ance upon the aid of the wealthy and benevolently-disposed, produces an inertness and inability to take any step towards social amelioration, without consulting the small aristocracy of the neighbourhood, and procuring subscriptions-i. e., alms-from them. We cordially join the very few who reprobate this abjectness of spirit. Let every institution, either for improvement or recreation, be supported by those who are especially benefited by it; and if the institution cannot be so supported, it may be assumed to be undesirable. When we see in millions of individuals thoughtlessness, dissipating pence, shillings, and pounds, on the paltriest objects, daily injuring the birth of their own happiness by supernumerary superfluities and reckless expenditure, surely a trifle might be appropriated for ordinary and exigent demands. One way of helping to remedy these evils, would be to establish Savings' Banks in connection with every Mechanics' Institute.

"THE EXCLUSION OF POLITICS AND RELIGION FROM MECHANICS' INSTITUTIONS.—An address upon this subject was delivered on Thursday evening, in the school-room underneath the Unitarian chapel in New Bridge-street, Strangeways, by Dr. Beard, the officiating minister at that place of worship, to the members of the Working Men's Association. He commenced with the assumption that these subjects were expressly excluded from most Mechanics' Institutions, and said they were originally intended for the communication to the working classes of what was deemed useful knowledge, and particularly such as bore upon their social pursuits in business. They still retain that function-a very important one-but they had undertaken to discharge another important office, namely, the elevation of the general tone of society. Perhaps their primary business was to gather round them a number of first minds among the people gene. rally, to employ those minds, to set them thinking one with the other: in the first place, then, to employ them in the elevation of other minds. The first function made Mechanics' Institutions like schools,

the second like universities:-universities among the working classes -to make them not only know what is known, but to make them discover what is not known. Not only to bring them to a certain level, but to elevate them to a higher position than they had hitherto attained. They were called upon to discover truth, and in that capacity, speaking to them as men of an university, not as children at a school, he said they ought to introduce the questions of politics and religion. He objected to the exclusion of politics and religion in Mechanics' Institutions on a general ground: he would not like to exclude any light from his own mind, and therefore could be no advocate for the exclusion of any possible light from other men's minds. As he would blame the Church of Rome for putting out an index of 'prohibited' books, so he could not defend the putting forth by Protestants of an index of 'prohibited' subjects. Not very long since a clergyman in the borough of Salford denounced the opinions of an individual lecturer at one of our public institutions, and sat himself down to write to the directors on the subject, merely because certain opinions were delivered with which he could not agree. Now, this man was committing the very fault he charged upon the Pope of Rome, but he (Dr. Beard) would rather have a Pope of Rome than a Pope of Salford. In this country, he was thankful to say, he could not find a similar instance in regard to politics, but only let him take them across the water, and there was, a few days since, an editor of a newspaper fined a heavy fine, and sentenced to a long imprisonment, simply for expressing, in his own newspaper, his opinion in regard to the existing government-the government of a man who had climbed to power on the shoulders of the people. Formerly there were censorships in England, but the people now would not allow them. These societies, however, were practical revivals of a censorship, therefore they were to him (Dr. Beard) offensive. It was clear that 'exclusion' was an instrument used by the enemies of mankind to keep them in their present position; it was, besides, unworthy of men— especially unworthy of Mechanics' Institutions, whose professed vocation is the furtherance of knowledge and the improvement of their fellow-creatures. The tendency of the system of exclusion was to divide men into two classes—a master class and a slave class. Surely Englishmen would not allow it to be said-Thus far shalt thou go and no further' in the pursnit of knowledge; that these were subjects reserved for their betters only! But why were these topics excluded?

They contain truth or error, or a mixture of the two. Suppose they contained truth? Investigation was the only way in which it could be ascertained. Suppose they contained error? Why then, investigate them still. But it was said it might lead to error. Ah! there it was; these men, who talk so much about faith, have no faith at all -they wanted faith in the power of the divinity-in the power of GOD's truth. Investigation was the only way in which truth could be separated from error."

We believe that Mechanics' Institutes, and societies having similar objects in view, are most valuable agencies in diffusing a large amount of useful information, and in promoting the social and intellectual improvement of the people. Without giving an opinion on Dr. Beard's sentiments upon this important and somewhat delicate subject, we submit it to our readers to deduce their own conclusions from the premises.

This being (with us, at least) one of the themes which heat in the handling, we leave it; and like Columbus, who drew immortality from an egg, and in crushing its fragile casing, cracked the shell of obscurity,—may our occult and dignified friends be equally successful, and the full solution of the problem be worked out. We shall, in the meanwhile, keep our mind open to conviction, and gladly receive the products.

Having named eggs, so full of meat and mystery, it may not be be irrelevant to name to our over-combustible metallic friends, who have a burning zest for controversy, that they contain a large proportion of phosphorous—a highly-sparkling and inflammable agent, as everybody knows but it is not so well known, even to physiologists, according to the experiments of a celebrated man, unac

countably to increase, as the Promethean spark of life begins to glow with a steadier and more fervent heat. The incorporation of phosphorous with the nerve tissues, may afford a hint in this new direction. Of minerals that we eat, we are gravely told in Household Words—There is no question that mental exertion is accompanied by proportionate waste of the substance of the brain-the instrument of thought; just as any other exertion of force is accompanied by chemical transmutation of matter. With this goes hand-in-hand the consumption of phosphorous, which is an incorporate part of the brain. The fiery ragings of the maniac, and the deep meditations of the scholar, are accompanied by a greater waste of the phosphates, than the expenditure of them that goes on in ordinary or more placid beings. The reflection is strange and whimsical, that the most luminous corruscations of thought have their source in a brain rich in phosphuretted fats; and that the thoughts that breathe, and words that burn, have been really cradled from their birth in dormant fire.

We can only affirm generally, that we are all men of metal; that in all our food we imbibe mineral matter; and that our frame is loaded with earth. Those minerals which are interwoven with the living structure of the plant, are taken up in the fabric of the animal. And, to us, they are as important as to the meanest vegetable that grows. I who write this, boast myself of being flesh and blood. But lime strengthens my bones; iron flows in my blood; flint bristles in my hair; sulphur and phosphorous quiver in my flesh. In this human frame the rock moves, the metal flows, and the materials of the earth, snatched

by divine power of vitality from the realms of inertiæ, live and move, and form part of a soul-tenanted frame. In the very secret part of the brain, there lies a gland gritty with earthy mineral matter, which Descartes did not scruple, with a crude scientific inquiry, to assign as the residence of the soul. You could no more have lived, and grown, and flourished, without iron, and silver, and potash, and sodium, and magnesium, than wheat can flourish without phosphorous, grass without silica, cress without iodine, or clover without lime. We are all of us, indeed, of the earth, earthy. If an animal has a particular predilection for some one particular metal, it is so because it is essential to its well-being-nay, to its existence. We might add the names of many minerals used in medicines voluntarily and of our own knowledge, or in food involuntarily and by way of adulteration: their name is legion. There would yet remain the examination of minerals which have been used by fashionable ladies, as beauty draughts, -such as antimony among the ladies of Paris at the present day,—or by others in lower grade for like purposes; and the list would include arsenic. For, strange as it may appear to thinking sober men, most of the things which have been employed for these light and frivolous ends, have been of a poisonous nature, as if the fair sex loved from the nettle danger, to pluck the flower beauty.

Sole (saith the proverb) et sale nihil sanctius et utilius ;— nothing is more holy or more useful than the sun and salt. The self-indulgent public, by their fruits repudiate this ancient apothegm, and substitute tobacco as a panacea for the ills of life. It is true, Dr. Parr and Robert