



Produced by Paul Murray, Stephanie Eason and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









  CRITICAL MISCELLANIES

  BY
  JOHN MORLEY


  VOL. III.
  Essay 1: On Popular Culture


  London
  MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1904




  ON POPULAR CULTURE

                                                                      PAGE

  Introduction                                                          1

  Importance of provincial centres                                      2

  Report of the Midland Institute                                       4

  Success of the French classes                                         5

  Less success of English history                                       6

  Value of a short comprehensive course                                 8

  Dr. Arnold's saying about history 'traced backwards'                  9

  Value of a short course of general history                           10

  Value of a sound notion of Evidence                                  16

  Text-books of scientific logic not adequate for popular objects      21

  A new instrument suggested                                           21

  An incidental advantage of it                                        23

  General knowledge not necessarily superficial                        25

  Popular culture and academic organisation                            25

  Some of the great commonplaces of study                              29

  Conclusion                                                           34




  ON POPULAR CULTURE

  AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE TOWN HALL, BIRMINGHAM (OCTOBER 5,
  1876), BY THE WRITER, AS PRESIDENT OF THE MIDLAND INSTITUTE.


The proceedings which have now been brought satisfactorily to an end
are of a kind which nobody who has sensibility as well as sense can
take a part in without some emotion. An illustrious French philosopher
who happened to be an examiner of candidates for admission to the
Polytechnic School, once confessed that, when a youth came before him
eager to do his best, competently taught, and of an apt intelligence,
he needed all his self-control to press back the tears from his eyes.
Well, when we think how much industry, patience, and intelligent
discipline; how many hard hours of self-denying toil; how many
temptations to worthless pleasures resisted; how much steadfast
feeling for things that are honest and true and of good report--are
all represented by the young men and young women to whom I have had
the honour of giving your prizes to-night, we must all feel our hearts
warmed and gladdened in generous sympathy with so much excellence, so
many good hopes, and so honourable a display of those qualities which
make life better worth having for ourselves, and are so likely to make
the world better worth living in for those who are to come after us.

If a prize-giving is always an occasion of lively satisfaction, my own
satisfaction is all the greater at this moment, because your
Institute, which is doing such good work in the world, and is in every
respect so prosperous and so flourishing, is the creation of the
people of your own district, without subsidy and without direction
either from London, or from Oxford, or from Cambridge, or from any
other centre whatever. Nobody in this town at any rate needs any
argument of mine to persuade him that we can only be sure of advancing
all kinds of knowledge, and developing our national life in all its
plenitude and variety, on condition of multiplying these local centres
both of secondary and higher education, and encouraging each of them
to fight its own battle, and do its work in its own way. For my own
part I look with the utmost dismay at the concentration, not only of
population, but of the treasures of instruction, in our vast city on
the banks of the Thames. At Birmingham, as I am informed, one has not
far to look for an example of this. One of the branches of your
multifarious trades in this town is the manufacture of jewellery. Some
of it is said commonly to be wanting in taste, elegance, skill; though
some of it also--if I am not misinformed--is good enough to be passed
off at Rome and at Paris, even to connoisseurs, as of Roman or French
production. Now the nation possesses a most superb collection of all
that is excellent and beautiful in jewellers' work. When I say that
the nation possesses it, I mean that London possesses it. The
University of Oxford, by the way, has also purchased a portion, but
that is not at present accessible. If one of your craftsmen in that
kind wants to profit by these admirable models, he must go to London.
What happens is that he goes to the capital and stays there. Its
superficial attractions are too strong for him. You lose a clever
workman and a citizen, and he adds one more atom to that huge,
overgrown, and unwieldy community. Now, why, in the name of common
sense, should not a portion of the Castellani collection pass six
months of the year in Birmingham, the very place of all others where
it