attendant on its committees ; a vigilant corrector of
its proofs. Of most winning manners, he was as
beloved as he was respected. I met him in 1863, at
an evening party, and had much talk with him about
our old intercourse. Full of animation, with
undimned intelligence his age was " as a lusty
winter, frosty but kindly." In his beaming face
there could scarcely be found the traces of that hard
work made up of professional practice, of scientific
writing, of secretaryship of the Royal Society, of
lecturer at the Royal Institution, which he had
gone through since he graduated in medicine at
Edinburgh in 1798. Upon all questions of Physi
ology, Peter Mark Roget and Charles Bell are the
great authorities in the Useful Knowledge Society.
No higher service could have been rendered to the
association in its early stages than Mr. Bell s con
tribution to its treatises. His " Animal Mechanics "
is a model of popular writing upon subjects which
demand high scientific knowledge. This charming
production was published in 1828. At that time
there was another member of the medical profession
one, however, unconnected with our Society who
also contributed most effectually to disperse the
belief that science could only be taught in the use of
technical language ; that the uninitiated in the
technicalities had better not attempt to comprehend
the mysteries of that temple where there was scant
room for the worship of the multitude. Dr. Neil
Arnott, in 1827, published the first portion of his
314 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE :
" Elements of Physics ; or Natural Philosophy,
General and Medical, explained in plain or non
technical language." Never was book more popular;
never was the completion of any undertaking more
anxiously looked for. The first volume of the " Sixth
and Completed Edition" reaches me while I write this
chapter. It is a presentation copy from one who for
five-and-thirty years has won the love and gratitude
of me and mine, as the wise physician and the hearty
friend. I could not forego this digression from the
matters more immediately before me.
The Useful Knowledge committees, as I have
looked upon these monthly assemblages, present the
aspect of something higher than toleration a
cordial union of men of very different persuasions in
religion, who have met upon a common platform for
the advancement of knowledge, to which religion can
never be opposed. Let me group three represen
tatives of opinions that appear as far removed as
possible from amalgamation. Dr. Maltby, a great
classical scholar, the preacher at Lincoln s Inn, the
future bishop, first of Chichester, and then of
Durham, is a dignified representative of the Church
of England. He is zealous for the welfare of the
Useful Knowledge Society, of which he was one of
the earliest members. He will do its work assi
duously and carefully. He will not insist upon
religious topics being thrust in amongst secular. He
will not stickle for the due honour of the Established
Church. How can he do either? By his side, it
may be, sits Mr. Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, the wealthy
Jew, whose ambition, as that of the Rothschilds and
of other men of large property and unimpeachable
loyalty, is to have a voice in the British Parliament.
THE SECOND EPOCH. 315
Mr. Goldsmid is a man of something more than
business talent ; good tempered ; not obtruding the
pride of riches ; hospitable. Mr. William Allen, the
Quaker, may form the third in this group. I have
often called on him at his old place of business in
Plough Court, where, a practical chemist, he had
been a thriving tradesman, and at the same time a
Fellow of the Royal Society and a valuable con
tributor to its transactions. He well merited the
honour of his countrymen for other qualities than his
scientific acquirements. He was a liberal promoter
of every public scheme of benevolence. He estab
lished upon his estate at Lindfield, in Sussex, after
he withdrew from the cares of a commercial life,
schools for boys, girls, and infants, real schools of
industry, where agriculture was taught, as well as
many useful arts. Whilst the children had every
opportunity for acquiring health in recreation, and
improvement in a good library, he built cottages for
the labourers of his village, such as ought to have
shamed many a landowner out of his neglect. The
memory of this good man is to me fresh and fragrant.
There was perhaps no society in England, with
the exception of the Royal Society, which could
present such a knot of young men of high promise
as were assembled at our committees in the
earliest stages of their organisation. Mr. John
William Lubbock, the only child of the eminent city
banker, assiduously followed his father s calling,
whilst he was attaining the highest reputation as a
mathematician. In 1825 he had graduated as M.A.
at Cambridge. In 1828 he was rendering me the
most important assistance in the preparation of the
" British Almanac." For several years he worked
316 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE :
with the heartiest zeal at this apparently humble
contribution to the objects of the Society. But the
occupation was not a humble one, for he was prac
tically developing his investigations upon the Tides,
which subject formed several papers in the Philo
sophical Transactions. Devoting himself with the
same readiness to superintend the astronomical
portion of the British Almanac, I was also brought
into intercourse with Mr. John Wrottesley, after
wards Lord Wrottesley, and President of the Royal
Society. He was a member of the bar. Mr.
Benjamin Malkin afterwards Sir Benjamin, when
he accepted a high judicial appointment in India,
and there too soon closed his valuable life devoted
his great talents and acquirements with indefatigable
industry to the business of our committee. His
forte was mathematics. His brother Arthur was
elected to the committee a few years after, and in
several departments rendered essential service as
a writer and editor. Mr. T. F. Ellis, the friend
and executor of Macaulay, had many opportu
nities, in the revision of the Society s works, to
exercise his acute critical faculty. Mr. Lefevre (now
Sir John) was also one of the distinguished Cam
bridge graduates who gave to the Useful Knowledge
Society the prestige of their academical honours.
The University of London (as the College was then
called) numbered amongst its Professors some of the
ablest members of our committee. Amongst the first
of those who joined the Society was Mr. George Long.
In subsequent " Passages," I shall have so frequently
to mention his name, as one of the most important
of my associates, that it will be scarcely necessary for
me here to do more than allude to his unequalled
THE SECOND EPOCH. 317
industry, his rich scholarship, his sound judgment,
which very soon gave him his right position amongst
the eminent persons by whom he was surrounded.
Mr. De Morgan became a member somewhat later. I
first saw him in 1830. The occasion will arise for
mentioning the eminent services he rendered to the
works in which I have been engaged. Mr. Key, and
Mr. Maiden, about the same period commenced their
distinguished career as teachers of youth, and very
soon also devoted their unprofessional services to the
general diffusion of knowledge.
Mr. Leonard Horner was the Warden of the
London University, when he became a member of
the Useful Knowledge committee. In their early
stages the new preparatory institution " for affording
to young men adequate opportunities for obtaining
literary and scientific education at a moderate ex
pense ;" and the new society for " imparting useful
information to all classes of the community," were
considered by many to be engaged in a co-partner
ship for the political and theological corruption of
youths and adults. In some arrangements pre
scribed by a rigid economy in the finances of each,
they did appear to cany on their operations in con
cert. Thus, when I first attended in Percy Street
to read manuscripts and proofs, I had to thread my
way up a staircase, on the walls of which Dr.
Lardner was hanging models for the illustration of
his approaching Lectures on Mechanics. As a ne
cessary consequence, the council of the University,
and the committee of the Society, had several
members in common. Mr. Horner was not only
surrounded with the reflection of his eminent bro
ther s fame, but had. that brother s testimony, in
318 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE:
his published letters, to the interest which young
Leonard, as early as 1811, took in the education of
the people. How well he was qualified for popular
instruction was shown by an admirable series of
articles on " The Mineral Kingdom " which he con
tributed to the " Penny Magazine." How ardently
and unremittingly he strove to elevate the condition,
and provide for the health of the Working Classes,
has been manifested by his labours as a Factory
Commissioner.
I am still hovering round the remembrance of the
earlier members of the Society, whose literary or
scientific qualifications gave the assurance that no
publication would go forth, deformed by the in
accuracies of superficial information. In a volume
written by me ten years ago, I have expressed
my opinion upon the system pursued in our com
mittees : " From the time when the Society com
menced a real superintendence of works for the
people when it assisted, by diligent revision and
friendly inquiry, the services of its editors the
old vague generalities of popular knowledge were
exploded ; and the scissors-and-paste school of
authorship had to seek for other occupations than
Paternoster Row could once furnish. Accuracy was
forced upon elementary books as the rule and not
the exception. Books professedly entertaining
were to be founded upon exact information, and
their authorities invariably indicated. No doubt
this superintendence in some degree interfered with
the free course of original composition, and imparted
somewhat of the utilitarian character to everything
produced. But it was the only course by which a
new aspect could be given to cheap literature, by
THE SECOND EPOCH. 319
showing that the great principles of excellence were
common to all books, whether for the learned or
the uninformed."* To accomplish such real super
intendence there were the services at hand, in the
department that may be broadly characterised as
Natural History, of Mr. Daniel, in Meteorology ;
of Mr. De La Beche, in Geology ; of Mr. Vigors,
in Zoology ; and of Dr. Anthony Todd Thomson, in
Botany and Vegetable Physiology. With each of
these gentlemen I was, in various labours, brought
into pleasant and profitable intercourse. I was in
more direct and constant intimacy with Mr. William
Coulson, the translator of Blumenbach s " Com
parative Anatomy." In the composition of my
little book on " Menageries," I could always apply,
in cases of doubt, to his technical information, and
to the wide range of the scientific knowledge of
Mr. Vigors. The aid which Dr. Conolly rendered to
the diffusion of knowledge was not special or pro
fessional. In those departments of what we now
call " social science," which include the public health
in its largest sense, his experience was always working
in companionship with his benevolence. In 1831
we were united in the production of a series which
was directly addressed to the working classes. Dr.
Conolly brought to this useful labour of which I
shall have to make more particular mention a lucid
style, and an accurate conception of the true mode of
reaching the uneducated. " Be thou familiar, but by
no means vulgar," is as good a maxim for a popular
writer, as for a young courtier going forth into the
world, to deal with all sorts and conditions of men.
*" The Old Printer and the^Modern Press." Murray. 1854.
320 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE I
We had many lawyers on the committee. I have
mentioned several who were distinguished for their
remarkable scientific qualifications. Others of the
bar were accomplished scholars. But no one dis
played a more elegant taste than John Herman
Merivale. His translations fro"m the Greek Antho
logy, and from the minor poems of Schiller, have
not been condemned to that oblivion which attends
the greater number of poetical attempts. The -purity
and elegance of the whole mind of Mr. Merivale is
reflected in his poems. Courteous and sympathizing,
I look back upon my occasional intercourse with him
with respect almost bordering upon affection. Mr.
George Cornewall Lewis brought his various high
qualifications to the service of the Society at a later
period, when he became a contributor to its publica
tions. I mention him among the lawyers, for before
he joined the Useful Knowledge committee he had
been called to the bar. Of the elder lawyers, no
one was more valuable to the society than Mr.
James Manning perhaps the most profound of the
historical and antiquarian lawyers of his time. His
accurate information upon many abstruse legal mat
ters was amply displayed when he became one of the
most important contributors to the " Penny Cyclo
paedia." Mr. David Jardine was also a most useful
contributor to the legal department of the Cyclo
paedia, and was the author of " Criminal Trials," pub
lished in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge a
valuable contribution to our constitutional history.
Let me not omit to mention the youngest of the
lawyers amongst us Mr. Thomas Falconer, who
was called to the bar in 1830. He inherited literary
tastes, and was an acute as well as a modest critic
THE SECOND EPOCH. 321
upon the unpublished volumes and articles that
were submitted for his revision.
I have finally to turn to a knot of men, eminent
in the political annals of our country. They might
at first view be regarded as the Corinthian capitals
of our edifice. But this would only be a half-truth.
Lord John Russell, Lord Auckland, Lord Al thorp,
Mr. Denman, Mr. Spring Eice, Sir Henry Parnell,
were always ready to work as members of our
committee, even after they had been called to the
highest offices of the State. After the Reform era
I have sat at the monthly dinner with five Cabinet
Ministers, to whom it appeared that their duty was
to carry forward that advancing intelligence of the
people which had conducted them to power, and
which would afford the best security that liberal
opinions and democratic violence should not be in
concert, as the " one increasing purpose " was work
ing out the inevitable changes of society and govern
ment. The first poet of the generation that was
immediately to follow them has probably shadowed
out the convictions that made Ministers of State
zealous educationists :
" Yet 1 doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the
suns." LocksUy Hall.
It was not only in the meetings of our committees
that I had the advantage, for my editorial guidance,
of the opinions of men of accurate minds and sound
information ; but I was frequently also in corre
spondence with those who took a more than common
interest in particular works. Such a work was that
well-known contribution to the " Library of Enter-
322 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE!
taining Knowledge," which first established the re
putation of Mr. George Lillie Craik as a sound
thinker and an accomplished writer. To myself,
individually, the recollection of that autumn of 1828
is especially dear, for it saw the commencement of an
intimacy which ripened into the unbroken friendship
of six-and-thirty years. In the preliminary stages
of discussion on the objects and mode of treatment
of a book such as this, which was to embrace a vast
number of illustrative anecdotes of the love of know
ledge overcoming the opposition of circumstances,
there were necessarily different estimates of the
value of scientific and literary studies, whether "for
use," or " for delight," or " for ornament." The great
distinction between the love of knowledge for its own
sake, and the love of knowledge as the means of
worldly advancement, may be traced very distinctly
in the two popular volumes of Mr. Craik, and the
equally popular " Self Help" of Mr. Smiles.
Mr. Craik had written a preliminary disser
tation in the sound views of which Mr. Brougham
expressed himself to me as generally coinciding.
But in a portion of a letter, dated from West
moreland in September, 1828, Mr. Brougham takes a
different view of the range of such a work as that
proposed :
"His (Mr. Craik s) idea of the line to be drawn
as to self-educated men in modern times, is also
quite correct; but we must, nevertheless, confine
the examples to cases which are quite plainly those
of men who have greatly altered their situation
by force of merit. As Watt, Arkwright, Franklin,
Burns, Bloomfield, Mendelssohn making the ground
THE SECOND EPOCH. 323
of division or classification self-exaltation rather
than self-education, though they often will coincide.
This field is quite large enough for one book ; but
the work might be followed by another compre
hending the rest of it, and including all self-taught
Genius in the larger sense. To give an example
I should certainly exclude Newton, though, like
Pascal, he taught himself mathematics ; also Gran-
ville Sharpe, though he raised himself by his merit to
great fame ; but he was grandson of the Archbishop
of York, and could not be said to alter his station in
life. I look forward to Mr. Craik s labours as of the
greatest use to the Society, and to the good cause;
having the greatest confidence in his sound prin
ciples, and a very high opinion of his talents."
This interesting discussion was continued between
Mr. Brougham, Mr. Hill, Mr. Craik, and myself, till
it was seen how the opposite views could be resolved
into a general agreement. I have before me Mr.
Brougham s proof of Mr. Craik s first volume. To
Mr. Brougham is to be assigned the merit of giving
to the book in this proof the title which has come
to be one of the commonest forms of speech :
" THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFI
CULTIES."
The title originally stood,
" THE LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE OVERCOMING DIFFI
CULTIES IN ITS PURSUIT."
CHAPTER XV.
EVERAL years had passed, crowded with
political events. The amended Reform
Bill was passing through Committee in the
House of Commons in February, 1832.
There seemed to be little doubt that a Minis
terial majority would be too strong in the Lower
House to allow any re-actionary measure in the
House of Lords to be successful. The new Govern
ment officials were settling themselves to the
discharge of their administrative duties as if a long
and quiet possession of place had been won. On the
13th of February, I received a note from Lord
Auckland, the President of the Board of Trade,
expressing his desire for a few minutes conversation
with me in the course of the afternoon. The inter
view was a very brief one, but its importance to me
was not to be measured by its duration. The
Cabinet Minister offered me a new office, which it
was proposed to create at the Board of Trade, for
digesting and arranging Parliamentary and other
official documents for the information of members of
the Government, and possibly for publication. This
duty would have involved a regular attendance at
Whitehall ; the salary proposed was not a tempting
one ; but the offer seemed to open the way for a
more ambitious career than that of a publisher. I
requested time for deliberation. Having consulted
a distinguished friend, he advised me to decline the
THE SECOND EPOCH. 325
*
proposal, however flattering. Lord Auckland was
surprised but not displeased at my rejection of his
kind overture. He asked me to recommend some
gentleman fitted for -the post. There was one with
whom I had recently formed an acquaintance, Mr.
George Richardson Porter. He had written a paper on
Life Assurance for the " Companion to the Almanac,"
and he was the author of a volume on the Silk
Manufacture, published in Lardner s " Cyclopaedia."
Mr. Porter received the appointment. The experi
ment was perfectly successful, and much of its
success may be attributed to the ability and industry
of him whom, so fortunately for the public good, I
had recommended. Mr. Porter became the head of
the statistical department of the Board of Trade, and
in 1841 he was promoted to be one of the joint-
secretaries of that board. Till the time of his
lamented death in 1852, we were mutually attached
friends, and he was one of the most valuable con
tributors to several of my publications.
Had I accepted the appointment of the Board of
Trade in that February, it is probable that the whole
course of my future life would have been changed.
It was upon the cards that either I should have
been sitting in an office at Whitehall from ten till
four, cramming Ministers and Members of Par
liament with statistical facts, or become identified
with the most successful experiment in popular
literature that England had seen. On March 31st,
1832, appeared the first number of " The Penny
Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge."
In a debate in the House of Commons on the 22nd
of May, 1834, on a motion for the Repeal of tho
326 PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE:
Stamp Duty on Newspapers, Mr. M. D. Hill, then
member for Hull, in reply to Mr. Bulwer who moved
the Repeal, thus described the origin of that work :
"The Honourable Gentleman -was pleased to cha
racterize The Penny Magazine, as affording a
trumpery education to the people, because he says it
deals in accounts of birds and insects, and such
matters. I certainly was a little astonished to find
my Honourable Friend scout an insight into the
wonders of creation, as a trumpery affair. I should
be sorry if his designation of that little work were
correct, because the blame of its existence rests with
myself, it being a project of my own ; neither am I
innocent of the course it has pursued ; which from
first to last has had, and still has, my hearty con
currence." The circumstances connected with this
"project" were these. The town in that time of
political excitement abounded with unstamped weekly
publications, which in some degree came under the
character of contraband newspapers, and were nearly
all dangerous in principle and coarse in language.
Mr. Hill and I were neighbours on Hampstead
Heath, and as we walked to town on a morning of
the second week in March, our talk was of these
cheap and offensive publications. "Let us," he
exclaimed, " see what something cheap and good can
accomplish ! Let us have a Penny Magazine ! "
" And what shall be its title ? " said I. "THE PENNY
MAGAZINE." We went at once to the Lord Chan
cellor. He cordially entered into the project. A
committee of the Society was called, and such a
publication was decided upon after some hesitation.
There was a feeling amongst a few that a penny
weekly sheet would be below the dignity of the
THE SECOND EPOCH. 327
Society. One gentleman of the old Whig school,
who had not originally belonged to the Committee,
said again and again, " It is very awkward." Lord
Brougham, however, was not accustomed to let
awkward things stand much in his way. " The
Penny Magazine" was decided upon. I undertook
the risk of the publication, and was appointed to be
its editor. The task was not a very easy one in the
onset, for it was impossible to say, before the issue of
a few numbers, whether the periodical sale would be
twenty thousand or a hundred thousand, and whether
a large demand would be a permanent one. It was
therefore necessary to have a due regard to economy ;
and thus the attraction of expensive woodcuts could
scarcely be ventured upon in the early days of the
experiment. It was imperative also to proceed very
cautiously in treading near the ill-defined line that
separated the essayist from the newspaper writer.
I have a letter before me from the Solicitor of Stamps,
in which he says he has perused the specimen
numbers (1 and 2) of the Magazine intended to be
published by the Society, and that he sees nothing
in these numbers that will render the publication
liable to stamp duty. So I went confidently to my
work. Perhaps no circumstance gave me greater
encouragement than a letter from Francis Place, who
knew more about the working classes, and had
probably more influence with them, than any man in
London. He describes his pleasure at seeing the
prospectus. He begs me to let him have a quantity,
which he would cause " to be usefully dispersed in
the houses of call for journeymen, in workshops, and
factories." Mr. Place united to his business of