The speeches were admirably calculated to excite ingenuity, emulation, and industry; and I really believe that there was not a single word of nonsense spoken on the occasion. Several ingenious improvements and inventions were displayed, and the meeting was considerably égayé by two or three pieces exceedingly well played on a piano-forte of an improved construction.
Many prizes were bestowed, and received with that sort of genuine pleasure which it is so agreeable to witness;—but these were all for useful improvements in some branch of practical mechanics, and not, as I saw by the newspapers had recently been the case at a similar meeting in London, for essays! One of the prize compositions was, as I perceived, "The best Essay on Education," from the pen of a young bell-hanger! Next year, perhaps, the best essay on medicine may be produced by a young tinker, or a gold medal be awarded to Betty the housemaid for a digest of the laws of the land. Our long-boasted common sense seems to have emigrated, and taken up its abode here; for, spite of their recent revolution, you hear of no such stuff on this side the water;—mechanics are mechanics still, and though they some of them make themselves exceeding busy in politics, and discuss their different kings with much energy over a bottle of small wine, I have not yet heard of any of the "operative classes" throwing aside their files and their hammers to write essays.
This queer mixture of occupations reminds me of a conversation I listened to the other day upon the best manner in which a nation could recompense and encourage her literary men. One English gentleman, with no great enthusiasm of manner or expression, quietly observed that he thought a moderate pension, sufficient to prevent the mind from being painfully driven from speculative to practical difficulties, would be the most fitting recompense that the country could offer.
"Is it possible you can really think so, my dear sir?" replied another, who is an amateur, and a connoisseur, and a bel esprit, and an antiquary, and a fiddler, and a critic, and a poet. "I own my ideas on the subject are very different. Good God! ... what a reward for a man of genius!... Why, what would you do for an old nurse?"
"I would give her a pension too," said the quiet gentleman.
"I thought so!" retorted the man of taste. "And do you really feel no repugnance in placing the immortal efforts of genius on a par with rocking a few babies to sleep?—Fie on such philosophy!"
"And what is the recompense which you would propose, sir?" inquired the advocate for the pension.
"I, sir?—I would give the first offices and the first honours of the state to our men of genius: by so doing, a country ennobles itself in the face of the whole earth."
"Yes, sir.... But the first offices of the state are attended with a good deal of troublesome business, which might, I think, interfere with the intellectual labour you wish to encourage. I should really be very sorry to see Dr. Southey made secretary-at-war,—and yet he deserves something of his country too."
"A man of genius, sir, deserves everything of his country.... It is not a paltry pension can pay him. He should be put forward in parliament ... he should be..."