MR LOWE ON EDUCATION AND ENGINEERING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1024, 15 July 1871, Page 2

MR LOWE ON EDUCATION AND ENGINEERING.

(Pall Malt Gazette, April 24th.)

Mr Lowe, Lord Kimberley, Lord Halifax, Mr Goschen, and other members of the Government, aa well as a numerous and distinguished general company, were present at a dinner given on Saturday evening by the Institute of Civil Engineers at the Hanover- Bquare Rooma. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed the toast of the evening. In doing so he said : I have the great honour of proposing to you the toast of " The Institute of Civil Engineers." I could never at the beat of times hope to do justice to such a theme, but at this particular moment I happen to have a little bit of engineering of my own which occupies a considerable portion of my attention. The fact is, the joint-stock company of which I am one of the directors has made a call upon the shareholders, and' ihey have demanded a poll. Under these peculiar and painful circumstances I trust you will make every allowance for the shortcomings of the agitated individual who now addresses you. As to this toast, I propose it to you with the most hearty goodwill, because I am of opinion that the profession of the civil engineer is perhaps the noblest which the world has yet seen. When I consider the ordinary education given in this country, and compare it with the education which iB appropriate to that profession, I am astonished at the contrast. My own education, and I had the happiness of receiving it at one of our public schools and universities, was directed mainly to learning something of the literature and the language of a people who have long since passed away— people who knew very little of nature, very little of the world in which they lived ; very little, indeed, of anything except the squabbles and quarrels in which they engaged with one another, and which they carried on upon a scale the most minute. When I think of the celebrated battle of Marathon, and all our school-boy enthusiasm about the 192 persons who perished on that occasion on the side of the victorious, and compare it with the grand drama which has been enacted in another part of Europe within the last seven or eight months, I cannot help feeling how small were the matters to which our early attention was directed. Why, ! a good colliery accident, under the auspices of those professional gentlemen! whom 1 see around me, would throw one of these great events of ancient times completely into the shade. Well, 1 turn from these pursuits of our youth, beautiful and attractive aB they are, but narrow and 3mall and unsuited as they are, too, to fit a man to take part in the great drama of life, to the education that ought I to he raquired and that will be required I in future days in the case of a civil engineer. What is that education I In order to ascertain it I look to the object for which this institution was incorporated. There I find that your aim and businesa are to direct the Bources of power in nature for the convenience and advantage of mankind. Now, the attainment of that object involves two things— a speculative and a practical consideration. Any man, that he may be fit to exercise in its highest sense your noble profession, ought to make himself master of the occult influences which Burround us, and of which the ancients to whose history and productions we have devoted bo much of our time knew nothing. It is you,_ gentlemen, and your predecessors in invert tion who have discovered in nature two. j powers which wera never dreamt ot until within the last 200 years— the power of attraction by which the movements of the heavens and the earth we controlled, and the power of electricity, which has given to man, weak and short-sighted as he ia, the ability to accomplish almost instanta^ neous action over the whole surface of the globe. It is your duty and happiness to know that you undertake to direct ior the happiness and convenience of our raoe the great forces in nature, to teach us how to aeiae those forces, and so to imprison, meclerate, and regulate them that they

shall serve man not only like most obedient and faithful servants, but with a power which no fabled giant could possess. I may here remark that, notwithstanding many calls upon my time, I have found sufficient leisure to look into the last work of the great philosopher who has written on this subject, and who has demonstrated to us how nature, availing herself of two great principles, the deßire of existence and the desire of leaving others to exist after us, has gradually moulded us from very different formß into our present shape. Now, it iB your business to play the return match and to do what nature has done for you — mould her' to your purposes as ahe has moulded you to hers. It is your duty to render an animal by no means very Bwif t or longsighted master over all the elements and all the disturbing forces of nature, to enable him to traverse in safety the raging seas and to construct on land a highway over which he can pass with the rapidity of a bird. Your profession is not only noble in theory, but most beneficial in practice. It realises to the full extent the grand idea that a man nan never be more usefully employed than in endeavouring to add to the comfort and happiness of the human race. It would ill become me to speak of the feats which you have performed in this direction. Since I myßelf can remember, it is bewildering to think of tne progress which you have made. Gas, steam, electricity, are not the creation of a remote age. They have been called into existence within the last sixty yeara, and when I reflect on what has already been done, I cannot ghelp looking forward with increased hopefulness to what it may be reserved to engineers to accomplish in the future. Indeed, it is enough to make one wish to revisit the earth, if only for a day, to see the results which the seeds you are now sowing broadcast will have produced fifty years from this time.