The ceaseless movement which is going on amongst us has
shown itself in some few incidents of the week, but we are with- out any marked domestic event. The railway agitation has been kept up by replies and rejoinders from the Committee of Investi- gation, the Chairman of the Railway, and others ; an interim con- tinuation which has lost its interest in anticipation of the meeting convened for the 25th. Some gentlemen, who appear not to have een able to assert themselves sufficiently in the ordinary railway neetinge, have held a meeting of their own in the London Tavern, with Mr. Melina for their chairman ; and have endeavoured to found a " national " association, in order to protect the interests of the railway proprietary. But it does not appear that the great body of the proprietary or its most influential members were represented in that congress.
At Rochdale, Mr. Bright has been delivering a voluntary lecture against capital punishment ; characterized by much of his vigour, but marred by some of the traits that narrow his influ- ence. If he had not been born in a sect that precludes itself from sympathizing with the feelings as well as the convictions of the great body of the people—if he had been born heir to an English lordship—John Bright, with his physical heartiness, would have been a powerful man in either House. As it is, people constantly admire his power, and do not feel it.
They are more impressed by a lecture on Education delivered in distributing prizes at Manchester by Sir James Kay Shuttle- worth ; though the Committee of the Privy Council is rather out of date, but Sir James has brought his doctrines up to the latest inquiries of the day. He took for his theme a branch of philo- sophy based upon his earliest studies—medicine ; and he de- livered one of the best lay sermons that we have in this day of lay sermons by distinguished hands.
Of the same class was the lecture delivered by Mr. G. F. Wilson at the Society of Arts, on the making of candles ; in which Mr. Wilson, as manager of Price's Candle Manufactory, is facile prineeps. An ingenious English merchant, Mr. Wilson's father, saw the opportunity, about the time that Palmer began with the self-snuffing candles, of improving the manufacture for an article in large domestic use ; and he established a factory of his own under a pseudonym. The hit was successful; the candles are a new creation. The? manufacture has expanded to gigantic proportions, and has assisted other modern im- provements in stimulating valuable import trades : it is even in- fluencing the palm-oil savages of Africa. It has drawn together thousands of workers, adult and juvenile, and presented the oc- casion for improving their state, cultivating their education, and thus assisting in social progress. All of which Mr. Wilson mo-
ralizast in one of the most interesting of lectures, while he was holding & candle to the progress of the age.
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