29 OCTOBER 1853, Page 12

WHAT IS RECREATION?

OCCASIONALLY some Mechanics' Institute or local Athenseura

bursts on an admiring public with a flood of selected eloquence such as could only be supplied by professors as eminent in their way as a Soyer or a Bathe and Breach; and the distant public is charmed with an idea that "mechanics," and very humble folks in other respects, are in so high a state of intellectual cultivation, that only a Cobden or a Coningsby—only Historic Fancies, or

The Otgects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Science—eau ade- quately express the sum of thought among the class. The im-

portance of these institutes is admitted. At the moat recent meet- ing, a Cobden and a Lyon Playfair, an M. D. Hill and an hereditary Peel, attest the utility of the apparatus for placing intellectual culture within the reach of the working man, who desires to be cultivated with all his soul : and the festival appears to embody cultivation triumphant. But look a little closer, and ask how the matter really stands ?

Inquire of the responsible officer, the secretary; and watch- his countenance while he answers. booth to say, it is as much as these festive institutions can do to keep up the appearance of flourishing : the fact would he a luxury too expensive to be hoped for. Take any specimen you like : a Northern institution falling into gloom, its members beginning to jangle under the darkness of adversity, as even Franklin's heroic companions jangled in the winter of ice, hunger, and desolation; its subscribers dropping off; its offioers resigning one by one ; its skeleton kept together only by a few self-sacrificing enthusiasts. Take a Metropolitan insti- tution of the most promising kind, under high presidency : its finance making lee-way ; its club sacrificed to its ball-room and concert budget. Take another more strictly devoted to working men : its funds also declining; its independent pride of paying all its lecturers yielding; its officers and conductors uncertain in their tenure ; its future misty. It is a common story ; and many vall recognize either the individual cases to which we refer, or their equivalents. If you look to the "Unions," you have the Midland confessing that its aggregation has resulted in little benefit besides the agreeable meetings of delegates and Dr. Lyon Playfair ad- monishing those same delegates on the inefficiency of incompetent and discordant lectures. We doubt whether the Yorkshire Union could speak much more confidently, if it spoke independently of its peculiarly efficient officers ; and as to the grand incorporation or Union of Institutes, is it yet more than a project?

The Mechanics' Institutes are the expression of a want, which

they have not yet adapted themselves to supply. If you demand social improvement, says Mr. Cobden, you must give them educa- tion and recreation,—education to fit them for using mechanics in- stitutes; and recreation to replace the grosser excitements which they will otherwise seek. True ; but what is education ? what is recreation ? Ministers and public have wrangled, and still are wrangling, and threaten to wrangle "in omne volubiles sevum," as to what is the education permissible ; and they have not yet even arrived at the preliminary stage of consenting to consider educe"- tion alone, without annexing it to the still more vexed and im- mortal question what is religious truth? And even the minor question is not easy of answer.

The few may gather for conscientious and didactic purposes, the

many are drawn by attractions. Self-improvement renders the few faithful to mechanics institutes; the many go for recreation. But what 4s "recreation "P Ask everybody—and receive every answer, various as classes and individuals. The theatre, one will say ; but what theatre ? The habitué of the Opera will relish what would inflict a yawn on the frequenter ef the Adelphi • and he would sneer at that Eagle Tavern which the patron of ihe Coal Hole would find " slow " ; while Tavern, critic of the penny theatre would think the recital of "Sam 'All," to the accompaniment obligato of brandy and water' without the agremens of the freer saloon; most "innocent." Many found theatres amusing be- fore Robson restored laughter to the pit; yet to a-Brougham, the theatre whit& was relaxation after the toils of the woolsack was the Anatomical Theatre. Mr. Cobden finds his recreation, and his best glory, in making didactic speeches after dinner on educa- tion. His friends unite with him in the delights of dreaming on a prompt millennium, while many a spirited young Englishman is rushing to the theatre of war on the Danube, to see in all its working life that very war at which Mr. Cobden shudders. One man spends his days spontaneously in classifying the petals of the harmless flowers that lie in his harmless path ; a Czar finds amuse- ment in adding province after province to a huge show empire ; the private gossip can find recreation in the malignant treachery of misohiefmakuig, sole resource of an idle intellect ; an English husband falls back, this week, on beating his wife's face with a red-hot poker; the popular Queen of Spain—for she has been popu- lar—is reported to have been welcomed with hisses for the amuse- ments which she cannot deny herself; and the Irish tourist, whom Leigh Hunt mentions somewhere, traversed all Spain and the Con- tinent, unrecreated by tarantella, polka, or caohucha—by Pompeii or Versailles—and found his only bit of pleasure in the boxing-match which he shared. The English people used to renovate themselves with cricket, or archery, on the village green. Streets, or the parlours of ten-pound houses, are not suitable for recreative sports ; so the freeborn Englishman goes to the public-house and finds a portable excitement m pewter or clay. When people have determined what is education or recreation, probably they will found enduring institutions in which to be educated and recreated on self-support- ing principle& Meanwhile, they must go on trying, and, "greatly daring, dine" at — per head, speeches included.