THE FAIRDAIRN ART - GALLERY AND MUSEUM AT MANCHESTER.
"Every influence that leads the mind and habits of man from mental indolence, from froward passion, from grovelling pursuits, lifts him into a purer and a healthier atmosphere, checks his baser nature, cultivates in him the habits of reflection and investigation, refines his taste and feel- ings, opens to his eye the loveliness of nature, and his heart to its in- fluences. The middle class of this country, as well as the higher, have long enjoyed these advantages and acknowledged them. They feel this power of art. In every way they show and acknowledge it. The books they read, the places they frequent, the pursuits they follow, continually prove it. And, probably, the lovers of art have benefited, strange as it may seem, far more than artists themselves, from these creations of genius. How many who admire nature have learned much of their love of her from their previous love of art The artist catches with his appreciating eye the beauties that others miss, and from his canvass the lover of the picture turns to the great original, and seeks and finds that and innumer- able other beauties which his hasty unskilled eye had never seen before. This is but one example. The same truth holds good as to the beauties of form, and even as to the nice and intricate contrivances and adaptations in mechanism. Ffere, then, comes the great question for the upper and middle class. If these things have delighted and benefited you, why cannot they likewise be a blessing to working men ; and, if they can be, why shall they not ? "
[From the tenth number of the Manchester Review, a Saturday paper the size of our own, but consisting almost wholly of leading articles, and reviews, though not without some striking correspondenoe. It is a paper which may vie with the highest class of the metropolis. The existence of such a journal in the capital of Lancashire not only allows the ad- vanced condition of that great manufacturing town, but something more. It is one amongst the many evidences of the metropolitan character im- parted to the whole kingdom by the modern means and appliances for transit and intercourse throughout the whole space within the four seas. It is amongst the consequences of railways, penny postage, and other great material agencies of our civilization ; but it is a cause as well as a consequence. Supplied with original information, executed with great vigour, it is a powerful organ for informing the community, for pro- moting political and intellectual discussions, and thus far attaining the sooner to practical measures of further advancement. It is an advantage that journals of this kind should be posted in several centres of the United Kingdom; it not only endows the writers, who prompt and con- solidate public opinion, with different points of view, but, while identify- ing the highest class of thinking with local interests and a healthy local pride, Raise enlarges the perception and purpose of the whole Leading Classes of the country.]
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