THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT.* LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, we may of course think of anything which we choose in a gravel-pit, as we may anywhere else. Thought is free at least so we fancy. But the most right sort of thought, after all, is thought about what lies nearest us; not always, but surely once in a way, that we may understand something of everyday objects. And therefore it may be well worth our while to go once into a gravel-pit, and think about it, till we have learnt what a gravelpit is. Learnt what a gravel-pit is? Everybody knows. If it be so, everybody knows more than I know. We all know a gravel-pit when we see one; but we do not all know what we see. I do not know. I know a little; a few scraps of fact about these pits round here, though about no others. Were I to go into a pit a hundred miles, even fifty miles off, I could tell you nothing certain about it; perhaps might make a dozen mistakes. But what I know, with tolerable A Lecture delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Odiham, 1857. certainty, about the pits round here, I wish to tell you. to-night. But why? You do not need, one in ten of you, to know anything about gravel, unless you be highway surveyor, or have a garden-walk to make; and then someone will easily tell you where the best gravel is to be got, at so much a load. Very true; but you come here to-night to instruct yourselves; that is, to learn, if you can, something more about the world you live in; something more about God who made the world. And you come here to educate yourselves; to educe and bring out your own powers of perceiving, judging, reasoning; to improve yourselves in the art of all arts, which is, the art of learning. That is mental education. Now if a gravel-pit will teach you a little about these things, you will surely call it a rich gravel-pit. If it helps you to wisdom, which is worth more than gold; which is the only way to get gold wisely, and spend it wisely; then we will call our pit no more a gravel-pit, but a wisdom-pit, a mine of wisdom. Let us go out, then, in fancy (for it is too cold to go out in person) to Hook Common, scramble down into the first gravel-pit we come to, and see what we can see. The first thing we see is a quantity of stones, more or less rounded, lying in gravel and poor clay. Well-what do those stones tell us? These stones, as I told you when I addressed you last, are ancient and venerable worthies. They have seen a great deal in their time. They have had a great deal of knocking about, and have stood it |