admirable botanizing ground. I have seldom seen a parterre in any garden more vividly coloured than the banks of the Dee below Parkgate, where the Bloody Crane's-bill and the Yellow Horned Poppy line the shore for nearly a mile with a glowing border of crimson and gold.

I have endeavoured to mention the principal fields of our district for botanical excursions. It must not, however, be supposed that all the plants in our local Flora are to be found in the course of a few visits to these

likely localities. Some plants seem to disappear for

several seasons in succession, and I have often returned from a vain search in a station of the highest character, and on my way home have found a long sought prize in a spot where it was little expected.

It may be interesting to compare the various proportions in which some of our more distinct botanical fields contribute to our local list of flowering plants. This can, of course, only be done approximately. Woods and woodlands afford 56 species; pastures and meadows 45; corn-fields 29; peaty soil, heaths, and bogs 40; purely aquatic localities 36; ditches, marshes, and wet places not distinctly peaty 123; walls, banks, hedges, road-sides, and waste places 254; sand-hills 69; the Dee shore 13; banks, rocks, and broken ground near the sea 38; saltmarshes 14; plants supposed to be not indigenous 62; plants that have been met with on only one occasion 28; species concerning the occurrence of which within the district there is doubt 28; making a total of 835 species out of 1561 flowering plants described by Hooker and Arnott in their British Flora of 1855.

Of Ferns and their allies our local list contains 32 species. The species in the British Flora are 60 in number.

The unwearied zeal with which Mr. F. P. Marrat has

applied himself to investigate the mosses of the district, has enabled him to enrich our local Flora with a list of 200 species. 446 species are described in the "Bryologia Britannica," published by Mr. Wilson, in 1855.

I have not thought it desirable to particularise the stations for rare or curious plants, such information being more appropriately given in the local Flora by Dr. Dickenson, published in the "Proceedings" of this Society.

SEVENTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, 25th February, 1858.

The REV. H. H. HIGGINS, M.A., Sen. V.P., in the Chair.

Dr. THOMSON exhibited and explained Mr. Turner's ingenious apparatus for detecting burglars.

Mr. BYERLEY exhibited a piece of wood cut from timber floated ashore off New Brighton, completely covered with barnacles; also a piece bored by the teredo navalis, containing fine specimens of the worm.

The following paper was then read:

ON THE MORAL DIGNITY OF THE SHAKSPERIAN DRAMA.

BY J. T. FOARD, ESQ.

THE Contemplation of any of the vast and magnificent architectural monuments bequeathed to us by distant ages, appears naturally to provoke inquiry into the necessities and motives which gave them birth. In presence of the Pyramids, of the ruins of "the hundred-gated" Thebes,

of the Temples of Nineveh, the mind, dispelling its instinctive and involuntary awe, recurs at once to their founders. To the men of whom these columns and fragments are but the "fossil remains." To seek the moral of the story these monuments enshrine. To ask if these beacons, which now hold lonely watch by the graves of a departed race, by their deserted hearths, by their silent homes, tell of a nobler race than our own; and enquire if they were of a loftier strain, of a more enduring courage, of a more self-sacrificing spirit than the men of to-day. For the human interest is still above all, and these bleaching skeletons and scattered bones of antique walls bear the burden of a song which can never grow old; which tells of hearts now cold, once full of passionate desires; of heads which have long ceased to throb, once not less ardent, restless than our own; or, it may be, of a people patient, pious, of a more practical faith and a more sublime ambition. The men who planted these breastworks against the tide of time, who framed these records to outlive their own brief day of sunshine and of shade, chose no mute means of appeal. The hand which framed column and lintel, key-stone and arch, stretched across the wide abyss of ages, of countries, and of climes, returns a warm and still vital pressure. Like the horn hung at the gate of enchanted castles in fairy tales, it is still potent to renew all grand and glorious memories, to wake the silence into busy life, to people the solitude with men, and, by the pomp and circumstance of antique life, kindle a new and not less generous emulation.

Who and what were these men? Under what creed, with what hope, by what inspiration built they so wisely and so well; not so much to endure, as to be worthy to endure; not so strong only, but so fitted to the mutations of fortune and of fate? Were their temples reared by many minds in unison? Whose

motives lent an elevation to their labours, or borrowed grace from its achievements? or did purely artistic considerations, or a sublime purpose lend its lustre to crown the glory of their deeds? These are questions that most naturally occur in reference to the relic of an art of which the bond of sympathy has been torn away, founded by men between whom and ourselves there is a great gulf fixed-for they were not Christians. The same considerations occur to us more promptly, and influence us more powerfully, in connexion with the remains of mediæval or Christian art and architecture. The moral of design and spirit of construction of the churches and cathedrals of the middle ages has a nearer and dearer interest, and is a subject no less of pleasant than important inquiry and legitimate research.

Modern criticism pronouncing on this ecclesiastical architecture, assumes the existence of a moral grandeur and dignified purpose superior to the instincts of emulation, or even of those influences of artistic propriety which constrain an artist in the execution of his work. It declares that what was accomplished with the rude engineering appliances of a semi-barbarian age, proves that some special motive, more or less exalted, is needed above mere power or resource, to achieve lasting and unchallenged honour, and for the consecration of labour to immortality. That an earnest and zealous devotional spirit, was alike the necessity that originated these splendid edifices, and of their unapproachable excellence. has proceeded further: it has declared that a certain superiority and grandeur of motive and design, are necessary to the supremacy of all that is to be eternal in duration or universal in acceptance; that singleness and purity of heart are demanded, to consecrate such efforts, and fit them with the moral dignity, essential to command unmixed and inevitable approval.

It

If this is true, wholly or in part, of one branch or phase of art, it must be no less true of each and every aspect of the same subject; of art spoken or written, as of art carved in stone or framed in architecture; of art dramatic and epic, as of art picturesque and pictorial. Antique philosophy (no less than antique fable in the mythology) assigned to dramatic art, epic poetry, and sculpture a common origin; the same beneficient tutelary guardianship of Minerva, and by her impersonation, the same miraculous origin and maturity at birth. The perfection of the highest possibilities of literature in tragedy and epic poetry (as of sculpture and architecture), in the results of one master mind, substantiate the truth, shadowed by the fable, of the unity in nature and origin of all art. Modern philosophy, with a spirit which seeks differences with a view to classification, rather than to discover resemblances, which contain the secret of laws, draws parallels between poetry and painting, and is content. It would consider the application of the same laws of creation to literature and sculpture unreasonable, and to claim for dramatic literature especially the same dignity of sustained design, would be considered absurd. The belles lettres are presumed soulless; their own incentive, inspiration, reward. The dramas of Shakspere would be cited perhaps as the first instance in proof of how little even a high order of literature has needed either of motive or design, to ensure its success, and how much may be accomplished without the pretext of superior intention. "Conceived in a purely secular spirit by an actor and manager of a theatre, they offer abundant evidence, if it were needed, that poetic literature of the highest kind, can be created in the simplest spirit of construction without moral arrangement or motives of dignified design." These positions are worth testing.

Is dramatic art exceptional in claiming moral excellence