To a blind and most responsive audience he said, ‘I did not lose my sight until I had reached manhood. I was twenty-five years of age at the time, and when I knew that my sight was gone, never to return, many friends came forward and, prompted by the kindest motives, advised me to adopt a life of quiet contemplation. I very soon, however, came to the resolution to live, as far as possible, just as I had lived before, following the same pursuits and enjoying, as well as I could, the same pleasures. (Cheers.) I would strongly advise those who may be similarly situated to try to pursue the same course, for I have found that there is a wide range of amusements in which I can take just the same delight as I did in days of yore. No one can more enjoy catching a salmon in the Tweed or the Spey, or throwing a fly in some quiet trout stream in Wiltshire or Hampshire. I can take the greatest delight, accompanied by a friend, in a gallop over the turf; a long row from Oxford to London gives me the same invigorating exercise that it used to do, and during the recent long frost I do not think any one in the whole country found more pleasure than I did in a long day’s skating with a friend. Often in the Cambridgeshire fens I have skated fifty or sixty miles in the day. (Cheers.) It is a true remark that nature provides a wonderful compensating power, but I am bound to say that of all the compensations which I have found, the greatest is the generous and cordial readiness with which people are ever ready to come forward to offer us that assistance without which we are often powerless to do anything. (Cheers.) This with regard to our lot is certainly a silver lining to the dark cloud.’ ‘There are at the present time some nine or ten different systems of printing for the blind. Each of these systems has its different advocates, and as the cost of printing is very heavy, a great and unnecessary outlay is incurred in printing the same book in many different ways. If an agreement could be arrived at to adopt one particular system, with the same outlay the numbers of books that would be brought within the reach of the blind would be increased manyfold, and an inestimable boon would be conferred upon them by having brought within their reach a greater number of the masterpieces of English literature.’ [Sidenote: Leap-frog.]