A well-regulated mind is the most desirable of all acquirements, and I know no better means of gaining this than by meetings of such institutions as this. Here you have intercourse with your friends, and you can gain from one another by friendly intercourse stores of knowledge, that to search for as individuals would take away much more time than you could by any means devote, and at the same time attend to the business of your calling. Here you have the means of amusement as well as of gaining sound information, and I trust no one here will ever have cause to regret the day when he came to associate with his friends, and hear what others could communicate, for "in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom." _THE STEAM-ENGINE._ The many varieties of the world's manufactures--one might almost call them wonders--are now so numerous, that to bring any particular one in a single form before this meeting is a matter of no easy nature. To-night, however, I have ventured to single out, and have the pleasure of bringing before you, the steam-engine, as the prime mover at present of our workshops and manufactories, as also the grand motive power of our railways, now so different from the time when the great Stephenson was said to be mad, because he thought it possible to drive a train at fifteen miles an hour. For the first serviceable use of this grand machine we are indebted to the great James Watt. He it was who first wrought it so as to be under the useful and entire control of man, from what it was in the time of Hero of Alexandria, about 120 years before Christ. Our engineers have, since Watt's time, improved upon it year by year, till at the present day, instead of having to go in a mail-coach from London to Edinburgh, which formerly took fifty hours, we now go in the express train in ten, a distance of 420 miles. If beyond this ten hours, we grumble, and ask guards, porters, &c., at the various stations, "What has made the train so late to-day?" forgetting that just before the railways were first opened, the great Stephenson was urged not to say too much as to the supposed power of the locomotive, in case the cause of railways might be damaged. This was only some forty years ago, and it shows us how times are changed, for in the present day we consider thirty miles an hour anything but a fast train.