Nor will such a retrospect be interesting only to those more immediately concerned in producing the results recorded. The popular use of reading-rooms, libraries, and lectures, is not connected with questions of merely individual or local importance; it is of imperial bearing: for while their multiplication and prosperity afford criteria for determining how far the desire of knowledge animates the people, indifference to learning and incapacity for self-instruction are attested by their failure or neglect. These are amongst the outward manifestations of those unconscious tendencies by which the philosophical observer estimates the bent and genius of the age. As in the multitudes who throng to gaze upon the line of armies manœuvring in the pomp of mimic war, he reads the love of military glory, if not the lust of conquest; as in an inordinate devotion to games, and theatres, and spectacles, he sees the traits of frivolity; so in the steady application of the faculties to the improvement of the mind he recognises the characteristics of a wise and understanding people. But these diversities of national choice and temperament cannot be consigned to the speculations of the theorist. They enter largely into the deliberations of the practical statesman. By their influence, the distribution of political power is confessedly affected. Rights that could not be confided to an ignorant, are freely accorded to an educated population. Already the principle of an educational qualification has been mooted as the safest mode in which the extension of the franchise could be granted; and in considering the claims of various constituencies to a participation in the representation of the country, it is far from impossible that the government would accord a preference to localities, maintaining in efficiency and prominence well organized institutions of social and intellectual progress.