ingmen’s Institute, they still continued members of the older institution; and thus the two institutions – differing in several respects in their aims and objects – went on successfully together for many years. It will be seen, therefore, that the reference to the position of the “institution of the sister town of St. Leonards” by “A Member of the Hastings Mechanics’ Institution” was not a happy one. But to return more directly to the newspaper correspondence in favour of the projected new readin(sic)-room the next letter is perhaps the best and the most liberal that was written on the proposed scheme. Those persons who have read pages 1 to 19 vol III Historico Biographies will not want to be told that besides being always in the fore-front of sanitary and other means of Improvement, Mr. Hatchard, was equally an advocate for means whereby the condition of the so-called working classes might be made more pleasurable. He seemed, indeed the impersonation of “Mr. Irvine” as against “Mr. Ryde” as portrayed in a popular novel – “Mr. Irvine was like a good meal o’victuals, you were the better for it without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’physic, he griped you and worrited you, and after all he left you much the same.”
The Rev. J. A. Hatchard, writing from Paris, said – “From what I remember from the contents of Mr. Rock’s letter, his plan was to establish a depôt for the sale of the publications of the Bible Society and Christian Knowledge Society. Such an establishment may be much called for in Hastings, but it does not appear to me that such an institution as a working-man’s reading-room can well be united with it. The basis is not broad enough for the popular working of such an institution. These are distinct institutions, and, as it appears to me, there is no reason why the friends to such a plan as the establishment of a reading-room for youths and working men should give up their scheme because there are those who desire to establish another Institution altogether dissimilar, although, perhaps, quite equally useful. At any rate, let us not mix up two distinct institutions. Not having seen Mr. Rock’s letter, I do not know how his objections to the innocent games of chess, draughts, dominoes and solitaire have been put. I gather, however, from more than one writer in the last number of your paper, that he has objections, and that one of them is founded upon the hypothesis that such games have a demoralizing effect. Now, if such games as those specified are demoralizing influence, all games must be the same. What, then, -
