The Quarterly Meeting, which was also the annual meeting, took place on the 2nd of May, when the accounts showed a balance in favour of the institution of a little under a pound. The Committee’s report regretted a decrease of 14 in the number of members, although their then number was 329, as compared with 337 in 1859; 269 in 1858; and 274 in 1857. Mr. C. J. Womersley (against his expressed wish) was elected President, on the proposition of Mr. W. Ransom, seconded by Mr. Grady, in the place of Mr. G. Scrivens, who had resigned. Mr. T. S. Hide was re-elected Treasurer. Mr. J. Huggett, proposed by the Rev. J. A. Hatchard and seconded by T. S. Hide, was elected Secretary, in the place of Mr. John Banks, who had resigned.
At the next Quarterly Meeting (Aug. 1st) the Committee’s report stated that Harry Chester, Esq., President of the Society of Arts, had been kind enough to deliver an address to the invited Mechanics’ Institutions of Hastings and St. Leonards, which had since been printed by request, and a copy presented by the Rev. J. A. Hatchard. The number of members was then 312, being a further increase of 19 during the quarter. The financial position was a favourable balance of £2. 10s.
The Winter Session for Lectures was opened on the 12th of November, with a lecture by the talented Mrs. Balfour, her subject being “Charlotte Bronte”. For nearly two hours Mrs. Balfour entertained a fairly numerous audience with less of a biographical character of her subject than of a semi-critical, semi-controversial kind, in which allusion was frequently made to the criticisms which had been passed upon the writings of “Currer Bell”, the nom de plume of her heroine.
The 2nd Lecture of the Session was delivered by Mr. Joseph Pitter. The date was November 19th, and the subject “Cowper’s Poetical Works”. The lecturer commenced with saying that lectures were sometimes like public dinners. It was not the quantity that the people ate and drank, but the opportunity it afforded of an intellectual treat at the close of the repast. So it might be with his lecture; it was not for the amount of information that he might convey to them that he had come from London, so much as to avail himself of an opportunity of seeing many of his old friends and of talking to them about a poet whose writings he loved. He then treated of the poetic faculty generally, and repudiated the general notion that poets must be born such. He [a poet himself] did not contend that all persons might be poets by cultivation, but he maintained that even a born poet needed cultivation, and that one would not be a poet worthy of the name if he did not cultivate his mind, just as a beautiful garden if not taken -
