Page:Address on the opening of the Free Public Library of Ballarat East, on Friday, 1st. January, 1869.djvu/27

 21 a country of which appears to have been written with prophetic inspiration—

The opportunities presented to enterprise and continuously sustained exertion have not been disregarded; of this ample proofs are given on all hands. The activity displayed in our harbors and towns, in the conduct of rural operations of every description, crowned this year with an abundance unexpected,—the opening of new branches of manufacturing industry, establish this to demonstration. But most conspicuously is it seen in your wealthy and flourishing city.

As far, then, as material progress and success are represented by our labors, we may without unseemly ostentation compare ourselves with the other hardy children which Britain, the mother of nations, cherishes in her bosom, or gives to reproduce her greatness in her out-lying possessions in the remote corners of the earth. How far we are redeeming the pledges imposed on us by the opportunities which prosperity creates, and fulfilling the missions which each in his sphere of duty has to fulfil, is not for me to say beyond secular and temporal matters, it is not my province to lead you; but what a field does the subject of education embrace? The vista through which the eye is led, from the hour of lisping infancy to that of adolescence, is broken by many an object which the solicitude of parents and relations has caused to intervene. These have each their several uses, but they overleaped, and the scene is closed