The portrait of Sir John Hawkshaw, by Collins, hangs on the walls of the Institution of Civil Engineers. To the proceedings of this body he has been for many years a stated contributor. In January 1862, he delivered an address as president of the institution. On that occasion he said that his profession had been to him from his earliest years an object of attachment, and that, were he actuated by no other motive, the love he bore it would prevent him from ever becoming lukewarm to its interests. Referring to the wide range which it embraced, he observed that engineering required the assistance of many departments of science and art, and called into employment important branches of manufacture. The civil engineer can perform, he said, no great work without the aid of a great variety of workmen, for it is on their strength and skill, as well as on his own scientific direction, that the perfection of his work will depend.

Speaking in 1862, he was then able to affirm that the engineering works of the thirty previous years had exceeded in magnitude all the previous engineering works of the world put together. The address, devoted in part to a review of improvements and progress effected in steam navigation, electric telegraphs, gunnery, and other cognate subjects, thus eloquently concludes - " No man can look back on the last twenty or thirty years without feeling that it has been the age of engineers and mechanicians. Our profession has done much in that period to change the aspect of human affairs. What agency, single or combined, can be compared in its effects or in its tendency towards the amelioration of mankind with the establishment of railways, the electric telegraph, and steam navigation?

In constructing railways, telegraphs, steamboats, and their adjuncts, docks and harbours, and moulding and fashioning the face of the material universe to the wants of man, in overcoming barriers, overleaping valleys and spanning seas, engineers annihilate both space and time, bring into juxtaposition nations and peoples, and accelerate beyond all human expectation personal communication and that interchange of ideas which is all-important to the advancement of civilisation and knowledge. Distance and separation have led, and always will lead, to misapprehension and prejudice - to ignorance and mistrust-to rebellion and war, and engineers may feel, when labouring on the giant public works that facilitate the intercourse of nations, that they are not merely conquering physical difficulties but that they are also aiding a great moral and social work '

These words will serve to show that Sir John Hawkshaw's aims reach beyond the immediate object of his professional labours material prosperity. He takes an interest in education, and lately pointed out, in a forcible communication to the Times, the deficient training in the use of living languages which our modern education supplies. Before Parliamentary committees he has frequently been examined, and is well known for the clearness and honesty of his evidence, and for his steadfast maintenance of opinions which his long and varied professional experience has convinced him to be correct. We may, in conclusion, add that he is at present engaged as sole Royal Commissioner in inquiring into the means of purifying tile river Clyde and its tributaries, and the best mode of dealing with the sewage and refuse from the towns and manufactories situate in the Clyde basin. This investigation is important, as Sir John's report may form the basis of future legislation as respects river pollution throughout the entire kingdom.

His address as President of the British Association will be looked forward to with interest. We may presume that, avoiding the questionable speculations indulged in to an unwarrantable degree by some of his predecessors, it will treat of those practical matters of science which concern the prosperity of nations and lie at the root of social well-being.

Sydney Morning Herald [935] 22nd November 1875.