will, by some wholly unexpected discovery or improvement, be greatly advanced; or that, by accidental or natural association, it will lead to some other very important improvement in a branch of art wholly dissimilar; or, finally, that it will be superseded by something quite different, but producing the same result. Take, as an example, the art of printing. The simple process of printing, with movable types and a press moved by hand, does not seem, in the lapse of four hundred years, to have undergone any very material improvement. The introduction of solid plates, and the application of artificial power to the press, are improvements wholly disconnected, in their nature, from the art of printing, and yet add incalculably to its efficacy and operative power.

In a word, the products of art are the creations of rational mind, working, with intelligent and diversified energy, in a thousand directions; bounding from the material to the moral world, and back from speculation to life; producing the most wonderful effects on moral and social relations, by material means, and again, in an improved political and moral condition, finding instruments and encouragement for new improvements in mechanical art. In this mighty action and reaction, we are continually borne on to results the most surprising. Physical and moral causes and effects produce moral and physical effects and causes, and every thing discovered tends to the discovery of something, yet unknown. It rarely, perhaps never, happens, that any discovery or invention is wholly original; as rarely, that it is final. As some portion of its elements lay in previously existing ideas, so it will waken new conceptions in the inventive mind. The most novel mechanical contrivance contains, within itself, much that was known before; and the most seemingly perfect invention, if we may judge the future by the past, admits of further improvements. For this reason, the more that is known, discovered, and contrived, the ampler the materials, out of which new discoveries, inventions, and improvements, may be expected.

Perfect as the steam-engine seems, it is a general persuasion, that we are in the rudiments of its economical uses. The prodigious advances, made in the arts of locomotion, teach nothing more clearly, than the probability, that they will be rendered vastly more efficient. The circulation of ideas, by means of the press, is probably destined to undergo great enlargement. Analytical chemistry has, within the last thirty years, acquired instruments, which enable the philosopher to unlock mysteries of Nature, before unconceived of. Machinery, of all kinds and for every purpose, is daily simplified and rendered more efficient. Improved manipulations are introduced into all the arts, and each and all of these changes operate as efficient creative causes of further invention and discovery. Besides all that may be hoped for, by the diligent and ingenious use of the materials for improvement, afforded by the present state of the arts, the progress of science teaches us to believe, that principles, elements, and powers, are in existence and operation around us, of which we have a very imperfect knowledge, perhaps no knowledge, whatever. Commencing with the mariner's compass, in the middle ages, a series of discoveries has been made, connected with magnetism, electricity, galvanism, the polarity of light, and the electro-magnetic phenomena, which are occupying much attention, at the present day, all of which are more or less applicable to the useful arts, and which may well produce the conviction, that, if in some respects we are at the meridian, we are, in other respects, in the dawn, of science. In short, all art, as I have said, is a creation of the mind of man ; an essence of infinite capacity for improvement. And it is of the nature of every intelligence, endowed with such a capacity, however mature in respect to the past, to be, at all times, in respect to the future, in a state of hopeful infancy. However vast the space measured behind, the space before is immeasurable; and, though the mind may estimate the progress it has made, the

boldest stretch of its powers is inadequate to measure the progress of which it is capable.

Let me say, then, Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Mechanic Association, PERSEVERE. Do any ask what you have done, and what you are doing, for the public good? Send them to your exhibition rooms, and let them see the walls of the temple of American Liberty fitly covered with the products of American Art. And while they gaze, with admiration, on these creations of the mechanical arts of the Country, bid them remember, that they are the productions of a people, whose fathers were told, by the British ministry, they should not manufacture a hobnail! Does any one ask, in disdain, for the great men who have illustrated the Mechanic Arts? Repeat to him the wellknown names, which will dwell in the grateful recollections of posterity, when the titled and laurelled destroyers of mankind shall be remembered only with detestation. Mechanics of America! Respect your calling! respect yourselves! The cause of human improvement has no firmer or more powerful friends. In the great Temple of Nature, whose foundation is the earth, whose pillars are the eternal hills, whose roof is the starry sky, whose organ-tones are the whispering breeze and the sounding storm, whose architect is God, there is no ministry more sacred than that of the intelligent mechanic!

EDUCATION THE NURTURE OF THE MIND.*

I TRUST, Mr. President, that I shall not be thought an intruder, in rising to take some part in this interesting debate. It is made the duty of the Board of Education, of which I have the honor to be officially a member, to promote, as far as practicable, the objects for which the Board was established, by a participation in these meetings. Even if no such call of duty warranted me, in thus presenting myself before you, at this time, I am persuaded that this is a cause in which you would not reject the services of a volunteer, however humble.

I do not rise however, sir, to attempt to convey any information, on the great subject of Education. I speak in the presence of many practical persons, before whom it would be arrogant, in me, to attempt to use the language of authority, on this subject. There is, however, a single illustration of the nature of education, which constantly presents itself to my mind, and which I deem so important, as to warrant me in dwelling, for a few moments, upon it, however obvious and trite the general proposition which I would endeavor to establish.

The point, sir, to which I refer, is the importance of education, as the means by which the mind of man, or rather let me say, by which man himself, considered as an intellectual and moral existence, attains his formation and growth.

There are many very striking truths, which, on account of their familiarity, fail to affect us as powerfully as they ought. The unusual and the irregular arouse our attention; the habitual passes before us, surrounds us, dwells within us, and we do not notice it, do not

* Substance of Remarks, made at the County Convention of the friends of Education, held at Tisbury, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, August 16, 1838.

reflect upon it. The multitude runs to gaze at any departure from the laws of Nature, but casts a vacant eye on the wonder and beauty of its daily miracles. How little are we affected by the divine faculty of vision, by which the entire external world is successively pictured, as it were, upon the everchanging tapestry which hangs around the inner chambers of the soul! But, if it is reported that an individual can see with the back of his head or the pit of his stomach, the community is alive at the tidings. Men, who have been blessed, all their lives, with the glorious gift of speech; who have been accustomed, without reflection, by a few slight movements of the lips and tongue, to give a vibration to the air, which carries intelligence, expresses the finest shades of thought, awakens sympathy and kindles passion in other minds; men, who have seen their little children, they know not how, without books and without a teacher, acquire this heavenly endowment of articulate speech,—will travel miles, to behold the performance of a ventriloquist; and think they have made a good bargain, when they have paid a dollar, to hear him throw a voice into a chest of drawers.

I am not disposed, sir, to play the austere censor, and to quarrel with this eager passion for novelty. It leads, I am aware, if well directed, to improvement. It nourishes the spirit of observation. But I would have it accompanied with the habit of sober and thoughtful reflection on the world of greater wonders, which surrounds us, which we carry about within us, in the frame of our being and the constitution of our nature. The truly wonderful is not that which breaks out into astonishing novelties and fantastic peculiarities; it is the inimitable contrivance and the miraculous proportion, resource, and harmony, of our existence. Imagination and romance, in their wildest freaks, credulity, in its greediest cravings for excitement, has never caught at any thing of monstrous or fairy creation, which parallels those quiet mysteries of our nature, which make up the the daily round of life.