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darted off with a bounding step and a look towards both the Doctor and Miss Lavinia, which seemed to say, "a fair field and no interruption."

In human life there are two things which are terrible-I mean to gentlemen who have delicate nervesthe one is the having a tooth drawn, and the other the asking a pretty girl, abounding in charms and worldly possessions, to do you the favor of accepting you, as the partner of her person and her property, till death dissolves the connection. Does the reader suppose that I mean to lay open to his inquisitive eye, the scene that ensued between the Doctor and Miss Lavinia? If he does, he is very much mistaken; all that I shall let him know is, that the embarrassing question, just above alluded to, was put by the Doctor to Miss Lavinia, and by her answered affirmatively. Her cousin says that Miss Lavinia, when the interview was over, blamed her very much for leaving her alone with the Doctor, and that when Mr. Faw departed, he seemed in very good humor, flushed in the cheeks, smiling, and brushing the knees of his pantaloons with an elegantly bordered white muslin handkerchief.

SOMETHING out of the COMMON ORDER OF
THINGS.

piece on the mantel that he had waited longer than he saw any good reason for. He rubbed his hands briskly, but said nothing. The company became impatient. The bride's-maids sent down to know the cause of the delay. The bride looked amazed, and well she might. The company became uneasy. Several gentlemen began to remember engagements elsewhere for the evening and to depart. The hours moved heavily along. The folks, at length, by degrees had all disappeared. Mr. Lint was finally left alone. He paced the well lit rooms with a quick step, and silently. He walked mechanically to the windows, and gazed out upon the snow-flakes as they drove against the panes of glass. The carriages had all rumbled off. The darkness of the night seemed doubly cheerless. "Well, this," muttered Mr. L., "is a matter which I do not, I cannot, understand." The old lady was in terrible agony-all her labor had been in vain—and then "people would talk so." "What a pity," said Mrs. L., " every thing was so well arranged," as she glanced her eyes around upon the rare and beautiful flowers, a bouquet of which was perched wherever a foundation could be made for it. "Dear me," she continued, “and poor Lavinia!" "I will see this farce out," said Mr. L. with clenched teeth and fist also clenched.

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But the Doctor-what did become of the Doctor?

AN UNEXPECTED PATIENT.

Poor Lavinia! to her indeed this was an awful night. The evening for the wedding at length arrived. How the Doctor's happiness and good fortune were envied! Her bride's-maids did all they could to alleviate her The world of beauty and fashion was thenceforth to sufferings. Her temples were rubbed with all manner lose its sun of light and radiance. It was a cold wintry of essences, and lest she should faint away, a bottle of night. The hospitable mansion of old Mr. Lint, Lavi- salts was kept continually at hand. She bore it hownia's uncle, seemed to rejoice on the occasion. The ever quite philosophically, and at a reasonable hour, large grates were brimful of coal, and each seemed one 'solitary and alone," she retired to rest. Early the solid mass of intense red heat. The candles were all next morning she breakfasted in her room, and her ornamented with richly cut papers-the work of the features seemed so round and pretty, that care itself fair hands of Lavinia's cousin. The whole edifice, could not find a spot upon them rude enough to answer for a foothold. "Dear me," said Miss Lavinia, helpfrom the garret to the kitchen under ground, was illuminated. Carriages rolled up after carriages and emping herself to a buckwheat cake, "now I come to think tied their loads of finery and beauty. The very servants of it, the man had red hair—what an escape!" bustled about and grinned and seemed unusually happy. I know that the reader is dying with anxiety to hear. The bride's-maids had arrived, the company had assembled-among other things, the hour for the ceremony had I must therefore be very deliberate in telling him; but arrived, so had the refreshments, so had the groom's- patience, and a few periods, will lead him to the informen, so had the priest-the bride was dressed, and her mation desired. I think when the whole truth is fairly blooming attendants were prepared to escort her; every told, that Mr. and Mrs. and even Miss Lint, will exthing was ready but the groom-where was he?" The cuse the absence of our hero, "situated as he was," as Doctor must be a very absent man," said Mr. Ruffles, Sir Patrick O'Plenipo would say. But where was the "to be absent on such an occasion." Mrs. Sneezer took Doctor? I will let you know in the course of the fola large pinch of snuff, and remarked, "that it was very lowing chapter. mysterious." Mr. Lint was in a curious predicament, and although in his own house, felt very little at home; and he walked to the passage door-opened it-looked out -the snow was whitening the tops of the thick array of carriages, the great-coats and the hats of the coachmen-the breeze was very cool; he saw no carriage in motion, nor other indication of the expected coming of the esculapian; he looked at his watch-blew his fingers and returned to the fireside. "This is very strange," said Mr. Lint. Mrs. Lint was very busy, marshalling and drilling her servants, pouring the wine out into the glasses, mixing lemonade, splitting up the oranges, and arranging the trays and waiters of cakes and fruit; and as industry and occupation are the "sovereignest thing on earth" against the approach of ennui, she hardly knew that the time appointed had arrived. At length she drew from her girdle a gemmed repeater, which gave her the first intimation of the lateness of the hour. She called out, "Samuel!" Samuel, all neatness and apron, immediately answered, "Madam!" "Samuel," said Mrs. L., "what are we waiting for?" "The groom, madam, has not corne." "The groom!" said Mrs. L., “that's very singular ;" and off whisked Mrs. L. to inform Mr. L. of a truth of which he was already painfully aware. The worthy priest had exhausted interrogation itself in inquiries about the prospects of the parties about to be wed, and concerning the health of every family, a member of which happened within reach of his voice--and turning his face towards the fire-place, observed by the time

Upon the evening appointed for the ceremony, the Doctor repaired to his room at an early hour, to prepare for the interesting occasion. When completely dressed, he surveyed his figure fully reflected in a psyche glass. His pantaloons and vest were of white-the former of the finest cassinet, the latter of satin; his coat was black, and of the best broad-cloth, fitting without a wrinkle; his stock and gloves, of course, corresponded in color with the vest and pantaloons; white silk stockings, and well polished pumps, covering feet unusually small, concluded his adornment. Thus to himself did his faithful mirror represent Dr. Faw, on the evening already referred to. As the Doctor stood before the glass, a rap was heard, and an individual obtruded himself upon him. "I am desired," said he, "Doctor, to request you to call immediately upon a lady who is alarmingly ill." The intrusive character then went on to describe exactly the place where the lady was to be found. "Will it not answer to-morrow?" said the Doctor. "I am particularly engaged." In this style of expression, I think that the Doctor was pretty accurate, for a wedding in which our position is that of first performer in the ceremony next the priest, might very fairly be called a particular engagement. "For the love of God, do come, Doctor; the woman may die. She cannot detain you more than a few minutes," was the further appeal addressed to our hero. The heart of Mr. Faw being just then in a condition particularly propitious to the action upon it of the

him; or like Morgan, of anti-masonic memory, he was abducted; or like Elijah, he went heavenward in a chariot of fire, the author of this narrative would not undertake to hazard a conjecture. All that he assumes to speak of, is what actually did occur; and further, as the form of the affidavits in the law run, he saith not.

TIME, TROUBLE, &c.

finer and kindlier sympathies, and as he supposed that it would be a charitable way of spending an hour which otherwise must move on leaden wings, he concluded that he would comply with the request. So taking his hat and cane, and hurrying on his gloves, he sallied forth. The reader now finds the Doctor on the public street in his wedding attire, hurrying to the bedside of his patient. . Arrived at the passage door, he encountered an Amazonian, on her knees, laboriously busy at that work of all Time is a great physician. It cures most of the maladetestation-scrubbing-her arms bared, and her frock dies of the heart, and frequently furnishes a specific tucked up. Her ladyship looked askance very know-where nothing else medicinal could be of any avail. ingly and grinned, which the Doctor supposed to be her The affections of Miss Lint, as the reader may have rude way of wishing him joy of the coming nuptials. opined, were not very deeply engaged in the affair with She instantly abandoned her occupation, and with her the Doctor, although matrimony was intended to result mop in hand accompanied the Doctor into the cham- from it. It has happened, and probably will happen ber and presence of his patient. The room, to all again, that women marry without any very overpowerappearance, was that of the sick: a cheerful fire was ing sense of irresistible love. All of the sex are not blazing in the hearth, and numerous vials were ranged framed of materials of which even a Shakspeare could upon the mantel. The bed-curtains were closely drawn. make Juliets. Nature had intended Lavinia for as The patient was bolstered upright in a sitting po- much happiness as belongs to our condition here, and sition. The Doctor took his seat by the bedside, and hence she was denied the more lively emotions out of began feeling her ladyship's pulse. The Doctor always which arise as often intense pain as the highest enjoywas a man of feeling. The sick woman immediately ment. She was never boisterously happy, nor did her made a desperate spring, and clasped her arms around feelings ever relapse into a correspondent degree of the neck of Mr. Faw, exclaiming, "Your wife! your gloom. The groomless wedding caused much talk in wife! you traitor!" Immediately three red-haired suc- the village when it occurred, as did all the accompanying cessors to the features and name of the Doctor crawled circumstances, as we have narrated them; but other from under the bed, and clinging to his knees, cried out stories and other excitements succeeded it, and after a most lustily, like Maelzel's Androides, "Papa! papa!" few years, it came to be but infrequently even alluded Doctor Johnson observes that when we are in any emerto. The swarm of admirers which Lavinia's charms, gencies of danger or perplexity, the mind acts with ex- including the metallic ones, commanded, were brushed traordinary rapidity, and that an immense number and variety of ideas are compressed into an inconceivable away for a season, like insects by the breath of a frosty breeze. They returned, however, eventually, and the minute period of time. Not Laocoon, with the serpents house of Mr. Lint became as joyous and as gay as ever; contorting around his limbs with fatal pressure, ever so true is that trite maxim, handed down to us from the felt with more intensity the horror of his situation, than ancients, "ubi mel, ibi apes"-where there is good enterdid our man of medicine. He thought in an instant of tainment, there will always be sufficient guests. the various modes of escape. The window was too high from the earth, and the pavement too hard to meditate a leap. The fire was too hot and dangerous for MRS. AND MR. RUFFLES, AND THE CONCLUSION. him to attempt the chimney. In his desperation, loaded Will the reader be kind enough to take it for granted, as he was, he turned towards the door. It was locked, that some four or five years have elapsed since Dr. Faw and the lady who had shown him up stood with her departed so abruptly from the bedside of the unmanage back against it, tall as a grenadier and twice as power-able patient, to whom we alluded in a preceding chapter. ful, with the dripping mop in her hands, uplifted like an On a dreary December morning, Mrs. Ruffles (formerly axe in the butcher's grasp. Reconciling himself to his Miss Lavinia Lint) was seated at the head of a neatly fate, the Doctor struggled back into the chair from which arranged breakfast table, busily engaged pouring out he had risen, and sank down upon it completely hope- coffee. The buckwheat cakes were sending up into less and unnerved. the room wreaths of steam. On each side of Mrs. R. was seated a curly haired young one, intent upon swallowing any and every thing that might come to hand. "Dear me," said Mrs. R. looking out of a window opposite, "how very like this day is to that evening on which it was appointed that I should be Mrs. Dr. Faw." Mr. Ruffles was sitting before the grate, drying the morning's paper and looking at the coals. Mr. Ruffles always read the newspaper whilst he breakfasted-a commendable custom, and a combination of luxuries. When Mr. Ruffles was seated, he commenced reading"Drowned, in attempting to cross- river, in the State of, on Monday last week, a gentleman, lately arrived in the neighborhood; his name and residence unknown; he was of middle size, well dressed, with sandy hair: letters were found upon him addressed to Dr. Faw. It is hoped that this account may reach his friends." "How strange," said Mrs. Ruffles, "that I should just then have happened to have spoken of him.” "Very," said Mr. Ruffles" but these things, you know, my dear, are unaccountable." "Are you ready for your coffee, my dear." "Yes." And so this story ends.

If ever the organ of “adhesiveness" was clearly developed upon any cranium, it must have been upon that of the veritable Mrs. Faw, judging from the manner she adhered to her husband. Sitting on his knees, her arme still around him, she continued pouring out a lava flood of invective, "You wretch! you undertake to deceive and ruin a poor innocent and confiding woman, and spend her money, after having a wife-and she living, and you run away from her." Such, and other like terms of reproach, was the poor Doctor doomed to hear rattled in his ears, and no means of escape. He was like a wretch bound to some instrument of torture and shame, and compelled to receive and bear all that might be meted out to him. Motionless he sat, unresisting and mute. At length the heart of the janitor relented. "Come," said she of the mop, roaring with laughter, "fair play is a jewel-the Doctor deserved a good deal, and he has got it--he came, at any rate, as he supposed, on an errand of mercy; let not his treatment, however he may have earned it, be merciless-he has been under the pump long enough." So saying, and tearing the husband from his wife's embrace, she raised him up aloft and bore him to the door. Like the hare, when the loud yelp of the pursuing hound breaks upon his ear, so leapt the Doctor forwards, and so he bounded along the stairs and the passage-way to the open street-the last that Mrs. Faw, or any body else, ever saw or knew of him with any absolute certainty, Whether, like Curtius, the earth gaped and swallowed

Holstein on the North Wind; Heinsius on the Ass;
Pierius Valerianus wrote an Eulogium on Beards;
Erasmus on Folly; Sallengre on Drunkenness; Syne-
sius on Baldness. (Greek.)

the government, Southern great men have despised or

THE MECHANIC ARTS, AND EVERETT'S forgotten that, without which, popular government can

ADDRESS.*

have no hope the increase and diffusion of knowledge In September last, the Massachusetts Charitable among the people. Vast, splendid, imposing objects, Mechanic Association' held, in Boston, an exhibition of monopolize their regards. To thunder in the Senate, machines, implements, and fabrics, recently produced or electrify the multitude at some great national or by the mechanic arts; and at the same time held a fair, party jubilee; to meditate exploits in war; or to proat which many articles made for the occasion, were pose some grand scheme of legislation for showering sold: the profits of the exhibition and fair being applied wealth upon millions at once; or to defend, with tongue to the charitable uses for which, mainly, the Associa- and pen, the political rights of large masses of men ;tion was formed. In variety, richness, and depth of these are the only quarries dignified enough for Southinterest, no exhibition of the kind, probably, ever surern ambition. It never deigns to bestow a thought passed, if any ever equalled, this one. More than upon the details of means, by which individual men fifteen thousand articles, in almost every department of and women may be made to covet, and to acquire, a art,' were displayed to the wonder-stricken eye. Spe- knowledge of their various duties and rights-of Nacimens of manufacture the most rare, of machinery the ture's wonders--and of Art's triumphs. Far less does most ingenious, courted attention on every hand. Agri- it deign, like Bacon, or (may we add) like Brougham cultural implements, the tools proper to a hundred differ- and Everett, to drudge personally (operarius et bajulus ent trades, steam engines,-all presenting some useful or fieri) in so unshowy a work. What infatuation! to curious invention or improvement-filled the most know-imagine that the edifice of state will withstand sapping ing beholder with new admiration for a fertility of mind and the storm, because its proportions are happy and and cunningness of hand, which seemed here to have the blocks which compose it are strong; when their been well nigh superhumanly creative. Foremost of won-joints are uneven and the cement which should unite ders, was the model of Davenport's electro-magnetic en- them is a crumbling sand!-Men who will devote their gine; applying the power of the loadstone to drive ma- powers to none but the vulgar aims of ambition-chinery. The model was of sufficient force to work a oratory, statesmanship, and arms-err as fatally as turner's lathe; and judicious observers, after examining those do, (and in a manner not unlike) who reserve all its principles of action, deemed it easily susceptible of their virtue for great occasions, when it may shine as such increase in power, while it might remain so portable heroism; slighting the 'lesser morals,' the daily and and cheap, as to be far superior to those hitherto match-hourly courtesies, which make so nearly the sum of less agents, water and steam.-The throng of spectators was proportioned to the attractiveness of the sight. Daily, for eight or ten days, thousands crowded the immense halls of the exhibition. The city, and the neighboring villages and towns, poured out almost their entire population. By the fifth or sixth day, sixty thousand people were supposed to have been admitted; and the sum received for admittances alone, was reckoned at twelve or fifteen thousand dollars.

The occasion was seized, to elicit the Address mentioned above. Its objects were, to swell the charity fund (for each auditor paid an admittance fee), and to impress mechanics and all others with a just sense of the dignity and importance of the mechanic arts. But there is one circumstance, especially worthy of notice. The author of the Address,—who, from the manner in which the title page mentions him ('Edward Everett, an Honorary member,' &c.) might be taken for merely some retired master mechanic,—is the distinguished Governor of Massachusetts; and even less distinguished by that title, than as an enlightened member of Congress, an eloquent orator, and an accomplished scholar: confessedly, one of the foremost men of that state, itself among the foremost in this confederacy.

We dwell with mingled pleasure and regret, upon this spectacle so frequent in the North, of genius, learning, and high official dignity, descending with cheerful frankness from their natural elevation, to a task of such humble usefulness: pleasure, to find that not everywhere in this our country, does greatness disdain to instruct common minds in lowly and homely truths; regret, to think how utterly, in their solicitudes touching An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 20th September, 1837, on occasion of their first exhibition and fair. By Edward Everett, honorary member of the association. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth-1937.

human happiness, and form so much the largest part of human duty. The would-be hero, unblessing and unblessed, diffuses no joy, and receives none, in his domestic or social circle. The would-be orator, statesman, or warrior, leaves undone almost all that he should have done for the peace, freedom, and happiness of his country. He speedily suffers the proper doom of all misguided seekers after Fame;

'In dark oblivion drown'd,

He sleeps forgot, with mighty tyrants gone; His statues moulder'd, and his name unknown.' The truest benefactors of mankind are those who, in their sphere, be it high or low, wide or narrow, do what they can to enlighten the minds and improve the morals of their fellow-men. Accordingly, especial honor is due to him, who adds this merit to the ordinary constituents of greatness.

Such is the honor due to Mr. Everett. Besides having figured, we need not say how conspicuously, in the great arena at Washington; besides having, in the ablest articles of the ablest American Review, signalized his pen in the cause not only of letters, but of human rights and human improvement; he has, by numerous instructive lectures and addresses, before associations and assemblies of different kinds, spread abroad a large amount of useful knowledge; and what is much better, created in many a mind, an ardent thirst for more of that knowledge; nay, what is best of all, has set an impressive and infectious example, which will multiply the effect of his own work a thousand fold.

The misdirected or slumbering geniuses of the South, whom we would fain arouse by pointing to that example, may possibly suppose that the field in which Mr. E. has thus labored, is barren of what is commonly deemed glory: that it yields no laurels: and that the only compensation to the plodding toiler, is the con

These illustrations of the important aid man derives from the mechanic arts, lead to the inference, that they are the great instruments of human civilization. Then come the subjoined striking views of the differences between civilized and savage life; closing with a graphic description of the work done by a weaving mill; and some wonderful results of the steam engine:

"It is a somewhat humiliating reflection, that, in many things

dependent on the human organs and senses,-unaided by the

sciousness of doing much good. So, before a trial, any one might have supposed. So, probably, Mr. Everett himself thought, when, inspired by patriotism and philanthropy (we do not like to employ the much abused word), he first girded himself for the work. But he has found it otherwise. He has found the field a full worthy one, for the best efforts of genius. It has furnished some of the most verdant and enduring chaplets that entwine his brow. His powers of reasoning and illustration, his treasures of diversified knowledge, aye, and his eloquence, have been signalized so, as the first talents in all the land might be proud of being signal-sations of the heart in an animalcule a hundred times smaller ized. The Address delivered at the late exhibition and fair, is an instance of this. We shall quote considerable portions of it, (as we have made the foregoing remarks) not to please the author, to whom we are un-enemy which has passed over the grass before his tent in the known, and owe nothing save our quota of the whole country's gratitude; but to shew how entirely susceptible such themes and such occasions are, of being handled in the style of a master, and to strengthen our recommendation of his example to his countrymen. The passages quoted, at the same time, will enrich our pages, and amply reward the reader's trouble in perusing them. The following paragraph displays the wonderful increase of man's power, from the use of machines, and other material agents:

arts, the savage greatly excels the most improved civilized
organization of the minutest insect or plant,--marks the rise of
man. Thus man, with one set of glasses, penetrates the secret
the sap in the capillaries of a blade of grass,counts the pul
than the head of a pin; while, with another set of glasses, he
fills the heavens with a hundred millions of stars, invisible to
the naked eye. To the savage, the wonders of the microscope
and the telescope are unknown; but he can, by traces which
elude our keenest vision, tell whether it is the foot of friend or
silence of night; and he can find his way through the pathless
and tangled forest without a guide. Civilized man, with his
wheels and his steam, runs a race with the winds, but, left to
the natural force of his members, soon sinks from fatigue. The
indefatigable savage, ignorant of artificial conveyance, outtires,
of civilized life faints at the delay of his periodical meal, a three
on foot, the hound and the horse; and, while the famished child
days' hunger makes no impression on the iron frame of the
with enjoyments that seem to render life a hundred fold more
poor Indian. Civilized man, although surrounded by his arts,
precious, lies drenched in sleep one-third of his precious hours,
and
hardy brother of the forest, when occasion requires, to bid defi-
may well envy the physical training which enables his
ance, night after night, to the approach of weariness.

"But this superiority which the savage possesses over civilized man, in the discipline of some of the natural capacities of our frame, is turned to little account of human improvement and happiness, for want of those arts which create, combine, and perpetuate the powers and agents by which our wants are supplied. Even the few comforts of which his forlorn condition is susceptible, are mostly derived, not from this superior training of his natural faculties and senses, but from his possession of some few imperfect arts. The savage, needy at best, without his moccasins, his snow-shoes, his dressed buffalo skin, his hollowed tree or bark canoe, his bow and arrow, his tent and his fishing gear, would be a much more abject being. And these simple inventions, and the tools and skill required by them, no doubt occupied a considerable period in the early hiscivilized life consists in the want of those more improved arts, the products of which we have been contemplating,--by which no inconsiderable quantity of human power and skill can be transferred to inanimate tools and machinery, and perpetuated in them; the arts whereby the grasp of the hand, which soon wearics, can be transferred to the iron gripe of the vice, the clamp, the bolt, that never tire; the arts by which stone, and metal, and leather, and wood, may be made to perform the offices of poor flesh and bone. The savage, when he has parched his corn, puts it in a rude mortar, which with infinite toil he has scooped out of a rock, and laboriously pounds it into meal. It is much, if, in this way, he can prepare food enough to keep him alive while he is preparing it. The civilized man, when he has raised his corn, builds a mill with a water-wheel, and sets the indefatigable stream to grinding his grain. There are now two or three laborers at work; one, it is true, with forces which soon weary, and which can only be kept up by consuming a part of the corn as fast as it can be made into food, but endowed with an untiring and inexhausti iron, the stream, the wheel, and the mill-stone, without capacity for head-work, are willing to grind corn all day, and not ask a mouthful back by way of sustenance.---Civilization is kept up by storing the products of the labor thus economized, and imparting a share of it to those engaged in some other pursuit, who give a portion of its products in exchange for food.

"Man, with his unaided strength, can lift but one or two hundred weight, and that but for a moment; with his pulleys and windlasses, he sets an obelisk upon its base,--a shaft of solid granite a hundred feet high. The dome of St. Peter's is one hundred and twenty feet in diameter; its sides are twenty-two feet in thickness, and it is suspended in the air at an elevation of three hundred and twenty feet from the ground,---and it was raised by hands as feeble as these. The unaided force of the muscles of the human hand is insufficient to break a fragment of marble, of any size, in pieces; but, on a recent visit to the beautiful quarries in Sheffield, from which the columns of the Girard College at Philadelphia are taken, I saw masses of hundreds of tons, which had been cleft from the quarry by a very simple ar-tory of our race. But the great difference between savage and tificial process. Three miles an hour, for any considerable space of time, and with ample intervals for recreation, food, and sleep, are the extreme limit of the locomotive capacity of the strongest frame, and this confined to the land. The arts step in by the application of one portion of them to the purposes of navigation, man is wafted, night and day, alike waking and sleeping, at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, over the unfathomed ocean; and, by the combination of another portion of the arts, he flies at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles an hour, and if need be with twice that rapidity, without moving a muscle, from city to city. The capacity of imparting thought, by intelligible signs, to the minds of other men,the capacity which lies at the foundation of all our social improvements, while unaided by art, was confined within the limits of oral communication and memory. The voice of wisdom perished, not merely with the sage by whom it was uttered, but with the very breath of air on which it was borne. Art came to the aid of the natural capacity; and, after a long series of successive improvements, passing through the stages of pictorial and symbolical representations of things,the different steps of hiero-ble invention;---the other patient fellow-laborers of wood and glyphical writing, (each occupying, no doubt, long periods of time for its discovery and application,)---it devised a method of imprinting on a material substance an intelligible sign, not of things, but of sounds forming the names of things; in other words, it invented the A B C. With this simple invention, and the mechanical contrivances with which it is carried into effect, the mind of man was, I had almost said, re-created. The day "Take another illustration in the arts employed in furnishing before it was invented, the voice of man, in its utmost stretch, the clothing of man. The savage, when he has killed a buffalo could be heard but by a few thousands, intently listening for an and dried his skin, prepares it with the manual labor of several hour or two, during which alone his strength would enable him weeks for a garment a substantial and sightly garment; but to utter a succession of sounds. The day after the art of wri- it has taken him a long time, and he has made but one. The ting was invented, he stamps his thoughts on a roll of parch- civilized man, having a world of business on his hands, has ment, and they reach every city and hamlet of the largest em- contrived a variety of machines, which perform almost all the pire. The day before this invention, and the mind of one work required for his clothing. He cuts a mass of curled wool country was estranged from the mind of all other countries. from the sheep's back,--a confused, irregular heap of fibrous For almost all the purposes of intercourse, the families of man threads, which would seem to defy the skill and industry of the might as well not have belonged to one race. The day after it, artificer. How long will it not take the busiest pair of fingers to and Wisdom was endued with the gift of tongues, and spake by piece those fibres together, end to end, to lay them side by side, her interpreters to all the tribes of kindred men. The day be so as to give them substance, coherence, dimensions,---to confore this invention, and nothing but a fading tradition, con- vert them into a covering and defence, excluding cold and wet! stantly becoming fainter, could be preserved by the memory, of The savage, in taking the skin, seems to have made the wiser all that was spoken or acted by the greatest and wisest of men. choice. Nature has done the spinning and weaving to his hand. The day after it, Thought was imperishable; it sprung to an But wait a moment :---there is a group of iron-fingered artificers earthly immortality; it seized the new-found instruments of in youder mill will show you a wonder. They will, with a record and commemoration, and, deserting the body as it sunk rapidity scarcely conceivable, convert this uncouth fibrous heap with its vocal organs into the dust, it carved on the very grave-into a uniform mass; they will draw out its short, curly fibres stone, "The mind of man shall live forever." into long even threads,lay them side by side, and curiously

cross them over and under with magical dexterity, till they form modern art of bleaching. Some necessary result can be ata compact tissue, covered with a soft down and a glossy lustre, tained, in half the time, by a new mechanical contrivance ;... smooth, impervious, flexible,in quantity sufficient to clothe a another wheel-a ratchet--a screw will effect the object; he family for a year, with less expeuse of human labor, than would tries a few experiments; it will succeed; it is done. He stamps be required to dress a single skin. his foot, and a hundred thousand men start into being; not, like "Consider the steam engine. It is computed that the steam those which sprang from the fabled dragon's teeth, armed with power of Great Britain, not including the labor economized by the weapons of destruction, but furnished with every implement the enginery it puts in motion, performs annually the work of a for the service and comfort of man. It is stated by James Watt, million of men. In other words, the steam engine adds to the (before whose time the steam engine was an imperfect and inhuman population of Great Britain another population, one efficient machine,) that the moment the notion of "separate million strong. Strong it may well be called. What a popula- condensation" struck him, all the other details of his improved tion! so curiously organized, that they need neither luxuries engine followed in rapid and immediate succession, so that, in nor comforts,that they have neither vices nor sorrows,---sub- the course of a day, his invention was so complete that he project to an absolute control without despotism,---laboring night ceeded to submit it to experiment. Could that day be identi and day for their owners, without the crimes and woes of sla-fied, it would well deserve an anniversary celebration by the very a frugal population, that wastes nothing and consumes universal tribes of civilized man." nothing unproductively; an orderly population, to which inobs Sentimentalists have complained of " the mechanical and riots are unknown; among which the peace is kept without police, courts, prisons, or bayonets; and annually lavishing tendency" of the present age, as having an unfavorable the product of one million pairs of hands, to increase the com- influence upon morals and intellect. Mr. Everett vinforts of the fifteen or twenty millions of the human population. And yet the steam engine, which makes this mighty addition to dicates the mechanic arts from this imputation; regardthe resources of civilization, is but a piece of machinery. You ing their intellectual and moral influences as among have all seen it, both in miniature and on a working scale, at the halls. In the miniature model, (constructed by Mr. New their happiest results. We cannot abridge his obsercomb of Salem,) it can be moved by the breath of the most deli-vations without greater injustice to them and to our readers, than we are willing to burthen our conscience with. The manner in which, at the close of the following extract, he is' warned back from his digression' by his watch, equals those happy transitions adduced by Dugald Stewart from Thomson, Goldsmith, and Virgil.

cate pair of lips in this assembly; and it could easily be constructed of a size and power, which would rend these walls from their foundation, and pile the roof in ruins upon us. And yet it is but a machine. There is a cylinder and a piston; there are tubes, valves, and pumps,---water, and a vessel to boil it in. This is the whole of that enginery, with which the skill and industry of the present age are working their wonders. This is the whole of the agency which has endowed modern art with its superhuman capacities, and sent it out to traverse the continent and the ocean, with those capacities which Romance has attributed to her unearthly beings:

Tramp, tramp, along the land they ride,

Splash, splash, across the sea.

"It is wholly impossible to calculate the quantity of labor economized by all the machinery which the steam engine puts in motion. Mr. Baines* states, that the spinning machinery of Great Britain, tended by one hundred and fifty thousand workmen, "produces as much yarn as could have been produced by forty millions of men with the one-thread wheel!" Dr. Buck land remarks, that it has been supposed that "the amount of work now done by machinery in England is equivalent to that of between three and four hundred millions of men by direct

labor."

We dare say most of our readers will find something new to them in the passage we are now going to quote, touching the progress of certain improvements in one familiar art.

"The immediate result of every improvement in these arts, as has been already stated, often is, and always might and should be, by making less labor and time necessary for the sup ply of human wants, to raise the standard of comfortable living,-increase the quantity of leisure time applicable to the culture of the mind,-and thus promote the intellectual and moral progress of the mass of the community. That this is the general tendency of a progress in the useful arts, no one can doubt, who compares the present condition of the world with its condition in the middle ages; and thefact is confirmed by the history of single inventions. I have already spoken of alphabetical writing. Pliny remarks of the Egyptian reed, (the first material of which paper was made,) that or. this reed rested the immortality of man. The thought, though savoring of heathenism in the expression, is just. This single art of alphabetical writing was a step absolutely essential in the moral and intellectual progress of our race. To speak of the art of printing, in its connection with morals and mind, would be as superfluous as it would be difficult to do justice to the topic. Its history is not so much an incident as the summary of modern civilization. Vast "It is not yet, I believe, more than two or three centuries, as the influence of this art of arts has been, it may well be since the only mode of spinning known was by the rock and doubted whether improvements will not yet be made in the mespindle. The simple spinning-wheel, moved by the hand, and chanism connected with it, which will incalculably increase its which was thought, in the times of our grand-parents, to show a efficiency. If I mistake not, the trumpet-voice of Truth from graceful form and a well-turned arm to nearly as much advan- this machine is yet destined to reach to distances and depths of tage as a harp at the present day, and to make a music almost as society, which have hitherto remained unexplored and neglected. cheerful, is at once an obsolete and a modern invention. The "Again, in reference to the intimate connection of the useful Greeks and Romans are said to have been unacquainted with and mechanic arts with intellectual progress, let us but advert the spinning-wheel. The monarch's heavy, purple and the for a moment to the mariner's compass, the telescope, the quadnymph's airy tissue were alike manufactured by twirling the rant. For myself, I never reflect upon their influence on the distaff, and drawing out a thread with the fingers; and no im- affairs of man, and remember that they are, after all, merely provement was made on this tedious process, in Great Britain, mechanical contrivances, without emotions of admiration borbefore the fifteenth century. It is evident that much more labor dering upon awe. This sentiment, I know, is so worn away by must have been requisite, with this rude machinery, to supply habit, that it seems almost to run into sentimentality. But let the indispensable article of clothing, than with the modern imus not be ashamed to reproduce the emotions that spring from provements. The introduction of the spinning-wheel produced the freshness of truth and nature. What must not have been a great economy of this labor; but the introduction of the spin- Galileo's feelings, when he pointed the first telescope to the heaning and weaving machinery of the last century, has pushed ven, and discovered the phases of Venus and the moons of this economy to an extent, at which it is in vain to attempt to Jupiter! When I behold the touched needle trembling to the calculate it. This economy operates, first, to multiply the com- pole,-when I know that, beneath the utter blackness of the forts of the existing population, and then, by necessary conse- midnight storm, when every star in heaven is quenched, and the quence, to increase the population capable of subsisting in a laboring vessel, in mid-ocean, reels, like a drunken man, on the given circuit. Yes, the man who, in the infancy of the arts, in-crested top of the mighty waves, that little bar of steel will guide vented the saw or the plane, the grindstone, the vice, or the hand-mill; and those who, in later periods, have contributed to the wonderful system of modern machinery, are entitled to rank high among the benefactors of mankind,--the fathers of civilization, the creators, I had almost said, of nations. No, it is not the fabulous wand of the enchanter, it is the weaver's beam, and instruments like it, which call thousands and tens of thousands into being. Mind, acting through the useful arts, is the vital principle of modern civilized society. The mechanician, not the magician, is now the master of life. He kindles the fires of his steam engine,--the rivers, the lakes, the ocean, are covered with flying vessels; mighty chain-pumps descend, clanking and groaning, to the deepest abysses of the coal mine, and rid them of their deluging waters; and spindles and looms ply their task as if instinct with life. It is the necromancy of the creative machinist. In a moment a happy thought crosses his imagination,---an improvement is conceived. Some tedious process can be superseded by a chemical application, as in the

• Baines' History of the Cotton Manufacture, p. 362. + Buckland's Geology and Mineralogy, Vol. I. p. 400.

the worn and staggering helmsman on his way,-I feel that there is a holy philosophy in the arts of life, which, if I cannot comprehend, I can reverence.

"Consider the influence on the affairs of men, in all their relations, of the invention of the little machine which I hold in my hands; and the other modern instruments for the measurement of time, various specimens of which are on exhibition in the halis. To say nothing of the importance of an accurate measurement of time in astronomical observations,-nothing of the application of time-keepers to the purposes of navigation,--how vast must be the aggregate effect on the affairs of life, throughout the civilized world, and in the progress of ages, of a conve nient and portable apparatus for measuring the lapse of time!

*Lardner's Popular Lectures on the Steam Engine, p. 61. Dr. Lardner, in the context of the passage above quoted, speaks of the notion of "separate condensation" as the "happy conception which formed the first step of that brilliant career which has immortalized the name of Watt, and which has spread his fame to the very skirts of civilization."

In the first volume of his Philosophy of the Human Mind

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