ART.

In considering the condition and prospects of art in the present

age, let us, as heretofore, glance at the several departments of

architecture, sculpture, and painting, consecutively, according to

their natural order and relative merits.

Archæology is at present achieving for prospective art just what

geology is contributing to the progress of natural science. Crumbling

relics and fossil impressions are everywhere exhumed, classified

and published for the purpose of ascertaining our true relation to

historical art and progressive civilization. From this source more

copious materials are derived, and a surer as well as better means

than language affords for solving the greatest of social problems,

since there is more authentic history built into the walls of the

Egyptian temples, or those of Greece, or the cathedrals of the mediæval

West, than exists in all the chronicles that ever were written. The

successive masterpieces of monumental art are unaltered cotemporary

records which, in the age of Washington, are becoming easily read, and

most lucidly translated into the universal language of mankind. The

buildings and subordinate artistic productions of each historic people

tell their own tale, and can never be entirely falsified by time or the

blunders of copyists; but remain as left by their originators, with the

undying impress of their aspirations, or their vagaries, stamped in

characters of adamant.

Alexander, the great transition-servitor of Providence in the earlier

ages of progress, had been prompted to visit the temples of Ammon, by

the tradition that they had been visited by his ancestor, Perseus,

in his expedition against Medusa, and Hercules, after the victory of

Busiris. Differently inspired, but for the same final end, the great

Corsican, born out of Europe, and eager to impel the car of empire

even beyond his native island-home, signalized his destiny when he

reached the same meeting-place of the obsolete and progressive nations,

exclaiming, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty

centuries behold you." The pilgrim, the crusader, and the Hadgi, had

successively brought back from those remote regions some degree of that

veneration which is connected with hazards undergone from religious

impulses. But with his savans round him, and all France quickened by

an impulse from America into a higher life, Napoleon's campaign in

the land of Ham, first in the history of our race, was the glorious

conquest of arts as well as of arms. The Pyramids, like the shrines of

Ammon, were temples; and they had been the immemorial centre of art and

science. The secrets of all the natural knowledge, the high historic

memories, and the mystic rites, of the ancient land of wisdom, seemed

to be there still, hidden in those profound treasuries of rock, which

neither time, conquest, nor curiosity, had been able to penetrate. But

what was then accomplished deserves especial regard and gratitude.

Connoisseurs of recondite skill and acute discrimination, led by their

sagacious champion, penetrated to the profoundest chamber, wherein,

some three thousand years before, some Pharaoh had been interred, and

thence gleaned the richest store of antique memorials to be preserved

and interpreted in other climes. The only army on earth who could

endure the fatigues of such an enterprise were employed to collect

the needed materials of advancing civilization; and then another

providential act, equally significant, bore those treasures to London

and not to Paris. All the oldest and most enduring worth is rapidly

concentrating in the youngest and most progressive race. When we come

to speak of sculptural art, and of its relation to the amelioration

of universal mind, we shall more particularly refer to the wonderful

manner in which "the Rosetta stone" came into English hands.

Under the same roof which protects the Egyptian antiquities in the

British Museum, are the Elgin Marbles, those glorious fragments of

Athens and the Parthenon. Their greatness of manner is far more

imposing than any mere bulk and extent; and more original skill and

science, more artistic talent is displayed in those mutilated models

alone, than in all other classical remains extant. Subsequent creations

are the branches only, but the Parthenon is the root from which their

broad and beautiful characteristics are undoubtedly derived. It is

indeed strange that, although the architecture of Rome sprung from

that of Greece, and all modern styles were derived, through Rome,

from the same source, never until our day was discovered the most

striking peculiarity of Grecian design. It was reserved for an English

architect, Mr. F.C. Penrose, to demonstrate the mathematical and

optical principles on which, apparently, the whole art was founded. The

Parthenon taught him the brilliant truth that there is not a straight

line in the building; and there is good reason to believe that such is

the rule with respect to other important Greek structures. Mathematical

curves, accurately calculated, were made to correct the disagreeable

effect which a perfect straight line has to a practiced eye; but the

delicate taste which thus carried classicalism to the highest pitch

of refinement, remained in abeyance until the dawn of an age in which

monumental art will first revive all previous excellences, and then

excel what it supersedes.

Not only has this age opened with an unprecedented acquaintance

with Egyptian art treasures, and a more accurate knowledge of the

architectural monuments of Greece, but we also enjoy the advantage of

other great external aids, such as the excavation of the buried cities

skirting Vesuvius, and the unexpectedly rich discovery of Etruscan

tombs. As the fitting concomitant of these startling revelations, the

great mind of Winckleman was prepared to give a luminous interpretation

thereof; and correlative attempts were made by other masters to treat

art historically and philosophically in the presence of innumerable

pupils zealous in antiquarian research. Referring to the destruction of

Herculaneum and Pompeii, Goethe remarks: "Many a calamity has befallen

the world ere now, yet none like this, replete with instruction and

delight for remote generations." No graphic power can convey to a

stranger an adequate idea of the affluence of objects intensely

interesting connected with these cities so long buried, and recently

disinterred. Successive streets of plebeian homes, but pillared and

sculptured as if they were the abodes of patricians, intersecting the

radiant confusion of theatres and temples, imbue the visitor with that

blended sense of beauty defying decay, of hoary antiquity, and of

thrilling domestic incident, which can be felt only amid the solemn

stillness of the excavated city. The baptism of fire here became, in

the highest degree conservative. It filled up with its train the gap

of eighteen centuries, and has made "the trivial fond records" which

the prints of hurried footsteps and trembling figures imply, immortal

in the marl which hardened over them, and has left them as touching

as if they told the fate of some ancient friends. Here we have the

ancients as they lived, with many of their houses adorned with the

wonderful efforts of Greek genius, skillfully copied by Roman art. We

look at them, astonished and enraptured at the gorgeous pomp, and at

the luxurious richness of which the East has ever been so proud. The

superb collection of varied art which has so recently been rescued

from the ruined city, opens to our age a new school of study, and most

strikingly exemplifies the progressive changes which befell art from

Pericles to Augustus, from eastern Greece to western Italy.

Still more startling are the developments recently made at Nineveh.

Like a second Pompeii, it has revealed the secrets of the inner life of

a people, the scene of whose existence had long been forgotten. One of

the fairest and most celebrated cities of the earth, and the capital of

a mighty empire, its very site was for centuries unknown, and its name

had become a by-word among nations. Buried beneath the ruins of its own

greatness, the sun no longer shone on its colossal walls, its palaces

and its temples. The wandering Arab and the enlightened European, alike

ignorant of the treasures beneath their feet, rode over the plain

beneath which lay buried the pride of Asshur and all the glories of

the magnificent Semiramis. That which Jonah describes as "an exceeding

great city of three days' journey," and Diodorus Siculus tells us

was sixty miles in circuit; that which had once been the centre of

civilization, and the scene of the utmost barbaric splendor, had sunk

in awful silence and desolation. The change in the general aspect

of the region, and the total disappearance of the mighty metropolis

and its records, were perfectly appalling, until one English scholar

wandered there to discover the strange monuments, and another fitting

co-operative, Rawlinson, was raised up to read them. No one appears to

have explored the ruins of Nineveh from about six hundred years before

Christ, when it was taken by Cyaxares, to the day when Layard displayed

its subterranean mysteries to a wondering world. During this long

lapse of centuries, empires had risen and been swept away, and two new

creeds, Christianity and Mohammedanism, had spread over the earth, when

slowly and sublimely rising from their colossal tomb, came forth the

winged forms of fearful majesty, and were borne to the remote West on

the bosom of that mightier civilization behind which they had lingered

so long.

The best specimens of original art in every successive monumental

style are thus collected in London, and form the finest illustration

of consecutive development; but at the same time old England is the

least original in her new buildings. The greatest wonder in the three

kingdoms at the present day is a monster of talent, and not a model

of genius, a huge inclosure of iron and glass, without a single new

molding or other feature of recent invention. But what deserves

particular notice is the fact, that within that vast non-architectural

structure is the finest, and probably the first, chronological

exemplification of all the great national styles of preceding times.

Like most modern buildings, these specimen-forms are executed in

unsubstantial materials, disguised so as to represent precious and

praiseworthy works. The Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Alhambra,

Mediæval, Renaissance, Pompeian, and Nineveh courts, show at a glance

what affluence of architectural invention in past ages existed in the

East, and how debased became all attempts in this department of art in

western Europe before American colonization began. It would seem as if

heaven designed that nothing of marked character should be imported to

interfere with early tendencies toward originality in this new artistic

sphere, and that afterward all select reminiscences of the old world

should be wafted toward us as fast as indigenous taste and power might

arise to require their support and assimilate their worth.

The Virginia colony transferred with but little change the degraded

cruciform type of sacred architecture common to the mother church

of that day, and which decayed utterly with her enforced spiritual

dominion. The primitive churches, such as those at Jamestown, Hampton,

and Petersburg, are the most picturesque and complete ruins in the

United States. The Puritans, on the contrary, built in a manner

astutely original, and their rectangular ugliness remaineth unto this

day. The early buildings of New England, and in the Middle States,

both civic and sacred, unsymmetrical and uncouth as they may appear,

have yet an air of originality and strength which will greatly tend

to perpetuate the characteristic hardihood of their origin. Greek and

Roman temples in small, and miniature cathedrals of mediæval design,

executed in heterogeneous materials and with excruciating anomalies,

are springing up in every ambitious town. But the most of these are

insipid, hollow, and contemptible shams, compared with the plain and

truthful, though unartistic edifices which our earnest fathers built.

As soon as the passion for paltry imitation shall have exhausted its

inanity, we shall see a rugged germ of originality spring from that

stock, which will grow into a worthy type of American monumental art.

Several indications already justify this hope. In the first place, in

all the great works which require the blending of inventive genius

with constructive skill, and which are made flexile as well as firm

in their adaptation to novel emergencies and the most available use,

our countrymen have no superiors on earth. Our engineering works and

national fabrics of every sort are confessedly unexcelled. Structures

of popular taste and public utility, such as stores, banks, hotels,

and ships, are universally acknowledged to be the finest extant. When

our people in general, and architects in particular, shall have given

equal thought and zeal to the perfection of religious art suited to our

climate and customs, still greater success will doubtless be attained.

It is well known that the Greeks invented the most beautiful order

of architecture, called Corinthian, at the period of Periclean

decline. The exquisite little memorial of Lysicrates was their only

perfected specimen, the proportions of which were never enlarged

in the clime of their first bloom. A corrupted Roman modification

has often been repeated, but not till the age of Washington, and

nearly on the very spot where Liberty first proclaimed her complete

emancipation, did an architect conceive the purpose of recasting those

perfectly beautiful outlines on a colossal scale. Since Pericles

and his age perished, earth has seen no fairer fabric, both as to

its material form and artistic soul, than Girard college presents.

Compare the Madeleine of Paris, and St. George's Hall at Liverpool,

two cotemporaneous masterpieces, nearest to the same order, and most

lauded by their respective nations, if you would estimate the actual

progress we have made in monumental art. There is more pure Doric,

Ionic, and Corinthian architecture executed in marble and now adorning

Philadelphia alone, than can be found in Paris and London combined, or

in any other three cities of either France or England.

The new House of Parliament now building in Westminster has already

cost an enormous sum, and is profusely decorated on the interior and

exterior with a great variety of graphic and sculptured art. But one

familiar with the palatial and ecclesiastical architecture of the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will search in vain for the first

original feature in the whole conglomerated pile. We, too, are building

a new Capitol, and how do the two edifices compare as to intrinsic

monumental worth? All nations wove native vegetation into their mural

and columnar creations down to the middle of the fifteenth century of

the Christian era, when all architectural invention manifestly ceased.

Thenceforth shields of arms, sheets of armor, and shreds of fiddles or

yet emptier fantasies usurped the entablature, darkened casements, and

cumbered over-burdened shafts. Hence in the palace of Lords and Commons

on the border of the Thames, if amid ten thousand vestiges of feudal

fierceness and heraldic insignia, we look for structural adornments

fashioned after a leaf, or flower, or tuft of foliage peculiar to the

England of to-day, not one can be found. But when the original home

of our national legislation was restored near the Potomac, the chief

colonnade was surmounted by a new cap, bearing in graceful curve and

foliation the clustered wealth of our primitive staple, corn. Since

then other indications of native resources have been added; and the

architect who is now serving his country and the cause of progressive

art so well, boldly lays our entire domain of vegetable glories under

contribution to enhance the beauty and characterize the purpose of

his marble halls. When completed according to the present design,

American architecture, sculpture, and painting, will therein coalesce

in consummate excellence to signalize an advance in native art

commensurate with the immensity of our republican domains.

Another favorable symptom among us is, that the people themselves, and

leading minds in particular, are becoming more inspired with a taste

for noble art. This is indispensable to the production of great and

worthy national monuments. Had Pericles, and Augustus, and Leo X. not

been as familiar with the principles and usefulness of art as any of

those that were around them, and had not the artists of their day not

been gentlemen in feeling and accomplishments, the monumental arts of

their respective ages would never have risen to the elevation with

which they are marked. As soon as our countrymen are once thoroughly

convinced of the direction in which the true future of the arts lies,

the grandest victory will already have been more than half gained. They

will then become thoroughly convinced how utterly unworthy of this

country and age were the arts both of the ancient Pagans and those of

the middle ages; and producers will not help feeling the degradation

inherent in their present servile copying. Men of a higher class of

intellect, emancipated from hereditary conventionalism, will devote a

more earnest search after excellence, and will find it in the greatest

purity and profusion, not where it has so long been sought, but in

some new and loftier sphere, where the virgin ore is still concealed

in its original matrix. This, however, is not to be rapidly attained.

To accomplish any thing really great requires centuries of years and

myriads of progressive steps. Unartistic millionaires will cease to

inhabit absurd houses, or worship in sham temples, as soon as the mass

of the people who long since rebelled against tyrannical and absurd

laws, shall come to be as appreciative of architectural improvement as

they are sagacious and patriotic to promote popular rights. No longer

content to fill new States with dried specimens of old civilizations,

a generation is about to appear who will cease erecting edifices which

are mere monuments of servile ignorance, and will assure posterity

that they dared to think for themselves, and had an art of their own.

Not one source of pure and lofty inspiration ever existed which does

not now exist; on the contrary, many are now extant which former ages

had no suspicion of, and it is painful to see them unused for the

noble purposes they were given to promote, substituted as they are by

mockeries and absurdities which degrade the office of art, and lead the

public to suppose that it is an empty bauble, fit only to pander to the

grossest sensuality.

True art is not a thing merely to be copied and bartered at such and

such a price, but to be studied with affectionate disinterestedness,

with reference to the future creation of new styles and higher classes

of beauty, and anterior to the sixteenth century artists wrought

constantly upon this principle. Then architecture and its correlative

arts were cultivated with a single motive and for only one purpose,

that of producing the best possible building with the best possible

materials that could be commanded, and without ever looking back

on preceding works, except to learn how to avoid their defects and

excel their beauties. It was an earnest progressive struggle toward

perfection, which, after the stormy period requisite to the founding

of our free institutions, we must resume and complete in the more

tranquil realm of ennobling art. First learning all that has been done,

we are to start from that highest point to surpass it; this has been

the process executed by all progressive races, and hence their success.

Well might Greece exult in the result of her great battle for freedom;

well might each separate state pride itself on the share it had borne

in the common struggle, and well might she tax monumental art to give

the loftiest expression to her triumphant joy. Kindled with a deep and

universal enthusiasm, art was then the reflex of victory, as it is now

its noblest monument, and such may it increasingly become in America!

Sculpture, the severest of artistic creations, has already achieved

a grand success in our western world. Early success and present

proficiency guaranty future excellence of the highest order in this

department of the liberal arts. Horatio Greenough of Boston was the

first of our countrymen who won a wide reputation in sculpture, and has

left works which justify the exalted encomiums he so zealously earned.

Hiram Powers soon followed in this serene sphere of genius, and having

journeyed unknown from the bosom of the Green Mountains to the "Queen

City of the West," he began an artistic career on the banks of the Ohio

which has since for many years brightened the fairest glories that

gleam in the mirror of the Arno. Clevenger, that noble and magnificent

son of the West, was quickened into a generous emulation by Powers, as

the latter had been fostered by the kindness of Greenough, and soon

the three were harmoniously working together in Florence. Two prime

luminaries have been withdrawn from that brilliant constellation to

shine in a brighter firmament, but others of not less promise have

been added to the sublunary galaxy in rapid succession, so that our

sculpturesque school is now second to none extant.

The State which gave birth to our oldest living sculptor abounds more

copiously in fine marble than Italy itself; and the statuary, as well

as the architect, will yet derive thence the material of his grandest

works. The far West is equally rich in the components of bronze, and

the more precious metals. At the moment of the present writing, a

native artist is erecting in the centre of this city an equestrian

statue of Washington of colossal size, which was cast in Massachusetts

with a completeness and perfection, it is said, unattainable at any

foundry in Europe. It was fitting that the first great leader in this

department of national renown should execute his masterpieces for the

republic and its metropolis, and that his worthy successors should now

be adorning the capitals of the remotest parent colonies with masterly

memorials in both marble and bronze. Patriotic hearts can not but be

thrilled in observing how in every section of our country spacious

studios are devoted to high art, whence busts, portrait-statues,

and original groups are elicited by constantly-increased patronage,

to adorn private mansions and ennoble the popular taste. Clevenger,

when an humble apprentice to a stone-mason in Cincinnati, made his

first attempt at sculpture by the light of a midnight moon over the

bas-relief of a tombstone; and the first full-length monumental figure

cut for "Mount Auburn" was executed by an adventurer in Boston, whom

we first knew as a poor country blacksmith, but who is now an eminent

and wealthy sculptor. The old world has no cemeteries which in natural

beauty and adaptedness to artificial adornment can compare with

our own, and these rural cities of the dead will soon become grand

repositories of living art. Already is this foreshadowed at Greenwood,

around the granite pedestal whereon the yet more enduring majesty of De

Witt Clinton looks abroad on the fleeting grandeurs of earth, ocean,

and sky. Niches and arcades are opened in all public buildings of

recent erection, and good sculpture is rapidly becoming an exquisite

delight to the American mind.

So long as the aim of the sculptor is only to advance step by step

toward the ideal of perfect beauty, no age can ever excel that of

Pericles. The limited powers of mortals are incapable of advancing

further in that direction than paganism attained in giving to corporeal

charms a material expression. But the age of Washington is called to

embody intellectual beauty, invested with such feelings as the highest

class of Christian development will admit of, and this will enable the

modern artist to reach a far higher point of excellence than has yet

been attained. The same subsidiary vehicle must be employed to convey

a more exalted class of expression, but a nobler aim is opened to the

consecrated aspirant, and superlative excellence in sculpture must

be the result. Of their kind, the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de'

Medici will ever stand without rivals; but they do not belong to the

highest class of art, for the Venus has no more mind than the Greeks

usually ascribed to women; and the Apollo, though the noblest animal

ever created, is no more in the realm of intellect than "a young

Mohawk." Sculpture is not always to remain only an unmeaning transcript

of an extinct system of art, but must advance beyond the expression

of mere corporeal beauty. What is now most wanted for this, as for

all kindred arts, is the power of expressing the loftiest order of

intellect, blended with the most refined sensibility which either the

heart of sculptured genius can conceive or its hand execute. We believe

that capacities adequate to the accomplishment of this consummate end

will yet be developed in America, and are convinced that their happy

exercise will lead to triumphs of art higher than ever the Grecians, in

their hour of most magnificent exaltation, dreamed of. The fine arts of

the ancients were only necessary results of their general system, and

of the objects they sought through every channel and in every thought;

as our ships and engines are not things apart from our commerce or

manufactures, but only great facts resulting from them as exponents the

most exact. But in due time Americans will elaborate beauty out of the

practical arts as earnestly as they now look for profit in them, and

then will the world witness the coalescence of the human and divine in

sculptured worth the most complete.

Painting was the first fine art cultivated in America, and has never

ceased to advance. When George Berkeley came to this country with the

benevolent purpose of opening a university for the education of the

aborigines, he included the arts of design in his system of education.

No founder of schools in the old world ever thought of that. Berkeley

had traveled in Italy with a Scotch artist, John Smybert, and chose

him to be professor of architecture, drawing, and painting in his

projected institution. There is at Yale College a large picture which

represents Berkeley and some of his family, together with the artist

himself, on their first landing in America, which is supposed to be the

first picture of more than a single figure ever painted on our shores.

Berkeley's general scheme was abandoned from necessity, but Smybert

settled in Boston, where he married and died. The latter event occurred

in 1751, when his pupil, Copley, was but thirteen years old. Trumbull

retired from the army, and resumed painting in Boston, in 1777,

surrounded by Copley's works, and in the room which had been built

for Smybert. Thus was the path of progress opened and increasingly

glorified, the greatest of New England colorists, Allston, having first

caught the reflection of Vandyke in Smybert. All the best portraits

which remain of eminent divines and magistrates of the eastern States

and New York, who lived between 1725 and 1751, are from the pencil of

this founder of pictorial art in America.

In his "History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the

United States," William Dunlap commemorates more than four hundred

and thirty painters who have contributed to the establishment of an

American school of art. It is really wonderful that so much artistic

merit should have been matured in the midst of difficulties incident

to the civilization of a barbarous continent. But Sir Walter Scott, in

recommending a work of American genius to Maria Edgeworth, sagaciously

accounted for the phenomenon by saying, "That people once possessed of

a three-legged stool, soon contrive to make an easy-chair." In allusion

to this anecdote, our first great sculptor, Greenough, remarks, "Humble

as the phrase is, we here perceive an expectation on his part, that

the energies now exercised in laying the foundations of a mighty

empire, would, in due time, rear the stately columns of civilization,

and crown the edifice with the entablature of letters and of arts.

Remembering that one leg of the American stool was planted in Maine, a

second in Florida, and the third at the base of the Rocky Mountains,

he could scarce expect that the chair would become an easy one in half

a century. It is true, that before the Declaration of Independence,

Copley had in Boston formed a style of portrait which filled Sir Joshua

Reynolds with astonishment; and that West, breaking through the bar of

Quaker prohibition, and conquering the prejudice against a provincial

aspirant, had taken a high rank in the highest walk of art in London.

Stuart, Trumbull, Allston, Morse, Leslie, and Newton, followed in quick

succession, while Vanderlyn won golden opinions at Rome, and bore away

high honors at Paris. So far were the citizens of the republic from

showing a want of capacity for art, that we may safely affirm the bent

of their genius was rather peculiarly in that direction, since the

first burins of Europe were employed in the service of the American

pencil before Irving had written, and while Cooper was yet a child.

That England, with these facts before her, should have accused us of

obtuseness in regard to art, and that we should have pleaded guilty

to the charge, furnishes the strongest proof of her disposition to

underrate our intellectual powers, and of our own ultra docility and

want of self-reliance."

No Walhalla can be made to start suddenly from a republican soil;

but we firmly believe that our free institutions are more favorable

to a natural, healthful growth of art, than any hot-bed culture

under the auspices of aristocrats or kings. Monuments, statues, and

pictures which represent what the people love and wish for are rapidly

multiplied, and this popular appreciation of high art needs only to be

guided by salutary examples to become mighty and prolific beyond any

preceding age.

No country ever existed where the development and growth of an artist

was more free, healthful, and happy, than it is in these United States.

Independence of character is essential to all eminent success, and

that is here necessitated by every law of life. Like Alexander, when

he embarked for Asia; Cæsar, when he leaped the Rubicon; Phidias, when

he adorned the Parthenon; Michael Angelo, when he painted the Capella

Sistina; Raphael, when he entered the Vatican; Napoleon, when he

invaded Italy; and Columbus, when he sailed for America; the aspirant

after exalted art-excellence in our land, must depend mainly on his own

genius, and find in that his best patron and reward.

The whole world of ancient art is moving toward this great western

theatre of its finest and sublimest development. The continental

cities contain a few magnificent collections, but the artistic wealth

stored in the many private mansions of the British islands transcends

all eastern lands. Waagen's four large volumes are not sufficient

to enumerate the "Art Treasures in Great Britain." These are more

secluded than the public galleries of Rome, Naples, Florence, and

Paris, but they are not inferior in respect to particular specimens,

and are vastly more diversified in general interest. On English soil

we may study the graphic, as well as sculptural and monumental history

of all authentic eras, with the assurance that as the mental worth

we contemplate is removed, it will probably advance still further

west. Not a great sale of literary or artistic collections occurs in

Europe, when a strong competition is not ventured upon by Americans.

We believe that this country will yet possess the chief treasures of

England, as that mighty nation has heretofore gathered to herself the

choicest productions of anterior times. Giotto's portrait of Dantè in

the Chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta, at Florence, was rescued from

under a thick coat of whitewash by our countryman, R.H. Wilde; and

the young university at Rochester, N.Y., bought the superb library of

Neander entire. Restore and reform is the standing order of the day.

Palaces are emptied of useless princes and unproductive aristocrats, in

order that remains of antiquity and paragons of beauty may find refuge

therein, under the protection of the populace who crowd with reverent

enthusiasm to their contemplation. Thus are the common people becoming

the true conservators of ancient worth, and the most liberal promoters

of modern improvement. At this moment the manufacturers in western

England buy more fine pictures, and lend a wiser as well as richer

support to art than all the personal patronage in the realm beside, the

sovereign included.

Every new enactment of the hereditary few is a fresh concession to the

popular demand for free access to whatever is beautiful or sublime.

Since Charles I., each great institution, the British Museum for

example, has been indebted to a private individual for its origin. The

common heart therein reads an impressive commentary on all progress,

and is ennobled in its joy. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, ancient Rome, and

modern Italy, disinterred and intelligently arranged, pass under the

simultaneous view of the masses, and every expression of tint, form,

and spirit becomes a fresh element of knowledge, a lever by which is

set in motion a vast fabric of creative wonder. Thus the sciences and

arts unite in a delightful combination for the good of humanity, and

nothing gives so much lustre to a nation as their perfection.

The cultivation of the fine arts greatly contributes to the respect,

character, and dignity of every government by which they have been

encouraged, and are intimately connected with every thing valuable

in national influence. In contemplating the permanent glory to which

so small a republic as Athens rose, by the genius and energy of her

citizens, exerted in this direction, it is impossible to overlook how

transient the memory and fame of extended empires and mighty conquerors

are, compared with those who have rendered inconsiderable states

eminent, and who have immortalized their own names by these pursuits.

Free governments alone afford a soil suitable to the production of

native talent, to the full maturing of the human mind, and to the

growth of every species of excellence. Therefore no country can be

better adapted than our own to afford a final abode for the best

specimens of the old world as models to the new, that by these we may

first learn to emulate, and ultimately be enabled to excel them.

We are yet a young people, engrossed with all the distracting cares and

toils incident to the primary subjugation of a virgin continent. And

yet, perhaps nowhere else are the masses more eager to enjoy beautiful

art. Private collections are rapidly multiplying, numerous exhibitions

are profusely visited, and public monuments are munificently sustained.

At a late meeting of the Royal Academy in London, at which the

ministers were present, the premier, Lord Aberdeen, said that "as a

fact full of hope he remarked that for several years the public, in the

appreciation of art, had outstripped the government and the parliament

itself." But in the United States the masses, who in this age are

everywhere rising in intelligent supremacy, most directly control the

resources of their respective States; and we may soon expect to see

diversified types of American art produced which will be commensurate

with the matchless charms of our climate, the varied richness of our

raw materials, and the grandeur of our national domain.

The best writers on art that ever lived are now enriching our language

with the most splendid contributions to a new and nobler order of

æsthetical criticism. Not only are such works appreciated with great

avidity by the common mind of our land, but the numerous art-students

from America, whose studios are leading attractions in every foreign

metropolis, receive the newest light with least prejudice, and profit

by progressive principles with most triumphant success.

The more occidental the stage of human development, and the later

the period of its existence, the more scope and capital there will

be for the exercise of genius. The last national picture executed

for the Rotunda at Washington was by a native artist born beyond the

Ohio; and the moving panorama, the most original and instructive,

if not the most refined species of art belonging to this age in all

the world, was invented by an American, amid the wild splendors of

the upper Mississippi. In regions yet beyond, Jubal with the chorded

shell, and Tubal-Cain, smelting metals and refining pigments for the

use of man, will direct those who congregate in cities, and turn the

discoveries of reason, with the embellishments of art to the widest

and most ennobling public good. We have every reason to believe that

as our nationality shall require an artistic expression, local genius

will never be wanting to give it an adequate expression; and that the

sublime productions of the West will ultimately be appealed to as the

finest test of the supreme rank we shall come to hold among the nations

of earth.

CHAPTER III.

SCIENCE.

The swallow travels, and the bee builds now, as these creatures of

instinct traveled and built in the days of Moses and Job; but the

capabilities and acquisitions of rational man are all progressive, not

only, as an individual from infancy to age, but as a species from the

beginning to the end of time. This is shown, by every art which man

has invented, and in every science he has employed. Let us proceed to

open up more specifically this illustrative department of our general

theme, and consider the threefold advantages, political, mechanical,

and educational which the age of Washington permits us to enjoy.

The science of government as practiced in this country, is undoubtedly

constructed on the loftiest principles of common sense, and constitutes

the best model and most salutary protection to each subordinate

department of productive thought. Here, the division of labor has been

carried to the greatest extent, not only in the deliberative but in

the executive departments; and progress is steadily pursued, without

attempting to anticipate results either by springing forward after

crude theories, or backward in attempts to copy extinct forms. Our view

of liberty differs essentially from that held by the ancients. By the

latter citizenship was regarded as the highest phase of humanity, and

man, as a political being, could rise no higher than to membership in a

state; therefore it was that Aristotle affirmed the state to be before

the individual. But with us the state, and consequently the citizenship

only affords the means of obtaining still higher objects, the fullest

possible development of human faculties both in this world and in that

which is to come.

The science of freedom, which is destined to spread its irresistible

empire over this continent, started its primary germ in the bosom

of our antipodes. Long before the words people, law, equality,

independence, and equitable legislation had found a place in refined

languages, republicanism glowed in the mind of Moses, and was partially

embodied in the Hebrew commonwealth. The safeguard of all races as

they were propagated, and the ennobler of all thoughts as they were

colonized, this blessing of blessings has ever migrated with advancing

humanity from age to age, till at length a fitting field has been

attained for its fullest and most fruitful development.

Heeren well observes that Greece may be considered as "a sample paper

of free commonwealths." But even that renowned land never saw her

people enjoy their just rights; nor was such an exalted privilege

realized by the nations of continental Europe, until the great

principle of popular consent was recognized as the foundation of

righteous authority. The crusades broke down feudalism, and elective

monarchies grew increasingly representative of the popular will, up to

the transition period, when James II. was hurled from his tyrannical

throne, and William of Orange became the people's king. All the best

political science of the old world went with the latter, from the

comparatively free Netherlands, to ameliorate England, and foster her

colonies in America. The essence of the great revolution of 1688 was

eminently pacific and progressive, occasioning no sacking of towns nor

shedding of blood. According to Macaulay, it announced that the strife

between the popular element and the despotic element in the government,

which had lasted so long, and been so prolific in seditions,

rebellions, plots, battles, sieges, impeachments, proscriptions, and

judicial murders, was at an end; and that the former, having at length

fairly triumphed over the latter, was thenceforth to be permitted

freely to develop itself, and become predominant in the English polity.

In tracing kindred paths of human progress, we have constantly had

occasion to note how the affairs of all consecutive ages, though

produced immediately by the voluntary agency of diversified actors,

have, nevertheless, been controlled by the divine counsel, and

contributed to execute the perfected unity of the divine plan. How

great and manifold were the purposes which Providence comprehended

in the discovery of America, and the peculiar colonies planted on

its shores, we need not attempt to portray. But it is impossible to

doubt that prominent among these were improvements in the science

of government, the evolution of new theories of civil polity, and a

grander application of such principles as had already been made known.

As a new world was about to be civilized, and required the highest

measure of free intelligence, Bacon, Harrington, Sidney, Milton,

Locke, Grotius, Puffendorf, and Montesquieu, arose to pour successive

shafts of light upon the new but sombre skies. Parental injustice and

colonial strife for a while darkened earth and heaven; but in due time

the sun of American freedom ascended with auspicious splendor, when

the mists of prejudice were dispersed, and the fresh revelations of a

new political science appeared like some glorious landscape amid clear

shining after rain. All the brightest beamings of antecedent light fell

concentrated in that ray which illumined the cabin of the Mayflower,

and kindled the fairest beacon of freedom on the eastern extremity of

our continent. It was an effulgence given to be thenceforth diffused

westward evermore, often buffeted, indeed, by adverse elements, but

never impeded in its predominating progress, and much less diminished

or obscured.

Before the pilgrim fathers disembarked, on the 11th of November, 1620,

off Cape Cod, they drew up and subscribed a formal social compact, from

which is the following extract: "We, whose names are under-written * *

* * do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of

God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a

civil body politic, * * * * and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute,

and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions,

offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and

convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise

all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder

subscribed our names." To this remarkable document were appended the

names of all the male adults on board the ship; the whole number of

both sexes being a hundred and one, who took possession of a desert

island, where day now first dawns on the sublimest republic of earth.

According to an eastern fable, the world is a harp. Its strings are

earth, air, fire, flood, life, death, and wind. At certain intervals,

an angel, flying through the heavens, strikes the harp. Its vibrations

are those mighty issues of good and evil, the great epochs which mark

the destiny of our race. In allusion to this, E.C. Wines remarks: "The

mystic harp was touched when the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Its quivering strings discoursed their most eloquent music. The burden

of the notes was, human freedom; human brotherhood; human rights;

the sovereignty of the people; the supremacy of law over will; the

divine right of man to govern himself. The strain is still prolonged

in vibrations of ever-widening circuit. That was an era of eras. Its

influence, vitalized by the American Union, is fast becoming paramount

throughout the civilized world. Europe feels it at this very moment

to her utmost extremities, in every sense, in every fibre, in every

pulsation of her convulsed and struggling energies.

"The great birth of that era is practical liberty; liberty based on

the principles of the Gospel; liberty fashioned into symmetry and

beauty and strength by the molding power of Christianity; liberty which

'places sovereignty in the hands of the people, and then sends them

to the Bible, that they may learn how to wear the crown.' And what a

birth! Already is the infant grown into a giant. Liberty, as it exists

among us, that is, secured by constitutional guaranties, impregnated

with Gospel principles, and freed from alliance with royalty, has

raised this country from colonial bondage and insignificance to the

rank of a leading power among the governments of earth.

"The union of these States under one government, effected by our

national Constitution, has given to America a career unparalleled,

in all the annals of time, for rapidity and brilliancy. Her three

millions of people have swelled, in little more than half a century, to

twenty-five millions. Her one million square miles have expanded into

nearly four millions. Her thirteen States have grown into thirty-one.

Her navigation and commerce rival those of the oldest and most

commercial nations. Her keels vex all waters. Her maritime means and

maritime power are seen on all seas and oceans, lakes and rivers. Her

inventive genius has given to the world the two greatest achievements

of human ingenuity, in the steamboat and the electric telegraph. Two

thousand steamers ply her waters; twenty thousand miles of magnetic

wires form a net-work over her soil. The growth of her cities is more

like magic than reality. New York has doubled its population in ten

years. The man is yet living who felled the first tree, and reared the

first log-cabin, on the site of Cincinnati. Now that city contains one

hundred and fifty thousand souls. It is larger than the ancient and

venerable city of Bristol, in England."

Thus the founders of our national compact have proved themselves the

unsurpassed adepts in political science. They unquestionably belonged

to that select number, of whom Bolingbroke said that it has pleased

the author of nature to mingle them, from time to time, at distant

intervals, among the societies of men, to maintain the moral system of

the universe at an elevated point. Nor shall we find less variety of

profound invention, or less popular advantages derived from practical

applications in the realm of American mechanical science, than in the

primary one of civic excellence just considered.

The labors of cotemporaries generally are in harmony with the epoch;

and in America especially do they all tend to promote that ultimate

destiny which promises to be much better as well as greater than the

past sufferings, commotions, and hopes of mankind. The westering career

of inventive genius reminds one of Milton's hero marching through

the dark abyss to discover fairer realms beyond. Though assailed by

feelings of discouragement, and fantastic apparitions rise before him,

still he persistingly rises from the dark depths, to set his foot on

the gigantic bridge that leads from gloom to brightness, and sees at

length the pendant new world hanging in a golden chain, fast by the

empyreal heaven, "with opal towers and battlements adorned of living

sapphire."

Modern science has produced a splendid mass of evidence as to the

growing power and capacity of the human mind; of its independence,

freedom, and ability to direct its own movements; of resisting the

influences of external agents, of inquiring after original truths, and

acting according to its own ideas of propriety, justice, or duty. As by

the use of armed vision, and other mechanical aids, the modern scholar

can extend his intellectual view to things, laws, and results beyond

the most distant conceptions of uncultivated mind, so will like means

bring into near neighborhood nations and continents heretofore the most

remote.

The mechanical inventor stands prominent among the chief heroes and

benefactors of every productive people, and especially is this true of

the mightiest in our day, the English race. Their bloodless conflict

with, and conquest over, the forces of nature, transcend in importance

all the glitter of ancestral fame, and the proud spoils of foreign

wars. Nothing in ancient annals is comparable to the prodigious feats

of human industry and skill which have been witnessed since the age

of Washington began. Not to go east of our own immediate ancestors,

it is interesting to see how the old haunts of power are now but

the abandoned monuments of progress, the means of which are mostly

mechanics, all the chief seats of whose influence have migrated to the

West. Canterbury, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Winchester, have remained

almost stationary ever since the United States were organized; while

Leeds, Paisley, and Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool have

become the comprehensive centres of the most productive and beneficent

life. The growth of the latter town has corresponded with our own great

commercial metropolis; which, like it, is truly a city of the young and

auspicious age. Sitting there upon a rock, overlooking the Atlantic,

and enriched with the merchandise of many nations, the modern Tyre of

the old world, whose rugged Lancastrian dignity comports well with the

majesty of universal commerce, relies for her principal support on her

rival New York.

Previous to the eighteenth century, great ingenuity and fertility of

invention was manifested in theoretical representations of mechanical

principles and complicated machines. But in all that relates to

efficient construction and adaptation to practical use, a total absence

of scientific insight was manifested. The puny engines might act very

well in the form of models, if not set to work out something in good

earnest, but otherwise they were sure to knock themselves to pieces

in a very short time. On the contrary, this century is distinguished

in nothing more than by the potent simplicity and prolific benefits

to which all its great mechanical inventions are reduced. The hundred

eyes of Argus, and the hundred hands of Briareus are at once laid

under contribution to the widest good in the simultaneous action of

all their most concentrated powers. Inventive genius, divinely guided,

is fast altering the face of earth, and converting the elements of

nature, together with her laws, into instruments and artificial

powers, wherewith to augment the fruitfulness of human industry, and

the products of cultivated soils. Labor-saving machinery increases the

yield of agricultural science, facilitates transportation, and enriches

commerce through the varied wealth it affords for exchange. The

steam-engine, spinning-jenny, and power-loom, consume neither food nor

clothing, while they accomplish more labor than millions of weary human

hands. How wonderfully does mechanical science augment the products

of industry, multiply the comforts and diminish the diseases of life,

developing the resources, and increasing the capital, intelligence, and

power of a nation!

With the exception of a few islands in hot climates, agriculture

never did flourish in any country where the mechanic arts were not

flourishing. Nearly all the grains, vegetables, and plants, as well as

fruits, which afford support to our spreading population, and replenish

the marts of trade, once grew spontaneously in eastern climes, whence

they were transplanted to constitute the advantage and reward of

western agriculture. As soon as the pioneer of a new region acquires

sufficient knowledge of the mechanic arts, and learns to construct

tools adapted to the cultivation of earth, he is able to convert its

products into the means of comfort, and the staples of commerce.

One discovery leads to another yet more prolific of good, and every

improvement in mechanical science not only multiplies the enjoyments

of rational man, but contributes to promote his health, increase

his longevity, and augments the products of every realm of nature,

in quantity, quality, and value. Agriculture is therefore dependent

upon mechanical science, not only for its origin, but also for every

step of its progress in the sublime march of invincible civilization.

Agriculture has less direct influence upon the wealth and power of

a nation than commerce, but it is most conservative of the highest

national weal. Minds engaged in the latter pursuit are more active and

acute, more inclined to seek after new discoveries and such inventions

as most favor zealous enterprise; hence, nearly all great material

improvements have been made by the mechanical, manufacturing, and

commercial classes. Their minds are fuller of schemes and projects,

often ill-digested; and they have more energy, but less stability of

character, usually, than agriculturists. They are more daring, but

less safe; their operations, unlike the salutary effects of bucolic

toil, frequently partaking of the character of gambling speculations.

Most of our colonies were planted by commercial companies, and

primarily depended on commercial gain for their chief support. But as

our national resources and dangers have multiplied, very fortunately

the conservative power of the rural populations has proportionately

increased; so that at the present moment of peril, the mighty palladium

of our Republic lies along the magnificent expanse of our western

agriculture.

The propulsive energies and ennobling tendencies of this age and nation

consist mainly in its mechanical, mining, and manufacturing industry,

as the main feeders and conservators of its commerce. These lead to

mental activity and independence, enterprise and inventions which

contribute to the largest measure of productive results, and most

ameliorate the various conditions of life. Had we long been limited to

the narrow area of the original thirteen colonies, the preponderance

of the commercial spirit would probably have ruined us; but happily

the maritime coast around the little East, extended as it may appear,

is vastly exceeded by the widening dominions of agriculture opened in

the great West, whose inexhaustible richness guaranties the perpetuity

of our union and the supplies of our food. Thither millions are

escaping from the old world, painfully recollecting how many small

homes they have seen demolished, to make way for the exclusive parks

and aristocratic mansions wherein they could find neither sympathy

nor support. But on the virgin soil where rugged emigrants build

their cabins of content, the sense of property becomes the truest of

magicians; it is to them the consciousness of power, and the feeling

of _value_ in self-relying effort. Arthur Young well said,

"Give a man nine years' lease of a garden, and he will turn it into

a desert; give a man entire possession of a rock and he will turn it

into a garden." The vast basin of the Mississippi will soon become

the paradise of republicanism, the chief fountain of ameliorating

civilization, and the central granary of the world.

The first canal that was opened in the United States extended from

Boston to the river Merrimac. The "Great Western" soon after was

undertaken, and now the finest canals in the country connect the Hudson

with the grand series of inland seas, and thence extend beyond the

Ohio. The first railroad was also constructed at the eastern extremity

of our republic, and was the beginning of a continuous thoroughfare of

rock and iron which at this time extends due west a greater length, and

with more abundant profit, than can elsewhere be found on earth. The

first steamboat was built in this city, and made her trial trip between

the focal-point of universal maritime navigation and the predestined

line of the grandest inland travel direct from east to west. As canal,

railroad, and steamboat were wanted, they were produced, exactly in

the places and exigences best fitted to give them the widest and most

salutary use. Neither Fulton nor Clinton dreamed of what gigantic

results they were the incipient agents. Even Jefferson, who as

unconsciously served the hidden purposes of Providence in the purchase

of Louisiana, when told of the proposed artery of commerce which now

winds like a thread of silver through this imperial Commonwealth, said

that "it was a very fine project, and might be executed a hundred years

hence." A hundred years hence! What will science have done for our

nation before that period shall have transpired?

The advanced races are always the goers, while the less advanced are

the stayers at home. Therefore the improvement of locomotion is one of

the first essentials in the progression of mankind, to clog which is

not merely a crime against the individual, but against humanity itself.

Man, aided by the facilities which mechanical engineering has provided,

is armed with the powers of nature; he has vanquished his opponent, and

enlisted her forces in his service. Matter is no longer an impediment

to oppose him, but the arsenal from which he draws his mightiest

weapons and richest stores. Coal and water become concentrated

forces, whose powers he may develop and control for the extension

and improvement of his terrestrial dominion. One single steam-engine

constructed by mechanical science, is of more real importance

than all the powers of Rome, and a single printing-press than all

the arts of Greece. They are more than mere instruments, they are

prodigious _powers_, placed at human disposal. They are products

of reason; and just as that highest mental attribute learns to see

further and further into the processes of nature, so does man by such

means acquire new power for extracting welfare from the earth. When

Humboldt would enumerate only a few of the instruments whose invention

characterizes this great epoch in the history of civilization, he

names "the telescope, and its long-delayed connection with instruments

of measurement; the compound microscope, which furnishes us with the

means of tracing the conditions of the process of development of

organs, which Aristotle gracefully designates as the formative activity

of the source of being; the compass, and the different contrivances

invented for measuring terrestrial magnetism; the use of the pendulum

as a measure of time; the barometer; hygrometric and electrometric

apparatuses; and the polariscope, in its application to the phenomena

of colored polarization in the light of the stars, or in luminous

regions of the atmosphere." Chemistry instructs us as to what and

whence the metals are; and from the grossest dregs elicits flaming gas,

that great moralizer of modern cities, more powerful than an armed

police. Mechanics and chemistry furnish us with an endless variety of

substances, in combinations infinitely diversified, all tending to give

man more power, leisure, and comfort; to make him, in fact, freer, and

more elevated in his position on the globe. Instead of being the slave

of physical nature, science renders man its master, as the Creator

intended him to be when he gave him an earthly dominion.

An immense amelioration has taken place in the condition of modern

society. Man has extended the limits of his life, has intelligently

constructed circumstances less fatal to his organism, and has vastly

diminished his liability to dissolution; in fact, he has, to a certain

extent, beaten the evils of the physiological world, exactly as he has

vanquished the difficulties of the mechanical world. Better dwellings,

clothing, and food; more abundant supplies of water and pure air, and

prompt treatment under acute disease; inoculation and vaccination; the

improvement of prisons and workhouses, and a more rational mode of

treating the human frame both individual and collective, has secured

to civilized man a longer tenancy and happier use of terrestrial

existence. Thus, the sciences not only lead to an amended order of

action, but also to a condition amended and improved as well. And we

confidently believe that the very same kind of improvements that have

followed the mathematical and physical sciences will supervene upon

social science, and achieve in the world of progressive man far greater

and more beneficent wonders than have yet been achieved in the world

of subordinate matter.

Civilization was born on the banks of the great rivers of the East, and

its grandeurs were first accumulated round the Mediterranean, under

the sway of Greece and Rome. The mediæval age enabled European nations

to develop their ultimate energies on the border of the Atlantic,

and, with ships vastly superior to the triremes of antiquity, to take

possession of the immense expanse of oceanic billows. Coincident with

the establishment of great commercial exchanges in this new world,

that masterly monument of mechanical science, the Eddystone lighthouse

arose on the line of all progress, and guided the old powers and

inert capital of Europe to improved enlargement and use in America.

The great currents of the sea and trade-winds of heaven move westward

alike and evermore. Science daily adds new capacities and momentum in

aid of transportation. Young as we are as a nation, our boats, yachts,

clippers, and steamships are the first in the world. The child of the

East has become a man in the West, where oriental toys have expanded

into colossal instruments proportioned to the occasions and efficiency

of their requisite use. But no inventor is taken captive by his

inventions here, however potent they may be. Every improvement lessens

the impress of local character, and prevents a separation of the nation

into distinct peoples. Petty cliques and transient conflicts may

sometimes occur; but deep in the popular heart the great social country

engrosses the profoundest regard, and entirely preponderates over the

geographical country.

The finest bricks are made on the western shore of Lake Michigan;

and the best materials for the manufacture of flint glass abound in

Minnesota. Lead and copper of great purity and in astonishing abundance

attract and reward industry beyond the grandest of inland seas; and

silver mixed with gold in fabulous profusion draws enterprise over

the diameter of earth to explore nature's great storehouse along the

Pacific shores. But better and more permanently profitable for man

than all else of mundane wealth, are the more substantial treasures

which are buried with inexhaustible richness on the terra firma route,

pre-ordained for ameliorated humanity to pursue from east to west.

Coal and iron constitute the chief motor and metor of all physical

improvement. Like freedom, superior intelligence, and exalted moral

worth, they are the special gifts of God to those who speak the English

language, and will be found most copious in those remote regions where

republicans are destined to be most free.

As the prominent inventions of a people are the best exponents of their

peculiar genius, and the clearest prophecies of prospective triumphs,

so does the energy of their educational zeal indicate the measure and

immediateness of their success. The successive departments of political

and mechanical science we have severally considered above; let us

now give more particular attention to the science of education as

exemplified in our land.

All human progress, political, intellectual, and moral, is inseparable

from material progression, by virtue of the close interconnection

which characterizes the natural course of social phenomena. But the

educational element must form the principal band of the scientific

sheaf, from its various relations, both of subordination and of

direction to all the rest. It is in this way that the homogeneous

co-ordination of legitimate sciences proceeds to the fullest

development, and for the widest ulterior influence on human destiny.

The filiation and adaptation of all great discoveries for the popular

good, affords a fine subject for grateful contemplation, and is

the most exhilarating guaranty to the loftiest hopes. The general

intellect, under the auspices of American freedom, now, and for the

first time, is entering upon the age of ameliorating science. It is an

advent to be hailed with chastened joy, and to be guarded by vigilant

expectation. In comparative anatomy it is well known that a Cuvier may

determine, from a single joint, tooth, or other fragment of an animal,

whose species had never entered human eye or imagination, not only its

general configuration, size, family, and grade in the series of organic

beings, but also its physiological constitution, its manners, its food,

its climatic habitation, whether in the geography or the chronology of

the globe. Even so equal knowledge of the analogous laws of symmetry

and mutual dependence in the social system, eventually attainable, and

to be applied to extant usages or disinterred relics, will enable its

possessor, by a single specimen, accurately to fix the entire condition

of the corresponding people on the scale of civilization. Tried by

this criterion, what monuments of national mind may we not anticipate

for the future, while we contemplate the results already attained

by our brief but glorious past. As the greater Newton succeeded the

great Kepler, and was in turn followed by La Place, who explained

the physical counterpart of his predecessor's theory by the law of

gravitation imperfectly understood by its own discoverer, so do we

believe that the inductive method re-established by Francis Bacon will

be consummated in our central clime, amid greatly increased splendors,

by the mental manhood of the twentieth century.

The great prophet of science to whom we have just referred, lived

mostly in the future, and in his last will he left "his name and memory

to foreign nations and to the next ages." He had crossed the Atlantic,

whose storms men had penetrated for ages without perceiving the fair

omens of progress, but in the confidence of his prophetic intuition he

gave the name of Good Hope to the headland he had reached; as Magellan,

when he beheld the boundless expanse of waters in another direction,

called it the Pacific. The seeds which Bacon sowed have here sprung

up, and are growing to a mighty tree, and the thoughts of millions

come to lodge in its branches. Those branches spread "so broad and

long, that in the ground the bended twigs took root, and daughters

grew about the mother tree, a pillared shade high overarched, and

echoing walks between;" walks where Literature may hang her wreaths

upon the massy stems, and Art may adorn that Religion, of which Science

erects the hundred-aisled temple. The preparation made for the present

age, and the high anticipations entertained by the last and wisest

of its precursors, is set forth as follows near the close of his

_Advancement of Learning_: "Being now at some pause, looking back

into that I have past through, this writing seemeth to me, as far as a

man can judge of his own work, not much better than that noise or sound

which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments; which

is nothing pleasant to hear, yet is a cause why the music is sweeter

afterward: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses,

that they may play who have better hands. And surely, when I set before

me the condition of these times, in which Learning hath made her third

visitation or circuit, in all the qualities thereof--as the excellency

and vivacity of the wits of this age--the noble helps and lights which

we have by the travails of ancient writers--the art of printing, which

communicateth books to men of all fortunes--the openness of the world

by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments and a

mass of natural history--the leisure wherewith these times abound, not

employing men so generally in civil business, as the states of Greece

did in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome in respect of

the greatness of her monarchy, the present disposition of these times

to peace, and the inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and

more to disclose truth--I can not but be raised to this persuasion,

that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and

Roman learning."

In 1647 the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts passed an Act "that every

township of fifty householders should appoint a person to teach all

the children to read and write, and that every township of one hundred

families should support a grammar-school."

In the following year (1648) the Legislative Assembly of the colony of

Connecticut, passed a statute in relation to education of very nearly

the same purport as that passed in Massachusetts. The Puritans of New

England entertained the same opinion as the Presbyterians of Scotland,

that education is necessary to the performance of religious duty; and

the former seem to have borrowed their ideas and system of education

substantially from the latter. This was the foundation of the system of

common-school education, which was adopted in the State of New York in

the early part of the nineteenth century, and has been more recently

adopted in nearly all the free States. While no effort has been made

to give the whole population of England a common-school education, and

Parliament persists in discouraging such an undertaking, our newest

western States even exceed New England in their educational zeal.

The first college in America was founded on the eastern edge of

Plymouth colony, and has been succeeded by a series of rivals

stretching due west, so rapidly and widely multiplied in numbers

and patronage, that now the new States possess richer advantages

for learning than the old. A self-educated seaman, born in the same

region of rock and ice, was the first to translate and publish with

emendations the profoundest mathematical works of modern times; and now

there are successful aspirants after like distinction, whose towers

of science stand reflected on the banks of the Ohio, casting their

shadows still onward before the ascending sun. It was fitting that

the most learned President of the United States should travel from

Pilgrim Rock to the "Mount Adams" of westward empire, whereon he laid

the corner stone of the only Observatory extant, which is sustained

by popular subscription, and rendered renowned by private enterprise.

In that "Queen City," which seems like a thing of yesterday, not only

has the pendulum of Galileo been made to measure the diameter of a

single planet, but one of the most valuable inventions of this age,

the astronomical clock, there first beat in its sublime reckoning of

the universe. A printer born in Boston, was armed by Providence with

paper and twine through which to draw harmless lightnings from the

skies; and a painter in New York, under the same heavenly guidance, and

at the fitting time, charged the celestial messenger with a kindred

burden of human intelligence, and dispatched it first from the capitol

of our Union to instruct and ameliorate mankind. Coincident with the

latter discovery, mechanical science in this great metropolis perfected

a still more imperial civilizer, the steam power-press; and now not

an element of nature expands, not a conquest of science is matured,

and not an inspiration of genius fulmines in the gloom of penury, or

around the pinnacles of power, that the press does not gather all

the aggregated excellence in subordination to its use, to enhance

the benefactions of ennobling intelligence upon which it subsists.

In Boston, ether was first applied to ameliorate the dreaded pain of

surgical steel, to mitigate the bitterest physical pangs, and rob Death

himself of half his spiritual terrors. In Cincinnati, the steam fire

engine has just been added to other mighty conservative agents. As the

general alarm aggravates midnight terrors, and the gains of a toilsome

life are threatened by the remorseless conflagration, glaring in lofty

defiance to ordinary resistance, a tiny match kindles the ardor of

invincible union between diverse elements in united opposition, and

agitated crowds are soon awed into admiring silence, as the mighty

flames are speedily drowned. One of our citizens has recently mapped

the ocean of international commerce with all its old currents of power

sagaciously discriminated, and newly traced as the best channels of

safety. Another, venturing where no predecessor had ever been has

just returned from the regions of perpetual ice, to win the grateful

applause of Christendom for the material wonders he discovered and

the beneficent spirit he displayed. A clergyman of this city, for his

researches in Palestine, was the first of four Americans who, within

the last fifteen years, have been decorated with the golden medals of

foreign honors; one of whom, on account of his explorations in the

opposite direction, whither tends the greatest public good, has just

been nominated to the highest secular dignity possible on earth.

The restless and insatiable activity of Americans in scientific

research and moral heroism, was finely personated by Ulysses of old.

Sick of Ithaca, Argos, Telemachus, and Penelope even, the old and

indomitable mariner-king panted for untried dangers and undiscovered

lands. His purpose was "to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all

the western stars, until he died." Thus actuated, man is lifted to a

higher platform of observation whence he may read the book of gemmed

pictures illuminating his nights, and revealed to fill his soul with an

inspiration more grand and inspiriting than any terrestrial object can

communicate. It is the legitimate and appropriate sequence of the new

revelations of modern science, and is designed more and more to render

the master of earth free of the universe. In his heavenly Father's

house are many mansions, and these with all their expansive marvels

are unfolded in salutary enlargedness, in order that their predestined

possessor through a corresponding education in their presence, may

expand his spirit till it shall become approximatively unbounded in a

creation without bounds. The telescope, the compass, the press, the

locomotive, and the telegraph, have in succession, and with vastly

increased degrees of power, infused into the heart of humanity a sense

of freedom, and in that influence their chief benefaction consists.

Each new province annexed to the magnificent domain of present

knowledge points more clearly to still richer provinces beyond; and on

the remotest border of all, human immortality and infinite progress

are most legibly inscribed. "Forward" and "forever" are exhortations

not only vocal in the music of the spheres, but are repeated to the

adventurer by the remotest billows, and quicken the passion for

profounder investigation in the darkest depths.

The regulator of the steam-engine was invented in Massachusetts, where

also originated most of the superior cotton and woolen machinery now

generally employed. The locomotive was there entirely re-cast, and

immensely improved. When the perfected "iron horse" thence advanced,

surmounted by that indigenous embodiment of democratic huzzas, the

steam whistle, "Young America" was just beginning to go ahead. When

in the laboratory of the University in this city, the sun-picture was

first invented, simultaneously with the labors of Daguerre, the same

promising youth was favored with a glance of what he is yet to be. And

when that first telegraphic message, "What hath God wrought!" was let

fly with the lucid freedom of lightning, Young America, standing on the

summit of six thousand years, and born to renovate the race whose final

destiny he represents, had then, indeed, begun to talk.

A comprehensive view of political, mechanical, and educational science

in our country will teach us that the mightiest minds are more and

more compelled to serve the masses; and that the most enormous outlay

of capital in either ponderous or exquisite producing agents, is all

in favor of the undistinguished populace, and not for the special

advantage of a select few. The most subtle and refined machinery,

for example, is not applied to the most delicate and elegant kind of

work, such as gold and silver, jewels and embroidery. These luxuries

are mainly executed by hand, while the most expensive machinery is

brought into play where operations on the commonest materials are to

be performed, because these are executed on the widest scale. Such is

especially the case when coarse and ordinary wares are manufactured for

the many. This is why such a vast and astonishing variety of artificial

power is used in our country and age. The machine with its million

fingers works for millions of purchasers, while in lands less free,

where magnificence and beggary stand side by side, tens of thousands

work for one. There Art and Science labor for princely aristocrats

only; here, the great mass of the people are their chosen and most

munificent patrons.

All great workers, and the improvements they originate, find their

legitimate use only in the enunciation of great truths for the popular

good. Thus it is that the relation of men to each other and to the

whole world is progressively changed, and that always in the direction

of increased equality. The universal mind receives simultaneously

the impression of each new idea; it imprints itself upon domestic

institutions, infuses itself into literature, reconstructs political

formulas, and in some measure both impels and controls the religious

life. It has lately been proved that the whole earth is a magnet,

and all mental achievements in our day tend to render the domain of

American civilization one immense university of science. At each

remove toward western freedom, progressive man has shown his mastery

by compelling all the elements to help create and grace his triumphs.

The waters turned from their courses to move his mills; the sportive

zephyrs and angry winds imprisoned in his sails; the flying vapor taken

captive to whirl his myriad of spindles, or send the "Iron Missionary"

tramp, tramp over the earth, splash, splash across the sea; the soft

light he makes ministrant to the dearest joys, depicting by it the

portrait of tenderest love; and the latent flame which sings along the

wires by lines of railway; all alike and together prophesy of mightier

and better things to come.

Facilities of knowledge are the auspicious means of transfusing

into the soul those ideas which are the tools vouchsafed to shape

the destiny of our race. The dynasty of a new thought is much more

glorious than the pedigree of old kings; and the future of free America

will infinitely transcend in worth and well-doing all the arbitrary

dignities and adventitious splendors gone by.

The machinery of production in America is already greater than that

of England. Our twenty-three millions of citizens produce a larger

amount of valuable staples, while they build twice as many houses; make

twice as many roads; apply three times more labor in the improvement

of land; build four times as many school-houses and churches; and

print ten times as many newspapers. We have laid the foundation of

a pyramid whose base is a million of square miles, studded all over

with innumerable little communities, each one of which occupies

space sufficient for a large one, with its academy, or its college,

its journals, bookstores, and libraries, all aiding to give to

the superstructure a magnificence proportioned to the breadth and

stability of its base. Among the more western States, not less than

in the eastern, there is universal activity and intelligence. It is

safe to repeat that the commonwealths recently organized have more

and better printing-presses, and consume more well-read paper; that

they have more commodious school-houses, and more scholars in them;

more churches, and more devout Christians in them; more well-selected

libraries, and more thoughtful readers in them, than any other nation

on earth.

What our future may become, our brief past will best suggest. We know

that however high we may ascend the course of history, we see, not in

each or any particular people, but in the human family as a whole, an

uninterrupted endeavor to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge always

progressive; so that, from the obscurity of earliest time, we arrive

step by step to modern science, more certain, more extended, and more

prolific, in practical results than was ever known in preceding ages.

This progress is proved by the sovereignty which man has successively

acquired over nature, subordinating to his will her most energetic

forces, and compelling them to accomplish the highest ends in the

surest manner. We see what the earth, transformed in an immense portion

of its best surface, has become under his hand. He subdues the billows,

traverses seas, and his invincible thought, aspiring to still sublimer

empire, makes his necessities to be served by the stars which vainly

flee in the deserts of space.

From the survey which has been taken above of the spreading of

ameliorating empire in the great West, it is evident that its central

throne must soon rest on the granite heights beyond the great lakes,

near the sources of the mighty Mississippi. Thither the free and brave

millions are fast gathering, whose noble progeny will people the entire

continent, and bless the world. The denizens of those wealthy regions,

and the patriots of those happy times, will be both intelligent and

brave beyond precedent, in conserving the republican institutions

they have received to perfect and perpetuate. The sentiment of the

great man of the extreme East, will be best appreciated, and most

sublimely exemplified, in proportion as it sweeps with the sun from

the horizon of its origin, and, from the loftiest Rocky Mountains,

resounds simultaneously from ocean to ocean, the profoundest sentiment

of undivided peoples, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and

inseparable!"

CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.

Human history is a perpetual exodus, and its promised land has ever

been in the West. Bondage to escape, seas to cross, miracles to

witness, conquests to win, a wilderness to traverse, and a Goshen to

attain, institutions to create, and all the seeds of a newer and nobler

civilization to propagate, ever has been, is now, and evermore will be,

the destiny and recompense of our race.

Greece collected the materials of ideas for the work of universal

civilization, Rome consolidated a heterogeneous mass from every

department of thought, and our Teutonic ancestors put all anterior

results into generalized systems, preparatory to the ultimate

perfection of civilized society on this continent and throughout the

world. We are perfecting the last republic possible in space, ending

the girdle of the globe we were created to redeem. As remote as is our

comprehensive sphere from the beginning of historic development, we are

indissolubly linked to the one divinely identical purpose. Our Union

constitutes the final member of an association truly majestic and holy,

the design of which is to elevate all classes and conditions of men to

the utmost heights of wisdom and worth.

The nations are not destined to find a precarious calm in their

degradation. They can never be subjugated by force, even should their

volitions be chained for a season, while their sentiments are enervated

in the service of the licentious. The great law of human progress

will not long permit its apathetic subjects to be passive and mute

spectators, impelled, like a vile horde, from one power to another.

Revolutions will multiply, and, at the same time, become less and

less calamitous, until all subjects shall become citizens, no longer

excluded from political equality and moral improvement. No enterprise

shall then be interdicted to adequate skill, and no arbitrary action

impede the pursuit of honorable gain. The popular currency of opinion,

law, and affection, must eventually be coined, and circulated in

mutual confidence, and bear a premium in every land. Progress in human

society is necessitated by its primary constitution. The social union

of men, and their habitual communication with each other, produces a

certain advancement of sentiments, ideas, and reasonings, which can

not be suspended. This constitutes the march of civilization, and the

perpetual order of the day is--forward! It leads us, necessarily, to

successive epochs, sometimes peaceable and virtuous, and sometimes

criminal and agitated, sometimes glorious, and at others, opprobrious;

and, according as Providence casts us into one condition or the other,

we gather the happiness or the suffering attached to the age in which

we live. On that our tastes, opinions, and habitual impressions, in

a great measure depend. Transient events may modify this law, but

no finite power can wrest from society its varied progress. In this

course of human development, the accompanying circumstances which most

nearly assume the form of an exception are themselves so enchained

as most strongly to corroborate the general rule. Taken as a whole,

the race of Adam, enlightened or benighted, pursues a determined

route, and accomplishes a prescribed progress, as do the stars. Now

clear, and anon obscure, at one time slow, and at another rapid their

apparent flight, nothing arrests the inevitable career, nor prevents

the accumulative good. Letters shine, science advances, the arts are

perfected, and splendors on every side are multiplied; then arrives

the moment when the opinions generally adopted, and the prevailing

disposition of all leading spirits are in conflict with existing

institutions. The crash of revolution resounds, and governments are

overthrown; forms of religion become obsolete, customs change, disorder

reigns, and prolonged suffering prostrates the people. At length the

tempest exhausts itself, and calm is restored. The necessity of repose

renders the populace docile for a season, and they lose the fiery zeal

which at first characterized their newly conquered opinions. A new

order of things becomes established upon a higher platform, in the

tranquil enjoyment of which the happy inheritors forget the sorrows

of their fathers. Then begins a newer, if not a sadder advance, which

leads popular ideas again into conflict with existing institutions,

whose overthrow results in yet wider catastrophes. It is thus that

civilization, by vicissitudes of repose and agitation, more or less

contiguous and saddening, conducts the nations to consummate perfection.

Contempt toward mankind, doubt as to their virtues, and despondency

with respect to their ultimate fortunes, recur but too often in the

historians of philosophy. But it is more noble and more truthful never

to despair respecting human weal, since it is only in the light of hope

that we can trace a route for virtue and honor, in which an impulse

may be given and a reward found for the brave, virtuous, and good. At

the moment mediocrity complains of deepest gloom, genius is wont to

perceive and proclaim the advent of ascending day, the fresh dawn of

which rapidly develops the germs of all that is requisite to create

a new world and invest it with transcendant charms. The decemvirs

augmented their tyranny over Rome, until a particular event rendered

the weight insupportable, and it was cast down. The British parliament

despaired of rendering the nation happy under the domineering Stuarts,

and the dynasty was changed. The American colonies found themselves

oppressed by an arbitrary tax, and declared themselves independent.

Through a similar course of opinions, the sufferers in common arrived

at a stage where the existing order of things needed to be overthrown.

Fresh ardor and new activities seized upon and impelled all spirits;

each one was impatient under a common wrong, and ready to enter the

battle for common rights. At such a crisis is manifested the maturity

of a thousand remote but cumulative circumstances which bear in their

bosom a salutary principle as mighty to soothe as to excite the pangs

of its birth. It comes with an additional proof that the chain of

national enthrallment is not unending or insufferable, but that the

crimes of revolutions will decrease in proportion as their exciting

cause is removed. Such was the series of struggles through which Greece

bloomed in consummate beauty; such was the convulsion which conducted

Rome from crude republicanism to imperial grandeur, across the field

of outrageous proscriptions and civil wars; and such was the long

commotion which the Europe of our day experienced in the establishment

of reform: a bloody period which marked the passage from effete and

oppressive institutions to the new order of things.

In the year 1800, Lucien Bonaparte remarked, "We are standing amid the

grave of old and beside the cradle of new institutions." It was indeed

true that the dawn of the nineteenth century beheld the world invested

with a contrast the most striking and strange; night and storm, day and

calm, were clearly separated. Even Asiatic immobility was broken up;

and Egypt, the cradle of civilization, was rocked from side to side in

the tempests of northern ambition. All the old powers of Europe were

alarmed and exhausted by disorders without a parallel since the Roman

empire sank in fragments beneath the crash of barbaric arms. The New

World alone, happily isolated from the convulsed parent states by a

wide expanse of waters, was permitted to develop in peace its primary

elements of personal worth and national greatness. The sudden summons

of death had just removed him who was so justly designated the "First

in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen;" but

sublimely through the universal gloom occasioned by such a bereavement,

the sun of intelligence and philosophic freedom rose clear and

unchangeable above the tomb of Washington.

Throughout the whole range of progressive philosophy, it will be

found that there exists a constant and necessary harmony between

cotemporary needs and knowledge. Each successive age produces its

appropriate agents who in their own persons both resume the past and

enlarge the future, by making a clearance in their sublime field,

so as to reconstruct a broader and more brilliant system of ideas.

The philosophy of the middle ages was distinguished for submission

to authority other than that of reason, the overthrow of which

vassalage it was reserved for the seventeenth century to inaugurate.

In the eighteenth century, the sentiment of humanity was developed,

consentaneously with mental independence, and thus a great step forward

was taken in the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy.

A sounder and more luminous psychology was originated which enabled

thinkers guided thereby to render to themselves a reasonable account

of what passes in self-consciousness, which is the visible scene of

the soul. The Cartesian revolution came to illuminate the chaos of

scholasticism, and Brucker led the mighty host of mental liberators

who forever prevented philosophy from re-entering the mediæval age.

From east to west the ameliorating progress arose and spread with

constantly-increased power and profit. As early as 1725, Vico, at

Naples, demonstrated that the organic development of great transitional

epochs, so manifest in the connected history of our race, contains

proof of the divine supervision, and a higher manifestation of order,

justice, and continuous advancement among men, than any argument _à

priori_ can supply. Herder fortified this idea with a still more

comprehensive grasp of intellect and illustration, which constituted

him the founder of the philosophy of history. He took man as he is,

the microcosm of the universe, and, by a higher philosophy, did much

to escape the sensualism and shallowness of the eighteenth century.

From the Romanic negativeness which prevailed till the opening of our

age, Herder and his successors advanced into Teutonic positiveness,

and began that order of reconstructive philosophy which now so happily

prevails. Shem, with all his obsolete traditions, was superseded,

and the universalized fabric of Japhetic thought arose to confer

a greater good. France powerfully co-operated in the ameliorating

endeavors of that mighty crusade of which Montesquieu was a patriarch

and Condorcet a martyr. Leibnitz believed in the law of progress in

all the concerns of life. The present, he asserted, was born of the

past, and is pregnant of the future. The vision of general peace he

regarded as a practical idea, and anticipated a universal language,

from which eventually every trace of linguistic confusion would

disappear, and the union of all hearts be consummated in the blending

of harmonious speech. Descartes had entertained like views, and these

earlier prophets of a lofty destiny were worthily succeeded by Pascal,

who wrote as follows: "By a special prerogative of the human race, not

only each man advances day by day in the sciences, but all men together

make a continual progress, as the universe grows old; because the

same thing happens in the succession of men which takes place in the

different ages of an individual. So that the succession of men, in the

cause of so many ages, may be regarded as one man, who lives always,

and who learns continually. From this we see with what injustice we

respect antiquity in philosophers; for, since old age is the period

most distant from infancy, who does not see that the old age of this

universal man must not be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in

those which are the most remote. They, whom we entitle Ancients, were

indeed new in all things, and properly formed the infancy of mankind;

and since to their knowledge we have joined the experience of the ages

which have followed them, it is in ourselves that is to be found that

antiquity which we revere in others."

England is constitutionally negative in philosophy, and was especially

so during the desolate eighteenth century, while her best minds were

driven westward over ocean to flame back from afar. But even then,

so predominant was the idea of progress in the greatest promoter

of philosophic "Learning," that "The Advancement" thereof was the

spontaneous title given to his greatest work. Bacon was also author

of the saying that "Antiquity was the youth of the world;" a maxim

afterward cordially adopted and learnedly illustrated by Dr. Price, the

friend and correspondent of Turgot. To adopt imagery like that used by

the great founder of the inductive method, if we hear little else than

a dissonant screeching of multitudinous noises now, which only blend

in the distance into a roar like that of the raging sea, it behooves

us to hold fast to the assurance that this is the necessary process

whereby the instruments are to be tuned for the heavenly concert. Chaos

is undergoing a perpetual curtailment of his empire, and eventually

must be cast out of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual world, as

entirely as out of the material.

The epoch of Anglo colonization in America was one of philosophical

transition in Europe. Antiquated systems were decomposed in the old

world, and another order, as auspicious as it was youthful, was

constructed in the new. Such was the use which Providence made of that

Cerberus of rationalism, Voltaire, whose school brought the doctrine

of Spinoza, Hobbes, and Bayle to a stop at deism, on the ruins of

the prevailing religious system. The materialism of Locke easily

degenerated into the dogmas of Helvetius, according to whom there

is no mind extant, for matter is every thing, and who proved to the

satisfaction of his age that selfishness, vanity, and gross enjoyments

are the only true guides and rational ends of enlightened men; in fact,

the only realities of human life. Thus, the way was fully prepared for

the congenial spirit of Diderot boldly to proclaim the wish--"that the

last king might be burned on a funeral pile, composed of the body of

the last priest."

Despairing of free thought and wholesome progress on the ancient

fields of human development, the most aspiring minds and hearts of

the philosophic world followed the mild splendors of the retiring

sun, and laid their visions of a better destiny in the wilderness of

America. Among those whose fond expectations were thither turned,

even down to our own day, were Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and

Chateaubriand. But a greater and better philosopher than they, though

equally imaginative, at an earlier period, came personally to our

stormiest coast, and thereon planted the first elements of a lofty

culture. George Berkeley left rich worldly emoluments on the western

extremity of the old world, and voluntarily bore the quintessence of

all its dialectical skill to enrich the eastern extremity of the new.

From that day to this, the region of the primary fountain has ever

remained the chief source of philosophical worth. Francis Wayland yet

lives a near neighbor to Berkeley's retreat in Rhode Island, and is

not remoter from "the minute philosopher" in time than in his ethical

system; but it was reserved for our great countryman to give America

and the world a fitting climax to all preceding disquisitions in "Moral

Science." Modern writers have differed much concerning the foundation

or obligation of virtue. Hobbes placed it in political enactment;

Mandeville, in the love of praise; Dr. Clarke, in the fitness of

things; Adam Smith, in sympathy for our race; Grotius and Puffendorf,

in the duty of improvement; Hume and Paley, in personal utility; while

Hutcheson, Cudworth, Butler, Reid, Stuart, and others, derive it from a

moral sense or natural impulse to do right, implanted by the Creator.

Repeated editions of the Moral Philosophy based on conscience, and

other kindred works, first used in Brown University, and now adopted as

hand-books in many educational establishments in this and other lands,

attest the high estimation in which the last and best expression of

progressive philosophy is held.

Nothing goes back--every thing advances. Philosophy gained in passing

from Asia into Greece, from Athens to Rome, and thence through the

middle ages to modern times. The advancement made during the past sixty

years abundantly indicates that the grand goal which Berkeley descried

from afar, by a Pisgah-view on the border of the land he himself

was not permitted to penetrate, will yet be triumphantly attained.

Born of yesterday on our soil, an immense future lies before the

career of philosophic thought toward the unbounded West; where, next

to religion, the most exalted sphere is reserved for the indefinite

expansion of her ameliorating spirit. It is the destiny of this mighty

moral agent to make the tour of the world, in following the physical

movements of lands and peoples, correspondent with the governing

epochs we have described. Having arrived at this ultimate centre of

earth's fermentation and fruitfulness, philosophy, with all subordinate

elements of civilization, will prosecute the last stage of her journey,

and return upon the mountains whence she originally descended,

permitted at last to contemplate thence a world redeemed.

But, in perfecting the grand restoration of society, let us first of

all be convinced that time is the primary instrument to be employed,

and that successive generations must pass before the nations are fully

prepared. Every thing under the sway of Providence is developed through

a progressive movement, which is continued and regular; a law whose

application is universal, and never subject to a failure. No violence

can for an instant hasten the growth of a blade of grass, much less can

force accelerate the march of society. The impossible of to-day may

become possible to-morrow; but the movement must be natural, and then

will the greatest speed, as well as most enduring safety, be found in

the deepest and broadest current. It is the manifest will of God that

mankind should be concentrated in one uniform march of progression,

found only and evermore in the development of that liberty which is

essential to all human beings. The common mind may not be the axe which

hews the throne down to a block, but it is the handle without which

the axe is of little use. Before common rights come to be a common

possession, the people may be yet more persecuted and tormented, but

they will never be conquered. Every great cause triumphs only at the

expense of grand sacrifices. The highest liberty exacts the noblest

martyrs, who descend into the dungeon, or expire on the cross, but

their agony is transformed into balm for universal wounds, and their

death brings life to the nations at large.

In all lands, and all epochs, the privileged classes, jealous of the

advantages they possess, constitute themselves into a permanent war

against the mass of the people whom they are ambitious to disinherit

and oppress. Almost every page of history furnishes an example. Greece

was not free from the curse; and at Rome, it was exemplified in the

conflict between the plebeian and patrician classes. In mediæval

times, the partially enfranchised communities struggled against feudal

arrogance; and in our own day it is reproduced in the antagonisms

which characterize the struggles of the conservative and progressive

parties. The agents of evil love darkness and resist light. They can

with comparative ease deprive men of their rights, if they can but

prevent their knowing them. They must be degraded intellectually, in

order to be kept in social degradation; hence tyranny always brutalizes

its victims as much as possible, that they may with impunity be treated

as brutes. When force is allowed to begin the oppression, ignorance is

the best auxiliary by which it is perpetuated. Among the many things

which render despotism detestable is the absolute opposition it of

necessity wages against human nature and its predestined perfection;

in which resistance it is obliged to repel light, augment gloom, and

fight incessantly against truth, against goodness, against God. The

primordial law of humanity is perpetually to know more, love more,

and concur with a constantly increased efficiency in the universal

realization of the progressively divine plan.

As civilized society is the daughter of knowledge and freedom, nothing

can be respected, which does not harmonize with this double source of

her mission. It is not upon force that we subsist, but by a superiority

produced through veneration, and that obedience which is the

spontaneous submission of one will to another. It is the mutual action

of mind identical in purpose. When the Spartans proposed in their

hearts to die for the salvation of Greece, they inscribed this appeal

on the rocky pass at Thermopylæ:--"Traveler, go tell the Lacedemonians

that we fell here in obedience to their sacred laws." This was not the

submission peculiar to a few heroes, but was demanded for the salvation

of a whole people; it was the voice of a whole people, living as well

as dead, and there was not a soul in the republic which would not have

responded to the soul of the three hundred.