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in all its branches has, within the present century, proceeded at an ex- 

 ceedingly lapid rate, we must not as a consequence inter that our 

 ancestors ot a thousand, or even of five thousand years ago, were desti- 

 tute of inventive genius, the faculty of reason, or the ability to put 

 their common sense to a profitable use, or that their craniums were not 

 furnished with as good a quality of brain matter as those of the present 

 day. The magnificent ruins ol fifty, or tven possibly a hundred cen- 

 turies ago, since no real date can be assigned to many of these monu- 

 ments of a long extinct people, which are found both in the new and 

 old worlds, show at least that the sciences of architecture, of sculpture, 

 and of the highest of the mechanical arts, must have reached a very 

 advanced state of perfection even at that early time ; while among the 

 very earliest remains of our race, viz., those who dwelt in caves and 

 were contemporaries of monstrous beasis which have long since become 

 extinct, such as the mastodon or the cave bear, when the ice ol the 

 glacial peiiod was even yet descending from our mountain sides, we find 

 that the genius of sculpture, and to a certain extent the knowledge of 

 it existed, though probably without having reached any very great 

 degree of excellence. The magnificent sculptured forms and architec- 

 tural wonders ot Egypt are familiar to you all, and show that in this 

 country, one of the great centres of the human race, knowledge of these 

 arts had also become very highly developed, according to the most 

 recent and reliable investigations at least 6,000 years ago ; while on our 

 own continent, in the curious remains left by the mound-builders and 

 the cliff-dwellers, races so far removed that their origins have never yet 

 been satisfactorily explained, but which evidently have preceded the 

 present races by an unknown and lengthy period of time, many of the 

 lines of decorative work have also been cultivated to a very considerable 

 degree. In fact, the present race is very often confronted with the 

 accuracy of the statement that " there is nothing new under the sun," 

 and it may probably be accepted as a sober truth that, making all due 

 allowance for cultivation, the human nature and the intellect of the 

 present day, differs very little, and that not in kind, from that which 

 prevailed among the earliest settlers of the globe. It may even be 

 said that, with many of the so-called startling discoveries of modern 



