$6 Review of Cleaveland’s Mineralogy. 
where they flourish, a highly improved state of the arts, and 
a great degree of intelligence in the community. To this 
state of things we are now fast approximating. The ardent 
curiosity regarding these subjects, already enkindled in the 
public mind, the very respectable attainments in science 
which we have already made, and our rapidly augmenting 
means of information in books, instruments, collections, and 
teachers, afford ground for the happiest anticipations. 
The merely intellectual sciences—those which require no 
means for their investigation beyond books, teachers, and 
study—those which demand no physical demonstrations, no 
instruments of research, no material specimens ; in short, — 
those sciences which relate only to the intellectual and moral - 
character of man, were early fostered, and, in a good degree, : 
matured in this country. Hence, in theology, in ethics, in 3 
jurisprudence, and in civil policy, our advances were much 
earlier, and more worthy of respect, in the sciences 
relating to material things. In some of these, it is true, we — 
have made very considerable advances, especially in natural — 
ms 
aie 
philosophy and the mathematics, and their applications to the : 
arts; and this has been true, in some good degree, for very — 
nearly a century. Natural history has been the most tardy in — 
its growth, and no branch of it was, till within a few years, 
involved in such darkness as mineralogy. Notwithstanding — 
the laudable efforts of a few gentlemen to excite some taste — 
for these subjects, so little had been effected in forming col- 
lections, in kindling curiosity, and diffusing information, that, — 
only fifteen years since, it was a matter of extreme difficulty 
to obtain, among ourselves, even the names of the most com- 
mon stones and minerals ; and one might inquire earnestly, 
and long, before he could find any one to identify even quartz, 
feldspar, or hornblende, among the simple minerals; or gr 
nite, porphyry, or trap, among the rocks. JVe speak from 
experience, and well remember with what impatient, but almost 
despairing curiosity, we eyed the bleak, naked ridges, which 
impended over the valleys and plains that were the scenes of 
our youthful excursions. In vain did we doubt that the glit- f 
tering spangles of mica, and the still more alluring brilliancy 
