VAIR OF THE AMERICAN IIVSTITUTE. 223 



FAIR OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



As the interests of Agriculture, as well as manufactures and the arts, come 

 professedly within the purview of the Institute, Ave may be allowed, without 

 traveling " out of the record," to take some notice of its proceedings, in the sin- 

 cere hope that they may conduce to obvious and substantial advancement in the 

 sciences, and improvement in the arts, implements and mMcliinery employed in 

 the prosecution of American industry. 



Their great annual exhibition has gone off with even more than usual eclat 

 and satisfaction to the public and the friends of the Institute. Far from being 

 put back any by the loss of its old theatre at ISiblo's, the accommodations at Cas- 

 tle Garden seemed, as far as we could judge, to be peculiarly well adapted to a 

 display of the endless variety of curious, highly polished and useful articles sent 

 in for exhibition. 



Judging from the number of visitors, said to have considerably overgone 200,- 

 000, the income must have been very large ; of which the Directors of the Insti- 

 tute will take advantage, and make corresponding provision for bringing into play 

 the inventive genius of the artisan, and the knowledge of the man of science. 



To satisfy the enlightened and patriotic views of those who control the patron- 

 age of this popular establishment, it will not be enough that these exhibitions 

 shall serve to bring together every year, at a given point, for the gratification of 

 the thousands who come to admire them, vast collections of rare and beautiful 

 commodities, which, with more pains-taking, might be seen in the shops and 

 manufactories ; their higher aim is to make these exhibitions answer to stimu- 

 late, to note and to reward only what constitute improve/nenls in the trades, the 

 arts, and the sciences applicable to the industrial pursuits, and calculated to aug- 

 ment the creative power and wealth of the nation. They design these exhibi 

 tions not so much to bring out repetitions of what has been already achieved 

 in the structure of implements of husbandry, and the practical operations of 

 Agriculture, in the work-shop of the artisan and the laboratory of the scientific 

 investigator ; but that they shall rather display the marks of all such recent 

 improvements as may serve to indicate distmctly the progressive advancement, 

 if any, which is going forward in any branch of national industry — taking spe- 

 cial care to record and do honor to the names of those inventors and authors 

 of improvements which entitle them to be known and esteemed as the real 

 benefactors of their country. 



Of what avail, say they, in a national point of view, and as promotive of yet 

 higher improvements in the industrial pursuits of the people, to collect, year 

 after year, from the workshops and factories of the city, the most finished and 

 shinuig specimens of cutlery, of saddlery, and of jewelry— of tin-ware, of hard- 

 ware, and of glass-ware — to display illustrations of all known machines, and 

 samples of the most beautiful fabrics — to draw, as to one great museum, the 

 most wonderful products from every kingdom of Nature, and the most curious 

 inventions of civilized life, unless it be for the purpose of comparison, with a 

 view to discover and proclaim how and wherein the mind, the Godlike part of 

 our nature, has been at work to meliorate the condition of society, to manifest 



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