140 



The Age of Improvement. 



Vol. VI. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 "The Age of Improvement." 



In this age of inquiry and improvement, it 

 is gratifying to observe, that not to one class of 

 men only, or to men of particular vocations 

 are the advantages of every day's discoveries 

 offered, but that avenues are every where 

 presented to every one of every calling, who 

 is disposed to avail himself of the learning, 

 the experience, the reflection and the inven- 

 tion of those who have lived before him, as 

 well as of those who, like himself, are now 

 active on the theatre of life. Man is to eat 

 his bread in the sweat of his face, and happy 

 is it for him that it is so — that necessity com- 

 pels him to labour: he is so constituted, that 

 industry is one of the means of his enjoy- 

 ment, while idleness is the parent of every 

 discomfort, as well as the bane of every vir- 

 tue. 



Euclid, the great father of geometry, told 

 one of the kings of Egypt, that there was no 

 royal road to learning: he, forsooth, would 

 have had a royal vantage ground from which 

 to start in his career, that he might gain the 

 summit without the toil of ascent. But the 

 philosopher assured him there was no royal 

 road marked out for him. Laborious thought 

 and patient investigation could not be dis- 

 pensed with if he would follow the investiga- 

 tions of his teacher, and master the difficul- 

 ties of ancient philosophy. Even so now, he 

 who would be a proficient in his calling, must 

 acquaint himself with all its improvements, 

 and he must search for them in conversation, 

 in travel, in books, and in deep reflection. 



Time is money. — What an invaluable and 

 inexhaustible store-house then, is thrown open 

 to the business-man who is in search of pro- 

 ficiency, by the multitude and cheapness and 

 varied character of books, whose pages give 

 him, in a comparatively short time, all that is 

 known by all men, on the subject he would 

 be instructed in ! Cowper said of commerce, 



" It gives the poles the produce of the sun, 

 Anil knits unsocial climates into one." 



So, the invention of letters gave the " Poten- 

 tiality," as Dr. Johnson might say, of inform- 

 ation to the whole world : and the wonderful 

 facilities which steam has given to the print- 

 ing-press in our own day, have thrown broad- 

 cast over the whole intellectual domain, not 

 only the thoughts of the wise and the virtu- 

 ous, but have made common stock of all 

 knowledge calculated to increase the produce 

 of labour, and thence to multiply to an incal- 

 culable extent the substantial comforts of 

 life. If we look back, and compare the 

 dwellings, the farming implements, the house- 

 hold furniture and the clothing of our Saxon 

 ancestors with our own, we shall feel, that in 

 respect to these, we are indeed dwelling in a 



" south land,'" and possessing what might per- 

 haps be termed the perfection of animal 

 enjoyment. And what has produced this 

 change? Alfred exercised that high attri- 

 bute of mind which has been given us for 

 noble purposes — he thought, and made com- 

 mon stock of what he knew: and the whole 

 world is now garnering a noble harvest from 

 the seed which that great man scattered 

 abroad. If Luther and Calvin and other 

 kindred spirits of their day had been inactive, 

 or if, after having assiduously laboured to 

 place the foundation stones of the reforma- 

 tion on what they conceived to be truth, the 

 people had till now refused to build upon 

 them, what would have been the character 

 of this age'? and where the rational princi- 

 ples of liberty which William Penn promul- 

 gated in his trial at the Old Bailey, and gave 

 a practical illustration of in his government 

 here, and which have been again, and still 

 further exemplified in our own Federal Con- 

 stitution ] The printing-press would have 

 needed no steam to hasten its operations, for 

 the common mind would still have been 

 shrouded in a darkness, which even steam 

 could not dissipate. 



It is instructive as well as delightful, to 

 trace this march of mind, down through the 

 generations that have preceded us, and con- 

 nect it, as we can not fail to do, with the 

 wonderful, yet natural results, which are 

 every day offering themselves to our accept- 

 ance. " Knowledge," as Lord Bacon de- 

 clared, " is power." It is not the imaginary 

 lever of Arcliimedes, but it is the substantive 

 machinery, which by day and by night is 

 operating upon the great mass of mind, and 

 continually producing the results to which 

 we have been glancing. Where this lever — 

 this moving power operates in a right direc- 

 tion upon the mind, who can calculate its 

 happy influence upon the outward comforts 

 of man? And when to this shall be added 

 the unfaltering tendency of our holy religion 

 to meliorate and purify and adorn all that 

 comes under the operation of its spirit, how 

 reasonable is the hope, that the last ages of 

 the world shall be more wise, more virtuous, 

 and consequently more happy, than any 

 which have preceded them ! And let no one, 

 however humble, conclude that his individual 

 weight cannot increase the momentum of 

 that intellectual lever, to which we have 

 alluded, and which, in fact, is every day giv- 

 ing evidence of an influence that is acknow- 

 ledged in all departments of society. While 

 thousands are expended in contesting the pa- 

 tent-right for the manufacture of a pin's head, 

 and tens of thousands for the discovery of a 

 continent, which none could inhabit if every 

 boundary were ascertained — or for a passage 

 at the very pole, which never could be used 



