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or Humboldt crossing seas and mountains to unfold the laws of na- 

 ture, or Herschel with optic glass in hand, at high midnight, 

 sweeping those southern skies amid revolving constellations. These 

 one and all belong to the fraternity of Industry. 



JNIan was created to labor. Without it, constituted as Adam 

 was, he would have grown weary of the perfections of Paradise, 

 and in idleness alone there would have been despair. All growth 

 of character, all noble energy, all true manhood, are the result of 

 ■work. In what are called the higher classes, men born to wealth 

 and rank, you can rarerly find a large, well-proportioned charac- 

 ter, nicely balanced in the equities of health, strength, moral force 

 and intellectual capacity. 



Where, in all England, in this nineteenth century, has there 

 been seen so strong and self-reliant a nature, so robust in those 

 elements which go to make up one grand central character in his 

 country's history, as George Stephenson, the mechanic and rail- 

 way engineer ? There can be no clearer illustration of the truth 

 of the doctrine, that in all labor there is a " perennial nobleness," 

 and that the true nobility of a country is the untitled nobility of 

 labor. The decaying castes, ranks, and orders in European so- 

 ciety, have relied for their perpetuity upon fresh accessions of 

 blood and vigor, from the great middling interests of the nations ; 

 and they know but too well, that, without this, an idle and disso- 

 lute race, or body, cannot long hold the sovereign sway of empire 

 against the clear heads and stout arms of millions of laborers. 



You all remember when the Duke of Grafton reproached Lord 

 Thurlow with his plebeian origin, that the noble Lord vindicated 

 his claim to his position, by the strenuous industry which had 

 placed him there, and hurled back the taunt that the Peerage 

 " solicited him, not he the Peerage^ 



Labor becomes, then, all ranks and conditions of men. There 

 can be no respectability without it. Let us, then, in whatsoever 

 pursuit we may be engaged, strive to dignify it by honest, manly 

 and straight-forward industry. The aims of the laborer should be 

 high and noble, and his daily duties should be set round with the 

 Christian virtues ; his work should not be for selfish and mercenary 

 purposes only, to gratify a fuoUsli pride, to stimulate envy, or 

 pander to a false ambition, but it should be performed in that 



