352 ' [Ass^BLT 



knowledge and industry combined, a head to devise, and hands to 

 practice, and malerials in abundance and variety at command, what 

 cannot man accomplish 1 Many, my friends, are the inducements 

 held out to you, to persevere in the great and glorious cause in which 

 you are engaged. The wilderness which our fathers found, with here 

 and there a wandering and solitary savage as an inhabitant, has be- 

 come a fruitful and thickly peopled country. The axe of the wood- 

 man has laid low the trees of the forest, and the implements of the 

 farmer have subdued the stubborn soil, and caused the fields to wave 

 with golden harvests, and yield their burdens to the reaper. Our val- 

 leys and water courses, through the enterprise of our mechanics and 

 manufacturers, have become studded with flourishing and prosperous 

 villages, and our cities receive, by our canals and steamboats and 

 railroads, the varied productions of Nature and of Art. Richly laden 

 fleets bring the produce of other nations to our shores, and this once 

 wild, and rude and inhospitable land, has become the resort of the 

 learned and wise, the asylum of the persecuted and poor, the abode 

 of the gifted and free. And this wonderful, happy and glorious change 

 has been effected chiefly by the practice and cultivation of the me- 

 chanical, and agricultural and useful arts — the arts that insure a Na- 

 tion's prosperity and peace. 



If you want the evidence of time well employed, of talents well 

 directed — if you would see what genius, skill and industry have 

 achieved throughout our land, let the exhibition here this night, 

 through the excellent arrangements of the Board of Managers of this 

 noble Institution, bear ample and conclusive testimony. Year after 

 year, since its organization by a few public spirited individuals, has 

 added to its successful operations, and each succeeding year, by their 

 judicious efforts, has increased the interest of the last. A more im- 

 posing spectacle than met our view on previous similar occasions, we 

 had thought scarcely possible ; but the variety and perfection of im- 

 plements and machinery now presented before the public for inspec- 

 tion, are truly matter of astonishment. From the most diminutive but 

 highly finished and glittering instrument, through every gradation, and 

 of every kind, of various form and size, up to the massive and pon- 

 derous engine, before whose powerful and perfect movement* we 



