No. 129.] '293 



" So far from locking up his wisdom in abstractions, lie is In- 

 cessantly embodying it in tangible things ; and in them it is that 

 intelligence, ingenuity, and resource are made manifest. "What 

 is this world but one of his workshops, and the universe but a 

 collection of his inventions? In him the squeamishness of half- 

 formed philosophers and of high-bred fashionables respecting 

 manual and mechanical pursuits finds no sympathy, but tcrribh 

 rehckc. His works proclaim his preference for the material and 

 useful to the merely imaginative ; and in truth it is in such that 

 the truly beautiful or sublime is to be found. A steamer is & 

 mightier epic than the " Illiad ;" and VVhittemore, Jacquard, and 

 Blanchard might langh even Virgil and Milton and Tasso to scorn . 



" There is, moreover, a morality belonging to the arts that as 

 yet has been little heeded ; a lever, hammer, pulley, wedge and 

 screw are actual representations of great natural truths^ and the 

 men who revealed them may be said to have been inspired. The 

 Divine afflatus flows through many channels. In fact, all truths 

 are allied — the decalogue being an exponent of moral, as are me- 

 chanical inventions of pAi/stco^, and axioms in science of philo- 

 sophical verities ; hence, whatever science discovers and art 

 applies is Divine, and ultimately tends to eradicate evil^ 

 indeed, all teachings begin with the arts, and nothing is more 

 certain than that all must end with them. If we glance at ex- 

 isting nations, we invariably find those that excel in arts ar.d 

 sciences most deeply imbutd with moral principles — the foremost 

 and most active in the benevolent enterprizes of the age. Inven- 

 tors, then, are revealers and expounders of the practical doctrines 

 of civilization, and more than any other class have shown us how 

 to lessen life's evils and multiply its good. 



" It has been regretted also, as an evil of magnitude, that 

 while the arts administer to the necessities of the species, a gene- 

 ral knowledge of them has not been demanded as a feature of 

 popular education ; that while the works of historians, poets and 

 theoiists have been adopted as models by which to form the taste 

 and excite the ambition of youth, the great doctrines of life, as 

 exemplified in the processes by which the products of this planet, 

 its f »rces, and the properties of its substances are crowded into 



