AMERICAN INSTITUTE, 41 



It is not my purpose to dwell upon the merits of land culture 

 as the chief element in the happiness of individuals and in the 

 wealth of nations, but to confine my remarks to the pursuits of 

 men in crowded communities and commercial cities. Commerce, 

 by the brilliancy and the grandeur of its enterprises, attracts its 

 full share of consideration. It rarely presents itself to the ima- 

 gination in its minor features of detail and retail, of barter and 

 exchange, in which the half dimes and threepences are melted 

 into massive bars of bullion. To name commerce is never to 

 suggest its minute accounts, insufficient measures, questionable 

 invoices, custom-house oaths, its shifts, evasions, and bankruptcies. 

 We look rather upon insolvency as part of the machinery of com- 

 missioners' courts, and the scales are an eml>lem of the court- 

 house, and not of the warehouse. Emperors, kings and commons, 

 monarchies and republics, are alike complaisant and subservient 

 in the presence of the merchant princes of the Stock Exchange, 

 and royalty uncovers in the presence of the money king; but we 

 forget the darkened lands and rooms where German and Iberian 

 Jews accumulate the world's weallh in dribblets — in mills, cen- 

 times, drachmas, and all the uncouth denominations in which the 

 demon avarice dresses its measures of value and its synonyms of 

 evil. The prosperous city — architectural palaces of beauty, 

 where trade holds morning and evening levees^ her mcUincc and 

 soiree — ships that float from emjjire to empire, dressed in the 

 colors of the ocean queen, or named for the glancing sunbeam, 

 connecting them by ties of interest and pleasure, and distributing 

 every product of the industrial world — such are the bright visions 

 with which commerce enchants us. Were the records of nations 

 lost, we could read their history in their commercial monuments, 

 their splendid cities, and floating palaces, and discover in their 

 merchant princes every trait of character that elevates or degrades 

 the human family. How London vaunted its Crystal Palace of 

 1851; and with what spirit Paris retaliated with her Exposition 

 Universelle of 1855, surpassing, if possible, the rivalry and friend- 

 ship of French Emperor and English King in ancient times upon 

 the field of the cloth of gold. With what interest does the world 

 regard the Empire City of New- York, with its palace of crystal, 



