the results of mere manual labor, and producing, in the end, that system of diffusing and multiplying the expression of thought, which is, perhaps, the glory of our human nature. Pliny said, that the Egyptian reed was the support on which the immortal fame of man rested. He referred to its use in the manufacture of paper. We may with greater justice say as much of the manufacture of paper from rags, and of the printing press, neither of which was known to Pliny.— But with all the splendor of modern discoveries and improvements in science and art, I cannot but think that he, who, in the morning of the world, first conceived the idea of representing sounds by visible signs, took the most important step in the march of improvement. This sublime conception was struck out in the infancy of mankind. The name

of its author, his native country, and the time when he lived, are known only by very uncertain tradition; but though all the intelligence of ancient and modern times, and in the most improved countries, has been concentred into a focus, burning and blazing upon this one spot, it has never been able to reduce it to any simpler elements, nor to improve, in the slightest degree, upon the original suggestion of Cadmus.

In what I have thus far submitted to you, you will probably have remarked, that I have illustrated chiefly the connexion with each other of the various branches of science and art; of the intellectual and physical principles. I have not distinctly shown the connexion of the moral principle, in all its great branches, with both. This subject would well form the matter of a separate essay. But its elementary ideas are few and plain. The arts and sciences, whose connexion we have pointed out, it is plain, require for their

cultivation a civilized state of society. They cannot thrive in a community which is not in a state of regular political organization, under an orderly system of government, uniform administration of laws, and a general observance of the dictates of public and social morality. Farther, such a community cannot exist without institutions of various kinds for elementary, professional, and moral education; and connected with these, are required the services of a large class of individuals, employed in various ways, in the business of instruction; from the meritorious schoolmaster, who teaches the little child its A, B, C, to the moralist, who lays down. the great principles of social duty for men and nations, and the minister of divine truth, who inculcates those sanctions, by which God himself enforces the laws of reason. There

must also be a class of men competent by their ability, education, and experience, to engage in the duty of making and administering the law, for in a lawless society it is impossible that any improvement should be permanent. There must be another class competent to afford relief to the sick, and thus protect our frail natures from the power of the numerous foes that assail them.

It needs no words to show, that all these pursuits are in reality connected with the ordinary work of society, as directly as the mechanical trades, by which it is carried on.— For instance, nothing would so seriously impair the prosperity of a community, as an unsound and uncertain administration of justice. This is the last and most fatal symptom of decline in a state. A community can bear a very considerable degree of political despotism, if justice is duly administered between man and man. But where a man has

no security, that the law will protect him in the enjoyment of his property; where he cannot promise himself a righteous judgment in the event of a controversy with his neighbor; where he is not sure, when he lies down at night, that his slumbers are safe, there he loses the great motives to industry and probity; credit is shaken; enterprise disheartened, and the State declines.-The profession, therefore, which is devoted to the administration of justice, renders a service to every citizen of the community, as important as to those whose immediate affairs require the aid of counsel.

In a very improved and civilized community, there are also numerous individuals, who, without being employed in any of the common branches of industry or of professional pursuit, connect themselves, nevertheless, with the prosperity and happiness of the public, and fill a useful and honorable place in its service. Take, for instance, a man like Sir Walter Scott, who probably never did a day's work, in his life, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and who has for some years retired from the subordinate station he filled in the profession of the law, as sheriff of the county and clerk of the Court. He has written and published at least two hundred volumes of wide circulation. What a vast amount of the industry of the community is thereby put in motion! The booksellers, printers, paper-makers, pressmakers, type-makers, book-binders, leather-dressers, inkmakers, and various other artisans required to print, publish, and circulate the hundreds and thousands of volumes, of the different works, which he has written, must be almost numberless. I have not the least doubt, that, since the series of his publications began, if all whose industry,directly

or remotely, has been concerned in them, not only in Great Britain, but in America, and on the Continent of Europe, could be brought together and stationed side by side, as the inhabitants of the same place, they would form a very conSuch a person may fairly be ranked as a

siderable town.

working man.

And yet I take this to be the least of Sir Walter Scott's deserts. I have said nothing of the service rendered to every class, and to every individual in every class, by the writer, who beguiles of their tediousness the dull hours of life; who animates the principle of goodness within us, by glowing pictures of struggling virtue; who furnishes our young men and women with books, which they may read with interest, and not have their morals poisoned as, they read them. Our habits, our principles, our characters,—whatever may be our pursuit in life,-depend very much on the nature of our youthful pleasures, and on the mode in which we learn to pass our leisure hours. And he who, with the blessing of Providence, has been able, by his mental efforts, to present virtue in her strong attractions, and vice in her native deformity, to the rising generation, has rendered a service to the public, greater even than his, who invented the steamengine, or the mariner's compass.

I have thus endeavored to show, in a plain manner, that there is a close and cordial union between the various pursuits and occupations, which receive the attention of men in a civilized community :-That they are links of the same chain, every one of which is essential to its strength.

It will follow, as a necessary consequence; as the dictate of reason and as the law of nature;-that every man in so

ciety, whatever his pursuit, who devotes himself to it, with an honest purpose, and in the fulfilment of the social duty which Providence devolves upon him, is entitled to the good fellowship of each and every other member of the community; that all are the parts of one whole; and that between those parts, as there is but one interest, so there should be but one feeling.

Before I close this lecture, permit me to dwell for a short time on the principle, which I have had occasion to advance above, that the immortal element in our nature—the reasoning soul—is the inheritance of all our race. As it is this which makes man superior to the beasts that perish; so it is this, which, in its moral and intellectual endowments, is the sole foundation for the only distinctions between man and man, which have any real value. This consideration shows the value of institutions for education and for the diffusion of knowledge. It was no magic, no miracle, which made Newton, and Franklin, and Fulton. It was the patient, judicious, long-continued cultivation of powers of the understanding, eminent, no doubt, in degree, but not differing in kind, from those which are possessed by every individual in this assembly.

Let every one then reflect, especially every person not yet passed the forming period of his life, that he carries about in his frame as in a casket, the most glorious thing, which, this side heaven, God has been pleased to create, an intelligent spirit. To describe its nature, to enumerate its faculties, to set forth what it has done, to estimate what it can do, would require the labor of a life devoted to the history of Man. It would be vain, on this occasion and in these