physical welfare of mankind, by encouraging the useful and ornamental arts.

An insatiable love of gain characterizes all commercial ages, and the more so as the spirit of trade is successful in materializing itself. A commercial people may not bow down to images of carved wood, of gold and silver; and yet their god may be "the vice, the saw, and the hammer," their homage may be to things that are seen and temporal, which gratify the lust of the eye and the pride of life, and they that will be rich may fall into diverse temptations, which lead to many hurtful lusts, and drown men's souls in perdition. Still, true piety has "the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." It teaches us to look favorably upon the progress of the arts, useful and ornamental, and to be thankful for talent in invention and cleverness in contrivance, and to remember our Creator in all that improves, elevates, and adorns the condition of man in the present stage of his existence. The sight of so many productions of art must have exercised the judgment, inspired the admiration, and chastened and guided the sensibilities of the mind as to artistic beauty, and enlarged the acquaintance of mankind with modern inventions, and furnished subjects for thought, reflection, and improvement, which will stimulate to new discoveries and combinations which shall yet fill up the history of human achievements.

"As Spring's unfolded blooms

Exhaling sweetness, that the skillful bee
May taste at will from their selected spoils,
To work her dulcet food;"

so the large collections of earth's choicest things exposed to the gaze and study of mankind cannot fail to be improved by them in their studios, and workshops, and mills. Here the sage and the artist of every clime, of every color, and of every faith, were engaged in studying the productions of each other's country, pondering over each other's labors, which they had essayed to do under the sun, and sharing each other's wisdom, and wiser grew on "the mission of the ages and the long result of time." For truly was this Palace of the arts a cosmopolitan gymnasium for the world, and a temple of Concord, in which a thousand hearts beat as one, and a thousand anthems issued from twice ten thousand tongues.

Lord Bacon's germinant idea has been realized. He thought it would be conducive to the advancement of human knowledge, if we had "a calendar resembling an inventory of the estate of man, of all inventions which are now extant, and out of which doth naturally result a note what things are yet impossible, or not yet invented." In the Palace of Glass we have the very thing-the huge household-book of the world's furniture, bound in glass. But it fails in one thing which Lord Bacon wanted. It does not show us what is impossible.

The advancement of the arts, industrial and luxurious, tends to the prosperity of mankind. The discoveries, which are the property of the wealthy only at first, descend slowly and imperfectly, but certainly, to the poorer classes of society, as the knowledge of the inventions and arts of mankind is more generally diffused, and applied to the comfort and elegancies of domestic life. It can no longer be with Christian nations, as it was with the most civilized nations of antiquity, that their masses should remain comparatively barbarous. The barriers of caste are broken down. The sum of the joys and sorrows of the million are now the ocean, that swells over the globe and gives it its character. Even those arts which seem remote from the poor man's fireside, effectually contribute to the perfection of manufactures, which either furnish him with employment, or adorn his rural habitation. The pursuits of immediate utility, in clearing the forest lands or in toiling at the mill, and of refined pleasure, however far separated from each other, under constitutional law and free trade, alike combine in exalting a nation's welfare. Mechanical skill, to use the words of Prince Albert, is now “wedded to high art." The multitudes of civilized nations have risen in education and social position, so that, what were luxuries some years ago, are now necessaries; and thus the demand upon industrial ingenuity has greatly increased. And the pressure of the utilitarian tendencies of the times makes inventive thought flow rapidly into facts. And the inventor, the manufacturer, the farmer, and the artisan, are consequently rising in social estimation. The men of glory do not now belong exclusively to the army and navy. Watt and Fulton and their successors share largely the thoughts and the praise of the world. In the days of Asaph, a man was famous according as he had "lifted up axes upon the thick trees.' Those were good and honest days. To be a gentleman then, it was not necessary never to have touched an implement of labor. The Great Exhibition has done much to correct an erroneous and morbid standard, and restore to us the proper idea of the nobility of labor. Its works of art and utility, valued at two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, were not the product of white kid opera-goers, club-loungers, indolent, aristocratic, pleasure-loving consumers of earth's good things. They were the noble incarnation of the power of the stalwart, healthy hands of the wORKERS of our race, who are as superior to the mere purse-proud drones, as the finest Sevre's porcelain is to the unbaked clay. In the Crystal Palace was seen the connection between science and art. It was the practical application of philosophy that gave birth to the manifold kinds of machines, which have at once abridged the toils and improved the products of human skill. Science has given beauty and adaptation to almost all the works of art. Phidias, it is true, succeeded Aristotle, and Michael Angelo came before Lord Bacon; yet Sci

ence has ever proved herself the friend of those arts which minister immediately to the enjoyments of mankind. Nor can any sagacity anticipate, or fancy conceive, the yet future enlargement of human science, especially in its minute details, to be derived from the reflections of scholars, artistes, and philosophers, and especially of farmers and mechanics, who have been to the World's Fair, and have seen, and will conquer, in their studios and shops, by making the busy activities of useful art yet more ministrative to man's enjoyments and progress. If, in the language of the old Spectator, "The arts have heretofore been the servants of commerce," now commerce must be the servant of the arts, and both the arts and commerce become more than ever the servants of humanity. If the first efforts of industry were chiefly animal, successive exertions have taught them to become scientific. Arts give birth to Science; and Science, in her turn, like a dutiful child, ministers to Art. Many of the great inventions of our race are the works of operative laborers. And as the Great Exhibition is the result of a desire to stimulate industrial progress, to elevate the position and to increase the perfection of the useful arts, so its influence will also tend to embody the genius of the fine arts in the products of industrial labor. "Souls cannot, like bodies, be embalmed to withstand the influence of time." Ages are like successive spring seasons, involving the perpetual uprising of new life and fresh beauty. The human spirit cannot be kept in the prison bounds of past ages. "One mighty to save" stands by every sepulchre in which man is entombed, and says, with authority-" Loose him, and let him go." Events may retard human progress, but nothing can prevent it. Man does not yet know himself. He is capable of discoveries, inventions, and improvements, that are not yet dreamed of. The vast future is for him. There is no conqueror but God.

2. The World's Fair has enlarged the KNOWLedge of mankind, by enlarging the knowledge of one nation of another. The great gathering has, undoubtedly, made Europe better acquainted with America, and America with Europe. The visitors to the Great Exhibition have enlarged their knowledge of each other, of human nature, and of the world. Narrow and contracted modes. of thought incident to a very circumscribed abode, or limited knowledge of men and things, have been expanded into more generous dimensions. A deep and luminous insight into scenes of nature, works of art, and ways of men, was afforded, which none but the most stupid could wholly neglect to improve. The Exposition is calculated to promote and increase the free interchange of raw material and manufactured commodities between all the nations of the earth, and thereby to advance their industrial skill, taste, knowledge, and science. The producer, to use Mr. Babbage's classification, the consumer, and the middle man were there brought together, and made to know each other, and

to feel in some degree their kindred, and their mutual dependence. And being thus brought into contact with one another, they have doubtless become better acquainted with each other's good qualities, and their jealousies, animosities, and prejudices are greatly modified. As there are many good people in the world that we do not love, simply because we do not know them, so there is much ingenuity, skill, and taste among other people and nations that we do not appreciate, because we are not ac quainted with them. Every man is our brother, yet knowledge must precede our love for him. The first step to bring forth affection is acquaintance. The Congress of the Nations to show to each other their advance in the arts and sciences was one of the happiest methods that could have been devised for making them acquainted, and to make them feel that they "are one body, and members in particular." The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates have ever dared to hope, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of a country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war. "The influences thus engendered, the arts thus developed, will long continue to shed their beneficent effects over countries more extensive than those which the sceptre of England rules." It seems scarcely within the reach of the human mind to grasp the results accruing to mankind upon the triumph of the industrial arts over those of war. In this world assemblage, nature, art, and utility were seen to struggle for the victory; and as utility is the basis of man's existence, at least in our age, the department of useful art seems to have triumphed in the contest. Even a London journal is so irreverent as to call the Koh-i-Noor "a large piece of carbon ;" and another says, most ungallantly, that, "for the pleasure of sight, we would not change a drinking glass resembling a blue convolvulus for the Koh-i-Noor itself." The huge compendium of human civilization recently exhibited in London could not have been but in an age of peace, and could not have taken place without the means of transit which distinguish our day. Without railroads and their appliances, the use of iron and glass in buildings could not have been in such a state of progress, and without them the heavy masses of goods and wares, and the immense multitudes of the world's denizens that have been up to London, on a visit to the tutelary saints of the human race, could not have been transported, and thus collected together.

3. The World's Fair is to be regarded as a solemn contract of peace amongst the nations of the earth. Its tendency is to establish universal international peace. It may be safely taken as a maxim, that such vast multitudes of the human race could not be brought together in peaceful rivalry, for one great common, peaceful purpose, and separate in peace, with mutual good will, if not with greatly increased mutual admiration, without its

tending to some desirable end. There is a bond of consanguinity which encompasses all the descendants of Adam. And this gathering together of the nations has shown them that God has indeed made of one blood all the families of men, though of many varying colors and faculties and tongues. There are sympathies in all human hearts, which are like the strings of a concert of harps attuned in harmony, incontestibly proving their unity. For "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." When nations have measured strength with one another on the battle field, how deadly were the passions evoked,

"Like warring winds, like flames from various points,
That mate each other's fury, there is nought
Of elemental strife, were fiends to guide it,
Can mate the wrath of man."

But when men are marshaled under their banners, lifted up towards heaven as the incense clouds of accepted peace offerings; when these bloody symbols of war, that have floated over them on so many fields of slaughter, and rallied them to battle, death, and glory, are the symbols of peace, "woven and lifted up by the hands of industry," hanging in unruffled unity-untorn by violence, unstained with blood-the emblems, indeed, of strife, but of that noble strife in which nations contend for victory in the fields of science, in the schemes of philanthropy, and in the arts of life-then the kindly instincts of the human breast, amid the glories of nature and the beauties of art, must have been unfolded, and mutual good will have brightened and blessed the interview. Then the better feelings of an inner and higher life are awakened, and man reflects the divinity of his origin as a stream reflects the stars. "If in the material world the most repulsive elements may be permanently compressed within their sphere of mutual attraction-if in the world of instinct, natures the most ferocious may be softened, and even tamed, when driven into a common retreat by their deadliest foe-may we not expect, in the world of reason and of faith, that men, severed by national and personal enmities, who have been toiling under the same impulse, and acting for the same end, who are standing in the porch of the same hall of judgment, and panting for the same eternal home-may we not expect that such men, thus temporarily united in heart and in purpose, will never again consent to brandish the deadly cutlass or throw the hostile spear?" Their mutual acquaintance with each other, which the nations have gained by the interview of the World's Fair, must have a decided tendency to wear off their national asperities, and teach them to respect each other's rights. War atter this will be more than ever fratricidal. Great Britain and America, who have met each other in days gone by on so many well-contested, but bloody fields, have now been communing together many months in sweetest concord-and in the animated