The three years just past have witnessed the continued prosperity and usefulness of our association. Its roots have struck deeper in our affections, and its branches have given a wider shelter to the widow and the fatherless. Its growth has been healthy and vigorous, "like a tree planted by the water-side."

Under the patronage of this association, another mechanics' fair has been holden, at which were exhibited the wonders of inventive genius, and the thousand products of industrious and intelligent labor. That principle of intelligence by which the presence of one thought recalls anther is beautifully illustrated in these exhibitions of art. The vanery of arades exhibited shows the infinitude of Dvoja ei dat which was the wonder of to-day is tulipsed by the sill SURE A MAINIETÓW,

ms at the interest felt 7. Las rentinues unabated.

ng the last exhibipreciate the value and

merely got up to satisfy an idle oney-speculation, they would their good results. But such which they are held. Their chief as it were, a love of the arts, and to

ety of useful labor.

d is so constituted that inward impresde fem outward objects. Hence the value of The eye is wenam through which the mind gains a knowledge De world around us.

a gaw campo, and the evil of a bad one.

Why, then, can calculate the beneficial effect which exhiquens, like those to which I allude, must necessarily have

upon a community. If, as it is said, Newton first conceived the true theory of gravitation from having seen an apple fall from a tree, is it not fair to presume that our exhibitions have created new thoughts, and have been the means of reproducing new and wonderful inventions which had else not been produced? They have been, we have every reason to believe, like the good seed mentioned in the parable, or the bread cast upon the waters.

Considering the subject in this light, I have been led to inquire, why there might not be permanently established, in this city, a hall devoted exclusively to the reception of new and valuable inventions in the mechanical sciences.

Were an institution of this character once begun, in time it would become as large as the patent office in Washington; for New England is the mother of American invention, as she is the chief seat of the mechanic

arts.

With a hall or institution of the character I have named, we should have an illimitable fund of useful amusement and of scientific study. It would be a school of art, of the beneficial effect of which no one can doubt.

The great distance at which New England is from Washington, renders it impossible for our mechanics and enterprising young men to avail themselves of the accumulated and accumulating wonders of the Patent Office. For general purposes of study, and as a means of reproduction, the models of inventions at the Patent Office in Washington are of little or no value. They might as well be sunk in the Potomac. They are kept to be looked at, like stuffed birds and monkeys in a museum. They are as mummies, dead, and useless, and excite far less attention from nine tenths of the visitors, who, for fashion's sake, or to satisfy a morbid curiosity, go there, than the war-blud

geon of a South Sea Islander, or the tooth of a sperm whale.

May we not, my friends, hope that, if by no other means, an institution, like the one I have spoken of, can at present be founded, one may be connected with the new school for the study of mechanical science, established at Cambridge within the last year by the splendid munificence of one of our most distinguished and respected citizens?

But, without dwelling longer upon preliminary or incidental questions, I come at ce to the main subject of my Address, namely

THE MECHANIC ARTS

ALENT OF CIVILIZATION, AND

THEIR RELATION DY DET OWN POENTRY. I have been led

from the fact that, upon an which have been delivered hit to be almost the only which has not been heretofore

sically important, and, in the saldeavor to give to it a practical wide field for investigation and re

mess extent of our country; its variety ir production; its vast mineral resources; sts, and its gorgeous sea-like prairies, are us capacity to support a dense population. No it in lakes, and rivers, and mountains.

e are remarkable for their general thrift and their desire for learning; their liberal support bos and colleges; but, above all, they are remarkaair their love of political and religious liberty.

We have three millions of square miles of territory. Its

shores are washed by two oceans. It is capable of supporting in abundance every human being now living on the face of the earth. The mind of man can hardly grasp, at one attempt, the full extent of our possession. The twenty millions of civilized men in the thirty states of this Union, are scarce sufficient, if united in one general chorus, to awaken the solitudes of some of our extended valleys. In relative proportion to the whole country, they are but as a small gnat on the back of an elephant!

During the two centuries we have held possession of this vast territory, although we have increased beyond any other nation, yet we have hardly gone beyond the Atlantic sea-shore. We have but pricked the shell. We have not ascended the highlands in the distance to view the rich valleys which lie beyond them.

Starting in early spring-time to reach our western boundary, the traveller from the east would, ere he reached his destination, find himself overtaken by the snows of winter, amid the mountain ravines of Oregon. If wise, he would encamp till the spring flowers came again, and then continue his journey, fortunate if he reached the farthest extremity of our country ere the winds of winter began again to blow.

It is to this glorious heritage of ours that European emigration points. Hundreds of thousands come to us every year, and yet, like water poured upon the sand, they soon become absorbed in our immensity.

It is this land, "of all the lands the best," that opens the widest range for the display of mechanical enterprise and invention that civilized man ever saw. Now what element of civilization can be named equal to that of intercommunication or commerce? What stronger element than that to bind together the union of the States?

It has often appeared to me, when reflecting upon the sject that great inventions have always come in the right time. It was peculiarly so as regards our own country. After the Revolution, we found ourselves in possession of a mh inheritance. We bound ourselves together as one man; we adopted one constitution; we established one repihkan form of government. Nothing was more absoItaly necessary, in order to make the experiment of the government on so extended a scale successful, than that the people should have confidence in one another, and steall know one another: in a word, that they should evate the sentiment of nationality. Almost at this moment, that wonderful invention of the steamboat was made. Thus science and mechanism, by giving to the world the steamboat, gave to the American union its greatest element of strength.

Consider that region of country known as the Mississippi valley. It contains, at the present time, about eight millions of people; yet there are hundreds of thousands of acres in it on which the foot-print of a white man was never seen. In some of the most densely populated western states, thousands upon thousands of acres of the primeval forests yet stand, and the woodland flowers "blush unseen."

The average of population to the square mile is not more than six, while here in Massachusetts, it is full one hundred, and yet we do not complain of being weighed down by a superabundant mass.

The Great West, however, is becoming settled. Its waste places are being made glad and to bloom and blossom as the rose.

To what particular agency, aside from the fertility of the soil, the salubrity of the climate, and the cheapness of the