tween them, and their mutual dependence on each other; this prodigality of ingenuity scattered with a profusion which seems to defy examination; this mingling of everything useful with all that the most refined elegance can covet, satisfying ultra-utilitarianism and fastidious luxury; this assembling, in harmonious intercourse, competitors in every branch of art, and bringing contrasted occupations in contact, that all may feel the fraternal bond which unites them; this lesson, preached from every stand, and table, and corner; on floor, on platform, and through gallery; saying alike to every visitor, from every section of this Union-whether farmer or planter, merchant or mechanic, lawyer, doctor, or divine-Behold this monument of free enlightened labor, this union of mind and matter, the effect of manual skill directed and governed by intelligence. All these are offered with worthy pride, and will be usefully remembered when the present glory has departed, and this passing pageant shall be numbered with its predecessors.

The character of a nation is recorded in its Arts. The secrets of old civilization would be almost wholly unknown to us, were it not for the fragments, gathered at intervals, as time or exploration scantily unfolds the crumbling remnants of ancient art. On the monuments of centuries the deep indentations, as they defeat all effort to discover the mode by which they were inscribed in the eternal granite, give facts of little import and insignificant detail, yet the most that is known of their construction. For thousands of years the hot sun has burned on them; the whirling sands, shrouding them in forgetfulness, have crept upon them, and, entering curve and crevice, are gradually asserting the dominion of the desert, and obliterating even the little that remains to speak to us of the distant past.

For the foundation of all knowledge we must go back to Egypt. Other lands, to which we turn for models of all that is useful or beautiful in art, are but things of

yesterday when compared with that Mother of Nations. Her empire bore the weight of two thousand years when Cecrops led his followers to colonize Greece, and Abraham may have gazed at the pyramids when they were already worn by the attrition of fifteen centuries. Yet, still further back, in that shadowy realm where fact and fable are so entwined that ghostly tradition flits in dim outline, stands a more remote antiquity, scorning, with mocking finger, the chronology of modern times. There India and China look down on Egypt and claim from her a filial reverence. The time, doubtless, has been, that the arts flourished in those countries, when the banks of the Nile were not yet peopled, and temple and obelisk, colossus and pyramid, slumbered in the unworked quarry. But their stagnant civilization was passed by the fresh vigor of other lands, and remains, perhaps, to the present day, with little change from the period when they claim to have been governed by the gods.

The Egyptians classified society into priests, soldiers, husbandmen, tradesmen, and artificers, giving each their rank in the order they were named. They were the most priest-ridden people of antiquity, and one would think they might have given a higher grade to the class which carved out deities, erected temples and shrines and monuments, got up palaces for the living and mausoleums for the dead, and left behind them memorials, which alone would tell, to future generations, of the glory of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies. The poor fame for which they sighed and planned, was dependent on the hard hand of labor; and the despised mechanic was the instrument by which priest and warrior were to secure their brief immortality.

The arts of Greece have been sung from Homer down. She never suffered her modesty to interfere with her celebrity, and whatever she borrowed, she invariably kept and claimed as her own. But what she touched, she purified,

and the baser metal of others became, in her hands, pure gold. She stole what she could from her progenitor, but the larceny did not interrupt her veneration. She made her the birth-place of the gods; and when the besiegers of Troy could not reach, with their prayers, the ears of Jupiter, it was because he was amusing himself with the Egyptians. Primitive Greece nurtured the useful arts. There was much of the Yankee in those old heroes of Homer. They could do something besides fighting. Agamemnon, "king of men," would have been ragged, had his own fingers not mended his clothes and tinkered his armor; and the most aristocratic of his followers must have gone hungry to bed, unless they cooked their own supper. Ulysses proved an excellent boat builder, when necessity called upon him, and, in the palmy days of his prosperity, he amused his leisure by making and ornamenting his own bedstead. It may be doubted whether this production of the wisest of the Greeks would have secured a diploma at the present exhibition, though his practical good sense would have deserved it. It is questionable, however, whether he inherited this quality, as it is stated that his father weeded his garden, and dressed his vineyard, with his gloves on. He was less particular in this respect, as hereditary succession secured him his principality; but had he been a candidate in our day, for political honors, his effeminacy would hardly have stood the test of caucus and the ballot-box.

The Romans preferred encouraging the arts among their neighbors to cultivating them themselves. They had a method of appropriating the labor of others, whenever it suited their convenience. Such a simple process saved much trouble, and obviated the necessity of book accounts. They belonged, decidedly, to the "Manifest Destiny" school, and carried their taste for annexation to an extent never since professed-until now. They wanted all the

land next to them, and every thing that belonged to any body else; and they helped themselves liberally, with a magnificent indifference to the rights of others. They no doubt talked in a very edifying manner, on the propriety and benevolence of extending the area of freedom, and considered it selfish to monopolize the blessings by which they were surrounded. The servile arts, which comprehended about every thing useful, were held in iron bondage; and not satisfied with scourging a careless, or crucifying a rebellious mechanic, within the territory they already possessed, they longed for a larger and more comprehensive liberty, with which they could expand the area of scourging and crucifixion. It may have been, that Young Rome" smiled at the shaking head of "Old Hunkerism," and listened impatiently to its prophetic warnings; or turned with fierce denunciation on the "fanaticism" which dared to speak of the justice of Jove and the equality of men. There is a moral in the lives of nations, as of individuals, and if one would read the penalty of foreign conquest and domestic wrong, let him look at Young Rome" now. In the chancery of Heaven divine equity may take, what seems to short-sighted man, a long time in giving a decision. But if slow, it is sure; and from it there is no appeal. Anne of Austria said to Cardinal Richelieu, "Sir Cardinal, God may not settle accounts every week, but he settles them at last."

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For some centuries after the extinction of the Roman empire, the arts not only made no advance, but were neglected and forgotten. The world was covered with a funeral pall, as though a moral pestilence had swept over it and smitten down every manly virtue. During all that period of dull, dead monotony, when "darkness was upon the face of the deep," and the sea of life was overspread with a calm so motionless, that no redeeming vitality seemed left to stir its waters, hardly a solitary feeble light

appeared to cheer society and keep it from receding into its original elements. Unmeaning wars, which could not even float the poor bubble of military glory; feudal oppression, that crushed down every generous sentiment; and monastic superstition, which brooded with black wings over poor humbled humanity, fill up the pages of history which record the degradation of that long night of gloom.

At last, a cry burst upon the ears of sleeping men, and awakening them to life, poured Europe upon Palestine, and gave an impulse to enterprise long after the holy sepulchre was abandoned. Then came discoveries, consequent upon the renewed energies of mankind, and the human race started on a career which gave a new era to the world. The arts once more arose, and advancing with the general progress, lured back their missing sisters, or called on invention to supply their place. But, here and there, some lone one, like the lost Pleiad, seemed blotted from the heavens, and kindred constellations were, hereafter, to shine on, without a ray from those fallen stars. But, in their revival, the arts had their favorable or adverse periods, as sagacious liberality patronized, or thick-headed despotism oppressed; now prostrate for long courses of years, and then arising, with regenerated vigor, to give a renown' to their age, and an epoch to history. Wars, the deadly foe of industry, have broken in upon them, in almost uninterrupted succession, diverting human activity from its legitimate occupations, demoralizing the taste, and weakening the inducements to honorable labor.

The mechanic makes a good soldier. The transition from the hammer to the musket is not unnatural, and sinews which have hardened in unremitting toil care little for the fatigues of the field. Men, accustomed to system and regularity, fall easily into the discipline and privations of military life. But to return to the paths of peace, is quite another and more difficult operation. Campaigns are not