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sion of the British power over the whole continent will be but the first act of a great drama, whose catastrophe I but dimly foresee.

"I speak of what concerns the whole Country; the fortune of individuals is wrapt in the uncertain future. For myself, I must own, that I feel a foreboding at my heart, which I cannot throw off. I can only say, if my hour is come, (and I think it is not distant,) I am prepared. I have been able to do but little; but, if Providence has no further work for me to perform, I am ready to be discharged from the warfare. It is my purpose, before I am taken from you, to make a disposition of my property, for the benefit of this infant community. My heart's desire is, that, in the picture of its future prosperity, which I behold in mental view, the last and best of earthly blessings shall not be wanting. I shall deem my life not spent in vain, though it be cut off to-morrow, if, at its close, I shall be accepted as the humble instrument of promoting the great cause of education.

"My friends, as I am soon to join the army, we meet, many of us, perhaps, for the last time. I am a solitary branch; I can be spared. I have no wife, to feel my loss; no children, to follow me to the grave. Should I fall by the tomahawk or in the front of honorable battle, on the shores of the stormy lake or in the infested woods, this poor body may want even a friendly hand to protect it from insult. But I must take the chance of a soldier's life. When I am gone, you will find some proof that my last thoughts were with the settlers of Fort Massachusetts; and perhaps, at some future day, should my desire to serve you and your children not be disappointed, my humble name will not be forgotten in the public assembly, and posterity will bestow a tear on the memory of EPHRAIM WILLIAMS."

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MECHANIC ARTS.*

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-I beg leave to congratulate you, on the success of your efforts to establish the first Fair of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. Under circumstances somewhat unfavorable, you have produced an exhibition, which, I am persuaded, has fully answered the public expectation. More than fifteen thousand articles, in almost every department of art, have been displayed in the halls. Specimens of machinery and fabrics, reflecting great credit on their inventors, improvers, and manufacturers, many of them affording promise of the highest utility, and unitedly bearing a very satisfactory testimony to the state of the arts in this Country, and particularly in this community, have been submitted to the public inspection. The exhibitors have already, in the aggregate, been rewarded with the general approbation of the crowds of our fellow-citizens, who have witnessed the display. It will be the business of your committees, after a critical examination of the articles exhibited, to award enduring testimonials of merit. But the best reward will be the consciousness of having contributed to the common stock of the public welfare, by the successful cultivation of the arts, so important to the improvement of society and the happiness of life.

I feel gratified, at being invited to act as the organ of your Association, in this general expression of its sentiments, on so interesting an occasion. It would be a pleasing employment, to attempt an enumeration and description of some of the most important of the articles exhibited. But it would be impossible to accomplish this object, to any valuable purpose, within reasonable

* An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, September 20, 1837, on occasion of their first Exhibition and Fair.

limits. It would require a condensing apparatus, more efficient than any which has yet been contrived, to bring even a descriptive catalogue of the articles exhibited, within the compass of a public address: to give a full account of the most important of them, would demand no small portion of the knowledge and skill required for their fabrication. The nature of this occasion prescribes a much simpler character to the remarks I shall submit to your indulgence. It will be my sole object to establish, by a few obvious illustrations, the vast importance of the Mechanic Arts. In pursuing this end, the greatest difficulty to be overcome is, that the point to be established is too certain, to be proved, and too generally admitted, to need a formal assertion.

Man, as a rational being, is endowed by his Creator with two great prerogatives. One is, the control over matter and inferior animals, which is physical power; the other, the control over kindred mind, which is moral power, and which, in its lower forms, is often produced by the control over matter: so that power over the material world is, practically speaking, a most important element of power in the social, intellectual, and moral, world. Mind, all the time, is the great mover; but, surrounded, encased, as it is, with matter, acting by material organs, treading a material earth, incorporated and mingled up with matter, I do not know that there is any thing but pure, inward thought, which is not dependent upon it; and even the capacity of the mind for pure thought is essentially affected by the condition of the material body, and by external circumstances acting upon it.

This control of mind over matter is principally effected through the medium of the mechanic arts, taking that term in its widest acceptation. The natural faculties of the human frame, unaided by artificial means, are certainly great and wonderful; but they sink to nothing, compared with the power which accrues from the skilful use of tools, machines, engines, and other material

agents. Man, with his unaided strength, can lift but one or two hundred weight, and that but for a moment; with his pulleys and windlasses, he sets an obelisk upon its base, a shaft of solid granite, a hundred feet high. The dome of St. Peter's is one hundred and twenty feet in diameter; its sides are twenty-two feet in thickness; it is suspended in the air, at an elevation of three hundred and twenty feet from the ground; and it was raised by hands as feeble as these. The unaided force

of the muscles of the human hand is insufficient to break a fragment of marble, of any size, in pieces; but on a recent visit to the beautiful quarries in Sheffield, from which the columns of the Girard College, at Philadelphia, are taken, I saw masses of hundreds of tons, which had been cleft from the quarry by a very simple artificial process. Three miles an hour, for any considerable space of time, and with ample intervals for recreation, food, and sleep, are the extreme limit of the locomotive capacity of the strongest frame, and this confined to the land. The arts step in: by the application of one portion of them, to the purposes of navigation, man is wafted, night and day, waking and sleeping, at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, over the unfathomed ocean; and, by the combination of another portion of the arts, he flies at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles an hour, and, if need be, with twice that rapidity, without moving a muscle, from city to city.

The capacity of imparting thought, by intelligible signs, to the minds of other men,-the capacity which lies at the foundation of all our social improvements,—while unaided by art, was confined within the limits of oral communication and memory. The voice of wisdom perished, not merely with the sage by whom it was uttered, but with the very breath of air on which it was borne. Art came to the aid of the natural capacity; and, after a long series of successive improvements, passing through the stages of pictorial and symbolical representations of things, the different steps of hieroglyphical writing, (each occupying, no doubt, long periods of time for

its discovery and application,) it devised a method of imprinting on a material substance an intelligible sign, not of things, but of sounds forming the names of things; in other words, it invented the A B C. With this simple invention, and the mechanical contrivances with which it is carried into effect, the mind of man was, I had almost said, recreated. The day before it was invented, the voice of man, in its utmost stretch, could be heard but by a few thousands, intently listening, for an hour or two, during which, alone, his strength would enable him to utter a succession of sounds. The day after the art of writing was invented, he was able to stamp his thoughts on a roll of parchment, and send them to every city and hamlet of the largest empire. The day before this invention, the mind of one country was estranged from the mind of all other countries. For almost all the purposes of intercourse, the families of man might as well not have belonged to one race. The day after it, Wisdom was endued with the gift of tongues, and spake, by her interpreters, to all the tribes of kindred men. The day before this invention, and nothing but a fading tradition, constantly becoming fainter, could be preserved by the memory, of all that was spoken or acted by the greatest and wisest of men. The day after it, Thought was imperishable; it sprung to an earthly immortality; it seized the new-found instruments of record and commemoration, and, deserting the body, as it sunk, with its vocal organs, into the dust, it carved, on the very gravestone, "The mind of man shall live forever." tool bat

It would be easy to multiply these illustrations of the importance of the aid, rendered by the arts to the natural faculties of man. They present themselves to the reflecting mind, in every direction; and they lead the way to the conclusion, that the mechanical arts are the great instruments of human civilization. We have some means of judging what man was, before any of the useful arts were discovered, because there exist, on the surface of the globe, many tribes and races, nearly