Artificer, make them subservient to morals and devotion; and thus the grandeur of nature illustrates the greatness of man. Linnæus placed man in the order of _Quadrumana_, or four-handed, in fellowship with the monkey tribe, and even considered the genus _Homo_ as consisting of two species, the ourang-outang being the second, the congener of the human being. Cuvier, with an obvious propriety, has departed from this classification, and placed man in an order by himself, that of _Bimana_, or two-handed, in allusion to the prehensory organs with which he is furnished. They are instruments of essential moment to their possessor, and form a characteristic mark of his nobility, for, strictly speaking, he is the only bimane. In several physical respects, man is far inferior to many of the lower animals. The elephant is his superior in bulk and power, the hawk in sight, the antelope in swiftness, the hound in scent, and the squirrel in agility. No animal, in the infancy of existence, continues for so long a period in a state of helplessness and dependence, or suffers for an equal interval infirmity in age. To every other animal nature supplies an appropriate clothing, for which they “toil not, neither do they spin”—the office of man; without which, he would live and die in the nakedness of his birth. No parallel to his case can be found in the animal kingdom, in relation to the slowness of his growth, the variety of his wants, and the numerous diseases to which he is exposed; and while animals directly adapt to their support the food that is suited to them—the lion his flesh, and the ox his grasses—the greater part of the human aliment, according to the practice of all nations, is subject to preparing processes, more or less rude or perfect, in order to be rendered agreeable and nutritious. These are apparently the hardships of the human condition; but a regard to their moral and intellectual effect will strip them of the character of disadvantages. If endowed with a high degree of physical force, if free from the necessity of culinary preparation, if naturally arrayed against the exigencies of climate, and thus constituted with a greater amount of personal independence—it may reasonably be inferred, that civilization would not have made its present advances, that mental capacity would have remained largely undeveloped, and the career of man have exhibited a succession of melancholy oscillation, between intemperate ferocity and selfish indolence. The sense of his weakness and the pressure of his wants have contributed to call forth his resources, to stir up “the gift and faculty divine,” to rouse inventive powers to action which would otherwise have continued dormant, and to excite benevolent affections, by the demand he is compelled to make for the society of his kind; and thus the very disabilities of his mere animal being tend to evoke his higher nature, and to accomplish one of the designed ends of his