progress of industry, but do we always ask ourselves wherein that progress consists? Is it in the greater perfection to which, in modern times, we have carried the works of our hands? Look at the elegant tissues of Persia and India, or at the flexible blades of Toledo and Damascus, and say in how far we have surpassed these works of semi-barbarous ages and people, with all our boasted mechanical improvements! Can we imagine anything more splendid, more rich, and more delicate than the clothes in which the Oriental princes still array themselves, as their forefathers used to array themselves centuries ago? Have we yet a dye more brilliant than the Tyrian, a sculpture equal to that of Greece, an architecture better than that of the ‘Dark Ages,’ paintings on glass to compare with those in the old cathedrals, workers in bronze to rival a Cellini? Is it not the highest compliment that we pay to a product of skill or genius to say of it that it is ‘classical,’ that it is worthy of the models that have been preserved for ages in our galleries and museums? What then do we mean when we speak of ourselves as more advanced than former nations; what is that difference between us which authorizes us to use the word progress and to look back with a complacent half-pitying eye upon the attainments of the generations that have passed away? “It is this: that in our discoveries in science, by our applications of those discoveries to practical art, by the enormous increase of mechanical power consequent upon mechanical invention, we have _universalized_ all the beautiful and glorious results of industry and skill, we have made them a common possession of the people, and given to society at large, to almost the meanest member of it, the enjoyments, the luxury, the elegance which in former times were the exclusive privilege of kings and nobles. Formerly the labor of the world fed, and clothed, and ornamented the Prince and his Court, or the warrior and his chieftains--but now it feeds and clothes and ornaments the peasant and his family. Then the ten thousand poor, miserable wretches worked for the one, or the few, but now the ten thousand work for the ten thousand. Then the wealth of provinces was drained to heap up splendors for the lord of the province, but now that wealth is multiplied and diffused, to give happiness to the commonalty. All the concentrated capital of Lyons, and Leeds, and Lowell, all our complicated machinery, while it creates new demands for human labor, is intended to cheapen manufacturing products, as the effort of that cheapness is to put the fabrics of woolen and silk within the reach of the poorest classes. Our books, at this day, may not be individually superior to the books of the days of Elzevir, but millions of men now possess books where hundreds only possessed them formerly. Our vases and cups may not be more exquisitely wrought than the vases and cups of Benevento Cellini, but they are