"The revival of learning, like that of religion, originally effected through the instrumentality of the press, though long hindered by the successive political convulsions and changes of the world, is now evidently in the course of rapid advancement, and is producing a deep and wide impression upon the mass of civilized society. It is pervading all classes, and affecting all interests. Its influence penetrates every public and private institution, and is exciting the best energies of the human mind, both to the invention of new methods of intellectual cultivation and the application of knowledge to the practical purposes of life. Fostered by the spirit of freedom, which goes before to disenthral the mind from that state of servitude in which its powers had been made to minister to ignorant and wayward ambition, or still more cramping and perverting superstition, it promises to gain an universal ascendancy, and to render all that influence which had been arrayed against it, henceforth subservient only to its triumphs. "But it is characteristic of the human mind, when set at liberty from ancient prejudices, and permitted to range in search of expected good, to become extreme in its calculations and projects of improvement, and to distract itself amidst the variety of its experiments. And more especially when its enterprises are favored by the encouragement of wealth, and sustained by the indiscriminate approval of the multitude. It is then, that overlooking the maxims of sound philosophy, and disregarding the safe lessons of experience, it is beguiled into the adoption of untried theories, and wastes its strength in the prosecution of plans, which are found at length to accord neither with the constitution of our nature nor with the approved usages of society. I will not say, that this is a great evil in comparison with that state of mental vassalage and inaction in which nothing is attempted, nor even conceived, for the true interests of mankind. For, the mind unfettered, will ordinarily be corrected of its mistakes and brought back from its wanderings, when truth is the object of its aspirations, and happiness is the prize only of successful effort. But we may learn from this infirmity of our nature, to be cautious in our estimates of the good before us, and to use that moderation in our endeavors which will leave us nothing to regret, when their end shall have been attained.