IT was our good fortune to form one of the dense auditory before whom this excellent Address was delivered; and although we are unable to convey to the reader an adequate idea of the effect its verbal publication produced, we may nevertheless afford a 'taste of its quality,' by a few choice extracts. We were pleased, at the very opening, to perceive that the Address was not to embrace political questions, connected with the arts of industry, nor to be a compendium of minute statistics, relating to the Institute, and manufactures in general--a course so common on such occasions. 'Figures cannot _lie_,' perhaps, but they can do things quite as disagreeable. Mere statistics are dismal bores to great masses, oftentimes, in the hands of matter-of-fact, hum-drum speakers, oppressively full of information; reminding the hearer of Swift's elixir, 'which being drank, presently dilates itself about the brain of the orator, whence instantly proceed an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums,' etc., all reducible upon paper, and fruitful of the most potent oscitant qualities. How many new members of Congress, who felt it their duty to attend to the public weal, in gratitude to their constituents, have been wakened by the watchful sergeant-at-arms, after the house had adjourned, from a deep sleep which had fallen upon them, as they 'by parcels something heard, but not attentively,' of 'figure-works and statistics,' from some arithmetical debater! 'In 1834, Sir, before the passage of the law creating the 'North American Window-Glass and Putty Company,' owing to the high price of putty in the United States, there were in ten counties in the state of Mississippi, nine hundred and sixty-two windows and a half, utterly destitute of glass; and it is worth stating, as a remarkable fact, that of the three hundred and twenty-seven panes which were fastened with a cheap adhesive substitute, the large number of two hundred and eighty-three were utterly useless. That putty--I say _that_ putty, Mr. Speaker--would not stick!' And thus proceeds the bore statistical,[16] in a speech 'thin sown with profit or delight.' But we are keeping the reader from 'metal more attractive.'