true and proper seat of commerce and of empire, or if we have not the virtues and the energies necessary to retain our vantage-ground, we shall not try to check the prosperity or the political ascendency of our sister-states. Far from indulging such unworthy thoughts, we regard this and every other improvement as calculated to promote our own prosperity, and, what is far more important than the advancement of our state or of yours, the union and harmony of the whole American family. The bond that brings us into so close connection is capable of being extended from your coast to the Mississippi, and of being fastened around not only New York and the first thirteen, but all the twenty-six states. This is the policy of New York, and her ambition. We rejoice in your co-operation, and invite its continuance, until alarms of disunion shall be among the obsolete dangers of the republic.

New York has been addressed here in language of magnanimity. It would not become me to speak of her position, her resources, or her influence. And yet I may, without offending the delicacy of her representatives here, and of her people at home, claim that she is not altogether unworthy of admiration. Our mountains, cataracts, and lakes, can not be surveyed without lifting the soul on high. Our metropolis and our inland cities, our canals and railroads, our colleges and schools, and our twelve thousand libraries, evince emulation and a desire to promote the welfare of our country, the progress of civilization, and the happiness of mankind. While we acknowledge that it was your WARREN that offered up his life at Charlestown, your ADAMS and your HANCOCK who were the proscribed leaders in the Revolution, and your FRANKLIN whose wisdom swayed its councils, we can not forget that Ticonderoga and Saratoga are within our borders-that it was a son of New York that fell in scaling the heights of Abraham-that another shaped every pillar of the Constitution and twined the evergreen around its capital-that our FULTON sent forth the mighty mechanical agent that is revolutionizing the world-and that but for our CLINTON, his lofty genius and undaunted perseverance, the events of this day and all its joyous anticipations had slept together in the womb of futurity.

The grandeur of this occasion oppresses me. It is not, as

some have supposed, the first time that states have met. On many occasions, in all ages, states, nations, and empires, have come together. But the trumpet heralded their approach; they met in the shock of war: one or the other sunk to rise no more, and desolation marked, for the warning of mankind, the scene of the fearful encounter. And if sometimes Chivalry asked an armistice, it was but to light up with evanescent smiles the stern visage of war. How different is this scene! Here are no contending hosts, no destructive engines, nor the terrors nor even the pomp of war. Not a helmet, sword, or plume, is seen in all this vast assemblage. Nor is this a hollow truce between contending states. We are not met upon a cloth of gold, and under a silken canopy, to practise deceitful courtesies; nor in an amphitheatre, with jousts and tournaments, to make trial of our skill in arms preparatory to a fatal conflict. We have come here enlightened and fraternal states, without pageantry, or even insignia of power, to renew pledges of fidelity, and to cultivate affection and all the arts of peace. Well may our sisterstates look upon the scene with favor, and the nations of the earth draw from it good auguries of universal and perpetual

peace.

EDUCATION.

The proper Range of Popular Education.

LET us remember for ourselves, and inculcate upon the people, that our progress thus far has but led us to the vestibule of knowledge. When we see the people content in the belief that they know all that is known or is desirable to be known, let us instruct them that there is a science that will reveal to them the hidden and perpetual fires in which are continually carried on the formation and modification of the rocks which compose this apparently solid globe, and from whose elaborate changes is derived the sustenance of all that variety of vegetable life with which it is clothed: that another will disclose to them the elements and properties of those metals which men combine or shape with varied art into the thousand implements and machines by the use of which the forest-world has been converted into a family of kindred nations; that another solicits their attention, while it will bring in review before them, so that they can examine, with greater care and instruction than did their great progenitor in the primitive garden, all the races of animated beings, and learn their organization, uses, and history; that another will classify and submit to their delighted examination the entire vegetable kingdom, making them familiar with their virtues as well as the forms of every species, from the cedar of Lebanon to the humble flower that is crushed under their feet; that another will decompose and submit to their examination the water which fertilizes the earth, and the invisible air they breathe; will develop the sources and laws of that heat which seems to kindle all life into existence, and that terrific lightning which

seems the especial messenger of Divine wrath to extinguish it. Let us teach that the world of matter in which we live, in all its vast variety of form, is influential in the production, support, and happiness, of our own life, and that it is passing strange, that with minds endowed with a capacity to study that influence and measurably direct it, we yield uninquiringly to its action, as if it were controlled by capricious accident or blind destiny. Shall we not excite some interest, when we appeal to the people to learn that science which teaches the mechanism of our own wonderfully and fearfully fashioned frames, and that other science which teaches the vastly more complicated and delicate structure of our immortal minds? Who would not follow with delight that science which elevates our thoughts to the heavens. and teaches us the magnitude, forms, distances, revolutions, and laws of the globes that fill the concave space above us? And who, with thoughts thus gradually conducted through the range of the material universe, would not receive with humility, yet with delight, the teachings of that spirit of divine truth which exalts us to the study of the character and attributes of that glorious and beneficent Being, whose single volition called it all into existence? Let us teach the people all this, and let us show them that, while we sit contentedly in comparative ignorance, the arts are waiting to instruct us how to reduce the weary labors of life; philosophy, how to avoid its errors and misfortunes; and eloquence, poetry, and music, how to cheer its way and refine our affections; and that Religion is most efficient when she combines and profits by all these instructions, to conduct us to happiness in a future state. Above all, let us inculcate that the great and beneficent Being who created us and this material universe, has established between each of us, and every part of it cognisable by our minds, relations more or less intimate; that he has impressed not more on the globes that roll through the infinitude of space than on the pebble that lies beneath our feet-not more on the immovable continent than on the rolling sea--not more on the wind and lightning than on the ethereal mind of man; and not more on the human soul than on the dimly-lighted instinct of the glow-worm, or of the insect visible only by microscopic aid "laws that determine their organization, their duration, time, place, circumstance, and action;

that for our security, improvement, and happiness, he has subjected these laws to our keen investigation and perpetual discovery; and that, vast as is the range of that discovery, so vast and more extended than we can describe, or can yet be conceived, is knowledge; and that to attain all this knowledge-is Education !"— Address at Westfield, N. Y., 1837.

Popular Education a Leveller.

THE aristocracy with which the world has been scourged was never one that was produced by science and learning. That education increases the power of those who enjoy its advantages is true; and in this best sense is education aristocratic. In this sense, science and learning always will create an aristocracy in every country where they are cherished. Not an aristocracy of birth, for it is education that has exploded among us the prejudice in favor of birth. To it we owe our exemption from the error prevalent all over the rest of the world, that no man is so fit, or so well entitled, to be a king as he who is the son of a king; none so brave as he whose father was a warrior; none so well entitled to the enjoyment of wealth as he whose ancestors were rich. Nor is the aristocracy produced by education that of wealth; for knowledge pays no respect to mere wealth: it humbles all pretensions except those of virtue and intellect. But the aristocracy produced by education is the increased power and influence of the most enlightened, and therefore the most useful, members of society. However repugnant we may be to admit the truth, and however glaring may be the exceptions to it, it is nevertheless a sound general principle that knowledge is power. Whatever there is in our lot that distinguishes us from the disfranchised peasantry of continental Europe, or the turbaned followers of the prophet, or the mutually-warring Africans in their native deserts, or their abject offspring here, or the aborigines of our forests, all is knowledge obtained by education; and, compared with all those classes of our common race, we are aristocratic. We exercise greater power, because we are wiser, and therefore better, than they. In every stage of society this tendency of education has been observed. He who first learned the malleable property of iron, and first shaped the axe and the