quently hardly weighed more scrupulously unfold themselves in the remotest perspecthan in daily colloquy, the writer will doubt-tive. Once, the country-village was comless be permitted also to scatter on paper paratively lively, and vocal with the coma few thoughts on the aspect of the exist- motion of debate; as has been said, even a ing era; thoughts which in the good old hundred years ago, there was comparatively time he would have wasted in talk, while much more tale-telling and less printed now, having the comfortable assurance, news; while now, with the newspaper in that no one will contradict him, while wri- his hand, the citizen quid nunc holds conting, he can think himself to be in the verse with every portion of the habitable right, until he sees some criticism of his globe, in the crowded coffee-room, or in pages, and afterwards too. the rail-car, without bestowing a single word on his neighbor, to give a jog to the intellectual faculties of either.

Mankind, when they had no printing, were divided in detached groups, each of whom enjoyed its own immunities and characteristic identity. Their thoughts and affections occupied the space of these hallowed inclosures, leaving the surplus, if any, to make excursions into the fields of nature and of religion. At first, indeed, before they were merged in states and kingdoms, communities resembled some isolated galvanic elements, within the contracted spheres of which, the affections and aspirations of the soul were forever gamboling in self-exhausting gyrations. Time gradually added other elements; but slow was the progress which men could make in knowledge and power through the mere instrumentality of tradition and manuscript, both indifferent conductors, and the battery, though its multiplied parts endowed it with increasing force, soon wore itself into decay. Then the Press at once became the communicating medium of the ethereal fluid, and by its infinitely superior adaptedness, raised the civilized world to the proud eminence which it now occupies on the heaving galvanic pile of mind, which seeks to outstrip the farthermost bounds of the very heavens.

The Press is that main engine of develop ment, which for three centuries, uninterruptedly and in a progressive ratio of speed, is carrying the human race towards some goal yet undiscernible and unknown. It has left mankind, what they ever were; but it is a leaven (Gährungs-stoff) which has given a characteristic scope and direction to that momentous disjunction which is going on between us and antiquity, and has infinitely multiplied energies and relations, and then again simplified them. With the art of printing commenced a new era in the culture of the human mind, which before had enjoyed a holiday of two thousand years, since acquiring the accomplishment of writing. The Press is a machine embodying an idea, by whose develop ments, the heir-loom of History itself, so to speak, has been re-constructed, to the effect that it incessantly throws off the antiquated materials of power, of thought and of passion, descended from our forefathers, in ever varying, ever increasing, ever bolder, finer and more elaborate patterns. As manual labor was the productive genius of the primitive and middle ages; so machinery is of modern times-but still it is the same genius which is at work. We are so accustomed to the common, all-pervading vehicle of thought, to the ability of scanning every movement in the worlds of matter or Every unit, whether great or small, from of mind, that it is with no small difficulty we the individual to the state or the nation, are able to place ourselves in a bygone age; feels itself, in the midst of the whirl and and the superficial thinker is utterly at a commotion of conflicting powers, identified loss to comprehend the intellectual great- in its thoughts, purposes and actions, as a ness of certain periods which were desti- part of one undivided whole, and all may tute of the present facilities for disseminat- perceive how the materials of fate are dising and interchanging ideas. The noiseless posed of in the fervent heat incident to the tread of the historical muse, led onward concentration of their powers at the poles only by traditional legends, strikes us as of the ever-working battery; and how thus gloomily as unearthly steps in the haunted destiny is every instant evolved, be it chamber of Ugolino; while an old man through the agency of man himself, or be it would become bewildered with terror in in his despite. It is pre-eminently this beholding how, by the necromancy of print- universal sensitiveness of the body social, ing, the hidden workings of the times are this ever present consciousness of historiunmasked, how the levers and shuttles pass cal dignity, which stamps the present cenand repass with inconceivable swiftness, tury as differing so strikingly and essenthe wheels buzz and fly, the woofs are reel-tially from the last, so faintly acted upon ed off, and everywhere images and designs by the Press, and which renders it so diam

etrically opposite to the earlier ages of the world. Every pleasing and noble feature in the aspect of our times, as well as every equivocal and fatal distortion, springs from this psychological revolution; from this source flow all those schemes and efforts in state, in science and in art, which characterize the present generation.

and the bustle among claimants and objec tionists, among the contending masses, and in the consultations among Savans at the couch of diseased humanity, grows ever louder and more confused. Nothing can transpire in any of the provinces of metaphysics, politics, religion, art, trade or science, which does not produce manifold and heterogeneous results, in a society rendered thus sensitive through the agency of the Press. Where one sees only health and safety, another scents a gangrene; the identical fact calls up to the imagination of one a series of the most flattering images, to that of his neighbor it portrays nothing but the rake's progress-to one the beginning of a felicitous consummation-to the other the beginning of a gloomy end. The one cannot comprehend how it is that the world does not advance more readily, universally, or in this, and that and the other particular quarter, where genius such as his applies the lever. Another is astonished again to find his transcendent abilities baffled, and like Jonah becomes fretful at the failure of his prophecies; but is not the less positive, that with such elements of discord and destruction within, the world cannot long hold together. All admit, however, even those who draw the most favorable auspices for the future from the present, that with the present striking advance of certain elements of power, other certain elements which caused the peculiar bloom and glory of departed ages, have become extinct; but while A beholds in this deficiency, or rather substitution of energies, the prognostics of a universal dissolution, B adopts it as merely another round in the physiological ladder of the species.

Even long after the invention of printing, comparatively but a very few privileged individuals were enabled to watch the course of the world, to confront and measure the events which passed before their eyes, by the past, as recorded on the page of History, thence to draw definite conclusions, to set the horoscope of the city, the state or the age, and to announce all this to their contemporaries. With the progress of this "black art" the feelers of society became proportionably more numerous and acute, its vision into futurity sharpened, and the one half of what is now printed is made up of judgments abstractedly pronounced by this conscientious and self-criticising age, whether in a sober mood, or misguided by passion, on the past, present and future. It happens, however, in the arena of literature, as it it does in the British Parliament. There, every speech being directed to the chair, the speaker is the focus, or rather the centre of all the radii of debate, and in a somewhat analogous manner every author or scribbler, in all his plans or strictures on the affairs of the world, addresses himself to the Public, that presiding hydra, which holds in terrorem the power of life or death in its grasp, over all Magazines, Journals, and Gazettes. The Public and the Speaker-both much less speaking, than spoken to have no perceptible influence over the issue, the result of the de- Those faculties of man, by which in obbate; the same as in judicatory assemblies, serving, experimentalizing, analyzing, disa thousand valuable or silly thoughts fall to solving, and again combining, condensing the ground, and that which is finally effect- and making deductions, he penetrates deeped, often has no relationship, either to the er and farther into outward nature and into efforts of genius expended, or to the end his own, have manifestly been exalted and contemplated; so the assertions and de- enlarged through the revolution effected murrers, the demands and the refusals, the by the press. This is more especially aptriumphs and the lamentations of the politi-parent in the great strides which the precal press, are daily set at naught by the ex-sent age has made in the various departecutive tribunal of History. The universal ments of natural science. development of the go-ahead principle, which in modern times has been so wonderfully accelerated, is chiefly the effect of the inherent and ever augmenting power of the press; and consequently, while the plot thickens, while so many conflicting phenomena appear, while what is past, as well as that which is yet to come, arouses the most opposite passions; the energies of the press receive increased stimulus,

The rich and fair legacy of learned lore, transmitted from antiquity, even within the precincts of natural philosophy, was preserved during the middle ages by a few men of towering genius, and, though with considerable drawbacks on the one hand, it obtained on the other some slow and unequal acquisitions. The single-handed thinker and seeker after truth, cramped and fettered by authorities, could make but feeble,

unproductive, and withal hazardous explor- the young brood of new discoveries are ing expeditions into the hidden chambers carefully nursed and fed after the most apof nature's laboratory; and consequently proved rules of dietetics. the efforts of genius either soared away The natural sciences are the boast of the into the clouds, or else diverged into the age-yes, and in their alliance with induswinding and obscure paths of a labyrinth, try, have made it arrogant. It is reasonawhere arose on some circumscribed basis ble to suppose, however, that the achieveof experiments, the speculative structures ments of the human mind, subsequent to of the theosoph, the astrologer and the al- the laws established by Keppler and by chemist. The seeds of science, so vigor- Newton, as yet have made but very few ously deposited by the ancients, were bare- stages in its boundless career. Here the ly kept scathless during the iron-age. The prospect is lost in distance; the re-actions press prepared the soil to receive the seed, on society, the re-modelling, emancipation and scattered it abroad; it speedily pro- and ennobling of the whole system flowing duced a thousand-fold, and now the entire from a conquest of nature's forces, in great domain of civilized life, is clothed in luxu- things or in small, in the aggregate or in the riant verdure, and a stately crop of true abstract, it is impossible to compute. But knowledge, hides, if it cannot choke, many when this new movement first became apa rank weed, the seed of which the press parent, about fifty years ago, after the great has, in its heedless race, also dropped. and important discoveries had been made The same thought, which called forth a in chemistry and in physic, mankind were general interchange of mind, gave to sci- affected somewhat in the manner of a man ence the principle of vitality, no longer of who for the first time travels on a rail-road. a stunted growth, a stagnant vegetation, Though mounting the car very cautiously, and this vitality and growth kept exact and apprehensive of not being able to enpace with the increase of books. Once, dure the rapid motion, he soon becomes the science of natural philosophy was a reconciled to the novelty, and in a little rigid, compact mass, easily scanned and while begins to suggest that the speed mastered by one mind. Mathematics, might very well be increased, without Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany, Physic and either inconvenience or danger. Just so Metaphysics, lay all huddled together in people spoke then, in verse and in prose, the brains of the Doctor mirabilis. In pro- in half jest and full earnest, of the gigantic portion, however, as the magic circle, undertakings of mind, of the flight of Icawhich the press had thrown around the rus, and pennis non homini datis. But soon philosopher and thinker, became more and one became accustomed to the rushing lomore intensely electrified with this vitali- comotive of science, whose scintillations ty, the mass became more fusible, and the were as many seeds of the utile dulce; and materials of science more redundant. Soon now the faction of science and the multiit could no longer be scanned, much less tude cried out vehemently to the other mastered by individual minds; it separated multifarious arts, fa presto, and the impainto ever various fragments and ramifica- tience to gain and to enjoy infinitely outtions, each of which required its master strips the sober and legitimate march of workman, and thus was set on foot that di-improvement. One prominent example vision of labor, that unfailing distribution, will suffice; in that we may see reflected that constant gathering and re-issuing (Wieder-abgeben) of materials, which at the present day gives to the activity of genius a feature so much resembling a mathematical concatenation of productive mechanism, or rather of a fraternity of skilful insects. That which instinct effects in the little community of bees, a general wakefulness and sharp-sightedness bring to pass in the Republic of Science-all that has been done at every point, and all that is yet to be done. Inspired by the common impulse, the student knows as by intuition, which flowery chalice he must crush in order to extract the purest honey; cell is added to cell as by rule and compass in the prolific hive of scientific literature, and

all the phantastic expectations, anticipations, misconceptions, misconstructions and fallacies through the medium of which one generation throws a halo of imaginary glory over the darkness of those yet unborn.

Mankind have scarcely succeeded in moving over the surface of their planet at the rate of forty miles per hour, scarcely do they anticipate with any degree of certainty, that the rail-road will infuse a renovated nervous system into the body social, before they grasp, no one can tell how many degrees higher, and pant for the immediate realization of the antiquated hobby, which so often is honored with fruition only in our dreams: they would fain fly on

the wings of the wind. Almost any one on our shoulders. Rail-roads resemble the among us has some friend or acquaintance, blood-vessels, which are here and there who is enthusiastically taken with the idea apparent during incubation in the shapeless of the thing, and who marvels, that earnest mass of an egg; as far as they are comand united measures have not long since plete, they only point out the future chanbeen adopted for its accomplishment. He nels for the circulation of the fluids and the tells you, this speculative son of Apollo, shape and position of the limbs. As no this Phaeton, that to mount into the clouds, one, without previous knowledge, can form to career about securely among and above a correct idea of the full grown animal, them, and to defy the tempest, may well from the confused embryo of the chicken be considered as premature and chimeri- while in the egg, so we probably can form cal: but that it would be enough to have no adequate conception of the fashions the power to sail above the surface at the which the world may yet put on, in conelevation of only a few feet, with the de- nexion with the new locomotive power, sirable command of ease, security and and no one knows whether his fancy-sketch speed, in order to supersede roads and on this point, will prove too excursive or every conveyance by land or water, and too circumscribed. Until the Rail-road as yet without encroaching materially on the a distinct system, recoiling upon itself, beprerogatives of tolls and custom-houses. comes the ladder of improvement, and has He means to say, that he could do all this, continued such for a longer or a shorter if he only had sufficient mastery over the period, men will not, if ever, learn to fly, sciences, especially chemistry and mechan- or turn their skill to great account. True, ics!-As it is, he stops at taking shares, every thing in our day developes itself without delay, in the aerial metallic packet- more rapidly; even inventions enjoy a ship which is constructing at Nüremberg. short life and a merry one, ripen quicker, But the Nürembergians do not hang peo- drop off earlier than formerly; but with all ple, &c. this high-pressure, the old tracks and preSuch fancies and experiments, by which cedents of advance, of perfectibility, rethe solution of the problem is so confi- main of necessity; and even our modern dently and incontinently expected to be wonders of creative genius obey those laws realized, indicate a misconstruing of those which govern the whole kingdom of art. It laws of our nature, which govern every will do no harm, if, bearing this reflection new-born idea, but more palpably every in mind, we not only look down upon our notable invention, 'which obtains a "local progenitors, but also endeavor to look up habitation and a name," which possesses a to posterity. distinct and characteristic existence, and which has advanced from the first dim conception in which it originated to its consummation, or rather its safe delivery through the process of an ascending scale of development in successive and harmonizing stages. The invention of locomotives and rail-roads as a general means of conveyance is yet in its infancy; but it is a very promising and precocious babe. No matter if it does not realize all that it now promises, still it must in the course of its farther development grow in importance and influence, it must reach a maturer age and experience, and when it finally shall be overtaken by some new, yet unheard of, and sublimer vehicle of speed, and be thrown aside in the grand lumber-room of History, it will only share the fate incident to our selves. When we have become thoroughly trained and formed in the school of experience, we are worn out, and pushed aside with buoyant insolence, by some younger aspirant who continues our work with fresh ingenuity, and thinks himself so much greater than ourselves, because he stands

Every new discovery or important step gained in the march of improvement, calls up to the imagination the most pleasing images. At last, having had its day, it presents itself to the understanding only in a chastened, may be a pitiful form. At the outset, it is a revelation, a marvel; replete with life, comfort and beauty, and improvement is hardly conceivable. Seen from a distance, the same object appears flat, cumbrous and clumsy; with all its elaborate appendages, but of little use, and to the unreflecting it seems inexplicable that people did not directly hit upon those improvements, which are now appreciated at a glance, and which, having been adopted, every body thinks himself competent to have made. Thus when riding in the most commodious and well-appointed carriage, we look behind us with a feeling of pity mingled with contempt, not only on the chariot in which Telemachus visited Menelaus, but on the coach, the body of which hung on leather-straps; a lumbering, gilt and bedaubed machine, like a ferry-house or a lion's cage, dragged slowly and obsti

nately over the rough and jagged pave- | bore of the several kinds of ordnance were ment, or through the bottomless roads; satisfactorily ascertained, the problem ponderous, rickety, tasteless and ridicu. solved how to ensure the greatest effect lous. How many lessons of experience, simultaneously with the quickest manœuhow many fruitless trials, how many dis- vers in the field; before the art of killing coveries in mechanics, in chemistry, in the masses of men with despatch and precision, use of metals, &c., were not needed grad- to annihilate them secundum artem, and ually to effect the metamorphosis of this with finished elegance, as it were, was patriarchal piece of finery, into a whole brought to its present pinnacle of perfecfamily of present splendid, light and ele- tion. Very probable it is, that mankind gant equipages-coaches, Berlins, chairs, now use the power of steam with no greatbritschkas, tandems, quitrins, tilburies, &c., er skill than they once did the powder; &c. Look at them: strength and com- and the steam-boat, which we think so pactness united with lightness; capacious- smart a thing, has yet to run through many ness with neatness, in the most ingenious long years of apprenticeship. Our steammanner imaginable; seats, and steps, and boat constructors and captains will not aphandles, all placed with scrupulous anato- pear any wiser to their grandchildren, than mical nicety, calculated to meet every po- the gunners and sappers which figured in sition and motion of the occupants; every the war of Schmalcalden do to our engithing in most perfect equipoise and har- neers. The four-and-twenty-pound carromony-a very complicated piece of me- nade, which, if exploding, kills every body chanism and yet apparently so simple. around it, and the mighty steamer "PresiOnly by persevering training and industry, dent," of several hundred horse power, could the rude and unwieldy limbs of that which perished with every soul on board, primitive monster, be transformed into equally indicate in their respective spheres, those graceful, slender, pat and pliant forms how far the artificial energies, as yet found of the present carriage, and which has be- out, may most profitably be applied, when queathed its most prominent virtues on the directed by moderation. It is intrinsically passengers' car rolling on iron. And this the province of time, generally a long time, car, with its inanimate phantom team, be- to elicit from any agent in nature's arsecomes in its turn an obsolete monster! Yes, nal its true character, its domestic habits, the age will and must arrive, which will so to speak, its virtues and its vices; to look back on the ne plus ultra, the vaunted enlarge and multiply it by division and subgem of our polish, the rail-road, just as we division, to produce the greatest effect look back on the first attempts of our fore- with the smallest outlay of means; to simfathers to obviate the jolting of a clumsy plify and perfect its parts, to make them wagon on a bad road. It will then seem lighter, more fitting, more convenient and perfectly in keeping with such bungling ornamental, until one transcendent idea contrivances, that hundreds of people were shail supersede another, whose embodiat once maimed or killed outright, though ment will seem a wonderful improvement the bungling contrivance itself may be to us, and to posterity again quite uncouth wondered at; and a future generation will and imperfect. as little covet the car in which Dumont D'Urville was burned to death, as we do the coach in which Henry IV. was assassinated.

The steamer of our day has aptly been likened to heavy ordnance, at its first invention. After knowing how to put powder and ball into metallic cylinders, and fire off the charge, the whole mystery of gunnery seemed at once exhausted. The greatest effect was expected only from the largest caliber, and thus an invention remained in its infancy, which has but slowly followed in the track of military science, until it has reached to our shrapuels and the Paixhan guns. Long experience, many and often very dearly purchased experiments, were needful, before the true proportions of length, thickness, strength and

Thus, in every age, the arts and inventions are like some curious tree, whose intertwining branches promiscuously bear buds, flowers, fruit, and empty shells, on the same twig. But never has this tree of life glowed in more luxurious verdure than at present. Its sap, circulating with accelerated vigor, throws out forms and productions hitherto unknown. This rapidity and exuberance of vegetation is, however, the result of the league which science and art have, on the principle of mutual advantage, so systematically entered into, in these days of universal utilitarianism. Invention was indeed always, in the main, the foster-child of science; but so long as science herself had nowhere gained a firm footing, and looked forward to no definite and final purpose, achieving