there never was a moment when greater improvements were to be expected: and this for the very reason that so much has already been done,---that truth, in its nature, is at once boundless and creative,--and that every existing art, invention, and discovery, is but an instrument of further improvement. Even when any particular art or machine seems to have reached the highest attainable point of excellence, nothing is more likely than that it will, by some wholly unexpected discovery or improvement, be greatly advanced; or that, by accidental or natural association, it will lead to some other very important improvement in a branch of art wholly dissimilar; or, finally, that it will be superseded by something quite different, but producing the same result. Take, as an example, the art of printing. The simple process of printing with moveable types, and a press moved by hand, does not seem, in the lapse of four hundred years, to have undergone any very material improvement; but the introduction of solid plates, and the application of artificial power to the press, are improvements wholly disconnected, in their nature, from the art of printing, and yet adding incalcula bly to its efficacy and operative power. In a word, the products of art are the creations of rational mind, working with intelligent and diversified energy, in a thousand directions ;---bound. ing from the material to the moral world, and back from specuand social relations by material means, and again, in an improved political and moral condition, finding instruments and encouragement for new improvements in mechanical art. In this mighty action and reaction, we are continually borne on to results the most surprising. Physical and moral causes and effects produce moral and physical effects and causes, and every thing discovered tends to the discovery of something yet unknown. It rarely, perhaps never, happens that any discovery or invention is wholly original; as rarely, that it is final. As some portion of its elements lay in previously existing ideas, so it will waken new conceptions in the inventive mind. The most novel mecha. nical contrivance contains within itself much that was known before; and the most seemingly perfect invention--if we may judge the future by the past---admits of further improvements. For this reason, the more that is known, discovered and contrived, the ampler the materials out of which new discoveries, inventions, and improvements, may be expected. Who can calculate in how many of those critical junctures when affairs of weightiest import hang upon the issue of an hour, Prudence and Forecast have triumphed over blind Casualty, by being enabled to measure with precision the flight of time, in its smallest subdivisions! Is it not something more than mere mechanism, which watches with us by the sick-bed of some dear friend, through the livelong solitude of night, enables us to count, in the slackening pulse, nature's trembling steps toward recovery, and to administer the prescribed remedy at the precise, perhaps the critical, moment of its application? By means of a watch, punctuality in all his duties,-which, in its perfection, is one of the incommunicable attributes of Deity,--is brought, in no mean measure, within the reach of man. He is enabled, if he will be guided by this half-rational machine, creature of a day as he is, to imitate that sublime precision which leads the earth, after a circuit of five hundred millions of miles, back to the solstice at the appointed moment, without the loss of one second, no, not the millionth part of a second, for the ages on ages during which it has travelled that empyreal road.* What a miracle of art, that a man can teach a few brass wheels, and a little piece of elastic steel, to out-calculate himself; to give him a rational answer to one of the most important questions which a being travelling toward eternity can ask! What a miracle, that a man can put within this little machine a spiritflation to life; producing the most wonderful effects on moral that measures the flight of time with greater accuracy than the unassisted intellect of the profoundest philosopher; which watches and moves when sleep palsies alike the hand of the maker and the mind of the contriver, nay, when the last sleep has come over them both! I saw the other day, at Stockbridge, the watch which was worn on the Sth of September, 1755, by the unfortunate Baron Dieskau, who received his mortal wound on that day, near Lake George, at the head of his army of French and Indians, on the breaking out of the seven years' war. This watch, which marked the fierce, feverish moments of the battle as calmly as it has done the fourscore years which have since elapsed, is still going; but the watch-maker and baron have now for more than three-fourths of a century been gone where time is no longer counted. Frederic the Great was Another and a vastly more important personage of the same war. His watch was carried away from Potsdam by Napoleon, who, on his rock in mid-ocean, was wont to ponder on the hours of alternate disaster and triumph, which filled up the life "Perfect as the steam engine seems, it is a general persuasion of his great fellow-destroyer, and had been equally counted on that we are in the rudiments of its economical uses. The prodi its dial-plate. The courtiers used to say, that this watch stop-gious advances made in the arts of locomotion, teach nothing ped of its own accord, when Frederic died. Short-sighted adu- more clearly, than the probability that they will be rendered lation! for if it stopped at his death, as if time was no longer vastly more efficient. The circulation of ideas by means of the worth measuring, it was soon put in motion, and went on, as if press is probably destined to undergo great enlargement. Ananothing had happened. Portable watches were probably intro-lytical chemistry has, within the last thirty years, acquired induced into England in the time of Shakspeare; and he puts one struments which enable the philosopher to unlock mysteries of into the hand of his fantastic jester, as the text of his morality. nature before unconceived of. Machinery of all kinds, and for In truth, if we wished to borrow from the arts a solemn monition every purpose, is daily simplified and rendered more efficient. of the vanity of human things, the clock might well give it to us. Improved manipulations are introduced into all the arts, and each How often does it not occur to the traveller in Europe, as he and all of these changes operate as efficient creative causes of hears the hour tolled from some ancient steeple,--that iron further invention and discovery. Besides all that may be hoped tongue in the tower of yonder old cathedral, unchanged itself, for by the diligent and ingenious use of the materials for improvehas had a voice for every change in the fortune of nations! It ment afforded by the present state of the arts, the progress of has chimed monarchs to their thrones, and knelled them to science teaches us to believe that principles, elements and powtheir tombs; and, from its watch-tower in the clouds, has, with ers are in existence and operation around us, of which we have the same sonorous and impartial stoicism, measured out their a very imperfect knowledge, perhaps no knowledge whatever. little hour of sorrow and gladness to coronation and funeral, Commencing with the mariner's compass in the middle ages, a abdication and accession, revolution and restoration; victory, series of discoveries has been made connected with magnetism, tumult, and fire :' and, with like faithfulness, while I speak, electricity, galvanism, the polarity of light, and the electrothe little monitor by my side warns me back from my digression, magnetic phenomena which are occupying so much attention and bids me beware lest I devote too much of my brief hour, at the present day, all of which are more or less applicable to even to its own commendation. Let me follow the silent moni- the useful arts, and which may well produce the conviction that, tion, sustained, perhaps, by the impatience of the audience, and if in some respects we are at the meridian, we are in other res hasten to the last topic of my address." pects in the dawn of science. In short, all art, as I have said, is improvement. And it is of the nature of every intelligence ena creation of the mind of man---an essence of infinite capacity for dowed with such a capacity, however mature in respect to the past, to be at all times, in respect to the future, in a state of hopeful infancy. However vast the space measured behind, the space before is immeasurable; and though the mind may estimate the progress it has made, the boldest stretch of its powers is inadequate to measure the progress of which it is capable. chanic Association,--PERSEVERE. Do any ask what you Our last extract closes the address. Bright and grand as are its anticipations of future improvement, none can deny them to be rational. And it is difficult to perceive how any mechanic can hear, or read, the concluding paragraph, without a conscious increase of that self-respect, and that real elevation of character, with which the whole address tends to inspire him. "So numerous are the inventions and discoveries that have been made in every department, and to such perfection have many arts been carried, that we may, perhaps, be inclined to think that, in the arts, as on the surface of the globe, after all the brilliant discoveries in navigation in the last three centuries, there is nothing left to find out. Though it is probable that, in particular things, no further progress can be made, (and even this I would not affirm, with any confidence,) yet, so far from considering invention as exhausted, or art at a stand, I believe *It is not, of course, intended that the sidereal year is always of precisely the same length, but that its variations are subject to a fixed law. See Sir Jno. Herschel's Treatise on Astronomy, $563. + Inclusus variis famulatus spiritus astris Et vivum certis motibus urget opus. Claudian. in Sphær. Archimides. The associations here alluded to have lately been rendered familiar to the public by the Mayor's spirited translation and adaptation to music of Schiller's splendid poem of The Bell. The idea was originally glanced at in one of Mrs. Elizabeth Montague's Letters. Let me say, then, Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Me have done, and what you are doing for the public good? Send wright, and Watt, of Franklin, of Whitney, and Fulton, whose whose *The exhibition was held in Faneuil Hall...-Ed. Messenger. SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER From the 1st December, 1837, to the 1st January, 1838. All persons who have made payments early enough to be entered, and whose names do not appear on this published receipt list, are requested to give immediate notice of the omission, in order that the correction may be forthwith made. . University of Va. (T. L. J.).....South Carolina Gunn, Allen M...... Jackson, Dr. Thomas Janney, S. H... ....Goochland Richmond .(W. F. R.) Vicksburg M..(W. F. R.)...... Vicksburg (H. & D.).. Prince William (T. L. J.). .... Alabama Harrison, Dr. Frederick W Marshall, James K.. Marshall, Edward C. .Portsmouth Marshall, John... .Richmond Marshall, Dr. Jacqueline A. ..South Carolina Norris, James.. Vicksburg Overton, Mrs. M. A.. Mecklenburg .Fredericksburg Savannah . 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His Character, and Writings.-The Baconian Philosophy; its chief peculiarity; its end Fruit: Bacon contrasted with Seneca; superiority of the Baconian, to the ancient Philosophy, even to that of Socrates, still more, to that of Epicurus; Fruitlessness of ancient philosophy; why? its disdain of the merely useful; its disrepute, even before Bacon's time; its false use, and false estimate, of the Sciences; arithmetic; geometry; astronomy; alphabetical writing; medicine: difference of Bacon in these respects. (Prepared for the Messenger.) Human Nature Vindicated...... Discourse on American Literature. By George Tucker, Esq. Professor of Belles-Lettres and Natural Philosophy, in the University of Virginia....... Lexicographic Acumen..... Journal of a Trip to the Mountains, Caves and Springs of The Governess. By the Author of "The Curse"—a Virginia Lady.... The Far West and its Native Inhabitants,-being a Review of Washington Irving's late work, "The Rocky Mountains, or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West" By a Virginian................. NO. II. PAGE ORIGINAL PAPERS (CONTINUED.) Review of "Hallam's View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages." By a Southerner.......... Review of Dr. Johnson's Tragedy of "Irene." By a Native of Virginia..... 111 The Truce Ground. A Tale of the Revolutionary War. Scene in South Carolina, during Gen. Marion's exploits. From the Diary of an Invalid. No. III. By a Lady of this State... 113 An Address on the Utility of Astronomy: delivered before the "Young Men's Society" of Lynchburg, Sept. 26th, 1837, by Professor Landon C. Garland, of Randolph Macon College; and published by request of the Society in the Southern Literary Messenger.... 114 123 73 Something on Sonnets. By James F. Otis............ 130 Specimen of Causticity... 81 88 Shakspeare and the Critics. 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