d
individual advances in improvement, they make, too, a common progress;
like vessels on a common tide, propelled by the gales at different
rates, according to their several structure and management, but all
moved forward by one mighty current, strong enough to bear onward
whatever does not sink beneath it.

A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opinions and
knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing in a degree
heretofore unknown. Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is
triumphing, over distance, over difference of languages, over diversity
of habits, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian
world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does
not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The
whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy
of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any
tongue, and the _world_ will hear it. A great chord of sentiment and
feeling runs through two continents, and vibrates over both. Every
breeze wafts intelligence from country to country; every wave rolls it;
all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce
of ideas; there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries,
and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make
up the mind and opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all
things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately
answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last
half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by
nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of
intellectual operation.

From these causes important improvements have taken place in the
personal condition of individuals. Generally speaking, mankind are not
only better fed and better clothed, but they are able also to enjoy more
leisure; they possess more refinement and more self-respect. A superior
tone of education, manners, and habits prevails. This remark, most true
in its application to our own country, is also partly true when applied
elsewhere. It is proved by the vastly augmented consumption of those
articles of manufacture and of commerce which contribute to the comforts
and the decencies of life; an augmentation which has far outrun the
progress of population. And while the unexampled and almost incredible
use of machinery would