bear in unison for the accomplishment of
social ends. Therefore, as a mere instrument of intercommunication,
rendering more direct and intimate the relations of individuals, and
promoting ease, celerity, and harmony in their combined movements, the
power of the press is prodigious and invaluable. But when this power is
extended beyond the bounds of mere material interests and the relations
of ordinary business--when it appeals to the intellect and enters the
domain of art, literature, science, and philosophy, embracing politics,
morality, and all the highest interests of mankind, its capacity for
good would seem to be illimitable.

In future ages, these innumerable sheets, which float so lightly on the
surface of our civilization, will form imperishable records of the
manners, habits, occupations, and the whole intellectual existence of
our people. They are so numerous that no accident can destroy them all;
and they will present to the eye of the future student of history the
most lively, natural, and perfect picture--the very moving panorama--of
the busy and teeming life of the present generation. No exhumed relics
of buried cities, no hieroglyphic inscriptions upon ancient monuments,
with whatever skill and genius deciphered, nor even any labored
descriptions of past ages, which may have survived the ravages of time,
will be equal to these memorials, in their power to recall the daily
work, the amusements, the business, and, in short, the whole material,
intellectual, and social being of our people.

The types and footprints of creation, imprinted on the rocks and
imbedded in the strata of the earth, giving knowledge of the existence
and habits of extinct species of animals, and teaching how geological
periods have succeeded each other, with their causes and concomitants,
are not so plain and distinct to us, as will be these daily effusions,
advertisements, and business notices of all kinds in the ordinary
newspapers of the country, to future generations of men, who shall there
seek to learn the successive and gradual steps by which the social
fabric shall be built up on the foundations of human thought and action.
Like the worm that crawls over the mud ere it hardens into rock; or the
leaf that fixes its form and impress in the bed of coal; or like the
bowlder that forms the pencil point of a mighty iceberg, scratching the
rocks in its movement across a submerged plain, destined to be upheaved
as a continent in some