f a tree or the
roof-shaped cabin, to those commodious and lightsome dwellings which
betoken the taste and competence of our villages and cities; in the art
of Copying or Printing, from the toilsome process of hand-copying, where
the transcription of a single book was the labor of months or years, and
sometimes almost of a life, to the power printing-press, which throws
off sixty printed sheets in a minute; in the art of Paper-making, from
the preparation of the inner bark of a tree, cleft off and dried at
immense labor, to machinery from which there jets out an unbroken stream
of paper with the velocity and continuousness of a current of water; in
the art of Painting, from the use of the crayon, and artificial colors
imperfectly blended, requiring whole days to present an incomplete
picture, to the production, as by enchantment, of perfect likenesses in
nature's own penciling, executed in a few seconds; in the art of
Telegraphing, from communicating information by signs which may be seen
from one station to another, to conveying intelligence to any given
distance with the velocity of lightning; and, in addition to all these,
in the arts of Moulding and Casting, of Designing and Engraving, of
Preserving materials and of Changing their color, of Dividing and
Uniting them, etc., etc., an ample catalogue, whose very names and
processes would fill volumes.

Now, for the perfecting of all these operations, from the tedious and
bungling process to the rapid and elegant; for the change of an almost
infinite variety of crude and worthless materials into useful and
beautiful fabrics, _mind_ has been the agent. Succeeding generations
have outstripped their predecessors just in proportion to the
superiority of their mental cultivation. When we compare different
people or different generations with each other, the diversity is so
great that all must behold it. But there is the same kind of difference
between contemporaries, fellow-townsmen, and fellow-laborers. Though the
uninstructed man works side by side with the intelligent, yet the mental
difference between them places them in the same relation to each other
that a _past age_ bears to the _present_. If the ignorant man knows no
more respecting any particular art or branch of business than was
generally known during the last century, _he belongs to the last
century_, and he must consent to be outstripped by those who have the
light and knowledge of the present. Though they are