phere of purchasers. In all this I see the cause as well as the effect
of a progressive refinement, which must be beneficial in many ways. This
very diffusion of cheap books and cheap prints may, in its natural
consequences, operate rather to diminish than to increase the number of
adventurers in literature and in the arts. For though at first it will
create employment for greater numbers, yet in another generation
imitative talent will become so common, that neither parents nor
possessors will mistake it for an indication of extraordinary genius, and
many will thus be saved from a ruinous delusion. More pictures will be
painted but fewer exhibited, more poetry written but less published, and
in both arts talents which might else have been carried to an overstocked
and unprofitable market, will be cultivated for their own sakes, and for
the gratification of private circles, becoming thus a source of sure
enjoyment and indirectly of moral good. Scientific pursuits will, in
like manner, be extended, and pursuits which partake of science, and
afford pleasures within the reach of humble life.

Here, then, is good in progress which will hold on its course, and the
growth of which will only be suspended, not destroyed, during any of
those political convulsions which may too probably be apprehended--too
probably, I say, because when you call upon me to consider the sinfulness
of this nation, my heart fails. There can be no health, no soundness in
the state, till government shall regard the moral improvement of the
people as its first great duty. The same remedy is required for the rich
and for the poor. Religion ought to be so blended with the whole course
of instruction, that its doctrines and precepts should indeed "drop as
the rain, and distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb,
and as the showers upon the grass"--the young plants would then imbibe
it, and the heart and intellect assimilate it with their growth. We are,
in a great degree, what our institutions make us. Gracious God were
those institutions adapted to Thy will and word--were we but broken in
from childhood to Thy easy yoke--were we but carefully instructed to
believe and obey--in that obedience and belief we should surely find our
temporal welfare and our eternal happiness!

Here, indeed, I tremble at the prospect! Could I look beyond the clouds
and the darkness which close upon it, I should then think that there may
come a time whe