In contemplating society as it is exhibited in the history of mankind, we find it universally progressive. Sometimes this tendency has been manifested chiefly in a fruitless struggle with outward obstacles, and still oftener the process has been arrested in the lapse of centuries by some political catastrophe ; but its existence is unquestionable. A number of emigrants fix upon some suitable spot as their future home: let us mark the result. Their stock consists at first merely of a few tools and weapons; these, and the strong arms which are prepared to wield them, are the young foundations of wealth and empire. Soon the forest resounds with the woodman's axe, and the first step is presently taken in the path to greatness; a village of mud cottages, interspersed with patches of cultivated land, which is covered, as autumn advances, with its first harvest. Visit the same spot after the lapse of fifty years: those rude huts have given way to streets of brick or stone; over the tops of the few trees which still remain as the hoary representatives of a fallen dynasty, the domes and turrets of civic structures meet the eye, while all around we see the fruits of industry in a profusion of gardens, orchards, corn-fields, and meadow-lands. Let another half century pass by, and what see we now? A spacious city, a very mart of commerce, the floor of whose exchange is trodden by merchants from every clime. Wherever we turn, our attention is attracted by objects of public interest, from countless mast-heads we see waving

the colours of all nations, while our ears are incessantly dinned with the noise of the steamengine or the rattle of the loom. The houses of the wealthy abound in evidences of intelligence and taste, and even the poorest-survey his cottage, examine his stock of food and clothing, and then say how much better is he off than the best of those poor wanderers who cleared the first acre, and ate their first thrifty meal beneath the shelter of a wattled cabin.

This is the process which has taken place wherever men have dwelt together, from the time when "Asshur went forth and builded Nineveh," down to the latest settlement among the prairies of the "far west." Wherever intelligence and industry join hands, a career of prosperity commences, something is continually won from the earth over and above what is required for present wants; this serves as a stepping-stone to a still greater surplus, which becomes in time productive of one still greater. Not only does wealth increase, but a corresponding expansion takes place in the physical and intellectual resources of the state; science, philosophy, literature, and art exhibit the signs of regular and rapid growth. Discovery succeeds discovery, and every day renders all natural resources more completely subservient to the wants of man; splendour rears its halls and palaces, sculpture moulds its monuments and statues, while poetry diffuses all around the harmonies of song. If we compare man as he appears in this advanced stage of

civilization with his former self, when he reared his hut on the edge of the forest, we experience the same impressions as when the eye passes from the sapling oak of yesterday to the still blooming veteran of a thousand winters. We feel that a glorious creation has slowly acquired birth and being—a creation finer, perhaps, even than the old mountains and bottomless seas; a commonwealth of men, a congress of kings; and this result has been attained, not by theory, not by a laborious induction of facts, not by adopting any artificial system, not even by aiming deliberately at its accomplishment, but simply by obeying the practical impulses with which the human bosom is inspired.

But some would deny that a highly civilized condition is either the happiest or the most natural to man. The savage state is lauded as preferable to ours, or at least that normal stage of civilization when women were all clad in russet and men in "sober grey;" when, according to a pleasant fiction, all had enough, and none had anything to spare; when architecture soared no higher than the thatched cottage, and mankind seemed as if they begged permission to "squat" upon the earth's surface, instead of grasping its dominion with a master's hand. To this we reply, that whatever attractions such a state may seem to wear, it is indebted for them exclusively to our own fancy. This faculty is sufficiently affluent to connect ideas of romance with a company of naked savages, and construct an arcadian republic out

of tomahawks and wigwams. But such conceptions are merely poetic dreams. Man, in an uncivilized state, is ignorant, sensual, superstitious, and we know that such qualities cannot comport with happiness. Equally groundless is the supposition that in a savage state the wants and resources of mankind were ever accurately balanced. It might, perhaps, be safely asserted, that the possession of a bare competence is only possible when society has become civilized. Society itself never pauses, it always fluctuates between progress and decay, and those principles which do not lead to wealth, will soon plunge it in poverty. Five hundred years ago, England was incomparably poorer than it is at present, but it does not appear that the struggle for subsistence was the less arduous. The poor man found as much labour required to feed his children with beans and barley as the factory operative experiences in providing his family with the finest wheaten flour. The hardest day's work an Englishman is required to undergo, and for which he is remunerated with a thousand domestic comforts, is not half so hard as that which barely suffices to keep the North American Indian above the point of absolute starvation. Still less can it be said that such a primitive state is natural to man. A state of nature, when man is the theme, is not composed of nakedness, ignorance, penury, and brutal coarseness. It might be so if, as some philosophers have thought, the progenitors of the human race crawled out of

the ground like snails, or made their way up to humanity through a dreary set of piscatory and apish transmigrations. It would then be reasonable to suppose that their first scale of living was not much higher than the beaver's, though even on this supposition it would not follow that any stage of improvement, short of the very highest, is his final goal. But the circumstances which attended man's introduction to his earthly abode were so refined, that a savage state could never be anything but an unspeakable degradation, an unnatural state, which he was bound, as soon as possible, to quit for ever. On looking back, we obtain in Paradise a faint glimpse of our true social elevation. Then man was happy, his mental faculties vigorous, and his outward condition all that could be desired. Civilization came, arrayed in her native radiance, and lavished her treasures on the holy pair. True, sin poured its vial on the lovely scene, and our next glimpse of man presents him to us in a sadly altered state; but his natural elevation is still that of his earliest days, which, by a long redemptive process, must be reached again. Hence every department of human progress is beheld centering in the same design; the consolidation of society, the growth of wealth, the cultivation of science and art, combine with the specific influences of Christianity in restoring man to that which alone can be regarded as his proper and natural condition; in raising the entire race to that pitch of moral and physical