PROEM.

LANGUAGE is of slow growth, and taste in literature and the fine arts comes to maturity only when society attains a high state of civilization and refinement. The germs of thought are sought out after we have beheld its full development: after we have seen the beauty of the rose, and felt its magic power, we delight to analyze its minute organization.

The state of civilization and refinement which our nation has already attained, naturally excites curiosity, and turns our attention to the past, leading us to reflect upon those hidden causes, the effects of which have displayed themselves around us with so much beauty and power.

Our forests have been felled, our wars fought, and our Government established: but these events do not contain the causes of our prosperity; they are the sensible effects of secret, yet mighty powers, which have renovated the human mind, and transformed the institutions of society. The spectacle which we behold was not wrought out by a single impulse, nor by the succession of any number of fortuitous events. It is