Washington sentinel., 1853-10-15
SPEECH OF HON. CALEB CUSHING,
4 BEF0EE HE HfLANll ms ITIUIk.
THE RELATIONS OF ART TO SOCIAL
ADVANCEMENT.

| THE RELATIONS OF ART TO SOCIAL
| ADVANCEMENT.
At the hour appointed, Mr.. Gushing was in'
troduced to the audience, and spoke as follows:
Mr.. PRESIDENT: yielded, with somewhat of
irrefection, perhaps, to the request of yourself
and your associates to address the Institute
| this evening counting more upon my disposi-
ton to oblge you than my ability; for, in
the first place, it is difficult to withdraw my
mind from the toll and care Of daily official
duty, and the thoughts which belong to it |; and,
in the second place, it is impossible for me TO
find time for the deliberate preparation of set
oration ] am constrained therefore, TO throw
myself on the indulgence of you, Mr.. President,
and Of the other members of the Institute and
of the ladies and gentlemen here assembled,
| for the unelaborate simplicity of an ordinary
extemporaneous disquisition upon meditated
| theme.
1t is true that an occasion like this affords
its own proper subject. Who, indeed can look
around upon scene like this--on this great
| exhibition of objects of art--on this thronging
assembly, convened to do honor to such an ex-
hibition-and not perceive its obvious moral
that this exhibition is an evidence of the pro-
gress, the condition, and the social relations of
| mechanic art--of that mechanic art which,
while it affords to us the first elements of all
personal comfort, does at the same time act
upon all the relations Of life, in substituting
skill, invention, genius, mind, in the place OF
the influence of mere brute force, which gives
to man an equality founded, not upon adyent-
tious circumstances of birth or fortune, but
upon the great gifts of God to all his creatures
alike applause that mechanic art. which
affords us shelter and protection against the
elements, which enables us to live, to move, to
act which gives to us the means to build to
adorn, to paint, TO write--ay, to paint with the
rays of the sun, and TO write with the flashes Of
the lightning; which empowers us to navigate
securely the storm-tossed ocean which submits
to our will the almost illimitable power of the
steam-engine, enchanting it to our car, to bear
us triumphantly on over earth and sea. These
are the results-I might say the triumphs--of
mechanic art and therefore say that such
! scene as this furnishes its own suggestive train
of thought.
1 But it would not become us to rest upon this
mere superficial view of the relation of mechanic
art to human comfort and happiness, and the
progress of society; for that art, in its great
results, is, indeed, n victory-the victory Of
| long ages of struggle-the victory of mind over
matter it is the conquest Of the material uni
verse by the human mind and the history,
therefore, OF mechanic art is the history of this
habitable globe, and of us, the human race. 1t
illustrates, in every stage OF our progress, the
nature and the elements Of the constitution and
progress of society.
Allow me, for n moment, to ask you to ac.
company me, in imagination, at least, in re-
| trospect of what this our world was, before it
became subject to the action Of art, and to see
what it now is in contrast with that primitive
condition. Follow me back to that long re-
mote epoch when this our earth had not begun
| to be inhabited-when, if any eye could have
beheld it--nay, allow me to say, when the
Divine eye looked down upon it--that eye could
behold the lofty mountains stretching up into
the sky, its summit crowned with eternal SHOWS,
its sides covered with the primeval forests, and
the fertile valley at its base, with the smiling
lake or rivulet passing through it, yet without
use and the wide prairie extending before the
view, inviting, but not yet having received the
plough of the cultivator; the desert in all its
awful immensity of waste; the river, rolling its
unknown waters onward to the vast expanse Of
the ocean, itself in its ceaseless wash upon its
shore, with its vast extent, the image Of bound
lessness in space and infnity in motion.
Let us carry our thoughts back to that unin-
habited condition of this earth, when it rolled
poised by the mysterious powers of nature, re-
volving around its central sun, with its attcn-
dant moon, careering, as it were, in that grand
vastness of the armament with all the bright
stars-the yet unread poetry Of fheaven--shining
down in their lost brilliancy upon it. Go back
to that time, and then pass to the moment when
life began to TEEN upon it, when earth, air, and
sea became filed with living being--the birds
of the air, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the
ield--all possessed Of life, it is true; Of in
stinct it is true-but about to give place, in the
great progress of the works Of nature, to man,
the preordained master of that nature to man,
who, in the language of the great Roman
orator, statesman and philosopher, first of all
animated beings, stood erectns adj cdlum-erect
towards heaven--bearing on his brow the visi-
BILE stamp of the signet of Immortality, Jap
plause, and when he came, and when the
powers Of the immortal mind which God had
placed within him, operated upon that sense
less, that savage, that untamed, that uncvilized,
and that uncultivated nature around him, mark
the marvellous contrast Of events.
We see him in the humble beginnings of pri-
mordial life, existing by the chase or fishery,
imperlectly sheltered by the rudest expedients
of the hour; or, it may be, in similar but
still imperfect state in the progress ofour race,
to that of some fertile island ofthe tropical seas,
where, in the language Of Gonzalo, in the
" Tempest
"Nature should bring forth
0fits own kind, ull foizen, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people,"
Passing from these primitive states of being,
into condition of things in which, as all ex-
perience has shown, combining certain difficult
ties and obstacles to success, but those obsta-
cles not indispensable say, in this combina-
ton Of circumstances, man ut once exercises
his proper dominion over the earth and oil
natural objects in 1t; he tames the beasts
around him ; he begins to cultivate the earth;
he cuts down the forests he causes new abun
dance to spring up on valley and prairie; he
prepares society. for that next stage, in which |
the exigencies Of personal comfort-the mere
instructive pursuit Of his happiness---teach him |
by the cultivation of mechanic art to surround I
himself with convenences unknown to the
state of nature. Then it is that dwellings,
suited to his new condition, rise on all hands:
that temples dedicated to religion are construct
ed; that fortresses for his defence spring up;
and the elements Of those great structures and
other works of art begin to exist, which grad
IL. IL. A. n |