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peculiar advantages. But we can hardly hope that the masterpieces of ancient art are ever to be surpassed here or in Europe. The forms and occupations of society are growing every day less favorable to the highest efforts of the imagination. We live in an age of utility. Everything which tends directly to improve the physical conditions of man, and develops his reasoning and active power, is cultivated with zeal and success. The most suborn obstacles of nature are yielding to new and tremendous enginery. What were impassable barriers, have become highways; and the fabled work of the giants [[strike-through]] have [[/strike-through]] are surpassed by the power of knowledge. Education is sent ahead into all classes of men, to make them feel their strength and use their reason. All this renders the world population prosperous and happy; but it is at the expense of much that we love, and much that elevates and refines the feelings. In this cultivation of the reason, the imagination loses its power. Eloquence, poetry, painting and sculpture, do not belong to such an age: they [[page torn]] declining, and they must give 

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