Excerpt from An Address Prounced at the Opening of the New-York Athenaeum, December 14, 1824 AN association of literary and scientific men, actuated by a disinterested zeal for diffusing the lights of kwledge, and for promoting the cultivation of literature in our common country, would invite public patronage to their undertaking. I am called upon to address you in their behalf: and I cant perhaps better dis charge the duty, than by taking a general retrospect of what the American mind has hitherto accomplished; and endeavouring to present you with some prospective views of what may be achieved hereafter by the intellectual genius of our countrymen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.