The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-27 00:00:00

The Weather—Sun Office. Aug. 27, 1863.

THERMOMETER.

This morning.
This day at Two o'clock 72
Barometer-29.60.
Wind—S. ; moderate, and fine, with rain in the morn
Ng and during the night.

t. QII A ,
-ovoir ySun,

LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1863,

A quarter of a century having elapsed since the
British Association was last assembled at New-
castle-upon-Tyne—that one suggestive circumstance
alone furnished this year's President, Sir WILLIAM
ARMSTRONG, with a noble theme for the inaugural
address delivered by him last evening, a remark.
able harangue, which will be found fully reported
in another part of this day's impression of our
journal. Within these five-and-twenty years last
past, how much in truth has there not been accom-
plished. Science, to take simply one solitary illus-
tration of the marvels it has effected within that
interval—Science has, PnosPERO-like, within this
narrow space of the world's history, summoned, in
Electricity, its ARIEL, virtually, to put a Girdle
round:the Earth in forty seconds. Since 1838, when
the town of Newcastle was last selected as the
chosen rendezvous for the members of the
British Association, the whole wonderful systems
of railways and of steam navigation, have covered
the solid earth with a magic network of iron, and
have enabled Man to traverse the ocean indepen •
dently of wind and tide. It is true that long before
1838 the marvellous contrivance of the steam engine
had already endowed modern civilisation with a
power, that might be regarded as not inaptly
symbolized by the Geni rising vapour-like from the
brazen casket dragged up from the deep in his net,
by the Arabian Fisherman. But it has been since
1838, it may here be confidently asserted, that the
chief application of that astonishing power, that the
principle evidence of its extraordinary capacity to
perform according to pleasure the labours of a Fairy
or of a Giant, has been manifested. Within this quar-
ter of a century, the round of which has but just been
completed, not only has the whole Railway System
grown up, and„parallel with it, the whole system of
the Electric Telegraph, but how many other won-
drous miracles of science have we not seen per-
formed with a nicety and a precision and a frequency
that have long since rendered them familiar even
to the uneducated multitude. If we have spoken,
as we have, of the invention of the steam-engine as
not inaptly symbolized by the Geni of the Brazen
Casket, dragged up in his net upon the
seashore, by the:Arabian Fisherman—and the
resemblance hinted at need hardly appear so extra-
vagant to the philcsophical dreamer, remembering,
for example, Sir ISAAC NEWTON'S humble reference
to himself, as one picking up shells and pebbles upon
the shore of the Great Ocean of Truth—we might
no less aptly recognise a symbolism of the magic
power of the Electric Telegraph in the obe
dient Geni of the Ring of ALLADIN. The
rubbing of the ring in that wonderful old
eastern romance, being, almost one might
say, mysteriously typical of the completion of the
metallic round, or the electric circuit, by the opera-
tion of the galvanic battery—evoking nowadays
momentarily at every telegraph station, at the
behest of anyone, a Geni far more more marvellous
as a messenger, than that old Geni of the Ring in
the story of " Alladin." Again, have we not pur.
chaseable now, any day, at any railway station, for
a few coins, a little scrap of a card-board ticket,
that, for carrying us to and fro, whithersoever
we wish, may vie with the few feet
"are of the Turkish Carpet, told of also
in the Arabian Night's Entertainments ? Another
Of the old poetic fabulists, it may be remembered,
amused his own fancy for the marvellous, and that
of his readers, by describing the little pool of water
upon e
a surface of which the reflection of the
gazer's fate
gazer's hat...,
was fixed and preserved, and—with the
ae shadow also of the surrounding
nescape
1111 exact and literal fore-shadowing
that of the marvels
effected bnowadays being perpetually
y
yea
the later the
havers
ofPhotographer. Several of
century have ei this last quarter of a
WARNER died, akaloPstaelidia since poor Captain
obszoticed, and was quietly
buried away in some
long
rttn_,,,rave as a mere idle
visionary—the
the projectiles,
about which he was wont i:hisOt!
talk amidst
vtourite subject,
almost universal ridicule,beingshe7e to
then, of the jester and the caricature
then, since the death of that poor, desl el" t•--..sinCe
ase
WARNER, who only talked of those 4, ion d Captain
range,
—have not the day-dreams of the .
mprao
ticable theorist, been, not only actually
realised, but absolutely surpassed by the
astounding specimens of ordnance fabricated, among
others, by the very wan who was last evening, at
Newcastle, delivering the inaugural address for
1863 of the proceedings at this annual meeting of
the members of the British Association. If only
for thus bringing vividly within the general survey
this last wonderful interval of five-and-twenty
years, since the Association was once before gathered
together down at Newcastle, we have reason to be
grateful to Sir WILLIAM ARMSTRONG for the en-

throning interest, the instructive scope, and the

6ingular suggestiveness of his really masterly re-

trospect,

It is -difficult for the denizens in the busy centres
of civilisation to realise the wild free life, the
reckless adventure of the new colony of the
Western Hemisphere. It is Equally difficult for
the weary teekex for employment, heartsick with