The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

.1 for the future fame of Louis it would be wet
NAPOLEON' if t he untoward chapter could be
blotted out oft he annals of the Empire.

Obstacles or the most tantalising description
still interfere' w ith the accomplishment of one of
the world's g reatest engineering achievements.
The Suez Ship Canal is to this day still talked of
hopefully-, but: ;tint() the last unattempted. Miracles
of skill in art < Lnd science are elsewhere performed
—literally—to admiration. But the digging of a
broad channel connecting the Red Sea and the
Mediterranea) 3 is being perpetually postponed, and
the project sc ft, aside as a daydream defying actual
realisation. I',ven Despotism—both European and
Oriental—hy,s failed to effect this wonder by its
potent fiat, t 'nough twice within the last sixty
years we ha ye seen it elaborately accumulat-
ing its prepa rations. NAPOLEON projected the
traversing of the isthmus by the commerce of
Europe and A,. ,ia by means of a grand ship canal—
but NAPOLEON left the work, not only undone, but
unattempted. The enterprise remains upon record
in his biograpl: y, with various other marvels dreamt
of by his Imps .rial and Royal MAJESTY, but never
seriously undertaken. It survives there in that
fairy tale of n• todern history in the same category
with the Ideal of.his Eastern Empire. It is there
as much of a visionary scheme as that colossal
elephant whip ch it was intended by the Em-
peror and King should spout forth perpetual
fountains of spring water for the refresh-
ment and ador, nment of the capital of his empire.
It survives, there, as a design wholly imaginary—
splendid but unsubstantial—like that intended
Palace of the King of Rome, one of the giant stones
of which was eventually carved into a stupendous
vase—yet standing in the vestibule of the National
Gallery, as: a -trophy of the victory won by the,
allies in 186, at, -Waterloo. It was imagined that
Suez would be 'severed by a ship canal during the
time of NAPOL EON—just as it was imagined cen-
turies before that Mount Athos would be
carved during the age of ALEXANDER,
into a stupendous effigy of the Macedonian con-
queror—bearing in the palm of one hand a popu-
lous city, and in the other an urn from which a
river was to flow forth everlastingly. Afterwards,
during the reign of the Viceroy MAHOMET ALI,
the design of the Ship Canal across Suez was
revived. It was talked about long and frequently
—the great Pasha of EGYPT held supreme power
over the ancient realm of the Pharoahs for years
and years, survived even to extreme old age, and
at last died. But the Suez Ship Canal
still remained a mere dotted outline of what
yet some day 'night possibly be attempted
—a dim supposititious achievement, pencilled fancy-
fully in the course of a map of Asia Minor. And
so to this day the notion has lasted—as just a faint
possibility. Nothing more apparently than a possi-
bility—even at this age of triumphant engineering.
A permanent tunnel, carriage, and footway could be
excavated under the channel of a broad river like
the Thames. The gigantic and rocky barrier of the
Alps could be traversed by the nide zigzag
roadway of the Simplan. An iron tube
could be suspended in midair over the Straits of
Menai, through the resounding walls of which
aerial bridge the railway trains are now-a-days
thundering perpetually at intervals. Mystic cords
of communication have been trailed under the waters
of the great deep from kingdom to kingdom, from
continent to continent, from hemisphere to hemis-
phere, along the submerged core of which
messagca could be transmitted in the flash
of an instant on the wings of the light-
ning. Yet while those marvels have
been readily enough accomplished by the engi-
neering skill of the nineteenth, century—the Suez •
Ship Canal remains yet to the last not even at-
tempted—a day dream in nubibus. Flying ma-
chines have been elaborately constructed, that
would not fly. Numerous other wild and fantastic
projects have been subjected again and again to
costly experiments, have been patentNl, have given
rise to enterprising companies, have accumulated
millions of money to scatter the same into
thin air immediately afterwards. But all this
while nothing has seriously been done towards the
cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez, with that
long :talked of ship canal, joining the Red Sea to
the Mediterranean. It is really as though the ad-
vocates of the design were babbling about a voyage
to the Moon—as though they were projecting a
tunnel straight down through the centre of gravity,
and on to our antipodes. Whatever the cost of the
undertaking, that cost might readily, we believe,
be contributed, and once contributed and applied,
would prove inevitably remunerative. What-
ever the difficulties of the enterprize,
those difficulties we may certainly rest assured
might be vanquished with comparative facility by
men like BRUNEL, or LOCKE, or STEPIIENSON. In
spite of so many reiterated disappointments, there-
fore, we may Mill be allowed to remain sanguine
that this noble day-dream of a ship canal through
Suez may yet—even during the life time of the
indefatigable M. LESS EPs —happily arrive at last
at the period •of its actual realization.