The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1856-12-03
SUPERIORITY OF OUR AGE.

Our age is boastful of its advances
beyond all which have preceded it. Il
claims vast superiority, at least in the
conveniences an6 arts of social life, aud
has small respect for the rude imple.
ments aud barbarian manners of our
great granfathers. The Saturday Eoe.
ming Post is skeptical as to the fact of
progress, and from a long article, in .,
which it sets forth the grounds of its
unbelief, we select the following para.
graph, which may star tie some of our
readers 81.
Let US say word about mechanics.
Every body knows, or ought to know,
that the ancients had telescope astrol-
abes, quadr ants, burning and magui-
flying glasses, the screw, the lever, and
the implements of Science, Art, War,
Agriculture, Manufactures, etc., in NUM-
Der and perfection. Without them
they could not have accomplished their
known result; and one tenth part Of
what they had or accomplished is not
known to us. Time makes sad havoc Of
| the monuments of mans skill. But now,
there is the little city of Karnac, in
Egypt-there are two Karnacs-the
great aud the little lin little Karnac
you could put Philadelphia and New
York, and have room to spare The
walls and structures are colossal, and
we argue safely that their builders had
both mechanica! skill and sufficient en-
ginery to build them. There is Pom
pey's pillar, fallen in the desert. The
French and English engineers, with all
their best appliances, labored seven days
to move the enormous shaft they
moved it about an inch Yet that shaft
had been quarried from the rock at .
distance of seven hundred miles, con.
veyed from thence, and erected in the
desert 1t was hewn from the quarry
of porphyry; g. sculp:ured all over
with deep oglyphics; and yet, as we
have said, our best instruments can
hardly make scratch on porphyry, and
having made it, are blunted and use.
less Our best hydraulic works are
said by competent judges to be inferior to
the Chinese canals; our best fortifioa.
tious are pigmy to the Chinese wallis
We have no Artesian wells SO deep az
the Chinese. In China the traveller meets
with borings three thousand feet deep,
made to get coal gas from the interior Of
the earth. Printing, of a certain clum.
sy fashion, the Chinese havo had for
centuries it is highly probable other
notions had it, too, in greater perfection,
though, as the philosophy Of those ages
was hostile to the diffusion of knowledge
it was probably the secret of the aristo.s
cracy or the priests. The " Of
railroads are still seen in India, but Of
gigantic size capable of bsaring an en-. !.
tire temple. How do we know they
had not steam, or some propulsive force
equal thereto? +? 1t is hardly safe to as.
sumo, of such people, that they had nos
everything they needed, if within the
scope of human wit. Herodotus mem
tioDs having seen at Demi, an enormous
globe of vivid light surmounting a tall
column, which lit the entire city. That
beats our gas lamps all to nothing We
have lately seen statements purportiDg
to come from, we think, Col. Maitland,
of the East India Company, narrating as
fact that the natives in that country
have some mysterious method of cona'
munication by which they are enabled
to transmit news from one part of the
country to another, faster than courier
can conveyit, at. bis utmost speed. II
this is true, tan1 4eally one is prepared
to believe any thing of the Hinlus J there
is an odor about it very like the mag.
netic telegraph. Esa,sz g.,sfF
--4<-s-st--
NH- al