The weekly Portage sentinel. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1854-1861, 1856-12-18
Superiority Of Olr Age.

Our age is boastful OF its advances bcyon,
all which have preceded it. 1t claims {
vast superiority, at least in the convenience.
and arts OF social life, and has smull re-
spect for the rude implements and barbarian
manners OF our great gran6iathers. The
Saturday Evening Post is skeptcul as tc
the fact OF progress, and from a long article
in which it sets forth the grounds Of its un.
belief we select the following paragraph
which may startle some1of our readers:
"Let US say word ub u mechanics. Ey.
erybody knows, or ought to know, that the
ancents had telescopes, aarolabes, quad
rants, burning and magniFying glasses, the
screw, the lever, and the implements of Sci.
ence, Art, War Agriculture, Manufactures,
ETC., in great number and perfection. With
out them they could not have accom-.
plished their knowh results; 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 and the little;
in the little Karnlc you could put Phia,
delphia and New York, and have room to
spare The walls and structures are colos-
sal, and we argue safely that their builders
had both mechanical skill and sufficient en-
ginery to build them. There is Pompey'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, conveyed from thence, and erected in
the desert 1t was hewn from the quarry
of PorPhyry; it is sculptured all over with
deep hierog oglyphcs; and yet,as we hnve said,
our best instruments can hardly make
scratch on pophyry, and having made it, are
blunted and useless Our best hydraulic
works are said by competent judges to be
inferior to the Chinese canals; our best forti
ficntions are pigmy to the Chinese wallis
We have no Artesian wells so deep as the
Chinese. In China the traveller meets with
borings three thousand feet deep, made to
get coui gas from the interior of the earth
Printing, of a certain clumsy fashion, the
Chinese have had for centuries; it is highly
probable other nations had it, too, in great
er perfection, though, as the philosophy Of
those ages Yves hostile to the diffusion of 7
knowledge, twas probably the secret ofthe
priests. The relics of railroads are still
seen in India but of gigantic size capable OF
bearing an entire temple. How do we know
they had no steam, or some propulsive force
equal thereto! II is hardly safe to assume
of such people, that they had not everything
they needed, if within the scope of human
wit Herodotes mentions having seen at
Denii, an enormous globe Of yvi light sur
tall column, which lit the entire
city, That beats our gas lamps all to moth
ng! We have lately Seen statements pur
porting to come from, we think, Col Matt
and, of the East India Company, narrating
Is fact that the natives in that country have
ome mysterious method of communication
" which they are enabled to transmit news
rom one part of the country to another, fast,
r than courier can convey il, at his utmost
peed. If this is true, (and really one is pre-
jared to believe anything OF the Hinslus y
here is an order about it very much like
he magnetic telegraph" a.g