Mountain Democrat., 1857-11-28
One Of the Best Things In the Language

hold in my hand portion Of the idcn-
tieal electric cable given me by friend,
Mr.. Peabody, which is now in progress of
manufacture, to connect America with
Europe. l read upon it the following
words:
"a part of the submarine electric tcle-
graph cable, manufactured by Mcssrs.
Glass & Co., Of London, for the Atlantic
Telegraph Company, TO connect st. Johns
Newfoundland, with Valencia, Ireland, .
distance Of sixteen hundred and forty nau.
tical, or nineteen hundred statue miles"
Does it seem all but incredible to you
that intelligence should travel for two
thousand miles, along those slender cop.
per wires, far down in the all but fathOm-
less Atlantic, never before penetrated by
aught pertaining to humanity, save when
some laundering vessel has plunged with
her hapless company to the eternal silence
and darkness of the abyss? Does it seem,
| say, all but miracle of art, that the
thought of living mcn-the thoughts that
we think up here on carth's surface in the
cheerful light of day-about the markets,
and the exchanges; and the seasons, and
the elections, and the treaties, and the
wars, and all the fond nOthings of daily
life, should clothe themselves with clcmcn-
tai sparks, and shoot with fiery speed in
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from
hemisphere to hemisphere far down among
the uncouth monsters that wallow in the
neither seas, along the wrcck-pavcd floor,
through the oozy dungeons of the raylcss
deep; that the last intelligence of the
crops, whose dancing taSsels will in few
months be coqucting with the west wind
on these boundlcss prairies should go
flashing along the Shiny decks of old sunk
en- galcons, which have been rotting for
ages; that messages of friendship and love
from warm living bosoms should burn
over the cold green bones of men and wo-
men, whose hearts, once as warm rs ours,
burst as the eternal gulf closed and roarcd
over them, centuries ago? Behold anoth-
CT phenomenon Of surety not less sur
prising,-an intellectual electrical tcle-
graph, If may so call it,-not less mar
vclious. Thc little volume which hold
in my hand contains the two immortal
| poems of Homer, those world-rcnOwned
of our race, not far from thirty centuries
ago, poured forth in the. delighted cars Of
heroic Greece, while the softest down OF
youth was on the check of its young ma
tionality,-thosc glowing golden legends,
that sovereign wrath of Achilles, which
Shall burn unqucnchably,
| Until the eternal doom shall be-
the parting of Hector and AndrOmach-a
scene to which the sad experience ol
three thousand years could not add one
image of tenderness nor one Of sorrow
the threats of Jupiter to the awe-struck
gods, while every peak of Olympus was
ablazc with his lcaping thunders; the pit
eous supplications Of aged Priam, kissing
the hand, bathing with his tears the feet
of the cruel chicftain, who had dragged
the torn body of his noble son three times
round the Italian walls; the weary and
sorrowing warnings of Ulysses, which
every subsequent age Of mankind has re-
traced with dclight,-thcse all, like the
cunningly imprisoned airs Of musical
box, breathe to us in one perennial strain
of melody from within the covers of this
small volume. by the simple agency oI
twcnty-tour little marks stamped on the
written or the printed page, the immortal
legend has flashed down to us through
the vicissitudcs of empires and eras =
across the vast expansc of enlightened
and bcnightcd periods Of history; from
region to region, from his own rocky islet
in the Kgean to shores unknown to, un-
dreamed of, by him; beneath the over
whclming billows ofthree thousand years,
where people whole have sunk; and
it now indstogcther, by the golden wires
of intellect and taste, the minds of Europe
and America; at this meridian Of their
refinement; with the mind Of every in.
tcrvcning age of litcray culture, back tc
the cradle Of infant Grcecc.-OratiOn o.
Eccrett.