The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1858-08-12
THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH.

dudley Obscfvaory at Albany more than year ago. Ii
quite appropriate ut the present time. In enumetng
the achievements of science, he said ~ yTssTgr
Such language, the representative of thought Dwell
upon ~ y pray you moment longer 1t ID great mys-
terry Of car being by the Of few written printed
lines On paper like each other that In language with
which We arc familiar witness Malay Japanese
manuscrtpt-thero any difference between
them this tnseen, intangible, mysterious mental
senoe compared with which perfume, sound, lunar
rainbo Is gross and material expresses itself to the eye
BY the ntle impulse the soft vibrations which the lips
mpart 70 the elastic air. 1t expresses itself to the To
give the spoken word Duration, translate it into writ
ten chAfcter ito give the written sign vital empha-
Sis translate it into vocal speech BY one divine art
the dead letter. charged with living meaning sounds
through echong halls, and wins storms its way to
sympathetic hearts by another the heeng waveets of
the air crystalzed into marvellous
and become mpershable gems Of thought whose ustre
no laFDe Of time obscure !; WHILE by the union of
beth, thk incomprehensible being the mind, gently
woad from the vesta chambers of our inu,ost nature
oomcaseh Hike bride adorned for her lordy spouse
the word ca In the saoh vestnrc Of conversation OF
argument OF eloquencc, of poetry of song to walk
with him the busy tho secluded paths of life to
instruct and delight the living generations ethereal
A. they to outve columns Of brass and pyra
mds Of granite and to descend In eternal youth the
unending highways of the ages.
Docs II much that the skill of men has In these
latter days contrived the of communicating intel
igece almost with the rapdity of thought across the
expansc Of continents and beneath the depth of ocean by
the electric wire that message despatched from Bos
St. Louis hour before she arrives at that meridian
1t is much, and we contemplate with just amazemcnt
the wonderful apparatus which, when laid down. as
sooner or later 1t will perhaps be- to connect the
three continents may, by possibility send the beginning
of such sentence am pronouncing around the
teraqueous globe and return it to the lips of the speaker
before he has completed its uttcrance But this aaz
ing apparatus is but another form Of language it trans
mts intelligence only it transmits words 1t is like
speech like the pen, like the press another piece of
machinery by which language is conveyed from place to
place The really wonderful thing is language ITSELF by
which thought is made sensible and communicated from
mind to mind not only in the great living congregation
of the civilized world for the time being but through the
vast general assembly of the ages by which we are able
at this moment not only to listen to all the great utter
which express the thoughts and emotions of tho
present day throughout the world but to soar with Mil
ton to the green fields of Paradise in the morning of cc-
alton to descend with Dante to the depths penal woe
to listen to the thunds Of Tully and Demostencs and
by the golden chain of chronology, trace the affinity and
descent of nations back through the labyrinth of the
| past, almost to the cradle of the race.
hold in my hand portion of the identical electrical
cable, given me by my friend, Mr.. Peabody, which is
Apr 22 1851 in progress OF manufacture to con-
meet America with Europe read upon it the following
words part Of the sub marine electric telegraph ca
BILE, manufactured by Mossrs. Glass Co., Of London
for the Atlantic Telegraph Company, to connect St.
Johns, Newfoundland with Valentia Ireland distance
of sixteen hundred and forty nautical or nineteen hun
dred statute miles. Does 1t all but incredible to
you that intelligence should travel for thousand miles
fathomess Atlantic before penetrated by aught
pertaining to humanity when laundering ves-
sci has plunged with her hapless company the eternal
silcrne and darkness of the abyss Does It seem saw
all but miracle of art that the thoughts of living
th6 thoughts that think up tho earth sur
face in the cheerful light of the markets. the
exchanges and the seasons and the elections and the
treaties and the wars, and all the fond notngs of daily
lie should cothe themselves with elemental sparks and
shoot with fiery speed in moment in the twinklng of
an eye from hemisphere to hemisphere far down among
the uncouth monsters that walow in the neither seas,
along the wreck paved floor through the oozy dungeons
of the rayless deep that the last intelligence of the
crops, whose dancing tascls WILL in few months be
coquetting with the west wind these boundless pai
ries, should go flashing along the Shiny decks Of old
sunken gaeons which have been rotting for ages that
messages of friendship and love, from living Boz
sos should burn the cold green bones of and
women whose hearts, ours, burst the
eternal gulf closed and roarcd them centuries ago.
Behold another phenomenon of surety not less
prisingan intellectual electric telegraph, if may
call itnot less marvellous The little volume which
hold in my hand contains the two immortal poems of
Homer, those worldrenowned strains which of the
imperial minds of race not far from thirty centuries
ago. poured forth in the of heroic Greece
while the soest down of youth upon the cheek Of
its young nationay-the glowing golden legends
sovereign wrath of Achilles, which
shall unquonchabiy,
| Until the eternal doom shall bes--
the parting Of Hector and Andromache scene to which
the sad experience of three thousand years could add
pter to the awestruck gods while every peak Olyn-
pus was abaxe with his leaping thunders the pteous
snpplicaons of aged Pam kissing the hand and bathing
with his tears the feet of the cruel cheain who had
dragged the torn body of his noble three times round
the Iian walls the weary and sorrowful wanderngs Of
Ulysses which every subsequent age of mankind has
traced with delight Those a like the cunningy impris-
oned airs of musical box breathe us in one peren-
nia strain of melody from within the covers of this small
volume. BY the simple agency of twenty four little
Marks stamped on the written the printed page, the
Immortal legend has flashed down us through the vi
cssitudes of empires and the expanse
of enlightened and benghtcd periods of hisory-from
region to region, from his rocky iset in the Egcan
to shores unknown, undreamed Of by hinbeneath the
overwhelming pillows Of three thousand years. where
peoples whole have sunk and it now binds together
by the golden wires of intellect and TASTE the mind
Europe and America at this meridian of their refinement
with the mind Of every intervening age of literary cu
ure back to the cradle of Infant Greece And WHILE at
places Of education, diligently investigate the
wonderful properties of matter developed in the phenom
of the physical world, shall rot my friends deem
portion of time and attention well bestowed upon
the miracles of the word written and spokenthe pho
homcna of language which lie at the foundation of all
our intellectual Improvement, of all literature and
science lin wor of all rational communication between
man and man
FROM DIR. CIIAPIN'S DISCOURSE.
! The following is the very eloquent passage in Rev.
DR. f. II. Chapins discourse on Sunday in the Second
Universalst Church. Boston, in relation to the Atlantic
cable l9ug
q Let not fail to recognise the greatness the gran
dcur of this achievement Let supposed honorng of
rclgion-no intention of exalting the moral spiritual
above the physiCal--hido from full