Staunton vindicator and general advertiser. (Staunton, Augusta County, Va.) 1858-1860, 1858-08-21

| EDWARD EVERETT ON THE ALLAN
TIE CARRIE

L
TIC CABLE.
The following passage from the ORATOR
delivered BY Mr.. Everett, on the occasion
of the inauguration Of the Dudley Observa-
tory at Albany, more than year ago, is
quite appropriate at the present time. In
tenumeratipg the achievements of science,
he said:
! | hold in my hand portion Of the fden-
teal electrical cable, given me by my friend
Mr.. Peabody which is now (April %,
1857, J in progress Of manufacture, to con-
meet America with Europe. read upon it
the following Words "a part of the sub
marine electric telegraph cable, manufac-
tired by Messrs Glass & Co., of London,
for the Atlantic Telegraph Company, to
connect St. Johns, Newfoundland, with
Valencia, Ireland, distance of sixteen
hundred and forty nautical, or nineteen hun
dred statute miles" Does il not seem all
but incredible to you that Intelligence should
travel for two thousand miles along those
slender copper wires, far down in the all
but fathomless Atlantic, never before pcne-
trated 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 itnot seem, say ,all but a miracle Of art,
that the thoughts Of living men-the thoughts
that we think up here on the earths surface
in the cheerful light of day-about the mar
kets, 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 elemental
sparks and shoot with fiery speed in me-
ment, in the twinkling Of an eye, from
hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among
the uncouth monsters that wallow 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 tassels will, in few months,
be conquetting with the west wind OF these
boundless prairies should 90 flashing along
the Shiny decks Of old sunken galleons,
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 women, whose
hearts, once as warm as ours, burst as the
eternal gulf closed and roared over them,
centuries ago? Behold another phenomenon
of surety not less surprising-an intellec-
tual electric telegraph if may SO call it.
not less marvellous! The little volume
which ! hold in my hand contains the i'm
mortal poems of Homer, those world re-
nowned strains. which one of the imperial
minds of our race, not far from thirty cen
turtles ago, poured forth in the delighted ears
OF heroic Greece, while the softest down of
youth was upon the cheek of its young ma
tlonolity-the glowing golden legends
that sovereign wrath of Achilles, which
shall burn unquenchably'
Until the eternal doom shall be-
the parting of Hector and Andromache--a
scene to which the sad experience of three
thousand years could not add one image of
tenderness and sorrow; the threats Of Jupi-
ter to the awestruck gods, while every peak
Of Olympus was ablaze with his leaping
'thunders; the piteous applications of aged
Priam, kissing the hand and bathing with
his tears the feet of the cruel chieftain, who
had dragged the torn body Of his noble son
three times round the Han walls; the weary
and sorrowful wanaerings Of Ulysses, which
every subsequent age Of mankind has retra-
ced with delight these al, like the ean-
ningly imprisoned airs Of musical box,
breathe to us in one perennial strain Of me-
lody from within the covers Of this small
Volume
BY the simple agency Of twenty-four lit
tic marks, stamped on the written or the prin-
ted page, the immortal legend has flashed
down to us through the yicissitudes Of en-
pires and eras-across the vast expanse of
heightened and benighted periods of history
from region to region, from his own rocky
islet in the Egean to shores unknown, un-
dreamed cft by him-beneath the over
whelming pillows Of three thousand years,
where nations whole have sunk; and it now
binds together, by the golden wires of in
telleet and taste, the mind of Europe and
America, at this meridian Of their refine
ment, with the mind of every Intervening
age of literary culture, back TO The cradle
of infant Greeee. And while at our places
of education, sc diligently investigate the
wonderful properties Of matter developed in
the phenomena Of the physical World shall
We hoI my lflenust ueem portlon u our
time and attention well bestowed upon the
miracles Of the werd,, written and spoken
the phenomena of language which lie at the
foundation of all our intellectual improve
nent, Of all our literature and science in
word of all rational communication between
man and maa.
s:SLAVERY" AGITATION in
FRANCE