The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1858-11-10

were the days when the great Intelligence
and the great Power, second to but one
had not come. The sway Of force,
and afterward the reign Of Priestcraft and
Fanatacism lasted through centuries. In
that dreary time, the great mind of the
world was as the earth before the crea-
ton; it hung chaotic in space, without
form and void" There was no great
thought separated from matter. The
dark horrors of the Inquistion rested as
heavily upon the head and the tongue as
they did upon the hand and the foot
The rack and wheel were not fashioned
SO much to break the body as the brain ;
and the fire was built around the stake,
not to destroy poor flesh and blood, which
were perishable and would soon resolve
themselves back into clay to the harm of
nobody, but to annihilate that freedom of
thought which taking root and growing,
would never die.
Men felt intelligence then only as we
know the wonderful lightnings now. We
see and feel their grand and mysterious
power; we know that the principle of
electricity impercolates everything, and
we almost fall down and worship it rs an
unseen power upon which hangs each
moment of our existence; but we know
it not: we only hope that the drifting
away of some great cloud, which now
hangs like an impenetrable curtain be-
tween it and u, shall, ere long, let us
look in upon its mystery. So the plod-
ding masses of the olden time waited pa,
tientIy for the unfolding of that great
principle which even then pcryaded all
things-whieh they felt within them as
something that foreboded a greater dos
tiny; and they looked up with fear and
hopefulness to the rending of that vail
which was hung before the Temple of
Thought.
1t is remarkable that all great inven-
tons spring upon the world in almost
perfection. The Telegraph was as eapa-
be of practical Use the day when Morse
set it in operation as now, when it has
become an institution Of all enlightened
lands. The st am engine may have been
modified and improved, but it turned the
VIII ael as powerfully then as now, and the
fashioning of lcttered blocks, by two men
of low degree, in an obscure German
town, towards the close of the fourteenth
century, ushereI into the world, full
grown and perfect the cart preseryatiye
of arts" Guttenburg and Faust, the
high priests Of knowledge, tore away, at
one grasp, the black mantle of supcrsti-
ton, aud let in upon the world the sun
rays of the Press. Good said let there
be light, and there was light He who,
with His own hands, rolled up the sun
above the dark waters of this chaotic
earth, brought no more sudden and un-
failing light than he ushered into exist
ence through the hands of those two
lowly men, His ministers. 1t was fitting,
therefore, t. at this "Divine art should
be christened by Religion-that its first
use should be the production, complete, of
the Sacred Book, the pattern of all books,
the perfection of composition, the model
of literature, the groundwork of all laws,
the teacher of political economy, and the
Pierian Spring at hose depths of ge-
MUS all the greatest and best writer's have
drank so deeply.
We need not follow, from the begin
ming, the progress of the types and the
press up to this day. Time will not per-
nit, and there are few in this audience
who are not familiar with their progress.
We can all look back and catch sight of
those grand headlands which jut out in
the history of the Press. There are Gut
tonburg and Faust in the dim distance !;
their sharp angular, Teutonic profiles
will never be forgotten. There was Cax-
ton, who brought the art to England
the gentleman of letters, as well as the
proficient in mechanism. There was
Lord Stanhopc, who introduced iron
presses; and Clarendon, whose name We
have given to one of our handsomest
types. There were Robert Stephens.
Grafton, Copeland, Plantin, the Frobens
of Germany, and the Adj of Italy. We
cannot count them all. Nearer, upon
our own shores. the eye falls upon the
patron saint of the American press, Ben
iamin Franklin, the Printer, the States
man, the Philosophcr,-who, with Ste
phen Day, Bradford, and few others, SCI
up on these shores those presses whose
progeny has overrun the whole land, AM