The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-04-06
The Funeral or Professor Morse.

Amid the genuine sorrow OF a whole people
all that was mortal of Samuel Finley Breese
Morse was yesterday consigned to an honored
tomb among the glades Of Greenwood. The
great, feverish, busy city did not halt in its
ceaseless round OF activity, but over bank.
hotel, warehouse and public Office the Stars
and Stripes hung at half-mast, and, waving
grandy in the April breeze, told, better than il
the mu1led drums were beating in every street.
that the sun had seen its last of the great
electrician now no more. An account of the
moving ceremonies at DR.. Adams church will
be found elsewhere, with note of some
of those who felt happy in honoring
themselves by being present at his
funeral; how some came in carriages
and some afoot and how the poor, mistaken
parsimony Of city officer took off carriage
or two from the funeral cortfge, and how the
great outpouring Of the peoples heart flooded
the parsimony out Of sight. The great ma
terial profit of the life of Morse, and its lesson
of usefulness as precious heritage, remain to
us. Day by day we can enjoy the one and
contemplate the other. 1t is but day or two
since we thought of Professor Morse as an in
ventor who had been well and ftly honored in
the calm eventide Of existence. Now his des-
tiny has been fulfilled and the scroll rolled
up; he has passed into the sphere, not of the
great lives that dazzle us a moment and are
quenched, but of the rare beings who, when
t9s white sl9ads e asath passes between as
and them, vailing them momentarily, next are
seen as bright fixed stars in the armament OF
fame.
He was of the worlds heroes of the peaceful
way-men whom republics should most de-
light to honor, because their object has been
the Improvement of mankind. Well may
nation build up bronze and marble to the
great war captains who in terrible times have
stood like giants between them and annihila-
ton. There is a key Of hot, human passion
to the triumphs Rome heaped on It's soldiers.
There was and is a fierce pride in clarifying
the death-dealing conqueror, whose power
and prowess are reflected back on the people
that produced him, until, from q diffusion of
this spirit by the lapse of time, his memory
burns red planet in the eyes of all the world.
Our hero, Morse, met at the outset with none
of the romantic halo that dances round the
statesman and the general. 1t was struggle
against ridicule and Indifference, but with an
unwavering trust that bore up against it all,
and the true mettle of genius that will assert
itself in the end. AS Calico met with scorn
and persecution, as Hervey was frowned on
by the doctors of his time, Morse was scorned
and frowned on until the world, by plain
demonstration, discovered its mistake and
fastened generously to rectify it.
OF the merit of his discovery and its appli.
cation we need not 60 into details. The In
ventor of the telegraph first made articulate
the deep-pervading electricity Of the rock
breasted earth. This will be his claim to last
ing remembrance. We need not, then, be-
come transcendental in his praise the simple
record speaks volumes. His true monument
will be in the hearts of his countrymen and
wherever the tinkle and click of the Morse in
strument serves as a vehicle over immense
distances for the transmission of thought. Not
the least claim of Franklin to grateful memory
are his essays to fathom the depths of the
mysterious power that was the raw material on
which Morse labored to construct his tele-
graph-a power whose essence and influence,
subtle and intangible, we have not yet
mastered any more than we have
learned the full secret of the old
rocks in whose bosoms it had 80
long lain buried and silent. But, incomplete
as our knowledge may be, we can look back
with self-gratulation to the not distant time
when it's sole sign to man for untold ages was
the lightning fash and thunderbolt that
taught only lesson of terror in the unknown
physical power that toppled mans hsbitations,
shivered and splintered the mighty trees Of the
forest and wiped out in an instant the life of
the living beings whom it touched in its lurid
visitation. These are some of the thoughts
that will rise when the name of Morse is
mentioned.
But as Americans we feel greater and
more direct pride in him. He was man OF
whom no carping history maker of the future
shall say that it is time to ding the cloak OF
adulation from abont him and make visible
the deformties hidden through the decency
of his contemporaries out of that immemorial
courtesy to the newly dead which comes
to us crystallised in Latin epgram.
As the mortal remains Of Professor
Morse were laid to earth, amid the SYM
pathy and sorrow of mighty nation,
in the full hope of glorious resurrection, so
we can commit his name aud fame to pos
terity in the certainty that neither critical
malice nor heart-eating envy can ever remove
or tarnish one leaf Of the cypress-twined olive
crown that garlands his memory to-day. or
the lesson of usefulness Of his life we have
spoken more than once since the venerable
head, silvered with its fourscorc years, first
felt the Death Angels gentle touch on its mas
sive brow, but we cannot end our heartfelt