The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-04-03

Lifetime.
The name Of Morse has been 80 long among
the great names Of America that it has
had historical significance. And yet, now
that we know the great inventor lies dead, we
feel as il there was wide gap in our national
life. The event We chronicle this morning
makes the day an anniversary. All the COM
| forts and blessings that an earthly existence
can give to the poor breathing body seem to
have fallen to Morse. He lived long after the
appointed time. His years were crowned with
reverence and honor and fortune. He
breathed the incense of that fame that so rarely
| comes to men in their own time. We are told
| that the sunshine Of fame is always followed
by the shadows of envy. 1t was the happy
fortune Of Morse to live into that calm,
| reverential, heaven-tinted twilight of old age,
when even envy departs, and we feel at peace
with our generation and with God.
We can realize how long Morse remained
with us when we look over his life and the
events with which he was contemporaneous.
We speak of Shelley and Byron as we speak Of
Pope and Swift, as men who belonged to q far
distant past. Yet Morse was an older man
than Shelley and but three years younger than
Byron. He was child when the Robespierres
reigned; lad at school before Napoleon won
Marengo q man in the flush and eagerness Of
life before he lost Waterloo. We arc about to
celebrate the centennial anniversary of our
republic, and had Morse lived four years
longer he could have taken part in the re-
joicings as one who had lived under all Of the
Presidents. With his own eyes he has seen
the republic grow from four millions to
forty millions; from being an obscure, strug-
Cling nationality, to be one Of the recognized
Powers of the globe. In our own country he
saw the rise OF slavery, Its triumph it's struggle
and its fall. One after another he has seen
America grapple with the social and political
problems generated in this age of progress,
and solve them and pass trumphantly on to-
wards splendid destiny. While America
has slowly, surely, patiently, grandly moved
on to this destiny, to brightly opening future,
full of duties and opportunities, he has seen
revolution and change upturning the thrones
and traditions Of Europe. If he had any sense
must have had his own thoughts of France, for
instance, with its panorama Of governments
imperial, royal, quasi royal, republican,
and provisional; OF those extraordinary
changes of public opinion which fell from
Napoleon the Great to Napoleon the Little,
from Lamartine and Barras to Gambetta.
And with these ins tructive memories he must
have had strange fears for England, with its
Dixie connections and Bradlaugh demonstra-
tons, and the premonitory rumblings of that
political earthquake which Hawthorne's exqui-
sitely poetical sense fancied he heard In Eng
land, and which even now Is loud enough to
Gil the world.
Morse was, perhaps, the most illustrious
American Of his age. When we come to
measure true greatness how readily we pass
from the confusing, barren echoes of what we
call glory to what we might call usefulness
Looking over the expanse of the ages we think
more earnestly and lovingly of Cadmus, who
gave us the alphabet of Archimedes, who in
vented The lever; of Euclid, with his demon
STATIONS in geo merry of Galileo, who solved
the mysteries Of the stars; Of Faust, who
taught us how to print; of Watt with his de-
velopment Of steam, than Of the resonant ora
tors who inham sd the passions of mankind and
the gallant chiefta ms who led mankind to war;
We decorate history with our Napolcons and
| Wellingtons. But it was better for the world
| that steam was demonstrated to be an active,
| manageable force, than that French Emperor
and his army should win the battle of Austen
litz. We have felt kindly to that philosophy
which saw the co nsummation OF human effort
in the growing of two vines where one had
grown before. For If war is valor and
passion reduced to mathematics how
much better Is peace, which gives
valor and passion the exactness of algebra
and the wide, embracing scope Of love and
reason! "Peace," says Milton, 'hath her vlcto-
ries no less renowned than war;" and when
a Napoleon OF peace, like the dead Morse,
| has passed away, and we come to sum up his
life VIC gladly see that the world Is better,
society more generous and enlarged, and MAN.
kind nearer the ultimate fulilment Of it's
earthly mission, because he lived and did the
work that was In him.
A man like Morse Is creation OF that
philosophy by which Bacon has SO long gov
erned the intellect OF the world. In the same
rank of heroes of p eace we place Franklin, Full
ton and Stephenson. The newer inventions
| by no means dim the lustre Of the old ones.
Steam was the natural precursor of the tele-
graph. We had an agent which had shown
how space could be controlled. Morse gave
us an agency by which time was destroyed. II
General Washington had been Informed that
man of the present time would sit in
his seat while the words Of an inaugural
address were read on the Pacific long before
the President had ceased to deliver ii on the
| Atlantic; il he conld have seen the United