The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1872-04-12

[St Louis Republican,


Were WILLIAM of Germany or
VICTORIA of England dead to-day,
the streets of great capital would
be thronged with mourning multi
tudes, the air would rock with the
reverberations of thunderous minute
guns, and stricken nation abandon
itself to all the pomp snd circum-
stances of majestic woe. Under
quiet roof tree in New York, sur
rounded by a little company of
weeping relatives and friends, a
plain, untitled old man lies in his
coffin. No crowds will gather in the
metropolis because he has gone; no
ud-mouthed artillery will vex the
heavens in his behalf; no funeral
garments will drape the land for his
sake-but centuries after the emper-
or and the queen are forgotten amid
vortex of revolutions, the name of
that old man will shine in letters of
living light and his memory, radiant
with the house of eternal youth, be
cherished and honored throughout
the habitable globe.
Looking at this coffin, what a
wealth of meaning and of truth there
is in MILToN's SPLENDID and familiar
lme-"Peace hath her victories no
less renowned than warp What
victories won on our blood-stained
planet, from the instant it launched
into space until the present hour, can
compare with that unsullied triumph
of mind over matter whose author is
sleeping his last sleep? What laurel
that ever circled human brows, can
match in unfading freshness the SIM
pie garland of glory which nestles
under the gray hair of him who will
soon rest beneath the grass and flow
ers of dawning spring? What hero
of the camp, what minister of kings,
what master of gold, what favorite of
fleeing fortune, has such sure her.
itage of vast immortality as this
modest, unpretending citizen whose
inventive genius has harnessed the
lightniugs to the car of thought, and
sent it abroad in the world to sweep
onward in endless circuit forever and
forever? Even literary fame, the
most deathless of all, is overshadow-
ed by his for books are more or less
limited to the confines Of a single
language, and their voices reaches
only the intelligent ear-but the
miraculous machine born from his
brain, speaks in every language, and
forces knowledge into the dullest
mind. Never while earth remains
the habitation of the human race,
can the achievements Of him who
gave to electricity soul and an ut
terance, be suffered to lapse into I'M
generous oblivion. He needs no
shaft of sculptured marble, no monu-
ment of artistic bronze, no "storied
urn or animated bust" to rescue him
from the clutch of devouripg time
these Geographic columns which the
daily press builds each morning and
evening, will secure for him grateful
remembrance when the arch of IT,
TUs shall have gone back to dust,
and the stones of the Pyramids are
dissolved into the sands of the desert.
II seems, too, as it Providence had
made MORSE the recipient of its
supremest favors. Other inventors
have been chilled and discouraged by
the rebuffs of the ignorant and pre-
JUDGED, and died without witness
ing the accomplishment of their al
bors others still have been robbed
of the credit which belonged to them
by INSCRIPTIONS rivals, and died in
poverty and despair-but his cup
has been filled to the brim with tie
wine of the gods. He has lived to
see the wonderons wire which first
throbbed to his touch, stretching
across continents and under oceans,
and building all peoples together in
a common brotherhood of mutual in
telligence; he has received the recog-
milton and reward of every civilized
nation, and in the fulness OF his years
and the consummation of his honors,
he has gone down to the grave leav- |
ing no spot to tarnish the lustre Of q |
noble reputation. Death to him is
simply an apotheosis.