THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.
Who will venture to make catalogue of the possible results of the "Submarine Electric Telegraph?" The more we meditate, the more new wonders open before us. We are running a race with Time; we outstrip the sun, with the round world for the race-course.—Yet, let us not boast: we do not run the race, but that more than a hundred million horse-power invisible to us, which was created with the sun. We are but the atoms involved, and borne about in the secrets of nature. And the secrets—what know we of them?—The facts only of a few of them: the main-springs of their action are, and perhaps ever will be, hidden. The world progresses; it has its infant state, its manhood state, and its old age—in what state are we now? and what is the world's age? Madame de Stael considered it quite in its youth—only fifteen—scarcely responsible! It seems, however, making rapid growth. Is it past the conceited epoch, and now cutting its wise teeth? We stand like spectators at the old fair-show; we see the motley, the ever busy, ever running harlequin and columbine; we are astonished at the fooleries, and are amazed at the wit, the practical wisdom, the magical wand power of the fantastic descendants of Adam and Eve, the masculine, and the feminine; and we laugh to behold the shuffling step of old Grandfather Time, as—
"Panting Time toiled after them in vain."
It is through the agency of mind that a few secrets are disclosed to us, and for our use. We call the recipient and the inventor Genius. It is given, as it is wanted, at the right time, and for the preordained purpose. We are sceptical as to "mute inglorious Miltons." Where the gift is bestowed it is used; and if it appear to be partially used, it is where partially given, that one man may advance one step, his successor another—and thus invention leads to invention. Genius for one thing arises in one age, and sleeps after his deed is done; genius for another thing succeeds him. Who shall dare to limit the number? One thing only we pause to admire—how seldom does the gift fall upon bad men!
There have been, perhaps, those who have had thrown in upon their minds a wondrous vision of things to come, which they were not allowed, themselves, to put forth in manifest action to the world. There have been seers of knowledge; and, perhaps, prophesiers in facts. No one will credit the assertion, therefore we make it not, that thousands of years ago steam was known, and applied to the purposes of life. We call, then, certain records the prophecies of Facts; that is, there was a certain practical knowledge, which in its description is prophetic of a new knowledge to be developed. Semiramis set up a pillar on which it was written, "I, Semiramis, by means of iron made roads over impassable mountains, where no beasts [of burthen] come." Did Semiramis prophecy a railroad—or were there Brunells and Stephensons then? When Homer spake, of the ships of the Phæcians, how they go direct to the place of their venture, "knowing the mind" of the navigator, "covered with cloud and vapour," had the old blind bard a mind's-eye vision of our steam-ships? Many more may be the prophecies of Facts; for in these cases doubtless there were facts, the prophecy being in the telling.
But there have been visions also without facts—that is, without the practical visions of an inward knowledge—wherein nature had given a mirror and bade genius look into it. Friar Bacon's prophecy is an example.
"Bridges," says he, "unsupported by arches, can be made to span the foaming current; man shall descend to the bottom of the ocean safely breathing, and treading with firm step on the golden sands never brightened by the light of day. Call but the secret powers of Sol and Luna into action, and behold a single steersman, sitting at the helm, guiding the vessel which divides the waves with greater rapidity than if she had been filled with a crew of mariners tolling at the oars. And the loaded chariot, no longer encumbered by the panting steeds, darts on its course with relentless force and rapidity. Let the pure and simple elements do thy labour; bind the eternal elements, and yoke them to the same plough."
Here is poetry and philosophy wound together, making a wondrous chain of prophecy. Who shall adventure upon a solution of that golden chain, which the oldest of poets told us descended from heaven to earth, linking them as it were together? Was it an electric fluid in which mind and matter were in indissoluble union?
What prophetic truths may yet be extracted from myth and fable, and come blazing like comets we know not whence, into the world's field! Hermes "the inventor," what is his wand, serpent-twined, and its meaning, brought into vulgar translation, and seen in the buffoonery of harlequinade? of what new power may it not be the poetical prototype? Who shall contemplate the multiplicity of nature's facts, and the myriads of multiplicities in their combination? Knowing that all that has ever been written or spoken, in all languages, is but the combination of a few sounds transferred to the alphabet of twenty-four letters, or even less, are we not lost in the contemplation of the possibilities of the myriads of facts, in their interchangings, combinations, and wonderful dove-tailings?
Perhaps, that we may not know too much before our time, facts are withdrawn from us as others are protruded. Memory may sleep, that invention may awake. Did we know by what machinery Stonehenge was built, we might have rested satisfied with a power inadequate to other and new wants, for which that power might have been no help. Archimedes did that which we cannot do, in order that we might do that which he did not. Who shall lift the veil of possibility?