A sudden thought—a happy hit—we are too apt to call a lucky one. Will it be the worse if we give it a better name, and say it is a gift? The thankfulness implied in gift may make it a blessing. It was no deep study that brought the great improvements into our manufacturing machinery.
The poor boy Arkwright, in a moment of idleness or weariness, thought happily of a cog in the wheel; and that little cog, was to him and his posterity a philosopher's stone; realising the alchemist's hopes, by far more sure experiment than the dealings with "green" and "red lions" and "dragons" for a result never to be reached. How wonderful has been the result, even to the whole world, of that momentary thought—that simple invention!
We have often heard it remarked that this is an age of inventions. It is true: not that the inventive mind was ever wanting. It is a practical age; the necessities of multiplied life make it so. The well-known "century of inventions" of the Marquis of Worcester is a stock not yet exhausted. But to speak of this our age, how can it be otherwise? Not only are material means enlarged by geographical and other discoveries, but the inventive mind is multiplied because mankind are multiplied, whose nature it is to invent. A population—to speak of England, for it is of England we are thinking—of five millions, as it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth, cannot bear comparison with ours of nearer twenty millions. Then, if we enlarge our view, and take in England's transplanted progeny, whose activity and whose advancement in knowledge and science we share, under every facility for the transmission of knowledge, we may fairly speculate upon a very wonderful futurity. The glory of the German dramatist, with his watch, and perhaps, but we forget, his printing-press, (for it ought to be in the play,) is annihilated: the author himself would now stand in the place of his Cæsar or Cicero.
It would be a dream worth dreaming to bring back from his Elysian Fields Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain—he who first discovered that it was an island—to show him his semi-barbarians, whom he so equitably governed, (passing by, however, how far we are, any of us, their descendants.) We will imagine but an hour or two passed with him at the Polytechnic Rooms, to show him enormous iron cables twisted into knots, as if they were pieces of tape—to see vast ponderous masses suspended by magnetism only—to let him look into the wonders of the telescope and the microscope, besides a thousand marvellous things, too numerous and too often enumerated to mention. Nor would it be unamusing to dream that we return with him, and on his way accompany him, summoned to the court of Pluto and Proserpine to narrate the incidents of his sojourn above. We could believe the line of Homer verified, and that we see the grim and sceptical Pluto leap up from his throne in astonishment, and perhaps, as the poet would have it, fear lest our subterranean speculators should break in upon his dominions, and let in the light of our day. We have taken the humblest walk for the "surprise." What if we had accompanied the ex-governor of Britain to the Crystal Palace? That we will not venture upon. But had he continued his narrative of all he saw there, Pluto would have given a look—at which Cerberus would have growled from his triple throats—and that the unlucky narrator might escape the castigation of Rhadamanthus, he would have been ordered a fresh dip in Lethe, as one contaminated, and who had contracted the lying propensities of people in the upper air.
We know not if the wonder in us be not the greater that we have not the slightest pretensions to mechanical knowledge. But we confess that, when we suddenly came upon the mechanical department, and saw the various machinery at work, the world's life and all its business came out vividly upon the canvass of our thought, as the great poetry of nature. Yes, nature rather than art, for art is but the capability of nature in practice. We thought of Sophocles and his chorus of laudation of man—the inventor and the [Greek: pontoporos]—and how impoverished did the Greek seem, how tame and inadequate the description!
Shakspeare is more to the mark. The whole world is scarcely large enough for the exhibition of man's thought and deed, as Shakspeare sees him. There is no small talk of his little doings—how he passes over the seas and bridles the winds. Inimitable Shakspeare omits the doing to show the capacity; makes, for a moment of comparison only, the earth a sterile promontory, and man that is on it himself, and in his own bosom, the ample region of all fertility, in undefined thought and action. "What a piece of work is man!—how noble in reason!—how infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable!—in action how like an angel!—in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" Behold man the inventor!
We have said that the increase of population must necessarily enlarge the stock of inventions, both by new and multiplied demands, and by the added number of inventors. But there is another cause in operation, that is seldom taken into the account—there are not only more millions of human hands to do the work, but there is an artificial working population, if we may call horse-power of steam a population as equivalent to hands.
In this view the working population, or working power, so far exceeds our actual population, that they can scarcely be named together. If it be said, this is not a power of mind, and therefore cannot be said to be inventive; it may be answered, that every instrument is a kind of mind to him who takes it up, improves, and works upon it, and with it: for, after all, it is mind that is operating in it. The man is not to be envied who in heart and understanding is dead to the manifold evolutions of this great workshop of the human brain, who cannot feel the poetry of mechanics. Is it not a creative power?—and is it not at once subjecting and civilising the world? Is not this poetry of mechanics showing also that man has dominion given him over the inert materials, as over other living creatures of the earth? We hail it in all its marvellous doings, as subject for creative dreams, scarcely untrue. Let those who will (and many there be who profess this blindness to the poetry of art and science) see nothing but the tall chimneys and the black smoke. To the imaginative, even the smoke itself becomes an embodied genie, at whose feet the earth opens at command; and they who yield themselves to the spell are conducted, through subterranean ways, to the secret chambers of the treasures of nature; and, by a transition to a more palpable reality, find themselves in a garden covered with crystal, to behold all beauteous things and precious stones for fruit, such as Aladdin saw, and fountains throwing out liquid gems, and fair company, as if brought together by enchantment—and this is the romance of reality. If we write rhapsodically, let the subject be the excuse, for the secrets of nature throw conjecture into the depths of wonder, and thought far out of the conveyance of language.
It was our purpose to speak of the Submarine Telegraph, and it is not surprising if we have in some degree been transported to great distances by its power.
The inventors, Messrs Brett, under every difficulty and discouragement, have at length succeeded. Our greatest engineers for a long while withheld their countenance; practical philosophers denied the probability. The possibility was tested by the first experiment. Fortunately no accident occurred in laying down the wire across the Channel, until communication by means of it had been made between France and England; and even the subsequent accident—the cutting the wire by the fishermen—has only served the good purpose of making more sure the permanent setting up of this extraordinary telegraph. The protection of the wires by the gutta-percha covering is considered perfect; but should it turn out otherwise, it will not affect the certainty of the invention: it must be permanent. A narrative of all the difficulties which beset the inventors, and which have delayed the experiment for years, would be curious. The discouragements and the expenses would have crushed men of less energy. Even at last, in making the cable, there was a disappointment and a hitch, arising from rival companies. We extract from the Times.