The one thing was done.  A new era of instantaneous communication between men and communities at a distance the one from the other was opened—­an era which has proved to be an era of light and knowledge.  Nor may we conclude this sketch without noting the fact that, not a few of the members of the House of Representatives who voted the pittance for the construction of the first line of actual working telegraph in the world, went home to their constituents and were ignominiously beaten for re-election—­this this for the slight service which they had rendered to their country and the human race!

When in New York City, turn thou to the west out of Fifth avenue into Twenty-second street, to the distance of, perhaps, ten rods, and there on a little marble slab set in the wall of a house on the north side of the street, read this curious epitaph: 

“In this house lived Professor S.F.B, Morse for thirty years and died!”

THE NEW LIGHT OF MEN.

By the law of nature our existence is divided between daylight and darkness.  There is evermore the alternate baptism into dawn and night.  The division of life is not perfect between sunshine and shadow; for the sunshine bends around the world on both horizons, and lengthens the hemisphere of day by a considerable rim of twilight.  To this reduction of the darkness we must add moonshine and starlight.  But we must also subtract the influence of the clouds and other incidental conditions of obscuration.  After these corrections are made, there is for mankind a great band of deep night, wherein no man can work.  Whoever goes forth at some noon of night, when the sky is wrapped with clouds, must realize the utter dependence of our kind upon the light.  How great is the blessing of that sublime and beautiful fact which the blind Milton apostrophizes in the beginning of the Third Book of Paradise Lost: 

    “Hail, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born! 
    Or of Eternal coeternal beam,
    May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
    And never but in unapproached light
    Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
    Bright effluence of bright essence increate! 
    Or hear’st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
    Whose fountain who shall tell?  Before the sun,
    Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
    Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
    The rising world of waters dark and deep,
    Won from the void and formless infinite.”

How then shall man overcome the darkness?  It is one of the problems of his existence.  He is obliged with each recurring sunset of his life to enter the tunnel of inky darkness and make his way through as best he may to the morning.  What kind of lantern shall he carry as he gropes?