who invented the lever;
of Euclid, with his demonstrations in geometry; of Faust, who taught us
how to print; of Watt, with his development of steam, than of the
resonant orators who inflamed the passions of mankind, and the gallant
chieftains who led mankind to war. We decorate history with our Napoleons
and Wellingtons, but it was better for the world that steam was
demonstrated to be an active, manageable force, than that a French
Emperor and his army should win the battle of Austerlitz. And when a
Napoleon of peace, like the dead Morse, has passed away, and we come to
sum up his life, we gladly see that the world is better, society more
generous and enlarged, and mankind nearer the ultimate fulfillment of its
earthly mission because he lived; and did the work that was in him."

The Louisville "Courier-Journal" went even higher in its praise:--

"If it is legitimate to measure a man by the magnitude of his
achievements, the greatest man of the nineteenth century is dead. Some
days ago the electric current brought us the intelligence that S.F.B.
Morse was smitten with, paralysis. Since then it has brought us the
bulletins of his condition as promptly as if we had been living in the
same square, entertaining us with hopes which the mournful sequel has
proven to be delusive, for the magic wires have just thrilled with the
tidings to all nations that the father of telegraphy has passed to the
eternal world. Almost as quietly as the all-seeing eye saw the soul
depart from that venerable form, mortal men, thousands of miles distant,
are apprised of the same fact by the swift messenger which he won from
the unknown--speaking, as it goes around its world-wide circuit, in all
the languages of earth.

"Professor Morse took no royal road to this discovery. Indeed it is never
a characteristic of genius to seek such roads. He was dependent,
necessarily, upon facts and principles brought to light by similar
diligent, patient minds which had gone before him. Volta, Galvani,
Morcel, Grove, Faraday, Franklin, and a host of others had laid a basis
of laws and theories upon which he humbly and reverently mounted and
arranged his great problem for the hoped-for solution. But to him was
reserved the sole, undivided glory of discovering the priceless gem,
'richer than all its tribe,' which lay just beneath the surface, and
around which so many _savans_ had blindly groped.

"He is dead, but his mission was fully completed. It has been