skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The
cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men
of time. Cold and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature
cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in
yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All the
bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more than Mexicos--the secrets of
water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the
chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon, are awaiting you.

The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of war; but right
drainage destroys typhus. The plague in the sea-service from scurvy is
healed by lemon juice and other diets portable or procurable; the
depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended by drainage and
vaccination; and every other pest is not less in the chain of cause and
effect, and may be fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it
commonly extorts some benefits from the vanquished enemy. The mischievous
torrent is taught to drudge for man; the wild beasts he makes useful for
food, or dress, or labor; the chemic explosions are controlled like his
watch. These are now the steeds on which he rides. Man moves in all modes,
by legs of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by
electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own
element. There is nothing he will not make his carrier.

Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. Every pot made
by any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the
enemy, lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But the
Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves that where was
power was not devil, but was God; that it must be availed of, and not by
any means let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so
handily? he was the workman they were in search of. He could be used to
lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far more reluctant and
dangerous, namely, cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance
of water, machinery, and the labors of all men in the world; and time he
shall lengthen, and shorten space.

It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of
the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to
dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of
society--a l