106 THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
equally successful completion of her moiety of the work. The mag- 
nitude of the triumph of Science seemed to impress with a solemn 
awe the humblest actors in this great event. The hardy seamen who 
bore the cable to land, knelt together and united their voices in pray- 
erful recognition of a divine and overruling Providence to whose aid 
they ascribed it that their labor had not been in vain; and the Eng- 
lish board—abandoning the cold formalities of a joint-stock company,— 
despatched to the American directory the telegram, memorable in its 
form as in its news:—Hurore AND AMERICA ARE UNITED BY 
TELEGRAPH ; GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, ON EARTH 
PEACE, GOOD WILL TO MEN. 
The great pulse of the empire throbbed in sympathy with that of 
the proud young western nation kindred with itself, and the common 
ancestral blood seemed to kindle anew into generous aspirations, with 
the consciousness that time and space had been annihilated, and 
the broad Atlantic no longer severed them and us from the vital heart 
of Britain’s world-wide empire. Science had her triumph. The 
costly experiment proved beyond all doubt the possibility of laying 
electric wires along the depths of the ocean’s bed, and of transmitting 
the electric current through their vast length of cable. But, that 
accomplished, all waited impatiently—and as it proved, in vain,— 
for the practical working of the wondrous telegraphic line. It had 
uncoiled its voluminous folds, and stretched its mighty length across 
the submarine valleys of the ocean, like some fabled leviathan, only 
to mock us as with an enchanted sleep. The wealth of thousands 
was embarked in the vessels freighted with its folds; the hopes of 
millions were awakened by the calm unheralded announcement of 
its triumph; and the most unimaginative reflected with a glow of 
pleasurable wonder on the noiseless freight of human thought speeding 
on the wings of the lightning through the dark abysses of the ocean. 
But there is, perhaps, something even more calculated to awaken our 
just admiration in the fact that, undaunted by so costly a failure, the 
indomitable enterprise of England has resumed the task, and will 
never rest till her Canadian sons, and her American kin, are united 
with her by this grand electric chain. Inthe expedition which sailed 
in the Bulldog and the Fow for the purpose of resuming this great 
work, Canada also had her representative in Dr. John Rae, a distin- 
guished associate of our own body, who had already been the pioneer 
of Sir Leopold McClintock in the nobler task which he accomplished 
