A Girdle Round the Earth.
THE following interesting article is from the N. Y. Independent, of April 6. It shows the mighty achievements of science which will probably be realized in 1865, in connecting the eastern and western hemispheres by telegraph, both by an eastern and a western rout, thus encircling the globe with the electric wire, and sending the lightning on its mission of intelligence around the world. It also shows how readily such events are impressed into the service of the popular delusion respecting the universal spread of peace and Christianity. The telegraph poles, says the writer, will stand like so many sentinels "to repress disturbance." Here is the peace side of the prospect. And in another place he adds that religion with other things "will naturally cluster about the track of the magnetic intelligence." This is the religious side. But it will take something more than telegraphic poles and telegraphic dispatches, to maintain peace and establish Christianity in all the earth. Men have tried for 6000 years to reform the world by such illegitimate means; but the means are not adapted to the end, and will not accomplish it. So long as the world neglects or resists the means that God has ordained to purify the heart, and so work true reformation in the earth, its progress will be downward and not upward. Nevertheless the popular hope runs in the channel that is set forth as follows: EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE may claim in its last moments to have done something memorable for the liberty, equality, and fraternity of the human race. Foremost of its achievements will be reckoned the overthrow of slavery in America, and the vindication of republicanism—the beginning of the abolition of all servitude, and the subversion of every throne. The reign of a true peace will have been inaugurated, for revolutions which uproot the ancient wrong are processes in the universal pacification—most perfect when the laws of God are most exactly obeyed. Especially will a good understanding among the nations have been promoted by the telegraphic circling of the globe, and the establishment of daily intercourse throughout the northern belt of civilization. The continents will clasp hands under the seas by cable, and the wire-bearing poles that stalk across the land like so many gendarmes, will report and repress disturbance along their beat. This is not speculation. A telegram which started from Bombay in India on the 3d of February, was received in this city by steamer on the 21st. By July next the Atlantic telegraph is expected to be laid, and Calcutta can then converse directly with San Francisco. Before the expiration of the year, it is probable the Russian overland telegraph to the Pacific will have been completed, and India and China united, so that the round of intelligence will be without a break, even if the material circuit be wanting. Meanwhile, however, a line is creeping northward from California toward Behring's Straits, and a cable to China via the Sandwich Islands is contemplated. The Southern hemisphere presents peculiar facilities for telegraphic connection whenever it shall seem remunerative, and the time may well come when Napoleon, if he were to revisit St. Helena, would find it a station between South Africa and Brazil, and might send a message to his ancient capital. Recent files of the London papers describe at length the operation of laying the final link in the chain of Indian communication. The problem was in effect to sink a thousand miles of cable from the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the muddy delta of the Euphrates and Tigris at its head. This was accomplished, of course, under British auspices, and seems to have been a trying and a gallant performance. A telegram from Calcutta has already traveled in twelve hours to London, and a higher degree of efficiency is expected, with a little experience on the part of the operators. It is curious to trace the line from the Gulf, running thence as it does to Bagdad, through Mesopotamia and deserted Nineveh to Aleppo, and thence to Constantinople. Hannibal would not be more astonished at being treated to a ride on the proposed railway over and under the Alps, than would the despots of Babylon at talking with the world's ends from their sumptuous palaces. Fancy Artaxerxes telegraphing to his satraps in Ionia, the defeat of his brother Cyrus at Cunaxa; or Xenophon announcing to the Spartan harmost at Byzantium, the safe arrival of his command at Trebizonde! To have extended a telegraph successfully through a barbarous country is a triumph which augurs well for the future of the tribes through which it passes. Religion, letters, the arts, and traffic will naturally cluster about the track of the magnetic intelligence, and a singular chapter be opened up in colonization and the mixture of races. Explorations of the venerable ruins which are so tempting to our research will be rendered more feasible, and the cosmopolitan tourist will devise new paths for his wandering footsteps. Yet for the present, it must be confessed, the bond between England and her colony is precarious, and neither she nor mankind will be satisfied till many lines insure perpetual interchange. When we shall have become accustomed to read at breakfast, advices from all quarters of the globe, we shall ill endure to learn that by the snapping of a wire, some land that was158yesterday at our doors has been suddenly thrust back into its primitive remoteness; nor shall we grumble less at losing the market reports from the coast of China, because of wars which are devoid of principle, even though they be waged in the interest of trade. The filaments must multiply till ignorance can find no corner where she may rest undisturbed, and until the brotherhood of man is wrought in an unfading texture upon the loom of time.