But, as if even these means were too slow for the God-like aspirations, the mighty throes of human thought, and its struggles for light and expansion, man seizes the lightning, tames and subdues it, and makes it the bearer of his thoughts and despatches. While these things are in progress by one portion of mankind, another learns to seize and control a sunbeam, in a manner subservient to the progress of the fine arts: and by which means a man performs in a minute, the work which a short time since would have employed the most active years of a lifetime.

