Samuel Finley Breese Morse

“ I do not speak of portrait-painters; had I no higher thoughts than being a first-rate portrait-painter, I would have chosen a far different profession. My ambition is to be among those who shall revive the splendor of the fifteenth century; to rival the genius of a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or a Titian; my ambition is to be enlisted in the constellation of genius now rising in this country; I wish to shine, not by a light borrowed from them, but to strive to shine the brightest. ”

“ SIR,—It is with lively satisfaction that I have the honor to announce to you that a sum of four hundred thousand francs will be remitted to you, in four annuities, in the name of France, of Austria, of Belgium, of the Netherlands, of Piedmont, of Russia, of the Holy See, of Sweden, of Tuscany and of Turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward, altogether personal, of your useful labors. Nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited. ”

“ Had I commenced a letter with the French Hélas! hélas! it would have been no more than might reasonably have been expected considering the desolate situation of New Haven and the gloomy prospects before me. But for you, who are in the very vortex of fashionable life and surrounded by the amusements and bustle of the metropolis of New England, for you to exclaim, "How lonely I am!" is unpardonable, or at most admits of but one excuse, to wit, that you can plead the feelings of the youth who exclaimed, "Gods annihilate both time and space and make two lovers happy!" ”

“ Yet the love of art still lives in some inner corner of his heart, and I know he can never enter the studio of a painter and see the artist silently bringing from the canvas forms of life and beauty, but he feels a tender twinge, as one who catches a glimpse of the beautiful girl he loved in his youth whom another has snatched away. ”

“ I say I have been listening to these miserly beings till the idea did not seem so repugnant of lowering my noble art to a trade, of painting for money, of degrading myself and the soul-enlarging art which I possess, to the narrow idea of merely getting money.
Fie on myself! I am ashamed of myself; no, never will I degrade myself by making a trade of a profession. If I cannot live a gentleman, I will starve a gentleman. ”

“ Yet in tracing the birth and pedigree of the modern Telegraph, 'American' is not the highest term of the series that connects the past with the present; there is at least one higher term, the highest of all, which cannot and must not be ignored. If not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of infinite wisdom, can the creation of an instrumentality so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the Father of every good and perfect gift? ”

“ No, I have made the sacrifice of my profession to establish an invention which is doing mankind a great service. I pursued it long enough to found an institution which, I trust, is to flourish long after I am gone, and be the means of educating a noble class of men in Art, to be an honor and praise to our beloved country when peace shall once more bless us throughout all our borders in one grand brotherhood of States. ”

“ We should not be Americans if we did not sympathize with them, nor can we compromise one of these principles and preserve our self-respect as loyal American citizens. They are the principles of order and good government, of obedience to law; the principles which, under Providence, have made our country unparalleled in prosperity; principles which rest, not in visionary theory, but are made palpable by the sure test of experiment and time. ”

“ It has been no man's fortune to leave behind him a more magnificent legacy to earth, or a more absolute title to a glorious immortality. To the honor of being one of the most distinguished benefactors of the human race, he added the personal and social graces and virtues of a true gentleman and a Christian philosopher; The memory of his private worth will be kept green amid the immortals of sorrowing friendship for a lifetime only, but his life monument will endure among men as long as the human race exists upon earth. ”

“ I will mention only a few of the principles upon which I found my judgment. Genius in both these arts is the power of making impressions. The question then is: which is capable of making the strongest impression; which can impress upon the mind most strongly a sublime or a beautiful idea? Does the sublimest passage in Milton excite a stronger sensation in the mind of a man of taste than the sublimest painting of Michael Angelo? Or, to make the parallel more complete, does Michael Angelo convey to you a stronger impression of the Last Judgment, by his painting, than Milton could by his poetry? ”

“ Again, for the second time in the history of the world, the power of language is increased by human agency. Thanks to Samuel F.B. Morse men speak to one another now, though separated by the width of the earth, with the lightning's speed and as if standing face to face. If the inventor of the alphabet be deserving of the highest honors, so is he whose great achievement marks this epoch in the history of language—the inventor of the Electric Telegraph. We intend, so far as in us lies, that the men who come after us shall be at no loss to discover his name for want of recorded testimony. ”

“ The Telegraph has now assumed such a marvellous position in human affairs throughout the world, its influences are so great and important in all the varied concerns of nations, that its efficient protection from injury has become a necessity. It is a powerful advocate for universal peace. Not that of itself it can command a 'Peace, be still!' to the angry waves of human passions, but that, by its rapid interchange of thought and opinion, it gives the opportunity of explanations to acts and to laws which, in their ordinary wording, often create doubt and suspicion. ”

“ The name of Morse will always stand in the foremost rank of the great inventors, each of whom has changed the face of society and given a new direction to the growth of civilization by the application to the arts of one great thought. It will always be read side by side with those of Gutenberg and Schoeffer, or Watt and Fulton. This eminence he fairly earned by one splendid invention. But none who knew the man will be satisfied to let this world-wide and forever growing monument be the sole record of his greatness. ”

“ A period of prosperity and happiness in the life of a man or of a nation is almost invariably followed by calamities, small or great; but, fortunately for individuals and for nations, the converse is also true. The creeping pendulum of fate, pausing for an instant at its highest point, dips down again to gather impetus for a higher swing.
And so it was with Morse. Fate was preparing for him a heavy blow, one of the tragedies of his eventful life, and, in order to hearten him for the trial, to give him strength to bear up under it, she cheered his professional path with the sun of prosperity. ”

“ What do you think of sparing me for about one year to visit Paris and Rome to finish what I began when in Europe before? My education as a painter is incomplete without it, and the time is rapidly going away when my age will render it impossible to profit by such studies, even if I should be able, at a future time, to visit Europe again.... I can, perhaps, leave my dear little ones at their age better than if they were more advanced, and, as my views are ultimately to benefit them, I think no one will accuse me of neglecting them. If they do, they know but little of my feelings towards them. ”

“ To another name of another generation, yet of the same proud national nativity, the glory has been reserved of having first taught mankind to reach even beyond the results of Franklin, and to subdue in a modified state, into the familiar and practical uses of a household servant who runs at his master's bidding, this same once frightful and tremendous element. Indeed the great work of science which Franklin commenced for the protection of man, you have most triumphantly subdued to his convenience. ”

“ Among the heroes whose names shall be inscribed upon the broad base of American Independence and Glory, the names of the heroes of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain will be recognized as brilliant and every way worthy; and it will hereafter be said that the example and exertions of New York have saved the nation.... What becomes of Massachusetts now and its sage politicians? Oh! shut the picture; I cannot bear the contrast. Like a dead carcass she hangs upon the living spirit which animates the heart, and she impedes its motions. ”

“ In Philadelphia I am happy to find they have successfully begun. I wish Americans would unite in the thing, throw aside local prejudices and give their support to one institution. Let it be in Philadelphia, since it is so happily begun there, and let every American feel a pride in supporting that institution; let it be a national not a city institution. Then might the arts be so encouraged that Americans might remain at home and not, as at present, be under the painful necessity of exiling themselves from their country and their friends. ”

“ It was natural that a keen business man like F.O.J. Smith should have leaned rather toward a private corporation, with its possibilities of great pecuniary gain, than toward government ownership. Morse, on the contrary, would have preferred, both at home and abroad, to place the great power which he knew his invention was destined to wield in the hands of a responsible government. However, so eager was he to make a practical test of the telegraph that, governments apparently not appreciating their great opportunity, he was willing to entrust the enterprise to capitalists. ”

“ He had the misfortune to incur the hostility of men who would deprive him of his merit and the reward of his labors. But this is the common fate of great inventors. He lived until his rights were vindicated by every tribunal to which they could be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized nations, and he died leaving to his children a spotless and illustrious name, and to his country the honor of having given birth to the only Electro-Magnetic Recording Telegraph whose line is gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world. ”

“ Every sheaf of wires laid down in the deep sea, occupying the bottom of soundless abysses to which human sight has never penetrated, and carrying the electric pulse, charged with the burden of human thought, from continent to continent, from the Old World to the New, is a testimonial to his greatness.... ”

“ It is flimsy and misty, and, as to color, the quality to which I was specially directed, if total disregard of arrangement, if the scattering of tawdry reds and blues and yellows over the picture, all quarrelling for the precedence; if leather complexions varied by those of chalk, without truth or depth or tone, constitute good color, then are they finely colored. But, if Landi is a colorist, then are Titian and Veronese never more to be admired. In short, I have never met with the works of an artist who had a name like Landi's so utterly destitute of even the shadow of merit. ”

“ In early May, Morse, in company with other artists, went on a sketching trip to Tivoli, Subiaco, Vico, and Vara. This must have been one of the happiest periods of his life. He was in Italy, the cradle of the art he loved; he was surrounded by beauty, both natural and that wrought by the hand of man; he had daily intercourse with congenial souls, and home, with its cares and struggles, seemed far away. His notebooks are largely filled with simple descriptions of the places visited, but now and then he indulges in rhapsody. ”

“ We have no aristocratic grades, no titles of nobility, no ribbons, and garters, and crosses, and other gewgaws that please the great babies of Europe; are we, therefore, to take rank below or above them? I say above them, and I hope that every American who comes abroad will feel that he is bound, for his country's sake, to take that stand. I don't mean ostentatiously, or offensively, or obtrusively, but he ought to have an American self-respect.
"There can be no condescension to an American. An American gentleman is equal to any title or rank in Europe, kings and emperors not excepted. ”

“ It has always seemed a mystery to me how I should have been led on to the acquirement of the knowledge I possess of painting, with so much sacrifice of time and money, and through so many anxieties and perplexities, and then suddenly be stopped as if a wall were built across my path, so that I could pursue my profession no longer. ”

“ Portraits have none of it; landscape has some of it, but history has it wholly. I am certain you would not be satisfied to see me sit down quietly, spending my time in painting portraits, throwing away the talents which Heaven has given me for the higher branches of art, and devoting my time only to the inferior.
"I need not tell you what a difficult profession I have undertaken. It has difficulties in itself which are sufficient to deter any man who has not firmness enough to go through with it at all hazards, without meeting with any obstacles aside from it. ”

“ The beginnings of every great invention have been clumsy and uncouth compared with the results attained by years of study and elaboration participated in by many clever brains. Contrast the Clermont of Fulton with the floating palaces of the present day, the Rocket of Stephenson with the powerful locomotives of our mile-a-minute fliers, and the hand-press of Gutenberg with the marvellous and intricate Hoe presses of modern times. ”