400,000 francs, as an
honorary and personal reward for his labors. In 1856, the telegraph
companies of Great Britain gave him a banquet in London, at which Mr.
William Fothergill Corke, himself the distinguished inventor of a system
of telegraphy, presided.

Professor Morse is also the inventor of submarine telegraphy. In 1842,
he laid the first submarine telegraph line ever put down, across the
harbor of New York, and for this achievement received the gold medal of
the American Institute. On the 10th of August, 1843, he addressed a
communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed his
belief that a telegraphic cable could and would be laid across the
Atlantic ocean, for the purpose of connecting Europe and America. His
words upon this occasion clearly prove that the idea of the Atlantic
telegraph originated with him. They were as follows: "The practical
inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the
electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the
Atlantic ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time
will come when this project will be realized."

In February, 1854, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, ignorant of
Professor Morse's views upon this subject, wrote to him to ask if he
considered the working of a cable across the Atlantic practicable. The
Professor at once sought an interview with Mr. Field, and assured him of
his entire confidence in the undertaking. He entered heartily into Mr.
Field's scheme, and rendered great aid in the noble enterprise which
has been described elsewhere in these pages. He was present at each
attempt to lay the cable, and participated in the final triumph by which
his prediction, made twenty-three years previous, was verified.

Professor Morse is now in his eightieth year. He resides during the
winter in the city of New York, and passes his summers at his beautiful
country seat near Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson. He bears his great honors
with the same modesty which marked his early struggles, and is the
center of a host of friends whom he has attached to himself by the
tenderest ties. "Courage and patience have been his watchwords, and
although the snows of time have bleached his hair, the same intelligence
and enterprising spirit, the same urbane disposition that endeared him
to the friends of his youth, still cause all who know him to rejoice in
the honorable independence which his great invention has secured to