"Without saying any thing to detract from my deep gratitude to the other Directors, I cannot help especially alluding to Mr. Cyrus Field, who is present to-day, and who has crossed the Atlantic thirty-one times in the service of this Company, having celebrated at his table yesterday the anniversary of the tenth year of the day when he first left Boston in the service of the Company. Collected round his table last night was a company of distinguished men--members of Parliament, great capitalists, distinguished merchants and manufacturers, engineers and men of science, such as is rarely found together even in the highest house in this great metropolis. It was very agreeable to see an American citizen so surrounded. It was still more gratifying, inasmuch as we were there to celebrate the approaching accomplishment of the Atlantic Telegraph." This was a congratulation on an escape from death, for their cherished scheme had just passed through a critical period of its history. The enterprise had been in great danger of abandonment--at least for years, a peril from which it had been rescued only by the most prompt and vigorous effort. Thus after infinite toil, the wreck of old disasters was cleared away, and the mighty task begun anew. The works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company were the largest in the world, and all their resources were now put in requisition. Never did greater care preside over a public enterprise. It was a case in which the motive of interest was seconded or overborne by pride and ambition. A cable was to be made to span the Atlantic Ocean, and to join the hemispheres; and they were determined to produce a work that should be as nearly perfect as human skill could make it. The Scientific Committee, that had so long investigated the subject, had approved a particular form of cable, as "the one most calculated to insure success in the present state of our experimental knowledge respecting deep-sea cables," but at the same time recommended the utmost vigilance at every stage of the manufacture. These precautions deserve to be noted, as showing with what jealous care science watches over the birth of a great enterprise, and prescribes the conditions of success. They recommended: