"I believe, as your worthy chairman has already hinted, that I am probably the first Lieutenant of Ireland who ever appeared upon this lovely strand. At all events, no Lord Lieutenant could have come amongst you on an occasion like the present. Amidst all the pride and the stirring hopes which cluster around the work of this week, we ought still to remember that we must speak with the modesty of those who begin and not of those who close an experiment, and it behooves us to remember that the pathway to great achievements has frequently to be hewn out amidst risks and difficulties, and that preliminary failure is even the law and condition of the ultimate success. Therefore, whatever disappointments may possibly be in store, I must yet insinuate to you that in a cause like this it would be criminal to feel discouragement. In the very design and endeavor to establish the Atlantic Telegraph there is almost enough of glory. It is true if it be only an attempt there would not be quite enough of profit. I hope that will come, too; but there is enough of public spirit, of love for science, for our country, for the human race, almost to suffice in themselves. However, upon this rocky frontlet of Ireland, at all events, to-day we will presume upon success. We are about, either by this sundown or by to-morrow's dawn, to establish a new material link between the Old World and the New. Moral links there have been--links of race, links of commerce, links of friendship, links of literature, links of glory; but this, our new link, instead of superseding and supplanting the old ones, is to give a life and an intensity which they never had before. Highly as I value the reputations of those who have conceived, and those who have contributed to carry out this bright design--and I wish that so many of them had not been unavoidably prevented from being amongst us at this moment[A]--highly as I estimate their reputation, yet I do not compliment them with the idea that they are to efface or dim the glory of that Columbus, who, when the large vessels in the harbor of Cork yesterday weighed their anchors, did so on that very day three hundred and sixty-five years ago--it would have been called in Hebrew writ a year of years--and set sail upon his glorious enterprise of discovery. They, I say, will not dim or efface his glory, but they are now giving the last finish and consummation to his work. Hitherto the inhabitants of the two worlds have associated perhaps in the chilling atmosphere of distance with each other--a sort of bowing distance; but now we can be hand to hand, grasp to grasp, pulse to pulse. The link, which is now to connect us, like the insect in the immortal couplet of our poet: