She has revolutionized naval warfare once by the steamboat. She has
revolutionized it a second time by planting towers of iron on the
elephantine backs of the waves. She has invented the sewing-machine to
save the dainty fingers of your virtuous grisettes from uncongenial
toil, so that Fifine and Fretillon may have more leisure for
self-development. She has taught you a whole new system of labor in her
machinery for making watches and rifles. She has bestowed upon you and
all the world an anodyne which enables you to cut arms and legs off
without hurting the patient; and when his leg is off, she has given you
a true artist's limb for your cripple to walk upon, instead of the peg
on which he has stumped from the days of Guy de Chauliac to those of M.
Nelaton. She has been contriving well-shaped boots and shoes for the
very people who, if they were your countrymen, would be clumping about
in wooden _sabots_. In works of scientific industry, hardly to be looked
for among so new a people she has distanced your best artificers. The
microscopes made at Canastota, in the backwoods of New York, look in
vain for their rivals in Paris, and must challenge the best workmanship
of London before they can be approached in excellence. The great eye
that stares into the celestial spaces from its workshop in Cambridge,
dives deeper through their clouds of silvery dust than any instrument
mounted in your observatory in face of the Luxembourg.
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