Here it is, for which I had a very complimentary and grateful note from "Samuel F.B. Morse, as an ardent admirer," &c. As never in print till now, I trust it will be acceptable to my readers. Mr. Morse's published speech was religiously high-minded and true-hearted, as indicated in the sonnet.
_To Professor Morse, in pleasant memory of October 10, 1856, at the Albion._
"A good and generous spirit ruled the hour; Old jealousies were drowned in brotherhood, Philanthropy rejoiced that skill and power, Servants to science, compass all men's good; And over all Religion's banner stood, Upheld by _thee_, true Patriarch of the plan Which in two hemispheres was schemed to shower Mercies from God on universal man. Yes, this electric chain from East to West More than mere metal, more than Mammon can, Binds us together kinsmen, in the best As most affectionate and frankest bond, Brethren at one, and looking far beyond The world in an electric union blest."
There is an extinct pamphlet, now before me, published by Routledge in 1860, entitled "The Rifle Movement Foreshown in Prose and Verse from 1848 to the Present Time,"--from my pen,--which proves that, in conjunction with my friend Evelyn and a few others, I may justly claim to have originated that cheap defence of England, at Albury, more than a dozen years before it was thought of anywhere by any one else. Take the trouble to read the following longish extract from the fifth edition of the above, and please not to omit the leash of ballads wherewith it ends.
"And now, next, about this Rifle pamphlet. Every page carries its date honestly, and several very curiously. In some of the editions there appears a rifle ballad of mine, written in 1845, and published in 1846 (in the first issue of my Ballads and Poems--Hall & Virtue) with the strange title "Rise Britannia, _a Stirring Song for Patriots in the Year 1860_:" an anticipation by fourteen years of the actual date of the Rifle Movement. In all the editions, the papers on 'Cheap Security' (being Talks between Naaman Muff (a Quaker), Till (a commercial gent), Dolt (a philanthropist), Funker (an ordinary unwarlike paterfamilias), and a certain Tom Wydeawake (patriotic but peculiar)) contain detailed allusions, though written several years before any definite existence, to the National Rifle Association, and to exactly such annual prize gatherings of riflemen as those at Wimbledon Common and Brighton Downs, and this latest at Blackheath. The discouragements of Tom Wydeawake and his few compeers were remarkable. He himself might fairly have claimed the honours of origination, discussed some two or three years ago, but he left them to others--_Sic vos non vobis_, &c."