States in prophecy, "Go back fifty years, and the world, with respect to those things which tend to domestic convenience and comfort, and the means of illumination and the production and application of heat, and the performance of various household operations, with respect to the methods of rapid locomotion from place to place, and the transmission of intelligence from point to point, stood about where it did in the days of the patriarchs. Suddenly, the waters of that long stream, over whose drowsy surface scarcely a ripple of improvement had passed for three thousand years, broke into the white foam of violent agitation. The world awoke from the slumber and darkness of ages. The divine finger lifted the seal from the prophetic books and brought the predicted time, when many would run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased."
Sir Edward Thornton, the British Minister Plenipotentiary to this country, in his address at the opening of our Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, referring to the exhibition in London in 1851, said: "We exhibited pottery
