A.D. 1866.]

blue mist, thus described by Mr. Glaisher, the meteorologist, writing on the 30th July:-" On looking from the grounds of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, under the trees towards the boundary walls of the park, I saw the same dense blue mist, which has continued without intermission to the present time, though somewhat less in density this morning. Ordinary mists pass away when the wind blows with a pressure of half a pound on the square foot. Since last Monday we have had pressure of the wind varying from a quarter of a pound to nine pounds, blowing continually for from sixty to seventy hours, yet there has been no change in this blue appearance. I have examined the atmosphere daily for this blueness, particularly during the last twelve months, and have never seen anything like it since 1854. This blue mist is apparent on all sides; it extends fully to the tops of the trees, though it is not then so easy to distinguish. It is most easily discernible through as much atmosphere as possible, viewed from under a tree, looking under other trees. Thus seen, the boundary walls of Greenwich Park, and all objects near them are coloured blue; or through gaps in trees, if there are others at a sufficient distance to form a background, when it resembles thin smoke from a wood fire. The intensity of the blue is increased when seen through a telescope with a low power. . . . The only other tint of mist I know connected with the prevalence of epidemic is that of a yellow mist, perceptible in like manner when scarlatina is prevalent; in neither case is there any excess of humidity in the air."

The disease kept extending itself as the summer advanced, until it reached its culminating point in the fortnight between the 21st of July and the 4th of August; in the week ending on the last-named day 1,053 deaths from cholera were reported in London. Then all at once it began to subside, and before the month of August had passed, the Lord Mayor was enabled to suggest a large appropriation of the funds which had been liberally subscribed by charitable persons (the Queen sent £500) for the formation and support of cholera hospitals, to the assistance of those who had been left orphans by the epidemic.

The enterprise of laying an insulated electric cable at the bottom of the Atlantic, in order to secure instantaneous telegraphic communication between Europe and America -first attempted in 1857, crowned with a fleeting and illusory success in 1858, and partially accomplished in 1865-was in the summer of this year completely realised, not only by the successful laying of the cable of 1866, but by the recovery from the bottom of the sea of the cable of 1865, which was then pieced on to a new wire rope, and carried safely onward to the shore of Newfoundland. A brief survey of the previous unsuccessful attempts will not be uninstructive. In the first, that of 1857, the cable was of a clumsy and ponderous description, if compared with the lighter and relatively stronger ropes afterwards adopted. Two men-of-war, the Agamemnon and the Niagara, composed the expedition; the Niagara paying out the cable. When 380 miles had been paid out, the cable broke, and the ships returned to port. In 1858, the

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same ships were employed, and a new plan was tried. The ships proceeded to the middle of the Atlantic, each with 1,500 miles of cable on board; here they effected a splice of the two ends of their respective cargoes, and proceeded in different directions, the Agamemnon to the eastward, the Niagara to the westward, paying out as they went. Even to the uninitiated this plan would appear to expose the cable to a needless amount of additional strain, and therefore to increase the risk of fracture. Twice the cable broke after less than fifty miles had been paid out; each time the vessels retraced their course, found each other on the waste of waters, effected a fresh splice, and went on paying out as before. A third time the cable broke, when about 140 miles had been submerged; a third time the vessels returned to the watery rendezvous, but they now failed to meet, and each returned separately to Queenstown. A fourth attempt, at the end of July, was more successful; though the signalling was repeatedly interrupted during the paying-out process, the cable did not actually break, and the end was supposed to have been accomplished. The Niagara brought her end to Trinity Bay on the 5th August, and on the same day the Agamemnon brought hers to Valentia. Messages of congratulation were interchanged between the Queen and the President of the United States (Mr. Buchanan), and for a short time there was great exultation. But a suspiciously great expenditure of electricity was required on one side of the ocean in order to affect the instrument on the other, and the movements of the needle continually became more like those which are produced by the normal electric currents that course through land and sea—“ -“opis haud indiga nostræ." The indications became feebler and feebler, and before any commercial use had been made of the cable, they ceased entirely.

Great disappointment was felt in both continents, and for some years no fresh attempt was made. In 1864, a new company was formed, under the auspices of which a new cable was manufactured on a simpler and better plan, and in July, 1865, the Great Eastern, accompanied by the Sphynx and the Terrible, men-of-war, commenced to lay it from Valentia. 1,200 miles of cable had been paid out, and a distance of only 600 miles remained to be traversed, when, while engaged in hauling in upon the cable, in order to discover and remove a “fault” which had revealed itself, the adventurers had the mortification of seeing it suddenly part. All three ships then began to fish for the cable with the greatest diligence; but although repeatedly grappled, it always snapped before it could be raised to the surface, and, after losing an inconceivable amount of rope, and all to no purpose, the expedition returned to England.

From the diary kept by the Secretary of the AngloAmerican Telegraph Construction Company on board the Great Eastern, we extract a few interesting particulars with reference to her successful voyage in 1866. She took her departure from Berehaven, Bantry Bay, on the 12th July, having the cable stowed away in large coils in two immense tanks, one forward, the other aft. The ship was commanded by Captain Anderson; the "cable

crew," and everything connected with the laying of the cable, was under the superintendence of Mr. Canning. The plan was, that the immense vessel, propelled both by paddles and screw, and, therefore, more manageable than a vessel dependent on one source of motion, should steam slowly ahead, paying out the cable as she went over the stern, through machinery invented for the purpose in the preceding year by Messrs. Canning and Clifford, which had been found to answer admirably. The shore end of the cable, which had been laid at Foilhummerum Bay, in Valentia Island, some days previously, was brought on board the Great Eastern on the 13th instant, and made fast to the cable; as soon as the splice was effected, the paying-out process immediately commenced. For some days the weather was everything that could be wished; it seemed as if "old ocean smiled" upon the enterprise; on the 16th, the sea was so still and smooth that the masts of the convoy were reflected in the water, an unusual thing to see. Three men-of-war took part in the expedition, ready to give immediato aid, if necessary-the Terrible, the Albany, and the Medway. The insulation of the cable was perfect; communication between the ship and Valentia was uninterruptedly maintained, and the last news from Europe, received through the cable, was printed each day on board, under the title of the Great Eastern Telegraph. The first check to the prosperous progress of the undertaking occurred on the 18th July, and it was a very alarming one. A "foul flake" took place in the after tank, containing, originally, more than 800 miles of cable, while the paying-out was tranquilly going on, a short time after midnight. The engines were immediately turned astern, and the paying-out of cable stopped. "It was found that the coil being paid out had caught three turns of the flake immediately under it, and carried them into the eye of the coil, fouling the lay-out and hauling up one and a half turns from the outside and five turns in the eye of the under flake." To compare great things with small, the emergency was like the tangle which often befalls a lady's skein of silk or worsted, as it is being reeled off from the back of a chair, or from clumsy hands. No fishing line was ever entangled worse than the rope was, when thrust up in apparently hopeless knots from the eye of the coil to the deck. There lay at least 500 feet of rope in this delightful condition; the rain was falling all the time heavily, and the wind getting up. Mr. Canning feared that he would be compelled to cut the cable and buoy it, and the ominous order was given to "stand by to let go the buoy." Captain Anderson, however, conned the ship, and directed the working of wheels and screw, with such admirable skill and judgment, as to keep the ship as nearly as possible right over the rope, so that it should hang straight up and down; in this way the dire necessity of cutting the cable was averted. Meantime, the cable crew had discovered the nature of the tangle, and, by dint of an hour and a half's hard work, succeeded in clearing it, so that soon after 2 A.M., the paying out of the cable could be recommenced. All through this critical period, the insulation of the cable continued to be "simply perfect."

From this time no incident of much moment marked the progress of the expedition. As the Great Eastern neared Newfoundland, the weather became foggy, and the Albany was sent on to Heart's Content, a harbour in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, to clear the north-east side of the harbour of shipping, and place a boat with a red flag for Captain Anderson to steer to for anchorage. By dint of good management-the men-of-war forming a line of communication between the shore and the Great Eastern, and that one which was nearest to her guiding her through the fog by the repeated firing of guns-she was piloted into Trinity Bay without accident on the morning of the 27th of July. The shore end was quickly laid, and the electric union of Europe and America was at last complete. On the 28th, Lord Carnarvon telegraphed to Lord Monck at Ottawa felicitations on the happy result of an enterprise which could not fail to draw closer the ties of amity and fellowship uniting Canada to England; and on the 30th congratulatory messages were exchanged between the Queen and President Johnson.

But this was not all. The task of fishing for the broken end of the cable of 1865, which the loss of all her spare rope had, as we have seen, compelled the Great Eastern to abandon in the previous September, was now resumed with all the eager hope and confidence engendered by success. The cable had been lost at a depth of about 2,000 fathoms, and experience had shown that to pick it up at one lift from that enormous depth was impracticable, the mere weight of the cable, in its resistance to the force employed by the picking-up machinery, being sufficient to snap it. It was arranged, therefore, that the Great Eastern herself, and the attendant men-of-war, tracing back the cable for the space of several miles from the point of fracture, should grapple for it, and when found raise it, not to the surface, but to various heights from the bottom, so that several miles of cable should be raised to an altitude intermediate between the bottom and the surface, and secured there by buoys attached to the grappling ropes; and thus the final lift, being only from this intermediate altitude, might present reasonable chances of success. But this plan of operations, simple though it be in the telling, involved a great amount of anxious and exhausting labour, and mechanical and practical difficulties of various kinds. We will let the Secretary describe the joyous termination of the enterprise in his own words.

"The grapnel went down for the fifteenth time at 10 A.M. [September 1]. Save that there was a long swell, as there always is in the Atlantic, the sea was like a mill-pond, and as we saw the grapnel go down we could not help remarking to each other that the circumstances under which we were going to make another effort to preserve the cable were as favourable as they could possibly be. In fact, it was felt that if we did not succeed on such a day as this, there was very little chance of our succeeding at all. . . . From 3.45 P.M., when we began to haul up, the strain on the dynamometer varied from 9 to 11. After dinner, we received a signal from the Medway" (which had been stationed two miles to the

A.D. 1866.]

westward of the Great Eastern, and therefore so much nearer to the broken end) "that she, having hooked the cable, had hauled it up about 500 fathoms. We told her to heave up as rapidly as possible, and, in fact, to break the cable, so that we might have the strain taken off our portion of it, and so increase our chance of raising it to the surface. To the eastward, the same effect would be produced by the bight we lifted the day before, and buoyed on the bight buoy. The picking up went on with its usual certainty and precision, and by twelve o'clock (midnight) the bows of the ship were crowded, not only

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majestically the cable rose up the frowning bows of the Great Eastern, slowly passing round the sheave at the bow, and then over the wheels on the fore-part of the deck. Even then there was no excitement; but now men were seen to cross the platform and to touch the rope, in order to feel satisfied that success had been achieved."

But although the cable had been recovered, the momentous question was still unanswered: What is its electrical condition-can signals be sent through it to and from Valentia? Certain necessary measures of precaution took up a considerable time, but at last it became

by those actually on watch, but by nearly all the hands, who turned out to see the result of this attempt to recover the cable. . . . Precisely at 12.50 this morning, the cable made its appearance upon the grapnel; and save when the voice of Captain Anderson or Mr. Canning was heard giving an order, one could almost hear a pin drop, such was the perfect silence which prevailed. No excitement, no cheering, as there was on the day when we lifted it before; all was calm and quiet; the men scarcely spoke above their breath." With some difficulty the cable was disengaged from the tenacious hold of the grapnel, and then-"the signal being given to haul up, the western end of the bight was cut with a saw, and grandly and

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evident that the end of the cable would soon be passed down into the electrician's room. There, awaiting its arrival, were Mr. Gooch, M.P., Mr. Cyrus Field, Captain Hamilton, Mr. Canning, Mr. Clifford, Professor Thomson, Mr. Deane, and others. At last, Mr. Willoughby Smith, the chief electrician, made his appearance at the door with the end of the cable in his hand, and, the connections having been made, he sat down opposite the instrument. A breathless silence prevailed; not a word was spoken, all eyes being directed upon the experienced operator, whose expression of countenance indicated the deep anxiety he felt in making the test. At the expiration of some ten minutes he relieved our suspense by stating

that, as far as he had then gone, he believed the tests to be perfect; but another minute had scarcely elapsed when he took off his hat and gave a cheer, which was lustily taken up in the room; and, having been heard outside, it was echoed from stem to stern of the ship with a heartiness which every Englishman can appreciate. . . . Mr. Canning at once sent a message to Mr. Glass, the managing director of the Telegraph Construction Company, expressing the pleasure he felt at speaking to him through the cable of 1865, and the operator at Valentia telegraphed back his congratulations." What remained to be done was quickly accomplished. The recovered cable was spliced on to the cable coiled on board the Great Eastern; the paying out then commenced, and was brought to a successful close at Heart's Content, on the 8th September. When the shore end had been landed, Mr. Gooch sent the following message to Lord Stanley: "Mr. Gooch has the pleasure to inform Lord Stanley that the cable of 1865 was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic on the 2nd of this month, and has been safely landed to-day in Heart's Content, the recovered cable being in the most perfect condition." Telegraphic communication was thus opened between the two continents, and it is surely safe to predict that our descendants will never allow it to be again interrupted.

The miscarriage of Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill led to periodical demonstrations during the summer and autumn in favour of the extension of the franchise. An organised agitation provided that mass meetings should be held in several of the largest cities in Great Britain, at convenient intervals of time. The riots in and near Hyde Park arose, as we have seen, out of a Reform demonstration; and the irrepressible Mr. Beales, whom Mr. Walpole's exquisite sensibility on the subject of broken heads had probably rather emboldened than mollified, arranged, in concert with the London Working Men's Association, a great Reform meeting in the Guildhall, on the 8th August. The Lord Mayor took the chair, and opened the proceedings with the melodramatic declaration that "the man must have a heart of stone who could witness this magnificent sight without the deepest emotion." Mr. Beales, in moving the first resolution, feelingly alluded to the perils which he had undergone in the cause of the people on the 23rd July. "Lord Derby, for whom individually, as possessing great powers in debate and high literary eminence, he (Mr. Beales) had the greatest respect, had said, at a recent banquet in the City, that no cause, however good, was ever otherwise than injured in public opinion, and in the opinion of Legislature, if supported by anything which bore the appearance of intimidation or violence.' (Mr. O'Connell had years before expressed nearly the same sentiment, in much fewer words, when he said, "The man that commits a crime gives strength to the enemy.") "He (Mr. Beales) cordially assented to every word thus uttered, and the truth of the principle thus laid down brought vividly back to his recollection the memorable scene of the 23rd July last, when his request for admittance to Hyde Park was met by intimidation, and the uplifted truncheons of an army of police on foot, acting under the orders of the

Government of which Lord Derby himself is the chief, whilst a magnanimous Chief Commissioner of the same body did his best to place him (Mr. Beales) under the gentle pressure of his horse's hoofs." The learned gentleman concluded by saying, "The prohibition of the League meeting on the 23rd July, and the exclusion of the public from Hyde Park on that day, have done far more than a hundred such meetings could have done to advance the cause of Reform, and unite the people in its support. . . No half-and-half measure of Reform will now be listened to. The banner of the League, having inscribed on it, Residential and Registered Manhood Suffrage, and the Ballot,' is now hailed in all quarters."

Mr. Odger, whose now well-known name had not, we believe, till then been heard of, seconded the next resolution, which menaced the existing Government with the withdrawal of all sympathy and support on the part of the Reformers if they did not speedily introduce a bill for the amendment of the representation of the people. Mr. Coffey also, and Mr. Bradlaugh, spoke in the course of the evening. About six weeks after this (September 24) a meeting, supposed to be larger than any that had been ever assembled in England, was held at Manchester. Bodies of men from the numerous manufacturing towns and villages in the neighbourhood were marching into Manchester all the morning, carrying flags inscribed with the words "National Reform Union," and proceeded to the large open space called Campfield, where six platforms had been erected. Notwithstanding the torrents of rain which continued throughout the day, the numbers assembled were estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 persons. In connection with each of the six platforms three identical resolutions were moved and passed, the general effect of which was to identify the people of Manchester, in opinions and political action, with Mr. Beales and his fellow-agitators. A high tribute was paid to some of the members of the late Government, and other friends of Reform, particularly Mr. Bright, in the third resolution, which ran thus:- That this meeting tenders its warmest and most grateful thanks to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, John Bright, Esq., John Stuart Mill, Esq., and all friends of Reform, who, throughout the late discussions in Parliament, vindicated the character and protected the rights of the people; and further expresses confidence in the honesty and ability of Mr. John Bright to champion the people's cause in Parliament during the coming parliamentary struggle." A resolution, passed in the evening at a great meeting in the Free Trade Hall, showed how deeply the eloquent and sarcastic invectives of Mr. Lowe were felt and resented by their objects :-"This meeting, while recording its indignation at the insults offered in Parliament and by the press to the working classes and their advocates, calls on the people of this country to allow themselves no longer to be trifled with by an oligarchic few, and to rally round those men who have upheld their cause." On the 8th October, a great Reform meeting was held at Leeds. The dreary open space above the town, called Woodhouse Moor, was the scene of the gathering, at which it was estimated that

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not less than 200,000 persons were collected. Resolutions of a similar character to those adopted at Manchester were passed; several speakers fiercely abused Mr. Lowe, and vindicated the character of the working men from the aspersions which had been heaped upon it; nor was the usual vote of confidence in Mr. Bright forgotten. A similar demonstration took place in Edinburgh in November. An immense working man's meeting had been arranged for the 3rd December, to be held at Beaufort House, Kensington, but it proved to be less imposing than the promoters had intended, not much more than an eighth of the 200,000 working men whose presence had been reckoned upon, actually making their appearance. An excited glass-blower spoke to the following effect: Every stage of that contest had called forth its martyrs, and they had a martyr before them in Mr. Beales. The question was, Would they suffer these little-minded, decrepit, humpbacked, one-eyed scoundrels who sat in the House of Commons to defraud them any longer of their rightswhether those who had squandered the people's earnings like water should continue to do so? From one end to the other of this land their fiat had gone forth that they meant to be free. What had Lord Derby done? He had translated Homer. But he could not make one of those beautiful specimens of glass-work which had been carried in procession that day. There was not a stocking-weaver in Leicester, or a clodhopper in the kingdom, rendering service to the State, who was not quite as useful as Lord Derby. What the people meant to do was to drive the devil out of the House of Commons, and let God Almighty in." Such "flat, stale, and unprofitable" invective, proceeding from the ignorant and confused cogitations of a soul perverted, by the indulgence of the passions of vanity and envy, to a deliberate preference of the mechanical to the spiritual, of the hand to the soul, seemed to lend some colour to the too sweeping assaults of Mr. Lowe against the character of the working class. It is, however, satisfactory to reflect that the speaker does not appear to have found imitators; and an incident which occurred on the following evening showed that there was a natural fairness and manliness about the English working man, which such speakers as the glass-blower at Beaufort Honse were very far from representing. At a Reform meeting of the London Trades in St. James's Hall (Dec. | 41, Mr. Ayrton was understood to censure the Queen for not recognising the people when they gathered in such numbers in front of one of her palaces. In reply to these remarks, Mr. Bright said:-"I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns, but I could not sit and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. I think that there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say this, that a woman-be she the Queen of a great realm, or be she the wife of one of you labouring men --who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affections, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you." Every sentence of this vindication was greeted with cheers, and at its close there was loud and prolonged

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cheering, amidst which the body of people in the hall arose and sang a verse of "God save the Queen."

So persevering and wide-spread an agitation in pursuit of a political object in a country constitutionally governed, must have disposed the Conservative Government, even if originally averse to mooting the question, to make the question of Parliamentary Reform the serious subject of their councils. But we have already seen, from the speech of Mr. Disraeli in Buckinghamshire, that, although the Government regarded itself as wholly unpledged, the question of Reform was one which had no terrors for the versatile and experienced leader of the party in the House of Commons; and in the course of the winter it became known that the Ministry were engaged in framing a large and comprehensive measure, and would introduce it early in the ensuing session.

One of the severest commercial crises ever known in this country will make the months of May and June, 1866, for ever memorable in the history of banking and finance. The crash which caused so many goodly and solidseeming commercial and financial structures to topple over and collapse in irretrievable ruin, was the natural reaction after a period of feverish, over-sanguine, and partly unsound speculation. The year 1865 had witnessed the launch on the money market of a vast number of new undertakings, carried on by companies offering the advantage of limited liability to their shareholders, and professing to hold out to the fortunate investor opportunities of enriching himself beyond the wildest dream of avarice. As the spring of 1866 wore on, the solvency and utility of some of these speculations came seriously into question, and a tendency to realise manifested itself. There was one immense financing firm which in the magnitude of its discounts had no equal in the City. This was the Limited Liability Company of Overend, Gurney, and Co., the shareholders of which had, as a great privilege, purchased the good-will of the basiness of the well-known firm of Overend and Gurney the year before, for the sum of £500,000. At the time they thus sold their business, the firm, as the subsequent judicial investigation proved, was hopelessly insolvent to the extent of many millions. The representatives of the new company must have been either quixotically confiding, or culpably remiss, or financially incompetent, not to have obtained some inkling, at the time of the negotiations for the purchase, of the real state of affairs; it seems certain, however, that their ignorance was as complete as that of the world outside. In March or April, it became known that certain firms and companies, with which Overend, Gurney, and Co. had had large transactions, were in difficulties or had suspended payment; a feeling of uneasiness arose; the shares of the company, which had been quoted at a good premium, fell below par; and some of the new shareholders, becoming alarmed, commenced to sell out. An immediate further depreciation of the shares was, of course, the consequence; this led to increased alarm, and to pressure from the company's creditors. The directors, perceiving ruin to be imminent, sought assistance from the Bank of England; but the authorities of that establishment, after