that water will transmit a galvanic current, but also that the moisture of the earth in its natural state is sufficient for the purpose.* The submarine telegraph followed; and in the autumn of 1851, a monster wire cable, weighing 180 tons, and 24 miles in length, was stretched along the bed of the Channel, from the South Foreland in England, to Sangatte, in France, bringing London and Paris with other continental cities into momentary inter

course.

The first telegraph line patented proved a successful speculation. Professor Wheatstone received 30,000l. in cash from the Telegraph Company. Mr. Cooke had 96,000l., principally in shares, and dependent on the success of the enterprise. The undertaking succeeding, Mr. Cooke realised the entire sum. It has been imputed to the Company, that they have, to save expense of change of apparatus, failed to develop the invention of which they were the foster parents. Both Mr. Highson's goldleaf telegraph and Mr. Bain's punctured-paper telegraph have been purchased by the Company, but neither brought into practical use.†

These are the chief incidents and progressive seps in the evolution of the new mode of postal communication. Countries differ in the mechanism of their telegraphs, but they are all based on the amazing speed of the electric spark, and its deflective property in passage by the magnet. One is at a loss whether thought itself or its electric vehicle is the more extraordinary phenomenon. Both are wonderful. It is a peculiarity of modern civilisation that no sooner is a discovery made, than its useful applications are rapidly maximised by the concurring intelligence of nations, and its benefits made universal. Electric telegraphs * Companion to the Almanac for 1848, p. 69. The Electric Telegraph, by W. F. Cooke, Esq.

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

735

are now the established messengers of Europe and America, and partly of Asia. In peaceful utilities the United States are seldom behind, and frequently take the lead in energy of execution. In 1853 they had formed thirty different telegraph companies, and telegraphic lines had been laid not only in the old states but the wide-spreading domains of the central and western territory of the Union. Unlike the English system, the American wires are not confined to railway routes, but stretch over vast ranges of country where wide plains and extensive forests abound. Each company employs men to look after the wires, at distances varying from twenty to one hundred miles; and these men examine the whole length of wire, especially after thunder-storms and electric disturbances of the atmosphere.

Nearly all the capital cities and chief towns of Europe have been connected by railways and telegraphic lines. The lightning-post is in progress of being made available across the Atlantic: it already traverses the peninsula of Hindostan, from Calcutta to Delhi, Madras, and Bombay. Over the land and under seas, public events, the flight of criminals, commercial intelligence, and domestic occurrences are in constant transmission. By more frequent intercourse the standard of humanity will be raised, made more equal, and the material wants of one district compensated by the affluence of another. All Europe may be now said to be in presence, to live face to face, and its component nations, by the new auxiliaries of communication, cooperating with general peace and mercantile freedom, likely to be fused into one federative union of communities, separated only by provincial dialects and administrations. During the Peninsular war, the news of battles and sieges were usually a fortnight or three weeks in reaching England from Spain; and the last bloody battle-that of

Toulouse-would not have been fought between Soult and Wellington had the belligerents commanded existing rapid means of communication. In the late Russian war, the events taking place in the Crimea were transmitted almost simultaneously with their occurrence, to Vienna, St. Petersburg, Paris, and London. The spirit of Ariel, to carry thoughts with the speed of thought, has been evoked, and former facts or similes fail in comparison. Eagles' wings, or the flight of the carrier-pigeon, were wont to be dwelt upon; but they have been outstripped by the new intelligencer, and the poet's stretch of fancy for the annihilation of time and space all but compassed. Imperial and royal speeches, in common with all the business of private life, have no longer to be waited for in anxious. or dull delay, but are received almost vivá voce; and even the blessings of the Vatican have ceased to be dilatory.*

I shall conclude a topic the most remarkable of the present reign, by observing that the earth has become man's; it was God's gift to him, and he now in fulness possesses it. He has bridged over its seas; can readily communicate from its most distant corners; has, with compass in hand, found out where its mysterious magnetic poles are hid; has scaled its highest mountain-ranges, traversed its widest and most arid plains, and has explored its inlets, islands, and continents, from the icy North to the not less icy region of the antarctic circle. What the ancients knew of the world was circumscribed within the narrow limits of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Medi

The emperor Napoleon, in reply to the congratulatory address of the legislative body on the birth of a prince, mentioned the fact of the "blessing of the Holy Father having been brought by electricity in an hour after the babe saw the light," March 16. 1856.

NOVELTIES OF TRAVELS AND SPORTING EXCURSIONS. 737

terranean. All their fables and illusions of the horizontal boundary of the earth, of its celestial canopy, and the dark Hyperborean ocean which environed it, have vanished and been put to flight by the lights of modern science and enterprise. Not only has the geography of the globe been mastered, but the products of its surface and the interior records of its pre-Adamite existence have been made available to human enjoyment and research. The Roman citizen was proud of his name; it preserved him inviolate wherever he went, into distant Albion or obscure Judæa: but civilisation has increased her triumphs, and her ægis extends to almost every region. Europeans are personally secure wherever curiosity, the love of pleasure, or the spirit of adventure may prompt them to penetrate. Females can now make the entire circuit of the globe in safety*, or singly traverse the wilds of America, do their toilet in its deep translucent lakes †, or enter the lair of the brave old English gentleman who, axe in hand, pioneered his way through trackless forests. The ascent of Mont Blanc, or a vacation ramble across the Arabian desert, forms the not unusual recreation of civilians; and English sportsmen, for the amusement of salmon-fishing, or the chase of the springbok or of Alpine game, will quietly take up their abode in the solitudes of South Africa, amidst the dense forests of Ceylon, or at the foot of the Himalaya mountains.

earth.

Madame Pfeiffer alone has twice made the overland tour of the

Mrs. Jameson's Canadian Travels.

Author of Eothen.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

QUEEN VICTORIA.-CONTINENTAL REVOLUTIONS OF 1848.

State of France in 1848.—Discontents of the People.—Government of Louis-Philippe ; its Difficulties, and arbitrary Character. — Three Days' Insurrection in Paris. — Risings in Berlin, Vienna, and Milan.-Failure of the general Fermentation, and the Reascendancy of the Military. — Communism in Paris; its subversive Theories. — Dreadful Conflicts with the Red Republicans. — Prince Napoleon elected President of the French Republic.— Alarm of the National Assembly at Democratic Tendencies; three Millions of Electors disfranchised.-Struggle for Ascendancy between the Prince President and the National Assembly. The Military occupy Paris, and the Assembly is dissolved.-New Scheme of Government promulgated by the President; the Empire reestablished in the Person of Napoleon III. - Policy and Popularity of the French Emperor.— French Loans. - Effects produced in England by the Continental Revolutions.— Famine in Ireland; subsequent improved State of the Country. Discoveries of Gold in California and Australia; their Influence on the Progress of States and Colonies. — The World's Fair, or Great Exhibition of London; its signal Success. Comparative Claims of Nations.—The Universal Exposition of Paris in 1854. NEARLY contemporary, or in close continuation with the surprises in Electricity and Travel, noticed at the conclusion of the preceding Chapter, were fresh vicissitudes in revolutionary France. The expulsion of Charles X., and the accession to sovereign power of the younger branch of the Bourbons, in the person of Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, did not prove a final or very satisfactory settlement. The government of Louis-Philippe had, with the firm support of the middle classes, subsisted eighteen years, but it had been a perturbed period. externally peace was maintained, and internally France