Who will venture to make catalogue of the possible results of the "Submarine Electric Telegraph?" The more we meditate, the more new wonders open before us. We are running a race with Time; we outstrip the sun, with the round world for the race-course.—Yet, let us not boast: we do not run the race, but that more than a hundred million horse-power invisible to us, which was created with the sun. We are but the atoms involved, and borne about in the secrets of nature. And the secrets—what know we of them?—The facts only of a few of them: the main-springs of their action are, and perhaps ever will be, hidden. The world progresses; it has its infant state, its manhood state, and its old age—in what state are we now? and what is the world's age? Madame de Stael considered it quite in its youth—only fifteen—scarcely responsible! It seems, however, making rapid growth. Is it past the conceited epoch, and now cutting its wise teeth? We stand like spectators at the old fair-show; we see the motley, the ever busy, ever running harlequin and columbine; we are astonished at the fooleries, and are amazed at the wit, the practical wisdom, the magical wand power of the fantastic descendants of Adam and Eve, the masculine, and the feminine; and we laugh to behold the shuffling step of old Grandfather Time, as—

It is through the agency of mind that a few secrets are disclosed to us, and for our use. We call the recipient and the inventor Genius. It is given, as it is wanted, at the right time, and for the preordained purpose. We are sceptical as to "mute inglorious Miltons." Where the gift is bestowed it is used; and if it appear to be partially used, it is where partially given, that one man may advance one step, his successor another—and thus invention leads to invention. Genius for one thing arises in one age, and sleeps after his deed is done; genius for another thing succeeds him. Who shall dare to limit the number? One thing only we pause to admire—how seldom does the gift fall upon bad men!

There have been, perhaps, those who have had thrown in upon their minds a wondrous vision of things to come, which they were not allowed, themselves, to put forth in manifest action to the world. There have been seers of knowledge; and, perhaps, prophesiers in facts. No one will credit the assertion, therefore we make it not, that thousands of years ago steam was known, and applied to the purposes of life. We call, then, certain records the prophecies of Facts; that is, there was a certain practical knowledge, which in its description is prophetic of a new knowledge to be developed. Semiramis set up a pillar on which it was written, "I, Semiramis, by means of iron made roads over impassable mountains, where no beasts [of burthen] come." Did Semiramis prophecy a railroad—or were there Brunells and Stephensons then? When Homer spake, of the ships of the PhÆcians, how they go direct to the place of their venture, "knowing the mind" of the navigator, "covered with cloud and vapour," had the old blind bard a mind's-eye vision of our steam-ships? Many more may be the prophecies of Facts; for in these cases doubtless there were facts, the prophecy being in the telling.

But there have been visions also without facts—that is, without the practical visions of an inward knowledge—wherein nature had given a mirror and bade genius look into it. Friar Bacon's prophecy is an example.

"Bridges," says he, "unsupported by arches, can be made to span the foaming current; man shall descend to the bottom of the ocean safely breathing, and treading with firm step on the golden sands never brightened by the light of day. Call but the secret powers of Sol and Luna into action, and behold a single steersman, sitting at the helm, guiding the vessel which divides the waves with greater rapidity than if she had been filled with a crew of mariners tolling at the oars. And the loaded chariot, no longer encumbered by the panting steeds, darts on its course with relentless force and rapidity. Let the pure and simple elements do thy labour; bind the eternal elements, and yoke them to the same plough."

Here is poetry and philosophy wound together, making a wondrous chain of prophecy. Who shall adventure upon a solution of that golden chain, which the oldest of poets told us descended from heaven to earth, linking them as it were together? Was it an electric fluid in which mind and matter were in indissoluble union?

What prophetic truths may yet be extracted from myth and fable, and come blazing like comets we know not whence, into the world's field! Hermes "the inventor," what is his wand, serpent-twined, and its meaning, brought into vulgar translation, and seen in the buffoonery of harlequinade? of what new power may it not be the poetical prototype? Who shall contemplate the multiplicity of nature's facts, and the myriads of multiplicities in their combination? Knowing that all that has ever been written or spoken, in all languages, is but the combination of a few sounds transferred to the alphabet of twenty-four letters, or even less, are we not lost in the contemplation of the possibilities of the myriads of facts, in their interchangings, combinations, and wonderful dove-tailings?

Perhaps, that we may not know too much before our time, facts are withdrawn from us as others are protruded. Memory may sleep, that invention may awake. Did we know by what machinery Stonehenge was built, we might have rested satisfied with a power inadequate to other and new wants, for which that power might have been no help. Archimedes did that which we cannot do, in order that we might do that which he did not. Who shall lift the veil of possibility?

Of this we may be sure, as the mind is made inventive, (and there is no seeming probability that a faculty once given will be taken away from our created nature,) there is a large and inexhaustible store-house, wherefrom it shall have liberty to gather and to combine. We do not believe that steam itself, the miracle of our age, is anything more than a stepping-stone to the discovery of another power—means superseding means. There is and will be no end, as long as the fabric of the world lasts.

There is an old German play, in which the whimsical idea of bringing the Past and Present together in dramatis personÆ is amusingly embodied. We forget the particulars, but we think CÆsar or Cicero figure in the dialogue. The ridiculous is their laughable ignorance of the commonest things. The modern takes out his watch and puts it to his ear, and tells the ancient the hour of the day. This is but one out of many puzzling new things; but, even here, how little is told of the real post-Ciceronian inventions; for the object of the play is to show the skill of the Germans only; it is but an offering to the German genius of invention.

Could a tale of Sinbad's voyage have been read to the Roman—how, as he approached the mountain, the nails flew out of the ship, for lack of comprehension of the load-stone—he would have thought it only fantastically stupid; and if he had laughed, it would have been at the narrator's expense. And so, indeed, it has fared with discoverers: they have been before the time of elucidation, like Friar Bacon; and some for fear of ridicule have kept back their knowledge; but not many perhaps; for knowledge, when it is touched by genius, becomes illuminated and illuminating, and will shine though men may shut the door, and stay themselves outside and see it not, while it brightens up only the four walls of a small chamber as it were with the magic lantern in a student's hand. Whereas it ought, according to its power, to gild the universe. The secresy of invention is rather of others' doing—of an envious or doubting world of lookers-on, than of the first perceiving genius. Fortunately the gift of genius, as intended for the use of mankind, comes with an expansive desire of making it known.

If the memory of tradition fails, and some inventions are lost, that their detail may not hamper the faculty that should take altogether a new line, so have we what we may term false lines, that yet, nevertheless, lead into the true. Science may walk in an apparently unnecessary labyrinth, and awhile be lost in the wildest mazes, and yet come out into day at last, and have picked up more than it sought by the way. Wisdom herself may have been seen sometimes wearing the fool's cap. The child's play of tossing up an apple has ended in establishing the law of gravitation. The boy Watt amused himself in watching a kettle on the fire: his genius touched it, and it grew and grew into a steam-engine; and, like the giant in the show, that shook off his limbs, and each became another giant, myriads of gigantic machines, of enormous power, hundred armed Briareuses, are running to and fro in the earth, doing the bidding of the boy observant at his grandam's hearth. Is there an Arabian tale, with all its magic wonders, that can equal this? We said that Wisdom has worn the fool's cap; true, and Foolery was the object—the philosopher's stone; but in the wildest vagaries of her thought, there were wise things said and done, and her secretary, Common Sense, made notes of the good; and all was put down together in a strange shorthand, intelligible to the initiated; and the facts of value were culled, in time, and sifted from the follies, and from the disguises—for there were disguises, that strangers should not pry into them before the allowed hour. Alchemy has been the parent of chemistry—that "[Greek: epistÊmÊ iera]," and its great mysteries, to reveal which was once death!! Secrets were hidden under numbers, letters, signs of the zodiac, animals, plants, and organic substances. Thus in the vocabulary of the alchemists, the basilisk, the dragon, the red and green lions, were the sulphates of copper and of iron; the salamander, the fire; milk of the black cow, mercury; the egg, gold; the red dragon, cinnabar. There is a curious specimen, in the work of the monk Theophilus, translated by Mr Hendrie, how to make Spanish gold:—

"The Gentiles, whose skilfulness in this art is probable, make basilisks in this manner: They have underground a house, walled with stones everywhere, above and below, with two very small windows, so narrow that scarcely any light can appear through them: in this house they place two old cocks, of twelve or fifteen years, and they give them plenty of food. When these have become fat, through the heat of their good condition, they agree together, and lay eggs. Which being laid, the cocks are taken out, and toads are placed in, which may hatch the eggs, and to which bread is given for food. The eggs being hatched, chickens issue out like hens' chickens, to which, after seven days, grow the tails of serpents, and immediately, if there were not a stone pavement, they would enter the earth," &c. &c.—"After this, they uncover them, and apply a copious fire, until the animals' insides are completely burnt. Which done, when they have become cold, they are taken out, and carefully ground, adding to them a third part of the blood of a Red Man, which blood has been dried and ground."

Doubtless it was the discovery of some such language as this which led to the popular belief that the Jews, who were great goldsmiths and alchemists, made sacrifices with the blood of children; and many a poor Jew suffered for the sin of mistifying knowledge. "The toads of Theophilus," says Mr Hendrie, "are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash, which would yield one of the elements for the solvent of gold; the blood of the Red Man, which had been dried and ground, probably a muriate of ammonia," &c. Such were the secrets of the "Ars Hermetica;" and their like may have been bidden in the wand of Hermes. Dragons, serpents, and toads! Awful the vocabulary, to scare the profane; but fair Science came at length unscathed out of the witches' cauldron: and thus it appeared that natural philosophy, like its own toad, ugly and venomous, bore a "precious jewel in its head."

Alchemy and magic were twin sisters, and often visited grave philosophers in their study both together. The Orphic verses and the hexameters of Hesiod, on the virtues of precious stones, exhibit the superstitions of science. They descended into the deeply imaginative mind of Plato, and perhaps awakened the curiosity of the elder, scarcely less fabulous Pliny, the self-devoted martyr to the love of discoveries in science. The Arabian Tales may owe some of their marvels to the hidden sciences, in which the Arabs were learned, and which they carried with them into Spain. Albertus Magnus, in his writings, preserved the Greek and Arab secrets; and our Roger Bacon turned them over with the hand of a grave and potent genius, and his touch made them metaphorically, if not materially, golden. His prophecy, which we have given, was, when uttered, a kind of "philosopher's stone."

Superstitions of science, of boasted and boasting philosophy! And why not? Is there not enough of superstition now extant—a fair sample of the old? Is the new philosophy without that original ingredient? It is passed down from the old, and will incorporate itself with all new in some measure or other, for the very purpose of misleading, that the very bewilderment may set the inventive brain to work, in ways it thought not of. Reasoners are every day reasoning themselves out of wholesome, airbreathing, awakening truths into the visionary land of dreams, and, speaking mysteriously like uncontradicted somnambulists, believe themselves to be oracular. Materialists have followed matter, driven it into corners, divided it, dissected it, and cut it into such bits that it has become an undiscernible evaporation; and they have come away disappointed, and denied its existence altogether. Thus, mesmerism is the bewildered expression of this disappointment, their previous misapprehension. They will not believe that the wand of Hermes represents two serpents intertwined—they see but one, though the two look each other in the face before them, and they are purblind to the wand and the hand that holds it. Even the "Exact Sciences," as they are called, are not complete; they lead to precipices, down which to look is a giddiness. The fact is, the action of the mind is as that of the body: mind and body have their daily outward work, and their times of sleep and of dreaming, and the dreaming of the one is not unfrequently the life of the other. The dream of the philosopher, be he waking or sleeping, is his refreshment, and at times suggestive of the to come. How know we but that "such stuff as dreams are made of" may serve for the fabrication of noble thoughts, and be inwoven into the habit of life, and become useful wear?

Perhaps magic was the first and needful life of philosophy—needful as a covering while it grew, and which it shook off as its swaddling-clothes, and became a truth. How few can trace invention to its germ, or know where the germ lies, and how that it fed upon reached it! The suggestion of a dream begetting a reality! They are no fools who think that good and bad angels are the authors of inventions. It is ingenious to suppose that we are rather the receivers and encouragers of our original thoughts than the authors of them. We may use the magnifying glasses of our reason or our passions, and do but a little distort them, or advance them to use and beauty, as we are good or bad in ourselves. And thus, from suggestions given, the imaginative genius, inventing, magnifies and multiplies by these his glasses and his instruments; and the thing invented requires much of this brilliant finery of our own to be removed before it be fitted for demand and use. Like wrought iron, the sparks must be beaten out of it while it is forming into shape. It must be off its red heat or white heat—be dipped in the cold stream of doubt, and look ugly enough to the eye of common opinion, and be long in the hand of experiment to try the patience of the inventor. And, after all, will the benefited be thankful? History has many a sad tale to tell on this subject. The "Sic vos non vobis" should be inscribed over the portals of the patent office. Yet sometimes, in pity to lost expectations, in the carrying out one great idea to—shall we say its final incompletion, to its last residuum of insanity?—some little scarcely noticeable matter in the machinery has been by some kind suggesting spirit held up to the eye of the philosopher, which has proved to be the magnum bonum of the whole scheme.

We once knew a tradesman who had spent the best years of his life, as well as his substance, to discover "perpetual motion." He sold off his goods when he fancied he had discovered it, and left his provincial town for the great metropolis and a philosopher's fame. As he travelled by the coach, going over in his mind the processes of his machinery, a portion of it struck him as applicable to a manufacture of common use, but of no very high pretensions. His perpetual motion failed. There was a good angel that whispered to him, "Descend from the ladder of your ambition—do not lose sight of it; but try the little interloping suggestion, and raise the means for prosecuting more favourably your perpetual motion." He did so. The action saved him from lunacy—the undignified and bye-sport, as it were, of his invention answered—from a ruined man he became rich, and his new business required of him so much perpetual motion bodily, that the idea of it, wonderful to say, was driven out of his speculative mind.

A sudden thought—a happy hit—we are too apt to call a lucky one. Will it be the worse if we give it a better name, and say it is a gift? The thankfulness implied in gift may make it a blessing. It was no deep study that brought the great improvements into our manufacturing machinery.

The poor boy Arkwright, in a moment of idleness or weariness, thought happily of a cog in the wheel; and that little cog, was to him and his posterity a philosopher's stone; realising the alchemist's hopes, by far more sure experiment than the dealings with "green" and "red lions" and "dragons" for a result never to be reached. How wonderful has been the result, even to the whole world, of that momentary thought—that simple invention!

We have often heard it remarked that this is an age of inventions. It is true: not that the inventive mind was ever wanting. It is a practical age; the necessities of multiplied life make it so. The well-known "century of inventions" of the Marquis of Worcester is a stock not yet exhausted. But to speak of this our age, how can it be otherwise? Not only are material means enlarged by geographical and other discoveries, but the inventive mind is multiplied because mankind are multiplied, whose nature it is to invent. A population—to speak of England, for it is of England we are thinking—of five millions, as it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth, cannot bear comparison with ours of nearer twenty millions. Then, if we enlarge our view, and take in England's transplanted progeny, whose activity and whose advancement in knowledge and science we share, under every facility for the transmission of knowledge, we may fairly speculate upon a very wonderful futurity. The glory of the German dramatist, with his watch, and perhaps, but we forget, his printing-press, (for it ought to be in the play,) is annihilated: the author himself would now stand in the place of his CÆsar or Cicero.

It would be a dream worth dreaming to bring back from his Elysian Fields Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain—he who first discovered that it was an island—to show him his semi-barbarians, whom he so equitably governed, (passing by, however, how far we are, any of us, their descendants.) We will imagine but an hour or two passed with him at the Polytechnic Rooms, to show him enormous iron cables twisted into knots, as if they were pieces of tape—to see vast ponderous masses suspended by magnetism only—to let him look into the wonders of the telescope and the microscope, besides a thousand marvellous things, too numerous and too often enumerated to mention. Nor would it be unamusing to dream that we return with him, and on his way accompany him, summoned to the court of Pluto and Proserpine to narrate the incidents of his sojourn above. We could believe the line of Homer verified, and that we see the grim and sceptical Pluto leap up from his throne in astonishment, and perhaps, as the poet would have it, fear lest our subterranean speculators should break in upon his dominions, and let in the light of our day. We have taken the humblest walk for the "surprise." What if we had accompanied the ex-governor of Britain to the Crystal Palace? That we will not venture upon. But had he continued his narrative of all he saw there, Pluto would have given a look—at which Cerberus would have growled from his triple throats—and that the unlucky narrator might escape the castigation of Rhadamanthus, he would have been ordered a fresh dip in Lethe, as one contaminated, and who had contracted the lying propensities of people in the upper air.

We know not if the wonder in us be not the greater that we have not the slightest pretensions to mechanical knowledge. But we confess that, when we suddenly came upon the mechanical department, and saw the various machinery at work, the world's life and all its business came out vividly upon the canvass of our thought, as the great poetry of nature. Yes, nature rather than art, for art is but the capability of nature in practice. We thought of Sophocles and his chorus of laudation of man—the inventor and the [Greek: pontoporos]—and how impoverished did the Greek seem, how tame and inadequate the description!

Shakspeare is more to the mark. The whole world is scarcely large enough for the exhibition of man's thought and deed, as Shakspeare sees him. There is no small talk of his little doings—how he passes over the seas and bridles the winds. Inimitable Shakspeare omits the doing to show the capacity; makes, for a moment of comparison only, the earth a sterile promontory, and man that is on it himself, and in his own bosom, the ample region of all fertility, in undefined thought and action. "What a piece of work is man!—how noble in reason!—how infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable!—in action how like an angel!—in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" Behold man the inventor!

We have said that the increase of population must necessarily enlarge the stock of inventions, both by new and multiplied demands, and by the added number of inventors. But there is another cause in operation, that is seldom taken into the account—there are not only more millions of human hands to do the work, but there is an artificial working population, if we may call horse-power of steam a population as equivalent to hands.

In this view the working population, or working power, so far exceeds our actual population, that they can scarcely be named together. If it be said, this is not a power of mind, and therefore cannot be said to be inventive; it may be answered, that every instrument is a kind of mind to him who takes it up, improves, and works upon it, and with it: for, after all, it is mind that is operating in it. The man is not to be envied who in heart and understanding is dead to the manifold evolutions of this great workshop of the human brain, who cannot feel the poetry of mechanics. Is it not a creative power?—and is it not at once subjecting and civilising the world? Is not this poetry of mechanics showing also that man has dominion given him over the inert materials, as over other living creatures of the earth? We hail it in all its marvellous doings, as subject for creative dreams, scarcely untrue. Let those who will (and many there be who profess this blindness to the poetry of art and science) see nothing but the tall chimneys and the black smoke. To the imaginative, even the smoke itself becomes an embodied genie, at whose feet the earth opens at command; and they who yield themselves to the spell are conducted, through subterranean ways, to the secret chambers of the treasures of nature; and, by a transition to a more palpable reality, find themselves in a garden covered with crystal, to behold all beauteous things and precious stones for fruit, such as Aladdin saw, and fountains throwing out liquid gems, and fair company, as if brought together by enchantment—and this is the romance of reality. If we write rhapsodically, let the subject be the excuse, for the secrets of nature throw conjecture into the depths of wonder, and thought far out of the conveyance of language.

It was our purpose to speak of the Submarine Telegraph, and it is not surprising if we have in some degree been transported to great distances by its power.

The inventors, Messrs Brett, under every difficulty and discouragement, have at length succeeded. Our greatest engineers for a long while withheld their countenance; practical philosophers denied the probability. The possibility was tested by the first experiment. Fortunately no accident occurred in laying down the wire across the Channel, until communication by means of it had been made between France and England; and even the subsequent accident—the cutting the wire by the fishermen—has only served the good purpose of making more sure the permanent setting up of this extraordinary telegraph. The protection of the wires by the gutta-percha covering is considered perfect; but should it turn out otherwise, it will not affect the certainty of the invention: it must be permanent. A narrative of all the difficulties which beset the inventors, and which have delayed the experiment for years, would be curious. The discouragements and the expenses would have crushed men of less energy. Even at last, in making the cable, there was a disappointment and a hitch, arising from rival companies. We extract from the Times.

"On the 19th of July last, Mr Crampton undertook to construct and lay down a cable containing four electric wires, each insulated in two coatings of gutta percha, and the whole protected by ten strands of galvanised iron wire, on or before the 30th of September. The electric wires, covered with gutta percha, in length a hundred miles, were turned out by Mr Statham, at the works of the Gutta Percha Company, and nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which that order was executed. The wire covering was ordered from Messrs Wilkins and Weatherly; but unfortunately, a dispute respecting the patent for making wire ropes occurred between that firm and Messrs Newall, which seriously delayed the progress of the work, as an injunction was served by the latter to prevent Messrs Wilkins and Co. from proceeding with the order.

"This was eventually compromised, and the rope was made conjointly by the workmen of the two firms on the premises of Messrs Wilkins and Weatherly, at Wapping.

"The very hurried manner in which (from this unforeseen delay) the work had to be accomplished, prevented that close attention that ought to have been given to any fracture, however small, of the wire; and in consequence, the outer casing, though of great strength and solidity, was not made with the same exquisite nicety and care that had been bestowed on the core of the cable."

The weather was unpropitious, and was probably the cause, from the circumstance of the Blazer being driven somewhat out of her course, that the length of the wire cable was not sufficient. This defect was, however, only of a temporary kind, and was supplied by that which was intended for another purpose. We extract the interesting account of the proceedings from the Times:—

"Shortly after 7 o'clock the fastenings at the end of the cable at the Foreland were completed, and the Fearless started to point out the exact course to be followed by the Blazer, which was towed by two tugs, one alongside, and the other ahead of her.

"A third tug belonging to the Government was also in attendance.

"The arrangements for paying out the cable consisted simply of a bar fixed transversely above the hold, over which the rope was drawn as it was uncoiled from below, and a series of breaks acting by levers fitted to the deck, in order to arrest the passage of the rope in the case of too rapid a delivery. On reaching the stem the cable passed overboard through a 'chock' of a semicircular shape, lined with iron. On starting, the steam-tugs proceeded at much too rapid a pace, (from four to five knots an hour,) and consequently one of the fractured wires (before alluded to) caught in the friction-blocks, and, before the way of the vessel could be checked, one strand of the iron wire was, for a length of about eighteen yards, stripped from the cable. The steam-tug towing ahead was then ordered alongside, when the speed could be better regulated, and the rate was reduced to about one and a half to two knots an hour. About six miles from shore it was determined to test the wires; but, from a misapprehension of instructions, the telegraph instruments at the South Foreland were not joined up with those on board the Blazer. A steam-tug, with one of the engineers and directors on board, immediately returned to the Foreland, when communication was made by telegraph and fusees fired from the vessel to the shore, and from the shore to the Blazer.

"At about mid-Channel, in the midst of a heavy sea, and a strong wind from the SW., an accident occurred, but for which the enterprise would have been carried out with the most perfect success; this was the snapping of the towrope (an eight-inch cable) and the consequent drifting of the Blazer from her appointed course to the length of a mile and a-half. Notwithstanding the delay caused by this untoward incident, the Blazer arrived off Sangatte at about 6 o'clock. The evening was, however, too far advanced, and the weather too stormy to attempt a landing; and, after embarking most of her passengers on board one of the steamers that ran into Calais, she was anchored for the night about two miles from the shore.

"On Friday the wind blew a strong gale from the westward, which rendered all near approach to the shore impracticable; but the Blazer was towed to within a mile of the beach, when, it being considered dangerous to leave her at anchor, the remainder of the rope was made fast to a buoy and hove overboard. The steam-tugs then returned with the Blazer to England.

"On Saturday the weather continued unfavourable, but Captain Bullock proceeded with the Fearless to the buoy off Sangatte, and, having hauled up the end of the rope, he towed it some hundred yards nearer the shore, and then again moored it.

"On Sunday the wind shifted more to the southward and moderated. Accordingly, the engineers and managers of the Gutta Percha Company took on board the Fearless a large coil of gutta percha roping, and, after hauling up the end of the telegraph cables, the first wires were carefully attached, and at half-past five in the afternoon a boat landed them on the beach at Sangatte. The moment chosen for landing was low-water, and the coil of gutta percha ropes was immediately buried in the beach by a gang of men in attendance, up to low-water mark, and even to a short distance beyond it. Thence to where the cable was moored did not much exceed a quarter of a mile.

"The telegraphs were instantly attached to the submarine wires, and all the instruments responded to the batteries from the opposite shore. At six o'clock messages were printed at Sangatte from the South Foreland, specimens of which Captain Bullock took over to Dover the same evening for the Queen and the Duke of Wellington.

"On Monday morning the wires at Sangatte were joined to those already laid down to Calais, and two of the instruments used by the French Government having been sent to the South Foreland, Paris was placed in immediate communication with the English Court."

We have remarked that very important discoveries are accidentally made in pursuing one of quite a different character from those which come up in the search unexpectedly.

They who remember our towns lighted with the old lamps, that in comparison with our gas-lights made but a "palpable obscure," should also remember how the change was brought about. The gas, which has proved of such vast utility that we can now-a-days scarcely conceive how the world could go on without it, was first a misfortune. It was generated in the coal mines, and, in order to get rid of it, it was conveyed by tubes to the outer air: in doing this it was found there to ignite, and from this simple attempt to effect an escape for a nuisance is almost every town in the civilised world illuminated by gas—besides which, the advantageous use of it in manufactories is beyond calculation. Even of gutta percha, now applied as a coating to these wires, who can determine all the uses to which it may be found applicable? Nature, it should seem, does not fabricate one material for itself, or for one use only, but adapts one thing to many purposes—and thus, as it were, teaches us that there is a chain in the facts of nature, by showing us a few of the connected links; and, at the same time, so far from exhibiting any sudden breaks, offering evidences of a continuous connection reaching beyond our conception. Verily this poor opaque earth of ours is the foundation on which the Jacob's ladder of invention is laid. We know not where it reaches, but there may be suggesting angels passing to and fro, and when their feet touch the ground, it delivers up its secrets, that float into the ears of the dreamer.

Electricity, it would appear, is the great agent in this connecting chain—nay, is it not, whatever it be in its essence, the chain itself, and the universal power equally in inert matter and in life? It has neither boundary on the earth nor in space. Its home is ubiquity; like the sphere of Hermes, its centre is everywhere, its circumference nowhere. That this astonishing power is yet under restraint—that it is not only kept from the evil it would do, but rendered to us serviceable—is a proof of the great beneficence of Him who made it and us. When the admiring child touches that gem, the dew-drop on the rose-leaf, it knows not that the little hand is on that which has lightning in it enough to cause instant death. It is scarcely the lover's poetical dream that he may be killed by the lightning of an eye—done dead by the tear that only moves his pity, on his mistress's eye-lid. In that little drop is the power of death—and by what miracle (truly all nature is miraculous) is the execution staid—the power forbidden to act? Nay, even the pity that we speak of, love itself, strange in its suddenness as we see it, how know we what of electricity be in it, instantly conveying from person to person natural but unknown sympathy?

Let us not get out of our depths,—but emerge from "the submarine," to land; and for this purpose, and to complete our argument of unexpected and collateral uses, we offer an extract from the Army and Navy Register:—

"New Mode of Discharging Gunpowder.—On Monday, August 18, some interesting experiments were tried at the Gutta Percha Company's Works, Warf Road, City Road, for the purposes of demonstrating the means by which this extraordinary production may be applied to the operation of discharging gunpowder. A galvanic battery was connected with upwards of 50 miles of copper wire covered with gutta percha, to the thickness of an ordinary black lead pencil. The wire, which was formed into coils, and which has been prepared for the projected submarine telegraph, was attached to a barge moored in the canal alongside the manufactory, the coils being so fixed together (although the greater portion of them were under water) as to present an uninterrupted communication with the battery to a distance limited at first to 57 miles, but afterwards extended to 70. A "cartridge" formed with a small hollow roof of gutta percha, charged with gunpowder, and having an intercommunicating wire attached, was then brought into contact with the electric current. The result was, that a spark was produced, which, igniting the gunpowder, caused an immediate explosion similar to that which would arise from the discharge of a small cannon. The same process was carried out in various ways, with a view of testing the efficient manner in which the gutta percha had been rendered impervious to wet, and in one instance the fusee or cartridge was placed under the water. In this case the efficiency of the insulation was equally well demonstrated by the explosion of the gunpowder at the moment the necessary "contact" was produced; and by way of showing the perfect insulation of the wire, an experiment was tried which resulted in the explosion of the fusee from the charge of electricity retained in the coils of wire, three seconds after contact with the battery had been broken. This feature in the experiment was especially interesting from the fact of its removing all difficulty and doubt as to whether the gutta percha would so far protect the wires as to preserve the current of electricity under the most disadvantageous circumstances. Another experiment was successfully tried by passing the electric current to its destination through the human body. Mr C. J. Wollaston, civil engineer, volunteered to form part of the circuit by holding the ends of 35 miles of the wire in each hand. The wire from the battery was brought to one end of the entire length of 70 miles, and instant explosion of the cartridge took place at the other end. The experiments were altogether perfectly successful, as showing beyond all question that the properties of gutta percha and electricity combined are yet to be devoted to other purposes than that of establishing a submarine telegraph. The blasting of a rock, the destruction of a fortification, and other operations which require the agency of gunpowder, have often been attended with considerable danger and trouble, besides involving large outlays of money; but it may be truly said that the employment of electricity in the manner described is calculated to render such operations comparatively free from difficulty. Amongst the company present on this occasion was Major-General Sir Charles Pasley, who took a warm interest in the proceedings, and expressed himself much gratified at the result. It is impossible to foretell the value of this discovery, particularly in engineering and mining operations. It forms a valuable addition to the benefits already conferred upon the public by the enterprise of the Gutta Percha Company."

This extract may lead the reader to conclude that there are double and opposite purposes in the secrets of nature. The chain which was intended to connect all nations in a bond of peace, has, it should seem, also (incidental to the first discovery) its apparatus for war.

When his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury was blessing the Crystal Palace, and all within it, as emblems of a religious bond of peace, and of amity of all nations, and it pleased the admiring masses to proclaim it the Temple of Peace and of Love, there was little thought that, among the machinery and instruments it contained, those of murderous purpose would be the first required for use, which was actually the case, when permission was asked and given for the removal of revolving firearms from the American department, to be sent out to the Cape.

Thus, good and evil are not unmixed. Either may be extracted, and leave the remainder, in appearance to us, a kind of caput mortuum.

It is far more pleasant to look to the peaceful results of inventions—to hear the spirit that is in the electric fluid say—

Let it be the means that far-off friends at the Antipodes shall communicate, if not by voice, by that which is like it—by sound and by lettered words. Let it touch a bell at their mid-day, and it may tingle at that instant in your ears at midnight, and awake you to receive, evolved from the little machinery at your bed's head, a letter in a printed strip, conveying "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," even as though you felt the breath that uttered them. Reader, be not sceptical. How many very practicable things have you denied, and yet found brought tangibly before your eyes, and into your hands! This simultaneous tingle of two bells—one at the Antipodes, and one within reach of your own touch, and at your own ear—may cause you to curl your lip in derision; but say, is it impossible? We have heard you say of much more improbable things, "Where there is a will there is a way." Well, here it is evident you have only a little to strengthen your will, and the length of the way will be no obstacle. You may amuse yourself with the idea, and make a comparison of it, and look at the figures on your China plate, and imagine them moved to each other under spell of their passion, (see the tale of the willow pattern,) to the defiance of all the ordinary rules of distance. Did not the foreseeing artist intimate thereby that love and friendship have no space-limits, and hold within themselves a power that laughs at perspective, as it does "at locksmiths?" The artist whom you contemned as ignorant was, you acknowledge, wise—wise beyond his art, if not beyond his thought. He had a second-sight of a new mode of communication, and expressed it prudently in this his hieroglyphic.

Does any marvel exceed this in apparent absurdity—that you, in London or Edinburgh, shall be able to communicate instantaneously with your friend or relative at St Petersburg or Vienna; for which purpose you have but to touch a few keys denoting letters of the alphabet, and under water and over land your whole thoughts pass as soon as your fingers have delivered them to the keys—nay, the letters are forestalling your thought, and those before it? Does it not seem very absurd to say that all the foreign news may be at your breakfast-table, fresh from every capital in Europe, before the Times can be published and circulated? How will the practice of the press be affected by this novelty? "The latest intelligence" becomes a bygone tale, "flat, stale, and unprofitable." Far greater things than the poet dreamed of become daily realities. Richest in fancy, Shakspeare apologetically covers the incredible ubiquity of his Ariel with a sense of fatigue—of difficulty in his various passages—Ariel, the spirit who "thought it much to tread
The ooze of the salt deep."
Our Government officers will have ready on the instant, messengers far swifter than Ariel—wondrous performers on the "slack-wires." They will put you "A girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes."
No; that was the lagging, loitering pace of the old spirit. It will not take forty seconds. What are thousands of miles to a second of time? Time is, as it were, annihilated: the sand in the glass must be accelerated, or the glass, held for ages, taken out of his hand, and some national exhibition ransacked for a new hour-instrument. The Prospero's wand broken, and newer wonders to be had for a trifle. Fortunatus's "wishing-cap" to be bought at the corner-shop, and the famed "seven-league boots" next door—and to be had cheap, considering, that you may tell all your thoughts, at ever so great a distance, by a little bell and a wire, while you are sitting in your armchair. It will be quite an easy matter to "Waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."
Railroads and the Submarine Telegraph more than double man's life, if we count his years by action. History itself must now begin as from a new epoch. All the doings of the world, through this rapidity given to person and to thought, must be so altered as to bear no parallel with the past. The old locomotive and communicating powers are defunct—they are as the water that has passed the mill. It must grind with that which succeeds. They are new powers that must set the wheels of governments and of all the world's machinery in motion.

There is in the Spectator a paper of the true Addisonian wit, descriptive of an Antediluvian courtship, in which the young couple, having gone through the usual process in the early art of love, complete their happiness in the some hundredth year of their ages. Theorists have entertained the notion that this long life was bestowed upon man in the world's first era, that knowledge might be more readily transmitted, there being few generations to the Flood. To the lovers of life it would be a sad thing to be led to the conclusion, that, transmission being quickened, life will be shortened; or that, as in the winding-up of a drama, events are crowding into the last act of our earth's duration. It may relieve their apprehensions to read of the advance the medical science is making simultaneously with all other sciences, so that they may look to a state in which a man may live as long as he likes, and at the same time do ten times the work: a man's day will perhaps be a year, counting by his doings. Morose poets and philosophers have lamented over us as ephemeral; if so, we are at least like the Antediluvian butterflies, and our day long. And now, with all our sanitary inventions, it stands a fair chance of a tolerable lengthening.

We have observed that it has been said that the world is not fifteen years of age; and, indeed, it looks like enough. Hitherto Nature has treated us as a kind mother does her children—given us toys and playthings, to be broken and discarded as we get older. We are throwing them by, we are becoming of age, and Nature opens her secrets to us, and we are just setting up for ourselves—as it were, commencing the business of life, like grown men in good earnest; and every day we find out more secrets, and all worth knowing.

We will not lay down the pen without expressing our congratulations to the inventors of the Submarine Telegraph, the Messrs Brett, and wishing them the fullest success. They themselves as yet know not the extent of the reach of their own invention, or they might well wonder at their own wonders, like "Katerfelto, with his hair on end!"
We wish them long life to see the results—and that they will not, through mistrust of so great a discovery, imitate Copernicus, who, says Fontenelle, "distrusting the success of his opinions, was for a long time loth to publish them, and, when they brought him the first sheet of his work, died, foreseeing that he never should be able to reconcile all its contradictions, and therefore wisely slipped out of the way." Messrs Brett will think it wiser to live, and be in the way and at their post, (no post obit,) ready to answer all queries and contradictions, through the convincing, the very satisfactory means, of their "Submarine Telegraph."