It has no bottom in it. Men in the positions | Mr. Johnson beautifully described, amidst of Doolittle, Raymond, and Weed, cannot, tremendous applause, as "sounding the tocif they would, act with men who grudge in sin of alarm, whenever I saw the citadel of their hearts every penny which is voted to- liberty in danger,". really meaning, as it wards the interest of the national debt or seems to us, whenever he saw any danger of the reward of the national army. Men liberty. It is interesting to know, too, like General Dick Taylor and Governor Orr that "neither the taunts nor jeers of Concannot, if they would, act with men who, gress, nor of a subsidized, calumniating though" wishing to do the South a pleasure, press, can drive me from my purpose," they gladly leave the negro bound," still do namely, to "acknowledge no superior exnot hesitate for a moment in asserting the cept my God, the author of my existence, hated authority of the President and the and the people of the United States." central Legislature over the whole South. God, he expressly tells us, has already enThis short-sighted attempt to patch up a dorsed the platform of Mr. Thurlow Weed truce on the part of vulgar-minded policy- and the Philadelphia Convention, so that to mongers rather than politicians, who can- Mr. Johnson's own mind the only power not see that there is no true Union possible that seems capable of moving him from his till there is some moral unity between North present policy is that of the people of the and South, has failure written as plainly on United States, if they should happen to its front as though the Philadelphia Conven- repudiate the platform of this discreditable tion had been itself, what it would have been and dishonoured league. We believe that but for the skilfully enforced silence, a scene the free settlers of the North will yet effect of fierce strife and wrangling. this, having their eyes partly opened by the President's fierce plebeian zeal for the antinegro party at the South. And if they should, let us hope that Mr. Johnson will still think better of "the author of his existence," than to identify His awful providences with the intrigues of this adroit knot of caucus-managers who have from 1860 to the present time soiled with their vulgarthoughted cunning the noblest cause for which man ever bled at the distinct signal

From the Spectator, 8 Sept.

THE AWAKENING OF THE CABLE.

The President certainly has not contributed to the chances of his party's success by the violent and fierce diatribe in which he indulged against the Congress which has just dispersed. "We have seen this Congress, he says, "pretend to be for the Union when its every step and act tend to perpetuate disunion and make a disruption of the States inevitable. Instead of promoting reconciliation and harmony, its legislation has partaken of the character of of the Most High. penalties, retaliation, and revenge." That, mind, is the President's description of the only two acts of Congress which he thought it his duty to veto, the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which simply gave him additional powers to protect the poor lynched and persecuted negro in the Southern States, and the Civil Rights Act, which gave the negro all the privileges of a citizen of the United States. This is what this President calls "penalties, retaliation, and revenge." And no doubt as to "penalties" he is right. The severest penalty you could inflict on these Southern free citizens is to make them respect the negro and acknowledge his equal civil rights. Whether it can be called "retaliation and revenge" to enforce respect for a more deeply injured third party on one who has inflicted terrible injuries on yourself, is a metaphysical question which most rational persons would probably answer in the negative. Yet it is interesting to know that Mr. Johnson thinks it a wicked and vindictive policy for the North to avenge itself by insisting on bare justice to the freedmen of the South. It is apparently his veto upon this policy which

THERE can be but few who have read without a certain thrill of fanciful wonder or almost awe, of the strange inarticulate messages which have come at intervals, during the whole year of the lost Atlantic cable's immersion, from the depths of the ocean three miles down, to the electricians watching the end of the clue which was safely attached to the Irish shore. "Night and day," says the Times, " for a whole year an electrician has always been on duty watching the tiny ray of light through which signals are given, and twice every day the whole length of wire-1,240 miles, has been tested for conductivity and insulation. . . . The object of observing the ray of light was of course not any expectation of a message, but simply to keep an accurate record of the condition of

the wire. Sometimes indeed wild incoherent | Could we imagine the cable a living nerve messages from the deep did come, but these instead of a wire, and Ireland a ganglion were merely the results of magnetic storms communicating by means of this nerve with and earth currents, which deflected the the other extremity, then, instead of regalvanometer rapidly, and spelt the most ex-ceiving a thrill from the opposite end in far traordinary words and sometimes even sen- less than a second, the message would travel tences of nonsense, upon the graduated scale before the mirror. Suddenly last Saturday morning, at a quarter to six o'clock, while the light was being watched by Mr. May, he observed a peculiar indication about it which showed at once to his experienced eye that a message was at hand. In a few minutes afterwards the unsteady flickering was changed to coherency, if we may use such a term, and at once the cable began to speak," to transmit, that is, at regular intervals, the appointed signals which indicated human purpose and method at the other end, instead of the hurried signs, broken speech, and inarticulate cries of the still illiterate Atlantic. When at length the message did come, the 'insulation' and conducting power' of the cable so long lost at the bottom of the ocean were found to be even more perfect than those of the new cable just laid down. The messages came through it more distinctly and more rapidly than through the line of communication which has just been successfully completed. After the long interval in which it had brought us nothing but the moody and often delirious mutterings of the sea stammering over its alphabet in vain, the words Canning to Glass' must have seemed like the first rational word uttered by a highfever patient when the ravings have ceased and his consciousness returns. The same telegraphic wire which, when played upon only by the general galvanic currents of the earth, uttered unmeaning and tumultuous sounds, the mere stormy reverie of the elements, became precise, business-like, informing, so soon as the lost end of it was picked up by a creature of the same order as he who managed the shore end.

It is not easy to hear of these things without being struck by the curious analogy between these artificial and artistic processes and those natural processes from which they are in some sense imitated. Scientific men assert that the nerves of the human body are to all intents and purposes a telegraphic apparatus, in which, however, the nervous agent, or equivalent of electricity, travels along the nervous cable indefinitely more slowly than electricity along the wire, more slowly than sound, more slowly than the motion of a race-horse.*

See the remarkable paper read by M. Emile du

Bois Reymond before the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, on Tuesday, the 13th April last.

quite as slowly as if sent by express train from the same distance. The speed of the nervous agency, -so say the men of science, -is so utterly distanced by the speed of electricity that were the earth, as some of the ancient philosophers believed, a sort of vast globular animal, with a corporeal and nervous organization of its own not more perfect than that of man, then, any one part of her body would be indefinitely longer in receiving notice through her nervous system of what is happening to other parts of her body than even the carrier pigeon would be in bearing the news; and hence the invention of the electric telegraph would in such a case actually bring intelligence to any one organic centre of the earth weeks beforehand of the sympathetic pain that it would feel on the arrival of the nervous message weeks later, from any specific injury already affecting some other centre of its nervous force. If, then, the human nerves be carriers of information which are indefinitely more tardy, and therefore of course liable to indefinitely more perturbations, by the way, than the magnetic cable beneath the Atlantic, may we not fairly suppose that those chains of intellectual, moral, and spiritual association, for the complete command of which, in our present state, we are certainly more or less dependent on nervous agency, and which assuredly are not traversed by the mind itself from one end to the other without an appreciable and not inconsiderable lapse of time, are liable not only to the same class of perturbations as the magnetic cable itself, but even to more and greater? Owing to the much tardier rate at which thought travels down the long strands or association, and the far more more complicated network of memories by which it is crossed and recrossed, not only in virtue of its original workmanship, but of the futile efforts with which we, like the Atlantic Cable squadron, often attempt to grapple and buoy them, there seems to us to be far more danger both of imperfect insulation and of interrupted coherence in the use of those delicate conducting media of thought and feeling, than of the injuries to which the Atlantic cable is itself liable. It is true indeed that we can scarcely suppose the spiritual chain of memory to be measurable by any corresponding and co-extensive I length of nerve, so that it is scarcely fair to

infer from the slow transmission of percep-
tion along the nerves, the equally slow
transmission of association and memory be-
tween past and present or present and past.
No nervous fibre stretches away into our
own past, like the Atlantic cable, from the
American to the European shores, and it
would be absurd to assert that in recalling
our own past history from year to year, the
number and succession of our thoughts
could be measured by the length of nervous
cable down which the supposed nervous
fluid is transmitted from our earliest memory
to our latest. Still, as there is a certain pro-
portion between the rapidity of our various
mental faculties, anything which gives us
the rate at which we grow into full and con-
scious perception, affords some approximate
measure of the general speed of our mental
processes. Memory is probably so much Such an analogy does not in the least im-
quicker than perception only because, know- ply the materiality of the mind itself, which
ing the line of march, we skip the unimpor- we hold to be absurd. But if the condi-
tant links in the chain without attending to tions of association are similar in the time
them to-day at all in the way in which we which they require for the process of recollec-
did yesterday, while the journey was new; tion, and the regularity or irregularity with
had we to attend as much to every point in which the mind travels along them, to the con-
the line of memory as we did in traversing ditions of the passage of nervous fluid along
the route for the first time, it would take us the nerves, and therefore also of the electric
probably as long to remember yesterday as fluid along the wire, there must be similar
it did to live through it. But we refer to conditions also of the greater or less perfec-
this not to establish a theory, but simply tion with which they perform their office, and
to justify the suggestion that if the scientific the same sort of possibility of their being
men are right in the time they assign to the rendered useless altogether, and becoming
transmission of a perception from one
mere channels to transmit the fitful mur-
point to another of our organism, we may murings of inarticulate thought or feel-
have some measure of the rate at which we ing. When, indeed, the lost cable is not
should recall the same process at a future one of the great strands of memory on which
period, supposing that we dwelt with the the soundness of the mind itself depends,
same stress of attention on each stage of we all of us can recall plenty of instances
the process.
And if this be granted, then in which we have personally fitted out such
what we are driving at all this time be- an expedition as the recent one in the At-
comes evident, that. strands of moral and lantic, have grappled with the missing elue,
spiritual association twisted (if we may be sometimes half found it, buoyed it with a
allowed the metaphor) through many long new symbol to show it whereabouts, and al-
years, and submerged for the whole of most got the lost end on board, when it has
that period far beneath the surface of the slipped away again with a great thud to the
mind, are strictly speaking, and without bottom. Sometimes, too, we may have-
metaphor, liable in a far higher degree to been more successful, and re-established an
the same kinds of accidents, the same dis- important line of communication with prov-
turbing causes, the same imperfect insula- inces of thought long lost to view, and even
tions, the same temporary interruptions, then perhaps have had, like the Great East-
and even in the last resort to the same rup- ern, to overrun the wire to a considerable
tures, as the submarine cable of the Atlantic distance nearer our own end than the point
telegraph itself. What are many kinds of at which we first grappled with it, in order
nervous disturbance but false messages car- to get rid of the tangle in which the different
ried through old trains of association, in" buoy and grapnel ropes" - the extrinsic
consequence of interuptions of the proper clues of fresh association by which we have
series of links by some rude shock at one of sought to recover the lost thread - have in-
the more important centres of feeling during volved it. But the point which makes our
the slow passage of the connecting thought? analogy seem, fancifully perhaps, of some
What is the ordinary failure of power which value, is the report of the electricians that

we connect with paralysis but the hesitation
and delay with which the mind travels down
a train of association that is, as we may say,
imperfectly insulated, that is, broken by
flutterings of illdefined and half remem-
bered feelings at various stages on the path?
What are various kinds of madness itself
but the absolute rupture of some of the
more important strands of memory, due to
some great agitation or storm that has
agitated the mind to its depth, and which
become, therefore, instead of connecting
threads of communication between person
and person, or between one province of life ·
and another, mere conductors of the un-
meaning mutterings of reverie, striking acci-
dentally some one of the broken chords in
some now useless chain of once specific asso-
ciations ?

From the Spectator, 8 Sept.

LHUYS.

DE

the line of cable may really gain in value nothing more than the mere restored line of as a transmitting medium during the time communication between mind and mind, to in which it is lost and useless. Its "in- exchange those wild and incoherent muttersulation" has, they say, in this case become ings of broken association for streams of more perfect, and the messages transmitted thought and feeling even purer, clearer, by it are better and more rapidly transmit- and more rapid than any which passed ted than by the newly laid cable. If this through it before the line was fractured and be true of an electric cable, the only its bearings lost. reason for it being of course that the pressure of the sea above it and the uniform temperature have rendered it less and less liable to disturbing influences, - why may not the same improvement take place, and for a like reason, in those broken cables of intellectual and moral associations that lie far beneath the consciousness of so many minds THE DISMISSAL OF M. DROUYN lost for the time to human reason? It certainly is not that the associative power is no longer there, for the very signals which we receive through them, incoherent and wild as they are in consequence of the rupture at the other end, often show, as the electric light on the lost cable showed, perfect and wonderful transmitting power, though the proper use of it is for the time lost. The true force of moral associations, we all know, often increases in intensity the less it is used to carry superficial currents of feeling. Those of our personal ties in which actual communication is broken by absence or death grow, as dreams alone are sufficient to tell us, clearer, keener, more perfectly" insulated," less crossed by petty and false threads of marring association, through the years of silence and disuse. That little ray of light by the gleam of which perhaps, unknown to us, the great Electrician of the spirit tests them day and night, shines the brighter only as the waves of daily action and passion roll deeper and fuller over the strands along which it flashes. And why may it not be so also with those broken strands which are interrupted not by absence or death, but by violent moral shocks, the magnetic storms, as it were, of the spirit? Is there not even for the insane a hope that the gathering up of one or two drifting threads of passionate association, even though it be postponed from this life to the other, will restore them not merely to their former, but more than their former, rational energy? The expedition may have to be fitted out from the opposite shore, through the helplessness of the mind still lingering on this; it may be that no resources of human science can effect for them the renewal of the lost clues in mid-ocean, but it is easy to conceive that the drifting ends once fairly seized, whether from the spiritual shore or from this, it will need no miracle of healing,

IT would be folly to consider the fact of M. Drouyn de Lhuys' retirement from the Foreign Office an incident of no extraordinary importance. At no time and under no circumstances. except of palpable external causes, such as manifest ill health can the resignation of one of the Emperor Napoleon's Foreign Ministers be disassociated from political motives, for the life and action of the Empire are concentrated in its attitude towards foreign nations, so that the Director of the Foreign Department must be the essential organ of the Imperial mind. But if, then, at all times it is natural to ascribe a political reason for the removal of a Foreign Secretary, it becomes absolutely impossible to dismiss the notion, when we observe such an array of incidents attending an unexpected removal, as on this occasion. M Drouyn de Lhuys' retirement has been pointedly marked with what the canons of common-sense interpretation must read as the signs of disgrace and expulsion. The announcement in the Moniteur of his having ceased to hold the seals of office produced not less surprise in the public, than the studied curtness of language in which the Emperor communicated the Imperial acceptance of his Minister's resignation. It is impossible for any official expression to be more chilling in its wording. "I regret, my dear M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that circumstances should oblige me to accept your resignation," is all the Emperor has to say. Never has a Government servant been told to go to the right-about with less ceremony. Also, the surprise created by the first announcement has not diminished, for when so unexpected a resolution comes in so startling a manner men have the right to conjecture some exceptional motive to have been at work, and will strain their wits to guess it. It requires but a glance at the

newspaper correspondence from Paris to represent the current of influence contrary see how completely the public was unpre- to that of the late Minister, as he is entrustpared for what has happened, and how thor-ed with the temporary direction of his deoughly it is puzzled for an explanation of partment, and M. Rouher together, have

the event.

succeeded in convincing the Emperor that he must frankly abandon all further ambiguous and semi-hostile attitude towards Germany, as this will inflame the fermenting agitation in France to a degree that must prove more than a match to the bridling power of Government, if indisposed to embark in war before long. And this report, circulated in well informed circles, derives confirmation from the fact that M. Benedetti, the direct go-between for the Emperor and Bismark, who notoriously is imbued with pro-Prussian sympathies, has been summoned to Paris, and, though not promoted, as was anticipated, to the Foreign Office, has yet received a high mark of the Emperor's satisfaction with his services. It is only the wilfully blind, who will not see things and signs even when staring them in the face, who can persist in overlooking the significance of these facts.

We believe that this must not be sought, as has been surmised, in backwardness on the part of the late Minister to assist in the literal execution of the September Convention concluded by himself. It is not in any backwardness, but in an attributed overforwardness, that, we believe, has resided the head and front of M. Drouyn de Lhuys' offences. Information we have received on excellent authority indicates that M. Drouyn de Lhuys has been offered up as a scapegoat to the clamour of the French public, at France coming away with nothing but a fillip out of the great scramble that has so vastly enriched Prussia. In advancing the demand for a rectification of frontier, that statesman is charged in high quarters with having been guilty of language never authorized, so that he would be held responsible to France for having thoughtlessly exposed the Empire to a rebuff. Upon his What, then, are we entitled to infer from head thus it is sought to concentrate the these circumstances? We believe them to vials of noisy wrath at the inflation of Prus- portend that the Emperor Napoleon has sia, while France has not grown an inch, made up his mind to set his face against but has only been snubbed. Such is the the war growl raised by the French public. account of the reasons for the resignation It cannot be denied that a feeling more we derive from sources of an excellent nature, and it is borne out by everything which can be detected as an indication of what is going on. It is not merely by the downright harsh language publicly addressed to him in the letters of dismissal that the late Minister is held up to general attention as the object of Imperial disfavour. M. Drouyn de Lhuys, after having had the honour of France confided to his keeping during four years, is not only superseded, but summarily turned away, without being allowed to carry on the current business of the department for ten days longer, until the arrival of his successor from Turkey. A more glaring manifestation of sovereign displeasure, calculated to concentrate the heightened light of disgrace upon the individual, cannot be conceived. It is the proceeding to which a master has recourse when he wishes to mark his sense of the total untrustworthiness of a servant, and no posterior explanation will ever succeed in removing that impression. At the same moment that the Minister is thus dismissed, who is accused of having written despatches couched in an unauthorized tone of menace against Germany, we hear of various movements in an analogous sense. It is affirmed that M. de Lavalette, who certainly must

dangerous than any the Empire has yet had
to confront is at this moment abroad in
France, and quite in a condition to attain
an awkwardly explosive inflammatoriness.
Already men's minds are dwelling on the
scathing criticism on the Emperor's policy
which is expected from M. Thiers on the
opening of the Chambers, and it is certain
that in Government regions it is felt that
something must be done to retrieve the lus-
tre tarnished by the simultaneous downfall
of Mexico and the growth of Prussia tamely
acquiesced in. To do so by the sharp and
perilous agency of war-war against Ger-
many united, not merely against Prussia
it would seem, is profoundly distasteful to
the Emperor. And yet something must be
compassed to burnish up the waning bril-
liancy of the Imperial régime. What this
something may be is not yet distinctly visi-
ble, but there are very serious indication
that the engines of diplomacy are in active
motion to produce in peaceful accord the
texture of a political settlement, which may
gratify national vanity in France without
its attainment being at the cost of national
pride in Germany. It is the decided im-
pression in well informed quarters that
confidential negotiations are going on ac-
tively between the Tuileries and Berlin,