To law, to learning, to religion, she

Adds Heaven's own element of liberty."

This poem of Mr Bailey's is curiously unlike his other works in its general character. "Festus" is a very laboured production; this is a very slovenly one. "Festus" is the most ambitious poem ever undertaken; this is comparatively very humble in its pretensions. We have a real admiration for the abilities which Mr Bailey has indicated-rather than displayed in each case. If he could but be persuaded to know the nature and limits of his powers, he would almost certainly be able to extend his reputation as a poet, far beyond the circle of that unhappy coterie in which at present he is exclusively approved, and would win the applause of persons whose applause is fame. There are hundreds of passages in "Festus," and many in "The Age," each of which contains matter for a short, separate, poem. Indeed, these passages are essentially independent pieces; but their effect is lost by their position, in a long work. Mr Bailey has not the power of writing a long work which shall have a vital totality and completeness; and, in this, he is only like many a poet, who has won enduring fame by small pieces of perfect truth, tenderness, and finish. Why cannot Mr Bailey and the other poets of his school, adopt this plan. They are most of them men of too much perception not to have been considerably annoyed at the way in which their works have been received by those whose approval they must know to be alone worth having.

There are two little pieces lately published by an American, Mr W. A. Butler, which deserve a few words from us. They are called "Nothing to Wear," and Two Millions ;" and are very hastily executed satires upon the abuses of wealth by the ignorant and vulgar. They have had a considerable circulation among a certain not very select class of readers; and display a freedom in the management of verse, and an occasional sense of humour, which, if properly cultivated and applied, might make Mr Butler's writings sought out by others than idlers at railway stations. Mr Firkin, with

"His visible coach outside the visible Church,"

is the representative of an increasing class who are as fair marks for satire as ever existed; but we can only regret that in "Two Millions," as in "The Age," some good subjects are blown upon and spoiled. We would strongly recommend Mr Butler and all persons who have faculties, and waste them, to reflect that they are only a worse development of the Firkin type. Firkin abuses the stewardship of a material estate; they waste the far more potent wealth of mind.

The Atlantic Telegraph.

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ART. X.-1. The Atlantic Telegraph. A History of Preliminary Experimental Proceedings, and a Descriptive Account of the Present State and Prospects of the Undertaking. Published by order of the Directors of the Company, July 1857. Pp. 70. London.

2. Elemens de Telegraphie sous-marine. Par A. DELAMARCHE, Hydrographer to the Navy, and Officer of the Legion of Honour. Paris. 1858. Pp. 92.

3. Sur le Telegraphe sous-marine Transatlantique. Par M. BLAVIER, in the Annales Telegraphiques, No. I. Paris. 1858. 4. On the Origin of the Submarine Telegraph, and its Extension to India and America. By JOHN W. BRETT, London; in the Reports of the British Association. 1854. P. 7. 5. On Magneto-Electricity and Underground Wires. By EDWARD B. BRIGHT. Liverpool. Id. Id. P. 8.

6. Experimental Observations on an Electric Cable. By WILDMAN WHITEHOUSE. Id. Id. 1855. P. 23.

7. On Improvements in Submarine and Subterraneous Telegraph Communications. By C. F. VARLEY. London. Id. Id. P. 17. 8. On the Submergence of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable. By Capt. N. S. NOLLOTH, R.N. From the Journal of the United Service Institution, Vol. II. London. 1858.

9. On the Origin and Progress of the Oceanic Electric Telegraph, with a few Brief Facts, and Opinions of the Press. By JOHN W. BRETT. London. 1858. Pp. 104.

10. The Museum of Science and Art. By DIONISIUS LARDNER, D.C.L. Vol. III. London. 1854.

11. On the Effects of Induction on long Submarine Lines of Telegraph. By Professor WILLIAM THOMSON, LL.D., F.R.S.

WERE we called upon to enumerate the true wonders of the world, those great gifts to civilisation which the highest reason never ventured to anticipate, and which evince more than any other the genius of our race, we would name the steam-engine and its application to fixed machinery and to vessels and carriages, -the system of railway locomotion,-the electric telegraph,the telescope and microscope, the voltaic battery,—the electromagnetism of Oersted, the electrotype,-gas illumination,the electric light,-the Daguerreotype and Talbotype, and the submarine Atlantic telegraph.

The last of these inventions, though neither the greatest nor the most useful, is perhaps the most marvellous. Even when the various discoveries which it combines were familiar to philosophers, it was no mean effort of genius to apply them in the construction and deposit of a submarine telegraph; and, when

cables had been stretched and in operation over short distances, and under shallower seas, it required a deep faith in the resources of science to contemplate their extension across the Atlantic. When Franklin tamed the lightening, and brought it down to do menial work in his laboratory, he little thought that the fire which flashed through the string of his kite, would join the world of civilisation to the young republic, which he loved. When Le Monnier and Sir W. Watson carried the electric influence through 6000 feet of wire, the idea never occurred to them that the transmitted shocks could be combined into signals and into words. When the humble resident in Renfrew, whose name exists only in the shadow of his initials, published "An Expeditious Method of Conveying Intelligence from one Place to another, without the Electricity being sensibly abated by the length of the Wire," he never dreamt that his unnoticed and perhaps ridiculed proposal, would be universally adopted, that his "sets of wires, equal in number to the letters of the alphabet," would be reduced to one, and that this one would spread itself, like a spider's web, over the four quarters of the globe, and finally pass across the widest and deepest of its oceans. When Volta invented the battery which has immortalised his name, and Professor Oersted discovered electro-magnetism, they never contemplated their telegraphic applications. Nay, even when Cooke and Wheatstone established the electric telegraph in England, and patented their inventions for working it, they never looked forward to its submarine extension.

We do not know who had the merit of first suggesting a Submarine Telegraph. The frequent use of subterranean, or buried telegraphic wires, which must have often passed through marshy ground, and even across brooks and rivers, could not fail to suggest the practicability of submarine cables; but, whoever may have hazarded the idea, it seems beyond a doubt that the Messrs

This proposal was published under the signature C.M., in the Scots Magazine for February 1753, and will be found at full length in our article on the Electric Telegraph, February 1855, vol. xxii., p. 548.

A writer in the Quarterly Review (June 1854, vol. xcv., p. 151) makes the following statement:-"As long back as the year 1840, as we find by the Minutes of Evidence in the Fifth Report upon Railways, wherein the subject of electric telegraphy was partially examined, that whilst Mr Wheatstone was under examination, Sir John Guest asked, 'Have you tried to pass the line through water?' to which he replied, "There would be no difficulty in doing so, but the experiment has not yet been tried.' Again, on the Chairman, Lord Seymour, asking, Could you communicate from Dover to Calais in that way?' he replied, 'I think it perfectly practicable."" This was certainly not suggesting a Submarine Telegraph; for any person of common information would have given the same answers. In the very next paragraph the Review doubts the practicability of a submarine cable, till 1847, when Siemens suggested the application of gutta percha to the wires. Sir William O'Shaughnessy had actually succeeded, in 1839, a year before the date of the report, in depositing a submarine cable in the bed of the Hoogly.

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Mr Brett, in 1845, suggested a Transatlantic Cable. Brett were the first that carried it into execution. So early as the 16th June 1845, they registered a "General Oceanic Telegraph Company," the specified object of which was "to form a connecting mode of communication, by telegraphic means, from the British Islands, and across the Atlantic Ocean, to Nova Scotia, and the Canadas, the Colonies, and Continental Kingdoms;" and, on the 23d of July of the same year, they explained to Sir Robert Peel, then at the head of the Government, the advantages which England and the Colonies would derive from its execution. A scheme, so grand and cosmical in its character, confounded the limited capacity of the minister, and Mr Brett was referred to the Lords of the Admiralty as the proper Board for "sanctioning and recommending it." It was, consequently, laid before Sir George Cockburn, the First Lord of the Admiralty; and, in order to test its practicability by direct experiment, Mr Brett offered, by means of a submarine and subterranean telegraph, "to place Dublin Castle in instantaneous communication with Downing Street, provided L.20,000 was advanced by the State towards the expense." The head of the Navy was in complete rapport with the head of the Treasury; and, true to its miser instincts and illiberal antecedents, the British Government rejected a scheme of general oceanic communication, which, as the Mistress of the Sea, and the protector of her vast Colonies, it was the especial duty of England to have originated and promoted.

Thus thwarted in his noble enterprise, Mr Brett sought for the patronage of foreign nations. In 1847 he obtained permission from Louis Philippe to unite England with France by a submarine line; but, though the Provisional Government of 1848 was equally favourable to the scheme, it was deemed by the public too hazardous to receive their support. Undaunted by disappointment, the Messrs Brett applied, in 1849, to Louis Napoleon, who immediately granted the concession which was solicited, and agreed to give them the exclusive benefit of their enterprise, for ten years. The public mind, however, was not yet prepared to patronise it, and only L.2000 was subscribed towards the undertaking.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, the Messrs Brett resolved to lay down the cable at their own expense; but, before doing this, they solicited from the Admiralty the same protection and exclusive privilege which had been conceded to them by the French Government. This boon, however, was refused, and permission was granted to them to land the cable on the English coast, and thus make it useful to the nation, on the express condition, "that the public should be at no cost respecting it," and that "it shall cease to be used, and removed whenever their Lordships (of the Admiralty) should think proper to order it!"

Though thus left to their own resources, and exposed to the chance of having the voice of their telegraph hushed, and its cable removed, they commenced their great work in August 1850. A single copper wire, enclosed in gutta percha, and twenty-seven miles long, was put on board the "Goliath" steamtug, to be paid out from a large iron cylinder, round which it was coiled. The vessel started from Dover, exciting no other feeling but one of fear on the part of the projectors, "lest this frail experimental thread should snap and involve the undertaking in ridicule. When one end was fixed in the Eastern Railway terminus, the wire was paid out and sunk by means of pieces of lead, fastened to it at distances of the sixteenth of a mile. The operation was successfully performed, and the wire landed and fixed at Cape Grisnez.1 When the instruments were attached to its extremities, a message was sent across the channel the same evening to Louis Napoleon, the only patron of the undertaking." After several other communications had been transmitted, "the words 'All well,' and 'Good night,' were printed by the telegraph in Roman type, and closed the evening." "The jest of yesterday," as the Times remarked, “thus became the fact of to-day."

Upon attempting to transmit messages, early next morning, no answer was obtained; and it was found "that the frail experimental thread had snapped," at a sharp ridge of rocks, about a mile from Cape Grisnez. The action of the waves had rubbed the cable against the rock upon which it lay, and after wearing off the gutta percha envelope, at last broke the wire. The slender wire which had thus given way had been employed by the Messrs Brett as an experimental test of the practicability of the enterprise, and not with the conviction that it would be the permanent line of communication. The result of the experiment was in every respect valuable. It established the great fact that a submarine cable, even with a single wire and an insulating envelope, would have been a permanent and useful telegraph if landed on a sandy beach, or if made stronger in those portions that had to rest on a rocky bottom. The Messrs Newall and Company, of Gateshead, were, therefore, employed to make a stronger cable, sufficient to resist any force, either of pressure or attrition, to which it might be exposed; and so complete was their success, that it has lasted for upwards of seven years. It is twenty-four miles long, and consists of four copper wires, the diameter of each of which is the sixteenth of an inch. Each wire is covered with two thick coatings of gutta percha, laid on in succession. The wires, thus invested, are then twisted together, and surrounded with a mass of spun-yarn soaked in The greatest depth of the channel is thirty fathoms.