ELECTRICAL TELEGRAPH. 231 



The electrotype is but one of the applications of 

 electricity to the uses of man. This agent has been 

 employed as the carrier of thought ; and with infinite 

 rapidity, messages of importance, communications in- 

 volving life, and intelligences outstripping the speed of 

 coward crime, have been communicated. There will be 

 no difficulty in understanding the principle of this, 

 although many of the nice mechanical arrangements, to 

 ensure precision, are of a somewhat elaborate character. 

 The entire action depends on the deflection of a com- 

 pass-needle by the passage of an electric current along 

 its length. If at a given point we place a galvanic bat- 

 tery, and at twenty or one hundred miles distance from 

 it a compass-needle, between a wire brought from, and 

 another returning to the battery, the needle will remain 

 true to its polar direction so long as the wires are un- 

 excited; but the moment connection is made, and the 

 circuit is complete, the electricity of the whole extent of 

 wire is disturbed, and the needle is thrown at right 

 angles to the direction of the current. Provided a con- 

 nection between two points can be secured, however 

 remote they are from each other, we thus, almost 

 instantaneously, convey any intelligence. The effects 

 of an electric current would appear at a distance of 

 576,000 miles in a second of time; and to that dis- 

 tance, and with that speed, it is possible, by Professor 

 Wheatstone's beautiful arrangements, to convey whispers 

 of love or messages of destruction. 



The enchanted horse of the Arabian magician, the 

 magic carpet of the German sorcerer, were poor contri- 

 vances, compared with the copper wires of the elec- 

 trician, by which all the difficulties of time and the 

 barriers of space appear to be overcome. In the Scandi- 

 navian mythology we find certain spiritual powers of 

 e\il enabled to pass with imperceptible speed from one 

 remote point to another, sowing the seeds of a common 

 ruin amongst mankind. Such is the morbid creation of 



