CHAP. m. THE CONVEYANCE OF THOUGHT. 21 



means of communication we now use daily would have 

 been wholly inconceivable to our ancestors a hundred 

 years ago. 



About the middle of the last century it was perceived 

 by a few students of electricity that it afforded a means 

 of communication at a distance; but it was not till the 

 year 1837 that the efforts of many simultaneous workers 

 overcame the numerous practical difficulties, and the 

 first electric telegraph was established. Its utility was 

 so great, especially in the working of the railways then 

 being rapidly extended over the kingdom, that it soon 

 came into general use ; but hardly anyone at first thought 

 that it would ever be possible to lay wires across the 

 ocean depths to distant continents. Yet, step by step, 

 with wonderful rapidity, even this was accomplished. 

 The first submarine line was laid from Dover to Calais 

 in 1851; and only five years afterward, in 1856, a com- 

 pany was formed to lay an electric cable across the 

 Atlantic. The cable, 2500 miles long and weighing a 

 ton per mile, was successfully laid, in 1858, from Ire- 

 land to Newfoundland; but owing to the weakness of 

 the electric current, and perhaps to imperfections in the 

 cable, it soon became useless, and had to be abandoned. 

 After eight years more of invention and experiment, 

 another cable was successfully laid in 1866; and there 

 are now no less than fourteen lines across the Atlantic, 

 while all the other oceans have been electrically bridged, 

 so that messages can be sent to almost any part of the 

 globe at a speed which far surpasses the imaginary power 

 of Shakespeare's sprite Ariel, who boasted that he could 

 " put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." 

 We are now able to receive accounts of great events al- 



