IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY. 107 



removing the ignorant and baneful preju- 

 dices of nation against nation, province 

 against province, and class against class ; 

 of assuring that social order which is the 

 foundation of progress, which has re- 

 deemed Europe from barbarism, and 

 against which one is glad to think that 

 those who, in our time, are employing 

 themselves in fanning the embers of an- 

 cient wrong, in setting class against class, 

 and in trying to tear asunder the existing 

 bonds of unity, are undertaking a futile 

 struggle. The telephone is only second 

 in practical importance to the electric tele- 

 graph. Invented, as it were, only the other 

 day, it has already taken its place as an 

 appliance of daily life. Sixty years ago, the 

 extraction of metals from their solutions, 

 by the electric current, was simply a high- 

 ly interesting scientific fact. At the pres- 

 ent day, the galvano-plastic art is a great 

 industry ; and, in combination with pho- 

 tography, promises to be of endless service 



