3 THE MICROSCOPE. 



fields, or gathering far beneath our feet the not 

 less precious harvests of our coal, and lime, and 

 iron mines : and as we gaze on the strange and 

 varied scene, we are constrained to ask, Where is 

 the seer's eye that can yet discover, or the pro- 

 phet's tongue that can tell, what is to be the 

 amount of the changes that the world is destined 

 to witness, as the result of the invention of the 

 Steam-Engine ? 



Or we see the Electric Element, that for six 

 thousand years seemed to go forth at only Hea- 

 ven's bidding, and to flash before the human 

 eye as the most awful of God's material agencies, 

 at last arrested in its dread path, and employed 

 by the genius of a Wheatstone to pass on its 

 way as man's most ready and rapid messenger, 

 communicating his thoughts with a tongue of 

 fire, in a moment of time, in the twinkling of 

 an eye, to his brother man, at the ends of the 

 earth ; now conveying to us war's dread tidings 

 from the shores of the Crimea, or the wide-spread 

 plains of India ; and now preparing to circulate 

 daily and instantaneously between the Old and 

 New Worlds even though the deep and stormy 

 waters of the Atlantic roll between them the 



