60 Remarks on the Theories of PT. u. 



bination of Chemistry and Optics it would become 

 possible to fix the fleeting images and shadows that 

 flit before our eyes and transfer them to paper in 

 shape of durable pictures, he would have been 

 regarded as a dreamer. Yet the art of Photography 

 has within that period been diffused over the whole 

 of the civilised world, and in the future has become 

 as imperishable as civilisation itself, with which it is 

 entwined. A still more recent and far grander and 

 more important step in Science has been made by 

 the Electric Telegraph. In the commencement of 

 the present century the wonders it accomplishes 

 would have been considered on a par with the in- 

 ventions in the ' Arabian Nights' Entertainments ; ' 

 we should have regarded as the most incredible of 

 fictions an Assembly in London transmitting a 

 message to Calcutta, and receiving an answer in the 

 course of the same evening before it separated, or 

 the speech of the President of the United States 

 being circulated in London the day after it was 

 delivered. Such apparent miracles would have been 

 ranked with the feat of the African magician re- 

 moving Aladdin's palace in one night from the centre 

 of Asia to that of Africa. Yet the discovery of the 

 almost instantaneous transmission of the electric 



