238 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



I came home from Kilkenny last Friday, where I made some 

 agreeable acquaintances, and spent three days very pleasantly 

 at a fine old country-house in a park of 1200 acres, full of fine 

 timber, &c. At Kilkenny is a curious old cathedral with a round 

 tower, to the top of which I climbed by ladders, and plucked a 

 saxifrage from the roof, which roof, although no bigger than an 

 ordinary round table, bore a considerable fauna and flora on its 

 flat. 



Yesterday the submarine electric telegraph was successfully 

 laid down between Holyhead and Hovvth, and a message sent 

 across the Channel, and now a union is effected between England 

 and Ireland of which Dan O'Connell little dreamed. Will they 

 ever ' ; pay out " a line under the Atlantic ? I should not say 'tis 

 impossible, but perhaps 'twould be easier to go round by 

 Behring's Straights across Siberia. Would it not be a good 

 plan in sending out future Arctic searching expeditions to give 

 them a long electric line (a sort of jilum ariadneum) which 

 they could lay down as they went along, and so send back con- 

 stant intelligence of their whereabouts? The idea is worth 

 something. 



To Mrs. Harvey, New York. 



Trinity College, Dublin, June 24, 1852. 



You will hear from Dr. Wainwright, I suppose, about the 

 grand affair in London of the Jubilee. Bishops from all parts 

 of Christendom, save Ireland, strange to say, though some of our 

 spiritual lords must have been in London at the time. I have 

 heard that one of your bishops (Michigan, I think) said it was 

 worth travelling 3000 miles for the three hours spent in the 

 Abbey on that occasion. It must indeed have been a touching 

 sight. There were 800 communicants; the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury with the Bishops of London and Michigan officiated 

 at the table. What a hopeful fraternization between your Far 

 West and our poor old weather-beaten church. May it be the 

 beginning of a long series of mutual good offices. " Peace be 

 within her walls, and plenteousness within her palaces," — not 

 plenteousness of silver and of gold, but of what California cannot 

 buy — " the spirit of power and might — the spirit of knowledge 

 and of the fear of the Lord." She will want it all in the im- 



