the beginning of its developments. It is found that wires are not the only conductors of electric intelligence. They may be dispensed with, for hundreds of miles, while the elements of earth and water supply their place, and carry the marvellous matter! Electricity is communicated from one city to another on a wire, but it will come back by itself. It is found necessary to insure its going the required distance, lest any thing should thwart it on its outward way. But once at the place proposed, it seems to return like the carrier-pigeon. In this manner: The wire from the positive pole stretches round the magnetic apparatus at the end of the long way, and is there bent back, bent home to the zinc in the distant tub. But instead of being carried home on poles, it is broken short, and put, there, into the ground, pointing to its destination. A short piece of wire is carried from the home battery a short way into the ground, whereupon the moist earth fills the gap and completes the circuit. Instead of wandering out of the way in the dark, the lightning darts straight to its mark. Animated nature cannot furnish such a curious piece of instinct as that! Water is found to be a conductor as well as earth. A wire is carried from a distant battery to the bank of a river, broken off, and the end sunk in the water pointing to the further bank. There another end of wire is set in the stream, pointing to the first, and the rest of it drawn away to the distant place at which it bends back. Bending back, it is led to the stream, and laid in it, with its point to the opposite bank, where another wire from the battery is sunk and pointed to meet the returning wire. Here are two large water-gaps left in the circuit. But the electricity flows all round. "Swift thro' the turbulent profound cleared. Still there is no knowing how soon this difficulty in the way of ocean-telegraphing may be obviated. It has been suggested that the wire from the battery may be so coiled as to be long enough to compel the current through the ocean. In the mean time, the nations seem bent on having ocean telegraphs, one way or the other. They are laying a set of wires across the Straits of Dover, to bring Paris and London within speaking distance, and ignore, so to speak, that "perilous narrow ocean' which has witnessed so many hostile armaments of the two nations in days gone by. Another is intended to run underneath St. George's Channel to Ireland. Speculators of grander views have thought of laying down wires from the bay of Galway to Пalifax. Mr. Stuart, of New-York, set forth the details of the business some time ago, in a letter to the Scientific American. There is nothing of impossibility in his calculations. Besides, we are beginning to think that this word impossible is not to be classed among the vocables of the American language. Another great lightning project—no less than a line of telegraph wires (on a railway) from the English Channel to India and the Golden Chersonese-has been much talked of in England. The length of the course would be three thousand eight hundred miles-a thousand miles more than the space between Liverpool and New-York. The route proposed is through Vienna, Belgrade, the Balkan range, the Hellespont, eastward between the Euphrates and the Tigris, by the ruins of Nineveh and Persepolis, and so on, through Beloochistan and over the Indus, into the city of Meanee. Such are among the facts and tendencies connected with one phase of Electricity—the Telegraph-effecting in our matter-of-fact days much of the incredible romance of the But there are other superstitious ages. electric developments, "born or to be born," But swifter is the sure flash of that amaz- the offspring of that mother-principle. Utiliing chemistry. The rolling stream bridges tarian hands are laid upon the Protean elethe way for that incomprehensible lightning- ment; and it shall be made to perform the traveller! From this striking fact people offices of Caliban as well as those of Ariel. have concluded that seas may become con- We are treating it as Diagoras of Mantinea ductors, and that the Atlantic ocean may (we believe) treated his wooden Hercules, be made, like a stupendous messenger, to when the irreverent old fellow threw the carry to and fro the intelligence of its bound- figure into the fire and bade him perform his ing continents! It has been demonstrated, thirteenth labor-that is, boil the philosohowever, that the distance from the battery pher's pot! Modern science is indeed bringmust be greater than the water-space to being electricity from heaven, giving it tasks in cities and avocations in the household. I makes no smoke, a young lady could, with Witness the generation of inflammable gas perfect ease and nonchalance, do a cook's from water-a fact that promises to revolu- business; arrange her fire on an ornamental tionize the age in the most radical manner, centre table, and fixing the viands at it, go beginning with men's homes, and operating on with the latest thrilling tale, and divide in a circle over all the conditions of society. her attention equally between the cookery The Voltaic Battery employs its light- and the catastrophe. ning energy in the delicate task of resolving Mr. Paine, of Worcester, has been making water into what are considered its elements, similar experiments and crying out "Heureka" oxygen and hydrogen. When the charged a great many times. We hope he will be wires from the poles are inserted in the wa- able to do something important with his ter that completes the circuit, oxygen is lib-magnets and helices. From his late anerated at the positive pole, and hydrogen at nouncements we perceive he employs a the negative. Magnetism brings about the couple of horse-shoe magnets, works his same result in another way. If a magnetic helices with a wheel, and, instead of having bar be put into the centre of a coil of wire, solid copper wires, uses them in a tubular the coils grow electric and the ends of it are shape, with water in them. A power of two poles, capable of doing the business of electricity seems to be thus generated which a battery! Water is thus decomposed, and evolves hydrogen gas in torrents. These hydrogen gas produced, which burns with a water-conductors constitute a remarkable feeble flame. This, however, being carbon- peculiarity. Water contains electricity in ized, or catalyzed, gives out a vivid and enormous quantities. Faraday says a single powerful light. This light is in its first un- drop of it holds the lightning of a thundercertain stage. The chemists of America, storm! Mr. Paine asserts that water is a England, France and Germany are trying simple substance; that oxygen and hydrogen to make it cheaply and generally available are not the constituents of it; but that water to the world. Among the many who have can be converted into each. And he says already been employing this new light, Mr. that he can evolve hydrogen alone from Allman, of London, has produced a very water. All this may seem strange enough. cheap voltaic flame, with which he has il-But, as Montaigne would say, Que scai-je? luminated the Polytechnic Institution of that metropolis. He uses helices and magnets, and deflagrates a piece of carbon which tips his electrodes. In Paris, M. Gillard has been doing some very successful things with his hydrogen. He makes his gas in a simple and cheap way, and carries it into a retort, at the bottom of which is a layer of charcoal. He heats the retort red-hot, and thus generates carbonic acid and hydrogen. These are passed into another vessel containing lime, which last takes up the acid and leaves hydrogen to go off alone and appear at the burner in a blaze. A piece of platinum net-work inserted in this blaze gives it astonishing brilliancy. M. Gillard has a complete kitchen apparatus, and does his cooking pleasantly with hydrogen. He has a gridiron with tubular bars, perforated, and letting the gas into these, he broils and produces a mutton chop in the most dramatic and delightful manner. He then places his gridiron in a standing attitude, puts a goose in a tin-kitchen before it, and in due time the fowl is deftly roasted. With his apparatus and his flame, which What know we? This is not an age to be astonished at any thing; and Science now-adays asks as large a faith as Superstition did formerly. The restless inquiry of chemists is such that we believe the grosser supporters of combustion will be superseded before long, and a time will arrive when wood and coal will become as obsolete as war with bows and arrows, or travelling about in stagecoaches. Our descendants will yet speak of this period as the rude time when men cooked their victuals with turf, timber and coal. The change we thus contemplate would certainly be a sweeping one. If by an apparatus of magnets and helices, large enough for the largest factory and small enough for the cookery of a small family, flame could be evolved from water, intense enough and cheap enough for the common purposes of life, the coal mines would be no longer burrowed, and the forests no longer corded for fuel. While the abrogation of the coal mines, which give England such exclusive commercial advantages, would strike a levelling blow at her high suprem acy, "the rest of mankind" would be re-tricity, and others equally potent and happy joicing in the blessings of this wonderful are, as it were, waiting on the threshold, to revolution. And then, how our social ideas be brought within the circle of world's facts. of things would be turned topsy-turvy to Electricity, so variously appropriated by the see Betty bringing the anthracite and pine- wit and ingenuity of mortals, seems to perlogs from the pipe or the pump-setting her vade all nature in some mysterious connecmagnets and helices in order, with something tion with the light and heat of the sun, in of the dignity of a scientific professor, to boil the direction of whose apparent course Amthe kettle for breakfast or roast a shoulder pere and others conclude that it carries the of mutton! Fancy a china jug doing duty currents across the earth. This lightningfor a coal-scuttle, and a man warming his spirit may not alone be termed the missive feet, before stepping into bed, at a pint of of angry Jupiter, flashing from Olympus; cold water! But the benefits to machinery but the Gnome doing business in the veins would be more effective than any others. of the earth, and fashioning the crystal palLet us imagine large steam-ships dispensing aces underground; the Undine of the lakes with their loads of coal, and therefore run- and rivers; the Proteus of the ocean, and ning with a larger freight of men and the universal Pan of the forests and mounmerchandise. What a triumph of mind tains; the cosmical spirit that, as potent in over matter, to see the fuel of the engine a drop of water as a thunder-storm, drawn over the side in buckets, and water "Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, turning its heated energy to vanquish the Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; ocean; reminding us of the image in one of Lives through all life, extends through all extent the old Lybian fables spoken of by Eschy- Spreads undivided, operates unspent.” lus the eagle conquered by an arrow fledged with one of his own feathers! Ves- Since writing the foregoing, we have seen sels being thus more cheaply constructed a suggestion concerning one more use of the and impelled from shore to shore, the inter-electric agency which brings us back to the course of nations would be increased and fancy with which we set out. It is, that the cheapened, and the best interests of civiliza- Telegraph shall be employed, all over the tion rapidly promoted. federation, to give a general notice and alarm. of storms; the wires from each city of the States striking upon its bell in the Capitol, and warning all n en of the insurrection of the Elements in any locality, and of the road by which they are marching! This idea as much transcends the Gothic romance, as the tornadoes and clouds of heaven, When Thunder flings out his red banner of Light ning," But Electricity is about to do more than this. While it proposes to use hydrogen to make steam, it entertains the arrière pensée of abolishing steam altogether as a motive power! Professor Henry has already rendered a magnet powerful enough to support a ton weight; and Professor Page of Washington entertains good hopes of producing strong electro-magnetic machinery. He has been enabled to set an engine in motion, at the rate of seventeen miles an hour. When are more sublime objects than men in rebelthis magnetic principle shall be sufficiently lion; though the poet Akenside holds a conpowerful for all purposes of locomotion, peo- trary opinion. It would be a striking achieveple will go "up and down on the earth and melt to erect in some central locality (Washto and fro in it" with a great deal of sub-ington would do for the present) a building limity and satisfaction. The dangerous and which may be called, after the earliest raised expensive agency of steam, with the snorting by the ancient Greeks, the Temple of the and the smoke, will be done away with; and Winds, round the walls of which the atmosthe lightnings of heaven will be almost lite-pheric history of our northern continent rally broken in, harnessed, and drawing a mighty train along the land, as astonishingly and beautifully as ever those Coursers of the Sun, immortalized by Guido, drew the chariot of Phoebus-Apollo through the firma ment ! Such are among the developments of Elec should be recorded from day to day. Here the wires of the nation should converge so that "Libs, Notus, Auster," and the rest of that turbulent family, would have their whereabouts and doings prated of all over the country; for the warnings received at the centre would be instantly radiated in all directions. Thus, a Warder of the Winds | much under the control of despots to be the at Buffalo would give notice of a hurricane beneficent agent it is designed and destined on the Lakes, with a south-eastern tendency. to be. Instantly, the ships of New-York, Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New-Orleans, &c., are bid look out for squalls, in due time, and farmers and all others having to do with the elements are put on their guard. The storms cannot keep pace with the lightning messenger: 66 Compared with the speed of its flight, In conclusion, we must not omit to note one inevitable achievement of the electric principle,-the finest and most propitious of all! It tends to maintain the integrity of the Union; to bind the "rods of empire" together in one magnificent fasces for Freedom to strike the tyrannies of the world with, or at least over-awe them, if the other word be too strong for the occasion. To the arguments of those who anticipate separation on account of distance and extent of territory, the Telegraph replies by diminishing space and time in such a way that, in less than twenty years, all North America, from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from one ocean to the other, will be as compact to all and so people every where may expect the skyey influences" without surprise. In addition to all this, such a system would create a body of atmospheric statistics, accumulating for years, which in the end would help science to some theory beneficial to the world in general, and sailors and farmers in par-intents and purposes as England was twenty ticular-a monument of practical philosophy as stately as the Temple itself. years ago. Electric wires will bring the thoughts of the most distant States together in a few hours; and electric motors will cheaply bring the people of them together in a few days. And so, the Genius of the Great Republic-from Washington's Monument on the Potomac, or from the banks of our Mediterranean Stream-shall continue to extend her lightning fingers to all the extremest points of her continental dominion, and around an enlightened and happy brotherhood, Of all countries, this is the most suitable for the Telegraph. Here the giant has amplest room to grow to full stature and stretch out his arms on every side. The telegraph | is not succeeding in England as a trading speculation. The island is too circumscribed for that whose name and nature imply wide spaces. So that this last is very much in the predicament of the Vicar of Wakefield's family picture, too big to be accommodated in the house when all was done! In Germany, that congeries of divided nations,-"Rivet the electric chain wherewith we are closely in France and other countries of Europe, where the telegraph is established, it is too bound." W. D. REMINISCENCES OF SEARGENT S. PRENTISS. BY T. B. THORPE, ESQ., OF LOUISIANA, AUTHOR OF "TOM OWEN THE BEE HUNTER," &c. &c. a sturdy inhabitant of Cape Cod, and one of the founders of the now flourishing town of Gorham, in the State of Maine. In this relation were exhibited many traits of character peculiar to the subject of this imperfect memoir, for he always displayed an ardent love of country, of liberty, and a fondness for political excitement. The father of Mr. Prentiss was a man of high respectability, and distinguished as an enterprising and successful shipmaster of Portland. He was remarkable for that indomitable will that his mother Mr. Prentiss inherited those more gentle qualities that ever characterized his life; qualities that shed over his eloquence such bewitching sweetness, and gave to his social intercourse such an indescribable charm. THE remarkable character exhibited by SEARGENT S. PRENTISS was appreciated by thousands of his fellow-citizens. A short but brilliant career in Congress had given him in some respects a national reputation; but those who knew him best, and had most occasion to admire and wonder at his genius, will ever feel that he was but comparatively unknown, and that his untimely death, occurring as it did in the meridian of his usefulness, destroyed the fond hope indulged by his admirers that the day would again come when his field of operation would ex-so eminently distinguished his son. From tend beyond the labors of the bar, and that his mighty intellect would be exerted in giving form and direction to events that affect not only the vital interests of persons, but nations and governments. The announcement of his death came upon the writer of this article as a cloud that obscures the noon-day sun. In the impulse of the moment a hasty tribute to his memory was prepared for the press, which, attracting unexpected attention from the interest felt by all to know something of Mr. Prentiss's character, has given rise to this more detailed notice, which is written with imperfect data, and a paucity of materials, even to the absence of any record of some of the most remarkable events in his career, and withal, a want of that leisure for reflection and an-geous east," and the strange adventures of alysis so necessary for the writer of a biographical notice. Mr. Prentiss was born in Portland, Maine, September 30th, 1808; but ere he was capable of much observation his father became a resident of a fine farm in the vicinity of Gorham. Here it was that Sargent passed his youth. Labor was the motto of his people, for his native soil was only generous when carefully wrought; honesty and frugality every where prevailed; yet the imagination was not unfed, for into his youthful mind were poured traditions of the "gor those "who go down to the sea in ships," while the natural scenery that surrounded Seargent S. Prentiss was emphatically the him was of the grandest form. The everoffspring of New-England. His forefathers lasting surge of the Atlantic surf beat in his were among the earliest settlers of the Pil-ears, and upon his bounded horizon rose in grim land, and combined in an eminent degree those seeming opposite qualities of the greatest sternness and self-sacrifice, with the kindest heart and most enthusiastic temperament. The maternal grandfather of Mr. Prentiss was an officer at the battle of Bunker Hill, silent majesty the summits of snow-capped mountains; and the influence of all these associations can easily be traced throughout his after life. In youth Mr. Prentiss, it is said, was remarkable for great personal beauty, for intelligence, and fondness for reading. It |