nearly three thousand more visits before the
requisite fourteen hundred consents are
obtained. The landlords of all house property
are to be consulted as well as the tenants, which
doubles the labour of the company's agents.
When the wire is finally fixed over the two
hundred and eighty miles, there will have been
about seven thousand interviews and negotiations,
and nearly three thousand five hundred
contracts.

Such is the labour required to spin the thin
web that is now shooting across crowded
thoroughfares, or creeping under the heavy paving-
stones, and joining the hands of chapels,
taverns, palaces, police-stations, warehouses,
hovels, and shops. Other labour will be
required to bring down the mysterious strings, so
that every one may be able to move the
living puppets, from station to station, from
Highgate to Peckham, from Hammersmith to
Bow.

Some of these strings (perhaps to the
number of ten) will drop into district stations—
offices that will act as centres of particular
divisions; others (perhaps to the number of a
hundred) will drop into familiar shops and trading-
places: amongst the pickle-jars of the oilman,
the tarts of the pastrycook, the sugar-casks of
the grocer, the beer-barrels of the publican,
the physic-bottles of the dispensing chemist.
The Post-office, industrious and effective as it
is, will find an active rival standing by its side—
bidding against it for popularity, coming in to
share its message-carrying trade. The elements
of nature will be harnessed for hack-work; and
four pennyworth of lightning will be as
common as a box of pills. The old cab-horse will
wonder why he is resting so long on his stony
stand; and the two millions and more of busy
metropolitan inhabitants may welcome another
means of easing their crowded streets. Everybody
will find a way of talking over everybody
else's head, or under everybody else's feet,
or behind everybody else's back. "No door-mat
to-night" will be whispered from Brompton to
Hampstead, and no one will be aware of the
fact but the two communicants. The
Elephant and Castle will despatch the tenderest
messages to the Angel at Islington; and
as soon as the back of young Emma's
mamma is turned at Camberwell, young Edwin
will be fully informed at Chelsea. St. John's-
wood will suddenly be invited to a roughly got
up, but pleasant party at Holloway; and
Kensington will be told that a private box for the
Opera is waiting for it at Bow-street. The
doctor at Finsbury will be requested to step up,
at once, to Park-lane; and Bayswater will stop
the toilet of Clapham by announcing a sudden
postponement of a dinner party. Greenwich will
be told by Kensington to prepare a whitebait
banquet in three hours; and Rotherhithe will be
informed by Camden-town that the child is a boy,
and that the mother is doing extraordinarily well.
The firemen of Cannon-street will be called to a
red-hot task at Blackheath; and when a policeman
is missing as usual— from— his beat, a
"reserve" can be summoned from the station. The
saddest of all messages will also fly across
the tidings of hope; for Death will
sometimes present himself at the shop-counter
to whisper his ghostly dispensations along the
wires.

The great centre of all this system is in
Lothbury, London, where a graceful school of
about sixty young ladies are even now learning
the mysteries of the old railway telegraph
signals. Whether they are training their minds
and hands in an art that will be wholly set
aside, yet remains to be seen; but whatever
machines may be used as the central and
district stations, it is certain that the sub-district,
or shop-stations, will require something exceedingly
simple and convenient.

The telegraphs most generally in use, both
in this country and on the Continent, require
great skill and practice to work; and, in
translating their arbitrary signs into ordinary
language, it becomes necessary to have specially
educated persons to work them. This necessity
was, for the first time, obviated by the system of
telegraphs invented by Professor Wheatstone
in 1840, in which either the letters of the
alphabet on a fixed dial were pointed to by a
moving hand, or a moving dial presenting the letters
successively behind a fixed aperture. In these,
the transmission of the message consisted
simply in bringing in succession the letters composing
it opposite a fixed mark, by means of an
apparatus called the transmitter. These instruments
were constructed to work, either by the
currents generated by induction from a
permanent magnet, or by the aid of a voltaic
battery; in the former case the instruments
required no preparation to put them, or attention
to keep them, in action. Since then,
Professor Wheatstone has devoted much time to
the improvement of this class of telegraphs;
the principal object of which has been to effect
their movements with greater steadiness,
certainty, and rapidity than hitherto, and by means of
magnets of small dimensions. As the instruments
are at present constructed, a lady or a
child may, after a few minutes' instruction, send
or receive a message by them; and, with practice,
as many signals may be conveyed per
minute as by any telegraphs in present use.
Especially applicable to house-top telegraphs,
they are more efficient than any others for
interchanging messages on railways, in public offices,
manufactories, private mansions, docks, mines, &c.
Being very portable, and requiring no preparation,
they are the best telegraphs for military
purposes; and being constructed so as not to be
affected by any extraneous movement, they can
be used with perfect safety in ships, even on
a rough sea, or on railway trains in motion.
Professor Wheatstone's new telegraphs have
been some time in daily use at the London
Docks, and between the Houses of Parliament
and the Queen's Printing-office, two miles
distant. In form these telegraphs are as portable
and familiar as a quart pot or a loaf of bread.
A circular box, the shape and size of a small