Page images
PDF
EPUB

by Mr. Bains of London. It is both ingenious and simple. He showed its operation to us, and from what we saw of its performances, we feel not a doubt but it is capable of doing all he claims for it. He shows, in other words, that it is capable of transmitting one thousand words per minute over telegraphic wires; which is a rapidity wholly unparalleled. What is more, he can prepare or put up long despatches in Liverpool, and when they arrive in New York or Boston, they can be transmitted in a few minutes. The President's Message, which may fill a page of the Journal of Commerce, he says, can be transmitted by this machine in less than an hour. This appears extraordinary; but it is made quite reasonable by an inspection of the operations of the machine.

We conceive that no part of the invention infringes in the least upon Morse's Patent. Mr. Bains dispenses entirely with the Magnet; hence his is simply an "Electrical Telegraph," and not, as Professor Morse claims his to be, an "Electro-Magnetic Telegraph."

We have not time to go into further particulars. We consider it an invention of great importance, and one in which the press, as well as the people of this country, is most deeply interested. It is an invention that should not become a monopoly in the hands of men who might employ it to the injury of the press, and of the best interests of the country.

We understand Mr. Bains sold his patent in England for £12,000. He has taken measures to secure his patent in Washington, and intends selling out his right to parties who may be disposed to treat with him: and if he does not prove the power of the machine to do all he claims, he will not receive a cent for it.

From the London Times of March 4th.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the safe arrival of the last and most illustrious instalment of the "royal fugitives" on these shores. For a whole week the ex-king of the French, after playing for eighteen years the most conspicuous part on the most conspicuous stage of European affairs, had totally disappeared from the scene. His place could nowhere be found; and, shocking as all would have felt it, it was at least as probable a conjecture as any other, that his majesty had perished in the channel. The express steamer brought them yesterday morning to Newhaven, where they had to wait for some hours till the state of the tide

should enable them to enter the harbor. At last they landed, and were glad to receive a very hearty welcome to the well-known shore. For the rest we must refer to the particulars which we have been enabled to supply, and to which the rank, the misfortunes, and, it must be added, the errors of the distinguished sufferer, will impart so peculiar an interest.

It may be safely said, there is nothing in history, nothing, at least, in the examples which most readily occur to the mind, that at all comes near the tremendous suddenness of the present royal reverse.

This day fortnight, Louis Philippe was the most prosperous, the most powerful, and accounted the ablest sovereign in the world. If the reader will just think of it, he will find that this wonderful man had attained the very acme of success, consideration and power. It is a work of time to enumerate the many circumstances of his splendid condition. His numerous, handsome, and dutiful children; the brilliant alliances-one of them recently concluded-which brought into one family interest the vast region from Antwerp to Cadiz; the near prospect of an event which would probably make his grandchild the sovereign, his son the regent of Spain; the great cross and drawback of his reign just removed,--Algeria pacified after eighteen years' war; his immense private fortune; his eleven or twelve palaces, unequalled for situation and magnificence, on all of which he had recently spent immense sums of money; his splendid army of four hundred thousand men, in the highest discipline and equipment; a minister of unequalled energy and genius, who had found out at last the secret of France; a metropolis fortified and armed to the teeth against all the world; the favorable advances recently made by those powers who had previously looked down on the royal parvenu; the wellbalanced state of his foreign relations, and the firmly-grasped reins of the political car;-all these gifts of fortune, and more, if we had time to go on with the list, were heaped on one man in such profusion as really to pall the imagination. What crowned it all, was that Louis Philippe was allowed the entire credit of his success. It was all the work of his own hands. He might stand like the ancient king on the walls and towers which he had drawn round his city, and contemplate the perfect work of beauty and policy which himself had made. The balance of Europe, the causes of peoples and kings, the issues of peace and of war, were in his hands. If there was an amari aliquid in this garden of roses and delights, twenty impregnable forts and a hundred thousand armed men were no insignificant watch upon a few disorderly subjects. Solon himself would hardly have ventured to preach upon his envious textante obitum nemo-to so safe a man.

[ocr errors]

What we have described was a sober and solid reality. What we now come to, reads like the preposterous incidents of a nursery tale. A mob of artizans, boys, and some women, pours through the streets of Paris. They make for the palace. Eighty thousand infantry, cavalry and artillery, are dumbfounded and stupified! In a few minutes an elderly couple are seen bustling away from the hubbub; they are thrust into a hackcab and driven out of the way. The mob rushes into the Senate, and proclaims a republican government-which exists, which is ruling the nation with great energy and judgment, and is already communicating with the representatives of foreign powers. But let us follow the princes. We say it without intending any disrespect, and only as relating the simple truth of the affair. No family of Irish trampers was ever so summarily bundled out of the way as this illustrious group. The Queen, we are told, had run back to a bureau for some silver; but it seems it was not enough, as a hat was sent round for the royal couple at St. Cloud, and a small sum clubbed by the National Guard. At Dreux, they were left with a five-franc piece between them. Flying" when none pursueth," they get to Louis Philippe's once celebrated chateau at Eu, where they are afraid to enter. So there they disappear into space. They were to be at Eu, and for a week, that is all that we know of them. Mean

They come like foreign

The Duke de Nemours

while, the rest had dropped in, one by one. birds dashed by a storm against a light-house. and certain Saxe Coburgs come one day, knowing nothing of the rest. They parted in the crowd.

A Spanish Infanta, for whose hand all the world was competing only the year before last, scrambled out another way, through by-roads and back-doors; and-strange event-is likely to give Spain an English-born sovereign, under Victoria's kindly auspices. No sooner, however, have the fugitives found a friendly asylum, than they are obliged to seek another roof. Other princes and princesses turn up here and there. A lady in waiting rejoins her mistress. A cabinet minister is found. The children and governess of another arrive: The rencontres and reunions are strange enough. A prince of the blood and an ex-prefect meet in disguise, and do not know one another. Very lately a youthful heir to the crown of France, and who had been actually acknowledged as reigning king by the deputies, is discovered at a channel island with his mother and brother. The two children had been almost lost in the mob on leaving the chamber, had been got somehow to Eu, with their mother, wearied and bearing muddy marks of rough travel, Thence, by heavy bribing, they had

procured a passage to the first British rock. Thus are they driven and scattered by the besom of revolution. They arrive penniless, without a change of raiment, dejected and bewildered, telling one another their stories of many strange adventures, having each come a different journey, though starting from one point, and almost at one hour.

After many days' suspense, the King and Queen are heard of, on some private information, on the coast of Normandy, where they had been "on the run" from house to house, and content with humble hospitality, the King, we are told, in strange disguises. They still have a small retinue. These half dozen invaders, without either arms or baggage, do not find it so easy to cross the channel. Stationing themselves at Honfleur, within twenty miles sail of Havre, they watch opportunity and the weather, which last delays their passage for several days. At length they get into a British steamer.

Arrived at Newhaven, after a rough passage, they encounter fresh delays, as if to prove that England is not so easily surprised. Louis Philippe, who was to bridge the British Hellespont, crosses it with foreign aid, and lands in a pea-jacket borrowed from the English captain; he finds himself at home; the associations and the friends of his former exile greet him. A generation passes like a dream, and the aged monarch finds himself the Duke of Orleans, the banished son of old Egalité again."

[graphic]

TRUE WORTH.

"Wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring to aspire, in sentiment, in language, and in conduct, to what the highest wisdom through all ages has sanctioned as most excellent, to him I attach myself by a sort of necessary attachment; and if I am so formed by nature or destiny, that, by no exertion or labor of my own, I can attain this summit of worth and honor, yet no power of heaven or earth shall hinder me from looking with affection and reverence upon those who have thoroughly attained this glory, or appear engaged in the successful pursuit of it."-Milton.

TRUE SOCIETY.

"Crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures where there is no love."-Locke.

APRIL FOOL.

Yes, you have made a fool of me,
This first of April, I agree;

But as for you, friend Tom, I fear

That you are one for all the year.

THE GOATEE.

"Come, tell me," said Dapper, and chuckled with glee,

"What think you now, Hal, of my famous goatee?"

"Why," said Hal, "'tis so fine, and so full round your throat,
That I really think you may pass for a Goat."

Martial Minor.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We thank our Correspondents who have favored us with their contributions for this number; and trust that they, and others, will send us more for the next.

« PreviousContinue »