It is the external communication so wonderful in our own times, we repeat, which has chiefly changed the character of our newspapers. When we read in a London daily paper the one line,--"The Overland Mail--by electric telegraph,"--we have two facts of the highest significance. "The Overland Mail" would appear, of itself, a marvel great enough for one age. The Overland Mail has brought London within a month of Bombay. It has joined India most effectually to England for all commercial and state purposes. It gives us the news of India, by the aid of the electric telegraph, in as little time as we ordinarily received news from Vienna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The steamer and the electric telegraph made the blood of England beat quicker in every heart, when our newspapers recorded, on the 13th of November, the most sanguinary and heroic battle of modern times, fought in the Crimea only a week previous. When Marlborough was setting out for his campaign of 1709, and so many political, if not patriotic, hopes, were fixed upon the probable issue, 'The Tatler,' then a newspaper, had the following paragraph:--"We learn from Brussels, by letters dated the 20th, that on the 14th, in the evening, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene arrived at Courtray, with a design to proceed the day following to Lisle, in the neighbourhood of which city the confederate army was to arrive the same day." The account of the movement of the great allied generals was transmitted from Brussels six days after the movement had taken place, Courtray being only distant forty-six miles; and the important news from Brussels, of the 20th May, was published in London on the 28th, London being distant some two hundred and fifty miles. The distance from Balaclava to London is about three thousand miles. [Illustration: Old hand-gunner.]