As fast as this incongruous mass of intelligence arrives, it is, in the mode already described, transcribed in writing to separate sheets of paper, which are without delay one after another lowered down to the superintendent of “_the Intelligence Department_,” by whom they are rapidly digested for distribution either to the whole of the Company’s reading-room stations, or for those lines only which any particular species of information may partially interest; such as corn-markets requiring corn intelligence; seaports, shipping news, &c. &c. As quickly as these various despatches are concocted, the information they respectively contain reascends through “the lift,” or wooden chimney, to the instrument department, from whence it is projected, or rather radiates, to its respective destination; and thus in every one of the Company’s reading-rooms throughout the kingdom there consecutively appears, in what would until very lately have been considered magic writing upon the walls, the varied information which had only reached London from all points of the compass _a few minutes ago_! But not only does this wonderful power, which it has pleased the Almighty to develop to mankind, facilitate in a most extraordinary degree our communication with each other, and thereby materially adds to our wealth, but it affords us a proportionate increase of power to defend that property which, by integrity and industry, our nation has, under Providence, been enabled to acquire. In case of war, our Commander-in-Chief would not only be made acquainted with information even of the smallest importance as soon as, or even before, it reached our shores, but he would simultaneously be enabled to issue orders to the troops at every station in the kingdom as rapidly as if they were all assembled on the parade before him. In like manner the Admiralty would receive intelligence and despatch directions, which, in combination with the arrangements at the Horse Guards, War Office, and Home Office, would give to our naval, military, and civil forces a combined strength which it has hitherto been impracticable for them separately to develop. But to whatever amount the electric telegraph, used in the manner we have described, may facilitate the commerce and strengthen the defences of the empire, there remains to be delineated an application of the discovery which, there can be no doubt, forms the most extraordinary feat which the ingenuity of man has hitherto performed. In a corner of one of the attics in which the eight electric instruments are placed there stands a small very ordinary-looking piece of cheap machinery composed of a few wheels, giving revolution to a small cylinder, upon which there has been wound a strip of bluish paper half an inch wide and about 60 yards in length.