money to enable him to carry out the telegraphic scheme among the keen speculators and large-pursed merchants. Through an accidental conversation at the hotel in which he was staying, he obtained an interview with Mr. Cyrus Field. He laid his plans before that gentleman, who had no desire to resume an active career, having just returned from travelling in South America, with the intention of enjoying the fortune his industry and sagacity had secured ere he had arrived at the middle term of life. But Mr. Field listened to Mr. Gisborne with attention, and then began to think over the project--“To lay these submarine cables so as to connect Newfoundland with Maine?--Good. To run a line of steamers from St. John’s to Galway?--Certainly. It would shorten the time of receiving news in New York from Europe four or five days.” And so the brain worked and thought. Then suddenly, “But if a cable can be laid in the bed of these seas--if the Great Atlantic itself could be spanned?” Here was an idea indeed. Deep and broad seas had been traversed in Europe, but here was one of the great oceans of the world, of depth but faintly guessed at, and of nigh 2000 miles span from shore to shore! Would it be within the limits of human resources to let down a line into the watery void, and to connect the Old World with the New? What a glorious thought! Was it a vision, or was it one of those inspirations from which originate grand enterprises and results which change the destinies of the world? Mr. Field terminated his reflections that night by an eminently practical measure. Ere he retired to rest he sat down and wrote two letters,--one to Lieut. Maury, U.S.N., to ask his opinion concerning the possibility of laying down a cable in the bottom of the Atlantic; the other to Professor Morse, to inquire whether he thought it practicable to send an electric current through a wire between Europe and America. Lieut Maury, in answering in the affirmative, wrote, “Curiously enough, when your letter came I was looking over my letter to the Secretary of the Navy on that very subject.” And, in fact, on the 22nd February, 1854, Lieut. Maury made a long communication to Mr. Dobbin, Secretary, United States Navy, from the Observatory, Washington, respecting a series of deep-sea soundings made by Lieut. Berryman, U.S.N., brig Dolphin, from Newfoundland to Ireland, in connection with researches on the winds and currents, carried on for the National Observatory. It is obvious that Lieut. Maury, as well as many others probably, had thought of the same idea as Mr. Field. He says, “The result is highly interesting, in so far as the bottom of the sea is concerned, upon the question of a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic;” and he goes on to make it the subject of a special report, in which occur the following passages;--