The electrotype is but one of the applications of electricity to the uses of man. This agent has been employed as the carrier of thought; and with infinite rapidity, messages of importance, communications involving life, and intelligences outstripping the speed of coward crime, have been communicated. There will be no difficulty in understanding the principle of this, although many of the nice mechanical arrangements, to ensure precision, are of a somewhat elaborate character. The entire action depends on the deflection of a compass-needle by the passage of an electric current along its length. If at a given point we place a galvanic battery, and at twenty or one hundred miles distance from it a compass-needle, between a wire brought from, and another returning to the battery, the needle will remain true to its polar direction so long as the wires are unexcited; but the moment connection is made, and the circuit is complete, the electricity of the whole extent of wire is disturbed, and the needle is thrown at right angles to the direction of the current. Provided a connection between two points can be secured, however remote they are from each other, we thus, almost instantaneously, convey any intelligence. The effects of an electric current would appear at a distance of 576,000 miles in a second of time; and to that distance, and with that speed, it is possible, by Professor Wheatstone’s beautiful arrangements, to convey whispers of love or messages of destruction. The enchanted horse of the Arabian magician, the magic carpet of the German sorcerer, were poor contrivances, compared with the copper wires of the electrician, by which all the difficulties of time and the barriers of space appear to be overcome. In the Scandinavian mythology we find certain spiritual powers of evil enabled to pass with imperceptible speed from one remote point to another, sowing the seeds of a common ruin amongst mankind. Such is the morbid creation of a wild yet highly endowed imagination. The spirit of evil diffuses itself in a remarkable manner, and, indeed, we might almost assign to it the power of ubiquity; but in reality its advance is progressive, and time enters as an element into any calculation on its diffusion. Electricity is instantaneous in action; as a spirit of peace and good-will it can overtake the spirit of evil, and divert it from its designs. May we not hope that the electrical telegraph, making, as it must do, the whole of the civilized world enter into a communion of thought, and, through thought, of feeling with each other, will bind us up in one common brotherhood, and that, instead of misunderstanding and of misinterpreting the desires and the designs of each other, we shall learn to know that such things as “natural enemies” do not exist? To hope to break down the great barrier of language is perhaps too much; but assuredly we may hope that, as we must do when closer and more