ing the bell and needles distinct from each other, no derangement of the one is to be feared from injury to or derangement in the other.

Mr. Cooke's first plan, in the extension of the conducting wires between distant points, was, as has been already stated, to cover each wire with cotton or silk, and then with pitch, caoutchouc, resin, or other non-conducting material, and to enclose them, thus protected, in tubes or pipes of wood, iron, or earthenware. Excepting in those localities where the suspension of wires is impracticable, as in streets, towns, or on public roads, the early plan has given place to more recent inventions. In 1842, a patent was obtained by Mr. Cooke, for a means of suspending and insulating the wires in the air, and the method described in his specification has been since adhered to, with little variation. The wires are generally of iron, which is galvanized, to protect it from the action of the atmosphere. They are of about one-sixth of an inch in diameter, corresponding to No. 8 of the wire-gauge. Being obtained in as great lengths as possible, in the first place, successive pieces are welded together, until a coil of about 440 yards is formed. These rings or bundles weigh about 120 pounds each.

The wires are suspended on the line, from stout squared posts or standards, of Dantzic or Memel timber. At each quarter-mile, a stronger post is fixed, from which the succeeding lengths of wire on either side are strained or tightened up. Intermediate to these principal posts, are placed smaller standards at from 45 to 55 yards asunder, for the purpose of supporting the wires. The straining apparatus is very simple, consisting merely of a reel or pulley, turning between two cheeks of cast iron, and carrying upon its axis a ratchet-wheel, into

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the teeth of which a click or catch falls. These winding heads, shown at rr, figs. 7 and 9, are connected through the post by a bolt of wrought iron b, tapped into each head. This bolt not only bears the strain of the wires, but also forms the metallic communication between their ends wound on the two reels. In order to insulate the bolt from the wood of the post, the hole in this latter is bored very large, and collars of eathenware, tt, are inserted at each side, in which the bolt rests, and against their outer surfaces the winding heads are screwed up tight. Fig. 9 is a section through the post and collar, showing this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a front, and 8 a side view of the head of a straining or quarterpost. The wires are usually arranged in two vertical planes, at the back and front of the standards, i or intermediate posts. They are not strained at each quarter-mile, but at intervals of half a mile alternately; those in the front plane at one post, and those in the back plane at the next. The standards. or supporting posts have merely to sustain the weight of the wires without relation to their tension. They have on each side two stout arms of oak or ash, secured by bolts, passing from one to the other, and resting in collars of earthenware, xx; where they pass through the standard. The wires pass through pieces of earthenware, of a double cone shape, e e, fastened to the outside of the arms by staples or clips, having a nut and screw at the end. These staples embrace the cones at a groove in the middle of their length. An arm similar to those on the standards is fixed to the back and front of each post alternately, to support that plane of wires which passes without being strained. The insulating earthenwares between the arm and post, y y, are, however, different in shape from those used

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For intermediate lengths the dimensions are varied proportionally, In passing through tunnels, or along the faces of walls or buildings, where posts cannot be conveniently fixed in the ground, the wires are supported on octagonal standards of oak or ash, which are fixed at about six inches from the wall by holdfasts of galvanized iron. These standards are about two inches in diameter and three feet in length, being at the top and bottom turned down to a shoulder, so as to fit into a ring at the ends of the holdfasts. The same method is adopted where the wires have to pass under bridges or archways.

The batteries employed are of a somewhat peculiar construction; they are made in the form of a Wollaston's trough, in which are arranged plates of copper and amalgamated zinc, each cell being then filled with dry and perfectly clean sand. When about to be used, the sand is just moistened with dilute sulphuric acid. These batteries are singularly constant, having been known to remain in action during a period of from two to five months, with only the occasional addition of a little more acid solution, to supply the waste by evaporation and saturation. The

effect of the sand appears to be, the prevention of too rapid an action, and, at the same time, the separation of the sulphates of copper and zinc. No copper is there

do. do.

fore deposited on the zinc plate, to the destruction of this latter by local action. The only points necessary to be observed, are the perfect amalgamation of the zinc plates, the absolute freedom of the sand from lime or other alkali, from carbonates or muriates, and the purity of the sulphuric acid. The zinc is formed in rolled plates of about or of an inch in thickness, and is cut into pieces of 4 inches by 3 inches. These plates will last with care for five or six months in almost constant action. A battery series of from 12 to 60 pairs is required, according to the length and nature of the line and the number of instruments in connection.

Six wires are extended along the whole length of railway, of which the upper pair are used with a special double-needle instrument, for verbal communication, between the main stations, which are Norwich, Brundall, Reedham, and Yarmouth. Each of the other four wires includes at every station a coil and single needle. On the dials connected with the first wire of these four, is engraved the name Norwich at all the stations; with the second, that of Brundall, with the third Reedham, and with the fourth Yarmouth. The distinct telegraphic system belonging to each station has, therefore, its representative at all the other stations. Each needle or pointer represents the state of the portion of

line under the control of the station the name of which it bears. The alarum of each instrument is connected only with the wire of its own station, so that on moving either of the needles, the alarum I will be rung at the place corresponding to the name of the needle, but at no other point, although the movement of the pointer will be visible throughout.

The electric telegraph is now the chief mode of transmitting all the news of the Government, and the important correspondence of merchants and of the public generally. Its influence has been already felt by the press. The journals of the large towns, which were taken in the country on account of their giving the most recent news, have lost a great number of their subscribers; whilst there has been a very large increase in the circulation of the journals of the small towns near the extreme points of the electric telegraphs. Renaissance, that style which arose in all the arts of design, from the introduction of antique features, consequent on the revival of classical learning, and the admiration of every thing classical after the fall of the Gothic system.

In Italy, where the arts had never become thoroughly Gothic, the system so called having been an exotic never quite naturalized in that country, the renaissance of classical principles of taste commenced as early as the 13th century; but in the rest of Europe the Gothic had then hardly arrived at its complete development, or, if become a pure and consistent system, had hardly begun to display its luxuriance; and two centuries at least were required to explore its vast capabilities, to work out its resources in all their wondrous variety, and to push on its suggestions beyond the limits of truth, and advance so far in complication and absurdity, as to render a change

of style necessary; and accordingly the arts of Germany, the Netherlands, France, and England, were not ripe for this change, called the ' renaissance,' till the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century; i. e. not till after the invention of printing; the great change of society resulting from which invention, rendered the introduction of the (already renovated) classic taste into these countries a very easy and rapid transition, totally different from the slow process of renaissance and purification, by which this taste had, in Italy, gradually acquired consistency.

In architecture (the only art here alluded to) the renaissance of classical forms and principles first distinctly shows itself in the works of Brunelleschi, the great Florentine architect, who lived from 1375 to 1444. His most famous work, the cupola of the cathedral, exhibits a bold emancipation from Gothic complexity, and return to classic simplicity, without the affectation of copying classic details, which could only be abused and misapplied in a work so totally unlike in principles of construction to those of the ancients. His churches of S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, though retaining Gothic plans and Byzanto-Gothic construction, present a still more classic treatment, not only in general design, but in that of details. The little octagonal chapel degli Angeli is as classic as any work of the ancient Romans, and the Pitti palace offers the first example of that eminently common-sense system of palatial architecture which continued to characterize the school of Florence throughout its career. Contemporary with this great man were Michelozzo, and L. B. Alberti, the first modern writer on the art, both of whom excelled the ancient Romans in purity of design, though the first could not give up the

Gothic window tracery, which he successively modified to his roundarched style without losing its beauty. They were succeeded by Cronaca and Bramante, the latter of whom (born the same year that Brunelleschi died) carried the revival of classicism to its perfection by re-introducing detached colonnades and hanging architraves, never attempted since the fall of ancient art, and even now (by Bramante) only on a very small scale, in the round chapel in the cloister of S. Pietro in Monterio. He is considered the founder of the Roman school, as Brunelleschi was of the Florentine; and his design for the modern St. Peter's, which he commenced, would have greatly excelled, in almost every kind of merit, the present jumble of twenty designs. His successor, M. Angelo, with his matchless genius for seizing whatever was grand rather than beautiful, returned (in the Capitoline Museum) to the classic simplicity of a single order, and an entablature unbroken from corner to corner: the renaissance was complete, and the modern Roman architecture having (like its sister arts) culminated in the hands of this wonderful man, or of Vignola, forthwith declined rapidly. Sanmicheli of Verona, who lived from 1484 to 1549, (a period comprised wholly in the life of M. Angelo,) originated that more fanciful and luxurious school which characterized the renaissant and modern architecture of Venice and its territory, and (being afterwards embellished by the beautiful productions of Sansovino, Palladio, and Scammozzi) became the favorite model for the schools of all transalpine countries, especially England.

In this country, a way was prepared for the introduction of classicism, by certain tendencies of our latest After-Gothic, the florid Perpendicular, and Tudor; as (I.) the

tendency to subordinate the arch and archlet to the frame-work of vertical and horizontal lines; the vertical constantly increasing indeed in number, but the horizontal in strength and importance, probably from a feeling that the number of the one should be balanced by intensity in the other. (II.) By these horizontal masses of moulding beginning almost to approximate the effect of classic entablatures, in their division into two groups, the upper and greater answering to the cornice, the lower and smaller to the architrave, and the intermediate space being, like the frieze, either plain or sculptured, or with alternate squares of sculpture, like metopes, but never subdivided horizontally. (III.) By the roofs being reduced in pitch, (a change peculiar to the AngloGothic decline,) and by towers being, on the same principle, finished without spires. (IV.) By the depression of the arch, the assimilation thereof to a semicircle or semi-ellipse, and the diminishing importance attached to its point, though that was never entirely omitted as in the French After-Gothic, called Burgundian. (V.) By the introduction of a large and bold scale of carved ornament, (as in King's College chapel, where the architecture and carving are out of all proportion to each other, a leaf being often larger than an arch or canopy, and a rose larger than a pedestal and 'statue together,) and by the introduction, as strikingly seen in the same building, of attached ornament, quite contrary to a fundamental Gothic principle, that of decorating by the removal of superfluous material, and not, as in classic architecture, by the addition of ornaments.

These several predisposing tendencies of our debased After-Gothic rendered it easy to engraft thereon those Italian details which dis

tinguish the works of the reign of Henry VIII. The chantries of Bishops Fox and Gardiner, at Winchester, are instructive examples of this process; and so are the tomb of Henry VII., the woodwork of King's College chapel, and much of the architecture of Cambridge. At Ely is a chantry with purely. Gothic vaulting, rather resembling that of the Mid-Gothic than any of the 15th century, still less of the 16th, but without bosses; and on a close inspection, rendered necessary by its dark situation, we find every rib composed of Italian cut mouldings, while the intermediate vault-surface, of plaster, is covered with the classic foliage commonly called arabesque. This shows capitally how the Gothic (or rather AfterGothic) principles of general design were retained, but the details rendered more and more pedantic, both in our Elizabethan fashion, and in the corresponding manners of the Continent; a process just the reverse of every true advance that has taken place in architecture; for every real improvement (the arch for instance, or the pointed arch, or the buttress) has begun in main structural parts, and descended thence into details and ornaments; but the pedantry of copying classic forms, instead of classic principles, begun, except in Italy, in the smallest and least essential details, and ascended into larger and larger features; the constant aim being to hide a smaller falsehood by a greater, and thus generally rendering the whole system 564

of building, at least in this country, more and more false, till at length, in the Anglo-Greek buildings that followed the researches of Stuart and Revett, the process of renaissance carried on for three centuries became complete, i. e. a building -no longer a collection of many little or a few great disguises- became in itself, as a whole, one immense sham.

Nor does the popular disrepute into which the perfect and unapproachable architecture of ancient Greece has now been brought by these attempts,-nor yet the romantic running after what has been (with singular ignorance) mistaken first for a national,' and then for a' Christian' style,-offer any prospect of escape from the effects of this 'renaissance,' or any approach towards a true renaissance of taste; since the change is only from the mimicry of a more perfect to that of a less perfect, and (as now practised or perhaps practicable) a more limited and monotonous system: it is only from pseudo-Greek to pseudo-Gothic,-from a sham temple to a sham church.

There

is no hope of real renaissance till the real objects of the art be agreed upon and attended to,-till it be acknowledged that nothing is beautiful which is false, and till improvements are introduced from structural parts into ornaments,— and not, as they have been in all English architecture since its culmination in the time of the first three Edwards, from mere ornaments into the really structural parts.