THE OMNIBUS.

As early as 1662 Paris was already provided with that convenience we are accustomed to consider as quite modern, -the omnibus of large towns. And it was no less a person than the great Pascal, the author of the Pensées and the Lettres Provinciales, to whom the citizens owed the useful idea. The Duke de Roannès, a friend of Pascal, was the patron of the enterprise, and provided the means of carrying it out. Here, assuredly, was a promising beginning. For a time the plan was highly successful. Three noble partners-if such commercial phrase be applicable -obtained from King Louis XIV. a royal grant of monopoly for the undertaking; they were the Duke de Roannès, the Marquis de Crenau, and the Marquis de Sourches. A great religious philosopher, a courtly duke, and two of those perfumed marquises of Versailles so riddled by the witty ridicule of Molière, were thus the founders of the omnibus! The grant of the king was dated February 7th, 1662. A month later-Saturday, March 18th, at seven o'clock in the morning-the new carriages were in motion, "running," as the king's ordonnance expresses it, "like the coaches travelling in the country, making daily trips in Paris between the different parts of the city."

The route lay between the Porte St. Antoine and the Palace of the Luxembourg, to and fro. There were at first seven of these coaches, each carrying six or eight passengers very comfortably. The coachmen wore blue coats, with the arms of the king and those of the city of Paris on the breast. The numbers were marked on the coachpanels by golden fleur-de-lis. The price of fare was five sous, equivalent to six sous to-day; and the vehicles were called carrosses à cinq sous, from this fact. By law, the coachman was forbidden to change large coin, and thus delay the passengers. Every one must come "fip" in hand. We are not told whether this suggestion originated in the mathematical head of Pascal, or not. The new coaches must have been

something quite superior to the later fiacre of the streets of Paris; they were provided with steps, which let down, like other good carriages of the time. The success of the enterprise was at first very great. The sister of Pascal, Madame Périer, writing to M. Arnauld de Pomponne, March 21, 1662, says: “The plan has been so successful, that from the first morning the coaches were well filled. Even women went in them. In the afternoon there was such a crowd that one could not get near them; and it has been the same ever since." Like a good sister, as she was, and proud of her brother's success, Madame Périer adds later: "I heard blessings poured on the head of the founder of an enterprise so advantageous, and so useful to the pub

lic."

Ere

Great indeed was the success. long every important street in Paris had petitioned to be included in the route of the "sixpenny-coaches." A second line was soon opened, by royal ordonnance as usual, between the Place Royale and the well-known church of St. Roch, in the Rue St. Honoré-one of the most profitable lines of the modern Parisian omnibus to-day. Other routes were opened. The number of the coaches was increased. Every thing looked prosperous. The plan was succeeding to admiration. Pascal might well feel gratified at the result of his benevolent plan. The perfumed marquises were doubtless charmed with the prospect of the golden louis to be added to their coffers. Suddenly the aspect of things changed. After so good a beginning, at the end of another twelvemonth the "sixpennycoaches" had entirely disappeared from the streets of Paris. The enterprise failed in the end. The death of Pascal occurring about that time, was, idly enough, supposed by some to have caused this failure. The real cause appears simple enough to us to-day. The spirit of aristocracy, getting the better of common sense, ruined the omnibus of 1662. The spirit of democracy has, many a time since that day, worked mischief by the same forgetfulness. And yet, without common sense, neither "sixpenny

coach" nor any other public enterprise, small or great, whether aristocratic or democratic in spirit, can long prosper. A royal ordonnance appeared, restricting the use of the "sixpenny-coach" to the burghers, the bourgeois de Puris, in the French sense of the words: those classes for whom it was best adapted were particularly forbidden to use it! "Soldiers, pages, artisans, lackeys, and workmen," were banished by law from the "sixpenny-coach." In short, the carrosses à cinq sous of Pascal now became in character the very reverse of the omnibus of to-day. As a matter of course, they immediately began to run half empty. Soon the amount of fares would not pay for the oats eaten by the horses. Ere long they were entirely withdrawn from the streets, and, after a most prosperous beginning, at the end of twenty years were only remembered to be laughed at, in spite of Pascal. Now and then their memory was revived to give point to some bon-mot; as, for instance, in a comedy of Dufresnoy, of 1692, which tells its audience of "cheap coaches, moving rapidly from the Palais de Justice to the Hospital-leaving while the courts are in session; and from the Medical School to the Incurables-leaving every hour!"

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

Many of the phenomena of electricity were partially investigated, and imperfectly comprehended, in the earliest ages. The property by which amber, when heated by friction, draws to itself all small adjacent bodies, was observed very early. From the verb elicere, to attract, this substance received its name of electron, whence our modern word of electricity.

It is quite singular that one of the fruits of electricity which has been of slowest growth, which has been the greatest length of time in reaching practical perfection, was yet one of the first of which science may be said to have had a presentiment. We allude to the electric telegraph. As early as 1636, Schwenter would seem to have had certain ideas on the subject, and to have

even labored to bring these to practical results. In a volume of " Physico-Mathematical Recreations " he inquires into the possibility of "two individuals communicating with each other by means of the magnetic needle." Here he touched the problem. In 1746 he however made certain experiments in the Jardin du Roi, and in the grounds of the Chartreuse, as to the transmissibility of elec tricity by iron, and succeeded in producing favorable results with wires nearly a thousand toises in length. In 1753 there appeared an article in the Scots' Magazine, signed with the initials C. M., which would seem to have nearly reached the recent great movements of Professor Morse: the article was reprinted in Cosmos a few years since. In 1765 we draw still nearer to something positive: a Genevese, Georges-Louis Lesage, in a voluminous essay, gave his views on the subject of the "Transmission of News by Electricity." The essay was copied and sent to Frederic of Prussia, -a man capable, no doubt, of comprehending the immense importance of the suggestion. But Frederic appears to have paid the subject no attention; he probably looked upon it as wholly chimerical. The paper was thrown aside and forgotten, until it lately came to light again from the archives of the Academy at Berlin. In France, Lesage attracted rather more attention. His essay was printed, in 1782, in the Journal des Savants; but it went no farther. This was stopping on the threshold, and yet the system of Lesage was capable of being carried out to full success. His telegraph was composed of as many wires as there are letters of the alphabet.

Each one of these was connected with an electrometer. As soon as one of the metallic wires received the impression of the electric machine, a little ball was impelled against the corresponding letter of the alphabet placed immediately opposite to it. It would be scarcely possible to come nearer than this to the perfect invention, without actually achieving it. Lesage, however, was not allowed to make any public exhibition. It was only in his own apart

ment, and in presence of a few friends, that he carried on his experiments.

The mechanician Lomond was making a movement in the same direction, in 1787. His efforts were almost equal to those of Lesage. Arthur Young went to see him, as he passed through Paris, and, in his "Travels," gives the following account of an experiment made in his presence: "I went to see M. Lomond, a very ingenious mechanician, who has the genius of invention. He has made a very remarkable discovery in electricity. You write two or three words on paper; he takes them into another room, and turns a cylindrical case, connected with which is an electrometer, a pretty little ball of the pith of feathers; a wire is attached to a similar cylinder placed in a distant apartment, and his wife, by watching the movements of the ball corresponding with it, writes out the words indicated in this way. It appears that he has thus formed a moving alphabet. As the length of the wire makes no difference whatever as regards the effect, it would be possible to carry on a correspondence from a great distance. Whatever be the uses to which it be applied, this discovery, in itself, is admirable."

These experiments, however, were generally looked upon as mere idle amusements-" a dream of some idler," as they were termed, in speaking of similar experiments of Linguet, who nevertheless anticipated, in 1782, one of the grandest steps of modern progress, in this way, by proposing "to establish underground electric conductors of gilt wire, to be enclosed in resined cases."

The first occasion on which a grand public experiment of the new discovery was made, appears to have been in Spain, a country little accustomed for centuries to make any movement in researches connected with art or science. In 1796, under the patronage of Godoy-Prince of Peace-the electric telegraph was first allowed to work officially, and for once only. The Gazette of Madrid, of Novem ber 25th, 1796, gives an account of the experiment: "The Prince of Peace having learned that Don F. Salva, who had read before the Academy of Sciences of Madrid a paper on the application of electricity to telegraphing, had also presented an electric telegraph of his own invention, wished to see the instrument, and was delighted with the promptitude and fidelity with which it worked. The Prince of Peace caused it to be exhibited to the King and the Court, and worked the instrument himself before their Majesties. In consequence of this experiment, the Infant, Don Antonio, desired to make a more complete telegraph, and has occupied himself with calculations regarding the amount of electrical force necessary, in order to make use of the telegraph for different distances, by sea or land. Some useful experiments have taken place. We shall refer to them later."

But here ends the story, as regards the Gazette of Madrid. Nevertheless, this single fact is very interesting. Without this brief record of the circumstance, who would have dreamed of naming Godoy, Prince of Peace, and Don Antonio, Infant of Spain, among the earliest telegraph-workers?

WE had taken with enthusiasm our first lesson in wood-craft at a place called the Still-water of the Boreas, -a long, deep, dark reach in one of the remote branches of the Hudson,-had tasted thoroughly the luxury of sleeping on hemlock-boughs, and of knowing that the next meal was not a question of a stated number of hours, or of our promptness at the dinner-table, but a question of skill in the use of the rod or the gun,-when our guide, a young backwoodsman, with a lope like a hound and reticence like an Indian, proposed to conduct us to a lake in the mountains where we might float for deer.

Our journey commenced in a steep and rugged ascent, which brought us, after an hour's heavy climbing, to an elevated region of pine forest, years before ravished by lumbermen, and presenting all manner of obstacles to our awkward and encumbered pedestrianism. The woods were largely pine, though yellow-birch, beech, and maple were common. The satisfaction of haying a gun, should any game show itself, was the chief compensation to those of us who were thus burdened. A partridge would occasionally whirr up before us, or a red squirrel snicker and hasten to his den; else the woods appeared quite tenantless. The most noted object was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of a great race, which presided over a cluster of yellow-birches, far up the mountain's side.

About noon we came out upon a long shallow sheet of water which the guide called Bloody-Moose Pond, from a tradition that a moose had been slaughtered there many years before. Looking out over the silent and lonely scene, his eye was the first to detect an object apparently feeding upon lily-pads, which our willing fancies readily shaped into a deer. As we were eagerly waiting some movement to confirm this impres

sion, it lifted up its head, and lo! a great blue heron. Seeing us approach, it spread its long wings and flew solemnly across to a dead tree on the other side of the lake, enhancing, rather than relieving, the loneliness and desolation that brooded over the scene. As we proceeded it flew from tree to tree in advance of us, apparently loth to be disturbed in its ancient and solitary domain. In the margin of the pond we found the pitcher-plant growing, and here and there in the sand the closed gentian lifted up its blue head.

In traversing the shores of this wild, desolate lake, I was conscious of a slight thrill of expectation, as if some secret of Nature might here be revealed, or some rare and unheard-of game disturbed. There is ever a lurking suspicion that the beginning of things is in some way associated with water, and one may notice that in his private walks he is led by a curious attraction to fetch all the springs and ponds in his route, as if by them was the place for wonders and miracles to happen. Once, while far in advance of my companions, I saw, from a high rock, wavelets rapidly chasing each other along a small bay, but on reaching the point found only a little roiled water, and the commotion quite stilled.

Pressing on through the forest, after many adventures with the pine-knots, we reached, about the middle of the afternoon, our destination, Nate's Pond, -a pretty sheet of water, lying like a silver mirror in the lap of the mountain, about a mile long and half a mile wide, surrounded by dark forests of balsam, hemlock, and pine, and, like the one we had just passed, a very picture of unbroken solitude.

It is not in the woods alone to give one this impression of utter loneliness. In the woods are sounds and voices, and a dumb kind of companionship; one is little more than a walking tree

himself; but come upon one of these mountain-lakes, and the wildness stands relieved and meets you face to face. Water is thus facile and adaptive, that it makes the wild more wild, while it enhances culture and art.

The end of the pond which we approached was quite shoal, the stones rising above the surface as in a summerbrook, and everywhere showing marks of the noble game we were in quest of -footprints, dung, and cropped and uprooted lily-pads. After resting for a half-hour, and replenishing our gamepouches at the expense of the most respectable frogs of the locality, we filed on through the soft, resinous pine-woods, intending to camp near the other end of the lake, where, the guide assured us, we should find a hunter's cabin ready built. A half-hour's march brought us to the locality, and a most delightful one it was, so hospitable and inviting that all the kindly and beneficent influences of the woods must have abided there. In a slight valley, about one hundred yards from the lake, though hidden from it for good reasons, surrounded by a heavy growth of birch, hemlock, and pine, with a lining of balsam and fir, the rude cabin welcomed us. It was of the approved style, three sides enclosed, with a roof of bark and a bed of boughs, and a rock in front that afforded a permanent back-log to all fires. A faint voice of running water was heard near by, and, following the sound, a delicious spring-rivulet was disclosed, hidden by the moss and debris as by a new fall of snow, but here and there rising in little well-like openings, as if for our special convenience. On smooth places on the logs I noticed female names inscribed in a female hand; and the guide told us of an English lady, an artist, who had traversed this region with a single guide, making sketches.

Our packs unslung and the kettle over, our first move was to ascertain in what state of preservation a certain dug out might be, which, the guide averred, he had left moored in the vicinity the summer before, for upon this hypo

thetical dug-out our hopes of venison rested. After a little searching it was found under the top of a fallen hemlock, but in a sorry condition. A large piece had been split out of one end, and a fearful chink was visible nearly to the water-line. Freed from the tree-top, however, and caulked with a little moss, it floated with two aboard, which was quite enough for our purpose. A jack and an oar were necessary to complete the arrangement, and before the sun had set our professor of wood-craft had both in readiness. From a young yellowbirch, an oar took shape with marvellous rapidity-trimmed and smoothed with a neatness almost fastidious,-no make-shift, but an instrument fitted for the delicate work it was to perform.

With

A jack was made with equal skill and speed. A stout staff about three feet long was placed upright in the bow of the boat, and held to its place by a horizontal bar, through a hole in which it turned easily; a half wheel eight or ten inches in diameter, cut from a large chip, was placed at the top, around which was bent a section of new birchbark, thus forming a rude semicircular reflector. Three candles placed within the circle completed the jack. moss and boughs seats were arranged— one in the bow for the marksman, and one in the stern for the oarsman. A meal of frogs and squirrels was a good gastronomic preparation, and when darkness came, all were keenly alive to the opportunity it brought. Though by no means an expert in the use of the gun-adding the superlative degree of enthusiasm to only the positive degree of skill-yet it seemed tacitly agreed that I should act as marksman, and kill the deer, if such was to be our luck.

After it was thoroughly dark we went down to make a short trial-trip. Every thing working to satisfaction, about ten o'clock we pushed out in earnest. For the twentieth time I felt in the pocket that contained the matches, ran over the part I was to perform, and pressed my gun firmly, to be sure there was no mistake. My position was that of kneeling directly under the jack, which I was