roduce 250,000_l._ or a net
revenue of 150,000_l._ But to achieve so vast a purpose, and to confer
on men a species of ubiquity, even if 50,000_l._ per annum were lost
to the government, would it not be worth the sacrifice, thus to give
to the people of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely
to be possessed, by any other people on earth? What a triumph of
civilization would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic
system! The combinations of the #TELESCOPE# began what those of the
#TELEGRAPH# would complete. United, they would produce a kind of
_finite ubiquity_, rendering the intercourse of an industrious
community independent of time and distance, and binding the whole in
ties of self-interest, by means which could be achieved only in a high
state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art.

As I looked around me from this eminence, a multitude of ideas,
sympathies, and affections, vibrated within me, which it would be
impossible or tedious to analyse. The organ of the Eye was here played
upon like that of the Ear in a musical concert. Nor was it the sense
alone which was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and
tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations
and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended
by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions of
#Handel#; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an
effect like one of the tender symphonies of #Haydn#. It was a
Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it
had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any
eminences which raise the landscape above an angle of six or eight
degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich it was in associations--how endless
in pictures for the imagination!

The north and north-east were still obscured by the dingy, irregular,
and dense Smoke issuing from the volcano of the Metropolis; and, in
looking upon it, how difficult it was to avoid tracing the now mingled
masses back to their several sources, considering the happiness or
misery which they reflected from their respective fire-sides, and
gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a
fertile imagination might conceive to be combined with this social
atmosphere! Convenient alike to every condition of humanity, it might
be considered as flowing at once from the dungeons of despairing
convicts, the cell