ake
them. Davy was in a fair way of becoming one of the fathers of the
working telegraph, when his private affairs obliged him to emigrate to
Australia, and leave the course open to Cooke and Wheatstone.

CHAPTER II. CHARLES WHEATSTONE.

The electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a
gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long
train of thinkers. In such a case he who crowns the work, making it
serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but
is likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole
inventor, although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is
perhaps less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner. He
who advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a
common boon, is entitled to our gratitude. But in honouring the keystone
of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on which
it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge. Justice at least is due to
those who have laboured without reward.

Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were the first
to bring the electric telegraph into daily use. But we have selected
Wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science,
and chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus. As James Watt
is identified with the steam-engine, and George Stephenson with the
railway, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph.

Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in February, 1802. His
father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed
to 128, Pall Mall, London, and became a teacher of the flute. He used to
say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at
the musical education of the Princess Charlotte. Charles, the second
son, went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to
several institutions in London. One of them was in Kennington, and kept
by a Mrs. Castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress. From
another he ran away, but was captured at Windsor, not far from the
theatre of his practical telegraph. As a boy he was very shy and
sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other
company than his own thoughts. When he was about fourteen years old he
was apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical
instruments, at 436, Strand, London; but he showed little taste for
handicraft or business, and loved better to stu