three hundred years she had been battling in Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia became the Kingdom of Northern Italy.

The next year (1860) Garibaldi, the lion-like fighter, the enthusiastic lover of Italy, gathering round him a thousand followers, made an unexpected attack on Sicily, which was held by the tyrant King of Naples. With his celebrated "Thousand" he won two remarkable victories. The Sicilians joined him; the Neapolitans were driven from the island. Not giving them time to recover, Garibaldi followed to the mainland, defeated them again, and was master of all Southern Italy. Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel, marching his troops southward, seized what was left of the States of the Church. The two conquerors met midway in Italy, and Garibaldi, grasping his sovereign by the hand, saluted him as King at last of a united Italy. Only Rome and Venice remained outside the pale, Rome protected by being in actual possession of the Pope, and, since France was still Catholic, guarded by French troops from the eager Italians. The year 1860 had been second only to 1848 in its importance in changing the outlines of modern Europe. [Footnote: See The Kingdom of Italy Established.]

Another change, immeasurably vast and still unmeasured in its consequences, may be dated from 1859, when Charles Darwin gave to the world his book, the Origin of Species. In this he proclaimed the doctrine of the evolution of all the more complicated forms of life from simpler forms. The idea, at first resolutely combated on religious grounds, has gradually received more or less acceptance into the entire religious fabric, even as were the discoveries of Galileo. [Footnote: See Darwin Publishes His Origin of Species.]

DISUNION IN AMERICA

Yet each and all of these events, important as they were, grew little in men's minds as the year 1860 drew to its close and revealed in America the coming of a mightier quarrel. The slavery question, once supposed to have been settled by the Missouri Compromise, had proved itself incapable of such settlement. The forward march of democracy had in fact made slavery an anachronism, outgrown and impossible. Even the Emperor of Russia saw that, and in 1861 liberated all the serfs within his territories. [Footnote: See Emancipation of Russian Serfs.] In the United States alone among the great Powers of the world, did slavery persist.

In 1854 a new political party, calling itself the Republican, was formed, having for its main principle opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories. [Footnote: See The Rise of the Republican Party.] Other issues might and did complicate the central question, but it was the slavery issue that inflamed men's minds, made Kansas a "battle-ground" between settlers from North and South, and sent John Brown upon his reckless raid. Watching the increasing success of the Republicans, Southern leaders began to reassert the doctrine of the right of secession. They said openly that if a Republican president were elected they would leave the Union.

And in 1860 a Republican president was elected. Was the long-predicted, and to most of Europe eagerly desired, disruption of the United States at hand? Was the break to be accomplished peacefully or in flame and wrath? The fading year of 1860 left the advancing world of democracy in panic over the danger to what had been its most successful stronghold.

[For the next section of this general survey, see volume XVIII.]

(1844) INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH, Alonzo B. Cornell

After the experiments of Franklin that did so much to advance the study of electrical phenomena, and to suggest practical applications of electricity, physicists in all countries occupied themselves with investigations along lines marked out by the American philosopher. In 1749 Franklin devised the lightning-rod. But notwithstanding the labors of many investigators, it was more than fifty years before any other practical discovery or invention in electricity was brought into general use. The first great achievement of the kind was Morse's improvement of the electric telegraph. That Morse's fellow-countryman, Joseph Henry, chiefly prepared the way for that triumph, the following account, with just emphasis, demonstrates.

Among the European scientists and inventors to whom both Henry and Morse were indebted was the French electrician, André Marie Ampère (1775-1836), whose name (ampère) has been given to the practical unit of electric-current strength. Ampère was the first and is the most famous investigator in electrodynamics. He also invented a telegraphic arrangement in which he used the magnetic needle and coil and the galvanic battery. Others, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, devised similar arrangements. But no strictly electromagnetic apparatus for telegraphic signalling was put to successful use until 1836, when, in England, Charles Wheatstone, who is commonly regarded as the first inventor of practical electric telegraphy, constructed an apparatus whereby thirty signals were transmitted through nearly four miles of wire. From 1837 to 1843 he had as an associate William Fothergill Cooke, and the two worked together to develop the electric telegraph. They afterward quarrelled over their respective claims to credit, but in 1838-1841 telegraph lines secured by their patents were set up on the Great Western and two other English railways.

Meanwhile other inventors were still working for the same results, in many parts of the world, and it has been significantly said that "the electric telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up little by little." Nevertheless with respect to the distinctive character of Morse's improvements, and his title to a peculiar place among those through whose labors the electric telegraph "grew," there can be no question.

Alonzo B. Cornell, son of the founder of Cornell University, at one time Governor of New York, was intimately connected with electrical and telegraphic affairs for many years; therefore on the subject here presented he speaks with professional authority. His father was the first builder of the Morse telegraphs.

* * * * *

During the early years of the nineteenth century but slight advance was made in the development of electrical science, although there were many persons both here and abroad engaged in experimental work, and there was considerable increase of literature bearing upon the subject. It was reserved for another illustrious American to accomplish the next important and decisive step in the pathway of progress. In 1828 Joseph Henry, then professor of physics at the Albany Academy, afterward a professor at Princeton, and subsequently for many years secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, made the highly important discovery that by winding a plain iron core with many layers of insulated wire, through which the electric current was passed, he could at pleasure charge and discharge the iron core with magnetic power. Thus Henry produced the electromagnet which was the beginning of the mastery by man of the subtle fluid. He also discovered that the intensity and power of the electric current were materially augmented by increasing the number of the series of battery plates without increasing the quantity of metal used in their construction.

These discoveries of Henry were, beyond all question, the most important in real and intrinsic value ever made in the progress of electric science, as they form the solid basis upon which all subsequent inventors have been enabled to accomplish successful results in their various fields of endeavor. It is conceded by all familiar with the history of electrical progress