The Portsmouth and Plymouth Dockyards also communicate by means of subtesranean lines with the naval establishments at Deptford, Woolwich, .Chatham, Sheerness, and with the Cinque Ports of Deal and Dover. These wires are worked independently of the Telegraph Company, and the messages are sent in cipher, the meaning of which is not known to the clerks who transmit the signals. There are also wires running from Buckingham Palace, and the chief Police Office in Scotland Yard, to the station at Charing Cross, and thence on to Lothbury, whilst the Lloyd's, the Stock Exchange, and the Corn Exchange, communicate directly with the Central Office.
At the present time almost every important town in Great Britain is furnished with means of telegraphic communication to other towns. As fast as any new railways, whether trunk or branch lines, are opened, so surely is the telegraph laid down; that the length of telegraph is nearly coincident with the length of rail The exceptions to this rule are so few as scarcely to disturb the simplicity of the rule itself. From numerous places in the metropolis, messages are every day being quickly flashed to Aberdeen in one direction, to Liverpool in another, to Dover in a third, to Southampton in a fourth, to Plymouth. to Milford Haven, to Holyhead—indeed, to almost all our outports, and to nearly every inland town of any com mercial pretensions. A system is everywhere acted on, that the principal railway stations shall at the same time be telegraph stations, some of the wires being for public use, and the others for railway use. The charges have been and are being gradually lowered, to the great advantage of all parties; and the messages now sent are of countless variety—the price of funds, the state of the markets, orders to purchase, the arrival of ships, what ships have just hove in sight, what ships have foundered, the receipt of important news, the Queen's speech, the result of elections, the divisions in a debate, the running of a race, the progress of the Court while travelling, the state of the weather, the direction in which a great storm is travelling, the verdict of an important trial, the sending for a doctor', the detection of a thief or murderer, inquiries after health, announcements of illness or of death, inquiries after lost luggage—these are only some of the open or confidential communications intrusted to the wires. Nor must we forget the various submarine cables, which although all have had occasional mishaps, yet taken collectively afford a remarkably complete series of channels through which messages may be exchanged between Great Britain and all the neighbouring countries ; and now the English public hear with as little surprise of messages or telegrams (to use a new word, concerning which Greek scholars for a time carried on a fierce battle) brought under water as if brought on dry land.
On the continent of Europe we find telegraphic wires ramifying in all directions. Nations were never more struck with the wonders of the electrio telegraph than on the occasion of the death of the Czar Nicholas in 1855. On the 2nd of March the Earl of Clarendon announced in the House of Lords that the Czar had died at St. Petersburg at one o'clock on that same day. Two distinct messages had been received, one rid Berlin and the Hague, the other rid Berlin and Ostend, both com municating a message telegraphed to Berlin from St. Petersburg, and all in four hours after the actual death. Not only have the dreary wastes of Russia been brought within the civilising influence of the electric wire, but lines in all directions have been laid, with or without regard to railways. Nearly all the chief cities in Europe are now linked together. Circuitous as is the route from London to Trieste, going through Belgium, Prussia, several minor German States, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, and Istria, the connection is nevertheless complete ; and telegrams are twice a-month transmitted to us relating to Indian affairs, brought to Trieste from Alexandria. Italy, in railways and in telegraphs, is in arrear of Austria; and Spain is lower on the list than Italy. Turkey, to the great astonishment of many of the Osmanlis, has been made a sharer in the fast-going, high-pressure operations of the age : she possesses an electric telegraph, extending from the Austrian frontier to Constantinople; and messages can now be flashed from London to the seat of the Ottoman empire. We have already glanced at other submarine lines, and must now conclude.
In sending messages in the United Kingdom by telegraph, either cipher may be used, or the ordinary signals known at the Telegraphic Office ; but such is the jealousy of despotism, that on the continent of Europe cipher is never permitted, except by the governments for their own use.