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DOMESTIC MANNEBS OF THE PRUSSIANS.

on being made to enter the water; and even young DutchGoliaths being scared by the mere sight of the fists of someEnglish David.

It is but justice to the people, however, to add, that noneof those brutal amusements which at once degrade and depraveour own lower orders — such as dog-fighting, prize-fighting,rat-killing, and badger-baiting, &c.—are ever indulged ineven by " the dangerous classes;" and though such sports areforbidden by the police, we were assured that scarcely a manwould frequent them, were any such exhibition announced totake place in the town.

But have the Prussians, it will be asked, no other amuse-

of Englishmen. It was still possible to transcend all they had previously done,and to avaü themselves of a means of intercommunication as rapid as even thelightning, and by which it was proved to be possible to outstrip Time itself; sothat a message could arrive at a place some minutes before it had left another.We allude, of course, to the Electric Telegraph,—an invention incontestablyEnglish, for though Ampere years before had proposed to employ electricity fortelegraphic purposes, it was Messrs. Wheatstone and Coolce who really renderedthe plan feasible, and laid down the first electric telegraph, in 1837. Suchan invention, doubtlessly, could never have been carried out but through theagency of the railways; and as these were essentially English in their character,requiring English capital and English enterprise to develop them; so assuredlythe electric telegraph could never have been brought to its present perfection,even if invented in any other country.

The land telegraph, however, not only belonged to us, but, as if we wouldadmit no rival to the honour of advancing the clvilisation of the whole humanrace, the plan for carrying the messages of Europe under the sea was likewiseborn of Englishmen, fostered by Englishmen, and successfully carried out bythem, for the first time, across the British Channel, in November 1851.

Now let any one who has dwelt for a length of time among the Prussiansendeavour to conceive the possibility of their ever doing any such things as theabove,—slow Prussians, who are not yet used to the rapidity of horses, andwho, in these days of rapid locomotion, still carry their goods to market inwagons drawn by oxen almost as sleepy as the drivers themselves,—phlegmaticPrussians, whose letters are still conveyed in clumsy coaches, that are so heavyas to require more horses to pull the carriage than to draw both passengersand mail-bags, and whose average speed is considerably less than that of ourfurniture-vans.