The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17 · Chapter 1Illustrations:
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The mutinous Sepoys blown from the mouths of cannon by the English at Cawnpore, Painting by Basil Verestchagin.
Charge of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, Painting by Stanley Berkeley.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE (Tracing briefly the causes, connections, and consequences of the great events.)
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY, Charles F. Horne
In the year 1844 electricity, last and mightiest of the servants of man, was seized and harnessed and made to do practical work. A telegraph line was erected between Washington and Baltimore. [Footnote: See Invention of the Telegraph.] In 1846 mathematics achieved perhaps the greatest triumph of abstract science. It pointed out where in the heavens there should be a planet, never before known by man. Strong telescopes were directed to the spot and the planet was discovered. [Footnote: See The Discovery of Neptune.] Man had found guides more subtle and more accurate than his own five ancient senses. The age of figures, the age of electricity, began.
The changes were symbolic, perhaps, of the more rapid rate at which the forces of society were soon to move. Over all Europe and America great events were shaping themselves with lightning speed. Tremendous changes political and economic, social and scientific, were hurrying to an issue.
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