ain, where
he was made a Commander of the Royal and Distinguished Order of
Carlos III. In every country to which it was taken, the merits of the
instrument were recognised, and Professor Hughes has none but pleasant
souvenirs of his visits abroad.

During all these years the inventor was not idle. He was constantly
improving his invention; and in addition to that, he had to act as an
instructor where-ever he went, and give courses of lectures explaining
the principles and practice of his apparatus to the various employees
into whose hands it was to be consigned.

The years 1876-8 will be distinguished in the history of our time for a
triad of great inventions which, so to speak, were hanging together. We
have already seen how the telephone and phonograph have originated; and
to these two marvellous contrivances we have now to add a third, the
microphone, which is even more marvellous, because, although in form it
is the simplest of them all, in its action it is still a mystery. The
telephone enables us to speak to distances far beyond the reach of eye
or ear, 'to waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole; 'the phonograph enables
us to seal the living speech on brazen tablets, and store it up for any
length of time; while it is the peculiar function of the microphone
to let us hear those minute sounds which are below the range of our
unassisted powers of hearing. By these three instruments we have thus
received a remarkable extension of the capacity of the human ear, and a
growth of dominion over the sounds of Nature. We have now a command over
sound such as we have over light. For the telephone is to the ear
what the telescope is to the eye, the phonograph is for sound what the
photograph is for light, and the microphone finds its analogue in the
microscope. As the microscope reveals to our wondering sight the rich
meshes of creation, so the microphone can interpret to our ears the jarr
of molecular vibrations for ever going on around us, perchance the clash
of atoms as they shape themselves into crystals, the murmurous ripple of
the sap in trees, which Humboldt fancied to make a continuous music in
the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and
grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even
the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a
bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land faintly blowing.'

The success of the Hughes type-printer may be said to