erley
Novels, was about to expire. Southey, the Poet Laureate, before his recent
illness, it was stated, had been deterred from undertaking a projected
great work by the unsatisfactory copyright provisions. Wordsworth was about
to lose the fruits of some of his earliest and most patriotic poems. Among
those who actively pressed the measure were Charles Dickens and Thomas
Carlyle. The sixty years' copyright demanded in Carlyle's petition was not
obtained; but authors were allowed to retain the property of their works
during life, while their heirs could possess it for seven years after their
death. Coincident with this literary victory came other triumphs in
literature. Thomas B. Macaulay published his "Lays of Ancient Rome"; Alfred
Tennyson brought out "Locksley Hall" and other poems; Bulwer Lytton
finished "Zanoni"; the new Shakespeare Society issued some twenty volumes
of researches. A new impetus to the making of books and printing was given
by Woolwich's new system of electrotyping, and Charles Young's new device
of a type-setting machine, first employed on the "Family Herald."

It was then, too, that Dr. Julius Robert Meyer, an obscure physician in
Heilbronn, published a paper in Liebig's "Annalen," entitled "The Force of
Inorganic Nature." Not merely the mechanical theory of heat, but the entire
doctrine of the conservation of energy was clearly formulated. It is true
that he was anticipated in a measure by Mohr, and that Helmholtz more
exhaustively demonstrated the truth of the hypothesis of the conservation
of energy; but Helmholtz himself hailed Meyer as the rightful claimant of
the honor of having first clearly formulated the doctrine.

[Sidenote: Second Charter petition]

[Sidenote: The "Sacred Month"]

A great gain for humanity was made in Lord Ashley's successful bill for the
restriction of work done by women and children in mines and collieries.
Under the leadership of O'Connell's former Irish rival, Feargus O'Connor,
the agitation for a People's Charter was revived. On May 2, another monster
petition, containing nearly three and a half million signatures, was rolled
into Parliament. Too voluminous to pass through the doors, it had to be cut
up and carried into the hall by sixteen men. A motion to consider it was
violently opposed by Macaulay. Once more the petition was rejected by 287
over 49 votes. Now followed one of the most singular labor strikes of
England. This was the so-called sacred month, or t