“On my way from Liverpool I saw at Rugby the telegraph wires of Wheatstone, which extend, I understood, as far as Northampton.  I went into the office as the train stopped a moment, and had a glimpse of the instrument as we have seen it in the ‘Illustrated Times.’  The place was the ticket-office and the man very uncommunicative, but he told me it was not in operation and that they did not use it much.  This is easily accounted for from the fact that the two termini are inconsiderable places, and Wheatstone’s system clumsy and complicated.  The advantage of recording is incalculable, and in this I have the undisputed superiority.  As soon as I can visit the telegraph-office here I will give you the result of my observation.  I shall probably do nothing until my return from the north.”

Nothing definite was accomplished during his short stay in London, and on the 17th of September he left for the Continent with Mr. Henry Ellsworth and his wife.  Mr. Ellsworth, the son of his old friend, had been appointed attache to the American Legation at Stockholm.  Morse’s letters to his daughter give a detailed account of his journey, but I shall give only a few extracts from them:—­

“Hamburg, September 27, 1845. Everything being ready on the morning of the 17th instant, we left Brompton Square in very rainy and stormy weather, and drove down to the Custom-house wharf and went on board our destined steamer, the William Joliffe, a dirty, black-looking, tub-like thing, about as large but not half so neat as a North River wood-sloop.  The wind was full from the Southwest, blowing a gale with rain, and I confess I did not much fancy leaving land in so unpromising a craft and in such weather; yet our vessel proved an excellent seaboat, and, although all were sick on board but Mr. Ellsworth and myself, we had a safe but rough passage across the boisterous North Sea.”

Stopping but a short time in Rotterdam, the party proceeded through the Hague and Haarlem to Amsterdam, and from the latter place they visited the village of Broek:—­

“The inn at Broek was another example of the same neatness.  Here we took a little refreshment before going into the village.  We walked of course, for no carriage, not even a wheelbarrow, appeared to be allowed any more than in a gentleman’s parlor.  Everything about the exterior of the houses and gardens was as carefully cared for as the furniture and embellishments of the interior.  The streets (or rather alleys, like those of a garden) were narrow and paved with small variously colored bricks forming every variety of ornamental figures.  The houses, from the highest to the lowest class, exhibited not merely comfort but luxury, yet it was a selfish sort of luxury.  The perpetually closed door and shut-up rooms of ceremony, the largest and most conspicuous of all in the house, gave an air of inhospitableness which, I should hope, was not indicative of the real character of the inhabitants.