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While engaged on this work he lost his wife in February, 1825, and then his parents. In 1829 he visited Europe, and spent his time among the artists and art galleries of England, France, and Italy. In Paris he undertook a picture of the interior of the Louvre, showing some of the masterpieces in miniature, but it seems that nobody purchased it. He expected to be chosen to illustrate one of the vacant panels in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington; but in this too he was mistaken. However, some fellow-artists in America, thinking he had deserved the honour, collected a sum of money to assist him in painting the composition he had fixed upon: 'The Signing of the First Compact on Board the Mayflower.'

In a far from hopeful mood after his three years' residence abroad he embarked on the packet Sully, Captain Pell, and sailed from Havre for New York on October 1, 1832. Among the passengers was Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, who had attended some lectures on electricity in Paris, and carried an electro-magnet in his trunk. One day while Morse and Dr. Jackson, with a few more, sat round the luncheon table in the cabin, he began to talk of the experiments he had witnessed. Some one asked if the speed of the electricity was lessened by its passage through a long wire, and Dr. Jackson, referring to a trial of Faraday, replied that the current was apparently instantaneous. Morse, who probably remembered his old lessons in the subject, now remarked that if the presence of the electricity could be rendered visible at any point of the circuit he saw no reason why intelligence might not be sent by this means.

The idea became rooted in his mind, and engrossed his thoughts. Until far into the night he paced the deck discussing the matter with Dr. Jackson, and pondering it in solitude. Ways of rendering the