8vo. xi, [2], 14-32pp, [2]. With a half-title and a final leaf of publisher's advertisements. Original publisher's dark green cloth, lettered in gilt. A trifle rubbed. Endpapers browned, armorial bookplate of French poet Jean-François Chatelain (1801-1881), Le Chevalier de Chatelain to recto of FFEP. Presentation copy, inked inscription to head of title page: 'Le Chevalier de Chatelain / From his admiring friend / the Author / 1872'.

The first trade edition (preceded by an edition printed by Robson and Son for private distribution and issued the year prior) of Richard Hengist Horne's (1802-1884) curious poem that takes the form of a dialogue held between a 'telegraph cable' and 'the sea'. In the preface by Henry Buxton Forman (1842-1917) we learn that a portion of the poem appeared in Household Words (edited by Horne's close friend Charles Dickens) and was written to commemorate the laying of the first successful submarine cable between Dover and Calais in 1851.