Just as the disc started on that fatal dispatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,—as the dear things will. They were beside themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were fumbling for matches, which would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet blind girl, who had learned Bain's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston, bent over the chemical paper, and smelt out the prussiate of potash, as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse messages with the finger,—and so this message was read at all the midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where the companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,—for Bain's is on the same principle as Morse's.
The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can be employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols,—be they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland Bay, so prophetically and appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope the reader sees that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent being who has any one of the five senses left him,—by all rational men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraphic alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.
LITERARY NOTICES.
Études sur Pascal. Par M. Victor Cousin. Cinqième Edition, revue et augmentée. Paris: 1857. pp. 566. 8vo.
We render hearty thanks to M. Cousin for this new edition of a favorite work. No library which contains Pascal's "Provinciales" and "Pensées" should be without it.
"Of all the monuments of the French language," says M. Cousin, in the Avant-propos to this new edition, "none is more celebrated than the work 'Les Pensées,' and French literature possesses no artist more consummate than Pascal. Do not expect to find in this young geometrician, so soon consumed by disease and passion, the breadth, surface, and infinite variety of Bossuet,
