e
who have access to the London edition of the _Spectator_ of 1841,
published by J.J. Chidley, 123 Aldersgate Street, can verify the
verbatim faithfulness of the following extract from page 274:--

"Strada, in one of his Prolusions (Lib. II. prol. 6), gives an account
of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a
certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two
several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the
other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time, and
in the same manner. He tells us that the two friends, being each of them
possessed of one of those needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing
it with four-and-twenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the
day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the
needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it could move
round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty
letters.

"Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they
agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain
hour of the day, and to converse with one another by means of this
their invention.

"Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them
shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately
cast his eye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind to write anything to
his friend, he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words
which he had occasion for, making a little pause at the end of every
word or sentence, to avoid confusion.

"The friend in the meanwhile saw his own sympathetic needle moving of
itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By
this means they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed
their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains,
seas or deserts.

"If Monsieur Scudery, or any other writer of romance, had introduced a
necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making a
present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the
reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them
corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and
watchers, or separated by castles and adventures.

"In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be revived or put in
practice, I would propose that upon the lover's dial-plate there should
be written no