590 



sus, and constructed so as to resemble a floating island in a lake. 

 ' Strada,' he continues, ' in the person of Lucretius, gives an 

 account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by 

 the help of a certain loadstone, which had such a virtue in it 

 that if it touched two 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 two friends, being each of them possessed of one 

 of those needles, may make a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it 

 with the four-and-twenty letters in the same manner as the 

 hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate, and 

 they fix one of those needles on each of these plates, in such a 

 manner that it coidd move round without impediment, so as to 

 touch the foui*-aud-twenty letters. Upon theu- separating from 

 one another into distant countries, they may agree to with- 

 draw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain hour 

 of the day, and to converse by means of this their invention. 

 Accordingly, when they are some hundred miles apart, each of 

 them may shut himself up in his own closet at the time ap- 

 pointed, and immediately cast his eye upon the dial-plate. If 

 he had a mind to write anything to his friend, he directed his 

 needle to eveiy 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 meantime 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 the whole Continent, and conveyed 

 their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or 

 mountains, seas or deserts.' * 



" But Addison does not profess to give a literal translation 

 of those remarkable lines, and without that it is impossible to 

 form an adequate idea of the import of some of them. The fol- 

 lowing version of them is rendered as faithful to the original as 

 the abstruseness of some passages would admit of. And it is 



• Guardian, No. 119, vol. ii. pp. 213, 214. 



