384 THE INTELLECTUAL, RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



a work of much literary skill and ingenuity. Strada is 

 quite specific, however, in his instructions. Two flat, 

 smooth disks are to be provided, marked around their cir- 

 cumferential edges with the alphabet. Iron needles are 

 pivoted at their centres and energized by one and the same 

 lodestone. "Let your friend," he says, u about to depart, 

 carry this disk with him, and let it be agreed beforehand 

 at what time or at what days he shall observe whether the 

 dial pin (needle) trembles, or what it marks on the indi- 

 cator. These things so disposed, if you desire to address 

 your friend secretly, whom a part of the earth separates far 

 from you, bring your hand to the disk; take hold of the 

 movable iron; here you observe the letters arranged round 

 the whole margin with stops, of which there is no need for 

 words; hither direct the iron and touch with the point the 

 separate letters, now this one and now the other, whilst 

 by turning the iron round again and again throughout 

 these you may distinctly express all the sentiments of 

 your mind. Strange, but true, the friend who is far dis- 

 tant sees the movable iron tremble without the touch of 

 any one and to traverse now in one, now in another direc- 

 tion: he stands attentive and observes the leading of the 

 iron and follows by collecting the letters from each direc- 

 tion, with which, being formed into words, he perceives 

 what may be intended, and learns from the iron as his in- 

 terpreter. Moreover, when he sees the dial pin stop, he, 

 in his turn, if he thinks of any things to answer in the 

 same manner by the letters being touched separately, 

 writes back to his friend." 



Addison 1 copied from Strada this conceit and talked 

 about it charmingly in the Spectator and Guardian, nearly 

 a century later, and Hakewill 2 and Akenside 3 allude to it. 



Addison: Spectator, 241, 1711; Guardian, 119, 1713. 



'Hakewill: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence 

 of God. London and Oxford, 1630. 



3 Akenside: The Pleasures of the Imagination. Bk III., v. 325-7 

 London, 1744. 



