ship's compass, is placed over a battery of
magnets that would go in an ordinary hat-case. The
surface of the box presents a dial face, like a
clock, round which are arranged the letters of
the alphabet, a sign or two, and the ten
numerals. Opposite each of the letters — spreading
out from the side of the box, like an
ornamental fringe round the dial-plate— is a single
tongue of brass, resembling a large key of a
German flute. By pressing down one of these
tongues with your finger (opposite the letter A,
for example) you cause a needle, like the long
hand of a watch, to point at the same letter on
another dial, exactly similar in form, but smaller
in size, placed under the eye of your correspondent
at the other end of the wire, if need be, miles off.
The distance of your needle-dial from your
battery may be thirty miles, or further, according
to the power of your magnets; but the action
of the letter-key upon the letter-needle is
instantaneous and infallible. The same operation,
accompanied by the same result, will indicate
numerals, according to a preconcerted sign, as
the figures are placed round the two dials, as
far as they will go, in a circle outside the letters.
If the battery is portable, the corresponding
machinery is much more so, being even smaller
than many an ordinary French mantel-shelf
clock. The needle-dial is fixed in a small barrel,
and fitted up so as to revolve like a microscope,
and suit the height, of the person observing it.
A voltaic battery would be less costly than
magnets, but more liable to get out of order in shop-
stations. The whole apparatus, as it stands,
would not take up half the space required by a
post-office desk, or require any more intellect to
work it than is required to write or read a
letter. An average housemaid could receive
and despatch a message, if the shopman had
just stepped round the corner, providing she
could spell a few words of one, two, or three
syllables.

Upon the adoption of some such apparatus
as this most probably upon this particular
machine will depend the success of the London
District Telegraph Company. The whole scheme
of popular telegraphs runs in a circle. Without
simplicity and clearness of machinery there can
be no extensive formation of cheap stations;
without a number of cheap stations there can
be no moderate tariff of charges; without this
moderate tariff there can be no general patronage
of telegraphs by the great body of the public.
Without general patronage, again, there can
be no moderate tariff.

Starting, as the company does, in some
degree, upon a sentiment, by soliciting the unpaid
co-operation of numerous householders and
landlords, it will be morally bound to place
itself in that position in which it can effect the
greatest amount of public good at the lowest
possible tariff of charges. The trading instincts
of its board of directors will compel them to
do this, if they are not kept in the right path
by any higher feeling. It will be fortunate,
therefore, for the metropolitan public that,
though the electric shock may not always be
required with the glass of ale, both may be
included in the fourpence, when absolutely
necessary.

A PHYSICIAN'S DREAMS.
I.

DREAMS being the stronghold of the
mysterious, it may be supposed that I have greater
wonders to relate than any waking phenomena
on which I have dwelt. But it is not so; and,
a slight consideration of what sleep is, will show
my reader that it cannot be so. Dream-books
rest on a very flimsy foundation; our life is a
unity; sleep is not an interruption of natural
laws, but a carrying on of the unvarying laws
of our being; not a phenomenon, but a fact in
our human constitution.

What is sleep?

Nay. What is the beating of the heart?
What is breathing? Sleep, like these, is a vital
necessity, an act, or (to use the word in its
philosophical sense) a passion of life. Being a
vital state, it answers to the words of Pope:

  Like following life through creatures you dissect,
  You lose it in the moment you detect.

To define sleep would only be to render less
clear the idea which is attached to the well-
known word. Shakespeare wisely describes it in
a passage needless to quote entire, by its effects
merely. He calls it, amongst other things,

  Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Pursuing this truthful thought, we ask, "Why
chief nourisher?" The answer must be,
"Because it brings us needful rest— relaxation
of the tired and stretched-out nerves and muscles
— but, above all, repose and refreshment of
brain." Active thought is almost entirely
suspended in sleep: habitual and wearisome
thought are interrupted. Sleep is truly the
"death of each day's life."

Physically, sleep is a passive state of the
brain, in which that organ pulsates equably, and
for the most part in a manner undisturbed by the
agitation of thought. A medical man had
opportunity, for a long time, of observing the brain
of a patient, which, to a considerable extent, had
been laid bare by a fracture, and removal of part
of the skull. He looked often at the bare brain,
while the patient was awake: while the patient
was asleep. The observer saw that, in a waking
state, the brain had intelligent, and, as one might
say, telegraphic motions, correspondent with the
thoughts which it was printing off. The doctor,
looking at the exposed brain while the patient
was conversing, perceived that different cerebral
motions accompanied the different ideas it was
excited by. He was looking manifestly at the
great laboratory of thought. But, in a state
of sleep, the patient's brain worked and
telegraphed no more. It became a mere pulse, like
that at the wrist, and, indeed, was found to
correspond, in its regular beat, with the beat of the
artery. Hence follows that, in as far as the
quietude of the brain is hindered, sleep is
hindered in the same proportion. Thus, a mere
mechanical quieting of the brain induces sleep.
I have read of sleepless men, who, to drown the