Dr. Maitland, in his valuable volume on the "Dark Ages," has the following remarks on a subject which I think has not met with the attention it deserves:

"Those who are in the habit of looking at such things, know how commonly early printed books, whose binding has undergone the analytical operation of damp, or mere old age, disclose the under end pieces of beautiful and ancient manuscript. They know how freely parchment was used for backs and bands, and fly-leaves, and even for covers. The thing is so common, that those who are accustomed to see old books have ceased to notice it."

In order to come within the design of your pages, I must put this in the shape of a Query, and ask, if it is not a pity that this fact has ceased to be noticed? We do not know what treasures may be contained in the shabby covers which we contemplate getting rid of. "There are thousands" (of MSS.), says the same writer, "equally destroyed,—thousands of murdered wretches not so completely annihilated: their ghosts do walk the earth; they glide unseen into our libraries, our studies, our very hands; they are all about and around us. We even take them up and lay them down, without knowing of their existence; unless time and damp (as if to punish and mock us for robbing them of their prey) have loosed their bonds, and set them to confront us."

Archbishop Tenison had not "ceased to notice it." He very diligently rescued these "fragments" from the hands of his bookbinder and it is to be regretted that he did not take equal precaution in preserving them. Recently, all that I could collect have been cleaned, inlaid, and arranged chronologically, making two interesting and valuable volumes.

How far would it be desirable to unite for the purpose of collecting MS. fragments, and early printed leaves?

Might not a Society, which should have for its especial object the discovery, cataloguing, and circulating information about these stray bits, be of great service? E. g. I have before me five volumes of Justinian's Codices and Digesta, Paris, 1526; the covers of which are made of MS. Thirteen leaves go to make one board. They are written on both sides and thus an easy multiplication gives us 260 pages of MS., or early printing, in the covers of one work!

It is not unlikely that, if the results of research in this direction were carefully registered, many perfect pieces might be recovered.

Philip Hale.

Archbishop Tenison's Library,
St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

I have just met with a passage in the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of Sir Thomas Browne, wherein this invention is foreshadowed in terms more remarkable and significant, if less imaginative and beautiful, than that from The Spectator, to which public attention has already been directed, and which, I conceive, must unquestionably have been written, with this particular example of the "received tenets and commonly presumed truths" of the learned physician's day, distinctly present to the mind of Addison. The passage referred to is as follows:

"There is another conceit of better notice, and whispered thorow the world with some attention; credulous and vulgar auditors readily believing it, and more judicious and distinctive heads not altogether rejecting it. The conceit is excellent, and, if the effect would follow, somewhat divine: whereby we might communicate like spirits, and confer on earth with Menippus in the moon. And this is pretended from the sympathy of two needles touched with the same loadstone, and placed in the centre of two abecedary circles, or rings with letters described round about them, one friend keeping one, and another the other, and agreeing upon the hour wherein they will communicate. For then, saith tradition, at what distance of place soever, when one needle shall be removed unto any letter, the other, by a wonderful sympathy, will move unto the same."—Book II. chap. ii, 4to., 1669, p. 77.

Thus it is that "coming events cast their shadows before:" and, in the present case, one is curious to learn how far back the shadow may be traced. By whom has this conceit been whispered thorow the world? and in what musty tomes is that tradition concealed, which speaks concerning it? Kircher's Catena Magnetica might haply tell us something in reply to these inquiries.

In conformity with an often repeated suggestion to the correspondents of "N. & Q.," to the simple signature of my habitat, alone hitherto adopted by me, I now subjoin my name.

Wm. Matthews.

Cowgill.