, or see, may take note of its signals, if he
can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying
his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the
sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb
tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes
and long-nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the
relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its
short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.

* * * * *

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Etudes sur Pascal_. Par M. VICTOR COUSIN. Cinqieme Edition, revue et
augmentee. Paris: 1857. pp. 566. 8vo.

We render hearty thanks to M. Cousin for this new edition of a favorite
work. No library which contains Pascal's "Provinciales" and "Pensees"
should be without it.

"Of all the monuments of the French language," says M. Cousin, in the
_Avant-propos_ to this new edition, "none is more celebrated than the
work 'Les Pensees,' and French literature possesses no artist more
consummate than Pascal. Do not expect to find in this young
geometrician, so soon consumed by disease and passion, the breadth,
surface, and infinite variety of Bossuet, who, supported by vast and
uninterrupted study, rose and rose until he gained the loftiest reaches
of intellect and art, and commanded at pleasure every tone and every
style. Pascal did not fulfil all his destiny. Besides the mathematics
and natural philosophy he knew scarcely more than a little theology,
and he barely passed through good society. It is true, Pascal passed
away from earth quickly; but during his short life he discerned
glimpses of the _beau ideal_, he attached himself to it with all his
heart and soul and strength, and he never allowed anything to leave his
hands unless it bore its lively impress. So great was his passion for
perfection, that unchallenged tradition tells us he wrote the
seventeenth 'Provinciale' thirteen times over. 'Les Pensees' are merely
fragments of the great work on which he consumed the last years of his
life; but these fragments sometimes present so finished a beauty, that
we do not know which most to admire, the grandeur and vigor of the
sentiments and ideas, or the delicacy and depth of the art."

This praise is unexaggerated. What a career was run by this genius!
Discovering the science of geometry at twelve years of age,--next
inventing the arithmetical machine,--discover