A telegraphic Wonder.
--The following account of an extraordinary French telegraphic invention is given in the Paris correspondence of the London Star:The Abbe Casselli's pantograph is taken up by the Government. A "project of law" was recently presented to the corps legislative, which proposes that it should supercede the Morse apparatus now in universal use. The pantograph is one of the greatest scientific wonders of the present day. It is properly enough termed here an autograph and amateur. A dispatch written at Paris is reproduced without the assistance of any clerk at Marseilles with the most rigorous fidelity, as is also a portrait, sketch, or drawing of any kind. Nor does the Casselli's apparatus need so great a supply of electricity as that of Morse, and is much less affected by the condition of the atmosphere. The Empress has lately had her likeness telegraphed to some of her friends in the provinces, and last week Cassella telegraphed a painting of a full-blown rose from the observatory to the bureau of the telegraphic administration. The petals were of a beautiful pink color, and the leaves of an equally good green; in short, were exactly like the tints of the original. Rossini, also, not many days ago, telegraphed to Marseilles by this apparatus a melody which he improvised in honor of the inventor, and which has since gone the rounds of the Paris salons.
The above statement seems incredible, but not more so than many things would have seemed a few years ago which we now know to be true. It will not do to discredit now-a-days all that seems wild and wonderful. A few years ago, if any man had predicted such an invention as the Morse telegraph, by which instantaneous communication could be had between and New Orleans. He would have been visionary. Less than two years ago, if one had predicted that this free Republic of ours could be converted, in the year of our Lod 1863, into the most odious military despotism, with the purse, the sword, the Legislature, and absolute control of the bench and the ballot box in a single hand, and all this power concentrated in the person of such a character and intellect as — well, say in the person of the caliber of "Abe Lincoln"--the prophet of such monstrosities would certainly have been regarded as a fit subject of confinement in a lunatic asylum.
Yet these things are! Therefore nil admiral
