As is becoming in any, and especially in an American, treatise upon this great subject, Mr. Prescott devotes some space to a detailed account of the labors of Professor Morse, which have led to his being regarded as the father of our American system of telegraphing.  In a chapter entitled “Early Discoveries in Electro-Dynamics,” he publishes for the first time some interesting facts elicited during the trial, in the Supreme Court of the United States, of the suit of the Morse patentees against the House Company for alleged infringement of patent.  In this chapter we have a resume of the evidence before the Court, and an abstract of the decision of Judge Woodbury.  This leads clearly to the conclusion, that, although Professor Morse had no claims to any merit of actual invention, yet he had the purely mechanical merit of having gone beyond all his compeers in the application of discoveries and inventions already made, and that he was the first to contrive and set in operation a thoroughly effective instrument.

Mr. Prescott has produced a very readable and useful book.  It has been thoroughly and appropriately illustrated, and is a very elegant specimen of the typographer’s art.

Great Expectations.  By CHARLES DICKENS.  Philadelphia:  T.B.  Peterson & Brothers. 8vo.

The very title of this book indicates the confidence of conscious genius.  In a new aspirant for public favor, such a title might have been a good device to attract attention; but the most famous novelist of the day, watched by jealous rivals and critics, could hardly have selected it, had he not inwardly felt the capacity to meet all the expectations he raised.  We have read it, as we have read all Mr. Dickens’s previous works, as it appeared in instalments, and can testify to the felicity with which expectation was excited and prolonged, and to the series of surprises which accompanied the unfolding of the plot of the story.  In no other of his romances has the author succeeded so perfectly in at once stimulating and baffling the curiosity of his readers.  He stirred the dullest minds to guess the secret of his mystery; but, so far as we have learned, the guesses of his most intelligent readers have been almost as wide of the mark as those of the least apprehensive.  It has been all the more provoking to the former class, that each surprise was the result of art, and not of trick; for a rapid review of previous chapters has shown that the materials of a strictly logical development of the story were freely given.  Even after the first, second, third, and even fourth of these surprises gave their pleasing electric shocks to intelligent curiosity, the denouement was still hidden, though confidentially foretold.  The plot of the romance is therefore universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented.  Its leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically concealed.  We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character, the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the conclusions.