In SWITZERLAND the only movements of importance relate to the demand made by the French government that the Council should promise hereafter to expel any fugitive who might be designated as dangerous. The Federal Government, while firmly refusing to enter into any such engagement, avowed its readiness to take all proper and necessary precautions against the sojourn of political refugees in Switzerland becoming a source of disquietude to neighboring states. An official report on the subject states that in June last there were but 235 political refugees in the Swiss states, and that they were all under the strict _surveillance_ of the police. Those who had taken any active steps likely to compromise the interests of other states, had been promptly expelled. There was a great deal of public interest manifested throughout Switzerland concerning the relations between their country and France, and considerable apprehension prevailed that their rights and liberties might not always be rigidly respected. The government of the Duchy of HOLSTEIN was formally transferred by the Commissaries of Prussia and Austria to the Commissary of Denmark, Count Reventlow-Criminil, on the 8th of February, in an official conference held at Kiel. In both GREECE and TURKEY there have been changes of Ministry. In the former country the change has no general importance. In Turkey, it is significant of reaction. Reschid Pacha, the most liberal and enlightened minister ever placed at the head of affairs in the Ottoman empire, has been dismissed, and is succeeded by Raaf Pacha, a man upward of eighty years of age, who was prime minister in 1838. The negotiation in regard to the Holy Sepulchre has been abandoned, and the French minister was to leave Constantinople forthwith. Editor's Table. Science, it has been said, is essentially unpoetical. It must be acknowledged, nevertheless, that it not unfrequently furnishes some of our choicest similes. Homer had, indeed, long ago compared thought to the lightning; but how much more definite, and, on this account, more effective, is the kindred simile drawn from the discovery of the modern electric telegraph. And yet, is there not here something more than simile? Is not the communication from soul to soul literally, as well as figuratively _tele-graphic_, that is, _far-writing_, or _writing from afar_? We hope to interest our readers by a brief examination of the query we have started.