earthy or plaster moulds of the founder, but a few drops of liquid be enclosed in the moulds, the most dangerous explosions follow. Notwithstanding the progress of science, founders, even now-a-days, do not always escape these accidents; and we have no reason to suppose that the ancients were free from them. While casting, then, their innumerable statues, the splendid ornaments of their temples and public resorts, of their gardens and private mansions at Athens and at Rome, many accidents must have occurred; the artists themselves must have discovered the immediate cause; whilst the philosophers on their part, following that tendency to generalization which was the characteristic feature of their schools, would here behold in miniature a true image of the eruptions of Etna. Now, all this might be true without having the slightest relation to the history with which we are now engaged; and I would not even have insisted so much upon these slight traces of the science of the ancients regarding the power of steam, were it not that I might live at peace with the Daciers of both sexes, and with the Dutens of our own day.*

Powers, whether natural or artificial, previous to becoming

* Influenced by the same motive, I can scarcely avoid mentioning here an anecdote, which, besides its romantic character, and its inconsistency with what we now know of the mode of the action of steam, shews us also the high idea which the ancients entertained of the power of this mechanical agent. It is stated that Anthemius, the architect of Justinian, had a dwelling contiguous to that of Zeno, and that, to annoy the orator, who was his declared foe, he placed beneath the ground-floor of his own house a number of great caldrons, which he filled with water; that from an opening made in the lid of each of these, proceeded a flexible tube, which was directed into the partition wall, under the beams that supported the ceil ings of Zeno's mansion; and finally, that these ceilings actually shook as if from a violent earthquake, when fires were lit beneath the caldrons.

really useful to mankind, have almost always wrought wonders in support of superstition; and steam has been no exception to this general rule.

Chroniclers have informed us, that upon the banks of the Weser, the god of the ancient Teutonic race manifested his displeasure by a kind of thunderbolt, to which, immediately afterwards, succeeded a cloud that filled the sacred enclosure. The image of the god Busterich, discovered, it is said, in some excavations, clearly demonstrates the mode in which this prodigy was produced. The god was made of metal. The hollow head contained water to the amount of an amphora; plugs of wood closed the mouth and another opening situated under the forehead, and combustibles suitably placed in a cavity of the cranium gradually heated the liquid. Speedily the steam generated caused the plugs to spring with a loud report, and then escaped with violence, forming a thick cloud between the god and his astonished worshippers. It appears also, that, in the middle ages, the monks found this to be a very valuable invention, and that the head of Busterich has performed before other assemblies besides those of the benighted Teutones.*

After these faint glimmerings of the Greek philosophers,

* Hero of Alexandria attributed those sounds, the objects of so much controversy, which the statue of Memnon produced when the rays of the rising sun darted upon it, to the passage, through certain openings, of a current of steam, which the heat of the sun was thought to have produced, at the expense of the liquid, which the Egyptian priests placed, it was said, in the interior of the pedestal of the Colossus. Solomon de Caus, Kircher, and others, have gone so far as to investigate the particular arrangements by means of which the priestly fraud was palmed upon the credulous. It appears evident, however, that their explanations are erroneous, if, indeed, there existed any thing of the sort requiring explanation.

we must pass over an interval of nearly twenty centuries, before we meet with any useful notions concerning the properties of steam. From that time onwards, experiments, precise, conclusive, and irresistible, take the place of mere idle

conjectures.

In the year 1605, Flurence Rivault, a gentleman of the bedchamber to Henri IV., and the preceptor of Louis XIII., discovered that an iron-ball, or bomb, with very thick walls, and filled with water, exploded sooner or later when thrown into the fire, if its mouth were closed, or, in other words, if you prevented the free escape of the steam as it was generated. The power of steam was here demonstrated by a precise proof, which, to a certain point, was susceptible of numerical appreciation, whilst at the same time it revealed itself as a dreadful means of destruction.

Upon this last-named fact, enlightened minds will not dwell with foreboding melancholy. They know well that mechanical powers, like human passions, will become useful or hurtful according as they receive a right or wrong direction. In the case of steam, it in fact requires only a very simple contrivance, to make available to productive labour, the for

* If some antiquarian think that I have not gone back far enough because I commence with Flurence Rivault, and if, according to the statement of Alberti, who wrote in 1411, he should inform us that, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, lime-burners were much alarmed both for themselves and their kilns, on account of the explosions which were produced when the pieces of limestone had a cavity in their interior, I answer, that Alberti himself was ignorant of the real cause of these terrible explosions; that he attributed them to the transformation of the air they contained into steam by the agency of the flames. To this I add, that the explosion of a piece of limestone thus accidentally hollow, supplied no means of that numerical calculation, of which the experiment of Rivault was evidently susceptible.

midable elastic power which, according to all appearance, shakes the earth to its centre, surrounds the art of the statuary with imminent danger, and breaks into a thousand pieces the strongest bombshell.

In what state do we find this projectile previous to its explosion? The lower part contains water at a very high temperature, but still liquid, and its remaining portion is filled with steam. This, according to the characteristic law of all gases, exercises its power equally in all directions; it presses with equal intensity upon the water, and the metallic sides which contain it. Let us now place a stopcock at the lower part of these sides,-on opening it, the water, forced by the steam, will issue forth with extreme velocity. If the stopcock was placed upon a tube, which, after taking a bend round the outside of the bomb, were then directed vertically from below upwards, the water would ascend in the tube in the ratio of the elasticity of the steam; or rather, for it is the same thing in other words, the water would rise according to the degree of temperature; and this ascending movement would find its limits only in the strength of the apparatus.

For this bomb let us now substitute a strong close boiler of large dimensions, and then there is nothing to prevent our forcing great masses of liquid to indefinite heights by the sole action of steam; and we shall have constructed, in every sense of the word, a steam-engine which might serve the purpose of drainage.

And now you have been made acquainted with that invention for which France and England have contended, as formerly the seven cities of Greece respectively claimed the honour of being the birthplace of Homer. On the other side of the Channel they have unanimously ascribed the honour of

it to the Marquis of Worcester, of the illustrious house of Somerset. On this side, again, we maintain that it belongs to a humble engineer, almost forgotten by our biographers, namely, Solomon de Caus, who was born at Dieppe, or in its neighbourhood. Let us now cast an impartial glance upon the several claims of these two competitors.

Worcester, deeply implicated in the intrigues of the last years of the reign of the Stuarts, was shut up in the Tower of London. One day, according to the tradition, the lid of the pot in which his dinner was preparing was suddenly elevated. In prison what can one do but think? Worcester pondered upon the strange phenomenon which he had witnessed. The idea then suggested itself, that the same force which had raised the cover, might become, under certain circumstances, a useful and convenient motive power. On recovering his liberty, he published, in the year 1663, in a work entitled The Century of Inventions, the means by which he proposed to realize his expectations. These means, in all essential particulars, so far at least as they can be comprehended, are, the bomb half filled with liquid, and the ascending vertical tube which we have just described.

" La

This bomb and this same tube are described in raison des forces mouvantes," the work of Solomon de Caus. There the idea is brought out distinctly, simply, and without any pretensions. There was nothing romantic in its origin, nor had it any connection either with the events of a civil war, or with a celebrated State-prison, or even with the sudden elevation of the pot-lid of an unfortunate prisoner; but, what is of far more importance in a question of priority, it is, according to the date of its publication, forty-eight years anterior to The Century of Inventions, and forty-one years before the imprisonment of Worcester.