OF THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER. 339 



&quot; Mathematical Magic&quot; ; the Honourable Eobert Boyle, 

 Sir William Petty, Lord Viscount Brouncker, and other 

 distinguished personages. 



Without positive facts to guide us we are ever 

 in danger of misjudging a bygone age, and in the 

 present instance it would be imprudent to hazard an 

 opinion on what is no less true than strange, that the 

 Marquis of Worcester entirely failed to arouse public 

 inquiry into the merits of his invention : being treated 

 throughout with an indifference, which, to modern 

 apprehension, appears wholly inexplicable. Yet, so 

 inconsistent is human nature, that the same age which 

 burned and drowned so-called witches, which believed 

 in the transmutation of base metals into gold, put faith 

 in the curative effect of sympathetic powders, and the 

 King s touch for bodily distempers, saw portents in 

 meteoric phenomena, and considered astrology a sound 

 science, could yet look with stolid indifference on this 

 germ of the steam-engine, unimpressed by what was 

 publicly exhibited, written, printed, and for at least 

 four years made the subject of its inventor s daily 

 conversation. Books and pamphlets were constantly 

 being published, filled with mysticism, gravely re 

 cording the day-dreams of fanatics and impostors, and 

 letters lent their aid to promulgate such fables ; yet here 

 was a new agent at work, of such potent power that its 

 like had never been seen, which nevertheless men saw, 

 heard, and listened to in dumb astonishment, with the 

 infantile simplicity of the poor Indian, ignorant of the 

 value of the gold or diamonds strewn in his path. 



The early associated scientific men may have been 

 perplexed on finding an individual coming forth, in the 

 sixty-second year of his age, to propound a new doc 

 trine. The suspicion was natural ; the cause appeared 

 evident ; his project might be a chimera, or an absolute 

 delusion. No one ever so remotely suspected his 



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