nil. PREFACE; 



No greater misfortune can befall a man than to be much in advance' 

 of his day and generation. How many hundreds are there probably 

 of such men alive at the present time, who, for want of encourage- 

 ment, are vainly striving against poverty and misery ? While willing 

 enough to raise statues and monuments to them fifty years after they 

 *re dead, the world, foolish still and foolish ever, almost invariably 

 refuses to know them while living. When we say, among other 

 things, that MAGNETISM will, long before the present century closes, 

 entirely replace steam as a motive power for the latter, at the best 

 is only a clumsy, uncertain and dangerous agent to work with then 

 the tenets which we have advanced are perhaps (without drawing 

 censure on us for egotism) sufficiently ahead of the world's know- 

 ledge to wound the vanity of some dozens of professors ; to touch 

 the pockets of some thousands whose prosperity would be affected by 

 them; and to render valueless the "loads of learned lumber" in the 

 heads of some millions of bookworms. There is thus sufficient in- 

 fluence does any one doubt it ? in this interested army to allay the 

 curiosity of the world, and to soothe it back to the even tenor of its 

 way. But, fortunately for us our daily bread does not depend on the- 

 acceptance of our theories, and as we watch and wait, and see a few 

 more thousands killed by boiler explosions; a few more thousands 

 drowned by the variation of ships' compasses ; a few more millions- 

 poisoned by improper medical treatment ; a few more fields of coal 

 exhausted, and all our interested professors- dead ~ r then perhaps a 

 more intelligent generation will be content tc- accept the dictation 

 and lessons of Nature. 



In the meantime we retain those pleasurable emotions which 

 cannot be taken away from us, the gratification which every writer 



