No. 244.] 179 



knowledge of natural phenomena attained by the ancients, was care- 

 fully hidden from the vulgar eye, and we find the traces of its exist- 

 ence only on the record of the means by which they endeavored to 

 sustain the influence of gross and debasing superstitions. 



One instance will suffice to illustrate this point. The lightning 

 which Franklin drew from the clouds, and proved to be the same agent 

 which we can now call into action in many simple ways, as an agent 

 which we have recently learned to employ as a messenger, more swift 

 than was fabled of the rainbow clad errand bearer of thundering Jove, 

 was habitually employed by the Etrurian augurs in the early ages of 

 Roman history, to create and sustain the popular delusion to which 

 they owed their influence. 



Rejecting then all notice of the various deceptions recorded to have 

 been practiced by pagan priests, in which we cannot fail to recognize 

 the action of steam ; rejecting also the reputed magic of the middle 

 ages, and a few abortive attempts to apply steam to useful purposes 

 in more modern times, we come to the era of the two men who have 

 been respectively claimed by the two great civilized nations, France 

 and England, as the inventors of the engine, Papin and the Marquis 

 of Worcester. Even of these our limits will permit only a casual 

 notice. Both employed, and at dates sufficiently near to each other 

 to allow of a reasonable doubt as to their respective priority, the 

 direct pressure of high steam. The English nobleman's discoveries 

 in steam, were indeed made public, but in a manner purposely mys- 

 terious. The work in which they are recorded is from the number 

 of the plans it comprises, called " The Century of Inventions," and 

 such is the guarded manner in which the notices are drawn up, that 

 they have in no case furnished any aid to those who have attempted 

 to follow the same course, and yet so completely are they identified 

 that no sooner has some inventor succeeded by direct means in obtain- 

 ing the same result, than it becomes possible to deprive him of the 

 merit of priority, by citing the words of the Marquis of Worcester. Of 

 his hundred inventions, one was at once found to correspond with a 

 part of the action of the first steam engine that was brought into 

 open use. Two other of these enigmas have since been solved, and 

 they embrace the steamboat and the locomotive. 



We might at this day have been in doubt whether the whole of the 

 series were not the mere dreams of an enthusiast, were it not that 



