538 Reviews. ^July, 



the eyes of the Marquis, he saw the last impotent efforts of his 

 Church to curb the free workings of the human mind ; he witnessed 

 the birth of the new philosophy, the publication of the ' De Aug- 

 mentis,' and later, that of the work which in all after ages was to 

 direct the philosophic mind, — the ' Novum Organum.' But we 

 question if he ever read this latter work : he certainly did not act 

 up to its precepts ; the ' Century ' is not the/work of a Baconian philo- 

 sopher. We regret, moreover, that Bacon is scarcely mentioned in 

 the book before us, for we conceive that no work which treats of the 

 science of the first half of the 17th century can be at all complete 

 without much mention of him ; but we do not think that Mr. Dircks is 

 imbued with the spirit of the Baconian method : — " All invention," 

 he writes, " is progressive — first, laws of Nature are discovered ; then, 

 applications are invented ; and last, follow divisions, and subdivisions 

 of endless great, small, and minute improvements." We submit that 

 the views inculcated in this sentence, are entirely opposed to the true 

 spirit of inductive philosophy, as well as to the experience gained 

 from past ages ; throughout the history of science we find that laws 

 of nature have been deduced from applications "of them, not the 

 reverse. The pump was invented ages before anything was known 

 of the pressure of the air; the steam-engine long before the pro- 

 perties of condensable vapours had been studied. 



Edward, second Marquis of Worcester, was born in 1601 ; he was 

 the son of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert, who was created Marquis 

 of Worcester by Charles I., in 1642. We hear but little of the 

 second Marquis till the breaking out of the civil war in 1640. As a 

 young man he had a taste for mathematical and mechanical studies, 

 and undoubtedly spent much time in putting in practice various 

 schemes, and in making models of different mechanical devices. 

 Shortly after his marriage in 1628, he engaged the services of a 

 foreign engineer, named Caspar Kaltoff, whom he appears to have 

 retained permanently in his employ ; in the dedication to the 

 ' Century ' (published in 1663) he speaks of him as having " been 

 these five-and-thirty years, as in a school under me employed." The 

 Marquis and his father were most devoted to Charles I., and on the 

 commencement of the civil war they warmly joined his cause. 

 In 1640 a commission was granted to the Marquis empowering 

 him to levy forces in several counties in England and Wales, and in 

 1642 he was appointed general of South Wales, a number of troops 

 raised by his father being placed under his command. Nor did the 

 Marquis assist the cause of the King by services alone, he advanced 

 large sums of money, and repeatedly levied forces at his own expense. 

 At a later date, in a petition presented to Charles II., he estimates the 

 money " that I have spent, lent (and lost ?) for my King and country," 

 at 918,000Z. In 1645 he was sent to Ireland by Charles I., with 

 orders to conclude a peace with the disaffected party by granting some 

 important concessions to the Roman Catholics, on the condition that 

 they should send 10,000 troops to England for the King's service ; but 

 the object of his visit was discovered, and in 1646 he underwent an ex- 

 amination before the Lord Lieutenant and the Council of Ireland, which 



