harmless, between two lovers, prohibited or prevented from any better epistolary intercourse.

A second edition of Mr. Young's Tour was published in quarto in 1794, and the above extract may be found on page 79, volume i.

THE FIRST DISCOVERIES OF STEAM-POWER.

The following extracts from an address by Edward Everett, at an agricultural fair, embody facts the more interesting from their limited notoriety :

I never contemplate the history of navigation of the ocean by steam, but it seems to illustrate to me in the most striking manner the slow steps by which a great movement advances for generations, for ages, from the first germ, then, when the hour is come, the rapidity with which it rushes to a final consummation. Providence offered this great problem of navigating the ocean by steam to every civilized nation almost on the globe. As long ago as the year 1543, there was a captain in Spain, who constructed a vessel of two hundred tons, and propelled it, at Barcelona, in the presence of the Emperor Charles V. and his court, by an engine, the construction of which he kept a secret. But old documents tell us it was a monster caldron boiler of water, and that there were two movable wheels on the outside of the vessel. The Emperor was satisfied with its operation, but the treasurer of the kingdom interposed objections to its introduction. The engine itself seems to have sprung to a point of perfection hardly surpassed at the present day, but no encouragement was given to the enterprise. Spain was not ripe for it; the age was not ripe for it; and the poor inventor, whose name was Blasco de Guerere, wearied and disgusted at the want of patronage, took the engine out of the vessel and allowed the ship to rot in the arsenal, and the secret of his machine was buried in his grave.

This was in 1543. A century passed away, and Providence offered the same problem to be solved by France. In reference to this, we have an extraordinary account, and from a source

equally extraordinary,-from the writings of a celebrated female, in the middle of that century, equally renowned for her beauty, for her immoralities, and for her longevity, for she lived to be one hundred and thirty-four years of age,-the famous Marian de l'Orme. There is a letter from this lady, written to one of her admirers in 1641, containing an account of a visit she made to a mad-house in Paris in company with the Marquis of Worcester. She goes on to relate, that in company with the marquis, while crossing the courtyard of that dismal establishment, almost petrified with terror, and clinging to her companion, she saw a frightful face through the bars of the building, and heard this voice:-"I am not mad-I am not mad: I have made a discovery which will enrich the kingdom that shall adopt it." She asked the guide what it meant: he shrugged his shoulders and said, laughingly, "Not much; something about the powers of steam." Upon this, the lady laughed also, to think that a man should go mad on such a frivolous subject. The guide went on to say that the man's name was Solomon de Coste; that he came from Normandy four years before, and exhibited to the king an invention by which, by the power of steam, you could move a carriage, navigate the ocean: "in short, if you believed him," said the guide, "there was nothing you could not do by the power of steam." Cardinal Richelieu, who at that time was France itself, and who wielded the whole power of government, and, in truth, an enlightened man, as worldly wisdom goes, was appealed to by Solomon de Coste. De Coste was a persevering man, and he followed Cardinal Richelieu from place to place, exhibiting his invention, until the cardinal, getting tired of his importunities, sent him to the mad-house. The guide stated further that he had written a book entitled Motive Power, and handed the visitors a copy of it. The Marquis of Worcester, who was an inventor, was much interested in the book, and incorporated a considerable portion of it in his well-known work called The Century of Invention.

It will be seen from this anecdote how France proved in 1641, as Spain had proved in 1543, that she was unable to take

race.

up and wield this mortal thunderbolt. And so the problem of navigating the ocean by steam was reserved for the Anglo-Saxon Soon after this period, the best mechanical skill of England was directed towards this invention. Experiments were often made, with no success, and sometimes with only partial success, until the middle of the last century, when the seeds implanted in the minds of ingenious men for two hundred years germinated, and the steam-engine-that scarcely inanimate Titan, that living, burning mechanism-was brought nearly to a state of perfection by James Watt, who took out a patent in 1769,-the great year in which Wellington and Napoleon were born; and ages after the names of Austerlitz and Waterloo shall perish from the memory of man, the myriad hosts of intelligent labor, marshalled by the fiery champions that James Watt has placed in the field, shall gain their bloodless triumph, not for the destruction but for the service of mankind. All hail, then, to the mute, indefatigable giant, in the depths of the darksome mines, along the pathway of travel and trade, and on the mountain wave, that is destined to drag, urge, heave, haul, for the service of man! No fatigue shall palsy its herculean arm, no trampled hosts shall writhe beneath its iron feet, no widow's heart shall bleed at its beneficent victories. England invented the steam-engine; but it seems as if by the will of Providence she could not go farther. Queen of the seas, as she deemed herself, she could not apply the invention she had brought almost to perfection, and that part of the great problem, the navigation of the ocean by steam, was reserved for the other branch of the Anglo-Saxon race,-the branch situated in a region in this Western hemisphere whose territory is traversed by some of the noblest rivers that belt the surface of the globe, and separated by the world-wide ocean from the Eastern hemisphere. It is amazing to consider how, with the dawn of the Revolution, the thoughts of men turned to the application. of steam-navigation. Rumsey, Fitch, and Evans made experimeuts, and those experiments attracted the notice of one whom nothing escaped pertaining to the welfare of his country: I

mean Washington. And we have a certificate from him, expressing the satisfaction with which he had witnessed the experiment of Rumsey. The attempt proved rather unsuccessful. I think it a providential appointment that the ocean was not navigated by steam in the Revolutionary age. The enormous preponderance of British capital and skill, if the ocean had been navigated by steam, would have put in her possession facilities for blockading our ports and transporting armies to our coasts, which might have had a disastrous effect on the result of the whole contest. But the Revolution passed and independence was established: the hour had come, and the man was there.

In the year 1799 this system of steam-navigation became matured in the mind of Fulton, who found a liberal and active coadjutor in Chancellor Livingston, who, in the same year, applied to the Legislature of New York for an act of incorporation. I am sorry to say that America at that moment could not boast of much keener perception of the nature of this discovery than France or Spain had done before. Chancellor Livingston at last had a petition drawn up of the act he desired passed. It was drafted by the young men of the Legislature, who, when tired of the graver matters of law, used to call up the "steam bill" that they might have a little fun. Young America, on that occasion, did not show himself much wiser than his senior. Nothing daunted at the coldness he received, nothing discouraged by the partial success of the first experiment, Chancellor Livingston persevered. Twenty years elapsed before steamers were found upon our lakes and rivers, and at that time such a system of steam-navigation was wholly unknown, except by hearsay, in Europe. This application of steam soon became a pressing necessity in this country, but twenty years more passed away before it was adopted in England. I could not but think, when the news of the Atlantic Telegraph came, what must have been the emotions of Fulton and Franklin could they have stood upon the quarter-deck of the Niagara and witnessed the successful termination of that electric communication which is the result of their united discoveries!

ERIAL NAVIGATION.

When air-balloons were first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The philosopher answered the question by asking another:-"What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man."

The first balloon-ascension was made by Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, November 21, 1783, in a montgolfière.

A century and a half before this, John Gregorie wrote, "The air itself is not so unlike to water, but that it may be demonstrated to be navigable, and that a ship may sail upon the convexity thereof by the same reasons that it is carried upon the ocean."

In the first number of the Philosophical Collections, 1679, is "a demonstration how it is practically possible to make a ship, which shall be sustained by the air, and may be moved either by sails or oars," from a work entitled Prodroma, published in Italian by P. Francesco Lana. The scheme was that of making a brazen vessel which should weigh less than the air it contained, and consequently float in the air when that which was within it was pumped out. He calculated every thing-except the pressure of the atmosphere, in consequence of which slight oversight he realized no practical result.

THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in 1619; but we learn from a passage in Longinus (ch. xxii.) that the fact was known two thousand years before. The father of critics, to exemplify and illustrate the use and value of trope in writing, has garbled from the Timæus of Plato a number of sentences descriptive of the anatomy of the human body, where the circulation of the blood is pointed at in terms singularly graphic. The exact extent of professional knowledge attained in the time of the great philosopher is by no means clearly defined. He speaks of the fact, however, not with a view to prove what was contested or chimerical, but avails himself of it to figure