Thoughts Upon Iron Plates.

Avere AA-retches chained , AVIIO howled in very agony at the Avrong Avhich men as mad as they Avere doing , but of which they Avere un ] iaj ) pi ] y the victims . " For all these , " said the smiling- official , " there is a gleam of hope ; but I will shoAv your lordship one poor wretch who has been ju'ononnced hy the whole faculty incurable . " Entering a small room , they

saAv a man rocking before a fire Avhich he Avas Stirling up Avith remarkable assiduity . His hair Avas shaggy aud dishevelled , his forehead was wrinkled , his small blue eye emitted the moisture Avhich sorrow long endured infallibly distils , his beard Avas grizzled and grimed Avitli dirt , and his Avhole form Avas enveloped in rags . This wretch had formed a notion that he could make his tin kettle run about the room by virtue of the steam wliich it threAv off , and never . surely was such a mad notion conceiA'ed . He had had a fortune left

linn , but one so demented AA'as deemed by the IUAV incapable of taking care either of himself or property . He died , and AA'as buried , and the old tin kettle which he prized as the friend of his hallucination , Avas thrown on one side , Avhere it lay long neglected , until a more practical genius took up its casemade a model of itfurnished it with Avheelslevers

, , , , A'alves , and goA'ernors , and other regulating checks , until at last he succeeded in making it travel to the neighbouring village , next from city to city , next from kingdom to kingdom , and IIOAV from continent to continent . We do not knoAv

what became of the ori ginal kettle of Salomon cle Cans—if is not preserved in the Society of Arts ancl Manufactures neither does it adorn a glass case in any national museum . Perhaps it may have fallen in with decent company . We can only give our readers the clue furnished by Mr . Babbage in his Essay on Manufactures , AA'here he says , " The worn

out saucepans and timvaro of our kitchens , Avhen beyond the reach of the tinker ' s art , are not utterly Avorthtess . We sometimes meet carts loaded Avith old tin kettles , and iron coal scuttles , traversing our streets . These have not yet completed their useful course . The less corroded parts are cut into strips , punched with small holesand varnished

, with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunkmaker , who protects the edges and angles of his boxes Avith them ; the remainder are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts of the toAvn , Avho employ them , m conjunction Avith pyroligneous acid . , in malting a black dye for the use of calico printers . "

The operations of man are , in their character at least , the counterpart of those of his Creator . They are on a smaller scale indeed , and bounded by limits Avliich do not apply to the silent course of nature , untrammelled by considerations of time or space as she is . Man works with an energy inferior in amount of force , but still with an object

intelligible , because definite , and this he pursues from failure to failure , until a ray , as it wore from an unknoAvn Avorld beams upon him , ancl that Avhich Avas wrong is made strai ght , ancl what Avas omitted is supplied . Man produces his results by what ho calls tho agency of motiVc forces . These he divides into five different kinds , namely , —the muscular of

power man , the muscular power of horses , the power or force of the Avind , the wei ght and moving force of Avatei- , the expansive force and rapid condensation of steam . To one or other of these every mechanical appliance is referable . In this country , hoivever , Ave have been accustomed to adopt horse power as the common standard of reference or as

, mechanicians call it , the dynamic unit . Our calculations are all based upon it ; and Avhefchcr AVC wish to ascertain the hydraulic force of a body of Avater , tho impetus of a machine propelled or moved by tho wind , or the velocity ancl power of the steam engine—Ave speak of all as of so many horse power . It may , thereforebe Avell to state in this lace

, p , that the medium poAver of the horse is estimated to lift about tAventy-tAvo pounds one foot hi gh in a minute . The Marquis of Worcester , whom we have mentioned , was imongst the first to dra w attention to the motive poAA'er of ,

steam . This nobleman died in 1 G 63 , nearly two centuries ago , aud the only work he left behind was entitled , " A Centurie of the Names ancl Scantlings of InA'entions . " This A'olume is exceedingly obscure ancl UOAV of little worth . There is , hoAvovor , a manuscript of his preserved in the British Museum , which Ave have been at some pains to inspect ,

and from Avhich AVC take tho following very graphic descrip tion of his first experiments with steam . "An admirable and most forcible AA'ay , " he says , " to drive up water by fire ; not by drawing or sucking it upward , for that must be as the philosophers call it , infra sphecram aclivilatis , which is but at such a distance . But this Avay hath no boundary , if

the vessels be onl y strong enough , for I have taken a piece of a Avhole cannon , whereof the end Avas burst , stopping and screAving up the broken end as also the touch-hole , and making a constant fire under it ; Avithin twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack ; so that having found a Avay to make my vessels so that they are strengthened by the force

Avithin them , and the one to fill after the other , I have seen the Avater run like a constant fountain stream forty feet high —one vessel of water , rarified by fire , driving up fort y of cold Avater . And a man that tends the work has but to turn tAvo cocks , that one vessel of water being consumed , another begins to force ancl refill with cold Avaterand so

, successively , the fire being tended and kept constant—which the self-same person may abundantly perforin in the interim betAveen the turning of the said cocks , "—Harleian MSS . No . 2428 .

Close upon this invention folloAvecl others , some of Avhich Avere presented to the French king , others to the Royal Society ; and the reader will remark that the only use of these experiments in the minds of iDhilosojdiers of that clay was to lift a body of Avater , with a vieAv to relieA'e miners from the flooding of their mines , by Avhich their work Avas

often obstructed , and IiA'es Avere occasionally lost . For nearly seventy years the use of the steam engine remained the same , the inrprovements being confined to mere matters of detail . It AA'as not until 1736—and many AA'I IO haA'ebeen accustomed to connect steamboats Avith the nineteenth century and Dr . Lardner , Avho protested against them as dangerous to life ,

and impossible as Avell as intractable agencies , will be surprised to learn that at that early period a pamphlet AA'as published by one Jonathan Hull , in Avhich he described a machine of his invention , by which '' 'Vessels or ships could be carried out of or into any harbour , port , or river against wind , or tide , or in a calm . " This extraordinary jwnphlefc has come to light in consequence of the recent discussion respecting the claimants to the modern locomotive . The claim of Hull is UOAV generally admitted , but his invention

appears to have altogether failed in his time either for want of encouragement , or inefficiency of apparatus . Perhaps the nearest to the truth is , that Hull AA'as considered mad in his day , and AA'as treated accordingly . At about this period also , the uses to Avhich the steam-engine AA'as applied had become more numerous . It Avas IIOAV employed to raise

Avater to turn corn mills ; to raise coals up a shaft ; and to drive mills , generally , in that manner ; and at a later period in making gas . But it Avas IIOAV to undergo such improvement as that the whole surface of the kingdom should be changed by it , that every inhabitant of this island should be nearly affected by it in every relationshipand

, that the future of tho Avorld should bo encompassed in itft mighty folds , creating neAV sources of Avealth , opening out neAV vistas of inquiry , ancl reducing time ancl distance to such proportions that , considering tho results of individual effort , a man of common energy may be said to effect , in the ordinary span of a lifetimeboth for his country ancl his

, family , fourfold Avhat ho could have accomplished half a century ago . At that period tho transit of goods from Manchester or Liverpool to London could not be effected in less than a Aveek , IIOAV it can be accomplished in six hours .