Chapter I: Part 1

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

NO. 749. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1878. PRICE 1½_d._]

THE POWER OF DRAW.

We have on several occasions called attention to the Power of Draw. It is a force which for good as well as for evil pervades the whole social system. Every centre of industry exerts this attractive force by drawing to it large numbers of persons for the sake of employment, and so far the Draw acts beneficially. All our large towns are in no small degree made up of individuals who have drifted thither in the hope of exercising their abilities for their own and the public advantage. This is exactly as it should be. The world is open to everybody. It is only a truism to say that by the Power of Draw the uttermost ends of the earth are peopled.

Unfortunately, this subtle power in its pervading energy is not limited to the industrious and well-disposed. It is acutely demonstrated by all who are looking about for the means of indulging in a life of idleness at the cost of others. The disposition to abstain from useful labour and to depend less or more on gratuitous benefactions, has been largely encouraged by mistaken views of what is ordinarily called charity. The poor—no matter how they happen to be poor—have been extolled as if they were superior beings, to whom all must contribute as one of the noblest of virtues. With perverted notions of this kind, society has for ages done everything in its power to consecrate and encourage poverty, and no wonder it has attained to stupendous dimensions. Early injunctions to give all to the poor were followed by the piously inconsiderate and wide-sweeping benefactions of the monasteries. These in their turn were followed by the statutory obligations of the poor-laws. And now there is superadded a system of voluntary contribution so extensive and varied as to dominate the soundest principles of political economy, and which in its general working amounts to a kind of communism. By every large city, arrangements are organised to succour every human need and infirmity. Those who do not find it agreeable to work will be fed—the feeding, perhaps, not being what all would like, but pretty well as a make-shift. For every species of ailment, from a broken leg to diseased lungs, there is adequate provision. The cultivation of thrift and self-respect not to be thought of. Bad as things seem to have been in the palmy days of the monasteries, they are now in some quarters ten times worse. While one set of people are slaving between death and life, another set, determined to take their ease, keep hovering on the verge of that agreeable category the poor, and so contrive to lead a jolly sort of existence.

Not that the so-called poor profess to be pure idlers. For decency’s sake, they occasionally work a little, and enjoy the commiseration of suffering from the severity of winter, or from the commercial depression arising from ‘bad times.’ On such occasions the Power of Draw increases in intensity; and now are offered favourable opportunities for tender-hearted individuals to take a lead in establishing soup-kitchens, or benefactions thought to be equally creditable. It is melancholy to consider how at times like these, so little real good is done in comparison with the amount of harm. We see, more particularly as regards the young, the degree of suffering that is presently assuaged, but take no account of the mischief incurred by adding to the general demoralisation. While philanthropists are fondly imagining that they are doing much good, they are very probably adding fresh accumulations to the already overgrown mass of misery and crime. Not more surely do hens run to the heap, than do the thriftless and semi-pauperised instinctively flock towards places where there is an inconsiderately lavish distribution of charity. We never hear of a soup-kitchen being set up, under however careful an administration, without saying: ‘There goes a distinct increase to the Power of Draw.’

The injury done by systems of profuse charity has been frequently pointed out, but we have seen nothing so effective and convincing on the subject as a paper read by Mr Brace at the American Social Science Congress of May 1874, of which a copious abstract is given by a correspondent in _The Times_, of January 24, in the present year. We think it may serve a good purpose to present our readers with a few facts from this interesting paper.

Referring to a serious depression in trade which threw large numbers of persons out of work in New York, plans were devised for giving temporary support to the necessitous; the result being that an encouragement was held out to idleness and improvidence. ‘The experience of New York in 1857’ (says Mr Brace), ‘and of Boston and other cities since that date, proves that the soup-kitchen charity only creates pauperism. Despite the warning of the experienced, soup-kitchens and free lodgings were opened by public and private means, with the utmost liberality, in various portions of New York last winter, and enormous sums were contributed by private citizens for these popular benefactions. Before the winter was over, however, most of those engaged in them regretted, without doubt, that they had ever taken part in these kindly but mistaken charities. The reports of competent observers shew what were their effects. The announcement of the intended opening of these and kindred charities immediately called into the city the floating vagrants, beggars, and paupers who wander from village to village throughout the state. The streets of New York became thronged with this ragged, needy crowd; they filled all the station-houses and lodging-places provided by private charity, and overflowed into the island almshouses. Street-begging to the point of importunity became a custom. Ladies were robbed even on their own door-steps by these mendicants. Petty offences such as thieving and drunkenness increased. One of the free lodgings in the upper part of the city established by the Commissioners of Charities became a public nuisance from its rowdyism and criminality.

Nor would these paupers work. On one occasion, the almshouse authorities were discharging a band of able-bodied paupers, and having need of some light outdoor labour on the island, they offered these men what is thought good country wages—that is, fifteen dollars a month and board. They unanimously refused, preferring the free lodgings and free lunches of the city.’ Then, he adds, came the attractive power—the Power of Draw. ‘Tramps came hurrying to the feast of charity, honest and hard-working labouring men from every part of the neighbouring country. Farms in the state of New York were left stripped of labourers, though the farmers offered good wages. Working-men came from as far away as Pittsburg and Boston, partly, no doubt, to see the sights of New York, but hoping also for aid from public and private charities. In some cases, young men were arrested in criminal houses, who made their headquarters in these soup-kitchens or relief-houses, and then sallied out to enjoy the criminal indulgences of the city.

The pauperising influences, however, of this indiscriminate charity reached beyond these classes. Poor families abandoned steady industry, got their meals at the soup-kitchens, and spent the day in going from one charitable organisation to another. Those experienced with this class report that such people acquire a “Micawber” habit of depending on chances, and seldom return to constant work again. Instances were known of families taking their meals from the Relief Association and spending the money set aside for this daily in liquor, so that, in the poorest quarters the liquor-trade was never so prosperous. A singular effect was also produced on the class of homeless girls. Many avoided the houses where charity was connected with work, and obtained their meals at the free-lunch places, and then lodged in the low cheap lodging-houses, where their habits were uncontrolled and they could wander the streets at night. Many were thus enticed into ruin.

But another class now felt the pauperising influence of this charity, one which had never stooped to public alms before, the mechanics and artisans. These were not driven by the severest poverty. They had been in receipt of good wages, and had much money laid up in the savings-banks. They contributed through the winter large sums to various strikes and labour unions. The best proof that they were not pressed by poverty is that never once did they lower their demand for wages in any branch of industry. The most ignorant job-work, as for instance a man’s labour in moving, was fifty cents an hour. Few would even clean snow from a side-walk or cut or saw wood or carry burdens for less than at the rate of two to two and a half dollars per diem. Mechanics still demanded from three to five dollars per diem. It was notorious that important trades, such as the building-trade, were at a standstill on account of high wages, and that the employing class could not afford to pay such high rates. Yet no wages came down. Labour was in struggle with capital against a lowering of prices. Charity assisted labour in the combat. The soup-kitchens and relief associations of various names became thronged with mechanics. Some of the best working-men in the city ate and lodged at the public expense. Thousands of able-bodied artisans, young and skilful, were fed by alms. The idleness and dependence injured many among them irretrievably. The whole settlement of the labour question was postponed by the over-generous charity of the city, and spring came upon the mechanical class without a revival of trade, which might have come if misguided kindness had not supported them in this struggle.

These benevolent institutions also interfered with many kinds of legitimate business. Thus in one ward, the eleventh, a number of small eating-house keepers, who had made an honest living by their occupation, were almost thrown into bankruptcy by the competition of certain soup-kitchens established by religious associations. A similar thing occurred in other wards. In one district also, a keeper of a laundry who had ten or twelve girls in his employment at good wages, found himself stripped of his help in the midst of the winter, these women preferring to live for nothing in the free lodgings. He accordingly was compelled to advertise for help, but without success, and was ultimately obliged to close his laundry.

It had been expected that this industrial crisis would bring down the wages of female servants, since these had remained at a high rate, though all other prices had fallen. The superintendent of the Free Labour Bureau, however, stated that during all this distress, the poor girls who came to his office could not be induced to take situations for less than from fourteen to twenty dollars per month, and said that they preferred to live at the charitable institutions until they could get such wages as they chose. It is well known that the wages of female labour have been as high this winter as at any time since the war. One of the free dormitories for women was, in fact, broken up by its coming to the knowledge of the directresses that a lady on one occasion offered each lodger a situation in a good family at ten dollars per month, and not one of these “victims of poverty” could be found who would accept the place on the terms.’

One way and another an injury was done through these pauperising influences which is even now scarcely remedied. The drawing of large numbers into the vortex of charity was in all respects inexcusable; for if the heedlessly benevolent had let matters alone, the more necessitous would have found remunerative work in quarters where labour was specially in demand. It should never be forgotten that there is a principle of readjustment in labour which tends to cure local disorganisations. What philanthropists have to do on pressing occasions like those mentioned is to interpose no distracting element, such as the temptation of free soup-kitchens, and to facilitate removal to spots where industry can be advantageously exercised.

In all the large cities in Great Britain we are acquainted with, there are antiquated semi-ruinous buildings in the alleys behind the main thoroughfares, which were at one time occupied by the affluent classes, but are now sunk to the condition of resorts for the idle, the drunken, and the dissolute, who habitually prey on society, and are a torment to the public authorities. Attempts to root out these dens of infamy and disease encounter a resolute opposition from those who from usurious motives have become the proprietors of such places, and more especially does opposition come from ratepayers who are shocked at the prospect of paying some trifle annually in the shape of an improvement tax. Antiquaries who have a morbid fancy for old houses which will scarcely hold together, and are as dark and unwholesome as dungeons, also have their howl. So that it is usually no easy matter to procure legislative authority to put our towns generally on a decent footing.

Let it be specially noted that narrow dingy lanes are the centres of nearly all that is degrading in towns whether large or small. The idle and dissolute do not approve of living in the face of day. They prefer to nestle in groups behind-backs, as being there less likely to incur observation. It is consistent with all experience that just as a town abounds in narrow lanes, it abounds in pauperism and every species of iniquity. Clear away your lanes, and you correspondingly lessen the number of the dangerous classes. Every town, of course, must have dwellings suitable for the less affluent in the community, but in some way or other let all come to the front. In England, the behind-backs ‘slums’ we speak of are known as courts, in Scotland they are called closes; but whatever be their generic designation, they are a nuisance and a scandal, for they draw towards them, by under-currents of intelligence, the dregs of the population from all parts of the United Kingdom. Obviously, the attraction is intensified by the succours of one sort or other offered by public charities. What with holes and corners to creep into out of sight, and with the chance of coming in for a share of profuse benevolences, the Draw is complete.

A number of years ago, when at the head of a city municipality, we made a fair attempt, by legislative measures, to sweep away the worst class of closes, substituting for them open thoroughfares, and likewise endeavoured to put the public charities on a reasonably comprehensive footing. The degree of success was moderate. From the prevalence of narrow views, the ‘Improvement Act’ was so materially restricted as to convey the impression that, by ordinary forms of procedure, in which loquacious and popularity hunting agitators have their say, the improvement of towns on a scale consistent with enlarged principles of sanitary and social economy is barely practicable. In vain you say of any special improvement that it would clear away the haunts of the disreputable, and at the same time lower the mortality to the extent of eight or ten per thousand annually. What is a lowering of the death-rate in comparison with the obligation to pay an additional rate of a penny per pound? Let things alone. The inertia of systematic obstruction accordingly prevails.

Curiously enough, as we speedily discovered, there are vested interests in charities. Each species of benevolence possesses an administrative organisation of chairmen, secretaries, collectors, and so forth, who with an affection for use and wont, do not readily perceive how there can be any advantage in a combination of distributive bodies. If you throw twelve separate charities into one, the officials connected with the eleven that are set aside will necessarily suffer extinction. There is a more cogent argument. Twelve collectors, each with his separate book, have a better chance of screwing money from householders than one solitary collector. Besides, there are peculiar fancies to be operated on. Some will contribute to Dispensaries, who could not be wheedled into subscribing for the support of a Soup-kitchen or the distribution of coals. Collectors, like sportsmen, know the bird they can bring down. In these circumstances, all that came out of our poor effort at combining charities was the establishment of another administrative body with the function of being a check on all descriptions of applicants. That this ‘Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor,’ has done some good by arresting promiscuous charity, is we believe generally allowed. On a similar plan there has been established in the metropolis, a ‘Society for organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity,’ which we understand is working advantageously. It is indeed chiefly by the rigid scrutiny which is so organised, that the deserving poor can be properly aided and the worthless repressed. On the public at large, however, rests the responsibility of ridding towns of their hosts of roughs and on-hangers; for so long as mean haunts in obscure courts and closes are suffered to exist, and while people indiscriminately yield to importunities, so long will be freely exercised the Power of Draw.

W. C.

HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.

CHAPTER XXIV.—A NEIGHBOURLY VISIT.

Jasper, as he walked with dawdling gait back to the morning-room—the ex-cavalry officer always did dawdle, except in the hunting-field or when race-horses were thundering past the judge’s chair—felt what in his case did duty for brains to be in a dizzy whirl. He could not grapple with the mystery which seemed to have chosen Carbery Chase for its headquarters. The captain was by no means, as has been said, one of those guileless youths, if such there be, who are slow to think evil. Shew him a plain, intelligible, sordid motive, and no one could be quicker in descrying it, no matter how fair a pretence of decorous honour might be kept up. But this was beyond him. ‘No kith or kin of mine after all!’ he muttered as he made his way along the thickly carpeted corridor. ‘I must have been wrong, absurdly wrong all the time. But why my father should press me so hard on this subject no fellow could understand. He’s in earnest though, about desiring the match.’

As he spoke he laid his grasp on the handle of the door of the morning-room, turned it, and entering, found with a complacent smile, that Ruth Willis was alone. Captain Denzil was on sufficiently good terms with himself, but even coxcombs are glad of the confirmatory suffrages of others; and Jasper felt as though he were under a sort of obligation to the baronet’s ward for having paid him the compliment of falling in love with him.

‘I thought,’ said Jasper, as if to apologise for his presence in that pretty room, where a man seemed incongruous with the surroundings, ‘that my sisters were here.’

‘Shall I call them?’ asked Ruth, with that sweet hypocrisy which girls only can exhibit, and half-rising from the tiny work-table as she spoke.

‘Pray don’t. _I_ have nothing on earth to say to them, or indeed to anybody,’ said Jasper. ‘Life drags at Carbery like wheels on a mud-plastered road. Don’t you find it so too, Miss Willis?’

‘Indeed I do not,’ answered the Indian orphan, taking up the cudgels gracefully in defence of her guardian’s home. ‘I should be very ungrateful if I did. It is not every day that a lonely little thing like myself is taken into the house of a kind dear family of new-old friends, who cherish and protect, and pet and spoil her, as your good father and sisters have done, Captain Denzil, to poor little Ruth Willis.’

She said this so well, did Ruth, in a voice that was slightly tremulous and with eyes that swam in tears, that Jasper was for the moment fairly taken in. There was uncommonly little sentiment in his own composition, but such men as he was, still like women to be softer-hearted than themselves, and then Miss Willis looked very pretty and delicate and helpless as she glanced up at him from under the screen of her dark eyelashes.

‘I can’t stand it, indeed I can’t, if you cry, Miss Willis!’ he said, drawing a chair up to the tiny work-table. ‘You have found me a sad bore and a sad plague, I am afraid, since I was stupid enough to do this at Pebworth races.’

As he spoke he looked down at his arm, which still reposed in its silken sling, and assumed a melancholy air, although in truth he felt all but well again. Ruth, from beneath her eyelashes, scanned him more narrowly than he was aware of.

‘Is he amusing himself at my expense?’ thus ran her quick thoughts. ‘Or has he been applying thus early in the day to the cherry-brandy in his hunting-flask, or the contents of the decanters? No; he seems sober, and civil too. This is a puzzle.’

Miss Willis was justified in her perplexity, for this attention on Jasper’s part was something new. The captain was not one of those men, of whom there are no lack, who in a country-house flirt to pass the time away, as naturally and with as little ulterior design as they smoke a cigar during their early stroll about the stables or the Home Farm. He had accepted, as an Eastern despot accepts the homage of his courtiers, fifty petty kindnesses at Ruth’s hands during his illness, and had preferred her company to that of Lucy and Blanche simply because she was cleverer than they, and had the tact not to weary him.

‘I was sorry to see you so much in pain, Captain Denzil, and glad when I could be of any use,’ answered Ruth, plying her needle with that demure industry which can be intermitted or resumed with such skilful effect in the course of a conversation.

‘Yes; and I was bear enough never to thank you, Miss Ruth. May I call you Ruth?’ said Jasper, as he bent forward and took the girl’s slender little hand in his. It was the first time that he had ever touched the hand of Miss Willis, save in the ceremonial salute with which members of a household meet for the day or part for the night.

‘I like to be called Ruth by my friends,’ returned the baronet’s ward. ‘Dear Blanche and Lucy always call me by my Christian name, and that pleases me, for I think it proves that they do not any longer regard me as a stranger. And that is much to me.’

There was a sweet simplicity, a touching pathos in Ruth’s tone not wholly thrown away on Jasper. He could not quite distinguish whether or not she were playing a part; but if this were acting, he owned that it was, of its kind, excellent.

‘I hope you count me among your friends?’ he said, still keeping captive the little hand that he held.

‘I shall be very pleased to do so,’ returned Ruth, with a downward droop of her silken eyelashes.

‘I wish I did know how to please you. It’s a lesson I should like to learn,’ said the captain, with a warmth that surprised himself; but before Miss Willis could return an appropriate answer, the door opened so quickly that she had barely time to snatch away her hand from Jasper’s grasp before his two sisters were in the room. Blanche Denzil had an open note in her hand, and both girls wore an expression more animated than usual. Lucy was the first to speak.

‘We want you, Jasper, to drive up with us to High Tor, if you feel strong enough this morning. Maud has written to Blanche, as she promised, you know, to let us know when her silver pheasants arrived from the dealer’s in London; and this note’—and Lucy indicated the letter in her sister’s hand—‘has just come, begging us to go round and see the birds made comfortable in their new abode. The day is charming. You must come with us, indeed.’

‘Pheasants before the First of October gives one leave to shoot them, are not much in my line,’ said Jasper carelessly. ‘What are _your_ plans for this morning, Miss Willis?’

Ruth with becoming modesty replied that Captain Denzil was only too good to inquire as to the proceedings of so insignificant a person as she was. ‘I try to be useful,’ she said. ‘Sometimes Sir Sykes allows me to read aloud to him the newspapers or a book. If nobody wants me, I think I shall stroll down to the quiet cool path in the woods beside the river. It is a favourite haunt of mine.’

‘Well, I’ll walk down there with you, if you don’t mind my cigar, Miss Willis,’ replied the captain languidly. ‘I don’t want particularly to go to High Tor, or to go into ecstasies over the fine feathers of a lot of fancy poultry cooped in a pen and called pheasants.’

‘No, no,’ said Blanche and Lucy with one accord; ‘we are not going to allow you to play truant to-day. You must come, and so must Ruth. We never thought of leaving her behind’ (this by-the-bye was the whitest of white fibs, for up to that moment Ruth’s companionship on the projected expedition had never once crossed the mind of either of the sisters); ‘and there is plenty of room for all in the double basket-carriage.’

‘I shall be bored, and shew it. The De Veres are not a bit in my line. Harrogate, for instance, I can’t get on with for five minutes—my fault, I daresay. But he knows nothing and cares nothing about the things that interest me; and I trouble my head just as little about his model cottages and reclamation of waste lands and militia drill. The one subject we have in common is fox-hunting, and even on that we take somewhat different views.’ This was a long speech for Jasper; but the concession which it somewhat ungraciously implied was readily accepted by his jubilant sisters.

‘You forget Lady Gladys,’ said Blanche archly; ‘she would never forgive us if we appeared without you.’

The double basket-carriage, one of those convenient, roomy, and perhaps to male eyes ugly vehicles, that do so much good service in country places, came round in due course, drawn by its pair of strong and spirited Exmoor ponies, coblike, sturdy little animals, well fitted to make light of the steep Devonshire roads, yet shewing some of the fire and fleetness due to their dash of Arab blood. The ‘clothes-basket on wheels,’ as Jasper irreverently styled it, received its human freight; Miss Willis, in spite of Blanche’s instances, seating herself meekly with her back to the horses, and the captain of course beside her. Lucy took the reins; the smart boy in livery who had been standing at the ponies’ heads, let go the bridles and sprang deftly to his perch behind as the light carriage bowled merrily away along the smooth park road.

Never yet, since first she made her appearance at Carbery Chase, had Ruth looked one half so attractive, in her quaint elfish way, as she did then, as flashing and animated, her dark eyes saying far more than did her lips, she conversed with Jasper on the outward drive.

‘I declare,’ thought the captain to himself, ‘if the governor had been a little more explicit, I wouldn’t mind speaking out. With three thousand a year, or four—ay, it would require to be four—the thing might be managed.’

NOTHING NEW.

‘There is no new thing under the sun,’ says a proverb which is itself perhaps only the rehabilitation of some antediluvian precept to the same effect; and nothing so powerfully argues in favour of the truth of the statement as a little pamphlet written by the eccentric though clever Marquis of Worcester, and printed in London by J. Grismond in 1663. It is entitled, ‘A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected, which, my former Notes being lost, I have, at the instance of a powerful friend, endeavoured now, in the year 1655, to set these down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in Practice.’ Who the ‘powerful friend’ may have been it is impossible to say. The published catalogue was, however, dedicated to Charles II. by His Majesty’s ‘passionately devoted, or otherwise disinterested, subject and servant,’ the Marquis.

This dedication is followed by a quaintly worded address to the two Houses of Parliament, craving patronage for the author’s investigations, thanking the Lords and Commons for past favours, ruefully stating that the inventor had already spent ten thousand pounds on his experiments, and promising to prosecute his researches by the aid of one Casper Kaltoff, who for five-and-thirty years had been employed under him. The Marquis, in stating his merits, is not too modest, for he belauds his inventions and his disinterestedness to the skies, and in well-chosen words suggests that if the government refuse him its patronage, the government, and not he, will suffer. Then, after the custom of the age, he subscribes himself, ‘Your most passionately bent fellow-subject in His Majesty’s service, compatriot for the publick good and advantage, and a most humble servant to all and every of you,

WORCESTER.’

So far the Marquis is, comparatively speaking, plain-spoken and straightforward; but when he begins to catalogue his discoveries, the reader feels bound to confess that though the noble peer may have set down his notes in such a way as might sufficiently instruct him to put any of them in practice, he scarcely amplified them sufficiently to instruct other people. Doubtless he was intentionally vague in the specifications or explanations of his inventions; for when he wrote, he still cherished a hope that he would reap some substantial fruits from his ingenuity; but in spite of his vagueness, he wrote at least enough to shew that many things even now regarded as new, had been roughly thought out by his fertile brain.

The specification first on the list is decidedly mysterious. It is entitled ‘Seals abundantly significant,’ and professes to describe an invention whereby accounts may be kept mechanically, and a letter, ‘though written but in English, may be read and understood in eight several languages, and in English itself to a clean contrary and different sense, unknown to any but the correspondent, and not to be read or understood by him neither, if opened before it arrive unto him.’ Presumably this ambiguous statement alludes to an instrument for writing accounts and letters in cipher, for the four specifications that follow, treat of that hackneyed subject, and one of them of a system of short-hand which seems to be not without a modern representative. Next comes a plan for telegraphing by means of coloured flags and lights; and then ‘A way how to level and shoot cannon by night as well as by day and as directly.’ The ninth specification is terribly pertinent to the tragic event that happened at Bremerhafen in December 1875. It speaks of ‘An engine, portable in one’s pocket, which may be carried and fastened on the inside of the greatest ship, and at any appointed minute, though a week after, either of day or night, it shall irrecoverably sink that ship.’ The note immediately following suggests torpedoes, and relates to a plan for diving and fastening a similar engine to a vessel.

Nor were Admiral Hobart Pacha’s attempts to ward off the attacks of these submarine monsters without a prototype; for the inventive Marquis at once goes on to hint at a method whereby a ship may be guarded from such a catastrophe either by day or by night. Specification number twelve is scarcely less suggestive of water-tight compartments, for it alludes to ‘A way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though shot an hundred times betwixt wind and water by cannon.’ The next note does not seem to have prompted the exertions of modern inventors; but who shall say whether number fourteen is not responsible for the employment of steam, or even of hydraulic power, for the working of a vessel? At all events, it hints at the economisation of labour, and at the multiplication of force without the intervention of a capstan or of similar machinery. Number fifteen palpably suggests the application of some motive-power very like steam to boats. The Marquis speaks of ‘A way how to make a boat work itself against wind and tide, yea, both without the help of man or beast; yet so that the wind or tide, though directly opposite, shall force the ship or boat against itself.’

It is not surprising that, in the middle of the seventeenth century, this, among many other alleged inventions, was regarded as somewhat chimerical; and indeed, at the present moment, if we except steam, it is hard to believe that the noble lord was not solemnly joking with Charles II. and the two Houses of Parliament. But a subsequent specification, which we shall notice in its due order, proves that the Marquis knew of the power of steam, and had practically experimented with it; and there are therefore some grounds for thinking that, had he been properly subsidised and assisted, the name of Worcester might have been as intimately associated with the great modern means of locomotion as are those of Watt and Fulton. Unfortunately the Marquis was too much in advance of his age, and thus his genius was lost upon it.

A very common table ornament of the present day is hinted at in number eighteen, which speaks of ‘An artificial fountain to be turned like an hour-glass by a child in the twinkling of an eye.’ And number nineteen plainly suggests the carriage-brake as now applied by every coachbuilder. The two succeeding notices relate to the use of water as a motive-power. And number twenty-three tells of a water-clock intended not only to shew the time, but also the motions of the heavenly bodies. Number twenty-four is a plan for discharging bullets by means of a silent spring, ‘admirable for fire-works and astonishing of besieged cities.’ And number twenty-six is a method for the more effectual employment of the lever as a mechanical force. Then follows a dark hint at the employment of pontoons for the formation of military bridges over broad rivers; and another specification, number thirty, speaks of a system for enabling four pieces of cannon ‘to discharge two hundred bullets each hour’—a thing which, under the old system of loading by manual power at the muzzle, would have been quite impossible. This is followed by a number of different plans for writing in cipher, and for communicating by means of various objects, such as knotted strings, fringes, bracelets, gloves, &c., and by the smell, taste, and touch. Number forty-four is a way ‘To make a key of a chamber-door which to your sight hath its wards and rose-pipe but paper-thick, and yet at pleasure in a minute of an hour shall become a perfect pistol, capable to shoot through a breast-plate commonly of carbine-proof, with prime, powder, and firelock, undiscoverably in a stranger’s hand.’ Such a diabolical machine in the possession of one of the many unscrupulous gentlemen of the period, would indeed have been a murderous weapon if used freely in the dimly lighted streets of London. Scarcely less unpleasant must have been the Venetian instrument for noiselessly discharging a poisoned needle at an unsuspecting enemy.

Next come specifications headed respectively ‘A most conceited tinder-box,’ ‘An artificial bird,’ and ‘An hour water-ball;’ the last of which speaks of a ball of any metal, ‘which, thrown into a pool or pail of water, shall presently rise from the bottom, and constantly shew, by the superficies of the water, the hour of the day or night, never rising more out of the water than just to the minute it sheweth of each quarter of the hour; and, if by force kept under water, yet the time is not yet lost, but recovered as soon as it is permitted to rise to the superficies of the water.’ Number forty-eight is the description of an improved staircase, and number forty-nine of ‘A portable engine, in way of a tobacco tongs, whereby a man may get over a wall, or get up again being come down, finding the coast proving unsecure unto him.’ Then there is ‘A pocket ladder,’ ‘A rule of gradation’ useful for cipher-writing, ‘A mystical jangling of bells’ for the conveyance of private intelligence, and three notices relating to ‘water-scrues.’ Number fifty-six is entitled ‘An advantageous change of centers;’ and respecting it the Marquis says: ‘A most incredible thing if not seen, but tried before the late king of blessed memory, in the Tower by my directions, two extraordinary ambassadors accompanying His Majesty, and the Dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, with most of the court, attending him. The wheel was fourteen feet over, and forty weights of fifty pounds apiece. Sir William Balfore, then lieutenant of the Tower, can justify it with several others. They all saw that no sooner these great weights passed the diameter line of the lower side but they hung a foot further from the center, nor no sooner passed the diameter line of the upper side but they hung a foot nearer. Be pleased to judge the consequence.’ In this modest request the Marquis appears to shroud a hint that he has discovered the secret of perpetual motion, which, however, has like all other perpetual-motion schemes, failed in practice.

Specification number fifty-eight is certainly in some measure responsible for the modern revolver, telling as it does of a method ‘whereby a pistol may be made to discharge a dozen times with one loading, and without so much as once new priming requisite, or to change it out of one hand into the other, or stop one’s horse.’ And the next notices are for the application of similar systems to carabines, muskets, arquebusses, and crocks or ship-muskets, and of a different method for sakers. In these ideas we may recognise indeed the first principles not only of the revolver, but also of the Winchester rifle and of the mitrailleuse in its various forms. Warfare has recently been revolutionised by inventions of this kind; and the conditions of naval warfare especially are now likely to be altered by the arrangement which practically places the whole broadside of a vessel under the control of one man. For this latter improvement we may find the idea in the Marquis’s plan by which ‘one man in the cabbin may govern the whole side of ship-muskets, to the number, if need require, of two or three thousand shots.’ After devoting several notices to the various aspects of this subject, the noble inventor complacently remarks: ‘When first I gave my thoughts to make guns shoot often, I thought there had been but one only exquisite way inventible, yet by several trials and much charge I have perfectly tried all these.’ The necessary experiments appear to have left him with an old cannon or two upon his hands, as the next and most important specification shews that the scientific nobleman nearly succeeded in blowing himself up, and so concluding his investigations. He calls it ‘A fire water-work;’ and probably that remarkable name expresses, as well as any other might, the Marquis’s ‘admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the philosopher calleth it, _intra sphæram activitatis_, which is but at such a distance. But,’ he emphatically continues, ‘this way hath no bounder, if the vessels be strong enough.’

Then he goes on to give us what seems to be the earliest record of the employment of steam-power in England. ‘I have taken,’ he says, ‘a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and scruing up the broken end, as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack. So that having a way to make my vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high; one vessel of water, rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks; that, one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and re-fill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim between the necessity of turning the said cocks.’ Following this are four notices relating to improvements for locks to chests and safes, one relating to a drawbridge, and one treating of what the Marquis calls ‘A conceited door’—namely one which will open either inwards or outwards.

Two paragraphs further on comes the short specification, ‘How to make a man to fly; which I have tried with a little boy of ten years old in a barn, from one end to the other, on a hay-mow.’ The last clause is certainly acceptable; for it justifies a hope that the poor little fellow did not break his neck in the pursuit of science. The three succeeding notices are entitled respectively ‘A continually going watch,’ ‘A total locking of cabinet-boxes,’ and ‘Light pistol barrels;’ and the headings serve to demonstrate at least the versatility of the author. Next come two methods for carrying secret correspondence without observation, an idea for the economisation of labour in rasping hartshorn, and the specification of a calculating machine. These are followed by notices of two barbarous engines, respectively called ‘An untoothsome pear’ and ‘An imprisoning chair,’ of a candle-moulding machine, and of a talkative artificial head, the _modus operandi_ of which we take the liberty of smiling at. The Marquis states that his invention would answer in French, Latin, Welsh, Irish, or English, any question put to it, and then shut its mouth until the next question was asked. It cannot be doubted that if the artificial head were so life-like as to be able to answer questions, it would also do a little talking on its own account. The noble Lord seems at this period to have been suffering from an attack of moral depravity; for the incredible notice of the brazen head is followed by two specifications of methods for cheating at cards and dice respectively; and a little lower down, we come upon ‘a little engine portable in one’s pocket, which placed to any door, without any noise but one crack, openeth any door or gate.’ Number ninety-three is the specification of an engine for raising sunken ships; and at the end of the long catalogue are some mysterious notices of a machine which the Marquis modestly calls ‘a semi-omnipotent engine,’ and of two other machines which conjointly seem to hint at some knowledge of hydraulic power of which the discoverer was particularly proud. ‘I deem this invention,’ he says, ‘to crown my labours, to reward my expenses, and make my thoughts acquiesce in way of further inventions;’ and he concludes by hinting at leaving to posterity a book wherein his inventions, ‘with the shape and form of all things belonging to them, should be printed by brass plates.’

And so we will take leave of the inventive nobleman, who, though apparently not always too veracious, was decidedly a genius. It is probably owing to the fact of his having lived in an inappreciative age that he is to this day usually placed on a level with the fabulous Academicians of Laputa, rather than among such men as Franklin, Arkwright, and Watt; but on the other hand, it is not unlikely that had his Century of Inventions been judiciously reduced to a score, or even a dozen, the Marquis of Worcester’s reputation among his contemporaries might have stood proportionately higher.

AN INSURANCE TALE.

I am a solicitor of considerable standing and practice in a large provincial town in Ireland, the name of which it is here unnecessary to mention. On the evening of the 31st of December some twenty-five years ago, I was in the aforesaid town sitting in my study. The day had been one of unusual inclemency; rain had alternated with sleet and snow; and the cold and cutting wind had blown with a rude strength which made its chilly touch at once incisive. As the shades of night had begun to fall, the storm, instead of abating, had risen in turbulence and height; and at the hour of which I am about to speak, the spasmodic energy of the elements seemed like the last convulsions of the dying year. I had been reading some legal documents during the evening; but perceiving from a glance at my watch that it was fast approaching twelve o’clock, I laid my papers aside and drew my chair nearer to the fire. The hail beat violently against the windows, the wind sighed amongst the trees outside, and the keyhole of my study-door expressed its feelings in tones if possible more melancholy.

The feeling of which I was conscious, as I sat thus gazing into the blazing comfort before me, was one of selfish satisfaction that I was not at the mercy of the tempest outside. Forms of various human sufferers presented themselves to my mental vision, and seemed to take the shape of the red coals in the fire; while the wind and my sorrowing keyhole seemed vocal with the burden of their woe. I was soon plunged in a deep moralising on the misery which we see around us—on that strange invisible link between sorrow and sin; and the last moments of the passing year were just landing me in one of those good resolutions which we are told form such excellent paving-stones, when I was aroused from my moral reverie by a knock at my study-door. Pushing my chair back a little distance from the fire, and assuming a more professional air, I articulated the well-known ‘Come in;’ and this mandate was duly obeyed by my servant, who informed me that a gentleman outside was particularly anxious to see me.

A moment afterwards, a figure which in all but size resembled our old friend the ‘drowned rat,’ entered my study, and making a courteous bow, said: ‘I fear this is a very unreasonable hour to intrude upon you, sir.’ My visitor was very tall, had a pale thoughtful face, and when he unbuttoned the coat which covered him from head to foot, I perceived that he was a clergyman.

‘Won’t you take a seat by the fire?’ I said, ‘for you must be very cold and wet such a night as this.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied; ‘I am too wet to sit down. I had better tell you at once the cause of this unseasonable visit. I have been attending in my capacity as a Christian minister a young lady who has been very ill, and is now, I believe, dying. She sent for me to-night about ten o’clock, and when I went to her, she entreated me to go for a solicitor. I had heard of you, sir, as a man of standing in that profession, and I have accordingly come to ask you to drive over with me to her.’

I suggested that the lady very probably wanted to make her will, and wished for professional assistance.

‘I cannot tell,’ he replied. ‘I asked her if no one but a solicitor would do, and she said not. She said she _must_ see a solicitor before she died. She seemed terribly distressed, and pressed her request so earnestly upon me that I felt I dare not neglect it.’

‘How far is the young lady’s residence from this?’ I asked, wishing to bring the matter to a practical issue.

‘About ten miles,’ replied the clergyman.

‘Ten miles on a night such as this is no joke!’

‘It is, sir, a long drive, and I know that the night is very severe; but I would take it as a great favour if you would come with me. I know not where to go or what to do, if you decline. I will drive you there, and send my car back with you; and you will of course hold me responsible for your fees.’

The last sentence decided my wavering resolve and gained the clergyman’s object; for what attorney ever remained inactive where he had a good mark for costs? So shrugging my shoulders, I said: ‘Well, I suppose I had better go with you, though I should much prefer going to bed.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied; ‘it is very good of you to consent.’

Having provided myself with the writing materials necessary to draft a will, and having wrapped myself from head to foot in waterproof, I accompanied the clergyman to the hall-door. There we ascended the conveyance which was to take us to our destination, and soon were cutting our way through the driving sleet and snow. Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, I thought it would be wise to elicit from the clergyman some little information about the young lady whose will I supposed that I was about to draw; and with that view I began to examine him. I, however, found that he could tell me very little. He only knew that she was a Miss M——; that she had been staying with an aunt of hers who lived in his parish; that she had become dangerously ill some four or five days previously; that he believed she was an only daughter; that her mother was dead; and that her father had been telegraphed for, and was expected to arrive in the morning. He added earnestly: ‘He will never see his daughter alive, poor man!’

While we were speaking, the joy-bells had begun to ring out their merry peals, welcoming in the new year. In a few moments, however, after the clergyman’s last remark, they ceased, and a dead silence ensued. ‘How ironical was the tone of those bells!’ said the clergyman with a sigh, as the last peal was dying away. I answered half-unconsciously ‘Yes;’ but I little knew how fully I would comprehend his meaning before many hours had passed away.

After a long and bitter drive, the conveyance at last drew up at a large old-fashioned house, with the appearance of which I was well acquainted, and which I knew to be the residence of an old lady of property, though I had never been inside it. The clergyman, on alighting, brought me round to a side-door, at which he knocked very gently. After he had knocked two or three times, the door was at length opened to us by an elderly woman, whom I afterwards learned to be the nurse, and who conducted us, by the aid of a lantern, up an old winding-stair into a long corridor. Stopping before a door at the end of it, the nurse motioned us to wait while she entered the room. She had been only a few seconds inside, when I heard a low moan, and a female voice exclaim almost in a cry: ‘Oh, has the time come?’ A moment afterwards the clergyman and myself had entered the room, and lying on a bed in the middle of it I saw the form of a young girl apparently about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. As we approached her bedside, the clergyman said to her: ‘I have brought the solicitor with me;’ but she did not answer him, and gently waved her hand for the nurse and himself to leave the room.

After they had left, she looked at me earnestly for a minute and then said in a faint voice: ‘Are you a solicitor, sir?’

I answered: ‘I am;’ and added: ‘I suppose you wish me to draw your will for you?’

‘My will!’ she said with evident surprise. ‘Ah no! I have nothing to leave, except perhaps my heart.’ She remained for some time after this without speaking, her silence being only broken by moans such as I had heard from the corridor. After a little while I heard her murmur: ‘O my father, my poor dear father! must it be?’ then clasping her two almost fleshless hands, she closed her eyes for a few moments. At last, with evident effort, she turned round on her pillow, and looking straight at me, said in a voice tremulous with weakness and emotion: ‘I want, sir, to make a statement to you which I feel it my duty to make before I die. It has tortured me for months, and I dare not meet my Maker if I did not tell all, though it breaks my very heart to do so.’

Fearing that she was going to confess some crime, or make some other important criminal declaration, I said to her: ‘If you are about to make any statement which may be of importance afterwards, I had better go for a magistrate, and you can make it before him.’