risks must have hung round a self-moving
skeleton, or a brazen head that could speak with
a human voice! The Chess-player, invented by
De Kempelen, was the most celebrated of all the
later automata; but this, however, turned rather
upon the cleverness of sleight-of-hand than upon
the wonders of mechanics, and ranks more as a
trick than as a matter of science. De Kempelen
also made a speaking automaton, which said
distinctly, "Romanorum Imperator semper
Augustus;" "Leopoldus Secundus;" "Vous êtes
mon ami;" "Je vous aime de tout mon cœur."
He had long laboured at this piece of mechanism,
but could only get the simple utterance of the
sounds o, ou, and e: i and u would not come at
any price, neither would the consonants. Then
he devised an apparatus, similar in action and
construction to the human mouth and teeth, and
this he placed at the extremity of the vocal tube.
Good French and Latin were the results. The
Americans also made a Speaking Machine, but
the inventor, Mr. Reale, destroyed his work of
sixteen years, in a moment of what people call
"frenzy." Afterwards, in 1846, Professor Faber
exhibited in the Egyptian Hall his Euphonia,
which is held to be the best speaking automaton
of all. Houdin is our latest wonder in the
mechanical way; but every one knows everything
about him: his singing nightingale, magic boxes
with rings in them that no mortal hands ever
put there, his drawing figure, which so ominously
broke its pencil when it began the crown for
the young Count de Paris, his tricks, and his
triumphs; his marvels with cards, eggs, birds,
hats, bottles, and extinguishers. We have them
all off by heart, and pleasant lessons they were
to learn, too! Well! of these mechanical
inventions, excepting the questionable reputation
that clung round Albertus Magnus, and the
unhappy fate of Alex, there are none to whom an
indiscriminating public showed marked ingratitude;
while, in later days, fame, honour, and
riches have heaped themselves up in
overwhelming piles, on the heads of those who have
showed inventive talent or mechanical skill.
We, the advocates of human nature as a whole,
are glad of this, as confirmatory of our own
theory.

There is no use in talking of the various
schemes for aerial ships, or of the thousand and
one balloons that have been sent up on
new principles and with perfect good faith
that each of those new principles was going to
inaugurate a new era in air navigation. Perhaps
aerial ships will be actual, commercial, and
trading facts, before long; perhaps the London
General Balloon Company will take the place of
the London General Omnibus Company, with
stations on the roof-tops of certain accommodating
British householders. Excepting the martyrs
of the experiment, beginning with Icarus and
ending with his American imitators of the other
day, aerial navigation has not been a very ill-
used pursuit. To be sure, people do say that
they are all cracked who think it can ever be
made of positive every-day use; but then every
new thing has been a sign of madness from time
immemorial, and there is no reason why this new
thing should be exempt. Roger Bacon and the
Marquis of Worcester were both thought to be
mad when they foreshadowed steam-engines and
telescopes; Paracelsus was evilly looked on for
the sake of his new drug, opium; and Napier of
Merchiston, when he asserted that he could set
ships on fire by a burning-glass, sail under
water, by help of a certain machine destroy
thirty thousand Turks without the risk of
losing one Christian, manure profitably with
common salt, and calculate by logarithms,
was held as little better than a maniac, if
not a wizard, which was worse. Rupert and his
experiments fared better. But then Rupert
was a prince, closely connected with the blood
royal, and royalty in those days meant
something more than taking off one's hat, or standing
while the national air was played. Rupert
did many noticeable philosophic things, fiery
soldier of fortune though he was: he brought
forward Van Siegen's invention of mezzotint,
made the toy called Prince Rupert's drops,
which no one can rightly explain even now;
blew up rocks and mines under water, made an
hydraulic machine, improved the naval
quadrant, made glass at Chelsea, cast hail-shot, and
devised the useful metal since called "Prince's
metal." He worked luxuriously at Windsor
Castle, of which his cousin, Charles the Second,
appointed him governor; and there in his apartment
swords and crucibles, rapiers, retorts,
spurs, and mathematical instruments lay
scattered all about in a confusion befitting his
multiplex life.

The first watchmaker was a great man. Was
he accused of witchcraft, and burned at the
stake for tampering with the mysterious laws of
life and motion? We do not know: he might
have been. And John Harrison of Faulby, the
country carpenter's uneducated son, and the
maker of the first marine chronometer, was a
great man too; and he did not suffer by his
invention. Quite the contrary; for he got
twenty thousand pounds for it, when, after forty
years' incessant labour, he had fully perfected
it, and made it the reliable creation that it is now.
No, all the inventors and discoverers have not
suffered. True,Columbus was ungratefully treated,
and Galileo knew (under a dominant priesthood)
more of the superstition and cruelty than of the
recognition and gratitude, of men; but all have not
been so evilly handled. To William Harvey no
one has grudged honours, though to be sure
poor Servetus was burned, partly for disproving
the theory then existing that the veins carried
the blood to the various parts of the body, a
disproval afterwards confirmed by Harvey. Dr.
Jenner has his statue and his colleges, and
rewards were not wanting even in his lifetime.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had a harder fight
to go through than fell to his lot, and yet
she was victorious in the end. To Newton and
Herschel, Lord Rosse and Le Verrier, to Niepce,
Daguerre, Fox, Talbot, and Wheatstone, to
Brewster and Davy, the world owes great and
glorious benefits; but we never heard of any