The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-28 00:00:00

mane con
and explaining to the best of his ability an
tra.dictory statements, the author bring; u
to modern times when the dispute aroso a,
first inv, need the steam engine. In tic,
century there wt., e many who claimed the hei'l( e
and several ingenious models were constuete
theoretically perfect, but practically useless. Amon
other claimants we may mention Solomon de
Caus, a native of Normandy, and Giovanni Branca,
but it was reserved for England to produce the man
who first constructed au engine which was of prac-
tical utility, and saved expense by its services. The
following quotation will beet explain the Marquis
of Worcester's engine :
The next name on our list is the Marquis of Worcester,
who in 1663 pub'ished a pamphlet addressed to King
Charles 11. and the English Parliament, entitled "A Cen •
tury of the Names and Scantlings of the Marquis of Wor-
cester's Inventions," with a view to obtain the aid of Go-
vernment for their prosecution. Among many ingenious
and some fantastic and preposterous devices, we have the
following fire water-work, "An 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,
' infra sphseram activitatis,' which is but at such a distance,
but tt• is way hath no bounder if the vessel be strong enough ;
for I have taken a piece of whole cannon, whereof the end
was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping
and screwing up the open end, as also the touch-hole, and
making a constant fire under it ; within 24 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 tne
water run like a constant fountain stream, 40 feet high.
One vessel of water rarefied by fire driveth up 40 of cold
water, and a man that tends the work has but to turn two
cocks that one vessel of water being consumed another
begins to force and refill with cold water, and so succes-
sively ; 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."
This is the first feasible scheme for raising water by steam
power that history records; and it is in that application
that the modern steam engine had its origin. Previous
projectors had in no way improved upon the expedients de-
scribed by Hero, and indeed in by far the majority of cases
the movement had been retrograde; but in the Marquis of
Worcester's contrivance we have an engine of respectable
efficacy applied to a.weighty purpose, and from his time the
progress en has never been interrupted, but improvement
has followed upollimprovement, until the steam-engine has
become what we now find it. It is idle to say that the
Marquis of Worcester's project was only a reproduction of
that of De Cats. The instrument of De Caus was a mere
toy, not intended, and certainly not adapted, for any pur •
pose of practical utility, whereas the Marquis of Worcester
enumerates many important practical uses to which his
engine might be applied, and many it certain y would have
been perfectly competent to compass. In another part of
his " Century" he says that his water-work " is by many
years' experience and labour so advantageously by me con•
trived, that a child's force bringeth up a hundred foot high
an incredible quantity of water, even two foot diameter, so
naturally, that the work will not be heard into the next
room, and with so great ease and geometrical symmet'y,
though it work day and night from one end of the year to
the other, it will not require 40s. reparation to the whole
engine, nor hinder one dav's work, and not only with little
charge to drain all sorts of mines, and furnish cities with
water though never so high seated, as well as to keep them
sweet, running through several streets, and so performing
the work of scavengers, as well as furnishing the inhabi-
tants with sufficient water for their private occasions."
It appears very clear from these descriptions ,that the
Marquis of Worcester not only had succeeded in making a
powerful and effective engine, but had arrived at a very just
conception of the important ends such a machine may be
made to fulfil. None of the contrivances before his time
were provided with means to make their action continuous;
and the instrument of De Cans, so far from being adapted
to raise water from a mine, or for the supply of towns, had
merely the power of emptying itself of the boiling water
with which it was filled. Indeed, it appears undeniable that
the Marquis of Worcester was the first person, so far
as our present knowledge extends, by whom "a water-
com mand ing engine" of any power or utility was constructed ;
and he seems to have brought his contrivance to nearly all
the perfection of which that species of engine is susceptible.
There is no evidence that he made use of the atmospheric
pressure as an aid to the final effect ; but he seems perfectly
conscious of the applicability of that agency, and indeed
speaks as if such an application was very well understood in
his time. We are not aware that there is any drawing
extant of this machine; and the various hypothetic4ldelinea-
tions of it that we have seen err, we think, in representing
it as provided with only one boiler, Po there could not in
this kind of engine have been any feed-pump, and in the
absence of that instrument two boilers must have been in-
dispensable to make the action of the engine continuous.
Besides, the description says that "one vessel of water
being consumed another begins to force, and refill with cold
water," which we take to mean that when the water of one
boiler was evaporated it was filled up with cold water, and
the other was in the meanwhile put into operation, the
water in tho boiler last filled having again become hot be-
fore that in the other was exhausted. One of these engines
appears to have been set up to draw water out of the Thames
at Vauxhall ; and is thus spoken of by Cosmo de Medici,
who inspected in 1653. "It raises water more than 40 geo-
metrical feet by the power of man only, and in a very short
space of time will draw up four vessels of water through a
tube or channel not more than a span in width, on which
account it is considered to be of greater service to the pub- I
pub-
lic than the other machine near Somerset House," which I
last was one driven by two horses. We should be disposed
to infer from this account, that the principle of the atmos
phonic pressure was employed in this engine, for it is diffi-
cult to see by what power other than suction the necessary
rapidity of -motion could be given to the water in the pipe
leading fr 1m the river to the engine, and which would ap-
pear to be smaller than the pipes applied in other cases.
It is impossible to enter into any detail of
the contents of this elaborate work. In fact
to clo so would require a small volume of
itself, which would be to this work like the
tender to a line of battle ship—but the
extracts we have give.n will furnish an idea
of some portion of it to the general reader, and to
engineers Mr. Bourne's name ought to be a suffi-
cient guarantee for the value of its contents. The
work itself, which extends over upwards of 400
quarto pages, is succeeded by an Appendix, in
which are—
Weights and Measures—Hyperbolic Logarithms—Elas-
ticity, Volume, and Temperature of Steam—Circumferences
and Areas of Circles—Squares and Cubes, and Square and
Cube Roots—Foluth and Fifth Powers of Numbers—
Pressures required to punch Iron Plates—Specific Gravities
—Weight of Plate Iron, Round Shafts, Lead Pipe, Angle
Iron, and Hoop Iron—eight of Square and Round Iron,
Sheet Iron, Brass, and Copper, and Cast Plates—Weight
of Cast Iron Pipes, Flat Iron, Copper Pipes, and compa-
rative Weights of Metal;—Lengths of Iron required for
Angle Iron Hoops—Weight of Flat Steel—Heights of
equivalent Columns of Mercury and Water2LStrength of
Boiler—Report on American Goods Locomotive Engines—
Specification of English Locomotives—Specification of a
Scotch Locomotive—Specification of an American Locomo-
tive—Statistics of Railways—Specification of a Dredging
Machine—Report of Mr. Field on Simpson's Double
Cylinder Engines—and Faraday on the Conservation of
Force.

fi ftec

The work is illustrated by thirty-seven beautifully
executed plates of various engines, and five hun-
dred and forty-six woodcuts, (we have not counted
the woodcuts, but take the publisher's word for it),
and the author deserves as much credit for the
clear way in which all details are explained, as for
the deep research and determined energy that he has
displayed in giving so complete a treatise on the
steam engine as the one before us.

Sketches in North America. By H. Reid, Long

man.

The Americans cannot complain that Mr. Reid
I does not give them fair play; he shows: both sides
of the picture, and if his censures are severe, his
praise is extreme, not that he carries either beyond
bounds. On first opening the volume one would
suppose that Mr. Reid was almost as much a
Yankee as Mr. Roebuck is an Austrian, but as the
readers advances he finds that. Brother Jonathan
has his faults, and that the author knows it. The
first chapter is devoted to a description of the coun-
try and the character and habits of the people.
The first example which Mr. Reid had of the
energy of the American people was at Eastport,
where a variety of goods had to be put on shore
from a steamboat. He was surprised to see every-
body trying to do his work faster than his neigh-
bour; porters running with heavy loads, seamen
rolling barrows, no walking, all leaping and rushing
as if their very existence depended on their dis-
patch. He speaks very highly of the general
character of the Americans as individuals, and
considers that too much has been said
about spitting, and talking through the nose. He
admires their railway carriages and many other
institutions, but condemns, in no measured terms,
the spirit of Rowdysim which prevails in all the
principal towns, and particularly New York where
it might justly be supposed that the authorities
would possess most power. He considers thib to be
a greater curse to the country than slavery, for the
one must naturally die out, while he thinks that the
spirit of insubordination is a special characteristic
of the American, and that to this all the
failings in the American constitution are to be
t community; aa u o
!attributed, for, says Mr. Reid, from the highest rto
rt
ihtey
is
o weste,xahibfeiteeld b y
ingo f rt ehsei s t
eannc ier
et o y
h
djuthdeges,
tahreusset
th e
at m a
defiance,g ist r a easn,
variousand eßveonwdthyeeeSceinetaitees,
such as the Plug Uglies, Rep Ras, and Muck
Snakes, walk the streets P.
eets in bands in broad day-
light, commit depredations, and even murder with
im • punity. For fear that he may be thought to
exaggerate, the author makes frequent extracts
from leading American journals, and, as he says,
lets the Yankees speak for themselves. The
American Senate to which Mr. Reid devotes
some eighty pages is cleverly described
and many amusing anecdotes of the free-and-easy
way in which an independent nation can transact
business are furnished. We give the following as
a specimen :

THE LADIES IN THE HOUSE.
" The Avenue presented a very gay and animated scene,
from the number of beautifully-dressed ladies, who, even
then, with two hours before them, showed their anxiety not
to be behind time.

---
" At this moment the doorkeepers are expelling gentle-
men from the ladies' galleries, and the greatest excitement
prevails—as, whenever one of the lords shows fight, the
ladies come to the assistance of the doorkeepers, and, as
many hands make light work, of course the refractory dis-
appears amid the tumultuous uproar of the galleries. The
pages below are reaping a harvest from fallen jewellery.
One shower, to the right of the Speaker's chair, called forth
a regular scramble among the crowds who were perambu-
lating the Chamber, and some funny falls and tumbles over
were the result.
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ugroups
one mm btehr
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rhi
ga vhet aa
and
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et
fatk. e n
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move below, and a few favoured ladies are shooting across