The direct and almost instant benefits of Mechanical Inventions to their originators have been thus eloquently illustrated in the Edinburgh Review:—"Contributing, as they do, to our most immediate and pressing wants—appealing to the eye by their magnitude, and often by their grandeur, and associated, in many cases, with the warmer impulses of humanity and personal safety—the labours of the mechanist and engineer acquire a contemporary celebrity, which is not vouchsafed to the results of scientific research, or to the productions of literature and the fine arts. The gigantic steam-vessel, which expedites and facilitates the intercourse of nations—the canal, which unites two distant seas—the bridge and the aqueduct, which span an impassable valley—the harbour and the break-water, which shelter our vessels of peace and of war—the railway, which hurries us along on the wings of mechanism, and the light beacon which throws its directing beams over the deep—address themselves to the secular interests of every individual, and obtain for the engineer who invented or who planned them, a high and a well-merited popular reputation."
THE ELGIN MARBLES.
These beautiful relics of Grecian antiquity cost the Earl of Elgin 74,000l., of which sum he barely received one-half from Government; so that Lord Byron's imputation to the Earl of a mercantile spirit in the transaction is notoriously unjust.
RALEIGH A CHEMIST.
During his confinement in the Tower of London, Sir Walter Raleigh devoted a considerable portion of his time to chemical and pharmaceutical investigations; and interesting it is to see how his unsubdued spirit enabled him to make the most of his misfortunes, to surmount difficulties, and to turn ordinary things to extraordinary purposes,—greatly, no doubt, to the amazement of those about him, who marvelled much to behold the splendid courtier, and the captain of a happier day, earnestly employing himself with chemical stills and crucibles in a vacant hen-house! "He has converted," says Sir W. Wade, the lieutenant of the Tower, in a letter to Cecil, "a little hen-house in the garden into a still-house, and here he doth spend his time all day in distillations."
MR. BABBAGE'S CALCULATING MACHINE.
A calculating machine is a fair subject for a joke. In May, 1839, when an additional grant was applied for in the House of Commons, in order to complete Mr. Babbage's machine, Mr. Wakley inquired whether it was likely to be of any use to the public? Upon this, Sir Robert Peel felicitously replied, that "the machine should be put to calculate the time at which it would be of any use." The calculating machine has certainly not yet been put to any more practical purpose.