The inventor of this first steamer was merely looked upon as an enthusiast, whose imagination had run mad; and his only encouragement was a donation of 200,000 maravedis from his sovereign, but the emperor no more dreamt of using the discovery than did Napoleon I., three centuries later, when the ingenious Fulton suggested to him the application of steam to navigation. It is well known that Fulton was not even permitted to make an essay of this new [{213}] propelling force before the French emperor. So then, we must date the fact of the introduction of steam navigation as far back as 1543; anterior to the discovery of Salomon de Caus in 1615; to the Marquis of Worcester in 1663; to Captain Savary in 1693; to Dr. Papin in 1696; and to Fulton and others, who all lay claim to the original idea.
But perhaps we may be wrong in denying originality to these men, for we have no proof that either of them had any knowledge of the discoveries of his predecessor.
It was only on the 18th of March, 1816, that the first steam-vessel appeared in France, making her entrance into the seaport of Havre; she was the Eliza, which had left Newhaven, in England, on the previous day.
From The Fortnightly Review.
THE CLOUDS AND THE POOR.
No one can write upon the clouds without some reference to Mr. Ruskin's labors. Few will forget the four chapters in the first volume of "Modern Painters," dealing first with men's apathy for those forms of beauty which daily flit around us, and ending with the magnificent contrast between Turner and Claude, showing with what difference they had rendered the calm of the mist and the shock of the tempest, the crimson of the dawn and the fire of sunset We are, indeed, all of us too apathetic, and the summer and the winter clouds are alike unheeded by us. And yet our grey English clouds have impressed themselves upon even our language and our daily speech. Our word "sky" has nothing in common with the ciel of the French and the cielo of the Italians, which through the Latin coelum refer to the clear blue chasm of the air. Our "sky" is connected with the Old-English seua, and literally means "the place of shadows." Our "welkin" is connected with wolcen, "a cloud," and is derived from a root which points to the incessant, rolling, billowy motion of the clouds.
But if we have failed to notice the clouds and their beauty, others have not failed. Men, seeing their power, feeling their blessings, have worshipped them. Upon them our Scandinavian ancestors built their creeds, and from them created their gods and goddesses. The beauty and the delicacy of the early Aryan mythology is interwoven with the storm-cloud, which alike inspires the story of the Odyssey and solves the mystery of OEdipus. Mr. Ruskin has already quoted from Aristophanes. We could wish that he had supplemented the Athenian poet, who gives merely the latter sensuous mythological view of the clouds, with passages from the fathers, who so deeply penetrated into both their beauty and their moral aspect. With them the clouds appear no longer puissant goddesses, daughters of Father Ocean, thronging in troops from Maeotis and Mimas, their golden pitchers filled with the waters of the Nile. Their fleecy forms told them of him who "giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar frost like ashes," of him who "maketh the clouds his chariots, and rideth on the wings of the wind." They could not feel the whirlwind's blast without remembering that it had borne Elijah heavenward, nor hear the thunder without remembering the thunder and lightning which clothed God on Sinai, [{214}] nor watch the evening rack without remembering that the clouds, such perhaps as they were gazing at, had received their Master out of his disciples' sight, and that again from them he should descend at his second coming. In these days of atmospheric laws, of measurements of rainfalls, and weather forecasts, we cannot by the utmost effort of the imagination place ourselves in their position. To them, as to the first Christians, heaven was directly above their heads, divided from the earth only by the screen of clouds. They must have regarded those white ethereal shadows, those dark rolling masses, in much the same way as the early sacred painters,—peopled each flake with cherubs and angels, and heard the air rustle with wings.
Be this as it may. Even if religion inspired them with such thoughts, they certainly were not insensible to the beauty which daily blossoms in the sky. "There is," cries St. Chrysostom, "a meadow on the earth and a meadow, too, in the sky. There are the various flowers of the stars, the rose below, the rainbow above." [Footnote 31] "Look up to heaven," he says, "and see how much more beautiful it is than the roof of palaces. The pavement of the palace above is much more grand than the roof below." [Footnote 32] His writings are full of metaphors drawn from the sky and the clouds. He speaks of "snow-storms of miracles," and "thick-falling showers of cares," and cries, "When God doth comfort, though sorrows come upon thee by thousands like snow-flakes, thou shalt be above them all." He reproaches men for looking down like swine to the earth, and not up to the sky, [Footnote 33] which he declares is the fairest of roofs, guiding them by its beauty to their Maker. [Footnote 34] And filled with that democratic spirit which so burns in all his writings, he cries to the poor man, "Seest thou this heaven here, how beautiful, how vast it is, how it is placed on high? This beauty the rich man enjoyeth not more than thou, nor is it in his power to thrust thee aside, and make it all his own; for as it was made for him, so it was, too, for thee. . . . . . Do not all enjoy it equally—rich and poor? . . . . . Yea, rather, if I must speak somewhat marvellously, we poor enjoy it more than they. . . . . The poor more than any enjoy the luxury of the elements." [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 31: "Homilies on the Statues." The Oxford Translation.]
[Footnote 32: "Homilies on 1 Thessalonians iv. 12." ]