'No. XXX.—A way in one night's time to raise a bulwark, twenty or thirty foot high, cannon proof, and cannon mounted upon it; with men to overlook, command, and batter a town, for though it (the bulwark) contain but four pieces, they shall be able to discharge two hundred bullets each hour.'
There can be but little question, from all I have cited, that the Marquis of Worcester was singularly in advance of his age as regarded the great principles of warfare. We have found him thus far, in all probability, acquainted with the construction of permutable seals, and indeed of the grand principle of permutation applied to technology in several respects (vide "Century" Nos. III, IV, V,) of the telegraph, of sinking vessels by torpedoes, and, finally, of floating batteries and cannon-proof vessels. In No. 30, we have, however, a hint that the marquis had studied the principles of revolving firearms, when he speaks of four cannon discharging two hundred bullets each hour. That he had, theoretically, at least, anticipated Colt, appears from
'No. LVIII.—How to make a pistol 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.'
I call attention to the words which I have italicized. It is well known that the mere principle of revolving barrels in firearms was already old, even when Worcester wrote. I have seen guns of the kind over three hundred years old, and they are not uncommon in foreign museums. But it would appear that the marquis was acquainted with the principle of the self-cocking pistol. How else could he propose to discharge a gun a dozen times, without changing it from one hand to another? And this, I believe, was not known before his day. But how this could have been conveniently carried out, without some application of detonating powders in place of flint, steel, and gunpowder, I do not understand. That he was very probably familiar with the application of such chemical detonating agents has already been suggested. In another number, he suggests the application of this principle to 'carbines.' So in No. LXII, he proposes 'a way for a harquebuss, a crock, or ship musket, six upon a carriage, shooting with such expedition as, without danger, one may charge, level, and discharge them sixty times in a minute of an hour, two or three together.' To which he adds the following:
'No. LXIV.—A seventh, tried and approved before the late king (of ever blessed memory), and an hundred lords and commons, in a cannon of eight inches and half a quarter, to shoot bullets of sixty-four pounds weight, and twenty-four pounds of powder, twenty times in six minutes; so clear from danger, that after all were discharged, a pound of butter did not melt, being laid upon the cannon britch, nor the green oil discoloured that was first anointed and used between the barrel thereof, and the engine having never in it, nor within six foot, but one charge at a time.'
Several improvements of this kind are suggested in the 'Century,' which evidently involve different principles from that of the modern revolver, in reference to which difference we are informed in a 'note by the author,' that 'when I first 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 of these.'
I cannot venture in a single article to exhaust the suggestions in the Century, and must refer my reader to the volume himself, assuring him that he will there find many curious hints, several of which have, since its publication, been very practically realized. It is worth noting, however, that the author seems to have fully anticipated a very remarkable modern invention, in declaring that 'a woman even may with her delicate hand, vary the ways of coming to open a lock ten millions of times, beyond the knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it.' From this, as I have already suggested, it appears that he had, far in advance of his age, mastered a very great principle in mechanics; and as he appears to have understood, in theory at least, several others, it is no more than justice to rank him far above those mere charlatans of science, and hunters for marvels by means of isolated observation and experiment, with whom many would place him. That the 'Century' contains much which would be very discreditable to any man of science at the present day, is very true. Perpetual motion, perfect aerostation, devices for idle tricks and mere thaumaturgy, appear in company with schemes to take unfair advantages at card playing, and for the construction of false dice boxes—of which latter it is indignantly observed by honest Partington, that, there are few who profess the science of cheating at cards or dice, or to be encouragers of those who do; and it may fairly be conceded that there are not two periods in our regal annals, in which this detestable meanness had become fashionable enough to sanction a nobleman in inscribing to a king and his parliament a method by which it might be advantageously effected! We may, however, believe that a second period has at the present dawned over England, not much inferior as regards 'detestable meanness,' to that of Charles the Second. A recent transaction has shown that noblemen and their friends in the year 1862, are not above ascertaining from Johnson's Dictionary, the obsolete spelling of a word, such as rain-deer, betting a hundred pounds with an American as to its true orthography, and agreeing with him to abide by Johnson's authority; a piece of swindling quite as detestable in its meanness as the using of loaded dice. Neither can I see that the conduct of a majority of the British people, in fomenting Abolition for many years, and then giving her aid and countenance to our Southern rebels, on the flimsy, and, at best, brazenly selfish plea of the Morrill Tariff, is less detestable or less mean. We may regret to see a vice in individuals tolerated in high places; but when the blackest inconsistency, and the most contemptible avarice are elevated by a Christian nation into principles of conduct toward another nation struggling to free the oppressed, we may well doubt whether another period has not approached in England, over which the future historiographer may not sigh as deeply as over that of Charles the Second.
I attach no serious value to the efforts of the Marquis of Worcester, save as illustrating the principle with which I prefaced this article: that according to the mental peculiarities of the most vigorous of races—the Indo-Germanic above others—there is a tendency in certain active minds to generalize and draw practical conclusions, not unfrequently centuries in advance of the wants of their age. The partial and premature forcing of these principles into practice, is sometimes quoted in after years as derogatory to the merit due to modern inventors, and as illustrating to a degree never contemplated by him who uttered it, the maxim that there's 'nothing new under the sun.' Nothing? Why, everything is new under the sun when it first assumes fit time and place. Were this not true, we might as well return to 'Nature's Centenary of Inventions,' as set forth by a pleasant pen in Household Words:
'Before the first clumsy sail was hoisted by a savage hand, the little Portuguese man-of-war, that frailest and most graceful nautilus boat, had skimmed over the seas with all its feathery sails set in the pleasant breeze; and before the great British Admiralty marked its anchors with the Broad Arrow, mussels and pinna had been accustomed to anchor themselves by flukes to the full as effective as the iron one in the Government dockyards. The duck used oars before we did; and rudders were known by every fish with a tail, countless ages before human pilots handled tillers; the floats on the fishermen's nets were pre-figured in the bladders on the sea weed; the glowworm and firefly held up their light-houses before pharas or beacon-tower guided the wanderer among men; and, as long before Phipps brought over the diving bell to this country as the creation, spiders were making and using airpumps to descend into the deep. Our bones were moved by tendons and muscles long before chains and cords were made to pull heavy weights from place to place. Nay, until quite lately—leaving these discoveries to themselves—we took no heed of the pattern set us in the backbone, with the arching ribs springing from it, to construct the large cylinder which we often see now attaching all the rest of a set of works. This has been a very modern discovery; but, prior even to the first man, Nature had cast such a cylinder in every ribbed and vertebrate animal she had made. The cord of plaited iron, too, now used to drag machinery up inclined planes, was typified in the backbone of the eels and snakes in Eden; tubular bridges and hollow columns had been in use since the first bird with hollow bones flew through the wood, or the first reed waved in the wind. Strange that the principle of the Menai Straits' railway bridge, and of the iron pillars in the Crystal Palace, existed is the Arkite dove, and in the bulrushes that grew round the cradle of Moses! Our railway tunnels are wonderful works of science, but the mole tunnelled with its foot, and the pholas with one end of its shell, before our navvies handled pick or spade upon the heights of the iron roads: worms were prior to gimlets, ant-lions were the first funnel makers, a beaver showed men how to make the milldams, and the pendulous nests of certain birds swung gently in the air before the keen wit of even the most loving mother laid her nursling in a rocking cradle. The carpenter of olden time lost many useful hours in studying how to make the ball-and-socket joint which he bore about with him in his own hips and shoulders; the universal joint, which filled all men with wonder when first discovered, he had in his wrist; in the jaws of all flesh-eating animals his huge one-hinge joint; in the graminivora and herbivora the joint of free motion; for grinding millstones were set up in our molars and in the gizzards of birds before the Egyptian women ground their corn between two stones; and the crushing teeth of the hyena make the best models we know of for hammers to break stones on the road. The tongue of certain shell fish—of the limpet, for instance—is full of siliceous spines which serve as rasp and drill; and knives and scissors were carried about in the mandibles and beaks of primeval bees and parrots.