from his remarking in a memorial addressed to the King that he penned it—"To ease your Majesty of a trouble incident to the prolixity of speech, and a natural defect of utterance which I accuse myself of." It might be interesting to speculate how his sense of deficiency in physical strength, in eloquence of speech, and volubility of language might have contributed to the fostering of that disposition for intense application to scientific studies which became to him like a second nature.

During the first two years of the Restoration, the Marquis was in pretty regular attendance on his Parliamentary duties. In 1661, he was obliged to seek protection so that proceedings might not be taken against him by his creditors; and about the same time his forfeited estates were restored to him, but so encumbered and impoverished as to yield him a very insufficient income, if any. It was in the midst of such distractions as these that this talented inventor and noble benefactor to his species had to maintain his social position; and, at the same time, endeavour to convince the bigoted age in which he may be said rather to have existed than to have flourished, that he was master of a power of such magnitude for the abridging of human labour, as the mind of man had never before conceived.

It may be freely conceded that, stupendous as he himself pronounced the parent engine to be, it was but as the acorn compared to the time-honoured monarch of the forest. Just as the existence of the plant is dependent on that of the seed, so if the Water-commanding Engine, the great Fire Water-work he constructed had never existed, we might have been unacquainted, to this day, with the mechanical application of steam, and should have been deprived in consequence of the manifold blessings it bountifully bestows on mankind.

ADDENDUM.

Evidence of the Marquis of Worcester's claim to the Invention of the Steam Engine.

1. His personal claim to have written a statement respecting it in 1655; his MS. being afterwards lost.

2. The Act of Parliament[5] which was granted him for the term of ninety-nine years, and which received the royal assent on the 3rd June, 1663.

3. His "Century of Inventions," printed from a re-written copy of his lost notes of 1655; and which names in the Dedication, the granting of the above Act.

The following list[6] comprises upwards of seventeen persons all living in 1663:—

4. Caspar Kaltoff, a confidential workman, engaged by the Marquis as his engineer in 1628, who died about 1664, and is honourably mentioned in the "Century."

5. Martha Kaltoff, wife of Caspar Kaltoff, who is named in letters patent dated 1672, as lately deceased. Her family was—

• Catharine, married to Claude Denis.
• Caspar Kaltoff, and his unmarried sister—
• Isabel Kaltoff.

6. Peter Jacobson, a sugar refiner, who married one of Kaltoff's daughters, had a portion of the buildings at Vauxhall, where the Water-commanding Engine was erected, and in operation from 1663, till at least to the year 1669, if not some years later.

7. William Lambert, another workman, a founder at Vauxhall, in the reign of Charles I., "under the Marquis of Worcester, for gun and waterwork, or any other thing founded in brass," in 1647, and who was living in 1664-5.

8. Christopher Copley, who had been a Colonel in the Parliamentary service, and was probably an iron master, having been the proprietor of four Iron Works. He assisted the Marquis at an early period and held a pecuniary interest in his invention of a Water-commanding Engine. Indeed it is highly probable that he was the "powerful friend" at whose instigation the "Century" was written in 1665.

9. The Earl of Lotherdale, written to in January, 1660, had a copy of the "Definition" of the Engine sent to him, and is promised an ingeniously contrived box or cabinet. He was appointed as late as March, 1665, to be one of a Commission to report on the affairs of the Marquis, and must, therefore, have been familiar with all matters relating to the noble inventor.

10. Dr. Robert Hook, the eminent mathematician, was acquainted with Caspar Kaltoff, and early in 1667, went purposely to see the engine working at Vauxhall, having read the "Definition."

11. The Honourable Robert Boyle received from Dr. Hook a copy of the "Definition," sent to him with a letter on the subject.

12. Lord Brereton is specially mentioned by Dr. Hook, as being so confirmed in his doubts of the excellence of the Marquis's engine, that he had laid a wager on the subject.

13. Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert, afterwards created first Duke of Beaufort, by Charles II., must have frequently seen the engine in operation. He died in 1699.

14. James Rollock, who wrote a poetic eulogy on the Engine about 1663, speaks of himself as "an ancient servant," having known his lordship forty years, dating back to 1623.[7]

15. Samuel Sorbière visited the works at Vauxhall, and published particulars of the engine he saw there in 1663.

16. Lord John Somerset, the Marquis's eldest brother, appears latterly to have lived at Vauxhall, according to a warrant dated September, 1664; and would certainly be admitted into his brother's confidence.

17. Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in his Diary exactly describes the engine he saw at Vauxhall in 1669, "considered to be of greater service to the public than the other machine near Somerset House."

18. Walter Travers, a Roman Catholic priest, names the engine in a letter which he wrote to the Dowager Marchioness of Worcester, in 1670.

19. Dr. Thomas Sprat, F.R.S., published in 1665, a critical work on "M. Sorbière's Voyage into England," and could not therefore be ignorant of the Marquis's engine, as it was named by the French traveller, although Sprat omitted to notice it specially in his own "Observations."

20. Among his other contemporaries were Sir Samuel Morland, Dr. Wallis, Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Isaac Newton, and many more, who, however, (so far as is at present known,) are silent in regard to all matters relating to the Marquis.