years thereafter, to receive the sole benefit, profit, and advantage resulting from the use of this machine. But this was of little avail, for like men of a similar genius in more humble life, he was oppressed by poverty and want of encouragement; and the desire of being useful to his country in the way which his experience pointed out as of all others the most effective, gained strength as his offers of service were rejected. Although at every period of life he seems to have been deeply impressed with the feeling that progress was never made in any thing by supine wishes and dilatory efforts, unremitting perseverance were in his case to be of no use in stemming the tide of adverse fortune. His wishes were written in sand; and in the prosecution of philanthropic projects, he was fated not only to experience the neglect of the public, but the ingratitude of friends, without being convinced of the hopelessness of the attempt at introducing improvements beyond the comprehension and spirit of the age. As long as hope survived, and that ceased not until he "was summoned by the angel of death," he continued to prefer with vigor his claims to public attention and patronage.

Worcester died in poverty, on the 4th of April, 1667. After his death, his wife, in endeavoring to introduce the "water commanding (steam) engine" into general use, not only lay under the imputation of "insanity" for thus persisting in carrying it forward, but was expostulated with by a Romish priest as being "instigated by the devil!"

From a manuscript volume containing the travels of Cosmo de Medicis, grand duke of Tuscany, first printed in 1818, it appears that about thirty years after the death of Worcester, he actually saw his steam engine in use pumping up water in London.

JAMES FERGUSON.

AMONG self-educated men, there are few who claim more of our admiration than the celebrated JAMES FERGUSON. If ever any one was literally his own instructor in the very elements of know. ledge, it was he. Acquisitions that have scarcely in any other case, and probably never by one so young, been made without the assistance either of books or a living teacher, were the discoveries of his solitary and almost illiterate boyhood. There are few more interesting narratives in any language than the account

which Ferguson himself has given of his early history. He was born in the year 1710, a few miles from the village of Keith, in Banffshire; his parents, as he tells us, being in the humblest condition of life, (for his father was merely a day-laborer,) but religious and honest. It was his father's practice to teach his children himself to read and write, as they successively reached what he deemed the proper age; but James was too impatient to wait till his regular turn came. While his father was teaching one of his elder brothers, James was secretly occupied in listening to what was going on; and, as soon as he was left alone, used to get hold of the book, and work hard in endeavoring to master the lesson which he had thus heard gone over. Being ashamed, as he says, to let his father know what he was about, he was wont to apply to an old woman who lived in a neighboring cottage to solve his difficulties. In this way he actually learned to read tolerably well before his father had any suspicion that he knew his letters. His father at last, very much to his surprise, detected him one day reading by himself, and thus found out his secret.

When he was about seven or eight years of age, a simple incident occurred which seems to have given his mind its first bias to what became afterwards its favorite kind of pursuit-viz. mechanics. The roof of the cottage having partly fallen in, his father, in order to raise it again, applied to it a beam, resting on a prop in the manner of a lever, and was thus enabled, with comparative ease, to produce what seemed to his son quite a stupendous effect. The circumstance set our young philosopher thinking; and after a while it struck him that his father, in using the beam, had applied his strength to its extremity, and this, he immediately concluded, was probably an important circumstance in the matter. He proceeded to verify his notion by experiment; and having made several levers, which he called bars, soon not only found that he was right in his conjecture as to the importance of applying the moving force at the point most distant from the fulcrum, but discovered the rule or law of the machine, namely, that the effect of any form or weight made to bear upon it is always exactly proportioned to the distance of the point on which it rests from the fulcrum. "I then," says he, "thought that it was a great pity that, by means of this bar, a weight could be raised but a very little way. On this I soon imagined that, by pulling round a wheel, the weight might be raised to any height, by tying a rope to the weight, and winding the rope round the axle of the wheel, and that the power gained must be just as great as the wheel was broader than the axle was thick; and found it to be exactly so, by hanging one weight to a rope put round the wheel, and ano

ther to the rope that coiled round the axle." The child had thus, it will be observed, actually discovered two of the most important elementary truths in mechanics-the lever, and the wheel and axle; he afterwards hit upon others; and, all the while, he had not only possessed neither book nor teacher to assist him, but was without any other tools than a simple turning lathe of his father's, and a little knife wherewith to fashion his blocks and wheels, and he other contrivances he needed for his experiments. After having made his discoveries, however, he next, he tells us, proceeded to write an account of them; thinking this little work, which contained sketches of the different machines drawn with a pen, to be the first treatise ever composed of the sort. When, some time after, a gentleman showed him the whole in a printed book, although he found that he had been anticipated in his inven tions, he was much pleased, as he was well entitled to be, on thus perceiving that his unaided genius had already carried him so far into what was acknowledged to be the region of true philosophy.

He spent some of his carly years as a keeper of sheep, in the employment of a small farmer in the neighborhood of his native place. He was sent to this occupation, he tells us, as being of weak body; and while his flock was feeding around him, he used to busy himself in making models of mills, spinning-wheels, &c., during the day, and in studying the stars at night, like his predecessors of Chaldea. When a little older, he went into the service of another farmer, a respectable man called James Glashan, whose name well deserves to be remembered. After the labors of the day, young Ferguson used to go at night to the fields, with a blanket about him and a lighted candle, and there, laying himself down on his back, pursued for long hours his observations on the heavenly bodies. "I used to stretch," says he, "a thread, with small beads on it, at arms' length, between my eye and the stars; sliding the beads upon it, till they hid such and such stars from my eye, in order to take their apparent distances from one ano. ther; and then laying the thread down on a paper, I marked the stars thereon by the beads." My master," he adds, "at first laughed at me; but when I explained my meaning to him, he encouraged me to go on; and, that I might make fair copies in the daytime of what I had done in the night, he often worked for me himself. I shall always have a respect for the memory of that man." Having been employed by his master to carry a message to Mr. Gilchrist, the minister of Keith, he took with him the drawings he had been making, and showed them to that gentleman Mr. Gilchrist upon this put a map into his hands, and having sup

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plied him with compasses, ruler, pens, ink, and paper, desired him to take it home with him, and bring back a copy of it. "For this pleasant employment," says he, " my master gave me more time han I could reasonably expect; and often took the threshing-flail out of my hands, and worked himself, while I sat by him in the barn, busy with my compasses, ruler, and pen." This is a beautiful, we may well say, and even a touching picture-the good man so generously appreciating the worth of knowledge and genius, that, although the master, he voluntarily exchanges situations with his servant, and insists upon doing the work that must be done, himself, in order that the latter may give his more precious talents to the more appropriate vocation. We know not that there is on record an act of homage to science and learning more honorable to the author.

Having finished his map, Ferguson carried it to Mr. Gilchrist's, and there he met Mr. Grant of Achoynamey, who offered to take him into the house, and make his butler give him lessons. "I told Squire Grant," says he, "that I should rejoice to be at his house, as soon as the time was expired for which I was engaged with my present master. He very polely offered to put one in my place, but this I declined." When the period in question arrived, accordingly, he went to Mr. Grant's, being now in his twentieth year. Here he found both a good friend and a very extraordinary man, in Cantley the butler, who had first fixed his attention by a sun-dial which he happened to be engaged in painting on the village school-house, as Ferguson was passing along the road on his second visit to Mr. Gilchrist. Dialling, however, was only one of the many accomplishments of this learned butler, who, Ferguson assures us, was profoundly conversant both with arithmetic and mathematics, played on every known musical instrument except the harp, understood Latin, French, and Greek, and could let blood and prescribe for diseases. These multifarious attainments he owed, we are told, entirely to himself and to nature; on which account Ferguson designates him "God Almighty's scholar."

From this person Ferguson received instructions in Decimal Fractions and Algebra, having already made himself master of Vulgar Arithmetic by the assistance of books. Just as he was about, however, to begin Geometry, Cantley left his place for another in the establishment of the Earl of Fife, and his pupii thereupon determined to return home to his father.

Cantley, on parting with him, had made him a present of a copy of Gordon's Geographical Grammar. The book contains a description of an artificial globe, which is not, however, illustrated

by any figure. Nevertheless, "from this description," says Ferguson, "I made a globe in three weeks at my father's, having turned the ball thereof out of a piece of wood; which ball I covered with paper, and delineated a map of the world upon it; made the meridian ring and horizon of wood, covered them with paper, and graduated them; and was happy to find that by my globe (which was the first I ever saw) I could solve the problems.'

For some time after this, he was very unfortunate. Finding that it would not do to remain idle at home, he engaged in the service of a miller in the neighborhood, who, feeling probably that he could trust to the honesty and capacity of his servant, soon began to spend all his own time in the alehouse, and to leave poor Ferguson at home, not only with every thing to do, but with very frequently nothing to eat. A little oatmeal, mixed with cold water, was often, he tells us, all he was allowed. Yet in this situation he remained a year, and then returned to his father's, very much the weaker for his fasting. His next master was a Dr. Young, who having induced him to enter his service by a promise to instruct him in medicine, not only broke his engagement as to this point, but used him in other respects so tyrannically, that, although engaged for half a year, he found he could not remain beyond the first quarter, at the expiration of which, accordingly, he came away with. out receiving any wages, having "wrought the last fortnight," says as much as possible with one hand and arm, when I could not lift the other from my side." This was in consequence of a severe hurt he had received, which the doctor was too busy to look to, and by which he was confined to his bed for two months after his return home.

he, "

Reduced as he was, however, by exhaustion and actual pain, he could not be idle. "In order," says he, "to amuse myself in this low state, I made a wooden clock, the frame of which was also of wood, and it kept time pretty well. The bell on which the hammer struck the hours was the neck of a broken bottle." A short time after this, when he had recovered his health, he gave a still more extraordinary proof of his ingenuity, and the fertility of his resources for mechanical invention, by actually constructing a timepiece or watch, moved by a spring. But we must allow him to give the history of this matter in his own words.

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"Having then," he says, no idea how any time-piece could go but by weight and line, I wondered how a watch could go in all positions; and was sorry that I had never thought of asking Mr. Cantley, who could very easily have informed me. But happening one day to see a gentleman ride by my father's house, (which was close by a public road,) I asked him what o'clock it then was? He