r
people who haunt insane asylums and prisons, and scenes of domestic
affliction and courts, for the sake of gratifying a gross love of
excitement, which they disguise to themselves under various ingenious
pretences. But the tendency of the age is to discourage such meddling
and prying into the mysteries and miseries of humanity. It is low, it is
mean, and the better nurtured and higher minded leave it to boors--be
they of Peoria or the Fifth avenue.

Well, our marquis, then the first gentleman in Great Britain, one of
'the barons of England who fought for the crown,' when in France as
particular friend of His Majesty Charles II, went one day on such a
party of pleasure, and somewhat annoyed his pretty companion by
persisting in listening to the drivelling talk of a madman--one Solomon
de Caus--who, while he rattled his chains, talked of a great invention
he had made, whereby chariots were to go by steam, and weights be
raised, and all manner of brave work be effected, at small cost or labor
to man. And the marquis talked to the madman, and the lady laughed, and
the chains rattled, and the straw rustled, and--well, it _has_ been made
the subject of a very good picture--which you, reader, may have seen,
either in original or engraving.

I will not pretend to say how far what is known of the life of this
French inventor is reconcilable with this story of the madhouse. It is
certain that Solomon de Caus, a French engineer, architect, and author,
died about 1635, that he was born probably at Dieppe, and devoted
himself to mathematics. The marquis might have met him in a better place
than a bedlam, since in 1612 De Caus went to London, where he was
attached to the Prince of Wales, and afterward to Charles I. From 1614
to 1620 he lived in Heidelberg at the court of the Elector Frederic V,
and returned to France in 1624, where he received the title of royal
engineer and architect. More than this, he wrote books on mechanics, in
one of which, _Les Raysons des Forces Mouvantes_, he speaks of the
expansion and condensation of steam in a manner which has been supposed
to suggest the alternate action of the piston, the principle of the
steam engine, and, finally, 'the great discovery' of and to the Marquis
of Worcester. How far all this may be supposed to contradict the lady's
story, I will not say. Certain it is, that many a man who has done quite
as well in worldly honors, has, after all, come to misery and madness
through unfo