hanical invention of the day. They are
automata of the most perfect kind, rendering the engine and
machine-maker in a great measure independent of inferior workmen. For
the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy,
do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. They will
repeat their operations a thousand times without tiring, or varying one
hair's breadth in their action; and will turn out, without complaining,
any quantity of work, all of like accuracy and finish. Exercising as
they do so remarkable an influence on the development of modern
industry, we now propose, so far as the materials at our disposal will
admit, to give an account of their principal inventors, beginning with
the school of Bramah.

[1] 1 Samuel, ch. xiii. v. 21.

[2] State Papers, Dom. 1621, Vol. 88, No. 112.

[3] Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 2nd
Series, 117.

[4] Dr. Kirwan, late President of the Royal Irish Academy, who had
travelled much on the continent of Europe, used to relate, when
speaking of the difficulty of introducing improvements in the arts and
manufactures, and of the prejudices entertained for old practices,
that, in Normandy, the farmers had been so long accustomed to the use
of plough's whose shares were made entirely of WOOD that they could not
be prevailed on to make trial of those with IRON; that they considered
them to be an idle and useless innovation on the long-established
practices of their ancestors; and that they carried these prejudices so
far as to force the government to issue an edict on the subject. And
even to the last they were so obstinate in their attachment to
ploughshares of wood that a tumultuous opposition was made to the
enforcement of the edict, which for a short time threatened a rebellion
in the province.--PARKES, Chemical Essays, 4th Ed. 473.

[5] EDOUARD FOURNIER, Vieux-Neuf, i. 339.

[6] Memoires de l' Academie des Sciences, 6 Feb. 1826.

[7] Farmer's Magazine, 1817, No. ixxi. 291.

[8] Vieux-Neuf, i. 228; Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 742.

[9] Vieux-Neuf, i. 19. See also Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 803.

[10] Mr. Hallam, in his Introduction to the History of Europe,
pronounces the following remarkable eulogium on this extraordinary
genius:--"If any doubt could be harboured, not only as to the right of
Leonardo da Vinci to stand as 'the first name of the fifteenth century,
which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so