ve that mankind's
knowledge will be so much increased that we shall be able to travel fifty
miles an hour. The poor 'dotard!' exclaimed the philosophic infidel,
Voltaire, in the complaisancy of his pity. But who is the dotard now?"

THE ATMOSPHERIC RAILROAD ANTICIPATED.

_First Voice_.

"But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?"

_Second Voice_.

"The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind."

--_The Ancient Mariner_.

This is the exact principle of the atmospheric railroad, and it is,
perhaps, worthy of note as a curious fact that such a means of locomotion
should have occurred to Coleridge so long ago.

W. Y. Bernhard Smith, in _Notes and Queries_.

EARLY STEAM CARRIAGES.

Stuart, in his "Historical and Descriptive Anecdotes of Steam Engines and
of their Inventors and Improvers," gives a description of what was
supposed to be the first model of a steam carriage. The constructor was
a Frenchman named Cugnot, who exhibited it before the Marshal de Saxe in
1763. He afterwards built an engine on the same model at the cost of the
French monarch. But when set in motion it projected itself onward with
such force that it knocked down a wall which stood in its way, and--its
power being considered too great for ordinary use--it was put aside as
being a dangerous machine, and was stowed away in the Arsenal Museum at
Paris. It is now to be seen in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers.

Mr. Smiles also remarks that "An American inventor, named Oliver Evans,
was also occupied with the same idea, for, in 1772, he invented a steam
carriage to travel on common roads; and, in 1787, he obtained from the
State of Maryland the exclusive right to make and use steam carriages.
The invention, however, never came into practical use.

"It also appears that, in 1784, William Symington, the inventor of the
steamboat, conceived the idea of employing steam power in the propulsion
of carriages; and, in 1786, he had a working model of a steam carriage
constructed which he submitted to the professors and other scientific
gentlemen of Edinburgh. But the state of the Scotch roads was at that
time so horrible that he considered it impracticable to proceed further
with his scheme, and he shortly gave it up in favour of his project of