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published in 1663, he has left a vague and ambiguous account of a new method of raising weights, which is generally thought to be the first proposal to use steam for that purpose. But the first to actually make a machine worked by steam was Papin, a Huguenot exile, who in 1685 made experiments with his condenser before the Royal Society. This first attempt prepared the way for others: Papin's condenser was followed by Savery's steam-pump, and that again by Newcomen's; and this being given to Watt to repair, became in the hands of that great inventor the double-acting steam-engine which has had so much effect on modern industry.

There was, however, one application of steam which from the time of Papin had been tried in vain; and it was in France that the first successful steamboat was constructed. Nor was this fortuitous : internal navigation had always been of more importance there than in England; and canals had existed in that country more than a hundred years before the first was constructed here. The most important school of the century, that of the Encyclopedists, was as far as possible aiming at construction rather than destruction; and while the greater minds made scientific discovery their aim, the lesser found a congenial task in applying science to industry. So strong was this movement that it was not confined to the progressive classes: the inventor of the steamboat was not an emancipated philosophe like Vaucanson, nor a revolutionary manufacturer like Montgolfier, but a young noble who all his life opposed that general transformation of society in which, as regards one particular movement, he took so notable a part.

Claude François Dorothée, eldest son of the Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans, was born in 1751. The family of Jouffroy had once been of great account in Franche-Comté, and one branch had become possessed of the lands of Abbans and the old château there, built in the eleventh century to guard the road leading up to the Jura. A few miles off, at Quingey, there was a Dominican convent, where the boys from the château went to school, and the eldest early showed a taste for mathematics. Strange things were coming to pass in those very years. Beyond the range of the Jura, which bounded the southern horizon, lay Switzerland, and Geneva, and Ferney; and Paris was but 200 miles away-nay, the state of the serfs in FrancheComté itself was already kindling the generous anger of Voltaire. Yet probably the tumults of the world without little troubled the good Dominicans of Quingey and their scholars; for "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not cease." But when such seed is sowing, who shall foretell the harvest? In his childhood,

however, Jouffroy felt other influences besides the effete remains of Feudalism and Catholicism. At Quingey dwelt an old officer named D'Auxiron, who with the help of his friend Marshal Follenay had invented a steamboat, which, as we shall see, had little success; yet through their efforts young Jouffroy was first attracted to the work of his life. For the rest, he was a studious boy, much given to joinery, wood-turning, and other mechanical pursuits.

Had he not been noble, he might perhaps have been left to prepare himself thus for his strange career, with such help as his friends at Quingey could afford; but as it was, he had to go through a certain routine. At thirteen he became page to Madame la Dauphine, and as soon as he was old enough entered the army. What was his course of life when at court we do not know, though we may imagine that the boy had many wistful thoughts of his books. and his carpentry in the old château. His career in the army was short and unfortunate. To one of his temperament, at once practical and independent, the duties of an officer in time of peace, the minute regulations, the drills and parades, which bore so little relation to the actual necessities of war, were irksome in the extreme his neglect led to a strong remonstrance from his colonel, which was immediately followed by a challenge from the subaltern; and in a few days. Jouffroy was on his way to the Îles Marguerites under a lettre de cachet, his military life at an end for the time being. His prison was that in which the Man of the Iron Mask had worn out his mysterious life, and from which on the very threshold of the Revolution fiery D'Esprémenil of the Parlement was to come back loyal, and repentant. Here Jouffroy remained for two weary years; but the troubles of life depend on what you bring as well as on what you find. To all strong natures it is at least in some small measure true that—

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

He soon found employment well suited to him. Along the shores of the Mediterranean were stationed the galleys to which criminals were sent, and from which the last of the Huguenot prisoners had been released only a few years before. These galleys attracted his attention, yet not on account of their terrible histories: they had moved under the sighs of the wretched, but always in accordance with the laws of mechanics. Jouffroy composed a work as the result of his observations, and thus began his true career.

Set free in 1775, he went to Paris, then in one of the great crises of its history. Fourteen centuries had passed since Julian there VOL, CCLVIII. NO. 1849.

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repudiated the new religion of Christ, and put himself under the protection of the immortal gods, making a last vain effort to stay the course of human progress-fourteen centuries during which Christendom had grown and flourished, and Paris had grown and flourished with it, till it became its very heart; and now in this same Paris, the Paris of St. Genevieve, the capital of the most Christian kings, and the stronghold of the League, there had arisen a spirit more dangerous to Christianity than all the power of the apostate emperor. Nor was the Church alone threatened. Through centuries the Counts of Paris, become kings of France, had laboured on, laying fief to fief and province to province, till they had transformed themselves from the chiefs of a feudal aristocracy into the most absolute of monarchs, and had built up the great France that we know. And now their good city of Paris was ripening for revolt; Rousseau had succeeded Voltaire; and the attack on the altar had been followed by the attack on the throne. The old Louis XV. had just been gathered to his fathers, and the new reign was opening with hopes destined never to be realised. The American rebellion was inspiring all lovers of freedom. Philosophic Turgot was ready, like a second Richelieu, to mould the institutions of the old régime into harmony with the ideas of the age, and thus effect the revolution from above, if only the young king would support him against the clamours of the court; and Paris was eagerly watching the outcome of the contest, though none foresaw how terrible a penalty for his weakness Louis would one day pay. But to Jouffroy, who was neither a philosophe nor a pensioner, and who foresaw as little as any one what the future had in store for him, there were matters of much more interest than the struggles of Turgot. The steam-engine, with Watt's earlier improvements, had just been introduced into France by Perier, which lent great force to proposals for moving ships by steam, and Jouffroy's old friends from Quingey had come to Paris to push their

invention.

The first attempt to apply steam to navigation was made by the inventor of the first rudimentary steam-engine. Denis Papin was born at Blois in 1647, of a distinguished Huguenot family. After taking the degree of doctor of medicine at the Protestant University of Saumur, he settled in Paris, where by his scientific attainments he gained the friendship of Leibnitz and Huyghens. But he soon found that in France there was no career open to a Protestant; for although the Revocation of the Edict was still some years distant, there were already signs in plenty portending the coming storm. Therefore, just as four years before Chardin had returned to the East,

so in 1675 Papin betook himself to England. There he invented his once-celebrated digester, a machine for softening bones, and his condenser, which was the first steam-engine; and he was presented to the Royal Society by Boyle, whom he assisted in some important experiments. He was also invited to Venice, to found an academy; and he was not without honour in his own country, for only five years after the Revocation he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences. In 1687 he left England for Marburg, here some of his family had taken refuge, and in the next year Charles of Hesse, "the crowned artisan," made him professor of mathematics in the university there. His position, however, was a very unpleasant one: the other professors looked upon him as an interloper, and intrigued against him at every opportunity; while, to add to his embarrassment, he became involved in a dispute with the rulers of the Huguenot Church. The causes of this quarrel are not known : perhaps his birth was his only fault; for he was nearly related to Pajon, who had been expelled from his chair at Sedan on account of his Pelagianism, and a kinsman of the minister Isaac Papin, who in his exile had turned Catholic after reading Bossuet's "Variations of the Protestant Churches." However that may be, the fact remains that the most eminent of the exiles for conscience' sake was expelled from the French Church at Marburg. Thus the Huguenots, who in their days of power, while the willing tools of the Condés and the Rohans, had indeed been notorious for their intolerance, even carried the same spirit into exile with them, a spectacle to the nations. At length, in 1707, he determined to return to England. He had long thought of applying his condenser to navigation, and he now embarked, with his wife, who was one of the fugitives, and his family, on board a steam-vessel of his own construction, to go down the Weser. Having with difficulty reached the frontier of Hanover, he was stopped by the bargees, who accused him of violating their corporate rights. He set off to appeal to a magistrate, and in his absence his boat was broken in pieces by the mob. He died some years afterwards in great misery, having made no further attempt to construct a steamboat. But had he done so he must inevitably have failed, for navigation by steam, to be really successful, required a steam-engine with constant action, and this had not yet been invented. In fact, experiments were made from time to time, notably by Jonathan Hulls in 1736, but without success; and when Jouffroy arrived in Paris in 1775 the problem was still unsolved.

In 1772 D'Auxiron had obtained a fifteen years' patent for his steamboat, and had formed, with Follenay's aid, a company to work it,

Perier, who, although himself without originality, had obtained a great reputation by introducing Watt's steam-engine into France, reported against the new steamboat; and this so alarmed the shareholders that he had to be taken into partnership in order to satisfy them. But the opposition of the boatmen and others interested in the existing means of transport proved a more formidable obstacle: the same passions which had destroyed Hargreaves' spinning-jenny at Blackburn and Papin's steamboat in Germany were aroused on the Seine; and on the eve of launching the boat-house was broken open, and the vessel much injured. The members of the company were furious, and attacked D'Auxiron as the most accessible person, a lawsuit being the consequence. Moreover, a serious difference showed itself between Perier and Jouffroy, who had now been admitted to the counsels of the promoters. The former calculated that the force to be exerted by the steam-engine would be equal to that exerted by a horse in towing the same boat; while Jouffroy insisted that it must be greater, in fact four times as much, because the point of application of the force was now in the water. Perier's views prevailed, and Jouffroy, leaving Paris with a confidence soon strengthened by the complete failure of his rival's experiments, returned to his father's house.

There was a curious legend attached to one of the towers of the château. It was related that in days long past a crusading seigneur of Abbans, who had fallen into the hands of the Moslems, lay in prison grieving for his young wife, when a good fakir gave him a ring by means of which he could transport himself home, on condition that he returned before break of day. The peasants believed that the tower was revisited by the ghostly crusader, and that those passing by it at midnight, which none ever did, saw it lighted up and heard the rattle of the prisoner's chains. Now, soon after Jouffroy's return, a great fear fell on all the neighbourhood; for beams of light, as if from a furnace, could be seen issuing from the old tower, and some who lived near even heard the clank of iron. But it was no crusader, borne over the seas by the magic ring of the fakir: it was the making of a new talisman for all peoples; it was Jouffroy constructing the machinery of his first steamboat. He had turned his back on Paris, with its controversies and its intrigues; he had left Perier to try what he could do with all the resources of capital, machinery, and skilful workmanship; and he had come back to the old château, to make a steamboat on his own plan, with no help save that of a village brazier.

Jouffroy had an aunt in a religious foundation at Baume-les

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