THE activity of American inventors kept equal pace at this period in the two directions of artillery and steam appliances. In 1841 the sum of fifty thousand dollars was appropriated by Congress for experiments in ordnance, and a possible one million dollars for the “shot-and-shell proof” iron-clad “Stevens Battery” then building at Hoboken, N. Y. Perry was frequently called upon to pronounce upon the various methods of harnessing, improving, and economizing the new motor. We find him in April, 1842, testing three new appliances for cutting off steam, and, on May 17, 1842, praying that the _Fulton_ may be kept in commission for the numerous experiments which he was ordered to make. The Secretary of the Navy gladly referred the numerous petitioners for governmental approval to Captain Perry. In November the question is upon a ventilator; again, it is on the comparative merits of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, or Cumberland coal; anon, a score or so of minor inventions claimed to be improvements. Perry sometimes tried the temper of inventors who lived in the clouds and fed on azure, yet he strove to give to all, however visionary, a fair chance, for he believed in progress. He foresaw the necessity of rifled ordnance and armor, and of steamers of the maximum power for swiftness and battery: perfection in these, he knew could be obtained only by prolonged study and slow steps of attainment. The collaborator of Washington Irving in _Salmagundi_, James K. Paulding, was at this time Secretary of the Navy. The position offered to Irving and declined, was given, at Irving’s suggestion to his partner. He was known more as a literary expert than as a statesman or man for the naval portfolio, although as far back as 1814, he had been appointed by President Madison one of a Board of Naval Commissioners. He was not a warm friend to the new fashions which threatened to overthrow naval traditions, denude the sea of its romance, and the sailing ships of their glory. The ferment of ideas and the explosion of innovations around him were little to his taste. To his mind, the engineers who were beginning to invade the sacred precincts of the Department seemed little better than iconoclasts. In the _Literary Life of J. K. Paulding_ are some amusing references to his horror of the new fire-breathing monsters; and the entries in his journal show how intensely bored he was by the new ideas, and the persistency with which the advanced naval officers held them. He wrote that he “never would consent to see our grand old ships supplanted by these new and ugly sea-monsters.” He cries out in his diary, “I am _steamed_ to death.”