It must have been about this period of his life that the Marquis of Worcester made one of his most singular and perplexing mechanical experiments, which he exhibited at the Tower before Charles I., several of his Court, some foreign ambassadors, and the lieutenant of that fortress. As he names Sir William Balfour (who held the latter appointment from 1630 to 1641) we can arrive at an approximate date. The mechanical surprise which he states he thus presented to gratify his royal master, was no other than a gigantic wheel, 14 feet in diameter, weighted with 40 weights of 50 lbs. each, equal to 2000 lbs., by means of which we are left to infer that the wheel maintained a rotatory motion, without assistance from any external aid whatever; that it was in fact, a realization of that long sought for curiosity--perpetual motion. As he wrote deliberately a statement of this circumstance fifteen years later, or more, which he afterwards printed, we are left without any grounds to suppose otherwise than that he deceived himself, or was deceived, from interested motives, by persons in his employment. The circumstance is scarcely worth notice except as a singular proof that such a hallucination could exist in the mind of the same genius that perfected the first practical steam-engine. We can only say that if the mystery could be cleared up, although it would be of little or no value to mathematics or mechanics, it would go far to elevate the scientific character of the Marquis, though he was not the only celebrity of his time infatuated with a thorough belief in the possibility of solving the paradox. The Marquis of Worcester, born at the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, is not mentioned as appearing at the Court of James I; his courtier life most likely commenced later, in the reign of Charles I, who was about his own age, and with whose career, the fortunes of both the Marquis of Worcester, and his father, family, and friends, were unhappily but too intimately interwoven. It requires a visit to Raglan Castle fully to realise the grandeur, nobleness, and strength of that romantically situated, and almost regal stronghold. It wears all the solemnity that antiquity can bestow, it is so gothic, so solid, and embowered, as it were, in a constant dubious shade. Then it is so extensive in its bounds, its apartments are so capacious, and its massy walls so lofty and so finely chiseled and proportioned, that when we consider there is no quarry within any reasonable distance, nor any river or stream for conveyance, the whole structure assumes the mystery of absolute romance. Its historic associations also rivet the attention of every beholder who is acquainted with the part it played in determining the fate of that great struggle between the Crown and the Parliament, which commenced in 1640, and ended with the establishment of a Commonwealth.