Any person who is acquainted with the various automaton figures that have been constructed by those celebrated mechanics, Vaucanson, Kempelen, and Maelzel, will readily admit the possibility of making a horse of this description; nor should we too readily undervalue those mechanical pursuits, which, though not of any immediate national advantage, have formed the employment of one of the greatest potentates of modern Europe.[7] [7] CHARLES V., after his abdication, retired to the monastery of St. Justus, in Estramadura, where he amused himself, during the latter period of his life, in the making of automatons, in which he was assisted by a very ingenious artist named Turriano. The most celebrated of the modern automata were those made by Vaucanson, and which are thus described by Beckman:-- "One of them, which represented a flute-player sitting, performed twelve tunes, and, as we are assured, by wind issuing from its mouth into a German flute, the holes of which it opened and shut with its fingers." "The second was a standing figure, which in like manner played on the Provençal shepherd's pipe, which it held in its left hand, and with the right beat upon a drum." "The third was a duck, of the natural size, which moved its wings, exhibited all the gestures of that animal, quacked like a duck, drank water, ate corn, and then, after a little time, let drop behind it something that resembled the excrement of a duck."[8] [8] History of Inventions, vol. iii. p. 326.