_Artis et Naturæ proles_, 'the offspring of Nature and of Art.' Such is the motto with which the Marquis of Worcester prefaced his 'Century of the Names and Scantlings of such inventions as he could in the year 1663 call to mind,' and which he presented to Government in the bold hope that by their purchase or other disposition he might even out-go the six or seven hundred thousand pounds already sacrificed for the king, as he asserts, but rather meaning, I imagine, that he might get some portion of it back again. Let no one laugh at the character of many of these 'Scantlings.' Science was young then; thaumaturgy, or the working of mere wonders, was still the elder sister of art; astrology might be found in every street; alchemists still labored in lonely towers all over England; and witches were still burned to the glory of GOD. The 'Mathematicall Magick, or the Wonders that may be performed by Mechanicall Geometry'--now by chance open before me--by Bishop Wilkins, the brother-in-law of Cromwell, with its disquisitions on 'Perpetuall Motion,' 'Volant Automata,' and 'Perpetuall Lamps,' passed for sound sense, and with it passed much occult nonsense of a darker dye. Manners and morals were as yet badly organized. Gambling was a daily amusement with all the gentry, and its imitators; for the Revolution, though it had very promptly driven out of England the very little merriment and cheerfulness which the Reformation had spared, had by no means taken away vice, and to cheat at cards was a part of all play in the best society--which it had not been in the olden time. Political plots were still rife, and cipher alphabets, signals by knots and signs, deadly secret weapons, and devices to escape prison were in daily demand, just as patent apple-parers and ice-cream freezers are at the present day. The marquis, who had lived well through his times, knew what would be popular, and, though a man of honor as times went, and a pious Christian, never dreamed that he did not play his part as a good citizen in supplying such grotesque wants.