* Sir Richard Phillips says: "In 1778 Thomas Paine proposed, in America, this application of steam." ("Million of Facts," p. 776.) As Sir Richard assisted Fulton in his experiments on the Thames, he probably heard from him the fact about Paine, though, indeed, in the controversy between Rumsey and Fitch, Paine's priority to both was conceded. In America, however, the priority really belonged to the eminent mechanician William Henry, of Lancaster, Pa. When Fitch visited Henry, in 1785, he was told by him that he was not the first to devise steam-navigation; that he himself had thought of it in 1776, and mentioned it to Andrew Ellicott; and that Thomas Paine, while a guest at his house in 1778, had spoken to him on the subject I am indebted to Mr. John W. Jordan, of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for notes from the papers of Henry, his ancestor, showing that Paine's scheme was formed without knowledge of others, and that it contemplated a turbine application of steam to a wheel. Both he and Henry, as they had not published their plans, agreed to leave Fitch the whole credit. Fitch publicly expressed his gratitude to Paine. Thurston adds that Paine, in 1788, proposed that Congress should adopt the whole matter for the national benefit. ("History of the Growth of the Steam Engine," pp. 252, 253.) It will not be forgotten that in the same year in which Paine startled William Henry with a plan for steam-navigation, namely in 1778, he wrote his sublime sentence about the "Religion of Humanity." The steamships, which Emerson described as enormous shuttles weaving the races of men into the woof of humanity, have at length rendered possible that universal human religion which Paine foresaw. In that old Lancaster mansion of the Henrys, which still stands, Paine left his spectacles, now in our National Museum; they are strong and far-seeing; through them looked eyes held by visions that the world is still steadily following. One cannot suppress some transcendental sentiment in view of the mystical harmony of this man's inventions for human welfare,--mechanical, political, religious. Of his gunpowder motor, mention has already been made (i., p. 240). On this he was engaged about the time that he was answering Bishop Watson's book on the "Age of Reason." The two occupations are related. He could not believe, he said, that the qualities of gunpowder--the small and light grain with maximum of force--were meant only for murder, and his faith in the divine humanity is in the sentence. To supersede destroying gunpowder with beneficent gunpowder, and to supersede the god of battles with the God of Love, were kindred aims in Paine's heart Through the fiery furnaces of his time he had come forth with every part of his being welded and beaten and shaped together for this Human Service. Patriotism, in the