No. 77, his scheme for flying, whatever it might have been, whether a balloon, wings, or a machine, yet even of this he says--“which I have tried with a little boy of ten years old.” Lastly, No. 100, a water-work is spoken of as “by many years experience and labour, advantageously contrived.” And connected with this water-raising subject we may take No. 68, of which he says:--“I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high.” This is not the language of a speculative theorist. It is experimental, practical, and demonstrative. Considering the vast sums expended by the Marquis on his experimental and on his practical works, the immense variety of his inventions, and the extreme novelty and singularity of many, it is rather surprising that no account of any of them has come down to our time, through some of the many channels of information then open to receive any accounts of the marvellous. Our next surprise is that none of the many cabinets of the curious seem to have possessed any model or any curious work of his production; not even the indefatigable Tradescant, although his museum was at Lambeth, bought by Ashmole, and given by him to the Bodleian Museum at Oxford. The Marquis did, however, present a peculiarly constructed box to Charles the Second, and he offered an improvement on it to the Earl of Lotherdale,[D] remarking:--“I promise your Lordship a box, with such conveniences and rarities as that which you saw had,--though it were a presumption in me to say, I would give a subject a better qualified present than I gave my Sovereign.” The invention might refer to the Cabinet mentioned in article No. 79, of the Century, as well as include some of his ingenious escutcheons, keys, and locks. We cannot but suppose that the Marquis was intimately acquainted with the published works of the renowned Roger Bacon, born in 1212, and who died at Oxford in 1292, celebrated for his proficiency in mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry. In his “Discovery of miracles of Art,” published 1659, there occurs the following passage:--“A man may easily make an instrument, whereby one man may, in despite of all opposition, draw a thousand men to himself, or any other thing, which is tractable.” The Marquis has left in manuscript a list of nine inventions, due to the “Quint-essence of Motion,” by means of which, he says in the 8th section,--“I can stop any other man’s motion, and render it null, since from any point of the compass, I can forcibly and effectually cause a counter-buff, or absolute obstruction to such motion, which way I please; all ways being indifferent to me, to work a perfect resistance, and to countermine their intentions, or to force their motions a clear contrary way.”[E] What may be the meaning of either statement it is difficult to imagine; or even to decide whether they be really allied to each other, for although in some respects alike, each is very enigmatical.