The general reader will be very likely to overlook one important fact, a golden hinge on which more rests than at first appears in the following narrative; and, therefore, a word of remark may not be altogether thrown away, in calling attention to the circumstance. There are very many persons, most intelligent and well informed on other matters, who have yet to learn that all invention is progressive in a regular series. There may be a long series of elementary principles developed without the occurrence of a single practical result, practical as regards any useful application to supply man’s wants. Then may arise a series combining these elements, so to speak, and for the first time producing a new instrument, machine, or engine. When a new machine is produced, we do not say, Why it only consists of a number of wheels and cylinders, therefore, surely there is nothing new in it! All the parts may be old, and yet the combination be quite new. To analyse an invention into its several parts, would be equivalent to finding that a poem was only composed of the letters of the alphabet, or the words in a dictionary. But there is another point of view not lightly to be passed over. Take this instance of the steam engine. We find a talented Scotch writer wondering that Englishmen take the trouble to claim the invention of the steam engine for the Marquis of Worcester, because of the “doubtfulness” existing respecting it, at the same time that he accompanies this statement with a large amount of evidence, but evidence which he does not fully admit. He thus places himself very much in the position of a philosopher, who should adopt as his theory some peculiar notion to the effect that the letter A, or the numeral 1, could be dispensed with, in consequence of some “doubtfulness existing” in respect to its value; and that, indeed, to retain either any longer would only be evidence of a “little national rivalry.” Although this may appear too absurd in this light, something very similar has been proposed as a kind of compromise in the contest between England and France, the “little national rivalry” between which countries might be settled, would Englishmen but give up all further advocacy of the Marquis of Worcester’s claim. This is not the reason given, but it is the happy result which would follow; and it is urged against the invention, that there is so much “doubtfulness existing” about it, that it is a wonder any one takes further trouble in the matter. So far as we can see, its value is A, or 1, it is the first of a series, it is the golden hinge, or link, on which all hangs; take this away, and we sever the head from the main body. Will any one in future be found to take up and maintain so foolish a line of argument? The Marquis of Worcester was unquestionably the Inventor of the Steam Engine in the first of its three stages, as a fire engine. Previous to the Marquis of Worcester, all that had been done, was solely in the series developing