Soon after the publication of this work, Morland returned to England, and resided near the court till his death. The celebrated John Evelyn mentioned having paid a visit to him at his house at Hammersmith, in 1695, when he had become aged and blind, but was still remarkable for his mechanical ingenuity. "On the 25th of October," says Evelyn, "the Archbishop and myself went to Hammersmith to visit Sir Samuel Morland, who was entirely blind; a very mortifying sight. He showed us his invention of writing (short-hand), which was very ingenious; also his wooden kalendar, which instructed him all by feeling; and other pretty and useful inventions of mills, pumps, &c.; and the pump he had erected, that serves water to his garden and to passengers, with an inscription, and brings from a filthy part of the Thames near it a most perfect and pure water."[3] He died at Hammersmith, in January 1696; and before his death, as a penance for his past life, was guilty of the eccentricity of burying in the ground six feet deep a great collection of music which he possessed.[4] DENIS PAPIN, 1688. (19.) Denis Papin, a native of Blois in France, and professor of mathematics at Marbourg, is the name which stands next recorded in the progressive invention of the steam engine. To this philosopher is due the discovery of one of the qualities of steam, to the proper management of which is owing much of the efficacy of the modern steam engine. [Pg037] Papin was born at Blois in France. He devoted his youth to the study of medicine, in which he took a degree at Paris. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes having driven him into exile, he went to England, where the celebrated Boyle associated him in several of his experiments with the air-pump, and caused him to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1681. Having been invited to Germany by the Landgrave of Hesse, he discharged during several years the duties of professor of mathematics at the university of Marbourg, where he died in 1710. Notwithstanding his discoveries respecting the agency of steam, he never received any mark of distinction in his own country. The truth is, the importance and value of these investigations were not apparent until long afterwards. This philosopher conceived the idea of producing a moving power by means of a piston working in a cylinder, in the manner which we shall now briefly explain. [Illustration: _Fig._ 7.]