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Page 33
Now, to discourse on all these, as they deserve, would be a task of no
ordinary magnitude, but the subject is an interesting one, and to treat
of it ever so cursorily might not unprofitably occupy a reflective
moment or two. Water is the first topic it is laid upon me to talk
about, and I begin with it all the more readily because it suggests a
sense of freshness, and thoughts which may float our enterprise
prosperously into port.
I. Water, as already hinted, is an element of vast account in the
economy of nature, and is a recreation to the heart and a delight to the
eye of both man and beast. To have a plentiful supply of it is one of
the greatest blessings of God to the creature, and to be able to bestow
it wisely and employ it usefully is one of the most serviceable of human
arts. It is too valuable a servant to suffer to go idle, and many are
the offices it might do us, if, as it travels from the mountains to the
sea-board, we caught it in its course, harnessed it to our chariot, and
guided it to our aim. We should turn it to account every inch of its
progress, and compel it, as it can, to minister to our requirements by
its irresistible energy. Its merely mechanical power is immense, and
this is due in great part to its incompressibility; for it is in virtue
of this quality alone we can, by means of it, achieve feats not
otherwise feasible. How else could we have raised to its sublime height
that stupendous bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and which is the
wonder of the beholder, as it is the boast of the designer? It stands
where it does by the help of some mechanism indeed, but the true giant
that lifted it on his shoulders and bore it to its airy elevation was
the incompressible force of water, a fluid which is, strangely, the
simple product of the combination of two elastic transparent gases,
oxygen and hydrogen, neither of which apart has the thew and sinew of
its offspring. Nay, it is this single element, which, acted on by heat
or acting through machinery, fetches and carries for us over the wide
globe, and is fast weaving into one living web the far-scattered
interests of the world.
Water was in primitive times utilised into a motive power by the help of
a mechanism of rude design, which yet is hardly out of date, and might
recently be seen in its original, still more in modified form, in
certain back-quarters of civilisation. A stream, guided by a sluice, was
made to play upon four vertical paddle-blades, attached to a shaft which
they caused to revolve, and which moved a millstone, resting upon
another through which it passed. It was a primitive mill, which
superseded the still more primitive hand-mill, or quern; and I myself
have seen it at work in the Shetland Islands, and even the north of
Scotland, though it is now done away with even there, still more farther
south, and its place supplied and its work done by overshot and
under-shot wheel-gear, and improved machinery attached, of less or more
complexity. One of the most recent improvements is the Turbine, a sort
of Barker's mill; it is of great power, small compass, and acts under a
good fall with a minimum expenditure of water-power.
Passing from the consideration of water as a motive power in its natural
state, I ask you to notice briefly the gigantic force it can be made to
develop under the action of heat. In its normal form the power of water
is due, as I have said, to its incompressibility; in the state of
vapour, to which it is reduced by heat, its power is due to the counter
force of expansion. It was when confined as a state prisoner in the
Tower of London that the Marquis of Worcester began to speculate on the
possibilities of steam, though he little dreamed of its more important
applications, and the incalculable services it might be made to render
to the cause of humanity. Suddenly, one day, his musings in his solitude
were interrupted by the rattling of the lid of a kettle, which was
boiling away on the fire beside him, when, being of a philosophic vein,
he commenced to inquire after the cause; and he soon reasoned himself
into the conclusion that the motive power lay in the tension of the
vapour, and that the maintenance of this must be due to successive
additions of heat. The thought was a seed sown in a fit soil, for it led
to experiments which confirmed the supposition, and inaugurated others
that have borne fruit, as we see. It was a great moment in the annals of
discovery, and from that time to this the genius of improvement has
moved onward with unprecedented strides; and this in the application of
steam-power as well as the results, stupendous as these last have been.
For as there is no department of industry that has not made immense
advances since, none on which steam has not directly or indirectly been
brought to bear with effect; so there has been no end to the ingenuity
and ingenious devices by which steam has been coaxed into subjection to
human use and made the pliant minister of the master, man. All these
results follow as a natural consequence from the first discovery of its
motive power by the Marquis of Worcester, and the subsequent invention
of James Watt, by which the force detected was rendered uniform, instead
of fitful and spasmodic, as it had been before. And yet, important as
was the discovery of the one, and ingenious as is the invention of the
other, both are of slight account in the presence of the great fact of
nature observed by the English nobleman and humoured by the Scottish
artisan. The _genie_ whom the one captured and the other tamed, is the
great magic worker, apart from whose subtle strength their ingenuity had
been wasted, and had come to naught.
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