which have conferred so much power and wealth upon the nation, it
is unquestionable that for the greater part of them we have been
indebted to men of the humblest rank. Deduct what they have done
in this particular line of action, and it will be found that very
little indeed remains for other men to have accomplished.

Inventors have set in motion some of the greatest industries of the
world. To them society owes many of its chief necessaries,
comforts, and luxuries; and by their genius and labour daily life
has been rendered in all respects more easy as well as enjoyable.
Our food, our clothing, the furniture of our homes, the glass which
admits the light to our dwellings at the same time that it excludes
the cold, the gas which illuminates our streets, our means of
locomotion by land and by sea, the tools by which our various
articles of necessity and luxury are fabricated, have been the
result of the labour and ingenuity of many men and many minds.
Mankind at large are all the happier for such inventions, and are
every day reaping the benefit of them in an increase of individual
well-being as well as of public enjoyment.

Though the invention of the working steam-engine--the king of
machines--belongs, comparatively speaking, to our own epoch, the
idea of it was born many centuries ago. Like other contrivances
and discoveries, it was effected step by step--one man transmitting
the result of his labours, at the time apparently useless, to his
successors, who took it up and carried it forward another stage,--
the prosecution of the inquiry extending over many generations.
Thus the idea promulgated by Hero of Alexandria was never
altogether lost; but, like the grain of wheat hid in the hand of
the Egyptian mummy, it sprouted and again grew vigorously when