Poor 'maniac' imprisoned for a discovery, which, carried onward to practical results, has almost revolutionized the world:

'SOLOMON DE CAUS, who was shut up for his supposed madness in the Bicêtre at Paris, seems to have been the first to conceive the idea of employing steam for moving carriages on land as well as ships at sea. MARION DE LORME, in a letter to the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, dated Paris, February, 1641, thus describes a visit paid to this celebrated mad-house in the company of the English Marquis of Worcester: We were crossing the court, and I, more dead than alive with fright, kept close to my companion's side, when a frightful face appeared behind some immense bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed: 'I am not mad! I am not mad! I have made a discovery that would enrich the country that adopted it.'

What has he discovered?' asked our guide.

"Oh!' answered the keeper, shrugging his shoulders, something trifling enough: you would never guess it; it is the use of the steam of boiling water.' I began to laugh. This_man,' continued the keeper, 'is named SOLOMON DE CAUS: he came from Normandy four years ago, to present to the King a statement of the wonderful effects that might be produced from his invention. To listen to him, you would imagine that with steam you could navigate ships, move carriages; in fact, there is no end to the miracles which, he insists upon it, could be performed. The Cardinal sent the madman away without listening to him. SOLOMON DE CAUS, far from being discouraged, followed the Cardinal wherever he went, with the most determined perseverance, who, tired of finding him forever in his path, and annoyed at his folly, shut him up in the Bicêtre.''

For the experiments and 'trials' of STEPHENSON, in inventing and perfecting several kinds of 'land-carriages,' or locomotives, we must refer the reader to the volume under notice. Meantime, we present a few anecdotes connected with the futile experiments of those who had preceded him:

'THE first English model of a steam carriage, was made in 1784, by WILLIAM MURDOCH, the friend and assistant of WATT. It was on the high-pressure principle, and ran on three wheels. The boiler was heated by a spirit-lamp; and the whole machine was of very diminutive dimensions, standing little more than a foot high. Yet on one occasion the little engine went so fast, that it out-ran the speed of its inventor. Mr. BUCKLE says, that one night, after returning from his duties in the mine at Redruth, in Cornwall, MURDOCH determined to try the working of his model locomotive. For this purpose he had recourse to the walk leading to the church, about a mile from the town. The walk was rather narrow, and was bounded on either side by high hedges. It was a dark night, and MURDOCH set out alone to try his experiment. Having lit his lamp, the water shortly began to boil, and off started the engine with the inventor after it. He soon heard distant shouts of despair. It was too dark to perceive objects; but he shortly found, on following up the machine, that the cries for assistance proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going toward the town on business, was met on the lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One in propria persona. No farther steps, however, were taken by MURDOCH to embody his idea of à locomotive carriage in a more practical form.'

'IN the course of the following year, the same idea was taken up by Doctor JAMES ANDERSON, of Edinburgh, who proposed, in his 'Recreations of Agriculture,' the general adoption of railways worked by horse-power, to be carried along the existing turnpike-roads. Doctor ANDERSON dilated upon his idea with glowing enthusiasm. ́Diminish carriage expense but one farthing,' said he, and you widen the circle of intercourse; you form, as it were, a new creation, not only of stones and earth, and trees and plants, but of men also, and, what is more, of industry, happiness, and joy.' The cost of all articles of human consumption would, he alleged, be thus reduced, agriculture promoted, distances diminished, the country brought nearer to the town, and the town to the country. The number of horses required to carry on the traffic of the kingdom would be greatly diminished, and a general prosperity would, he insisted, be the result of the adoption of his system. Indeed,' said he, it is scarcely possible to contemplate an institution from which would result a greater quantity of harmony, peace, and comfort to persons living in the country, than would naturally result from the introduction of rail-roads.'

"THE first steam-carriage adapted for actual use on common roads, was, on the whole, tolerably successful. It excited considerable interest in the remote district, near to the Land's End, where it had been constructed. Being so far removed from

the great movements and enterprise of the commercial world, TREVETHICK and VIVIAN determined upon exhibiting their machine in the metropolis, with a view, if possible, to its practical adoption for the purpose intended. In furtherance of this object, they set out with the locomotive to Plymouth, whence a sea-captain, named VIVIAN, was to convey it in his vessel to town. COLERIDGE relates, that while the vehicle was proceeding along the road toward the port, at the top of its speed, and had just carried away a portion of the rails of a gentleman's garden, ANDREW VIVIAN descried ahead of them a closed toll-gate, and called out to TREVETHICK, who was behind, to slacken speed. He immediately shut off the steam; but the momentum was so great, that the carriage proceeded some distance, coming dead up, however, just on the right side of the gate, which was opened like lightning by the toll-keeper.

"What have us got to pay here?' asked VIVIAN.

The poor toll-man, trembling in every limb, his teeth chattering in his head, essayed a reply: 'Na-na-na-na

What have us got to pay, I say?'

"No-noth-nothing to pay! My de-dear Mr. DEVIL, do drive on as fast as you can! Nothing to pay!''

Our readers will miss a rare treat, if they do not secure an early perusal of this most interesting work.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. By E. J. TRELAWNY. In one Volume: pp. 304. Boston: TICKNOR and Fields.

Do you remark one little thing about the title of this book ?— ‘SHELLEY AND BYRON?' This is explanatory and satisfactory, and explains the quo animo of the writer. We shall waste few words in commendation of this book: it requires none, simply because its subject at once 'satisfies the sentiment.' For the first thirty pages, the inference we think will be irresistible, that the writer is an English 'SNOB,' of the first THACKERAY breed. Thenceforth, however, every thing is in his favor. Hence a few extracts. He writes

with ease and spirit; seems forgetful of himself, in any offensive sense; and speaks naturally of all those things 'which he saw, and part of which he was: '

'BYRON'S literary was, like ALEXANDER'S military career, one great triumph; but while he was at the zenith of his popularity, he railed against the world's injustice. Was this insanity, or what polite doctors now call a softening of the brain? I suppose, by the world' he meant no more than the fashionable set he had seen squeezed together in a drawing-room, and by all the press that attacked him; the fraction of it which took its tone from some small but active clique: as to friends deserting him, that could not be, for it was his boast that he never had attempted to make any after his school hallucinations. But in the pride of his strength, and the audacity of his youth, enemies he certainly did make, and when they saw an opportunity of getting rid of a supercilious rival, they instinctively took advantage of it. As to the Poet's differences with his wife, they must have appeared absurd to men who were as indifferent to their own wives as were the majority of BYRON's enemies.

'When the most worldly wise and unimpassioned marry, they take a leap in the dark, and can no more foresee the consequences, than poets-owls blinded by the light of their vain imagination. The worldly wise, not having risked or anticipated much, stand to their bargain for better or worse,' and say nothing about it; but the irascible tribe of songsters, when they find that marriage is not exactly what they imagined it to be, 'proclaim their griefs from the house-top,' as BYRON did.

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Very pretty books have been written on the 'Loves of the Angels,' and 'Loves of the Poets,' and Love universal; but when lovers are paired and caged together in holy matrimony, the curtain is dropped, and we hear no more of them. It may be, they moult their feathers and lose their song. BYRON's marriage must not be classed with those of the Poets, but of the worldly wise; he was not under the illusion of love, but of money. If he had left his wife and cut society, (the last he was resolved on doing,) he would have been content: that his wife and society should have cast him off, was a mortification his pride could never forgive nor forget. As to the oft-vexed

question of the Poet's separation from his wife, he has told the facts in prose and verse; but omitted to state that he treated women as things devoid of soul or sense; he would not eat, pray, walk, nor talk with them. If he had told us this, who would have marvelled that a lady, tenderly reared and richly endowed, pious, learned, and prudent, deluded into marrying such a man, should have thought him mad or worse, and sought safety by flight? Within certain degress of affinity, marriages are forbidden; so they should be where there is no natural affinity of feelings, habits, tastes, or sympathies. It is very kind in the saints to ally themselves to sinners; but in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, it turns out a failure: in BYRON's case it was signally so.

'In all the transactions of his life, his intense anxiety to cut a good figure made him cruelly unjust to others. In fact, his pride and vanity mastered him, and he made no effort to conceal or to control their dominion, reckless how it marred his worldly advantages. Amidst the general homage paid to his genius, his vanity reverted to his early disappointments, when he was baffled and compelled to fly, and though Parthian-like he discharged his arrows on his pursuers, he lost the battle. 'SHELLEY had a far loftier spirit. His pride was spiritual. When attacked, he neither fled, nor stood at bay, nor altered his course, but calmly went on with heart and mind intent on elevating his species. While men tried to force him down to their level, he toiled to draw their minds upward. His words were: 'I always go on until I am stopped, and I never am stopped.' Like the Indian palms, SHELLEY never flourished far from water. When compelled to take up his quarters in a town, he every morning with the instinct that guides the water-birds, fled to the nearest lake, river, or sea-shore, and only returned to roost at night. If debarred from this, he sought out the most solitary places. Towns and crowds distracted him. Even the silent and half-deserted cities of Italy, with their temples, palaces, paintings, and sculpture, could not make him stay, if there was a wood or water within his reach. At Pisa, he had a river under his window, and a pine forest in the neighborhood.

'I accompanied Mrs. SHELLEY to this wood in search of the Poet, on one of those brilliant spring mornings we on the wrong side of the Alps are so rarely blessed with. A caleche took us out of Pisa through the gate of the Cascine; we drove through the Cascine and onward for two or three miles, traversing the vineyards and farms on the Grand Ducal estate. On approaching some farm buildings, near which were a hunting-palace and chapel, we dismissed the carriage, directing the driver to meet us at a certain spot in the afternoon. We then walked on, not exactly knowing what course to take, and were exceedingly perplexed on coming to an open space, from which four roads radiated. There we stopped until I learnt from a Contadino, that the one before us led directly to the sea, which was two or three miles distant; the one on the right, led to the Serchio, and that on the left, to the Arno: we decided on taking the road to the sea. We proceeded on our journey over a sandy plain, the sun being near its zenith. Walking was not included among the number of accomplishments in which Mrs. SHELLEY excelled; the loose sand and hot sun soon. knocked her up. When we got under the cool canopy of the pines, she stopped, and allowed me to hunt for her husband. I now strode along; the forest was on my right hand, and extensive pastures on my left, with herds of oxen, camels, and horses grazing thereon. I came upon the open sea at a place called Gombo, from whence I could see Via Reggio, the Gulf of Spezzia, and the mountains beyond. After bathing, seeing nothing of the Poet, I penetrated the densest part of the forest, ever and anon making the woods ring with the name of SHELLEY, and scaring the herons and water-birds from the chain of stagnant pools which impeded my progress. With no land-marks to guide me, nor sky to be seen above, I was bewildered in this wilderness of pines and ponds; so I sat down, struck a light, and smoked a segar. A red man would have known his course by the trees themselves, their growth, form, and color; or if a footstep had passed that day, he would have hit upon its trail. As I mused upon his sagacity and my own stupidity, the braying of a brother jackass startled me. He was followed by an old man picking up pine cones. I asked him if he had seen a stranger?

L'Inglese malincolico haunts the wood, maledetta. I will show you his nest.' As we advanced, the ground swelled into mounds and hollows. By-and-by the old fellow pointed with his stick to a hat, books, and loose papers lying about, and then to a deep pool of dark glimmering water, saying, Eccolo!" I thought he meant that SHELLEY was in or under the water. The careless, not to say impatient, way in which the Poet bore his burden of life, caused a vague dread among his family and friends, that he might lose or cast it away at any moment.

The strong light steamed through the opening of the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie, that he did not hear my approach. There the trees were stunted and bent, and their crowns were shorn like friars by the sea-breezes, excepting a cluster of three, under which SHELLEY'S traps were lying; these overtopped the rest. To avoid startling the Poet

out of his dream, I squatted under the lofty trees, and opened his books. One was a volume of his favorite Greek dramatist, SOPHOCLES- the same that I found in his pocket after his death-and the other was a volume of SHAKSPEARE. I then hailed him, and turning his head, he answered faintly: 'Hollo! come in.'

66

'Is this your study?' I asked.

"Yes, he answered, and these trees are my books: they tell no lies. You are sitting on the stool of inspiration,' he exclaimed. In those three pines the weird sisters are imprisoned, and this,' pointing to the water, 'is their cauldron of black broth. The Pythian priestesses uttered their oracles from below; now they are muttered from above. Listen to the solemn music in the pine-tops: don't you hear the mournful murmurings of the sea? Sometimes they rave and roar, shriek and howl, like a rabble of priests. In a tempest, when a ship sinks, they catch the despairing groans of the drowning mariners. Their chorus is the eternal wailing of wretched men.'

They, like the world,' I observed, 'seem to take no note of wretched women. The sighs and wailing you talk about are not those of wretched men afar off, but are breathed by a woman near at hand; not from the pine-tops, but by a forsaken lady.' ''What do you mean?' he asked.

Why, that an hour or two ago, I left your wife, MARY SHELLEY, at the entrance of this grove, in despair at not finding you.'

"He started up, snatched up his scattered books and papers, thrust them into his hat, and jacket-pockets, sighing: 'Poor MARY! hers is a sad fate. Come along: she can't bear solitude, nor I society: the quick coupled with the dead.'

'He glided along with his usual swiftness, for nothing could make him pause for an instant when he had an object in view, until he had attained it. On hearing our voices, Mrs. SHELLEY joined us; her clear gray eyes and thoughtful brow expressing the love she could not speak. To stop SHELLEY's self-reproaches, or to hide her own emotions, she began in a bantering tone, chiding and coaxing him :

"What a wild-goose you are, PERCY: if my thoughts have strayed from my book, it was to the opera, and my new dress from Florence, and especially the ivy wreath so much admired for my hair, and not to you, you silly fellow! When I left home, my satin slippers had not arrived. These are serious matters to gentlewomen, enough to ruffle the serenest tempered. As to you and your ungallant companion, I had forgotten that such things are; but as it is the ridiculous custom to have men at balls and operas, I must take you with me, though, from your uncouth ways, you will be taken for VALENTINE, and he for ORSON.'

SHELLEY, like other students, would, when the spell that bound his faculties was broken, shut his books, and indulge in the wildest flights of mirth and folly. As this is a sport all can join in, we talked, and laughed, and shrieked, and shouted, as we emerged from under the shadows of the melancholy pines and their nodding plumes, into the now cool purple twilight and open country. The cheerful and graceful peasant girls, returning home from the vineyards and olive groves, stopped to look The old man I had met in the morning gathering pine cones, passed hurriedly by with his donkey, giving SHELLEY a wide berth, and evidently thinking that the melancholy Englishman had now become a raving maniac. SANCHO says, 'Blessings on the man who invented sleep;' the man who invented laughing deserves no less.

at us.

The day I found SHELLEY in the pine forest, he was writing verses on a guitar. picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines:

''ARIEL, to MIRANDA take

This slave of music.'

It was a frightful scrawl: words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh over-grown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks: such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered:

"When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing. If you ask me why I publish what few or none will care to read, it is that the spirits I have raised haunt me until they are sent to the devil of a printer. All authors are anxious to breech their bantlings.'

We have by no means done with this book. It is a work which cannot be 'finished' at one sitting. It is literally replete with valuable INCULCATION, which must distil into the mind of the reader. Nor do we believe, much as has already been written upon SHELLEY, that this will be the last work upon the same theme. It will itself provoke others.

A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMAN. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' 'Agatha's Husband,' 'The Ogilvies,' etc., etc. New-York: RUDD AND CARLETON.

A BOOK-NOTICE in a magazine is generally like a laugh that comes in a very long while after the joke. There are potent, sleep-giving elements in a review of a work which every body has read, praised, blamed, and laid away. But even with a full knowledge of all this, we cannot withhold our opinion from the critical 'gentlemen of the jury' before whom Miss MULOCH has arraigned the bello sexo. The author of 'John Halifax' is certainly one of the women of the age, ranking with BARRETT BROWNING, Mrs. GASKELL, and the BRONTÉS: she is a thinker and a worker: and, what is better, has not forgotten that she is a woman a mistake which 'sweet girl-graduates,' when they are very bright, are apt to make. Miss MULOCH writes like a sweet, sensible woman; never allowing her intellect to run away with her heart, or vice versa. Her view of woman in her sphere displays the keenest perception of those loves and duties which should make up fire-side life. The book is full of practicable suggestion, and should be read by every mother and daughter in our goodly land. We leave the volume, commending the following extracts to the reader's attention:

A N OLD MAID.

'SHE has not married. Under heaven, her home, her life, her lot, are all of her own making. Bitter or sweet they may have been-it is not ours to meddle with them, but we can any day see their results. Wide or narrow as her circle of influence appears, she has exercised her power to the uttermost, and for good. Whether great or small her talents, she has not let one of them rust for want of use. Whatever the current of her existence may have been, and in whatever circumstances it has placed her, she has voluntarily wasted no portion of it—not a year, not a month, not a day. 'Published or unpublished, this woman's life is a goodly chronicle, the title-page of which you may read in her quiet countenance; her manner, settled, cheerful, and at ease; her unfailing interest in all things and all people. You will rarely find she thinks much about herself; she has never had time for it. And this her life-chronicle, which, out of its very fulness, has taught her that the more one does, the more one finds to do she will never flourish in your face, or the face of heaven, as something uncommonly virtuous and extraordinary. She knows that, after all, she has simply done what it was her duty to do.

'But-and when her place is vacant on earth, this will be said of her assuredly, both here and otherwhere-'She hath done what she could.''

'Touch her gently, Father TIME!' This picture of masculine singleness is not so flattering a portrait:

SCARCELY any sight is more pitiable than a young man who has drifted on to past thirty, without home or near kindred; with just income enough to keep him respectably in the position which he supposes himself bound to maintain, and to supply him with the various small luxuries- -such as thirty guineas per annum in cigars, etc. which have become habitual to him. Like his fellow-mortals, he is liable enough to the unlucky weakness of falling in love, now and then; but he somehow manages to extinguish the passion before it gets fairly alight; knowing he can no more venture to ask a girl in his own sphere to marry him, or be engaged to him, than he can coax the planet VENUS out of her golden west into the dirty, gloomy, two-pair-back where his laundress cheats him, and his landlady abuses him; whence, perhaps, he occasionally emerges gloriously, all studs and white neck-tie-to assist at some young beauty's wedding, where he feels in his heart he might once have been the happy bridegroom-if from his silence she had not been driven to go desperately and sell herself to the old fool opposite, and is fast becoming, nay, is already become, a fool's clever mate; a mere woman of the world. And he, what a noble ideal he has