weather-beaten man, exclaiming: 'It is my father-it is my father!' An officer who observed the scene, directed Maxwell, for he it was, to fall out of the ranks; and the bewildered man was carried rather than led into the house of Madame St Alois. Janet and Helen, though retaining no personal recollection of their father, comprehended the whole matter at once, and welcomed him with a thousand caresses. Margaret now sought her mother: she endeavoured to steal softly to the apartment in which she had left her, and to break the intelligence by degrees; but even her very footsteps betrayed extraordinary tidings. Mrs Maxwell looked up at once, and read in her daughter's face something she knew not what, of joy. In another moment she exclaimed: 'He is alive-you have seen him!' and then a violent burst of tears enabled her to listen to the confirmation of her hopes. Who shall describe the joy of that meeting? Maxwell was indeed alone, and had never ceased to think of the wife and children whom he believed to be buried in the ocean. His name had been amongst the list of the killed, but he had survived after several days' exposure on the field of battle. Compelled to go home for the recovery of his health, he had visited Scotland, and had also been received by the parents of his wife, who, too late, lamented their conduct to their daughter. To find his family thus prosperous, and in every way so well worthy of pride and affection, more than repaid him for all that he had suffered. Mrs Maxwell, too, how was she rewarded for the dreary past! Meekly and patiently as she had borne her afflictions, she sometimes accused herself of not having been sufficiently submissive to the will of Heaven, and felt that she scarcely deserved this excess of happiness. Madame St Alois, who loved nothing so well as merry faces, became at once a confirmed supporter of the Bourbons; nd though for a time compelled to part with the family Ther adoption, it was only to meet again. Maxwell, at denonclusion of the war, found no difficulty in obtaining what charge. Though he had gained nothing besides joy at ring his long and meritorious services, his wife

had been placed in a situation which enabled her to realise a sum sufficient for their future comfort; and at the death of the good Madame St Alois, the younger Maxwells were amply provided for by the bequest of all her savings.

JOHN SPENCE, A NATURAL MECHANICAL GENIUS. JOHN SPENCE was the son of a tanner in Linlithgow, and from the early age of four or five years, exhibited a taste for mechanics. He could not study the subject in books, from his ignorance of the technical terms, but, as hè grew up, he cultivated his favourite propensity by visiting many and various machines, observing them in motion, and meditating on the principles developed in their construction. Wheels and levers occupied all his boyish thoughts, and he was happy only when inventing, and constructing what he invented. At the age of twelve, he was sent to a shoemaker to learn that business, but was never indentured. Such was his readiness in taking up any handicraft employment, that, after looking on for a week or two in the shoemaker's workshop, he began the trade at his own hand, requiring no further superintendence to teach him its whole mystery.

Some years afterwards, having imbibed a dislike to the shoemaker trade, and being desirous of getting near some of the great machinery in Glasgow, John Spence went to that city, and made an unsuccessful attempt to procure employment in some of the factories there. He then returned to Linlithgow, where, to his great satisfaction, he obtained the humble place of keeper of a small steam-engine. His duty here was to oil the machinery and feed the furnace; and though his friends were altogether unable to conceive what pleasure he could find in such an occupation, he felt perfectly happy in it, from the opportunity it afforded him merely of seeing

wheels in motion. Tired at length with the sameness of the scene, Spence, at the end of two years, returned to the trade of a shoemaker. But the mechanical powers still haunted his imagination, and he continued to invent and construct, neither to the benefit of his purse, nor to the satisfaction of his friends and his wife. In 1814, he was so much disgusted with the shoemaking, that he resolved to try the weaving trade. He constructed the whole apparatus of a loom, except the hiddles and the reed, got a professional weaver to put in the first web, and, without any other instruction, made cloth not distinguishable from the manufacture of those regularly bred to the business.

A restless desire to accomplish something of greater moment in the mechanic arts, appears to have soon led Spence away from the weaving scheme. Among other curious subjects, he turned his attention to the invention of travelling machines, where the moving power was to be supplied by the traveller's hands or feet. He came from Linlithgow to Edinburgh in a car of this kind, which was afterwards exhibited in the latter city. This car stood on four wheels, and could hold three persons, two of whom wrought at a time in propelling by means of two handles acting on the wheels, and which handles revolved like those of bucket - wells or milk-churns. Various other machines, evincing much mechanical ingenuity, were invented by John Spence, but we are unable to describe these in detail, and now turn to the great feat which brought him into general notice, or rather, notoriety.

Spence was just the man to be tempted into the pursuit of the Will-o'-the-Wisp, called the Perpetual Motion. His scientific knowledge was too limited to guard him against the delusive belief in the practicability of such an invention; and the honours which would undoubtedly attend success, formed a most seductive prospect to his ambition. After directing his ingenuity long to this difficult point, he at last announced to his friends in Linlithgow, that he had attained the object of his desires.

This occurred between the years 1814 and 1818. After a time, the intelligence of the ingenious Linlithgow shoemaker's discovery of the perpetual motion spread generally over the country, and great numbers of strangers, scientific and otherwise, visited his house, and saw his machine. Everybody admired the ingenuity and seeming simplicity of the contrivance. In the Edinburgh Magazine for May 1818, a description of the invention is thus given. After stating the difficulty of explaining it clearly, the writer proceeds: Suffice it to say, that a wooden beam, poised by the centre, has a piece of steel attached to one end of it, which is alternately drawn up by a piece of magnet placed above it, and down by another placed below it; and that, as the end of the beam approaches the magnet, either above or below, the machine interjects a non-conducting substance, which suspends the attraction of the magnet approached, and allows the other to exert its powers. Thus, the end of the beam continually ascends and descends betwixt the two magnets, without ever coming into contact with either; the attractive power of each being suspended precisely at the moment of nearest approach. As the magnetic attraction appears to be a permanently operating power, there appears to be no limit to the continuance of the motion, but the endurance of the materials of the machine.' The novelty here, it will be seen, lies in the ingenious manner in which the magnetic power seems to be rendered inoperative, at the proper moment, by the intervention of the non-conductor. The magnet had often been thought of as the source of a perpetual movement, but Spence had the merit of inventing this mode of bringing it into play.

Such are the principles upon which the perpetualmotion machine of Spence was ostensibly constructed. Being seen by several persons of eminence, the inventor was recommended to bring his wonderful engine to Edinburgh, for exhibition before the great ones of the capital. He adopted the advice given to him, and came to Edinburgh in the middle of the year 1818. He at

once excited the greatest attention among the scientific people, some of the most eminent of whom seem to have sincerely adopted the belief that Spence had succeeded in discovering the grand desideratum. The whole world ran after the extraordinary shoemaker of Linlithgow. The great machine itself was, after a time, shut up in a convenient place (on the Calton Hill, we believe), in order to test the perpetuity of its movements, and it was there visited by thousands. Drawings of it were exhibited in the streets, and the ingenious sect of the phrenologists examined the inventor's skull, where they found everything to coincide with the possession of great mechanical genius. There is one point in the report of the phrenologists upon Spence's head, which strikes us as extremely naïve, considering what came out afterwards. 'I found,' says the phrenological reporter, 'that he had a very large development of cautiousness;' and afterwards, 'so far as I have been able to observe, he is very cautious; and some persons who have been attempting to impetrate his secret from him, regarding the perpetual motion, will be able to confirm my testimony from their own experience.' When addressed himself on the subject, Spence said: "You may judge yourself whether I am cautious. All this, though reflecting credit rather than otherwise upon phrenology, tends to excite a smile when one considers how little Spence's real reason for caution and concealment was thought of at the time; for, after a season, the perpetual movement came to a pause, like all earthly things! The inventor had permitted no one to examine the interior of the machine, and was himself excluded from doing what he chose to it; and, in consequence, the movement came to an end, after having continued for about a month. was then found, that the operation of the magnetic power was merely the ostensible cause of the movement, and that the real source was a large spring in the interior. The machine ran out in the same way as does an eightday clock.

It

The deception which Spence had practised was certainly