y consisting very
much in coal lands, his attention must of necessity have been called to
the difficulties experienced by the miners in pumping the water from the
deep mines. There were mines which employed as many as five hundred
horses in pumping out the water, and it was a thing of frequent
occurrence for a productive mine to be abandoned because the whole
revenue was absorbed in clearing it of water. This inventor was perhaps
the man in England who had the greatest interest in the contrivance to
which in early life he turned his mind.

He was born in the year 1601, and sprung from a family whose title of
nobility dated back to the fourteenth century. He is described by his
English biographer as a learned, thoughtful, and studious Roman
Catholic; as public-spirited and humane; as a mechanic, patient,
skillful, full of resources, and quick to comprehend. He inherited a
great estate, not perhaps so very productive in money, but of enormous
intrinsic value. There is reason to believe that he began to experiment
with steam soon after he came of age. He describes one of his
experiments, probably of early date:--

"I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and
filled it with water three quarters full, stopping and screwing up the
broken end, as also the touch-hole, and making a constant fire under it.
Within twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack."

That the engine which he constructed was designed to pump water is shown
by the very name which he gave it,--"the water-commanding engine,"--and,
indeed, it was never used for any other purpose. The plan of it was very
simple, and, without improvements, it could have answered its purposes
but imperfectly. It consisted of two vessels from which the air was
driven alternately by the condensation of steam within them, and into
the vacuum thus created the water rushed from the bottom of the mine. He
probably had his first machine erected before 1630, when he was still a
young man, and he spent his life in endeavors to bring his invention
into use. In doing this he expended so large a portion of his fortune,
and excited so much ridicule, that he died comparatively poor and
friendless. I think it probable, however, that his poverty was due
rather to the civil wars, in which his heroic old father and himself
were so unfortunate as to be on the losing side. He attempted to form a
company for the introduction of his machine, and when he died withou