or Paris instead
of money payments. These tickets were to be dated and attached to the
letter or wrapped round it, in such a manner that the postman could
remove and retain them on delivering the missive. These franks were to
be sold by the porters of the convents, prisons, colleges, and other
public institutions, at the price of one sou."

[15] Inaugural Address delivered before the Institution of Civil
Engineers, 14th Jan. 1862.

[16] BEAMISH'S Memoir of Sir I. M. Brunel, 79, 80.

[17] There was the same clumsiness in all kinds of mill-work before the
introduction of machine-tools. We have heard of a piece of machinery
of the old school, the wheels of which, when set to work, made such a
clatter that the owner feared the engine would fall to pieces. The
foreman who set it agoing, after working at it until he was almost in
despair, at last gave it up, saving, "I think we had better leave the
cogs to settle their differences with one another: they will grind
themselves right in time!"

CHAPTER XI.

JOSEPH BRAMAH.

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial
world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and
decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and
oil."--ISAAC TAYLOR, Ultimate Civilization.

The inventive faculty is so strong in some men that it may be said to
amount to a passion, and cannot be restrained. The saying that the
poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to the inventor, who,
though indebted like the other to culture and improved opportunities,
nevertheless invents and goes on inventing mainly to gratify his own
instinct. The inventor, however, is not a creator like the poet, but
chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a great measure in quick
perception and accurate observation, and in seeing and foreseeing the
effects of certain mechanical combinations. He must possess the gift
of insight, as well as of manual dexterity, combined with the
indispensable qualities of patience and perseverance,--for though
baffled, as he often is, he must be ready to rise up again unconquered
even in the moment of defeat. This is the stuff of which the greatest
inventors have been made. The subject of the following memoir may not
be entitled to take rank as a first-class inventor, though he was a
most prolific one; but, as the founder of a school from which proceeded
some of the most distinguished mechanics of our