oast an egg; and he dressed his
meat by clock-work. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as "a
gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory,"
valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in "sowing
salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley,
who afterwards raised the first Eddystone lighthouse, must have been the
wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying
in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a
certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in.
There was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal; you had
scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat to the middle of
the canal--from whence you could not escape till this man of art and
science wound you up to the arbour. What was passing at the "Royal
Society" was also occurring at the "Academie des Sciences" at Paris. A
great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a
stranger, would point to his legs, to show the impossibility of
conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visitor never failed
finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final
bow! While the visitor was going down stairs, this inventive genius was
descending with great velocity in a machine from the window: so that he
proved, that if a man of science cannot force nature to walk down
stairs, he may drive her out at the window!

If they travelled at home, they set off to note down prodigies. Dr.
Plott, in a magnificent project of journeying through England, for the
advantage of "Learning and Trade," and the discovery of "Antiquities and
other Curiosities," for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland
enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class thus: "Next
I shall inquire of animals; and first of strange people."--"Strange
accidents that attend corporations or families, as that the deans of
Rochester ever since the foundation by turns have died deans and
bishops; the bird with a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham
near Exeter just before the death of any of that family; the bodies of
trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton in Cheshire, a
certain warning to the heir of that honourable family to prepare for the
next world." And such remarkables as "Number of children, such as the
Lady Temple, who before she died saw seven hundred descended from
her."[203] This f