he years following his return from Greece was chiefly devoted to
further exercise of his inventive faculties.

[15] It is interesting to note that the recent introduction among us of
the Turkish bath was due to Lord Dundonald. "Having recovered," says Dr.
Gosse, in his treatise "Du Bain Turc," p. 58, "from two attacks of
intermitting fever, I visited the islands of the Archipelago until
summoned to Nauplia by Admiral Cochrane, who was then on board the
little steam-vessel _Mercury_. There the air of the gulf, and the marshy
miasma, brought on another attack of fever, from which I feared a fatal
issue. Lord Cochrane had the kindness to take me in his arms, and to
place me in the current of steam, which caused me to perspire freely. My
illness disappeared as by enchantment." A similar service was rendered
by Lord Dundonald to Mr. David Urquhart, whose attention was thus called
to the advantages of the Turkish bath, and who became its great
advocate.

To the wonderful invention known as his "secret war-plan" allusion will
presently be made. His other most important mechanical pursuits had for
their principal object the improvement of steam-engines and other
appliances for steam-shipping. Almost his first reminiscence was of a
visit in which, when he was seven or eight years old, he accompanied his
father to Birmingham, there to meet with James Watt, and hear something
of his memorable discovery. Apprehending in his youth the value of that
discovery, he never wearied in his efforts to extend its usefulness. The
_Rising Star_, built in 1818 under his directions, and those of his
brother, Major Cochrane, for service in Chili, was the first
steam-vessel that crossed the Atlantic, and it was an additional
disappointment to him, amid all the misfortunes incident to his efforts
to give adequate assistance to the Greeks in their war of independence,
that the ill-fated steamers which were to be his chief instruments
therein, failed through the indolence and incompetence of those to whom
their construction was assigned.

It is not necessary here to detail the studies and experiments by which
he afterwards sought to introduce a better steam-engine, for locomotive
purposes, than was then, or is even now, in general use. His plan--not a
new one, though it had never before been made available in practice--was
to substitute for the ordinary reciprocating engine a machine which
should at once produce a circular