Garden Swape.

103

Chap. 13.]

it was in all probability a very old affair, and in common use. Thesesculptures moreover prove, that it has remained in Egypt unaltered in itsform, dinaensions, mode and material of its construction and methods of' us-ing it, during at least thirty-four centuries ! and this, notwithstanding thepolitical convulsions to which that country has ever been subject, since itsconquest by Cambyses ; its inhabitants having been successively underthe Persian , Grecian, Roman, Saracenic, and Turkish yoke, thus literallyfulfilling a prophecy of Ezekiel, that, “ there shall be no longer a princeof the land of Egypt, ”—a descendant of its ancient kings ; yet throughall these mighty revolutions that have swept over it like the fatal Simoon,and destroyed every vital principle of its ancient grandeur, this simplemachine has past through them all unchanged, and is still applied by theinhabitants to the same purposes, and in precisely the same way, for whichit was used by their more enlightened progenitors.

We have seen it usedby the Greeks and Romans, and we find it stillin the possession of their descendants, wherever they dwell, as well asamong those of more ancient people, the Hindoos, Arabs , and Chinese .And although we may be unable to keep it constantly in view in Europe ,in those ages which immediately followed the fall of the Roman power,when the ferocious tyranny of the Saracens established a despotisin overthe mind as well as the body; and by the characteristic zeal of Omar,entailed ignorance on the future, by consuming the very sources of know-ledge under the baths of Alexandria; yet, when in the 15th Century, thehuman intellect began to shake off the lethargy, which during the longnight of the dark ages had paralyzed its energies, and printing was intro-duced—that mighty art which is ordained to sway the destinies of ourrace forever—among the earliest of printed books, with illustrations, thisinteresting implement may be found portrayed in vignettes, in vieles ofcities, and of rural Ife; tangible proofs of its universal use throughoutEurope at that time, as well as during the preceding ages.

Having referred in this and in a preceding chapter, to the ‘ MathematicalMagic’ of Wilkins, we subjoin some remarks on the mechanical specula-tions of that and other old church dignitaries. [These remarks were atfirst designed for a note, but have been too far extended to be inserted asone.j The former was certainly one of the most ingenious and imaginative ofmechanics that ever was made a bishop of, and not a few have worn themitre. ‘The Right Reverend Father in God , John, Lord Bishop ofChester,’ (like friars Bacon and Bungey, the Jesuit Kircher, the AbbeMical, and a host of others,) excelled equally in mechanical and theologi-cal Science; and at one period of his researches in the former, seemedalmost in danger of rendering the latter superfluous: viz. by developinga plan of conveying men to other worlds by machinery! See his Tract onon the ‘Discovery of a New World in the Moon , and the possibility ofa passage thither.’ Lon. 1638. After removing with a facility truly de-lightful, those objections to such a‘passage’ as arise from the ‘extremecoldness and thinness of the etherial air,’ ‘ the natural heaviness of a man’sbody,’and ‘ the vast distance of that place from us,’ and the consequentnecessity of rest and provisions during so long a journey, there being, ashe observes, ‘no inns to entertain passengers, nor any castles in the air toreceive poor pilgrims’—he proposes three modes of accomplishing theobject. 1. By the application of wings to the body ; ‘ as angels are pic-tured, as Mercury and Deedalus are feigned, and as has been attemptedby divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople , as Busbequius re-