The Romans are supposed to have had some knowledge of the power of steam.  Among amusing anecdotes, showing the knowledge the ancients had of steam, it is told that Anthemius, the architect of Saint Sophia, lived next door to Zeno.  There existed a feud between them, and to annoy his neighbour, Anthemius had some boilers placed in his house containing water, with a flexible tube which he could pass through a hole in the wall under the floor of Zeno’s dwelling; he then lit a fire, which soon caused steam to pass through the tube in such a quantity as to make the floors to heave as if by an earthquake.  But to return.  We next come to Blasco de Garay (A.D. 1543), who proposed to propel a ship by the power of steam.  So much cold water seems to have been thrown on his engine, that it must have condensed all his steam, as little notice is taken of it except that he got no encouragement.  We find that it has also been used by some of the ancients in connection with their deities.  Rusterich, one of the Teutonic gods, which was found in an excavation, proves how the priests deceived the people.  The head of this one was made of metal and contained a pot of water.  The mouth and another hole in the forehead being stopped by wooden plugs, a fire of charcoal was lighted under this pot of water, and at length the steam drove out the plugs with a great noise, and the god was shrouded in a mist of steam which concealed him from his astonished worshippers.

In 1629, Giovanni Branca of Loretto in Italy, an engineer and architect, proposed to work mills and other machinery by steam blowing against vanes, much in the same way as water does in turning a wheel.  The waste of steam in such a plan is so obvious, that it is not to be wondered at that it did not produce any great results, as we all know that the moment we let steam out of his case, the case is all up with him, and he dies a natural death.  He is a most delicate yet powerful agent, and requires to be kept warm in all weathers—­this fact does not seem to have struck Mons. Branca when he let him out of his boiler.

The next person we come to, and perhaps the first of any note, is the Marquis of Worcester in 1663 (died 1667).  He was a man who seems, as far as history tells us, to have taken a great interest in furthering the advancement of steam.  He was not contented with one invention, but published a book entitled “A Century of Inventions,” and in this work he describes a means of raising water by the pressure of steam.  The Marquis appears to have been a politician as well as an inventor, as we find he was engaged on the side of the Royalists in the Civil Wars of the Revolution, lost his fortune and went to Ireland, where he was imprisoned.  Escaping to France, from thence he returned to London as a secret agent of Charles II., but was detected and imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained till the Restoration, when he was set at liberty.  One day, while in prison, he observed the lid of the pot in which his