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PANORAMIC VIEW FROM THE KEEP.

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from being used as such in the late war during the threatened invasion. The next is

Llanishen Hill, with the church of St. Dionysius; and continuous with it rise the Devaudon and "New Church Hills," opposite the Elms; the royal forest of Wentwood and Pen-y-Cae Mawr; Kemeys Firs, near to Caerleon, an elevation which commands a view of thirteen counties.*

In the south-west are seen the heights of Caerleon and Pen Twyn Barlwm; Gaer Vawr, on which is an ancient encampment-the largest in the countywith the site of a British town; Dial Carig; and Craig-y-Garcyd, two miles north-west of Usk, the site of a Roman camp. In the immediate foreground are the village and church of Raglan.

Westward appear Abersycan and the hills near Pontypool; the Blorenge hill, nearly two thousand feet high.† The opening which occurs in the range at this point, allows of a glimpse of the Breconshire hills at Crick Howell to Bwlch, within eight miles of the county town. The next in succession arethe Sugar Loaf, or Pen-y-Foel-so called from its conical shape-near Abergavenny, which crowns the summits of four converging hills, and rises eighteen hundred and fifty-two feet above the channel of the river Gavenny, which flows near its base.

The same view takes in the Hatteril Hills, or Black Mountains, crowned with Roman encampments; and near which is Oldcastle, once the residence of Lord Cobham, whose unhappy fate forms a painful page in the national history. From these hills the Monnow takes its source. Beneath lies the dark Vale of Ewias; and in its bosom are the ruins of Lanthony, a Cistercian Abbey of the twelfth century, which forms one of the illustrated subjects of this work. In the same direction is seen the Skyrrid Vawr, a lofty hill, seen in a volcanic fissure, which is supposed to have been thrown open during one of those remote convulsions of nature, of which in these districts the traces are so distinct and frequent.

Looking northward, the prominent objects are Campstone Hill, and the Craig, at the foot of which lie the picturesque remains of Grosmont Castle, which gives the title of Viscount to the Beaufort family. To these, but more northward, succeed Garway, Broad Oak, the Skinch-Cwm, and White Hills, which close the panorama from Raglan Keep.—We have been thus particular

* Monmouth, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, Wilts, Somerset, Devon, Brecon, Glamorgan, Caermarthen, Cardigan, and Radnor; together with the British Channel to some distance beyond the Holms. Near the latter is a Tower called "Kemey's Folly." Its founder, boasting to his father that the

tower could be seen from thirteen counties, was answered-"I am sorry, my son, that so great an extent of country should be witness to thy consummate folly;" and from that day, we are told, the tower assumed the name which it still retains.

† Or, according to Mr. Thomas, 1720 feet.

in designating the objects seen from the different points of view, in order that the tourists who annually visit this scene, may be in some degree prepared for the enjoyment which it is so well calculated to afford.

Descending from this lofty tower, where on festive occasions the family ensign still floats, the contrast between the Natural scenery, which has just faded from the spectator's eye, and the iron-bound work of Art, forces itself upon the mind, and elicits a spontaneous burst of gratitude that, under the protecting banner of the English Constitution, the peasant is now as safe in his cottage as ever Baron of Raglan was in his Keep; that at last "right" is a match against "might," and that the strong arm of Justice falls with impartial force on the culprit-whether he be robed in ermine, or clad in hodden grey.

The visitor, as he crosses the rustic bridge that now spans the moat, will recall the interesting fact, that this very spot, so to speak, was the "birthplace"

CASTLE.]

ORIGIN OF THE STEAM-ENGINE.

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of the Steam-engine; a circumstance which, had Raglan no other claim to their notice, must entitle it to a more than cursory observation from all who have an hour to spend within its walls. . The spot where it is believed to have been first placed by the inventor--then Lord Herbert--was in a building erected close under the wall of the Keep, where the drawbridge rose; but which has left few or no traces, in shape or dimensions, that are now visible above the moat. It is satisfactory, however, to know that the ground is stamped by tradition as the spot where the noble inventor, during his father's lifetime, made his first experiments on the uses and powers of steam; and where he probably constructed that "model of his invention," which he desired might be placed with him in his coffin.

If ancient warriors considered it an honourable distinction to be consigned to the tomb in a full suit of armour, it was excusable in one who had carried with him through life the remembrance of many wrongs, many sacrifices, to desire that, at least, the evidence of one bloodless triumph, one proof of scientific discovery, might accompany him at his final departure from this scene. It was the favourite child of his matured judgment, the result of those scientific researches, after which he had been straining for many years the mighty consequences of which were dimly foreshadowed in his imagination. It was the reward and consolation of a life of suffering, as well as of science; and there is something both natural and touching in the wish that this model--the only mechanical evidence that told him "he had not lived in vain"--should be deposited with him in the grave.

Some of his commentators have affected to smile at this wish, as evincing a feeling of weakness and vanity on the part of Lord Worcester, incompatible with a philosophic mind. But in this they only allege what cannot be proved; and the charge falls harmless when applied to a man who was—what can never be disputed-one of the most ingenious and scientific men of his day. When Columbus a schoolboy at Genoa-first rigged his tiny skiff, and sent it dancing over the blue waters, on which it moved like the shadow of coining events; no one foresaw that this mere toy would one day be succeeded by vessels, directed by the same master-pilot, that should throw open another continent to the old world. Nor, while Lord Worcester was squandering much time and treasure, as it was thought, in useless experiments in the Keep at Raglan, did any one imagine that these very experiments were preparing the way for that stupendous power, that should one day give incredible impulse to the arts of civilized life, cross the Atlantic, and traverse the Pacific, with a celerity that promises to unite in one bond of fellowship all the nations of the earth.

It can hardly be doubted that results similar to these haunted the imagination of Worcester, and kept up within him that spirit of discovery which

animated him in all his labours, soothed him with the hope of being numbered among the benefactors of his country, and a prospect of that immortality which attends the favoured votaries of science. He may often have indulged the thought, though never embodied in words-and it was a remarkable prediction on the part of him who uttered it long afterwards—

"Soon shall thine arm, triumphant Steam, afar,

Drag the slow barge, and drive the flying car!"

It has been alleged by Desaguliers,* that Savary, the reputed inventor of the steam-engine, obtained his notions from the work already named, "The Century of Inventions;" and that, in order to conceal the original, he purchased all the Marquess's books that could be had for money, and committed them to the flames. Of this, however, we have no direct proof, and Captain Savary must be acquitted; but it is quite certain that, as already mentioned, the original work is so rare, that not a copy is to be found except in the British Museum, and perhaps in the Beaufort Libraries at Troy House or Badminton Park. It is to be observed, however, that no contemporary record exists to illustrate or verify the Marquess's description of the contrivance, which we presume to call a Steam-Engine; or to inform us where, and in what manner, it was carried into effect. Yet it is very evident from his account, that he had actually constructed and worked a machine that raised water by steam; an operation which was sufficient to produce on the minds of rustics, the effect ascribed to the "roaring of lions," as mentioned in the preceding anecdote. The Marquess's description, though short and obscure, would appear to favour the belief, that the force of his engine was derived solely from the elasticity of steam; and that the condensation of steam by cold was no part of his contrivance, but the invention of Captain Savary, who, in 1696-nearly thirty years after the Marquess's death-published an account of his machine in a small tract, entitled, "The Miners' Friend." In these engines-several of which he had erected previously-the alternate condensation and pressure of the steam took place in the same vessel into which the water was first raised from a lower reservoir, by the pressure of the atmosphere, and then expelled into a higher one by the elastic force of strong steam. Steam was thus employed merely to produce a vacuum, and to supply the strength that was applied, for a like effect, to the sucker or piston of an ordinary pump; and it was a great and important step to have discovered a method of bringing the air to act in this manner, by the application of heat to water, without the assistance of mechanical force.

* "Thomas's Raglan," p. 155.