Perpetuum Mobile: or Search for self-motive Power. By Henry Dircks.[243] London, 1861, 8vo.
A useful collection on the history of the attempts at perpetual motion, that is, at obtaining the consequences of power without any power to produce them. September 7, 1863, a correspondent of the _Times_ gave an anecdote of George Stephenson,[244] which he obtained from Robert Stephenson.[245] A perpetual motionist wanted to explain his method; to which George replied--"Sir! I shall believe it when I see you take yourself up by the waistband, and carry yourself about the room." Never was the problem better stated.
There is a paradox of which I ought to give a specimen, I mean the _slander-paradox_; the case of a person who takes it into his head, upon evidence furnished entirely by the workings of his own thoughts, that some other person has committed a foul act of which the world at large would no more suppose him guilty than they would suppose that the earth is a flat bordered by ice. If I were to determine on giving cases in which the self-deluded person imagines {139} a conspiracy against _himself_, there would be no end of choices. Many of the grosser cases are found at last to be accompanied by mental disorder, and it is difficult to avoid referring the whole class to something different from simple misuse of the reasoning power. The first instance is one which puts in a strong light the state of things in which we live, brought about by our glorious freedom of thought, speech, and writing. The Government treated it with neglect, the press with silent contempt, and I will answer for it many of my readers now hear of it for the first time, when it comes to be enrolled among circle-squarers and earth-stoppers, where, as the old philosopher said, it will not gravitate, being _in proprio loco_.[246]
1862. On new year's day, 1862, when the nation was in the full tide of sympathy with the Queen, and regret for its own loss, a paper called the _Free Press_ published a number devoted to the consideration of the causes of the death of the Prince Consort. It is so rambling and inconsecutive that it takes more than one reading to understand it. It is against the _Times_ newspaper. First, the following insinuation:
"To the legal mind, the part of [the part taken by] the _Times_ will present a _prima facie_ case of the gravest nature, in the evident fore-knowledge of the event, and the preparation to turn it to account when it should have occurred. The article printed on Saturday must have been written on Friday. That article could not have appeared had the Prince been intended to live."
Next, it is affirmed that the _Times_ intended to convey the idea that the Prince had been poisoned.
"Up to this point we are merely dealing with words which the _Times_ publishes, and these can leave not a shadow of doubt that there is an intention to promulgate the idea that Prince Albert had been poisoned."
The article then goes on with a strange olio of {140} insinuations to the effect that the Prince was the obstacle to Russian intrigue, and that if he should have been poisoned,--which the writer strongly hints may have been the case,--some Minister under the influence of Russia must have done it. Enough for this record. _Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire_:[247] who can he be in this case?
