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We seem to be in the presence of a constructor who arranges things, of a moralist turning ancient stories with a latent purpose of decorum, of an official Englishman looking about for old confirmations of modern sociology, of a salaried laureate inventing a prototype of Prince Albert. The singleness of a story-teller who has convinced himself that he tells a true story is gone.
On the outbreak of the War of 1812 he built several ships for the American Government for use on the Great Lakes. In 1820 he was appointed Naval Constructor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and there built six ships of the line. In 1822 he built the steamer "Robert Fulton," which made the first successful steam voyage to New Orleans and Havana.
The poor shepherd's body was not respected by the revolutionists, though he was a sans-culotte, but he was a sans-culotte who was a constructor and not a destroyer, therefore to the dogs with him. There was a saying "Avenio ventosa Cum vento fastidiosa, Sine vento venenosa." That may be rendered in French "Avignon venteuse Avec vent ennuyeuse, Sans vent pernicieuse."
The practical Roman, stern constructor of roads and codes, when he needs must worship, loved a deity practical as himself; and in his parcelling of the known world into plots, saying unto this man, Bide here, and to that, Sit you down there, he could scarce fail to evolve the god Terminus: visible witness of possession and dominion, type of solid facts not to be quibbled away.
And this the French socialists, misled by a priori notions, attempted to do, on the theory of the Contrat-Social, as if they had a tabula rasa, without regarding the existing constituents of society, or traditions, or historical growths. Equality, as a phrase, having done duty as a dissolvent, was pressed into service as a constructor.
But they were little used in merchant vessels, and their longitudinal resistance was only partial and incidental. Shelf-pieces and waterways were adapted from French models by Sir Robert Seppings, who became chief constructor to the Navy some years after Trafalgar.
When one thinks how large a number of human beings have been benefited by Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is impossible not to envy a great engineer his almost unlimited power of permanent usefulness to unborn thousands of his fellow-creatures. As a canal-maker, Telford was hardly less successful than as a constructor of roads and harbours.
From Brindley, the constructor of the earliest great canal, to Joseph Gillott, the inventor of the very steel pen with which this book is written; from Arkwright the barber who fashioned the first spinning-machine, to Crompton the weaver, whose mule gave rise to the mighty Manchester cotton trade; from Newcomen, who made the first rough attempt at a steam-engine, to Stephenson, who sent the iron horse from end to end of the land, the chief mechanical improvements in the country have almost all been due to the energy, intelligence, and skill of our labouring population.
“To the Senate of the United States:—I nominate Naval Cadet Joseph W. Powell to be advanced two numbers under the provisions of section 1,506 of the Revised Statutes, and to be an ensign in the navy, for extraordinary heroism while in charge of the steam launch which accompanied the collier Merrimac, for the purpose of rescuing her gallant force when that vessel was, under the command of Naval Constructor Hobson, run into the mouth of the harbour of Santiago, Cuba, on the third instant, and dexterously sunk in the channel.
It is not at all unlikely that if a skilful and experienced naval constructor, aided by an able corps of assistants, should design an airship of a diameter of not less than two hundred feet, and a length at least four or five times as great, constructed, possibly, of a textile substance impervious to gas and borne by a light framework, but, more likely, of exceedingly thin plates of steel carried by a frame fitted to secure the greatest combination of strength and lightness, he might find the result to be, ideally at least, a ship which would be driven through the air by a steam-engine with a velocity far exceeding that of the fleetest Atlantic liner.
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