Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/78

64 last piece of work for him had been the carrying out of Polhem's plan for transporting some Swedish warships over land, a distance of sixteen and a half miles, so as to prevent their capture by the enemy. It was a great engineering feat, and, like the whole of Charles's life, of but temporary value.7

With the King's death, work on the canal was stopped and with it the employment of "Em. Swedberg" as a practical engineer.

He was, however, far from being a narrow specialist. He had already begun to study mining and metallurgy in the district around Starbo, where his stepmother owned property the income of which she had allotted to him, her favorite stepson. As early as April 6, 1717, he had been formally "seated" at the Board of Mines and had continued to attend meetings until his duties with Polhem called him away.

But that was while Charles XII was alive. After his death, although Emanuel had been vigorously qualifying himself for the job, the Board refused to grant him a salary. It may have been some encouragement to him that in May, 1719, he was ennobled, along with the rest of Bishop Swedberg's children, taking the name of Swedenborg. (This was quite commonly done for the children of bishops, though not for the bishops themselves. Bishop Swedberg had been campaigning for it a long while.)

Ennobled or not, Swedenborg began to be further conscious of the obstacles to progress in his country. During that summer he put on paper a description of Swedish blast furnaces, and various inventions in regard to more airtight stoves, but, he wailed to Benzelius: "All such speculations and arts are unprofitable in Sweden and are esteemed by a lot of political blockheads as scholastic matters which must stand far in the background while their supposed finesse and intrigues push to the front."

He attended the Board several times in November, 1719, without being recognized as an assessor entitled either to salary or recognition, so he ceased attendance, but continued to study mining. Other matters claimed his interest. He wrote a booklet on the coinage question, recommending the decimal system, and this, he informed Benzelius, was really to be his last word, he was tired of the contempt shown toward "daily and domestic matters." "I've already worked myself poor with them, and have sung long enough