Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/344

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. OCT. 3*. mi

as to his health, removed him from Eton, and the family decided on settling in Geneva, where they placed Charles under the care of Dr. Tronchin The Genevese system of education was cheap and excellent, and the devotion to culture was deep and genuine.

On Lord Mahon's coming of age in 1774, he was presented at Court " in coal-black hair and a white feather." His father would not suffer him to wear powder because wheat was dear, and the wits said he had been " tarred and feathered." He presented a remarkable contrast to the youth of the day, who played high and drank deep. With his teetotal views he was regarded by them with contempt, and his hygienic ways seemed to argue that he was crazy, it being considered woi'thy of remark that " he slept with no nightcap, and the window open." The same year he stood for Westminster, but received only 2,342 votes, being at the bottom of the poll.

In the following year Lord Mahon was married to his second cousin, Lady Hester Pitt. His domestic life, however, was not to be happy. The death of his first wife was a tragedy, and neither his second wife nor his children inspired him with deep affection. Plunging into political activity and scientific research, he came to depend less and less on human sympathy, and the softer lines of his character faded away.

He was " first the comrade, and then the enemy, of Pitt ; the protege of Wilkes ; the formidable antagonist of Pox during the Coalition, and of Burke during the French Revolution ; the valued supporter of Wilberforce ; the friend of Franklin and Condorcet, Grattan and Price ; the ally of Shelburne and Lauderdale in their opposition to the Great War, and of Lord Holland in his championship of religious liberty ; the butt of Gillray, and the bogy of Horace Walpole ; the hero of the youthful Coleridge and Landor ; the oracle of the little band of Parliamentary Re- formers, who never lost courage or hope ; the patron of Lancaster's school ; the friend of Fulton and Rennie." It may well be said that "few of his contemporaries touched the life of their age at so many points."

At the age of twenty he had become a " noble author," publishing a pamphlet, ' Considerations on means of preventing Fraudulent Practices on the Gold Coin,' in which he proposed the method (since adopted with great advantage for copper pieces) of raising the edge to protect the impres- sion.

In 1775 he discovered a method of securing buildings against fire, and in 1777 he completed two calculating " arithmetical machines," as they were called. The first, " by means of dial plates and small indices moveable with a steel pin, performed with undeviating accuracy " com- plicated sums of addition and subtraction. The second solved problems in multiplication and division, " without possibility of mistake," by the simple revolution of a small winch.

In 1790 he took out a patent for "constructing ships and vessels, and moving them without help of sails, and against wind, waves, current, or tide " ; and in the same year he invented that ingenious little contrivance which is used to this day in every form of machinery, "the split pin." On March 1st, 1793, he had the satisfaction of launching his ship the Kent, a vessel of over 200 tons (without the engines), measuring 111 ft.,

and drawing something over 7 r ft. of water. On May Oth the Navy Board sent to the Ad- miralty their opinion on the Kent. They con- sider " that she may be converted into a gun- boat, and employed as such in His Majesty's. Navy, and deem it advisable, upon Loi'd Stan- hope's delivering up the vessel, that he should take away whatever part of the steam-engine or its apparatus which may have been put on board," adding : " We are the more inclined to give this advice to their Lordships from a thorough con- viction that an invention of this kind could never be applied to any advantageous purposes in Hi Majesty's Navy." Naturally the wits made fun of the invention, and the following is quoted from ' N. & Q.,' 2 S. iv. 265 :

Behold from Brobdignag that wondrous fleet, With Stanhope Keels of thrice three hundred feet I Be Ships or Politics, great Earl, thy theme, Oh ! first prepare the navigable stream.

Baffled in his attempts at steam navigation, Stanhope devoted his attention more exclusively to the question of construction. In 1807 the average life of the ships of the Navy was only about eleven years. He obtained the King's per- mission to exhibit a model on the round pond contiguous to Kensington Palace ; but the Com- missioners reported unfavourably, and five years were allowed to pass before Stanhope, still per- sistent, got Melville to nominate another Com- mittee, and a model of a single-deck 60-gun frigate was submitted to them. The ship was to- be 210 ft. in length, 48 ft. in breadth, draw (with stores, guns, &c.) 13 ft. of water, and be riggedi with four masts instead of three. Three Com- missioners favoured the new construction, and three opposed it ; but the excellent qualities of Stanhope's method of shipbuilding received con- firmation in the year of his death in the expedition, of Capt. Tuckey to explore the river Congo in a mall vessel built for the purpose.

Stanhope was also much occupied with the problems of inland navigation, and in 1793 pro- jected a canal designed to connect the Bristol and English Channels. His old comrade Fulton, on leaving England in 1797, completely identified himself with the interests of France ; and Stan- hope on the 13th of May, 1802, communicated to- the House of Lords the fact that Fulton had ionstructed a diving-boat in France which was- intended to be navigated under water and would make it easy to blow up a first -rate- man-of-war with only 15 Ib. of powder. In the ame year Fulton conceived the idea of a sub- marine which, he assured the Directory, would annihilate the British Navy. In 1807 Stanhope
 * ook out a patent to " counteract or diminish the

danger of that most mischievous invention for destroying ships by submarine explosions " i 3ut Fulton was not impressed by his friend's nvention. " The torpedoes are now so far mproved," he wrote to his friend and rival in ( 1811, " that any plan I have yet seen cannot ; defend a ship against a vigorous attack from bhem."

Stanhope's services to the art of printing ;uv still gratefully remembered. In 1805, after several years' labour, he offered the Oxford Uni- versity Press his inventions " the secret piw'. )f stereotyping," the iron hand-press called tin 1 Stanhope Press, and his system of logotypes and ogotype cases. He also volunteered to instruct