Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/164

148 conscious that it formed the first great step towards reducing the whole science of number to the absolute control of mechanism, I wished it to be placed wherever the greatest number of persons could see it daily.

With this view, I advised that it should be placed in one of the much-frequented rooms of the British Museum. Another locality was, however, assigned to it, and it was confided by the Government to the care of King's College, Somerset House. It remained in safe custody within its glass case in the Museum of that body for twenty years. It is remarkable that during that long period no person should have studied its structure, and, by explaining its nature and use, have acquired an amount of celebrity which the singularity of that knowledge would undoubtedly have produced.

The College authorities did justice to their charge. They put it in the place of honour, in the centre of their Museum, and would, no doubt have given facilities to any of their members or to other persons who might have wished to study it.

But the system quietly pursued by the Government, of ignoring the existence of the Difference Engine and its inventor doubtlessly exercised its deadening influence on those who were inclined, by taste or acquirements, to take such a course.