“Not that alone,” I answered; “the reputation of enormous cost—a marvellous quintessence of value which must be positive intoxication to the possessor, but concerning which, you, my sober reason, can know nothing—try to imagine the delight of -wearing the value of a fine landed estate on your bosom—a thrilling passion of splendour, which Cleopatra felt when she drank the costly pearl.”
“One moment, with regard to that question of value,” replied my reason. “It is asserted that paste stones may be so cunningly fashioned as to deceive, save on very closest inspection, the best judges. If this be the case, that ‘glitter and pure water’ must stand by themselves for what they are worth—cost is not necessarily united with those qualities—those qualities, for all purposes of ordinary display, may be represented by bits of glass at a few pounds value for workmanship; consequently, that halo of fabulous cost, which is felt to lend such splendour to the diamonds, rests upon a mere assertion. That glistening of refracted light may be equally the result of an expenditure of sixteen pounds or sixty thousand. It is an old story of family diamonds being pawned, and paste stones worn in their place with exactly the same effect on the spectator as the real stones.”
I began to feel irritated with my reason, a proof, possibly, that my reason had got the best of the argument. “I firmly believe,” said I, in an angry tone, “that parures of diamonds are bought and sold—I shall stick to facts.”
“Facts have nothing to do with me,” replied my reason, calmly, “my province is to afford explanations, and I only regret that in this matter of the diamonds it is out of my power to give you any assistance.”
G. U. S.
THE TRIALS OF AN INVENTOR,
WILHELM BAUER, THE GERMAN ENGINEER.
Part I.
The story of Wilhelm Bauer’s life can scarcely be uninteresting to an English reader in these days when everything connected with sea-defences claims even painful attention. There is no wish here to attempt proving his claim to priority of invention, though the originality of his ideas must be acknowledged. The question of priority we must leave to those more conversant with the world’s battle for the development of new forces. How few cases there are, if we look back through the history of discovery, where any one man has held undisputed claim as sole inventor, even when the inventor can at all be identified. The reflection of a wide-felt requirement suggests the same idea to men who have no mutual knowledge but unconsciously by their sympathy with the needs of their age.
As this is only a biographical sketch, we may pass over the dim ages of pre-historic submarine navigation, of which the Edda gives us mysterious hints, telling us of some wondrous contrivance by which “Nordens Guder” penetrated the depths of the sea. Nor shall we be charmed into listening to the wondrous tale how great Kaiser Freidrich travelled beneath the waters searching for treasure.
Coming to modern times, many of us remember Fulton’s vessel which was to have carried away Napoleon from St. Helena, and which succeeded in giving a very uncomfortable breakfast to several worthy citizens of London beneath the level of the Thames. Then came Jansen’s smuggling apparatus, 1834, which was, however, effectually put down by the English Parliament. And so, passing over several other experimenters, we reach the subject of our sketch.
Wilhelm Bauer was born in 1822, at Villengen, in Bavaria. His father was sergeant in the Bavarian Chevaux Légers. The education he received was of the most elementary description—reading, writing, and arithmetic merely. He left school at the legal time, being twelve or thirteen years of age, and was then apprenticed to a turner; left his master, as the law requires, at the end of his time, to commence the “Wanderjahre.” From early childhood he had been addicted to mechanical contrivances—the source of many a lecture from parents and teachers upon the wickedness of idling and litter; but the lectures had been in vain, and now, in the course of his wanderings, arriving at Bremen, the first definite ideas of his future inventions began to form themselves in his mind.
He worked constantly at his trade, devoting every spare hour to study, and all his scanty savings to the purchase of books to aid it. But he grew depressed and disgusted with his lot, returned to Bavaria, and, hoping to secure a little more leisure to work out his thoughts, he enlisted into the ranks of the Light Horse. But his hammering and chips did not at all please his officers, and they were very glad to obtain permission for him to leave that regiment; and he then joined the Artillery, in which he vainly hoped to find perhaps some one who would feel sympathy in his endeavours. The old story again! Those in authority, as their kindest advice, could but counsel him to give up the wild plans, which only caused him loss of time, and attend better to his proper duties as a sergeant, to which rank he had been just promoted.
It was in 1849, when hostilities broke out with Denmark, that Bauer first began to see some hope in the future. He was ordered to the seat of war with his regiment. Many plans for defence and attack of ships and batteries were suggested to him by the events of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, and especially the loss sustained by the Bavarians and Saxons in the Duppler Works from the Danish vessels turned his thoughts to the possibility of making a diving-machine, in which an enemy’s ship could be approached unseen and blown up. Some further reverses suffered by the Germans on the Schlappe made him still more bent on realising his ideas. Brooding over his plans whilst walking on the Jutland seashore one day, he suddenly found an admirable model for the form of his vessel in a placid-eyed little sea-dog demurely swimming by his side.
Not long afterwards, fortune bestowing on him a fine copper cauldron, he carried the prize in triumph to his tent, and spent the hours he should have slept in attempting to knock it into the shape of his friend the seal. The patrol, passing near, took up the genius to the guard house; he escaped,