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56         Books: Turner's Counsel to Inventors of Improvements. 
3304s. 
COUNSEL TO INVENTORS OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE USEFUL ARTS. By Thomas Turner,
of the Middle Temple.-Elsworth. 
MR. TURNER is already favourably known as the compiler of a useful Treatise
on 
Copyright (vide JOURNAL OF DESIGN AND MANUFACTURES, vol. ii., p. 26), and
we are 
glad to see him pursuing his theme, although without any very ostensible
object. His 
present is an agreeable chatty book, but why it should be called "Counsel
to Inven- 
tors" we cannot see; it is at least very readable, if not equally profitable.
The work 
opens thus:- 
"First in order, as a requisite for the production of valuable inventions,
comes a 
taste for experiment, a love of trying. An extensively practised mode of
dyeing 
calicoes is called ' resist work;' the pattern is printed on with some substance
which 
' resists' the dye, rejects it as a cabbage leaf repels the water, which
runs off it, when 
the whole is immersed in the colour, and afterwards washed; the pattern is
not dyed 
in, but negatively obtained by dyeing all the rest. It is the converse process
to litho- 
graphy, wherein the impression comes from the parts which do not refuse the
ink. 
Mr. Grouse, the inventor of this beautiful process, was a commercial traveller;
but 
he was fond of dabbling in printing by the fireside. Humphrey Davy (the boy)
used 
to melt scraps of tin (his native county has been a tin country from the
time of the 
Phcenicians) in the candle flame. So Arkwright, the barber, was a scientific
barber; 
his hair-dye (the best, we are told, in the country) was a secret recipe,
and may have 
taught him the superiority of invention and the value of exclusive knowledge.
"The supply of this article, inventiveness, must be obtained from any
source that 
will yield it. All classes send more or less to market; some authors love
to dwell on 
contributions to practical science of working men-Stephenson and Arkwright,
Rad- 
cliffe, Crompton and Hargreave, and less absolutely, Watt; but the list of
engineers 
is spangled here and there with titles and coronets; a scientific instrument
renders 
us familiar with the name of Orrery; the Stanhope printing-press was a decided
step 
in advance in the most intellectual of manufacturing arts; the Marquis of
Worcester 
is conspicuous among the inventors of the past, and steam owes something
to Lord 
Dundonald among those of the present. The name of Howard, so illustrious
in the 
eyes of the herald, so revered by the philanthropist, appears on the patent
list, and 
for a very lucrative one; 100,0001. has been named as the profit of the vacuum-pan
for sugar-boiling; and Robert Boyle was, according to the professor, at once
' father 
of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.' Saans occasionally issue from
their 
studies to mingle in the train, beginning with one Thales, who, Aristotle
tells us, by 
his acquaintance with lunar changes, having anticipated a fall in the barometer,
made 
an excellent investment (not, like Murphy, in almanacs), but in wheat; Wollaston
scraped a round sum of gold out of his platinum working; and Wheatstone was
a teacher of philosophical theory before he patented the electric telegraph.
Pursuits, 
apparently remote from commercial life, send an occasional amateur; Lee and
Cart- 
wright, for instance, both improvers of textile machinery, were clergymen,
as were in 
older times St. Dunstan unrivalled in smithery, and Wykeham in masonry and
architecture." 
Still pnrsuing the same gossiping tone, he adduces examples of successful
courge 
and perseverance in inventors:- 
"Two moral qualities essential to success in other studies are eminently
so i4 
this; and their predominance in the Anglo-Saxon character has had much share
in 
giving that race so high a rank as productive artists. Courage is one, perseverance
the other; both perhaps are elements of what is termed energy, or, in the
vernacular 
tongue, 'pluck.' Newton said he made his discoveries by ' always thinking
about 
them.' 'If we do but go on,' said a lover of mountain scenery, ' some unseen
path 
will open among the hills.' And Lord Eldon assured a student that if he did
justice 
to his profession, his profession would do justice to him. Watt staked his
all on his 
idea of a steam-engine, and might well quake at times; even Smeaton could
not see 
the value of the project, and counselled him against following it. And a
letter of his 
describes his ' bad health as resulting from the operations of an anxious
mind, the 
natural consequence of staking everything on the cast of a die, for in that
light I look 
upon every patent that has not received the sanction of repeated success.'
While he 
trembled, however, he did not waver; and we know-all men know-the result.
John 
Hunter's devotion to his science had to supply, it is said, the deficiency
of slender, or at 
least moderate capacity, and did supply it; because on sea or land, at the
quiet bed- 
side, or the glowing battle-field, in the closet, the library, the lecture
theatre, he was