ble pin-cushion, or the superior advantage of a breed of naked sheep, the answer would have been, it is unphilosophical to ask such questions.
In more modern times we have witnessed projects not unlike those of the learned of Laputa, above mentioned. A machine called an Automaton, was, not long since, constructed. This was designed to transport from place to place, by land, any load without the aid of horses, oxen, or any other animal. The master was to sit at helm, and guide it up hill and down, and over every kind of road. This machine was completed, and proved demonstrably capable of performing the duties assigned to it, and the only difficulty which attended it, and which hath hitherto prevented its universal use was, that it would not go.—Here, if any ignorant fellow had been so uncivil, he might have doubted why, if wood and iron were designed to go alone and carry a load, the whole herd of oxen, horses, and camels were created.
A few years ago the learned insisted that it was grovelling to travel either by land or water, but that the truly philosophical mode was to go by air. Hence, in all parts of the world, speculatists were mounted in balloons, with the whole apparatus of living and dying, and were flying through the Heavens, to the utter astonishment and mortification of those poor illiterate wretches who were doomed to tug and sweat on the earth. To be sure this method of travelling was somewhat precarious.—A flaw of wind, regardless of the principles of this machine, might destroy it, or, by the giving way of one philosophical pin, peg or rope, it might be let into the sea, or dashed against a rock, and thus its precious contents miserably perish. But doubtless reason will, in time, provide sufficient checks against all these casualties. Here again some
