We're anxious that Peace may continue her reign,
We cherish the virtues which sport in her train;
Our hearts ever melt, when the fatherless sigh,
And we shiver at Horrour's funereal cry!

But still, though we prize

That child of the skies,

We'll never like slaves be accosted.

In a war of defence

Our means are immense,

And we'll fight till our all is exhausted:

For foes to our freedom we'll ever defy,

Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry!

The Herald of July 8, 1799, in giving an account of the Fourth of July celebration of that year, says, "The Rutland Ode, written by the ingenious Mr. Fessenden, was then performed by vocal and instrumental music by Mr. Thomas Atwell and his choir." Fessenden made this the lead poem in his Original Poems. It has been reprinted in various collections since then, most recently in B. E. Stevenson's Poems of American History (1908), where it is taken to illustrate the anti-French feeling of the high-Federalists during the period of the French Revolution. and the Napoleonic regime.

It is possible that the poems of a third type in the Original Poems volume, the literary satires, belong to this period as well; but since they have not been found in any newspapers to which Fessenden habitually contributed before he went to England, they are left for consideration later. He seems to have devoted less and less time to his verse after 1799. The Museum for November 24, 1800, prints a note "To Readers and Correspondents": "Our quondam friend, Simon Spunkey, is respectfully and earnestly requested to furnish us with an ode to ornament the threshold of the future year. Events of interest and magnitude have transpired, which in the dress of the successor of Butler, would receive embellishment and new consequence.' Fessenden's earlier "Epistle Excusatory" to Dennie1 had perhaps given a true reason for his silence:

Then since my verses, grave or funny,
Will not procure me ready money,
And since in time I'd best be heedful,
To gain a little of the needful,

If you should chide me e'er so sharp
On hakmatak I'll hang my harp,
Throw Phoebus' fiddle in the fire,

And give to Otter Creek my lyre.

Toward the end of 1799 Dennie went to Philadelphia to start the Port Folio, and tho he called for contributions from his old friend, Fessenden apparently sent nothing except the Tabitha Towzer piece, which he had already published. The trip to England offered him work in his profession, adventure, and the possibility of financial gain. Consequently he left his reputation as political satirist, already heralded as a successor of Butler, and his place as laureate of rural New England, at the moment when he might have extended his fame thruout the country. When he returned he resumed the political writing but never again composed the sprightly, colloquial verse in which he had so successfully pictured the life of the country people in much of their own vocabulary, and with their own homely huOnly the fear that much use might have exhausted this talent keeps us from seconding Hawthorne's wish, expressed in his account of "The Country Lovers:"21

This excellent ballad compels me to regret, that, instead of becoming a satirist in politics and science, and wasting his strength on temporary and evanescent topics, he had not continued to be a rural poet. A volume of such sketches as "Jonathan's Courtship," describing various aspects of life among the yeomanry of New England, could not have failed to gain a permanent place in American literature.

19 Museum, October 14, 1797; Original Poems, 104.
"Port Folio, February 28, 1801.

Hawthorne, 247.

Fessenden reached London, "after a tedious passage," on July 4, 1801, the anniversary of his successes before the celebrating crowds of his Vermont townsmen. He had letters to the American ambassador, Rufus King, and soon presented them.

Mr. King gave him a letter of introduction to "Mr. Nicholson, an eminent philosopher and chymist, at Soho Square." This was William Nicholson (1753-1815), one of the leading scientists of the day, whose influence was extensive, thru his pupils, thru his books and translations, and thru the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, which he edited from 1797 to 1815. He was interested in various problems of hydraulics, had planned the water systems for two or three large towns, and so would be the natural specialist to consult in regard to Barnabus Langdon's pump. 3

The more careful tests of the machine made in London showed that it was a fraud, that its victory over gravity was apparent rather than real, in that the water had been raised because of air holes in the pipe, a "principle" which had not been included in the specifications. Later tests in Rutland had already showed the backers in America that they had been duped.

4

'Rufus King (1755-1827), Member of Congress from Massachusetts and after 1789 from New York; Ambassador to Great Britain 1796-1805; later candidate for the Presidency, opposing Madison.

'Preface to Philadelphia (1806) edition of Terrible Tractoration, vii. "It should be noted that the machine was not of Fessenden's invention, in spite of the persistence of this statement in some of the briefer sketches of his life. He says in the Philadelphia Preface: "This machine was the invention of a Mr. Langdon (not mine as has been stated by some of my good friends in this country.)" There is also the record of the Langdon patent. The anonymous author of the preface to the first American edition of Terrible Tractoration says the machine "was already common there," but Fessenden frankly admitted that it was a fraud.

Even Mr. Nicholson's story of how a similar trick had been practised upon the French Academy could not have comforted. Fessenden, for the Academicians had discovered the presence of the air holes by the hissing. In the account of these trials, Fessenden expresses his disappointment and anger in terms from his legal training: "Note:-This was such a fraud in the inventor, that by every principle of law and reason the patent was void, and no contract founded on it could be valid." Perhaps in later years the failure of the venture seemed the more cruel when he learned that a pump working upon an extension of this principle was actually used in England, "for the application of which a lucrative patent was obtained by a Mr. Dalby."

With the tendency to action which characterized Fessenden thruout his life, he now set about improving the pump, hoping to realize something yet for himself and his partners. His scheme was to raise water to any desired height in a suction pump by a series of "pump boxes" placed at intervals of thirty feet, at each of which atmospheric pressure would be utilized to force the water to the next box. From the description he has left us, this plan is as chimerical as the first. It got no further than a "tolerable sketch by way of diagram" which he showed Nicholson and some other gentlemen of mechanical skill......They agreed that it was new, ingenious, and might be in some situations useful; but thought that the expense of a patent, which in England is near £120 and the difficulty of obtaining patronage for a new thing, though it might be really useful, ought to deter me from attempting to prosecute my improvements.”

"

This campaign of the pumps had occupied about six weeks. Now, toward the end of August, when he was planning to return to America, another machine came his way. His own account of this next venture illustrates without need for comment how far his Yankee passion for wheels and contrivances and his over-confidence in his fellow-Yankeemen could carry him beyond the limits of sound business reasoning.

This is evidence of the laxness of the investigations of contrivances for which patents were applied, now largely reduced. Perhaps this experience in part influenced Fessenden to make his later studies of Patent Law. The specifications for the Langdon patent were burned in the Patent Office fire of 1836.

"Preface, x, xi.

At this juncture, an American introduced himself to me at my lodgings in the Strand, whom I had never before seen. He informed me that he was the inventor of a new and curious machine for grinding corn and other useful purposes, for which he had obtained a patent. That Sir William Staines, then mayor of London, was at the head of a company for carrying his patent into effect. -That he had sold one fourth part of his patent for £500 sterling to a gentleman who was a great mechanick, a person of much respectability, a city surveyor, and possessor of a large property.— That he, the inventor, had built a number of mills in America, and was fully competent to direct, in every particular, respecting his invention. He produced the counterpart of his assignment of one fourth part of the patent, in which £500 was expressed as the consideration of the deed. I found on inquiry that he had married the daughter of a clergyman, settled in London, and a person of respectable appearance; and I saw no reason to disbelieve any of his statements. This adventurer likewise produced a small model of his machine, which seemed to be the work of considerable ingenuity. At length, after some hesitation and inquiry, I was prevailed on to purchase one fourth of the patent, and was sufficiently punished for my temerity.

The mayor soon took the liberty of seceding from the concern. The rich partner who was prior to me in the purchase of a part of the patent, was not exactly so rich, nor quite so respectable as had been represented. The £500 stated to have been paid by him was only a nominal sum to induce others to purchase. The patentee sold out, and I found that no ordinary exertions were necessary to prevent the total failure of the whole scheme. A company of four persons was now formed to build a machine, on a cheap scale, on the Thames, which, it was hoped, would display the principles of the patent, and perform work enough to requite the expense of construction.

In order to become in some measure competent to render assistance in this undertaking, I set about investigating the principles on which a machine ought to be built, which would come within the patent. From the writings of Smeaton, Ferguson, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and some other authors who had treated on such branches of mechanical philosophy as were connected with this subject compared with experiments, which had been made with a view to this patent, I was able to develop its principles and recommended such rules as those concerne I have been taught by experience to adopt. But I found myself connected with men who despised science, who could not even comprehend my statements, and who proceeded in spite of my re nonstrances to spoil the machine. After suffering no small degree of vexation, fatigue, and anxiety, I was induced to attempt to make my pen subsidiary to my support.