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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art
+and Science, by J. Hamilton Fyfe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science
+
+Author: J. Hamilton Fyfe
+
+Release Date: July 17, 2011 [EBook #36768]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIUMPHS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sharon Joiner, Jana Srna, Bill Keir, Erica
+Pfister-Altschul and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TRIUMPHS OF
+INVENTION AND DISCOVERY
+IN ART AND SCIENCE.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE STEPHENSON'S HOME. Page 120.]
+
+
+
+
+    TRIUMPHS OF
+    INVENTION AND DISCOVERY
+    IN ART AND SCIENCE.
+
+    BY
+    J. HAMILTON FYFE.
+
+
+    "PEACE HATH HER VICTORIES NO LESS THAN WAR."
+
+
+    LONDON:
+    T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
+    EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
+
+    1871.
+
+
+
+
+Preface.
+
+    "_Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war._"--MILTON.
+
+
+It is not difficult to account for the pre-eminence, generally assigned
+to the victories of war over the victories of peace in popular history.
+The noise and ostentation which attend the former, the air of romance
+which surrounds them,--lay firm hold of the imagination, while the
+directness and rapidity with which, in such transactions, the effect
+follows the cause, invest them with a peculiar charm for simple and
+superficial observers. As Schiller says,--
+
+                      "Straight forward goes
+    The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
+    Of the cannon ball. Direct it flies, and rapid,
+    Shattering that it _may_ reach, and shattering what it reaches.
+    My son! the road the human being travels,
+    That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
+    The river's course, the valley's playful windings:
+    Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
+    Honouring the holy bounds of property!
+    And thus secure, though late, leads to its end."
+
+The path of peace is long and devious, now dwindling into a mere
+foot-track, now lost to sight in some dense thicket; and the heroes who
+pursue it are often mocked at by the crowd as poor, half-witted souls,
+wandering either aimlessly or in foolish chase of some Jack o' lantern
+that ever recedes before them. The goal they aim at seems to the common
+eye so visionary, and their progress towards it so imperceptible,--and
+even when reached, it takes so long before the benefits of their
+achievement are generally recognised,--that it is perhaps no wonder we
+should be more attracted by the stirring narratives of war, than by the
+sad, simple histories of the great pioneers of industry and science.
+
+Picturesque and imposing as deeds of arms appear, the victories of
+peace--the development of great discoveries and inventions, the
+performance of serene acts of beneficence, the achievements of social
+reform--possess a deeper interest and a truer romance for the seeing eye
+and the understanding heart. Wounds and death have to be encountered in
+the struggles of peace as well as in the contests of war; and peace has
+her martyrs as well as her heroes. The story of the cotton-spinning
+invention is at once as tragic and romantic as the story of the
+Peninsular war. There were "forlorn hopes" of brave men in both; but in
+the one case they were cheered by sympathy and association, in the other
+the desperate pioneers had to face a world of foes, "alone, unfriended,
+solitary, slow."
+
+The following pages contain sketches of some of the more momentous
+victories of peace, and the heroes who took part in them. The reader
+need hardly be reminded that this brief list does not exhaust the
+catalogue either of such events or persons, and that only a few of a
+representative character are here selected.
+
+In the present edition the different sections have been carefully
+revised, and the details brought down to the latest possible date.
+
+                                                                J. H. F.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+THE ART OF PRINTING--
+    1. John Gutenberg,                                    13
+    2. William Caxton,                                    28
+    3. The Printing Machine,                              32
+
+THE STEAM ENGINE--
+    1. The Marquis of Worcester, and his Successors,      53
+    2. James Watt,                                        63
+
+THE MANUFACTURE OF COTTON--
+    1. Kay and Hargreaves,                                77
+    2. Sir Richard Arkwright,                             81
+    3. Samuel Crompton,                                   90
+    4. Dr. Cartwright,                                    98
+    5. Sir Robert Peel,                                  104
+
+THE RAILWAY AND THE LOCOMOTIVE--
+    1. "The Flying Coach,"                               111
+    2. The Stephensons: Father and Son,                  116
+    3. The Growth of Railways,                           133
+
+THE LIGHTHOUSE--
+    1. The Eddystone,                                    141
+    2. The Bell Rock,                                    153
+    3. The Skerryvore,                                   160
+
+STEAM NAVIGATION--
+    1. James Symington,                                  171
+    2. Robert Fulton,                                    176
+    3. Henry Bell,                                       183
+    4. Ocean Steamers,                                   186
+
+IRON MANUFACTURE--
+    Henry Cort,                                          193
+
+THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH--
+    1. Mr. Cooke,                                        201
+    2. Professor Wheatstone,                             204
+    3. The Submarine Telegraph,                          209
+
+THE SILK MANUFACTURE--
+    1. John Lombe,                                       221
+    2. William Lee,                                      225
+    3. Joseph Marie Jacquard,                            227
+
+THE POTTER'S ART--
+    1. Luca Della Robbia,                                237
+    2. Bernard Palissy,                                  241
+    3. Josiah Wedgwood,                                  250
+
+THE MINER'S SAFETY LAMP--
+    1. Sir Humphrey Davy,                                263
+    2. George Stephenson's Lamp,                         275
+
+PENNY POSTAGE--
+    1. Sir Rowland Hill,                                 279
+    2. New Departments of the Postal System,             292
+
+THE OVERLAND ROUTE--
+    1. Lieutenant Waghorn,                               299
+    2. The Suez Canal,                                   309
+
+
+
+
+The Art of Printing.
+
+
+  I.--JOHN GUTENBERG.
+ II.--WILLIAM CAXTON.
+III.--THE PRINTING MACHINE.
+
+
+
+
+The Art of Printing.
+
+    "A creature he called to wait on his will,
+    Half iron, half vapour--a dread to behold--
+    Which evermore panted, and evermore rolled,
+    And uttered his words a millionfold.
+    Forth sprung they in air, down raining in dew,
+    And men fed upon them, and mighty they grew."
+
+                                            LEIGH HUNT, _Sword and Pen_.
+
+
+
+
+I.--JOHN GUTENBERG.
+
+
+Some Dutch writers, inspired by a not unnatural feeling of patriotism,
+have endeavoured to claim the honour of inventing the Art of Printing
+for a countryman of their own, Laurence Coster of Haarlem. Their sole
+reliance, however, is upon the statements of one Hadrian Junius, who was
+born at Horn, in North Holland, in 1511. About 1575 he wrote a work,
+entitled "Batavia," in which the account of Coster first appeared. And,
+as an unimpeachable authority has remarked, almost every succeeding
+advocate of Coster's pretensions has taken the liberty of altering,
+amplifying, or contradicting the account of Junius, according as it
+might suit his own line of argument; but not one of them has succeeded
+in producing a solitary fact in confirmation of it. The accounts which
+are given of Coster's discovery by Junius and his successors present
+many contradictory features. Thus Junius says: "Walking in a
+neighbouring wood, as citizens are accustomed to do after dinner and on
+holidays, he began to cut letters of beech-bark, with which, for
+amusement--the letters being inverted as on a seal--he impressed short
+sentences on paper for the children of his son-in-law." A later writer,
+Scriverius, is more imaginative: "Coster," he says, "walking in the
+wood, picked up a small bough of a beech, or rather of an oak-tree,
+blown off by the wind; and after amusing himself with cutting some
+letters on it, wrapped it up in paper, and afterwards laid himself down
+to sleep. When he awoke, he perceived that the paper, by a shower of
+rain or some accident having got moist, had received an impression from
+these letters; which induced him to pursue the accidental discovery."
+
+Not only are these accounts evidently deficient in authenticity, but it
+should be remarked that the earliest of them was not put before the
+world until Laurence Coster had been nearly a hundred and fifty years in
+his grave. The presumed writer of the narrative which first did justice
+to his memory had been also twelve years dead when his book was
+published. His information, or rather the information brought forward
+under cover of his name, was derived from an old man who, when a boy,
+had heard it from another old man who lived with Coster at the time of
+the robbery, and who had heard the account of the invention from his
+master. For, to explain the fact of the early appearance of typography
+in Germany, the Dutch writers are forced to the hypothesis that an
+apprentice of Coster's stole all his master's types and utensils,
+fleeing with them first to Amsterdam, second to Cologne, and lastly to
+Mentz! The whole story is too improbable to be accepted by any impartial
+inquirer; and the best authorities are agreed in dismissing the Dutch
+fiction with the contempt it deserves, and in ascribing to JOHN
+GUTENBERG, of Mentz, the honour to which he is justly entitled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the career of Gutenberg we shall speak presently, but let us first
+point out that the invention of typography, like all great inventions,
+was no sudden conception of genius--not the birth of some singularly
+felicitous moment of inspiration--but the result of what may be called a
+gradual series of causes. Printing with movable types was the natural
+outcome of printing with blocks. We must go back, therefore, a few
+years, to examine into the origin of "block books."
+
+Mr. Jackson observes that there cannot be a doubt that the principle on
+which wood engraving is founded--that of taking impressions on paper or
+parchment, with ink, from prominent lines--was known and practised in
+attesting documents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Towards
+the end of the fourteenth, or about the beginning of the fifteenth
+century, he says, there seems reason to believe that this principle was
+adopted by the German card-makers for the purpose of marking the
+outlines of the figures on their cards, which they afterwards coloured
+by the practice called _stencilling_.
+
+It was the Germans who first practised card-making as a trade, and as
+early as 1418 the name of a _kartenmacher_, or card-maker, occurs in the
+burgess-books of Augsburg. In the town-books of Nuremburg, the
+designation _formschneider_, or figure-cutter, is found in 1449; and we
+may presume that block books--that is, books each page of which was cut
+on a single block--were introduced about this time. These books were on
+religious subjects, and were intended, perhaps, by the monks as a kind
+of counterbalance against the playing-cards; "thus endeavouring to
+supply a remedy for the evil, and extracting from the serpent a cure for
+his bite."
+
+The earliest woodcut known--one of St. Christopher--bears the date of
+1432, and was found in a convent situated within about fifty miles of
+the city of Augsburg--the convent of Buxheim, near Memmingen. It was
+pasted on the inside of the right hand cover of a manuscript entitled
+_Laus Virginis_, and measures eleven and a quarter inches in height, by
+eight and one-eighth inches in width.
+
+The following description of it by Jackson is interesting:--
+
+"To the left of the engraving the artist has introduced, with a noble
+disregard of perspective, what Bewick would have called a 'bit of
+nature.' In the foreground a figure is seen driving an ass loaded with a
+sack towards a water-mill; while by a steep path a figure, perhaps
+intended for the miller, is seen carrying a full sack from the back-door
+of the mill towards a cottage. To the right is seen a hermit--known by
+the bell over the entrance to his dwelling--holding a large lantern to
+direct St. Christopher as he crosses the stream. The couplet at the foot
+of the cut,--
+
+    'Cristofori faciem die quacunque tueris,
+    Illa nempe die morte mala non morieris,'
+
+may be translated as follows,--
+
+    Each day that thou the image of St. Christopher shall see,
+    That day no frightful form of death shall chance to fall on thee.
+
+These lines allude to a superstition, once popular in all Catholic
+countries, that on the day they saw a figure or image of St.
+Christopher, they would be safe from a violent death, or from death
+unabsolved and unconfessed."
+
+Passing over some other woodcuts of great antiquity, in all of which the
+figures are accompanied by engraved letters, we come to the block books
+proper. Of these, the most famous are called, the _Apocalypsis, seu
+Historia Sancti Johannis_ (the "Apocalypse, or History of St. John");
+the _Historia Virginis ex Cantico Canticorum_ ("Story of the Virgin,
+from the Song of Songs"); and the _Biblia Pauperum_ ("Bible of the
+Poor"). The first is a history, pictorial and literal, of the life and
+revelations of St. John the Evangelist, partly derived from the book of
+Revelation, and partly from ecclesiastical tradition. The second is a
+similar biography of the Virgin Mary, as it is supposed to be typified
+in the Song of Solomon; and the third consists of subjects representing
+many of the most important passages in the Old and New Testaments, with
+texts to illustrate the subject, or clinch the lesson of duty it may
+shadow forth.
+
+With respect to the engraving, we are told that the cuts are executed in
+the simplest manner, as there is not the least attempt at shading, by
+means of cross lines or hatchings, to be detected in any one of the
+designs. The most difficult part of the engraver's task, says Jackson,
+supposing the drawing to have been made by another person, would be the
+cutting of the letters, which, in several of the subjects, must have
+occupied a considerable portion of time, and have demanded no small
+degree of perseverance, care, and skill.
+
+These block books were followed by others in which no illustrations
+appeared, but in which the entire page was occupied with text. The
+Grammatical Primer, called the "Donatus," from the name of its supposed
+compiler, was thus printed, or engraved, enabling copies of it to be
+multiplied at a much cheaper rate than they could be produced in
+manuscript.
+
+And thus we see that the art of printing--or, more correctly speaking,
+engraving on wood--has advanced from the production of a single figure,
+with merely a few words beneath it, to the impression of whole pages of
+text. Next, for the engraved page were to be substituted movable letters
+of metal, wedged together within an iron frame; and impressions, instead
+of being obtained by the slow and tedious process of friction, were to
+be secured by the swift and powerful action of the press.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the year 1400, John Gaensfleisch, or Gutenberg, was born at Mentz.
+He sprung from an honourable family, and it is said that he himself was
+by birth a knight. He seems to have been a person of some property.
+
+About 1434 we find him living in Strasburg, and, in partnership with a
+certain Andrew Drytzcher, endeavouring to perfect the art of typography.
+How he was induced to direct his attention towards this object, and
+under what circumstances he began his experiments, it is impossible to
+say; but there can be no doubt that he was the first person who
+conceived the idea of _movable types_--an idea which is the very
+foundation of the art of printing.
+
+An old German chronicler furnishes the following account of the early
+stages of the great printer's discovery:--
+
+"At this time (about 1438), in the city of Mentz, on the Rhine, in
+Germany, and not in Italy as some persons have erroneously written, that
+wonderful and then unheard-of art of printing and characterizing books
+was invented and devised by John Gutenberger, citizen of Mentz, who,
+having expended most of his property in the invention of this art, on
+account of the difficulties which he experienced on all sides, was about
+to abandon it altogether; when, by the advice and through the means of
+John Fust, likewise a citizen of Mentz, he succeeded in bringing it to
+perfection. At first they formed or engraved the characters or letters
+in written order on blocks of wood, and in this manner they printed the
+vocabulary called a 'Catholicon.' But with these forms or blocks they
+could print nothing else, because the characters could not be transposed
+in these tablets, but were engraved thereon, as we have said. To this
+invention succeeded a more subtle one, for they found out the means of
+cutting the forms of all the letters of the alphabet, which they called
+_matrices_, from which again they cast characters of copper or tin of
+sufficient hardness to resist the necessary pressure, which they had
+before engraved by hand."
+
+This is a very brief and summary account of a great invention. By
+comparison of other authorities we are enabled to bring together a far
+greater number of details, though we must acknowledge that many of these
+have little foundation but in tradition or romance.
+
+Let us, therefore, take a peep at the first printer, working in
+seclusion and solitude in the old historic city of Strasburg, and
+endeavouring to elaborate in practice the grand idea which has been
+conceived and matured by his energetic brain. Doubtlessly he knew not
+the full importance of this idea, or of how great a social and religious
+revolution it was to be the seed, and yet we cannot believe that he was
+altogether unconscious of its value to future generations.
+
+Shutting himself up in his own room, seeing no one, rarely crossing the
+threshold, allowing himself hardly any repose, he set himself to work
+out the plan he had formed. With a knife and some pieces of wood he
+constructed a set of movable types, on one face of each of which a
+letter of the alphabet was carved in relief, and which were strung
+together, in the order of words and sentences, upon a piece of wire. By
+means of these he succeeded in producing upon parchment a very
+satisfactory impression.
+
+To be out of the way of prying eyes, he took up his quarters in the
+ruins of the old monastery of St. Arbogaste, outside the town, which had
+long been abandoned by the monks to the rats and beggars of the
+neighbourhood; and the better to mask his designs, as well as to procure
+the funds necessary for his experiments, he set up as a sort of
+artificer in jewellery and metal-work, setting and polishing precious
+stones, and preparing Venetian glass for mirrors, which he afterwards
+mounted in frames of metal and carved wood. These avowed labours he
+openly practised, along with a couple of assistants, in a public part of
+the monastery; but in the depths of the cloisters, in a dark secluded
+spot, he fitted up a little cell as the _atelier_ of his secret
+operations; and there, secured by bolts and bars, and a thick oaken
+door, against the intrusion of any one who might penetrate so far into
+the interior of the ruins, he applied himself to his great work. He
+quickly perceived, as a man of his inventiveness was sure to perceive,
+the superiority of letters of metal over those of wood. He invented
+various coloured inks, at once oily and dry, for printing with; brushes
+and rollers for transferring the ink to the face of the types; "forms,"
+or cases, for keeping together the types arranged in pages; and a press
+for bringing the inked types and the paper in contact.
+
+[Illustration: GUTENBERG IN THE OLD MONASTERY. Page 22.]
+
+Day and night, whenever he could spare an instant from his professed
+occupations, he devoted himself to the development of his great design.
+At night he could hardly sleep for thinking of it, and his hasty
+snatches of slumber were disturbed by agitating dreams. Tradition has
+preserved the story of one of these for us as he afterwards told it to
+his friends. He dreamt that, as he sat feasting his eyes upon the
+impression of his first page of type, he heard two voices whispering at
+his ear--the one soft and musical, the other harsh, dull, and bitter in
+its tones. The one bade him rejoice at the great work he had achieved;
+unveiled the future, and showed the men of different generations, the
+peoples of distant lands, holding high converse by means of his
+invention; and cheered him with the hope of an immortal fame. "Ay," put
+in the other voice, "immortal he might be, but at what a price! Man,
+more often perverse and wicked than wise and good, would profane the new
+faculty this art created, and the ages, instead of blessing, would have
+cause to curse the man who gave it to the world. Therefore let him
+regard his invention as a seductive but fatal dream, which, if
+fulfilled, would place in the hands of man, sinful and erring as he was,
+only another instrument of evil." Gutenberg, whom the first voice had
+thrown into an ecstasy of delight, now shuddered at the thought of the
+fearful power to corrupt and to debase his art would give to wicked men,
+and awoke in an agony of doubt. He seized his mallet, and had almost
+broken up his types and press, when he paused to reflect that, after
+all, God's gifts, although sometimes perilous and capable of abuse, were
+never evil in themselves, and that to give another means of utterance to
+the piety and reason of mankind was to promote the spread of virtue and
+intelligence, which were both divine. So he closed his ears to the
+suggestions of the tempter, and persisted in his work.
+
+Gutenberg had scarcely completed his printing machine, and got it into
+working order, when the jealousy and distrust of his associates in the
+nominal business he carried on, brought him into trouble with the
+authorities of Strasburg. He could have saved himself by the disclosure
+of all the secrets of his invention; but this he refused to do. His
+goods were confiscated; and he returned penniless, with a heavy heart,
+to his native town Mentz. There, in partnership with a wealthy goldsmith
+named John Fust, and his son-in-law Schoeffer, he started a printing
+office; from which he sent out many works, mostly of a religious
+character. The enterprise throve; but misfortune was ever dogging
+Gutenberg's steps, and he had but a brief taste of prosperity. The
+priests looked with suspicion upon the new art, which enabled people to
+read for themselves what before they had to take on trust from them. The
+transcribers of books,--a large and influential guild,--were also
+hostile to the invention, which threatened to deprive them of their
+livelihood. These two bodies formed a league against the printers; and
+upon the head of poor Gutenberg were emptied all the vials of their
+wrath. Fust and Schoeffer, with crafty adroitness, managed to conciliate
+their opponents, and to offer up their partner as a sacrifice for
+themselves. By the zeal of his enemies, and the treachery of his
+friends, Gutenberg was driven out of Mentz. After wandering about for
+some time in poverty and neglect, Adolphus, the Elector of Nassau,
+became his patron; and at his court Gutenberg set up a press, and
+printed a number of works with his own hands. Though poor, his last
+years were spent in peace; and when he died, he had only a few copies of
+the productions of his press to leave to his sister.
+
+Meanwhile, at Strasburg, some of his former associates pieced together
+the revelations that had fallen from him, while at the old monastery, as
+to his invention; and not only worked it with success, but claimed all
+the credit of its origin. In the same way, Fust and Schoeffer, at Mentz,
+grew rich through the invention of the man they had betrayed, and tried
+to rob of his fame.
+
+There is a curious, but not very well authenticated story about a visit
+Fust made to Paris to push the sale of his Bibles. "The tradition of the
+Devil and Dr. Faustus," writes D'Israeli in the "Curiosities of
+Literature," "was said to have been derived from the odd circumstances
+in which the Bibles of the first printer, Fust, appeared to the world.
+When Fust had discovered this new art, and printed off a considerable
+number of copies of the Bible to imitate those which were commonly sold
+as MSS., he undertook the sale of them at Paris. It was his interest to
+conceal this discovery and to pass off his printed copies for MSS. But,
+enabled to sell his Bibles at sixty crowns, while the other scribes
+demanded five hundred, this raised universal astonishment; and still
+more when he produced copies as fast as they were wanted, and even
+lowered his price. The uniformity of the copies increased the wonder.
+Informations were given in to the magistrates against him as a magician;
+and on searching his lodgings, a great number of copies were found. The
+red ink, and Fust's red ink is peculiarly brilliant, which embellished
+his copies, was said to be his blood; and it was solemnly adjudged that
+he was in league with the Infernal. Fust at length was obliged, to save
+himself from a bonfire, to reveal his art to the Parliament of Paris,
+who discharged him from all prosecution in consideration of the
+wonderful invention."
+
+The edition of the Bible, which was one of the very first productions of
+Gutenberg and Fust's press, is called the Mazarin, in consequence of the
+first known copy having been discovered in the famous library formed by
+Cardinal Mazarin. It seems to have been printed as early as August
+1456, and is a truly admirable specimen of typography; the characters
+being very clear and distinct, and the uniformity of the printing
+perfectly remarkable. A copy in the Royal Library at Paris is bound
+in two volumes, and every complete page consists of two columns,
+each containing forty-two lines. The reader will recognize the
+appropriateness of the fact that from the first printing press the first
+important work produced should be a copy of God's Word. It sanctified
+the new art which was to be so fruitful of good and evil results--the
+good superabounding, and clearly visible--the evil little, and destined,
+perhaps, to be directed eventually to good--for successive generations
+of mankind. It was a fitting forerunner of the long generation of books
+which have since issued so ceaselessly from the printing press; books,
+of the majority of which we may say, with Milton, that "they contain a
+potency of life in them to be as active as those souls were whose
+progeny they are; to preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and
+extraction of the living intellects that feed them."
+
+Gutenberg's career was dashed with many lights and shadows, but it
+closed in peace. In 1465, the Archbishop-elector of Mentz appointed him
+one of his courtiers, with the same allowance of clothing as the
+remainder of the nobles attending his court, and all other privileges
+and exemptions. It is probable that from this time he abandoned the
+practice of his new invention. The date of his death is uncertain; but
+there is documentary evidence extant which proves that it occurred
+before February 24, 1468. He was interred in the church of the Recollets
+at Mentz, and the following epitaph was composed by his kinsman Adam
+Gelthaus:--
+
+    "D. O. M. S.
+
+    "Joanni Gesnyfleisch, artis impressoriae repertori, de omni
+    natione et lingua optime merito, in nominis sui memoriam
+    immortalem Adam Gelthaus posuit. Ossa ejus in ecclesia D.
+    Francisci Moguntina feliciter cubant."
+
+
+
+
+II.--WILLIAM CAXTON.
+
+
+During the last thirty or forty years of the fifteenth century, while
+printing was becoming gradually more and more practised on the
+Continent, and the presses of Mentz, Bamberg, Cologne, Strasburg,
+Augsburg, Rome, Venice, and Milan, were sending forth numbers of Bibles,
+and various learned and theological works, chiefly in Latin, an English
+merchant, a man of substance and of no little note in Chepe, appeared at
+the court of the Duke of Burgundy at Bruges, to negotiate a commercial
+treaty between that sovereign and the king of England; which
+accomplished, the worthy ambassador seems to have liked the place and
+the people so well, and to have been so much liked in return, that for
+some years afterwards he took up his residence there, holding some
+honourable, easy appointment in the household of the Duchess of
+Burgundy. This was William Caxton, who here ripened, if he did not
+acquire, his love of literature and scholarship, and began, from hatred
+of idleness, to take pen in hand himself.
+
+"When I remember," says he, in his preface to his first work, a
+translation of a fanciful "Recueil des Histoires de Troye," "that every
+man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew
+sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to
+put himself into virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no
+great charge or occupation, following the said counsel, took a French
+book, and read therein many strange marvellous histories. And for so
+much as this book was new and late made, and drawn into French, and
+never seen in our English tongue, I thought in myself, it should be a
+good business to translate it into our English, to the end that it might
+be had as well in the royaume of England as in other lands, and also to
+pass therewith the time; and thus concluded in myself to begin this said
+work, and forthwith took pen and ink, and began boldly to run forth, as
+blind Bayard, in this present work."
+
+While at work upon this translation, Caxton found leisure to visit
+several of the German towns where printing presses were established, and
+to get an insight into the mysteries of the art, so that by the time he
+had finished the volume, he was able to print it. At the close of the
+third book of the "Recuyell," he says: "Thus end I this book which I
+have translated after mine author, as nigh as God hath given me cunning,
+to whom be given the laud and praise. And for as much as in the writing
+of the same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyen
+dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper, and my courage not so
+prone and ready to labour as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me
+daily, and feebleth all the body; and also because I have promised to
+divers gentlemen and to my friends, to address to them as hastily as I
+might, this said book, therefore I have practised and learned, at my
+great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in print, after the
+manner and form you may here see; and is not written with pen and ink as
+other books are, to the end that every man may have them at once. For
+all the books of this story, named the 'Recuyell of the Historyes of
+Troye,' thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun in one day, and also
+finished in one day" (that is, in the same space of time).
+
+By the year 1477, Caxton had returned to London, and set up a printing
+establishment within the precincts of Westminster Abbey; had given to
+the world the three first books ever printed in England,--"The Game
+and Play of the Chesse" (March 1474); "A boke of the hoole Lyf of
+Jason" (1475); and "The Dictes and Notable Wyse Sayenges of the
+Phylosophers" (1477),--and was fairly started in the great work of
+supplying printed books to his countrymen, which, as a placard in his
+largest type sets forth, if any one wanted, "emprynted after the forme
+of this present lettre whiche ben well and truly correct, late hym come
+to Westmonster, in to the Almonesrye, at the reed pale, and he shal have
+them good chepe." From the situation of the first printing office, the
+term chapel is applied to such establishments to this day.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM CAXTON. Page 30.]
+
+Caxton published between sixty and seventy different works during the
+seventeen years of his career as a printer, all of them in what is
+called black letter, and the bulk of them in English. He had always a
+view to the improvement of the people in the works he published, and
+though many of his productions may seem to us to be of an unprofitable
+kind, it is clear that in the issue of chivalrous narratives, and of
+Chaucer's poems (to whom, says the old printer, "ought to be given great
+laud and praising for his noble making and writing"), he was aiming at
+the diffusion of a nobler spirit, and a higher taste than then
+prevailed.
+
+In 1490, Caxton, an old, worn man, verging on fourscore years of age,
+wrote, "Every man ought to intend in such wise to live in this world, by
+keeping the commandments of God, that he may come to a good end; and
+then, out of this world full of wretchedness and tribulation, he may go
+to heaven, unto God and his saints, unto joy perdurable;" and passed
+away, still labouring at his post. He died while writing, "The most
+virtuous history of the devout and right renouned Lives of Holy Fathers
+living in the desert, worthy of remembrance to all well-disposed
+persons."
+
+Wynkyne de Worde filled his master's place in the almonry of
+Westminster; and the guild of printers gradually waxed strong in numbers
+and influence. In Germany they were privileged to wear robes trimmed
+with gold and silver, such as the nobles themselves appeared in; and to
+display on their escutcheon, an eagle with wings outstretched over the
+globe,--a symbol of the flight of thought and words throughout the
+world. In our own country, the printers were men of erudition and
+literary acquirements; and were honoured as became their mission.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE PRINTING MACHINE.
+
+
+Between the rude screw-press of Gutenberg or Caxton, slow and laboured
+in its working, to the first-class printing machine of our own day,
+throwing off its fifteen or eighteen thousand copies of a large
+four-page journal in an hour, what a stride has been taken in the noble
+art! Step by step, slowly but surely, has the advance been made,--one
+improvement suggested after another at long intervals, and by various
+minds. With the perfection of the printing press, the name of Earl
+Stanhope is chiefly associated; but, although when he had put the
+finishing touches to its construction, immensely superior to all former
+machines, it was unavailable for rapid printing. In relation to the
+demand for literature and the means of supplying it, the world had, half
+a century ago, reached much the same deadlock as in the days when the
+production of books depended solely on the swiftness of the
+transcriber's pen, and when the printing press existed only in the
+fervid brain and quick imagination of a young German student. Not only
+the growth, but the spread of literature, was restricted by the labour,
+expense, and delay incident to the multiplication of copies; and the
+popular appetite for reading was in that transition state when an
+increased supply would develop it beyond all bounds or calculation,
+while a continuance of the starvation supply would in all likelihood
+throw it into a decline from want of exercise.
+
+Such was the state of things when a revolution in the art of printing
+was effected which, in importance, can be compared only to the original
+discovery of printing. In fact, since the days of Gutenberg to the
+present hour, there has been only one great revolution in the art, and
+that was the introduction of steam printing in 1814. The neat and
+elegant, but slow-moving Stanhope press, was after all but little in
+advance of its rude prototype of the fifteenth century, the chief
+features of which it preserved almost without alteration. The steam
+printing machine took a leap ahead that placed it at such a distance
+from the printing press, that they are hardly to be recognised as the
+offspring of the same common stock. All family resemblance has died out,
+although the printing machine is certainly a development of the little
+screw press.
+
+Of the revolution of 1814, which placed the printing machine in the seat
+of power, _vice_ the press given over to subordinate employment, Mr.
+John Walter of the _Times_ was the prominent and leading agent. But for
+his foresight, enterprise, and perseverance, the steam machine might
+have been even now in earliest infancy, if not unborn.
+
+Familiar as the invention of the steam printing machine is now, in the
+beginning of the present century it shared the ridicule which was thrown
+upon the project of sailing steam ships upon the sea, and driving steam
+carriages upon land. It seemed as mad and preposterous an idea to print
+off 5000 impressions of a paper like the _Times_ in one hour, as, in the
+same time, to paddle a ship fifteen miles against wind and tide, or to
+propel a heavily laden train of carriages fifty miles. Mr. Walter,
+however, was convinced that the thing could be done, and lost no time in
+attempting it. Some notion of the difficulties he had to overcome, and
+the disappointments he had to endure, while engaged in this enterprise,
+may be gathered from the following extracts from the biography of Mr.
+Walter, which appeared in the _Times_ at the time of his death in July
+1847:--
+
+"As early as the year 1804, an ingenious compositor, named Thomas
+Martyn, had invented a self-acting machine for working the press, and
+had produced a model which satisfied Mr. Walter of the feasibility of
+the scheme. Being assisted by Mr. Walter with the necessary funds, he
+made considerable progress towards the completion of his work, in the
+course of which he was exposed to much personal danger from the
+hostility of the pressmen, who vowed vengeance against the man whose
+inventions threatened destruction to their craft. To such a length was
+their opposition carried, that it was found necessary to introduce the
+various pieces of the machine into the premises with the utmost possible
+secresy, while Martyn himself was obliged to shelter himself under
+various disguises in order to escape their fury. Mr. Walter, however,
+was not yet permitted to reap the fruits of his enterprise. On the very
+eve of success he was doomed to bitter disappointment. He had exhausted
+his own funds in the attempt, and his father, who had hitherto assisted
+him, became disheartened, and refused him any further aid. The project
+was, therefore, for the time abandoned.
+
+"Mr. Walter, however, was not the man to be deterred from what he had
+once resolved to do. He gave his mind incessantly to the subject, and
+courted aid from all quarters, with his usual munificence. In the year
+1814 he was induced by a clerical friend, in whose judgment he confided,
+to make a fresh experiment; and, accordingly, the machinery of the
+amiable and ingenious Koenig, assisted by his young friend Bower, was
+introduced--not, indeed, at first into the _Times_ office, but into the
+adjoining premises, such caution being thought necessary upon the
+threatened violence of the pressmen. Here the work advanced, under the
+frequent inspection and advice of the friend alluded to. At one period
+these two able mechanics suspended their anxious toil, and left the
+premises in disgust. After the lapse, however, of about three days, the
+same gentleman discovered their retreat, induced them to return, showed
+them, to their surprise, their difficulty conquered, and the work still
+in progress. The night on which this curious machine was first brought
+into use in its new abode was one of great anxiety, and even alarm. The
+suspicious pressmen had threatened destruction to any one whose
+inventions might suspend their employment. 'Destruction to him and his
+traps.' They were directed to wait for expected news from the Continent.
+It was about six o'clock in the morning when Mr. Walter went into the
+press-room, and astonished its occupants by telling them that 'The
+_Times_ was already printed by steam! That if they attempted violence,
+there was a force ready to suppress it; but that if they were
+peaceable, their wages should be continued to every one of them till
+similar employment could be procured,'--a promise which was, no doubt,
+faithfully performed; and having so said, he distributed several copies
+among them. Thus was this most hazardous enterprise undertaken and
+successfully carried through, and printing by steam on an almost
+gigantic scale given to the world."
+
+On that memorable day, the 29th of November 1814, appeared the following
+announcement,--"Our journal of this day presents to the public the
+practical result of the greatest improvement connected with printing
+since the discovery of the art itself. The reader now holds in his hands
+one of the many thousand impressions of the _Times_ newspaper which were
+taken off last night by a mechanical apparatus. That the magnitude of
+the invention may be justly appreciated by its effects, we shall inform
+the public that after the letters are placed by the compositors, and
+enclosed in what is called a form, little more remains for man to do
+than to attend and watch this unconscious agent in its operations. The
+machine is then merely supplied with paper; itself places the form, inks
+it, adjusts the paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and
+gives it forth to the hands of the attendant, at the same time
+withdrawing the form for a fresh coat of ink, which itself again
+distributes, to meet the ensuing sheet, now advancing for impression;
+and the whole of these complicated acts is performed with such a
+velocity and simultaneousness of movement, that no less than 1100 sheets
+are impressed in one hour."
+
+Koenig's machine was, however, very complicated, and before long, it was
+supplanted by that of Applegath and Cowper, which was much simpler in
+construction, and required only two boys to attend it--one to lay on,
+and the other to take off the sheets. The vertical machine which Mr.
+Applegath subsequently invented, far excelled his former achievement;
+but it has in turn been superseded by the machine of Messrs. Hoe of New
+York. All these machines were first brought into use in the _Times'_
+printing office; and to the encouragement the proprietors of that
+establishment have always afforded to inventive talent, the readiness
+with which they have given a trial to new machines, and the princely
+liberality with which they have rewarded improvements, is greatly due
+the present advanced state of the noble craft and mystery.
+
+The printing-house of the _Times_, near Blackfriars Bridge, forms a
+companion picture to Gutenberg's printing-room in the old abbey at
+Strasburg, and illustrates not only the development of the art, but the
+progress of the world during the intervening centuries. Visit
+Printing-House Square in the day-time, and you find it a quiet, sleepy
+place, with hardly any signs of life or movement about it, except in
+the advertisement office in the corner, where people are continually
+going out and in, and the clerks have a busy time of it, shovelling
+money into the till all day long. But come back in the evening, and the
+place will wear a very different aspect. All signs of drowsiness have
+disappeared, and the office is all lighted up, and instinct with bustle
+and activity. Messengers are rushing out and in, telegraph boys, railway
+porters, and "devils" of all sorts and sizes. Cabs are driving up every
+few minutes, and depositing reporters, hot from the gallery of the House
+of Commons or the House of Lords, each with his budget of short-hand
+notes to decipher and transcribe. Up stairs in his sanctum the editor
+and his deputies are busy preparing or selecting the articles and
+reports which are to appear in the next day's paper. In another part of
+the building the compositors are hard at work, picking up types, and
+arranging them in "stick-fulls," which being emptied out into "galleys,"
+are firmly fixed therein by little wedges of wood, in order that
+"proofs" may be taken of them. The proofs pass into the hands of the
+various sets of readers, who compare them with the "copy" from which
+they were set up, and mark any errors on the margin of the slips, which
+then find their way back to the compositors, who correct the types
+according to the marks. The "galleys" are next seized by the persons
+charged with the "making-up" of the paper, who divide them into columns
+of equal length. An ordinary _Times_ newspaper, with a single inside
+sheet of advertisements, contains seventy-two columns, or 17,500 lines,
+made up of upwards of a million pieces of types, of which matter about
+two-fifths are often written, composed, and corrected after seven
+o'clock in the evening. If the advertisement sheet be double, as it
+frequently is, the paper will contain ninety-six columns. The types set
+up by the compositors are not sent to the machine. A mould is taken of
+them in a composition of brown paper, by means of which a "stereotype"
+is cast in metal, and from this the paper is printed. The advertisement
+sheet, single or double, as the case may be, is generally ready for the
+press between seven or eight o'clock at night. The rest of the paper is
+divided into two "forms,"--that is, columns arranged in pages and bound
+together by an iron frame, one for each side of the sheet. Into the
+first of these the person who "makes up" the paper endeavours to place
+all the early news, and it is ready for press usually about four
+o'clock. The other "form" is reserved for the leading articles,
+telegrams, and all the latest intelligence, and does not reach the press
+till near five o'clock.
+
+The first sight of Hoe's machine, by several of which the _Times_ is now
+printed, fills the beholder with bewilderment and awe. You see before
+you a huge pile of iron cylinders, wheels, cranks, and levers, whirling
+away at a rate that makes you giddy to look at, and with a grinding and
+gnashing of teeth that almost drives you deaf to listen to. With
+insatiable appetite the furious monster devours ream after ream of snowy
+sheets of paper, placed in its many gaping jaws by the slaves who wait
+on it, but seems to find none to its taste or suitable to its digestion,
+for back come all the sheets again, each with the mark of this strange
+beast printed on one side. Its hunger never is appeased,--it is always
+swallowing and always disgorging, and it is as much as the little
+"devils" who wait on it can do, to put the paper between its lips and
+take it out again. But a bell rings suddenly, the monster gives a gasp,
+and is straightway still, and dead to all appearance. Upon a closer
+inspection, now that it is at rest, and with some explanation from the
+foreman you begin to have some idea of the process that has been going
+on before your astonished eyes.
+
+The core of the machine consists of a large drum, turning on a
+horizontal axis, round which revolve ten smaller cylinders, also on
+horizontal axes, in close proximity to the drum. The stereotyped matter
+is bound, like a malefactor on the wheel, to the central drum, and round
+each cylinder a sheet of paper is constantly being passed. It is
+obvious, therefore, that if the type be inked, and each of the cylinders
+be kept properly supplied with a sheet of paper, a single revolution of
+the drum will cause the ten cylinders to revolve likewise, and produce
+an impression on one side of each of the sheets of paper. For this
+purpose it is necessary to have the type inked ten times during every
+revolution of the drum; and this is managed by a very ingenious
+contrivance, which, however, is too complicated for description here.
+The feeding of the cylinders is provided for in this way. Over each
+cylinder is a sloping desk, upon which rests a heap of sheets of white
+paper. A lad--the "layer-on"--stands by the side of the desk and pushes
+forward the paper, a sheet at a time, towards the tape fingers of the
+machine, which, clutching hold of it, drag it into the interior, where
+it is passed round the cylinders, and printed on the outer side by
+pressure against the types on the drum. The sheet is then laid hold of
+by another set of tapes, carried to the other end of the machine from
+that at which it entered, and there laid down on a desk by a projecting
+flapper of lath-work. Another lad--the "taker-off"--is in attendance to
+remove the printed sheets, at certain intervals. The drum revolves in
+less than two seconds; and in that time therefore ten sheets--for the
+same operation is performed simultaneously by the ten cylinders--are
+sucked in at one end and disgorged at the other printed on one side,
+thus giving about 20,000 impressions in an hour.
+
+Such is the latest marvel of the "noble craft and mystery" of printing;
+but it is not to be supposed that the limits of production have even now
+been reached. The greater the supply the greater has grown the demand;
+the more people read, the more they want to read; and past experience
+assures us that ingenuity and enterprise will not fail to expand and
+multiply the powers of the press, so that the increasing appetite for
+literature may be fully met.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have briefly alluded to stereotyping; but some fuller notice seems
+requisite of a process so valuable and important, without which, indeed,
+the rapid multiplication of copies of a newspaper, even by a Hoe's
+six-cylinder machine, would be impossible. If stereotyping had not been
+invented, the printer would require to "set up" as many "forms" of type
+as there are cylinders in the machine he uses; an expensive and
+time-consuming operation which is now dispensed with, because he can
+resort to "casts." There is yet another advantage gained by the process;
+"casts" of the different sheets of a book can be preserved for any
+length of time; and when additional copies or new editions are needed,
+these "casts" can at once be sent to the machine, and the publisher is
+saved the great expense of "re-setting."
+
+The reader is well aware that while many books disappear with the day
+which called them forth, so there are others for which the demand is
+constant. This was found to be the case soon after the invention of
+printing, and the plan then adopted was the expensive and cumbrous one
+of setting up the whole of the book in request, and to keep the type
+standing for future editions. The disadvantages of this plan were
+obvious--a large outlay for type, the amount of space occupied by a
+constantly increasing number of "forms," and the liability to injury
+from the falling out of letters, from blows, and other accidents. As
+early as the eighteenth century attempts seem to have been made to
+remedy these inconveniences by cementing the types together at the
+bottom with lead or solder to effect their greater preservation. Canius,
+a French historian of printing, states that in June 1801 he received a
+letter from certain booksellers of Leyden, with a copy of their
+stereotype Bible, the plates for which were formed by soldering together
+the bottom of common types with some melted substance to the thickness
+of about three quires of writing-paper; and, it is added, "These plates
+were made about the beginning of the last century by an artist named Van
+du Mey."
+
+This, however, was not true stereotyping; whose leading principle is to
+dispense with the movable types--to set them again, as it were, at
+liberty--by making up perfect fac-similes in type-metal of the various
+combinations into which they may have entered. These fac-similes being
+made, the type is set free, and may be distributed, and used for making
+up fresh pages; which may once more furnish, so to speak, the punches to
+the mould into which the type-metal is poured for the purpose of
+effecting the fac-simile.
+
+The inventor of this ingenious process of casting plates from pages of
+type was William Ged, a goldsmith of Edinburgh, in 1735. Not possessing
+sufficient capital to carry out his invention, he visited London, and
+sought the assistance of the London stationers; from whom he received
+the most encouraging words, but no pecuniary assistance. But Ged was a
+man not readily discomfited, and applying at length to the Universities
+and the King's printer, he obtained the effective patronage he needed.
+He "stereotyped" some Bibles and Prayer-books, and the sheets worked off
+from his plates were admitted equal in point of appearance and accuracy
+to those printed from the type itself.
+
+But every benefactor of his kind is doomed to meet with the opposition
+of the envious, the ignorant, or the prejudiced. "The argument used by
+the idol-makers of old, 'Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our
+wealth,' and, 'This our craft is in danger to be set at nought,' was, as
+is usual in such cases, urged against this most useful and important
+invention. The compositors refused to set up works for stereotyping, and
+even those which were set up, however carefully read and corrected, were
+found to be full of gross errors. The fact was, that when the pages were
+sent to be cast, the compositors or pressmen, bribed, it is said, by a
+typefounder, disturbed the type, and introduced false letters and
+words. Poor Ged died, and left the dangerous secret of his art (which he
+did not disclose during his life-time) to his son, who, after many
+struggles for success, failed as his father had done before him." There
+is a tradition current, however, that he joined the Jacobite rebellion,
+was arrested, imprisoned, tried, and sentenced, but was eventually
+spared in consideration of the value of his father's admirable
+invention.
+
+That invention, after being forgotten for nearly half a century, was
+revived by a Dr. Tilloch, and taken up, improved, and extended by the
+ingenious Earl Stanhope. It is now practised in the following manner:--
+
+The type employed differs slightly from that in common use. The letter
+should have no shoulder, but should rise in a straight line from the
+foot; the spaces, leads, and quadrats are of the same height as the stem
+of the letter; the object being to diminish the number and depth of the
+cavities in the page, and thus lessen the chances of the mould breaking
+off and remaining in the form. Each page is corrected with the utmost
+care, and "imposed" in a small "chase" with metal furniture (or
+frame-work), which rises to a level with the type. Of course the number
+of pages in the form will vary according to the size of the book; a
+sheet being folded into sixteen leaves, twelve, eight, four, or two for
+16mo, 12mo, 8vo, quarto, or folio.
+
+Having our pages of type in complete order, we now proceed to rub the
+surface with a soft brush which has been lightly dipped into a very thin
+oil. Plumbago is sometimes preferred. A brass rectangular frame of three
+sides, with bevelled borders adapted to the size of the pages, is placed
+upon the chase so as to enclose three sides of the type, the fourth side
+being formed by a single brass edge, having the same inward sloping
+level as the other three sides. The use of this frame is to determine
+the size and thickness of the cast, which is next taken in
+plaster-of-paris--two kinds of the said plaster being used; the finer is
+mixed, poured over the surface of the type, and gently worked in with a
+brush so as to insure its close adhesion to the exclusion of bubbles of
+air; the coarser, after being mixed with water, is simply poured and
+spread over the previous and finer stratum.
+
+The superfluous plaster is next cleared away; the mould soon sets; the
+frame is raised; and the mould comes off from the surface of the type,
+on which it has been prevented from encrusting itself by the thin film
+of oil or plumbago.
+
+The next step is to dress and smoothen the plaster-mould, and set it on
+its edge in one of the compartments of a sheet-iron rack contained in an
+oven, and exposed, until perfectly dry, to a temperature of about 400 deg..
+This occupies about two hours. A good workman, it is said, will mould
+ten octavo sheets, or one hundred and sixty pages in a day: each mould
+generally contains a couple of octavo pages.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the state to which it is now brought, the mould is exceedingly
+friable, and requires to be handled with becoming care. With the face
+downwards it is placed upon the flat cast-iron _floating-plate_, which,
+in its turn, is set at the bottom of a square cast-iron tray, with
+upright edges sloping outwards, called the "dipping pan." It has a
+cast-iron lid, secured by a screw and shackles, not unlike a copying
+machine. This pan having been heated to 400 deg., it is plunged into an iron
+pot containing the melted alloy, which hangs over a furnace, the pan
+being slightly inclined so as to permit the escape of the air. A small
+space is left between the back or upper surface of the mould, and the
+lid of the dipping-pan, and the fluid metal on entering into the pan
+through the corner openings, _floats_ up the plaster together with the
+iron plate (hence called the _floating-plate_) on which the mould is
+set, with this effect, that the metal flows through the notches cut in
+the edge of the mould, and fills up every part of it, forming a layer of
+metal on its face corresponding to the depth of the border, while on
+the back is left merely a thin metallic film.
+
+The dipping-pan, says Tomlinson, is suspended, plunged in the metal, and
+removed by means of a crane; and when taken out, is set in a cistern of
+water upon supports so arranged that only the bottom of the pan comes in
+contact with the surface of the water. The metal thus _sets_, or
+solidifies, from below, and containing fluid above, maintains a fluid
+pressure during the contraction which accompanies the cooling.
+
+As it thus shrinks in dimensions, molten metal is poured into the
+corners of the pan for the purpose of maintaining the fluid pressure on
+the mould, and thus securing a good and solid cast. For if the pan were
+allowed to cool more slowly, the thin metallic film at the back of the
+inverted plaster mould would probably solidify first, and thus prevent
+the fluid pressure which is necessary for filling up all the lines of
+the mould.
+
+Tomlinson concludes his description of these interesting processes by
+informing us that an experienced and skilled workman will make five
+dips, each containing two octavo pages, in the course of an hour, or, as
+already stated, at the rate of nearly ten octavo sheets a day.
+
+When the pan is opened, the cake of metal and plaster is removed, and
+beaten upon its edges with a mallet, to clear away all superfluous
+metal. The stereotype plate is then taken by the _picker_, who planes
+its edges square, "turns" its back flat upon a lathe until the proper
+thickness is obtained, and removes any minute imperfections arising from
+specks of dirt and air-bubbles left among the letters in casting the
+mould. Damaged letters are cut out, and separate types soldered in as
+substitutes. After all this anxious care to obtain perfection, the plate
+is pronounced ready for working, and when made up with the other plates
+into the proper form, it may be worked either at the hand-press or by
+machine.
+
+Other modes of stereotyping have been introduced, but not one has
+attained to the popularity of the method we have just described.
+
+
+
+
+The Steam Engine.
+
+
+ I.--THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER.
+II.--JAMES WATT.
+
+
+
+
+The Steam Engine.
+
+    "It is said that ideas produce revolutions and truly they
+    do--not spiritual ideas only, but even mechanical."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+
+I.--THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER.
+
+
+As the last century was drawing to its close, two great revolutions were
+in progress, both of which were destined to exercise a mighty influence
+upon the years to come,--the one calm, silent, peaceful, the other full
+of sound and fury, bathed in blood, and crowned with thorns,--the one
+the fruit of long years of patient thought and work, the other the
+outcome of long years of oppression, suffering, and sin,--the one was
+Watt's invention of the steam engine, the other the great popular revolt
+in France. These are the two great events which set their mark upon our
+century, gave form and colour to its character, and direction to its
+aims and aspirations. In the pages of conventional history, of course,
+the French revolution, with its wild phantasmagoria of retribution, its
+massacres and martyrdoms, will no doubt have assigned to it the foremost
+rank as the great feature of the era,--
+
+    "For ever since historians writ,
+      And ever since a bard could sing,
+    Doth each exalt with all his wit
+      The noble art of murdering."
+
+But those who can look below the mere surface of events, and whose fancy
+is not captivated by the melo-drama of rebellion, and the pageantry of
+war, will find that Watt's steam machine worked the greatest revolution
+of modern times, and exercised the deepest, as well as widest and most
+permanent influence over the whole civilized world.
+
+Like all great discoveries, that of the motive power of steam, and the
+important uses to which it might be applied, was the work, not of any
+one mind, but of several minds, each borrowing something from its
+predecessor, until at last the first vague and uncertain Idea was
+developed into a practical Reality. Known dimly to the ancients, and
+probably employed by the priests in their juggleries and pretended
+miracles, it was not till within the last three centuries that any
+systematic attempt was made to turn it to useful account.
+
+But before we turn our attention to the persons who made, and, after
+many failures and discouragements, _successfully_ made this attempt, it
+will be advisable we should say something as to the principle on which
+their invention is founded.
+
+The reader knows that gases and vapours, when imprisoned within a narrow
+space, do struggle as resolutely to escape as did Sterne's starling from
+his cage. Their force of pressure is enormous, and if confined in a
+closed vessel, they would speedily rend it into fragments. Let some
+water boil in a pipkin whose lid fits very tightly; in a few minutes
+the vapour or steam arising from the boiling water, overcoming the
+resistance of the lid, raises it, and rushes forth into the atmosphere.
+
+Take a small quantity of water, and pour it into the hollow of a ball of
+metal. Then with the aid of a cork, worked by a metallic screw, close
+the opening of the ball hermetically, and place the ball in the heart of
+a glowing fire. The steam formed by the boiling water in the inside of
+the metallic bomb, finding no channel of escape, will burst through the
+bonds that sought to confine it, and hurl afar the fragments with a loud
+and dangerous explosion.
+
+These well-known facts we adduce simply as a proof of the immense
+mechanical power possessed by steam when enclosed within a limited area.
+Now, the questions must have occurred to many, though they were
+themselves unable to answer them,--Why should all this force be wasted?
+Can it not be directed to the service and uses of man? In the course of
+time, however, human intelligence _did_ discover a sufficient reply, and
+_did_ contrive to utilize this astonishing power by means of the machine
+now so famous as the Steam Engine.
+
+Let us take a boiler full of water, and bring it up to boiling point by
+means of a furnace. Attach to this boiler a tube, which guides the steam
+of the boiler into a hollow metallic cylinder, traversed by a piston
+rising and sinking in its interior. It is evident that the steam rushing
+through the tube into the lower part of the cylinder, and underneath the
+piston, will force the piston, by its pressure, to rise to the top of
+the cylinder. Now let us check for a moment the influx of the steam
+_below_ the piston, and turning the stopcock, allow the steam which
+fills that space to escape outside; and, at the same time, by opening a
+second tube, let in a supply of steam _above_ the piston: the pressure
+of the steam, now exercised in a downward direction, will force the
+piston to the bottom of its course, because there will exist beneath it
+no resistance capable of opposing the pressure of the steam. If we
+constantly keep up this alternating motion, the piston now rising and
+now falling, we are in a position to profit by the force of steam. For
+if the lever, attached to the rod of the piston at its lower end, is
+fixed by its upper to a crank of the rotating axle of a workshop or
+factory, is it not clear that the continuous action of the steam will
+give this axle a continuous rotatory movement? And this movement may be
+transmitted, by means of bands and pulleys, to a number of different
+machines or engines all kept at work by the power of a solitary engine.
+
+This, then, is the principle on which the inventions of Papin, the
+Marquis of Worcester, Newcomen, and James Watt have been based.
+
+The great astronomer Huyghens conceived the idea of creating a motive
+machine by exploding a charge of gunpowder under a cylinder traversed by
+a piston: the air contained in this cylinder, dilated by the heat
+resulting from the combustion of the powder, escaped into the outer air
+through a valve, whereupon a partial void existed beneath the piston,
+or, rather, the air considerably rarified; and from this moment the
+pressure of the atmospheric air falling on the upper part of the piston,
+and being but imperfectly counterpoised by the rarified air beneath the
+piston, precipitated this piston to the bottom of the cylinder.
+Consequently, said Huyghens, if to the said piston were attached a chain
+or cord coiling around a pulley, one might raise up the weights placed
+at the extremity of the cord, and so produce a genuine mechanical
+effect.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF THE STEAM ENGINE.]
+
+But Experiment, the touchstone of Physical Truth, soon revealed the
+deficiencies of an apparatus such as Huyghens had suggested. The air
+beneath the piston was not sufficiently rarified; the void produced was
+too imperfect. Evidently gunpowder was not the right agent. What was?
+Denis Papin answered, Steam. And the first Steam Engine ever invented
+was invented by this ingenious Frenchman.
+
+Papin was born at Blois on the 22nd of August 1645. He died about 1714,
+but neither the exact date nor the place of his death is known. The
+lives of most men of genius are heavy with shadows, but Papin's career
+was more than ordinarily characterized by the incessant pursuit of the
+evil spirits of adversity and persecution. A Protestant, and devoutly
+loyal to his creed, he fled from France with thousands of his
+co-religionists, when Louis XIV. unwisely and unrighteously revoked the
+Edict of Nantes, which permitted the Huguenots to worship God after
+their own fashion. And it was abroad, in England, Italy, and Germany,
+that he realized the majority of his inventions, among which that of the
+Steam Engine is the most conspicuous.
+
+In 1707 Papin constructed a steam engine on the principle we have
+already described, and placed it on board a boat provided with wheels.
+Embarking at Cassel on the river Fulda, he made his way to Muenden in
+Hanover, with the design of entering the waters of the Weser, and thence
+repairing to England, to make known his discovery, and test its
+capabilities before the public. But the harsh and ignorant boatmen of
+the Weser would not permit him to enter the river; and when he
+indignantly complained, they had the barbarity to break his boat in
+pieces. This was the crowning misfortune of Papin's life. Thenceforward
+he seems to have lost all heart and hope. He contrived to reach London,
+where the Royal Society, of which he was a member, allowed him a small
+pittance.
+
+In 1690 this ingenious man had devised an engine in which atmospheric
+vapour instead of steam was the motive agent. At a later period,
+Newcomen, a native of Dartmouth in Devonshire, conceived the idea of
+employing the same source of power.
+
+But, previously, the value of steam, if employed in this direction, had
+occurred to the Marquis of Worcester, a nobleman of great ability and a
+quick imagination, who, for his loyalty to the cause of Charles I., had
+been confined in the Tower of London as a prisoner. On one occasion,
+while sitting in his solitary chamber, the tight cover of a kettle full
+of boiling water was blown off before his eyes; for mere amusement's
+sake he set it on again, saw it again blown off, and then began to
+reflect on the capabilities of power thus accidentally revealed to him,
+and to speculate on its application to mechanical ends. Being of a
+quick, ingenious turn of mind, he was not long in discovering how it
+could be directed and controlled. When he published his project--"An
+Admirable and Most Forcible Way to Drive up Water by Fire"--he was
+abused and laughed at as being either a madman or an impostor. He
+persevered, however, and actually had a little engine of some two horse
+power at work raising water from the Thames at Vauxhall; by means of
+which, he writes, "a child's force bringeth up a hundred feet high an
+incredible quantity of water, and I may boldly call it the most
+stupendous work in the whole world." There is a fervent "Ejaculatory and
+Extemporary Thanksgiving Prayer" of his extant, composed "when first
+with his corporeal eyes he did see finished a perfect trial of his
+water-commanding engine, delightful and useful to whomsoever hath in
+recommendation either knowledge, profit, or pleasure." This and the rest
+of his wonderful "Centenary of Inventions," only emptied instead of
+replenishing his purse. He was reduced to borrow paltry sums from his
+creditors, and received neither respect for his genius nor sympathy for
+his misfortunes. He was before his age, and suffered accordingly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1698 his work was taken up by Thomas Savery, a miner, who, through
+assiduous labour and well-directed study, had become a skilful engineer.
+He succeeded in constructing an engine on the principle of the pressure
+of aqueous vapour, and this engine he employed successfully in pumping
+water out of coal mines. We owe to Savery the invention of a vacuum,
+which was suggested to him, it is said, in a curious manner: he
+happened to throw a wine-flask, which he had just drained, upon the
+fire; a few drops of liquor at the bottom of the flask soon filled it
+with steam, and, taking it off the fire, he plunged it, mouth downwards,
+into a basin of cold water that was standing on the table, when, a
+vacuum being produced, the water immediately rushed up into the flask.
+
+In tracing this lineage of inventive genius, we next come to Thomas
+Newcomen, a blacksmith, who carried out the principle of the piston in
+his Atmospheric Engine, for which he took out a patent in 1705. It is
+but just to recognize that this engine was the first which proved
+practically and widely useful, and was, in truth, the actual progenitor
+of the present steam engine. It was chiefly used for working pumps. To
+one end of a beam moving on a central axis was attached the rod of the
+pump to be worked; to the other, the rod of the piston moving in the
+cylinder below. Underneath this cylinder was a boiler, and the two were
+connected by a pipe provided with a stop-cock to regulate the supply of
+steam. When the pump-rod was depressed, and the piston raised to the top
+of the cylinder, which was effected by weights hanging to the pump-end
+of the beam, the stop-cock was used to cut off the steam, and a supply
+of cold water injected into the cylinder through a water-pipe connected
+with the tank or cistern. The steam in the cylinder was immediately
+condensed; a vacuum created below the piston; the latter was then forced
+down by atmospheric pressure, bringing with it the end of the beam to
+which it was attached, and raising the other along with the pump-rod. A
+fresh supply of steam was admitted below the piston, which was raised by
+the counterpoise; and thus the motion was constantly renewed. The
+opening and shutting of the stop-cocks was at first managed by an
+attendant; but a boy named Potter, who was employed for this purpose,
+being fonder of play than work, contrived to save himself all trouble in
+the matter by fastening the handles with pieces of string to some of the
+cranks and levers. Subsequently, Beighton, an engineer, improved on this
+idea by substituting levers, acted on by pins in a rod suspended from
+the beam.
+
+Properly speaking, Newcomen's engine was not a steam, but an atmospheric
+engine; for though steam was employed, it formed no essential feature of
+the contrivance, and might have been replaced by an air-pump. All the
+use that was made of steam was to produce a vacuum underneath the
+piston, which was pressed down by the weight of the atmosphere, and
+raised by the counterpoise of the buckets at the other end of the beam.
+Watt, in bringing the expansive force of steam to bear upon the working
+of the piston, may be said to have really invented the steam engine.
+Half a century before the little model came into Watt's hands,
+Newcomen's engine had been made as complete as its capabilities
+admitted of; and Watt struck into an entirely new line, and invented an
+entirely new machine, when he produced his Condensing Engine.
+
+
+
+
+II.--JAMES WATT.
+
+
+There are few places in our country where human enterprise has effected
+such vast and marvellous changes within the century as the country
+traversed by the river Clyde. Where Glasgow now stretches far and wide,
+with its miles of swarming streets, its countless mills, and warehouses,
+and foundries, its busy ship-building yards, its harbour thronged with
+vessels of every size and clime, and its large and wealthy population,
+there was to be seen, a hundred years ago, only an insignificant little
+burgh, as dull and quiet as any rural market-town of our own day. There
+was a little quay at the Broomielaw, seldom used, and partly overgrown
+with broom. No boat over six tons' burden could get so high up the
+river, and the appearance of a masted vessel was almost an event.
+Tobacco was the chief trade of the town; and the tobacco merchants might
+be seen strutting about at the Cross in their scarlet cloaks, and
+looking down on the rest of the inhabitants, who got their livelihood,
+for the most part, by dealing in grindstones, coals, and fish--"Glasgow
+magistrates," as herrings are popularly called, being in as great repute
+then as now. There were but scanty means of intercourse with other
+places, and what did exist were little used, except for goods, which
+were conveyed on the backs of pack-horses. The caravan then took two
+days to go to Edinburgh--you can run through now between the two cities
+in little more than an hour. There is hardly any trade that Glasgow does
+not prosecute vigorously and successfully. You may see any day you walk
+down to the Broomielaw, vessels of a thousand tons' burden at anchor
+there, and the custom duties which were in 1796 little over L100, have
+now reached an amount exceeding one million!
+
+Glasgow is indebted, in a great part, for the gigantic strides which it
+has made, to the genius, patience, and perseverance of a man who, in his
+boyhood, rather more than a hundred years ago, used to be scolded by his
+aunt for wasting his time, taking off the lid of the kettle, putting it
+on again, holding now a cup, now a silver spoon over the steam as it
+rose from the spout, and catching and counting the drops of water it
+fell into. James Watt was then taking his first elementary lessons in
+that science, his practical application of which in after life was to
+revolutionize the whole system of mechanical movement, and place an
+almost unlimited power at the disposal of the industrial classes.
+
+When a boy, James Watt was delicate and sickly, and so shy and sensitive
+that his school-days were a misery to him, and he profited but little by
+his attendance. At home, though, he was a great reader, and picked up a
+great deal of knowledge for himself, rarely possessed by those of his
+years. One day a friend was urging his father to send James to school,
+and not allow him to trifle away his time at home. "Look how the boy is
+occupied," said his father, "before you condemn him." Though only six
+years old, he was trying to solve a geometrical problem on the floor
+with a bit of chalk. As he grew older he took to the study of optics and
+astronomy, his curiosity being excited by the quadrants and other
+instruments in his father's shop. By the age of fifteen he had twice
+gone through De Gravesande's Elements of Natural Philosophy, and he was
+also well versed in physiology, botany, mineralogy, and antiquarian
+lore. He was further an expert hand in using the tools in his father's
+workshop, and could do both carpentry and metal work. After a brief stay
+with an old mechanic in Glasgow, who, though he dignified himself with
+the name of "optician," never rose beyond mending spectacles, tuning
+spinets, and making fiddles and fishing tackle, Watt went at the age of
+eighteen to London, where he worked so hard, and lived so sparingly in
+order to relieve his father from the burden of maintaining him, that his
+health suffered, and he had to recruit it by a return to his native air.
+During the year spent in the metropolis, however, he managed to learn
+nearly all that the members of the trade there could teach, and soon
+showed himself a quick and skilful workman.
+
+In 1757 we find the sign of "James Watt, Mathematical Instrument Maker
+to the College," stuck up over the entrance to one of the stairs in the
+quadrangle of Glasgow College. But though under the patronage of the
+University, his trade was so poor, that thrifty and frugal as he was, he
+had a hard struggle to live by it. He was ready, however, for any work
+that came to hand, and would never let a job go past him. To execute an
+order for an organ which he accepted, he studied harmonics diligently,
+and though without any ear for music, turned out a capital instrument,
+with several improvements of his own in its action; and he also
+undertook the manufacture of guitars, violins, and flutes. All this
+while he was laying up vast stores of knowledge on all sorts of
+subjects, civil and military engineering, natural history, languages,
+literature, and art; and among the professors and students who dropped
+into his little shop to have a chat with him, he soon came to be
+regarded as one of the ablest men about the college, while his modesty,
+candour, and obliging disposition gained him many good friends.
+
+[Illustration: JAMES WATT. Page 67.]
+
+Among his multifarious pursuits, Watt had experimented a little in the
+powers of steam; but it was not till the winter of 1763-4, when a model
+of Newcomen's engine was put into his hands for repair, that he took up
+the matter in earnest. Newcomen's engine was then about the most
+complete invention of its kind; but its only value was its power of
+producing a ready vacuum, by rapid condensation on the application of
+cold; and for practical purposes was neither cheaper nor quicker than
+animal power. Watt, having repaired the model, found, on setting it
+agoing, that it would not work satisfactorily. Had it been only a little
+less clumsy and imperfect, Watt might never have regarded it as more
+than the "fine plaything," for which he at first took it; but now the
+difficulties of the task roused him to further efforts. He consulted all
+the books he could get on the subject, to ascertain how the defects
+could be remedied; and that source of information exhausted, he
+commenced a series of experiments, and resolved to work out the problem
+for himself. Among other experiments, he constructed a boiler which
+showed by inspection the quantity of water evaporated in a given time,
+and thereby ascertained the quantity of steam used in every stroke of
+the engine. He found, to his astonishment, that a small quantity of
+water in the form of steam heated a large quantity of water injected
+into the cylinder for the purpose of cooling it; and upon further
+examination, he ascertained the steam heated six times its weight of
+well water up to the temperature of the steam itself (212 deg.). After
+various ineffectual schemes, Watt was forced to the conclusion that, to
+make a perfect steam engine, two apparently incompatible conditions must
+be fulfilled--the cylinder must always be as hot as the steam that came
+rushing into it, and yet, at each descent of the piston, the cylinder
+must become sufficiently cold to condense the steam. He was at his wit's
+end how to accomplish this task, when, as he was taking a walk one
+afternoon, the idea flashed across his mind that, as steam was an
+elastic vapour, it would expand and rush into a previously exhausted
+place; and that, therefore, all he had to do to meet the conditions he
+had laid down, was to produce a vacuum in a separate vessel, and open a
+communication between this vessel and the cylinder of the steam-engine
+at the moment when the piston was required to descend, and the steam
+would disseminate itself and become divided between the cylinder and the
+adjoining vessel. But as this vessel would be kept cold by an injection
+of water, the steam would be annihilated as fast as it entered, which
+would cause a fresh outflow of the remaining steam in the cylinder, till
+nearly the whole of it was condensed, without the cylinder itself being
+chilled in the operation. Here was the great key to the problem; and
+when once the idea of separate condensation was started, many other
+subordinate improvements, as he said himself, "followed as corollaries
+in rapid succession, so that in the course of one or two days the
+invention was thus far complete in his mind."
+
+It cost him ten long weary years of patient speculation and experiment,
+to carry out the idea, with little hope to buoy him up, for to the last
+he used to say "his fear was always equal to his hope,"--and with all
+the cares and embarrassments of his precarious trade to perplex and
+burden him. Even when he had his working model fairly completed, his
+worst difficulties--the difficulties which most distressed and harassed
+the shy, sensitive, and retiring Watt--seemed only to have commenced. To
+give the invention a fair practical trial required an outlay of at least
+L1000; and one capitalist, who had agreed to join him in the
+undertaking, had to give it up through some business losses. Still Watt
+toiled on, always keeping the great object in view,--earning bread for
+his family (for he was married by this time), by adding land-surveying
+to his mechanical labours, and, in short, turning his willing hand to
+any honest job that offered.
+
+He got a patent in 1769, and began building a large engine; but the
+workmen were new to the task, and when completed, its action was
+spasmodic and unsatisfactory. "It is a sad thing," he then wrote, "for a
+man to have his all hanging by a single string. If I had wherewithal to
+pay for the loss, I don't think I should so much fear a failure; but I
+cannot bear the thought of other people becoming losers by my scheme,
+and I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst." And just
+then, to make matters still more gloomy, he learned that some rascally
+linen-draper in London was plagiarizing the great invention he had
+brought forth in such sore and protracted travail. "Of all things in
+the world," cried poor Watt, sick with hope deferred, and pressed with
+little carking cares on every side, "there is nothing so foolish as
+inventing."
+
+When nearly giving way to despair, and on the point of abandoning his
+invention, Watt was fortunate enough to fall in with Matthew Boulton,
+one of the great manufacturing potentates of Birmingham, an energetic,
+far-seeing man, who threw himself into the enterprise with all his
+spirit; and the fortune of the invention was made. An engine, on the new
+principle, was set up at Soho; and there Boulton and Watt sold, as the
+former said to Boswell, "what all the world desires to have,
+POWER;"--the infinite power that animates those mighty engines, which--
+
+          "England's arms of conquest are,
+    The trophies of her bloodless war:
+              Brave weapons these.
+    Victorious over wave and soil,
+    With these she sails, she weaves, she tills,
+    Pierces the everlasting hills,
+              And spans the seas."
+
+Watt's engine, once fairly started, was not long in making its way into
+general use. The first steam-engine used in Manchester was erected in
+1790; and now it is estimated that in that district, within a radius of
+ten miles, there are in constant work more than fifty thousand boilers,
+giving a total power of upwards of one million horses. And the united
+steam power of Great Britain is considered equal to the manual labour of
+upwards of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number
+of males on the face of the earth. From the factory at Soho, Watt's
+improved engines were dispersed all over the country, especially in
+Cornwall--the firm receiving the value of a third part of the coal saved
+by the use of the new machine. In one mine, where there were three pumps
+at work, the proprietors thought it worth while, it is said, to purchase
+the rights of the inventors, at the price of L2500 yearly for each
+engine. The saving, therefore, on the three engines, in fuel alone, must
+have been at least L7500 a year.
+
+In the first year of the present century, Watt withdrew himself entirely
+from business; but though he lived in retirement, he did not let his
+busy mind get rusty or sluggish for want of exercise. At one time he
+took it into his head that his faculties were declining, and though
+upwards of seventy years of age, he resolved to test his mental powers
+by taking up some new subject of study. It was no easy matter to find
+one quite new to him, so wide and comprehensive had been his range of
+study; but at length the Anglo-Saxon tongue occurred to him, and he
+immediately applied himself to master it, the facility with which he did
+so, dispelling all doubt as to the failing of his stupendous intellect.
+He thus busied himself in various useful and entertaining pursuits, till
+close upon his death, which took place in 1819.
+
+Extraordinary as was Watt's inventive genius, his wide range of
+knowledge, theoretic and practical, was equally so. Great as is the
+"idea" with which his name is chiefly associated, he was not a man of
+one idea, but of a thousand. There was hardly a subject which came under
+his notice which he did not master; and, as was said of him, "it seemed
+as if every subject casually started by him had been that he had been
+occupied in studying." He had no doubt a rapid faculty of acquiring
+knowledge; but he owed the versatility and copiousness of his
+attainments above all to his unwearied industry. He was always at work
+on something or other, and he may truly be called one of those who--
+
+            "Could Time's hour-glass fall,
+    Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand,
+    And by incessant labour gather all."
+
+In a recent volume of memoirs by Mrs. Schimmel Pennick, we find the
+following graphic sketch of this extraordinary man:--"He was one of the
+most complete specimens of the melancholic temperament. His head was
+generally bent forward or leaning on his hand in meditation, his
+shoulders stooping, and his chest falling in, his limbs lank and
+unmuscular, and his complexion sallow. His utterance was slow and
+impassioned, deep and low in tone, with a broad Scotch accent; his
+manners gentle, modest, and unassuming. In a company where he was not
+known, unless spoken to, he might have tranquilly passed the whole time
+in pursuing his own meditations. When he entered the room, men of
+letters, men of science, many military men, artists, ladies, and even
+little children, thronged around him. I remember a celebrated Swedish
+artist being instructed by him that rat's whiskers made the most pliant
+painting-brushes; ladies would appeal to him on the best modes of
+devising grates, curing smoking chimneys, warming their houses, and
+obtaining fast colours."
+
+His reading was singularly extensive and diversified. He perused almost
+every work that came in his way, and used to say that he never opened a
+book, no matter what its subject or worth, without learning something
+from it. He had a vivid imagination, was passionately fond of fiction,
+and was a very gifted story-teller himself. When a boy, staying with his
+aunt in Glasgow, he used every night to enthral the attention of the
+little circle with some exciting narrative, which they would not go to
+bed till they had heard the end of; and kept them in such a state of
+tremor and excitement, that his aunt used to threaten to send him away.
+
+Since Watt's time, innumerable patents have been taken out for
+improvements in the steam engine; but his great invention forms the
+basis of nearly all of them, and the alterations refer rather to details
+than principles of action. The application of steam to locomotive
+purposes, however, led to the construction of the high pressure engine,
+in which the cumbrous condensing apparatus is dispensed with, and motion
+imparted to the piston by the elastic power of the steam being greater
+than that of the atmosphere.
+
+
+
+
+The Manufacture of Cotton.
+
+
+  I.--KAY AND HARGREAVES.
+ II.--SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT.
+III.--SAMUEL CROMPTON.
+ IV.--DR. CARTWRIGHT.
+  V.--SIR ROBERT PEEL.
+
+
+
+
+The Manufacture of Cotton.
+
+    "Are not our greatest men as good as lost? The men who walk
+    daily among us, clothing us, warming us, feeding us, walk
+    shrouded in darkness, mere mythic men."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+
+I.--KAY AND HARGREAVES.
+
+
+On the 3d of May 1734, there was a hanging at Cork which made a good
+deal more noise than such a very ordinary event generally did in those
+days. There was nothing remarkable about the malefactor, or the crime he
+had committed. He was a very commonplace ruffian, and had earned his
+elevation to the gallows by a vulgar felony. What was remarkable about
+the affair was, that the woollen weavers of Cork, being then in a state
+of great distress from want of work, dressed up the convict in cotton
+garments, and that the poor wretch, having once been a weaver himself,
+"employed" the last occasion he was ever to have of addressing his
+fellow creatures, by assuring them that all his misdeeds and misfortunes
+were to be traced to the "pernicious practice of wearing cottons."
+"Therefore, good Christians," he continued, "consider that if you go on
+to suppress your own goods, by wearing such cottons as I am now clothed
+in, you will bring your country into misery, which will consequently
+swarm with such unhappy malefactors as your present Object is; and the
+blood of every miserable felon that will hang after this warning from
+the gallows will lie at your doors."
+
+All which sayings were no doubt greatly applauded by the disheartened
+weavers on the spot, and much taken to heart by the citizens and gentry
+to whom they were addressed.
+
+This is only one out of the many illustrations which might be drawn from
+the chronicles of those days, of the prejudice and discouragement cotton
+had to contend against on its first appearance in this country.
+Prohibited over and over again, laid under penalties and high duties,
+treated with every sort of contumely and oppression, it had long to
+struggle desperately for the barest tolerance; yet it ended by
+overcoming all obstacles, and distancing its favoured rival wool.
+Returning good for evil, cotton now sustains one-sixth of our
+fellow-countrymen, and is an important mainstay of our commerce and
+manufactures.
+
+First imported into Great Britain towards the middle of the seventeenth
+century, cotton was but little used for purposes of manufacture till the
+middle of the eighteenth. The settlement of some Flemish emigrants in
+Lancashire led to that district becoming the principal seat of the
+cotton manufacture; and probably the ungenerous nature of its soil
+induced the people to resort to spinning and weaving to make up for the
+unprofitableness of their agricultural labours.
+
+A nobler monument of human skill, enterprise, and perseverance, than the
+invention of cotton-spinning machinery is hardly to be met with; but it
+must also be owned that its history, encouraging as it is in one aspect,
+is in another sad and humiliating to the last degree. It is difficult at
+first to credit the uniform ingratitude and treachery which the various
+inventors met with from the very men whom their contrivances enriched.
+"There is nothing," said James Watt in the crisis of his fortunes, worn
+with care, and sick with hope deferred--"there is nothing so foolish as
+inventing;" and with far more reason the inventors of cotton-spinning
+machines could echo the mournful cry. It is sad to think that so proud a
+chapter of our history should bear so dark a stain.
+
+In 1733 the primitive method still prevailed of spinning between the
+finger and thumb, only one thread at a time; and weaving up the yarn in
+a loom, the shuttle of which had to be thrown from right to left and
+left to right by both hands alternately. In that year, however, the
+first step was made in advance, by the invention of the fly-shuttle,
+which, by means of a handle and spring, could be jerked from side to
+side with one hand. This contrivance was due to the ingenuity of John
+Kay, a loom-maker at Colchester, and proved his ruin. The weavers did
+their best to prevent the use of the shuttle,--the masters to get it
+used, and to cheat the inventor out of his reward. Poor Kay was soon
+brought low in the world by costly law-suits, and being not yet tired of
+inventing, devised a rude power-loom. In revenge a mob of weavers broke
+into his house, smashed all his machines, and would have smashed him
+too, had they laid hands on him. He escaped from their clutches, to find
+his way to Paris, and to die there in misery not long afterwards. Kay
+was the first of the martyrs in this branch of invention. James
+Hargreaves was the next.
+
+The use of the fly-shuttle greatly expedited the process of weaving, and
+the spinning of cotton soon fell behind. The weavers were often brought
+to a stand-still for want of weft to go on with, and had to spend their
+mornings going about in search of it, sometimes without getting as much
+as kept them busy for the rest of the day. The scarcity of yarn was a
+constant complaint; and many a busy brain was at work trying to devise
+some improvement on the common hand-wheel. Amongst others, James
+Hargreaves, an ingenious weaver at Standhill, near Blackburn, who had
+already improved the mode of cleaning and unravelling the cotton before
+spinning, took the subject into consideration. One day, when brooding
+over it in his cottage, idle for want of weft, the accidental
+overturning of his wife's wheel suggested to him the principle of the
+spinning-jenny. Lying on its side, the wheel still continued in
+motion--the spindle being thrown from a horizontal into an upright
+position; and it occurred to him that all he had got to do was to place
+a number of spindles side by side. This was in 1764, and three years
+afterwards Hargreaves had worked out the idea, and constructed a
+spinning frame, with eight spindles and a horizontal wheel, which he
+christened after his wife Jenny, whose wheel had first put him in the
+right track. Directly the spinners of the locality got knowledge of this
+machine that was to do eight times as much as any one of them, they
+broke into the inventor's cottage, destroyed the jenny, and compelled
+him to fly for the safety of his life to Nottingham. He took out a
+patent, but the manufacturers leagued themselves against them. Sole,
+friendless, penniless, he could make no head against their numbers and
+influence, relinquished his invention, and died in obscurity and
+distress ten years after he had the misfortune to contrive the
+spinning-jenny.
+
+The history of the cotton manufacture now becomes identified with the
+lives of Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright--the inventors of the
+water-frame, the mule, and the power-loom.
+
+
+
+
+II.--SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT.
+
+
+Somewhere about the year 1752, any one passing along a certain obscure
+alley in Preston, then a mere village compared with the prosperous town
+into which it has since expanded, might have observed projecting from
+the entrance to the underground flat of one of the houses, a blue and
+white pole, with a battered tin plate dangling at the end of it, the
+object of which was to indicate that if he wanted his hair cut or his
+chin shaved, he had only to step down stairs, and the owner of the sign
+would be delighted to accommodate him. But either people in that quarter
+had little or no superfluous hair to get rid of, or they had it taken
+off elsewhere; for Dicky Arkwright, the barber in the cellar, for whom
+the pole and plate stood sponsor in the upper world, had few
+opportunities of displaying his talents, and spent most of his time
+whetting his razors on a long piece of leather, one end of which was
+nailed to the wall, while the other was drawn towards him, and keeping
+the hot water and the soap ready for the customers who seldom or never
+came. This sort of thing did not suit Dick's notions at all; for he was
+of an active temperament, and besides feeling very dull at being so much
+by himself all day, he pulled rather a long face when he counted out the
+scanty array of coppers in the till after shutting up shop for the
+night. As he sat one night, before tumbling into his truckle bed that
+stood in a recess in one corner of the dingy little room, meditating on
+the hardness of the times, a bright idea struck him; and the next
+morning the attractions of the sign-pole were enhanced by a staring
+placard, bearing the urgent invitation:--
+
+    COME TO THE
+    SUBTERRANEOUS BARBER!
+    HE SHAVES FOR A PENNY!!
+
+Now twopence, as we believe all those who have investigated the subject
+are agreed, was the standard charge for a clean shave at that period;
+and as soon as this innovation got wind, we can fancy how indignant the
+fraternity were at the unprincipled conduct of one of their number; how
+they denounced the reprobate, and prophesied his speedy ruin, over their
+pipes and beer in the parlour of the "Duke of Marlborough," which they
+patronized out of respect for that hero's enormous periwig,--in their
+eyes his chief title to immortality, and a bright example for the
+degenerate age, when people had not only taken to wearing their own
+hair, but were even beginning to leave off dusting it with flour! And to
+make matters worse, here was a low fellow offering to shave for a penny.
+A number of people, tickled with the originality of the placard, and not
+unmindful of the penny saved, began to patronize the "Subterraneous
+barber," and he soon drew so many customers away from the higher-priced
+shops, that they were obliged to come down, after a while, to a penny as
+well. Not to be outdone, Arkwright lowered his charge to a halfpenny,
+and still retained his rank as the cheapest barber in the place.
+
+Arkwright's parents had been very poor people; and as he was the
+youngest of a family of thirteen, it may be readily supposed that all
+the school learning he got was of the most meagre kind,--if, indeed, he
+ever was at school at all, which is very doubtful. He was of a very
+ardent, enterprising temperament, however, and when once he took a thing
+in hand, stubbornly persevered in carrying it through to the end. About
+the year 1760, being then about thirty years of age, Arkwright got tired
+of the shaving, which brought him but a very scanty and precarious
+livelihood, and resolved to try his luck in a business where there was
+more scope for his enterprise and activity. He therefore began business
+as an itinerant dealer in hair, travelling up and down the country to
+collect it, dressing it himself, and then disposing of it in a prepared
+state to the wig-makers. As he was very quick in detecting any
+improvements that might be made in the process of dressing, he soon
+acquired the reputation amongst the wig-makers of supplying a better
+article than any of his rivals, and drove a very good trade. He had also
+picked up or discovered for himself the secret of dyeing the hair in a
+particular way, by which he not only augmented his profits, but enlarged
+the circle of his customers. He throve so well, that he was able to lay
+by a little money and to marry. He was very fond of spending what
+leisure time he had in making experiments in mechanics; and for a while
+was very much taken up with an attempt to solve the attractive problem
+of perpetual motion. No doubt he soon saw the hopelessness of the
+effort; but although he left the question unsolved, the bent thus given
+to his thoughts was fruitful of most valuable consequences.
+
+Living in the midst of a manufacturing population, Arkwright was
+accustomed to hear daily complaints of the continual difficulty of
+procuring sufficient weft to keep the looms employed; while the
+exportation of cotton goods gave rise to a growing demand for the
+manufactured article. The weavers generally had the weft they used spun
+for them by their wives or daughters; and those whose families could not
+supply the necessary quantity, had their spinning done by their
+neighbours; and even by paying, as they had to do, more for the spinning
+than the price allowed by their masters, very few could procure weft
+enough to keep themselves constantly at work. It was no uncommon thing,
+we learn, for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and
+call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him
+for the rest of the day. Arkwright must have been constantly hearing of
+this difficulty, and of the restrictions it placed on the manufacture of
+cotton goods; and being a mechanical genius, was led to think how it
+might be lessened, if not got rid of altogether. The idea of having an
+automaton spinner, instead of one of flesh and blood, had occurred
+before then to more than one speculator; but the thing had never
+answered, and no models or descriptions of the machines proposed were
+preserved. One inventor had, indeed, destroyed his own machine, after
+having constructed it and found it to work, for fear that if it came
+into use it would deprive the poor spinners of their livelihood,--in
+reality its effect would have been to provide employment and food for
+thousands more than at that time got a miserable living from their
+spinning-wheels.
+
+While Arkwright was intent on the discovery of perpetual motion, he fell
+in with a clockmaker of the name of Kay, who assisted him in making
+wheels and springs for the contrivance he was trying to complete. This
+led to an intimate connection between them; and when Arkwright had given
+up the perpetual motion affair, and applied his thoughts to the
+invention of some machine for producing cotton weft more rapidly than by
+the simple wheel, Kay continued to help him in making models. Arkwright
+soon became so engrossed in his new task, and so confident of ultimate
+success, that he began to neglect his regular business. All his
+thoughts, and nearly all his time, were given up to the great work he
+had taken in hand. His trade fell off; he spent all his savings in
+purchasing materials for models, and getting them put together, and he
+fell into very distressed circumstances. His wife remonstrated with him,
+but in vain; and one day, in a rage at what she considered the cause of
+all their privations, she smashed some of his models on the floor. Such
+an outrage was more than Arkwright could bear, and they separated.
+
+In 1768, Arkwright, having completed the model of a machine for spinning
+cotton thread, removed to Preston, taking Kay with him. At this time he
+had hardly a penny in the world, and was almost in rags. His poverty,
+indeed, was such, that soon after his arrival in Preston, a contested
+election for a member of Parliament having taken place, he was so
+tattered and miserable in his appearance, that the party with whom he
+voted had to give him a decent suit of clothes before he could be seen
+at the polling-booth. He had got leave to set up his machine in the
+dwelling-house attached to the Free Grammar School; but, afraid of
+suffering from the hostility of the spinners, as the unfortunate
+Hargreaves had done some time before, he and Kay thought it best to
+leave Lancashire, and try their fortune in Nottingham.
+
+Poor and friendless, it may easily be supposed that Arkwright found it a
+hard matter to get any one to back him in a speculation which people
+then regarded as hazardous, if not illusory. He got a few pounds from
+one of the bankers in the town; but that was soon spent, and further
+advances were refused. Nothing daunted, Arkwright tried elsewhere for
+help, and at length succeeded in convincing Messrs. Need and Strutt,[A]
+large stocking-weavers in the place, of the value of his invention, and
+inducing them to enter into partnership with him. In 1769 he took out a
+patent for the machine, as its inventor, and a mill, worked by
+horse-power, was erected for spinning cotton by the new machine. Two
+years after, he and his partner set up another mill in Derbyshire,
+worked by a water-wheel; and in 1775 he took out another patent for some
+improvements on his original scheme.
+
+The machinery which he patented consisted of a number of different
+contrivances; but the chief of these, and the one which he particularly
+claimed entirely as his own invention (for he frankly admitted that some
+of the other parts were only developments of other inventors), was what
+is called the water-frame throstle for drawing out the cotton from a
+coarse to a finer and harder twisted thread, and so rendering it fit to
+be used for the warp, or longitudinal threads of the cloth, which were
+formed of linen, as well as the weft. This apparatus was a combination
+of the carding and spinning machinery; and the principle of having two
+pairs of rollers, one revolving faster than the other, was now for the
+first time applied to machinery.
+
+In a year or two the success of Arkwright's inventions was fairly
+established. The manufacturers were fully alive to its importance; and
+Arkwright now reaped the reward of all the toil and danger he had
+undergone in the shape of a diligent and persistent attempt to rob him
+of his monopoly, which was carried on for a number of years, and was at
+length successful. Some of the manufacturers, who were greedy to profit
+by the new machinery without paying the inventor, got hold of Kay, who
+had quarrelled with Arkwright some time before, and found him a willing
+instrument in their hands. It would take too long to go over all the law
+processes which Arkwright had now to engage in to defend his rights. Kay
+got up a story that the real inventor was a poor reed maker named Highs,
+who had once employed him to make a model, the secret of which he had
+imparted to Arkwright; and this was a capital excuse for using the new
+machinery in defiance of the patent, although the evidence at the
+various trials is now held completely to vindicate Arkwright's title as
+inventor. One law plea was lost to him, on account of some technical
+omission in the specifications; another restored to him the enjoyment of
+his monopoly; and a third trial destroyed the patent, which Arkwright
+never took any steps to recover.
+
+Besides trying to defraud Arkwright of his patent-rights, the rival
+manufacturers, with jealous inconsistency, did their best to
+discountenance the use of the yarns he made, although much superior in
+quality to what was then in use. But Arkwright not only surmounted this
+obstacle, but turned it to good account, for it set him to manufacturing
+the yarn into stockings and calicoes, the duty on which being soon
+after lowered, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the
+manufacturers, turned out a very profitable speculation.
+
+For the first five years Arkwright's mills yielded little or no profit;
+but after that, the adverse tide against which he had struggled so
+bravely changed, and he followed a prosperous and honourable career till
+his death, which happened in 1792. He was knighted, not for being, as he
+was, a benefactor to his country, but because, in his capacity of high
+sheriff, he chanced to read some trumpery address to the king. He left
+behind a fortune of about half a million sterling.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] The founder of the family of Strutt of Belper, afterwards ennobled.
+
+
+
+
+III.--SAMUEL CROMPTON.
+
+
+Excellent as was the yarn produced by the spinning-jenny and the
+water-frame, compared with the old hand-spun stuff, it was coarse and
+full of knots; and when a demand arose for imitations of the fine India
+muslins, the weavers found they could produce but a very poor piece of
+work with such rough materials.
+
+Among those who were inconvenienced for want of a better sort of yarn
+was young Samuel Crompton, who lived with his widowed mother and two
+sisters in an old country house called Hall-in-the-Wood, near what was
+then the little rural town of Bolton in the Moors. When Samuel was only
+five years old his father died, and left his widow with the three
+children on her hands, to struggle through the world as best she could.
+A hard-working, energetic, God-fearing woman, she buckled to the fight
+with a stout heart and a resolute will. Her husband had been both farmer
+and weaver, like most of the men in that quarter; and she did her best
+to fill his place, looking after the little farm and the three cows, and
+working at the loom, the yarn for which she taught the bairns to spin.
+Whatever she took in hand she did with might and main, and the result
+was, her webs were the best woven, her butter the richest, her honey the
+purest, her home-made wines the finest flavoured of any in the district.
+Small as her means were, she gave her boy the best education that could
+be got in Bolton--first at a day-school, and afterwards, when he was old
+enough to take his place by day between the treadles, at a night-school.
+Rigid in her sense of duty, and resolute to do her own share of the
+work, she exacted the same from others, and kept her lad tightly to the
+loom. Every day he had to do a certain quantity of work; and there was
+no looking her in the face unless each evening saw it done, and well
+done too. Anxious to satisfy his mother, and yet get time for his
+favourite amusement of fiddle-making and fiddle-playing, Sam grew
+quickly sensitive of the imperfections of the machinery he had to work
+with. "He was plagued to deeath," he used to say, "wi' mendin' the
+broken threeads;" and could not help thinking many a time whether the
+jenny could not be improved so as to spin more quickly, and produce a
+better thread. By the time he came to man's estate, in 1774, his
+thoughts had settled so far into a track, that he was able to begin
+making a contrivance of his own, which he hoped would accomplish the
+object he had in view. He had a few common tools which had belonged to
+his father, but his own clasp-knife served nearly every purpose in his
+ready hands. He had his "bits of things" filed at the smithy, and to get
+money for materials, he fiddled at the theatre for 1s. 6d. a night.
+Every minute he could spare from the task-work of the day was spent in
+his little room over the porch of the hall in forwarding his invention.
+As it advanced, he grew more and more engrossed with it, and often the
+dawn found him still at work on it. The good folks down in Bolton were
+sorely puzzled to think what light it was that was so often seen
+glimmering at uncanny hours up at the old hall. The story went abroad
+that the place was haunted, and that the ghost of some former resident,
+uneasy from the sorrows or the sins of his past life, kept watch and
+ward till cock crow, with a spectral lamp. The mystery was cleared up at
+last. It was discovered that the ghost was only Sam Crompton "fashing
+himself over bits of wood and iron;" and Sam was pointed out as a
+"conjuror"--the cant term for inventor--when he walked through the town.
+
+The five years of labour and anxiety bore fruit in 1779, when the
+"mule-jenny" with its spindle carriage was finished and set to work. As
+its name indicates, it was an ingenious cross between the jenny and the
+water-frame, combining the best features of both with several novel
+ones, which rendered it a very valuable machine.
+
+Just as Crompton had put the finishing touches to his mule, the weavers
+and spinners broke out in open riot at Blackburn, and scoured the
+country with the cry, "Men, not machines;" breaking every machine they
+could lay hands on. To keep himself out of trouble and save his mule,
+Crompton took it to pieces, and hid it in the roof of the hall. When the
+storm had swept past, he brought it out, put it together, and began to
+use it in his daily work. The fine yarn he turned out made quite a
+sensation, and the fame of his invention spread far and wide. People
+came from all quarters to get a sight of it; and when denied admittance,
+brought ladders and harrows, and climbed up to the window of the room
+where it stood. One pertinacious fellow actually ensconced himself for
+several days in the cockloft, from which he watched Crompton at work in
+the room below, through a gimlet hole he bored in the ceiling. Crompton
+lost all patience with this constant espionage. "Why couldn't folk let
+him enjoy his machine by himself?" he asked. A friend, whose advice he
+asked, urged him not to think of taking out a patent, but to make a
+present of his invention to the community at large. Save me from my
+friends, Crompton might well have cried. Simple, guileless fellow that
+he was, he acted on his "friend's" advice, and on a number of
+manufacturers putting down their names for subscriptions varying from a
+guinea to a crown, threw open the invention to the world. When the time
+came for the subscriptions to be called in, some of the manufacturers
+actually were base enough to refuse payment of the paltry sums they had
+promised, and overwhelmed with abuse the man by the fruit of whose brain
+they were making their fortunes. When all the money was collected, it
+amounted to only L60, just as much as built Crompton a new machine, with
+no more than four spindles.
+
+Shy, simple, confiding, innocent of the cunning ways of the world, sadly
+backward in the study of mankind, and perhaps somewhat ungenial and
+unpractised to boot, Crompton, from the time when one would have thought
+he had set his foot on the first round of the ladder of fortune, went
+stumbling on from one misfortune to another, ill-used on every side, and
+unsuccessful in every effort to get on in the world. Wheedled out of his
+patent rights, cheated of the money promised him, his workmen lured away
+from him as soon as he had taught them the construction of the mule, he
+grew morbid and distrustful of everyone. He would have no more workmen;
+and as the production of his machines was thus restricted to the labours
+of his own hands, he could not compete with the large factories, who
+drew all the customers away from him. Peel, the father of the statesman,
+offered him first a lucrative place of trust, and afterwards a
+partnership; but he would not listen to him. He grew more wretched and
+discouraged every day. In despair he cut up his spinning machines, and
+hacked to pieces with an axe a carding machine he had invented,
+exclaiming bitterly, "They shall not have this too."
+
+He then retired into comparative obscurity at Oldham, where he drudged
+away at weaving, farming, cow-keeping, and overseeing the poor, and
+found it no easy matter withal to support his family, for he had married
+some years before. Afterwards he re-appeared at Bolton as a small
+manufacturer; and there was a brief interval of sunshine. The muslin
+trade was very brisk, and the weavers walked about with five-pound notes
+stuck in their hats, and dressed out in ruffled shirts and top boots,
+like fine gentlemen. While this lasted Crompton found abundant sale for
+his superior yarn. But trade grew depressed, and the gloom settled over
+Crompton's life to its close.
+
+The idea was started of getting Parliament to do something for him; but
+he was too independent to supplicate government officials in person.
+Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was willing to
+befriend him; but Crompton's ill luck was at his heels. On the 11th of
+May 1812, Crompton was talking with Peel and another gentleman in the
+lobby of the House of Commons, when Perceval walked up to them, saying,
+"You will be glad to know we mean to propose L20,000 for Crompton. Do
+you think it will be satisfactory?" Crompton walked away out of delicacy
+not to hear the answer. An instant afterwards there was a great shout,
+and a rush of people in alarm. Perceval lay bathed in his own blood,
+slain by the bullet of the assassin Bellingham. Crompton had lost his
+friend.
+
+When the subject of a grant to the inventor of the spinning-mule was
+brought up in the House a few days afterwards by Lord Stanley (now Lord
+Derby), only L5000 was proposed. No one thought of increasing it. "Let's
+give the man a L100 a-year," said an honourable member; "it's as much as
+he can drink." So the vote was agreed to; though at that very time the
+duty accruing to the revenue from the cotton wool imported to be spun
+upon the mule was L300,000 a-year, or more than L1000 a working day. The
+impulse which this invention gave to the cotton manufactures of Great
+Britain, and the commercial prosperity to which it led, enabled the
+country to bear the heavy drain of the war taxes; and it has been said,
+with no little truth, that Crompton contributed as much as Wellington to
+the downfall of Napoleon. As soon as it became known, the mule-spindle
+took the lead in cotton-spinning machines. In 1811 above 4,600,000
+mule-spindles, made by his pattern, were in use. At the present time it
+is calculated that there are upwards of 30,000,000 in use in Great
+Britain; and the increase goes on at the rate of above 1,000,000 a-year.
+In France there were in 1850 about 3,000,000 spindles on Crompton's
+principle; and one firm of mule makers (Hibbert, Platt, and Company, of
+Oldham), make mules at the rate of 500,000 spindles a-year. The immense
+impetus given to trade, money, civilization, and comfort by this
+invention is almost incalculable.
+
+The grant of L5000 was soon swallowed up in the payment of his debts,
+and in meeting the losses of his business. "Nothing more was ever done
+for him. The king, who was fond of patronizing merit, took no notice of
+him; his eldest son was promised a commission, which he did not get; and
+some time after, when struggling through life on only L100 a-year, the
+post of sub-inspector of the factories in Bolton became vacant; though
+he applied for the office, for which he was eminently qualified, he was
+passed over in favour of the natural son of one of the ex-secretaries of
+state--a man who did not know a mule from a spinning-jenny."[B]
+
+Crompton spent his last days in poverty and privation, and died at the
+age of seventy-four, in 1827.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Athenaeum.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--DR. CARTWRIGHT.
+
+
+In the summer of 1784 a number of gentlemen were chatting, after dinner,
+in a country house at Matlock in Derbyshire. Some extensive cotton-mills
+had recently been set up in the neighbourhood, and the conversation
+turned upon the wonderful inventions which had been introduced for
+spinning cotton. There were one or two gentlemen present connected with
+the "manufacturing interest," who were very bitter against Arkwright and
+his schemes.
+
+"It's all very well," said one of the grumblers, "but what will all this
+rapid production of yarn lead to? Putting aside the ruin of the poor
+spinners, who will be starved because they haven't as many arms as these
+terrible machines, you'll find that it will end in a great deal more
+yarn being spun than can be woven into cloth, and in large quantities of
+yarn being exported to the Continent, where it will be worked up by
+foreign weavers, to the injury of our home manufacture. That will be the
+short and the long of it, mark my words."
+
+"Well, but, sir," remarked a grave, portly, middle-aged gentleman of
+clerical appearance, after a few minutes' reflection, "when you talk of
+the impossibility of the weaving keeping up with the spinning, you
+forget that machinery may yet be applied to the former as well as the
+latter. Why may there not be a loom contrived for working up yarn as
+fast as the spindle produces it. That long-headed fellow Arkwright must
+just set about inventing a weaving machine."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense," returned the "practical man" pettishly, as though
+it were hardly worth while noticing the remarks of such a dreamer. "You
+might as well bid Arkwright grow the cloth ready made. Weaving by
+machinery is utterly impossible. You must remember how much more complex
+a process it is than spinning, and what a variety of movements it
+involves. Weaving by machinery is a mere idle vision, my dear sir, and
+shows you know nothing about the operation."
+
+"Well, I must confess my ignorance on the subject of weaving," replied
+the clergyman; "but surely it can't be a more complex matter than moving
+the pieces in a game of chess. Now, there's an automaton figure now
+exhibiting in London, which handles the chess men, and places them on
+the proper squares of the board, and makes the most intricate moves, for
+all the world as if it were alive. If that can be done, I don't see why
+weaving should baffle a clever mechanist. A few years ago we should have
+laughed at the notion of doing what Arkwright has done; and I'm certain
+that before many years are over, we shall have 'weaving Johnnies,' as
+well as 'spinning Jennies.'"
+
+Dr. Cartwright, for that was the clergyman's name, confidently as he
+foretold that machine-weaving would be devised before long, little
+dreamt at that moment that he was himself to bring about the fulfilment
+of his own prediction. A quiet, country clergyman, of literary tastes, a
+scholar, and poetaster, he had spent his life hitherto in the discharge
+of his ministerial duties, writing articles and verses, and had never
+given the slightest attention to mechanics, theoretical or practical. He
+had never so much as seen a loom at work, and had not the remotest
+notion of the principle or mode of its construction. But the chance
+conversation at the Matlock dinner table suddenly roused his interest in
+the subject. He walked home meditating on what sort of a process weaving
+must be; brooded over the subject for days and weeks,--was often
+observed by his family striding up and down the room in a fit of
+abstraction, throwing his arms from side to side like a weaver jerking
+the shuttles,--and at last succeeded in evolving, as the Germans would
+say, from "the depths of his moral consciousness," the idea of a
+power-loom. With the help of a smith and a carpenter, he set about the
+construction of a number of experimental machines, and at length, after
+five or six months' application, turned out a rude, clumsy piece of
+work, which was the basis of his invention.
+
+"The warp," he says, "was laid perpendicularly, the reed fell with the
+force of at least half a hundredweight, and the springs which threw the
+shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short,
+it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a
+slow rate, and only for a short time. This being done, I then
+condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my
+astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine.
+Availing myself of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general
+principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year
+1787 that I completed my invention."
+
+Having given himself to the contrivance of a loom that should be able to
+keep pace in the working up of the yarn with the jenny which produced
+it, solely from motives of philanthropy, he felt bound, now that he had
+devised the machine, to prove its utility, and bring it into use. To
+have stopped with the work of invention, would, he conceived, have been
+to leave the work half undone; and, therefore, at no slight sacrifice of
+personal inclination, and to the rupture of all old ties, associations,
+and ways of life, he quitted the ease and seclusion of his parsonage,
+abandoned the pursuits which had formerly been his delight, and devoted
+himself to the promotion of his invention. He set up weaving and
+spinning factories at Doncaster, and, bent on the welfare of his race,
+began the weary, painful struggle that was to be his ruin, and to end
+only with his life. "I have the worst mechanical conception any man can
+have," wrote his friend Crabbe, "but you have my best wishes. May you
+weave webs of gold." Alas! the good man wove for himself rather a web of
+dismal sack-cloth, sore and grievous to his peace, like the harsh shirts
+of hair old devotees used to vex their flesh with for their sins. The
+golden webs were for other folk's wear,--for those who toiled not with
+their brain as he had done, but who reaped what they had not sown.
+
+He had invented a machine that was to promote industry, and save the
+English weavers from being driven from the field, as was beginning to be
+the case, by foreign weavers; and masters and men were up in arms
+against him as soon as his design was known. His goods were maliciously
+damaged,--his workmen were spirited away from him,--his patent right was
+infringed. Calumny and hatred dogged his steps. After a succession of
+disasters, his prospects assumed a brighter aspect, when a large
+Manchester firm contracted for the use of four hundred looms. A few days
+after they were at work, the mill that had been built to receive them
+stood a heap of blackened ruins.
+
+Still, he would not give up till all his resources were exhausted,--and
+surely and not slowly that event drew nigh. The fortune of L30,000 with
+which he started in the enterprise melted rapidly away; and at length
+the day came when, with an empty purse, a frame shattered with anxiety
+and toil, but with a brave, stout heart still beating in his breast,
+Cartwright turned his back upon his mills, and went off to London to
+gain a living by his pen. As he turned from the scene of his
+misfortunes, he exclaimed,--
+
+    "With firm, unshaken mind, that wreck I see,
+    Nor think the doom of man should be reversed for me."
+
+The lion that has once eaten a man has ever after, it is said, a wild
+craving after human blood. And it would seem that the faculty of
+invention, once aroused, its appetite for exercise is constant and
+insatiable. Cartwright having discovered his dormant powers, could no
+more cease to use them than to eat. A return to his quiet literary ways,
+fond as he still was of such pursuits, was impossible. An inventor he
+was, and an inventor he must continue till his eye was glazed, and his
+brain numbed in death. When a clergyman he set himself to study
+medicine, and acquired great skill and knowledge in the science, solely
+for the benefit of the poor parishioners, and now he gave himself up to
+the labours of invention with the same benevolent motives. Gain had not
+tempted him to enter the arena,--discouragement and ruin were not to
+drive him from it. The resources of his ingenuity seemed inexhaustible,
+and there was no limit to its range of objects. Wool-combing machines,
+bread and biscuit baking machines, rope-making machines, ploughs, and
+wheel carriages, fire-preventatives, were in turn invented or improved
+by him. He predicted the use of steam-ships, and steam-carriages,--and
+himself devised a model of the former (with clock-work instead of a
+steam-engine), which a little boy used to play with on the ponds at
+Woburn, that was to grow up into an eminent statesman--Lord John
+Russell. To the very last hour of his life his brain was teeming with
+new designs. He went down to Dover in his eightieth year for warm
+sea-bathing, and suggested to his bathman a way of pumping up the water
+that saved him the wages of two men; and almost the day before his
+death, he wrote an elaborate statement of a new mode he had discovered
+of working the steam-engine. Moved by an irresistible impulse to promote
+the "public weal," he truly fulfilled the resolution he expressed in
+verse,--
+
+    "With mind unwearied, still will I engage,
+    In spite of failing vigour and of age,
+    Nor quit the combat till I quit the stage."
+
+In 1808 he was rewarded by Parliament for his invention of the
+power-loom, and the losses it brought upon him, by a grant of L10,000.
+He died in October 1823.
+
+
+
+
+V.--SIR ROBERT PEEL.
+
+
+Cartwright's power-loom was afterwards taken in hand and greatly
+improved by other ingenious persons--mechanics and weavers. "The names
+of many clever mechanics," says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "who
+contributed to advance it, step by step, through failure and
+disappointment, have long been forgotten. Some broke their hearts over
+their projects when apparently on the eve of success. No one was more
+indefatigable in his endeavours to overcome the difficulties of the
+contrivance than William Radcliffe, a manufacturer at Mellor, near
+Manchester, whose invention of the dressing-machine was an important
+step in advance. With the assistance of an ingenious young weaver in his
+employment, named Johnson, he also brought out the dandy-loom, which
+effects almost all that can be done for the hand-loom as to motion.
+Radcliffe was not, however, successful as a manufacturer; he exhausted
+his means in experiments, of which his contemporaries and successors
+were to derive the benefit; and after expending immense labour, and a
+considerable fortune in his improvements, he died in poverty in
+Manchester only a few years ago."
+
+To the Peel family the cotton manufacture is greatly indebted for its
+progress. Robert Peel, the founder of the family, developed the plan of
+printing calico, and his successors perfected it in a variety of ways.
+While occupied as a small farmer near Blackburn, he gave a great deal of
+attention to the subject, and made a great many experiments. One day,
+when sketching a pattern on the back of a pewter dinner-plate, the idea
+occurred to him, that if colour were rubbed upon the design an
+impression might be printed off it upon calico. He tested the plan at
+once. Filling in the pattern with colour on the back of the plate, and
+placing a piece of calico over it, he passed it through a mangle, and
+was delighted with seeing the calico come out duly printed. This was his
+first essay in calico-printing; and he soon worked out the idea,
+patented it, and starting as a calico-printer, succeeded so well, that
+he gave up the farm and devoted himself entirely to that business. His
+sons succeeded him; and the Peel family, divided into numerous firms,
+became one of the chief pillars of the cotton manufacture.
+
+To such perfection has calico-printing now been brought, that a mile of
+calico can be printed in an hour, or three cotton dresses in a minute;
+and so extensive is the production of that article, that one firm
+alone--that of Hoyle--turns out in a year more than 10,000 miles of it,
+or more than sufficient to measure the diameter of our planet.
+
+It was a favourite saying of old Sir Robert Peel, in regard to the
+importance of commercial wealth in a national point of view, "that the
+gains of individuals were small compared with the national gains arising
+from trade;" and there can be no doubt that the success of the cotton
+trade has contributed essentially to the present affluence and
+prosperity of the United Kingdom. It has placed cheap and comfortable
+clothing within the reach of all, and provided well-paid employment for
+multitudes of people; and the growth of population to which it has led,
+and consequent increase in the consumption of the various necessaries
+and luxuries of life, have given a stimulus to all the other branches of
+industry and commerce. From one of the most miserable provinces in the
+land, Lancashire has grown to be one of the most prosperous. Within a
+hundred and fifty years the population has increased tenfold, and land
+has risen to fifty times its value for agricultural, and seventy times
+for manufacturing purposes. From an insignificant country town and a
+little fishing village have sprung Manchester and Liverpool; and many
+other towns throughout the country owe their existence to the same
+source. These are the great monuments to the achievements of Arkwright,
+Crompton, Peel, and the other captains of industry who wrought this
+mighty change, and the best trophies of their genius and enterprise.
+
+
+
+
+The Railway and the Locomotive.
+
+
+  I.--"THE FLYING COACH."
+ II.--THE STEPHENSONS: FATHER AND SON.
+III.--THE GROWTH OF RAILWAYS.
+
+
+
+
+The Railway and the Locomotive
+
+
+
+
+I.--"THE FLYING COACH."
+
+
+It is the grey dawn of a fine spring morning in the year 1669, and early
+though it be, there are many folks astir and gathering in clusters
+before the ancient, weather-stained front of All Souls' College, Oxford.
+The "Flying Coach" which has been so much talked about, and which has
+been solemnly considered and sanctioned by the heads of the University,
+is to make its first journey to the metropolis to-day, and to accomplish
+it between sunrise and sunset. Hitherto the journey has occupied two
+days, the travellers sleeping a night on the road; and the new
+undertaking is regarded as very bold and hazardous. A buzz rises from
+the knots of people as they discuss its prospects,--some very sanguine,
+some very doubtful, not a few very angry at the presumption of the
+enterprise. But six o'clock is on the strike--all the passengers are
+seated, some of them rather wishful to be safe on the pavement
+again--the driver has got the reins in his hand--the guard sounds his
+bugle, and off goes the "Flying Coach" at a rattling pace, amidst the
+cheering of the crowd and the benedictions of the university "Dons," who
+have come down to honour the event with their presence. Learned,
+liberal-minded men these "Dons" are for the times they live in; but only
+fancy what they would think if some old seer, whose meditation and
+research had
+
+    "Pierced the future, far as human eye could see,
+    Seen the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be,"
+
+were to come forth and tell them, that before two centuries were over
+men would think far less of travelling from Oxford to London in one hour
+than they then did of doing so in a day, by means of a machine of iron,
+mounted upon wheels, which should rush along the ground, and drag a
+load, which a hundred horses could not move, as though it were a
+feather. Roger Bacon had prophesied as much four centuries before; the
+Marquis of Worcester was propounding the same theory at that very day,
+and yet who can blame them if they treated the notion as the falsehood
+of an impostor, or the hallucination of a lunatic?
+
+In these days when railways traverse the country in every direction,
+and are still multiplying rapidly, when no two towns of the least
+size and consideration are unprovided with this mode of mutual
+communication--when we step into a railway carriage as readily as into
+an omnibus, and breakfasting comfortably in London, are whisked off to
+Edinburgh, almost in time for the fashionable dinner hour,--it requires
+no little effort to realize the incredulity and contempt with which the
+idea of superseding the stage-coach by the steam locomotive, and having
+lines of iron railways instead of the common highways, was regarded for
+many years after the beginning of the present century. Even after the
+practicability of the project had been proved, and steam-engines had
+been seen puffing along the rails, with a train of carriages attached,
+even so late as 1825, we find one of the leading periodicals--the
+_Quarterly Review_--denouncing the gross exaggeration of the powers of
+the locomotive which its promoters were guilty of, and predicting that
+though it might delude for a time, it must end in the mortification of
+all concerned. The fact was, said the writer, that people would as soon
+suffer themselves to be fired off like a Congreve rocket, as trust
+themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate--the
+rate of eighteen miles an hour, which people now-a-days, accustomed to
+dash along in express trains at two or three times that speed, would
+deem a perfect snail-pace.
+
+The "railway" had the start of the locomotive by a couple of centuries,
+and derives its parentage from the clumsy wooden way-leaves or
+tram-roads which were laid down to lessen the labour of dragging the
+coal-waggons to and from the place of shipment in the Newcastle
+colleries. These were in use from the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth that the
+locomotive steam-engine made its appearance. Watt himself took out a
+patent for a locomotive in 1784, but nothing came of it; and the honour
+of having first proved the practicability of applying steam to the
+purposes of locomotion is due to a Cornishman named Trevithick, who
+devised a high-pressure engine of very ingenious construction, and
+actually set it to work on one of the roads in South Wales. At first,
+therefore, there was no alliance between the engine and the rail; and
+though afterwards Trevithick adapted it to run on a tram-way, something
+went wrong with it, and the idea was for the time abandoned. There was a
+long-headed engine-man in one of the Newcastle collieries about this
+time, in whose mind the true solution of the problem was rapidly
+developing, but Trevithick had nearly forestalled him. The stories of
+these two men afford a most instructive lesson. A man of undoubted
+talent and ingenuity, with influential friends both in Cornwall and
+London, Trevithick had a fair start in life, and every opportunity of
+distinguishing himself. But he lacked steadiness and perseverance, and
+nothing prospered with him. He had no sooner applied himself to one
+scheme than he threw it up, and became engrossed in another, to be
+abandoned in turn for some new favourite. He was always beginning some
+novelty, and never ending what he had begun, and the consequence was an
+almost constant succession of failures. He was always unhappy and
+unsuccessful. If now and then a gleam of success did brighten on his
+path, it was but temporary, and was speedily absorbed in the gloom of
+failure. He found a man of capital to take up his high-pressure engine,
+got his locomotive built and set to work, brought his ballast engine
+into use, and stood in no want of praise and encouragement; and yet, one
+after another his schemes went wrong. Not one of them did well, because
+he never stuck to any of them long enough. "The world always went wrong
+with him," he said himself. "He always went wrong with the world," said
+more truly those who knew him. His haste, impatience, and want of
+perseverance ruined him. After actually witnessing his steam engine at
+work in Wales, dragging a train of heavy waggons at the rate of five
+miles an hour, he lost conceit of his invention, went away to the West
+Indies, and did not return to England till Stephenson had solved the
+difficulty of steam locomotion, and was laying out the Stockton and
+Darlington Railway. The humble engine-man, without education, without
+friends, without money, with countless obstacles in his way, and not a
+single advantage, save his native genius and resolution, had won the
+day, and distanced his more favoured and accomplished rival. It was
+reserved for GEORGE STEPHENSON to bring about the alliance of the
+locomotive and the railroad--"man and wife," as he used to call
+them--whose union, like that of heaven and earth in the old mythology,
+was to bear an offspring of Titanic might--the modern railway.
+
+
+
+
+II.--THE STEPHENSONS: FATHER AND SON.
+
+
+Towards the close of the last century, a bare-legged herd-laddie, about
+eight years old, might have been seen, in a field at Dewley Burn, a
+little village not far from Newcastle, amusing himself by making
+clay-engines, with bits of hemlock-stalk for imaginary pipes. The child
+is father of the man; and in after years that little fellow became the
+inventor of the passenger locomotive, and as the founder of the gigantic
+railway system which now spreads its fibres over the length and breadth,
+not only of our own country, but of the civilized world, the true hero
+of the half-century.
+
+The second son of a fireman to one of the colliery engines, who had six
+children and a wife to support on an income of twelve shillings a-week,
+George Stephenson had to begin work while quite a child. At first he was
+set to look after a neighbour's cows, and keep them from straying; and
+afterwards he was promoted to the work of leading horses at the plough,
+hoeing turnips, and such like, at a salary of fourpence a-day. The lad
+had always been fond of poking about in his father's engine house; and
+his great ambition at this time was to become a fireman like his father.
+And at length, after being employed in various ways about the colliery,
+he was, at the age of fourteen, appointed his father's assistant at a
+shilling a-day. The next year he got a situation as fireman on his own
+account; and "now," said he, when his wages were advanced to twelve
+shillings a-week--"now I'm a made man for life."
+
+The next step he took was to get the place of "plugman" to the same
+engine that his father attended as fireman, the former post being rather
+the higher of the two. The business of the plugman, the uninitiated may
+be informed, is to watch the engine, and see that it works properly--the
+name being derived from the duty of plugging the tube at the bottom of
+the shaft, so that the action of the pump should not be interfered with
+by the exposure of the suction-holes. George now devoted himself
+enthusiastically to the study of the engine under his care. It became a
+sort of pet with him; and he was never weary of taking it to pieces,
+cleaning it, putting it together again, and inspecting its various parts
+with admiration and delight, so that he soon made himself thoroughly
+master of its method of working and construction.
+
+Eighteen years old by this time, George Stephenson was wholly
+uneducated. His father's small earnings, and the large family he had to
+feed, at a time when provisions were scarce and at war prices, prevented
+his having any schooling in his early years; and he now set himself to
+repair his deficiencies in that respect. His duties occupied him twelve
+hours a-day, so that he had but little leisure to himself; but he was
+bent on improving himself, and after the duties of the day were over,
+went to a night-school kept by a poor teacher in the village of
+Water-row, where he was now situated, on three nights during the week,
+to take lessons in reading and spelling, and afterwards in the science
+of pot-hooks and hangers as well; so that by the time he was nineteen he
+was able to read clearly, and to write his own name. Then he took to
+arithmetic, for which he showed a strong predilection. He had always a
+sum or two by him to work out while at the engine side, and soon made
+great progress.
+
+The next year he was appointed brakesman at Black Collerton Colliery,
+with six shillings added to his wages, which were now nearly a pound
+a-week, and he was always making a few shillings extra by mending his
+fellow-workmen's shoes, a job at which he was rather expert. Busy as he
+was with his various tasks, he found time to fall in love. Pretty Fanny
+Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring farm, caught his fancy; and
+getting her shoes to mend, it cost him a great effort to return them to
+the comely owner after they were patched up. He carried them about with
+him in his pocket for some time, and would pull them out, and then gaze
+fondly at them with as much emotion as the old story tells us the sight
+of the dainty glass slipper, which Cinderella dropped at the ball,
+excited in the breast of the young prince. Bent upon taking up house for
+himself, with Fanny as presiding genius, Stephenson now began to save
+up, and declared himself a "rich man" when he put his first guinea in
+the box.
+
+Instead of spending the Saturday afternoon with his fellow-workmen in
+the public-house, Stephenson employed himself in taking the engine to
+pieces, and cleaning it; but besides his attention to work, he was also
+remarkable for his skill at putting and wrestling, in which he beat most
+of his comrades. And he was not without pluck either, as he let a great
+hulking fellow, who was the bully of the village, know to his cost, by
+giving him such a drubbing as made him a "sadder and wiser man" for some
+time afterwards. He still continued his attendance at the night-school,
+till he had got out of the master as much instruction in arithmetic as
+he was able to supply.
+
+By the time he was of age he had saved up enough to take a little
+cottage and furnish it comfortably, though, of course, very humbly; and
+in the winter of 1802, Fanny, now Mrs. George Stephenson, rode home from
+church on horseback, seated on a pillion behind her husband, with her
+arms round his waist; and very proud and happy, we may be sure, he was
+that day, as the neighbours came to their doors to wish him "God speed"
+in his new mode of life.
+
+Having learned all he could from the village teacher, George Stephenson
+now began to study mensuration and mathematics at home by himself; but
+he also found time to make a number of experiments in the hope of
+finding out the secret of perpetual motion, and to make shoe-lasts and
+shoes, as well as mend them. At the end of 1803 his only son, Robert,
+was born; and soon after the family removed to Killingworth, seven miles
+from Newcastle, where George got the place of brakesman. They had not
+been settled long here when Fanny died--a loss which affected George
+deeply, and attached him all the more intensely to the offspring of
+their union. At this time everything seemed to go wrong with him. As if
+his wife's death was not grief enough, his father met with an accident
+which deprived him of his eye-sight, and shattered his frame; George
+himself was drawn for the militia, and had to pay a heavy sum of money
+for a substitute; and with his father, and mother, and his own boy to
+support, at a time when taxes were excessive and food dear, he had only
+a salary of L50 or L60 a-year to meet all claims. He was on the verge of
+despair, and would have emigrated to America, if, fortunately for our
+country, he had not been unable to raise sufficient money for his
+passage. So he had to stay in the old country, where a bright and
+glorious future awaited him, dark and desperate as the prospect then
+appeared.
+
+He still went on making models and experiments, and perfecting his
+knowledge of his own engine. To add to his earnings he also took to
+clock-cleaning, with the view of saving up enough to give his boy the
+best education it was in his power to bestow. "In the earlier period of
+my career," he used afterwards to say, "when Robert was a little boy, I
+saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he
+should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a
+good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor
+man, and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my
+neighbours' clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was
+done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son." George began
+by teaching his son to work with him; and when the little chap could not
+reach so high as to put a clock-hand on, would set him on a chair for
+the purpose, and very proud Robert was whenever he could "help father"
+in any of his jobs.
+
+About this time a new pit having been sunk in the district where he
+worked, the engine fixed for the purpose of pumping the water out of the
+shaft was found a failure. This soon reached George's ears. He walked
+over to the pit, carefully examined the various parts of the machinery,
+and turned the matter over in his mind. One day when he was looking at
+it, and almost convinced that he had discovered the cause of the
+failure, one of the workmen came up, and asked him if he could tell what
+was wrong.
+
+"Yes," said George; "and I think I could alter it, and in a week's time
+send you to the bottom."
+
+George offered his services to the engineer. Every expedient had been
+tried to repair the engine, and all had failed. There could be no harm,
+if no good, in Stephenson trying his hand at it. So he got leave, and
+set to work. He took the engine entirely to pieces, and in four days had
+repaired it thoroughly, so that the workmen could get to the bottom and
+proceed with their labours. George Stephenson's skill as an
+engine-doctor began to be noised abroad, and secured him the post of
+engine-wright at Killingworth, with a salary of L100 a-year. Robert was
+now old enough to go to school, and was sent to one in Newcastle, to
+which, dressed in a suit of coarse grey stuff cut out by his father, he
+rode every day upon a donkey. Robert spent much of his spare time in the
+Literary and Philosophical Institute of Newcastle; and would sometimes
+take home a volume from the library, which father and son would eagerly
+peruse together. Occasionally they tried chemical experiments together;
+and now and then Robert would try his hand by himself. On one occasion
+he electrified the cows in an adjacent enclosure by means of an electric
+kite, making the bewildered animals dash madly about the field, with
+their tails erect on end; and another time he administered a severe
+electric shock to his father's Galloway pony, which nearly knocked it
+over, and drew down upon him the affected wrath of his father, who,
+coming out at the instant, shook his whip at him and called him a
+mischievous scoundrel, though pleased all the while at the lad's
+ingenuity and enterprise. As an early proof of the former, there still
+stands over the cottage door at Killingworth a sun-dial, constructed by
+Robert when he was thirteen years old, with some little help from his
+father.
+
+The idea of constructing a steam-engine to run on the colliery
+tram-roads leading to the shipping-place was now receiving considerable
+attention from the engineering community. Several schemes had been
+propounded, and engines actually made; but none of them had been brought
+into use. A mistaken notion prevailed that the plain round wheels of an
+engine would slip round without catching hold of the rails, and that
+thus no progress would be made; but George Stephenson soon became
+convinced that the weight of the engine would of itself be sufficient to
+press the wheels to the rails, so that they could not fail to bite. He
+turned the subject over and over in his mind, tested his conceptions by
+countless experiments, and at length completed his scheme. Money for the
+construction of a locomotive engine on his plan having been supplied by
+Lord Ravensworth, one was made after many difficulties, and placed upon
+the tram-road at Killingworth, where it drew a load of 30 tons up a
+somewhat steep gradient at the rate of four miles an hour. Still there
+was very little saving in cost, and little advance in speed as compared
+with horse-power; but in a second one, which Stephenson quickly set
+about constructing, he turned the waste steam into the chimney to
+increase the draught, and thus puff the fuel into a brisker flame, and
+create a larger volume of steam to propel the locomotive. The
+fundamental principles of the engine thus formed remain in operation to
+this day; and it may in truth be termed the progenitor of the great
+locomotive family.
+
+In 1821 George Stephenson got the appointment of engineer, with L300 of
+salary, to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, in the Act of
+Parliament for which power was given to use locomotive engines, if
+needful, either for the conveyance of goods or passengers. When the line
+was opened, it was worked partly by horses and partly by locomotive and
+stationary engines. This led to a partnership between Mr. Edward Pease
+of Darlington, the chief projector of the line, and Stephenson, in a
+locomotive manufactory in Newcastle,--for many years the only one of the
+kind in existence.
+
+Meanwhile, young Robert Stephenson, having spent a year or two in
+gaining a practical acquaintance with the machinery and working of a
+colliery, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session
+in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy,
+and geology. He made the best of his opportunities; and that he might
+profit to the utmost by the lectures, he studied short-hand, and took
+them all down _verbatim_, transcribing his notes every evening before
+he went to bed. Robert brought home the prize for mathematics, and
+showed he had made so much progress at college that, though the L80
+which the session cost was a large sum to his father at that time,
+George never failed, then or afterwards, to declare that it was one of
+the best investments he had ever made.
+
+After a year or two in his father's locomotive factory, Robert spent two
+or three years in charge of the machinery of a mining company in
+Columbia, and returned to England at the close of 1827, to find the
+great question, "Whether locomotives can be successfully and profitably
+applied to passenger traffic?" hotly agitated, his father, almost alone,
+taking the side of the travelling, against that of the fixed engines,
+and insisting that the wheel and the rail were clearly and closely part
+of one system.
+
+The success of the Darlington line induced the Liverpool merchants to
+project a line between that town and Manchester; and George Stephenson
+was almost unanimously chosen engineer, though it was still undetermined
+whether the new line should be worked by steam or horse power. But,
+apart from that question, a great, and, as it appeared to most of the
+engineers of the time, an insurmountable difficulty existed in the
+quagmire of Chat Moss,--an enormous mass of watery pulp, which rose in
+height in wet, and sank in dry weather like a sponge, and over whose
+treacherous depths it was pronounced impossible to form a firm road. It
+was perfect madness to think of such a thing, said the engineers, and
+none of them would support Stephenson's scheme; but he resolved to see
+what could be done. Truck-load after truck-load of stuff was emptied
+into the moss, and still the insatiable bog kept gaping as though it had
+not had half a feed. The directors, alarmed, would have abandoned the
+project, had they not been so deeply involved that they were obliged to
+let Stephenson continue. But he never doubted himself--not for a moment.
+He only pushed on the works more vigorously; and, before six months were
+over, the directors found themselves whirling along over the very bog
+they expected all their capital was to be fruitlessly sunk to the bottom
+of. Still, no decision had been come to as to whether locomotive or
+fixed engines were to be adopted; and the Stephensons were still
+battling bravely in favour of the locomotive against a host of
+opponents. Robert did his father good service by the able and pithy
+pamphlets which he wrote on the subject; and at length their
+perseverance was rewarded by the directors consenting to employ a
+locomotive, if they could get one that would run at the rate of ten
+miles an hour, and not weigh more than six tons, including tender; and
+offering a reward of L500 for the best engine fulfilling these
+conditions. George Stephenson and his son set to work immediately, and
+the product of their united skill and ingenuity was the celebrated
+_Rocket_, which carried off the prize, and attained a speed of
+twenty-nine miles on the opening day. The practicability and success of
+the locomotive was now beyond a doubt; from that day forward public
+opinion began to turn. Of course, for many a long year afterwards there
+were not wanting numbers of bigoted men of the old school who cried down
+the new-fangled system, and would hear of no means of transit but the
+stage-coach and the canal-boat. But shrewd folk, like the old Duke of
+Bridgewater, whose faculties were sharpened by their pockets being in
+danger, could not help crying out, "There's mischief in these tram-ways!
+I wish the canals mayn't suffer;" and, within ten years of the day when
+the _Rocket_ went puffing triumphantly along the Liverpool and
+Manchester line, most sensible people had become convinced of the
+importance of the locomotive railway, and scarcely a principal town in
+the country but was supplied with a line.
+
+The Stephensons had fought a hard fight for their protege, "rail and
+wheel," and now they were to reap the fruits of their enterprise and
+foresight. To nearly all the most important of the new lines George
+Stephenson acted as engineer; and thus, in the course of two years,
+above 321 miles of railway were constructed under his superintendence,
+at a cost of L11,000,000 sterling. Robert at first left his father to
+attend to the laying out of railways, and directed his attention to the
+improvement of the locomotive in all its details, experimenting
+incessantly, and trying now one new device, now another. "It was
+astonishing," says Mr. Smiles, "to observe the rapidity of the
+improvements effected,--every engine turned out of Stephenson's
+workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed,
+power, and working efficiency."
+
+By this time George had taken up his residence at Tapton House, near
+Chesterfield, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his
+life. Close by were some extensive coal-pits, which he had taken in
+lease, and from which he supplied London with the first coals sent by
+railway. He was now a man of wealth and fame, known and honoured
+throughout his own country, and in many foreign ones, and blessed with
+many a staunch, true friend. More than once he was offered knighthood by
+Sir Robert Peel, but declined the honour. As he grew up in years, he
+gradually abandoned his railway business to the charge of his son, and
+settled down into a quiet country gentleman of agricultural tastes. He
+was very fond of gardening and farming, and spent many a long day
+superintending the operations in the fields. When a boy, he had always
+been very fond of taming birds and rabbits, and had once had flocks of
+robins, which, in the hard winter, used to come hopping round his feet
+for crumbs. And now, in his old age, he had special pets among his dogs
+and horses, and was proud of his superior breed of rabbits. There was
+scarcely a nest on his estate that he was not acquainted with; and he
+used to go round from day to day to look at them, and see that they were
+kept uninjured.
+
+The year before his death he visited Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor.
+Dr. Buckland, the geologist, was of the party. One Sunday, as they were
+returning from church, they observed a train speeding along the valley
+in the distance.
+
+"Now, Buckland," said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you
+tell me what is the power that is driving that train?"
+
+"Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines."
+
+"But what drives the engine?"
+
+"Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver."
+
+"What do you say to the light of the sun?"
+
+"How can that be?" asked the professor.
+
+"It is nothing else," said the engineer. "It is light bottled up in the
+earth for tens of thousands of years--light, absorbed by plants and
+vegetables, being necessary for the condensation of carbon during the
+process of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form; and now,
+after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that
+latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work as in
+that locomotive, for great human purposes."
+
+On the 12th of August 1848, this great, good man--one of the truest
+heroes that ever lived, and one of the greatest benefactors of our
+country--passed from among us, leaving his son, Robert, to develop and
+extend the great work of which he had laid the foundation.
+
+Among one of the first railways of any extent of which Robert Stephenson
+had the laying out, was the London and Birmingham; and it is related, as
+an illustration of his conscientious perseverance in executing the task,
+that in the course of the examination of the country he walked over the
+whole of the intervening districts upwards of twenty times. Many other
+lines, in England and abroad, were executed by him in rapid succession;
+and it was stated a few years ago, that the lines of railway constructed
+under his superintendence had involved an outlay of L70,000,000
+sterling.
+
+The three great works, however, with which his name will always be most
+intimately associated, and which are the grandest monuments of his
+genius, are the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, the Britannia Bridge
+across the Menai Straits, and the Victoria Bridge across the St.
+Lawrence at Montreal. The first two are sufficiently well known--the one
+springing across the valley of the Tyne, between the busy towns of
+Newcastle and Gateshead; the other spanning, in mid air, a wide arm of
+the sea, at such a height that vessels of large burden in full sail can
+pass beneath. The third great effort of Robert Stephenson's prolific
+brain he did not live to see the completion of. The Victoria Bridge at
+Montreal is constructed on the same principle as the Britannia Bridge,
+but on a much larger scale. "The Victoria Bridge," says Mr. Smiles,
+"with its approaches, is only sixty yards short of two miles in length.
+In its gigantic strength and majestic proportions, there is no structure
+to compare with it in ancient or modern times. It consists of not less
+than twenty-five immense tubular bridges joined into one; the great
+central span being 332 feet, the others, 242 feet in length. The weight
+of the wrought iron on the bridge is about 10,000 tons, and the piers
+are of massive stone, containing some 8000 tons each of solid masonry."
+
+After the completion of the Britannia Bridge, and again after the
+opening of the High Level Bridge, Robert Stephenson was offered the
+honour of knighthood, which, like his father before him, he respectfully
+declined. In 1857 he received the title of D.C.L. from the University of
+Oxford; and for many years before his death he represented Whitby in
+Parliament. He was passionately fond of yachting, and almost immediately
+after a trip to Norway in the summer of 1859, he was seized with a
+mortal illness, and died in the beginning of October. On the 14th
+October he was buried in Westminster, amongst the illustrious dead of
+England.
+
+No man could be more beloved than Robert Stephenson was by a wide circle
+of friends, and none better deserved it. "In society," writes one who
+had opportunities of intercourse with him, "he was simply charming and
+fascinating in the highest degree, from his natural goodness of heart
+and the genial zest with which he relished life himself and participated
+its enjoyment with others. He was generous and even princely in his
+expenditure--not upon himself, but on his friends. On board the
+_Titania_, or at his house in Gloucester Square, his frequent and
+numerous guests found his splendid resources at all times converted to
+their gratification with a grace of hospitality which, although
+sedulous, was never oppressive. There was nothing of the patron in his
+manner, or of the Olympic condescension which is sometimes affected by
+much lesser men. A friend (and how many friends he had!) was at once his
+equal, and treated with republican freedom, yet with the most high-bred
+courtesy and happy considerateness.... His payment of half the debt of
+L6000, which weighed like an incubus on an institution at Newcastle, is
+generally known; but his private charities were as boundless as his
+nature was generous, and as quietly performed as that nature was
+unostentatious. Such, then, was Robert Stephenson, as complete a
+character in the multifarious relations of life as probably any man has
+met or will meet in the course of his experience. Not unlike, or rather
+exceedingly _like_, his father in some respects, especially in the easy,
+unimposing manner in which he went about his life's work, he was hardly
+to be accounted his father's inferior, except perhaps in the heroic
+quality of combativeness. Father and son, independently of each other,
+and both in conjunction, have left grand and beneficent results to
+posterity, and both recall to us Monckton Milnes's men of old, who
+
+    "'Went about their gravest tasks
+    Like noble boys at play.'"
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE GROWTH OF RAILWAYS.
+
+
+It was about the year 1818 that Thomas Gray of Nottingham, travelling in
+the north of England, happened to visit one of the collieries. As he
+stood watching a train of loaded waggons being propelled by steam along
+the tram-road which led from the mouth of the pit to the wharf where the
+coals were shipped, the idea flashed through his mind that the same
+system was applicable to the ordinary purposes of locomotion.
+
+"Why!" he exclaimed to the engineer who was showing him over the
+place,--"why are there not tram-roads laid down all over England so as
+to supersede our common roads, and steam engines employed to drag
+waggons full of goods, and carriages full of passengers along them,
+instead of horse-power?"
+
+"Propose that to the nation," replied his companion, "and see what you
+will get by it. Why, sir, you would be worried to death for your
+pains."
+
+Gray was not to be balked, however. The idea took firm possession of his
+mind, and became the one great subject of his thoughts and conversation.
+He talked about it to everybody whom he met, and who had patience to
+listen to him, wrote letters and memorials to public men, and afterwards
+appealed to the people at large. He was laughed at as a whimsical,
+crochetty fellow, and no one gave any serious attention to his views.
+Mr. Jones of Gromford Manor, and Mr. Pease of Darlington, also
+distinguished themselves by their agitation in favour of railways, at a
+time when they were regarded with suspicion and alarm. The growing trade
+of Liverpool and Manchester, and other large towns, however, spoke more
+imperatively and forcibly in favour of the new project than any amount
+of individual agitation. The means of communication between the various
+manufacturing towns had fallen far behind their wants; and it was at
+length felt that some new system must be adopted. The railroad and the
+locomotive got a trial; and before long the carriers' carts and the
+stage coaches were driven off the road for want of custom, although the
+conveyance of goods and passengers throughout the country went on
+multiplying an hundred-fold. One can fancy the astonishment and awe with
+which the country-folk watched the progress of the first railway train
+through their peaceful acres,--how old and young left their work and
+rushed out to see the marvellous spectacle,--how the "oldest
+inhabitants" shook their heads, and muttered about changed times,--how
+the horses in the field trembled with fear, and threw up their heels at
+their iron rival as it went snorting past--a strange, iron monster, the
+handicraft of man, able to drag the heaviest burdens, and yet outstrip
+_Flying Childers_ or _Eclipse_, as fresh at the end of a journey as at
+the beginning, and never to be tired out by any toil, if only kept in
+meat and drink. Just as in the days of Charles the First, honest,
+short-sighted folk prophesied the ruin of the empire and a judgment upon
+the use of coaches, and bewailed the misfortunes of the hundreds of
+able-bodied men who would be thrown out of employment; so in the early
+days of the railroad, great fears were entertained that the horses'
+occupation would be gone, and that the noble breed would quickly become
+extinct. There was no measure to the lamentations over the ruin of that
+great institution of English life--the stage-coach, with its gallant
+driver and guard, and spanking team.
+
+The extension of the railway system is one of the wonders of our time.
+The few score miles of railroad planted in 1825 have put forth offshoots
+and branches, till now a mighty net-work of some ten thousand miles in
+all, is spread over the three kingdoms, with many fresh shoots in bud.
+Up to the end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of railway were open,
+the annual average of travellers by coach was some six millions a year;
+ten years afterwards there were more than four times that number, and
+to-day the annual average is more than a hundred millions! The number of
+persons employed upon the working railroads of the United Kingdom amount
+to about one hundred and thirty thousand, while nearly half as many find
+employment in the construction of new lines.
+
+A few facts, stated by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, illustrate in a
+very striking manner the gigantic proportion of the railway system of
+Great Britain:--The railway has pierced the earth with tunnels to the
+extent of more than fifty miles, and there are about twelve miles of
+viaducts in the vicinity of London alone. The earthworks which have been
+thrown up would measure 550,000,000 cubic yards, beside which St. Paul's
+would shrink to a pigmy, for it would form a pyramid a mile and a half
+high, with a base larger than the whole of St. James's Park. Every
+moment four tons of coal flashes into steam twenty tons of water--as
+much water as would suffice to supply the domestic and other wants of a
+town the size of Liverpool, and as much coal as equals half the
+consumption of the metropolis. The wear and tear is so great that twenty
+thousand tons of iron have to be replaced annually, and three hundred
+thousand trees, or as much as five thousand acres could produce, have to
+be felled for sleepers.
+
+When George Stephenson was planning the Liverpool and Manchester line,
+the directors entreated him, when they went to Parliament, not to talk
+of going at a faster rate than ten miles an hour, or he "would put a
+cross on the concern." George was sanguine, however, and spoke of
+fifteen miles an hour, to the astonishment of the committee, who began
+to think him crazy. The average speed is now twenty-five miles an hour,
+and a mile a minute can be done, if need be. The wind is hard pushed to
+keep ahead of a good engine at its fullest speed.[C] The express trains
+on the "broad gauge" of the Great Western travel at the rate of
+fifty-one miles an hour, or forty-three, including stoppages. To attain
+this rate, a speed of sixty miles an hour is adopted midway between some
+of the stations, and even seventy miles an hour have been reached in
+certain experimental trips. The engines on this line can draw a
+passenger-train weighing one hundred and twenty tons at a speed of sixty
+miles an hour, the engine and tender themselves weighing an additional
+fifty-two tons. The ordinary luggage-trains weigh some six hundred tons
+each. The locomotive, however, goes on the principle that the labourer
+is worthy of his hire; if it works hard, it eats voraciously. At
+ordinary mail speed the engine consumes about twenty lbs. of coke per
+mile; so that, costing L2500 to begin with, and spending an allowance of
+L2000 a year--as much as an under-secretary of state--the locomotive is
+rather an extravagant customer--only, it works very hard for the money,
+and earns it over and over again. With all its strength and size, the
+locomotive is a much more delicate concern than would be supposed; the
+5416 different pieces of which it is composed must be put together as
+carefully as a watch, and, though guaranteed to go two years without a
+doctor, exacts the most devoted attention from its guardians to keep it
+in order.
+
+It would fill a volume of huge dimensions to dilate on all the phases of
+the social revolution which the modern railway has wrought in our own
+and other countries; how it is daily annihilating time and space, and
+making the Land's End and John o'Groat's House next door neighbours;
+rubbing down old prejudices and jealousies, both national and
+provincial, promoting commerce, developing manufacture, transforming
+poor little villages into flourishing towns, and industrious towns into
+mighty cities; carrying civilization into the heart of the jungle and
+the desert, and, with its twin-brother, the steam-ship, joining hands
+and hearts in peace and amity all the world over. After the wonders of
+the last thirty years, who can doubt that our children, at the close of
+the century, will regard us as little less backward than we now do our
+fathers at its dawn?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] The wind is calculated to travel at the rate of eighty-two feet in a
+second; the pace of a steam-engine, at the rate of sixty miles an hour,
+would be rather more.
+
+
+
+
+The Lighthouse.
+
+
+  I.--THE EDDYSTONE.
+ II.--THE BELL ROCK.
+III.--THE SKERRYVORE.
+
+
+
+
+The Lighthouse.
+
+    "Far in the bosom of the deep,
+    O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep:
+    A ruddy gleam of changeful light,
+    Bound on the dusky brow of night;
+    The seaman bids my lustre hail,
+    And scorns to strike his timorous sail."--SCOTT.
+
+
+
+
+I.--THE EDDYSTONE.
+
+
+When worthy Mr. Phillips, the Liverpool Quaker, taking thought in what
+way he could best benefit his fellow-creatures, built the beacon on the
+Smalls Rock in 1772, he could hardly have made a happier selection of "a
+great good to serve and save humanity." There are few enterprises more
+heroic or beneficent than those connected with the construction and
+management of lighthouses. From first to last, from the rearing of the
+column on the rock to the monotonous, nightly vigil in attendance on the
+lamps--from the setting to the rising of the sun--the valour,
+intrepidity, and endurance, of all concerned are called into play, and
+the wild perils and stirring adventures they experience impart to the
+story of their labours a thrilling and romantic interest. In the case of
+the Smalls Lighthouse, for instance, Whiteside, the self-taught
+engineer, and his party of Cornish miners had no sooner landed, and got
+a long iron shaft worked a few feet into the rock, than a storm arose
+that drove away their cutter, and kept them clinging with the tenacity
+of despair to the half-fastened rod for three days and two nights, when
+the wind fell and the sea calmed, and they were rescued, rather dead
+than alive, numbed from their long immersion in the water, which rose
+almost to their necks, and exhausted from want of food. And after the
+lighthouse had been erected, the engineer and some of his men again
+found themselves, as a paper in a bottle they had cast into the sea
+revealed to those on shore, in a "most dangerous and distressed
+condition on the Smalls," cut off from the mainland by the stormy
+weather, without fuel, and almost at the end of their stock of food and
+water--in which alarming situation they had to remain some time before
+their friends could get out to their relief. Most sea-girt beacons have
+their own legends of similar perils and fortitude; and the narratives of
+the erection of the three great lighthouses of Eddystone, Inchcape, and
+Skerryvore, which may be selected as the types of the rest, are full of
+incidents as exciting as any "hair breadth 'scapes i' the imminent
+deadly breach."
+
+About fourteen miles south from Plymouth, and ten from the Ram's Head,
+on the Cornish coast, lies a perilous reef of rocks, against which the
+long rolling swell of the Atlantic waves dashes with appalling force,
+and breaks up into those swirling eddies from which the reef is
+named--the Eddystone. Upon these treacherous crags many a gallant vessel
+has foundered and gone down within sight of the shore it had scarcely
+quitted or was just about to reach; and situated in the midst of a much
+frequented track, the rapid succession of calamities at the Eddystone
+was not long in awakening men's minds to the necessity of some warning
+light. The exposure of the reef to the wild fury of the Atlantic, and
+the small extent of the surface of the chief rock, however, rendered the
+construction of a lighthouse in such a situation a work of great and (as
+it was long considered) insuperable difficulty. The project was long
+talked of before any one was found daring enough to attempt the task;
+and when at length in 1696 Henry Winstanley stepped forward to undertake
+it, he might have been thought of all others the very last from whose
+brain so serious a conception would have emanated. The great hobby of
+his life had been to fill his house at Littlebury, in Essex, with
+mechanical devices of the most absurd and fantastic kind. If a visitor,
+retiring to his bedroom, kicked aside an old slipper on the floor,
+purposely thrown in his way, up started a ghost of hideous form. If,
+startled at the sight, he fell back into an arm chair placed temptingly
+at hand, a pair of gigantic arms would instantly spring forth and clasp
+him a prisoner in their rude embrace. Tired of these disagreeable
+surprises, the astonished guest perhaps took refuge in the garden, and
+sought repose in a pleasant arbour by the side of a canal; but he had
+scarcely seated himself, when he found himself suddenly set adrift on
+the water, where he floated about till his whimsical host came to his
+relief. Such was the man who now entered upon one of the most formidable
+engineering enterprises in the world.
+
+Although Winstanley's lighthouse was but a slight affair compared with
+its successors, it occupied six years in the erection--the frequent
+rising of the sea over the rock, and the difficulty and danger of
+passing to and from it greatly retarding the operations, and rendering
+them practicable only during a short summer season. For ten or fourteen
+days after a storm had passed, and when all was calm elsewhere, the
+ground-swell from the Atlantic was often so heavy among these rocks that
+the waves sprang two hundred feet, and more, in the air, burying the
+works from sight. The first summer was spent in boring twelve holes in
+the rock, and fixing therein twelve large irons as a holdfast for the
+works that were to be reared. The next season saw the commencement of a
+round pillar, which was to form the steeple of the tower, as well as
+afford protection to the workmen while at their labours. When Winstanley
+bade farewell to the rock for that year, the tower had risen to the
+height of twelve feet; and resuming operations next spring, he built at
+it till it reached the height of eighty feet. Having got the apartments
+fit for occupation, and the lantern set up, Winstanley determined to
+take up his abode there with his men, in order that no time might be
+lost in going to and from the rock. The first night they spent on the
+rock a great storm arose, and for eleven days it was impossible to hold
+any communication with the shore. "Not being acquainted with the height
+of the sea's rising," writes the architect, "we were almost drowned with
+wet, and our provisions in as bad a condition, though we worked night
+and day as much as possible to make shelter for ourselves." The storm
+abating, they went on shore for a little repose; but soon returning, set
+to work again with undiminished energy.
+
+On the 14th November of the same year (1698), Winstanley lighted his
+lantern for the first time. A long spell of boisterous weather followed,
+and it was not till three days before Christmas that they were able to
+quit their desolate abode, being "almost at the last extremity for want
+of provisions; but by good Providence then two boats came with
+provisions and the family that was to take care of the light; and so
+ended this year's work."
+
+It was soon found that the sea rose to a much greater height than had
+been anticipated, the lantern, although sixty feet above the rock, being
+often "buried under water." Winstanley was, therefore, under the
+necessity of enlarging the tower and carrying it to a greater
+elevation. The fourth season, accordingly, was spent in encasing the
+tower with fresh outworks, and adding forty feet to its height. This
+proved too high for its strength to bear; and in the course of three
+years the winds and waves had made sad havoc in the unstable fabric.
+
+In November 1703, Winstanley went out to the rock himself, accompanied
+by his workmen, to institute the repairs. As he was putting off in the
+boat from Plymouth, a friend who had for some time before been watching
+the condition of the lighthouse with much anxiety, mentioned to him his
+suspicion that it was in a bad way, and could not last long. Winstanley,
+full of faith in the stability of his work, replied that "he only wished
+to be there in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of the
+heavens, that he might see what effect it would have on his structure."
+And with these words he shoved off from the beach, and made for the
+rock.
+
+With the last gleams of daylight, before the night fell and shrouded it
+from view, the tower was seen rising proudly from the midst of the
+waters. Before the dawn it had disappeared for ever, and the waves were
+lashing fiercely round the bare bleak ledge of the fatal rock. Poor
+Winstanley had had his presumptuous wish only too fully realized. The
+storm of the 26th November was one of the most fearful that ever ravaged
+our shores. The whole coast suffered severely from its fury, and when
+the morning came, not a sign remained of the lighthouse, architect, or
+workmen, save a fragment of chain-cable wedged firmly into a crevice of
+the rock. The disappearance of the warning light was quickly followed by
+the wreck of a large homeward-bound man-of-war, and the loss of nearly
+all her crew, upon the rocks.
+
+This first Eddystone lighthouse was a strange, fantastic looking
+structure, deficient in every element of stability, and the wonder was
+not that it fell in pieces as it did, but that it was able to withstand
+so long the boisterous weather of the Channel. But if of little merit as
+an architect, Winstanley at least deserves respect, as Smeaton remarks,
+for the heroism he displayed in undertaking "a piece of work that before
+had been looked on as impossible."
+
+For four years the Eddystone remained bare and untenanted, till, in the
+summer of 1706, the erection of a new lighthouse was commenced under the
+superintendence of John Rudyerd, by profession a silk-mercer in Ludgate
+Hill, but by natural genius an engineer of considerable merit. With such
+skill and energy did he apply himself to the work, that before two
+summers were over his tower was completed, and its friendly light beamed
+over the troubled waters and sunken crags. Rudyerd's lighthouse was
+entirely of wood, weighted at the base by a few courses of mason work,
+and 92 feet in height. In form, it was a smooth, solid cone of elegant
+simplicity, unbroken by any of those ornamental outworks, which offered
+the wind and sea so many points to lay hold of, in Winstanley's
+whimsical pagoda. Smeaton speaks of Rudyerd's tower as a masterly
+performance; and had it not been destroyed by fire, forty-six years
+after its erection, there seems little reason to suppose it might not
+have been standing to this day,--although no doubt the ravages of the
+worm in the wood would have demanded frequent repairs. On the 2d
+December 1755, some fishermen who happened to be on the beach very early
+in the morning preparing their nets, were startled by the sight of
+volumes of smoke issuing from the lighthouse. They instantly gave the
+alarm, and a boat was quickly manned for the relief of the sufferers. It
+did not reach the rock till about ten o'clock, and the fire had then
+been raging for eight hours. It was first discovered by the light-keeper
+upon watch who, going into the lantern about two o'clock in the morning
+to snuff the candles, found the place filled with smoke. He opened the
+door of the lantern into the balcony, and a mass of flame immediately
+burst from the inside of the cupola. He lost no time in seizing the
+buckets of water kept at hand, and dashing them over the fire, but
+without effect. His two companions were asleep, and it was some time
+before they heard his shouts for assistance. When at length they did
+bestir themselves, all the water in the house was exhausted. The
+light-keeper--an old man in his ninety-fourth year--urged them to
+replenish the buckets from the sea; but the difficulty of lowering the
+buckets to such a depth, and their confusion and terror at the sudden
+catastrophe and their impending fate, destroyed their presence of mind,
+and rendered them quite powerless. The old man did his best to prevent
+the advance of the flames; but, exhausted by the unavailing labour, and
+severely injured by the melting lead from the roof, he had to desist. As
+the fire spread from point to point, with rapid strides descending from
+the summit to the base, the poor wretches fled before it, retreating
+from room to room, till at last they were driven to seek shelter from
+the blazing timbers and red hot bars, in a cleft of the rock. There they
+were found by their preservers, crouching together half dead with
+suffering and fright. It was with the greatest difficulty that they were
+got into the boat; and they had no sooner reached the shore than one of
+them, crazed by the terrors he had undergone, ran away, and was never
+heard of more. The old man lingered on for a few days in great agony,
+and died from the injuries he had received.
+
+Such was the fate of the second lighthouse on the Eddystone,--one
+element revenging, as it were, the conquest over another.
+
+In spite of the fatality which seemed to attend these lighthouses,
+the lessees of the Eddystone--for it was then in private hands, and
+did not come into the hands of the Trinity House till many years
+after--resolved to make another attempt; and this time they selected as
+the architect one of the ablest professional men of the day, and with
+sagacious liberality, adopted his advice to build it of stone and
+granite.
+
+Smeaton truly belonged to the class of heaven-born engineers. From his
+earliest years the bent of his genius unmistakably revealed itself.
+Before he was six years old, he one day terrified his parents by
+climbing to the top of a barn to fix up some contrivance he had put
+together, after the fashion of a windmill; and another time he
+constructed a pump that raised water, after watching some workmen
+sinking one. And as he grew older, his efforts took a more ambitious
+range, and were all equally remarkable for their originality and
+success. His father destined him for the bar; but his inclination for
+engineering was so irresistible, that he allowed him to resign all
+chance of the woolsack, and set up in business as a mathematical
+instrument maker. He gradually advanced to the profession of civil
+engineering,--which he was the first man in England to pursue, and which
+he may be said to have created.
+
+It was in 1756 he commenced the construction of the great work which may
+be regarded as the monument of his fame. Having decided that his
+lighthouse should be of stone, the next point to be settled was its
+form. His thoughts, he tells us in his book, instinctively reverted to
+the analogy between a lighthouse shaft and the trunk of a stately oak.
+He remarked the spreading roots taking a broad, firm grip of the soil,
+the rise of the swelling base, gradually lessening in girth in a
+graceful curve, till a preparation being required for the support of the
+spreading boughs, a renewed swelling of diameter takes place; and he
+held that cutting off the branches we have, in the trunk of an oak, a
+type of such a lighthouse column as is best adapted to resist the
+influence of the winds and waves. Whether or not Smeaton arrived at the
+form of his lighthouse, which has since become the model for all others,
+from this fanciful analogy, its appearance rising from the rock presents
+a strong resemblance to a noble tree stripped of its boughs and foliage.
+
+Smeaton commenced the undertaking by visiting the rock in the spring of
+1756, accurately measuring its very irregular surface, and in order to
+ensure exactness in his plans, making a model of it. In the summer of
+the same year he prepared the foundation by cutting the surface of the
+rock in regular steps or trenches, into which the blocks of stone were
+to be dovetailed. The first stone was laid in June 1757, and the last in
+August 1759. Of that period there were only 431 days when it was
+possible to stand on the rock, and so small a portion even of these was
+available for carrying on the work, that it is calculated the building
+in reality occupied but six weeks. The whole was completed without the
+slightest accident to any one; and so well were all the arrangements
+made, that not a minute was lost by confusion or delay amongst the
+workmen.
+
+The tower measures 86 feet in height, and 26 feet in diameter at the
+level of the first entire course, the diameter under the cornice being
+only 15 feet. The first twelve feet of the structure form a solid mass
+of masonry,--the blocks of stone being held together by means of stone
+joggles, dovetailed joints, and oaken tree-nails. All the floors of the
+edifice are arched; to counteract the possible outburst of which,
+Smeaton bound the courses of his stone work together by belts of iron
+chain, which, being set in grooves while in a heated state, by the
+application of hot lead, on cooling, of course, tightened their clasp on
+the tower. Throughout the whole work the greatest ingenuity is displayed
+in obtaining the greatest amount of resistance, and combining the two
+great principles of strength and weight,--technically speaking, cohesion
+and inertia.
+
+On the 16th October 1759, the warning light once more, after an interval
+of four years, shone forth over the troubled waters from the dangerous
+rock; but it was but a feeble illumination at the best, for it came from
+only a group of tallow candles. It was better than nothing, certainly;
+but the exhibition of a few glimmering candles was but a paltry
+conclusion to so stupendous an undertaking. For many years, however, no
+stronger light gleamed from the tower, till, in 1807, when it passed
+from the hands of private proprietors into the charge of the Trinity
+House, the mutton dips were supplanted by Argand burners, with silvered
+copper reflectors.
+
+Imperfect, however, as used to be the lighting apparatus, the Eddystone
+Beacon has always been a great boon to all those "that go down to the
+sea in great ships," and has robbed these perilous waters of much of
+their terror. We can readily sympathize with the exultation of the great
+engineer who reared it, when standing on the Hoe at Plymouth, he spent
+many an hour, with his telescope, watching the great swollen waves, in
+powerless fury, dash against his tower, and "fly up in a white column,
+enwrapping it like a sheet, rising at the least to double the height of
+the tower, and totally intercepting it from sight." It is now more than
+a hundred years since Smeaton's Lighthouse first rose upon the
+Eddystone; but, in spite of the many furious storms which have put its
+stability to rude and searching proof, it still lifts its head proudly
+over the waves, and shows no signs of failing strength.
+
+
+
+
+II.--THE BELL ROCK.
+
+
+The Inch Cape, or Bell Rock, is a long, narrow reef on the east coast of
+Scotland, at the mouth of the Frith of Tay, and some dozen of miles from
+the nearest land. At high water the whole ledge is buried out of sight;
+and even at the ebb the highest part of it is only three or four feet
+out of the water. In the days of old, as the tradition goes, one of the
+abbots of Arbroath, among many good works, exhibited his piety and
+humanity by placing upon a float attached to the perilous reef a large
+bell, so suspended as to be tolled by the rising and falling of the
+waves.
+
+    "On a buoy, in the storm it floated and swung,
+    And over the waves its warning rung."
+
+Many a storm-tossed mariner heard the friendly knell that warned him of
+the nearness of the fatal rock, and changed his course before it was too
+late, with blessings on the good old monk who had hung up the bell; but
+after some years, one of the pirates who infested the coast cut it down
+in wanton cruelty, and was one of the first who suffered from the loss.
+Not long after, he perished upon this very rock, which a dense fog
+shrouded from sight, and no bell gave timely warning of.
+
+    "And even in his dying fear,
+    One dreadful sound did the rover hear;
+    A sound as if with the Inch Cape Bell,
+    The devil below was ringing his knell."
+
+After the lapse of many years, two attempts were made to raise a beacon
+of spars upon the rock; but one after the other they fell a prey to the
+angry waves, and were hardly set up before they disappeared. It was not
+till the beginning of the century that the Commissioners of Northern
+Lighthouses took up the idea of erecting a lighthouse on this reef, the
+most dangerous on all the coast. Several years elapsed before they got
+the sanction of Parliament to the undertaking, and 1807 arrived before
+it was actually entered upon.
+
+Mr. Robert Stevenson, to whom the work was intrusted as engineer, had
+from a very early age been employed in connection with lighthouses. He
+went almost directly from school to the office of Mr. Thomas Smith of
+Edinburgh, and when that gentleman was appointed engineer to the
+Northern Lighthouse Commissioners, became his assistant, and afterwards
+successor. When only nineteen, Mr. Stevenson superintended the
+construction of the lighthouse on the island of Little Cumbray; and
+during the time he was engineer to the Commissioners, which post he held
+till 1842, he erected no fewer than forty-two lighthouses, and
+introduced a great many valuable improvements into the system. His
+reputation, however, will be chiefly perpetuated as the architect of the
+Bell Rock Lighthouse.
+
+On the 17th August 1807, Mr. Stevenson and his men landed on the rock,
+to the astonishment and discomposure of the seals who had, from time
+immemorial, been in undisturbed possession of it, and now floundered off
+into the water on the approach of the usurpers. The workmen at once set
+about preparing the rock for the erection of a temporary pyramid on
+which a barrack-house was to be placed for the reception of the workmen.
+They could only work on the rock for a few hours at spring-tide. As soon
+as the flood-tide began to rise around them, putting out the fire of the
+smith's forge, and gradually covering the rock, they had to gather up
+their tools and retreat to a floating barrack moored at a considerable
+distance, in order to reach which they had to row in small boats to the
+tender, by which they were then conveyed to their quarters. The
+operations of this first season were particularly trying to the men, on
+account of their having to row backwards and forwards between the rock
+and the tender at every tide, which in rough weather was a very heavy
+pull, and having often after that to work on the rock knee deep in
+water, only quitting it for the boats when absolutely compelled by the
+swelling waves. Sometimes the sea would be so fierce for days together
+that no boat could live in it, and the men had, therefore, to remain
+cooped up wearily on board the floating barrack.
+
+One day in September, when the engineer and thirty-one men were on the
+rock, the tender broke from its moorings, and began to drift away from
+the rock, just as the tide was rising. Mr. Stevenson, perched on an
+eminence above the rest, surveying them at their labours, was the first,
+and for a while, the men being all intent on their work, the only one,
+who observed what had happened. He said nothing, but went to the
+highest point of the rock, and kept an anxious watch on the progress of
+the vessel and the rising of the sea. First the men on the lower tier of
+the works, then by degrees those above them, struck work on the approach
+of the water. They gathered up their tools and made towards the spot
+where the boats were moored, to get their jackets and stockings and
+prepare for quitting the rock. What their feelings were when they found
+only a couple of boats there, and the tender drifting off with the other
+in tow, may be conceived. All the peril of their situation must have
+flashed across their minds as they looked across the raging sea, and saw
+the distance between the tender and the rock increasing every moment,
+while all around them the water rose higher and higher. In another hour,
+the waves would be rolling twelve feet and more above the crag on which
+they stood, and all hope of the tender being able to work round to them
+was being quickly dissipated. They watched the fleeting vessel and the
+rising tide, and their hearts sank within them, but not a word was
+uttered. They stood silently counting their numbers and calculating the
+capacity of the boats; and then they turned their eyes upon their
+trusted leader, as if their last hope lay in his counsel. Stevenson
+never forgot the appalling solemnity of the moment. One chance, and but
+a slender one, of escape alone occurred to him. It was that, stripping
+themselves of their clothes, and divesting the two boats, as much as
+possible, of everything that weighted and encumbered them, so many men
+should take their seats in the boats, while the others hung on by the
+gunwales; and that they should then work their way, as best they could,
+towards either the tender or the floating barrack. Stevenson was about
+to explain this to his men, but found that all power of speech had left
+him. The anxiety of that dreadful moment had parched his throat, and his
+tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He stooped to one of the little
+pools at his feet to moisten his fevered lips with the salt water.
+Suddenly a shout was raised, "A boat! A boat!" and through the haze a
+large pilot boat could dimly be discerned making towards the rock. The
+pilot had observed the _Smeaton_ drifting off, and, guessing at once the
+critical position of the workmen on the rock, had hastened to their
+relief.
+
+Next morning when the bell sounded on board the barrack for the return
+to the rock, only eight out of the twenty-six workmen, beside the
+foreman and seamen, made their appearance on deck to accompany their
+leader. Mr. Stevenson saw it would be useless to argue with them then.
+So he made no remark, and proceeded with the eight willing workmen to
+the rock, where they spent four hours at work. On returning to the
+barrack, the eighteen men who had remained on board appeared quite
+ashamed of their cowardice; and without a word being said to them, were
+the first to take their places in the boats when the bell rang again in
+the afternoon.
+
+At length the barrack was completed, and the men were then relieved from
+the toil of rowing backwards and forwards between the tender and the
+rock, as well as from the constant sickness which tormented them on
+board the floating barrack. They were now able to prolong their labours,
+when the tide permitted, into the night. At such times the rock assumed
+a singularly picturesque and romantic aspect--its surface crowded with
+men in all variety of attitudes, the two forges and numerous torches
+lighting up the scene, and throwing a lurid gleam across the waters, and
+the loud dong of the anvils mingling with the dashing of the breakers.
+
+On the 18th July 1808, the site having been properly excavated, the
+first stone of the lighthouse was laid by the Duke of Argyle; and by the
+end of the second season some five or six feet of building had been
+erected, and were left to the mercy of the waves till the ensuing
+spring. The third season's operations raised the masonry to a height of
+thirty feet above the sea, and the fourth season saw the completion of
+the tower. On the first night in February of the succeeding year (1811)
+the lamp was lit, and beamed forth across the waters.
+
+The Bell Rock Tower is 100 feet in height, 42 feet in diameter at the
+base, and 15 feet at the top. The door is 30 feet from the base, and the
+ascent is by a massive bronze ladder. The "light" is revolving, and
+presents a white and red light alternately, by means of shades of red
+glass arranged in a frame. The machinery which causes the revolution of
+the lamp is also applied to the tolling of two large bells, in order to
+give warning to the mariner of his approach to the rock in foggy
+weather, thus reviving the traditional practice from which the rock
+takes its name.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE SKERRYVORE.
+
+
+"Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating
+to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of
+Mr. Stevenson that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called
+Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be essential to have a
+lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the commissioners, who one
+and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be,
+rather than continue this dreadful buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the
+part of Mr. Stevenson, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon
+that of the yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little
+as the commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, came in sight of
+this long range of rocks (chiefly under water), on which the tide breaks
+in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at one
+end of the reef which is about a mile in length. These are never
+entirely under water, though the surf dashes over them. We took
+possession of it in the name of the commissioners, and generously
+bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was
+carefully measured by Mr. Stevenson. It will be a most desolate position
+for a lighthouse--the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the
+nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at 14 miles distance."
+
+Such is an entry in the diary of Sir Walter Scott's Yacht Tour, on the
+27th August 1814; but although the necessity of a lighthouse on the
+Skerry Vhor, or, as it is now generally called, Skerryvore, was fully
+acknowledged by the authorities, it was not till twenty-four years
+afterwards that the undertaking was actually commenced, under the
+superintendence of Mr. Alan Stevenson, the son of the eminent engineer
+who erected the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
+
+In the execution of this great work, if the son had, as compared with
+his father, certain advantages in his favour, he had also various
+disadvantages to contend with at Skerryvore from which the engineer of
+the Bell Rock was free. Mr. Alan Stevenson had steam power at his
+command, and the benefit of all the experience derived from the
+experiments of his predecessors in similar operations; but at the same
+time, the rock on which he had to work was at a greater distance from
+the land, and separated from it by a more dangerous passage than that of
+either the Bell or the Eddystone; and the geological formation of which
+the rock is composed, was much more difficult to work upon. The
+Skerryvore is distant from Tyree, the nearest inhabited island, about 11
+miles; even in fine weather the intervening passage is a trying one, and
+in rough weather no ship can live in such a sea, studded as it is with
+treacherous rocks. The sandstone of the Bell Rock is worn into rugged
+inequalities, which favoured the operations of the engineer; but the
+action of the waves on the igneous formation of the Skerryvore has given
+it all the smoothness and slippery polish of a mass of dark coloured
+glass. Indeed, the foreman of the masons, on first visiting the rock,
+not unjustly compared the operation of ascending it to that of "climbing
+up the neck of a bottle."
+
+The 7th August 1838 was the first day of entire work on the rock, and
+with succeeding ones was spent in the erection of a temporary barrack of
+wood, for the men to lodge in on the rock. It was completed before the
+season closed; but one of the first heavy gales in November wrenched it
+from its holdings, and swept it into the sea, leaving nothing to mark
+the site but a few broken and twisted stanchions, attached to one of
+which was a portion of a great beam which had been shaken and rent, by
+dashing against the rocks, into a bundle of ribands. Thus in one night
+were obliterated the results of a whole season's toil, and with them,
+the hopes the men cherished of having a dwelling on the rock, instead of
+on board the brig, where they suffered intensely from the miseries of
+constant sickness.
+
+The excavation of the foundations occupied the whole of the summer
+season of 1839, from the 6th May to the 3d September. The hard,
+nitrified rock held out stoutly against the assaults of both iron and
+gunpowder; and much time was spent in hollowing out the basin in which
+the lighthouse was to be fixed. From the limited extent of the rock and
+the absence of any place of shelter, the blasting was an operation of
+considerable danger, as the men had no place to run to, and it had to be
+managed with great caution. Only a small portion of the rock could be
+blown up at a time, and care had to be taken to cover the part over with
+mats and nettings made of old rope to check the flight of the stones.
+The excavation of the flinty mass occupied nearly two summers.
+
+The operations of 1840 included, much to the delight of the workmen, the
+reconstruction of the barrack, to which they were glad to remove from
+the tossing vessel. The second edifice was more substantial than the
+first, and proved more enduring. Rude and narrow as it was, it offered,
+after the discomforts of the vessel, almost a luxurious lodging to its
+hardy inmates.
+
+"Packed 40 feet above the weather-beaten rock, in this singular abode,"
+writes the engineer, Mr. Alan Stevenson, "with a goodly company of
+thirty men, I have spent many a weary day and night, at those times
+when the sea prevented any one going down to the rock, anxiously looking
+for supplies from the shore, and earnestly longing for a change of
+weather favourable to the recommencement of the works. For miles around
+nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing heard but
+howling winds and lashing waves. Our slumbers, too, were at times
+fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof,
+the rocking of the house on its pillars, and the spurting of water
+through the seams of the doors and windows; symptoms which, to one
+suddenly aroused from sound sleep, recalled the appalling fate of the
+former barrack, which had been engulphed in the foam not twenty yards
+from our dwelling, and for a moment seemed to summon us to a similar
+fate. On two occasions in particular, these sensations were so vivid as
+to cause almost every one to spring out of bed; and some of the men fled
+from the barrack by a temporary gangway to the more stable, but less
+comfortable shelter afforded by the bare walls of the lighthouse tower,
+then unfinished, where they spent the remainder of the night in the
+darkness and the cold."
+
+In spite of their anxiety to get on with the work, and their intrepidity
+in availing themselves of every opportunity, these gallant men were
+often forced by stress of weather into an inactivity which we may be
+sure they felt sadly irksome and against the grain. "At such seasons,"
+says Mr. Stevenson, "much of our time was spent in bed, for there alone
+we had effectual shelter from the winds and the spray which reached
+every cranny in the walls of our barrack." On one occasion they were for
+fourteen days without communication with the shore, and when at length
+the seas subsided, and they were able to make the signal to Tyree that a
+landing at the rock was practicable, scarcely twenty-four hours' stock
+of provisions remained on the rock. In spite of hardships and perils,
+however, the engineer declares that "life on the Skerryvore Rock was by
+no means destitute of its peculiar pleasures. The grandeur of the
+ocean's rage--the deep murmur of the waves--the hoarse cry of the sea
+birds, which wheeled continually over us, especially at our meals--the
+low moaning of the wind--or the gorgeous brightness of a glossy sea and
+a cloudless sky--and the solemn stillness of a deep blue vault, studded
+with stars, or cheered by the splendours of the full moon,--were the
+phases of external things that often arrested our thoughts in a
+situation where, with all the bustle that sometimes prevailed, there was
+necessarily so much time for reflection. Those changes, together with
+the continual succession of hopes and fears connected with the important
+work in which we were engaged, and the oft recurring calls for advice or
+direction, as well as occasional hours devoted to reading and
+correspondence, and the pleasures of news from home, were more than
+sufficient to reconcile me to--nay, to make me really enjoy--an
+uninterrupted residence, on one occasion, of not less than five weeks on
+that desert rock."
+
+The Skerryvore Lighthouse was at length successfully completed. The
+height of the tower is 138 feet 6 inches, of which the first 26 feet is
+solid. It contains a mass of stone work of more than double the quantity
+of the Bell Rock, and nearly five times that of the Eddystone. The
+entire cost, including steam tug and the building of a small harbour at
+Hynish for the reception of the little vessel that now attends the
+lighthouse, was L86,977. The light is revolving, and reaches its
+brightest state once every minute. It is produced by the revolution of
+eight great annular lenses around a central light, with four wicks, and
+can be seen from the deck of a vessel at the distance of 18 miles. Mr.
+Alan Stevenson sums up his deeply interesting narrative in the following
+words: "In such a situation as the Skerryvore, innumerable delays and
+disappointments were to be expected by those engaged in the work; and
+the entire loss of the fruit of the first season's labour in the course
+of a few hours, was a good lesson in the school of patience, and of
+trust in something better than an arm of flesh. During our progress,
+also, cranes and other materials were swept away by the waves; vessels
+were driven by sudden gales to seek shelter at a distance from the rocky
+shores of Mull and Tyree; and the workmen were left on the rock
+desponding and idle, and destitute of many of the comforts with which a
+more roomy and sheltered dwelling, in the neighbourhood of friends, is
+generally connected. Daily risks were run in landing on the rock in a
+heavy surf, in blasting the splintery gneiss, or by the falling of heavy
+bodies from the tower on a narrow space below, to which so many persons
+were necessarily confined. Yet had we not any loss of either life or
+limb; and although our labours were prolonged from dawn to night, and
+our provisions were chiefly salt, the health of the people, with the
+exception of a few slight cases of dysentery, was generally good
+throughout the six successive summers of our sojourn on the rock. The
+close of the work was welcomed with thankfulness by all engaged in it;
+and our remarkable preservation was viewed, even by many of the most
+thoughtless, as, in a peculiar manner, the gracious work of Him by whom
+the very hairs of our heads are all numbered!"
+
+
+
+
+Steam Navigation.
+
+
+  I.--JAMES SYMINGTON.
+ II.--ROBERT FULTON.
+III.--HENRY BELL.
+ IV.--OCEAN STEAMERS.
+
+
+
+
+Steam Navigation.
+
+
+
+
+I.--JAMES SYMINGTON.
+
+
+Of the many triumphs of enterprise achieved by the agency of that
+tremendous power which James Watt tamed and put in harness for his race,
+perhaps the greatest and most momentous is that which has reversed the
+old proverb, that "time and tide wait for no man," given ten-fold
+meaning to the truth that "seas but join the regions they divide," and
+enabled our ships to dash across the trackless deep in spite of opposing
+elements,--
+
+    "Against wind, against tide,
+    Steadying with upright keel,"
+
+in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the cost and peril of
+the old mode of naval locomotion. How amply realized has been James
+Bell's prediction more than half a century ago, "I will venture to
+affirm that history does not afford an instance of such rapid
+improvement in commerce and civilization, as that which will be effected
+by steam vessels!"
+
+Towards the close of the last century, a number of ingenious minds were
+in travail with the scheme of steam navigation. The Marquis de Jouffroy
+in France, and Fitch and Rumsey in America, were successful in
+experiments of its feasibility; but it is to the efforts of Miller and
+Symington in Scotland, followed up by those of Fulton and Bell, that we
+are chiefly and more immediately indebted for the practical development
+of the project.
+
+Having a natural bent for mechanical contrivances, and abundance of
+leisure and money to indulge his tastes, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, in
+Dumfriesshire, somewhere about the year 1785, was full of schemes for
+driving ships by means of paddle-wheels,--by no means a novel idea, for
+it was known to the Romans, if not to the Egyptians, and had often been
+tried before.
+
+All he aimed at originally was, to turn the wheels by the power of men
+or horses; and this he managed to do successfully enough. Single,
+double, and treble boats were often to be seen driving along Dalswinton
+Lake, moved by paddle-wheels instead of oars. On one occasion, at Leith,
+one of the double boats, sixty feet long, propelled by two wheels, each
+of which was turned by a couple of men, was matched against a
+Custom-house boat, which was reckoned a fast sailer. The paddle-wheels
+did duty very well; but the men were soon knocked up with turning them,
+and the want of some other motive power was strongly felt. A young man
+named Taylor, who was tutor to Mr. Miller's boys, is said to have
+suggested the use of steam; but whether this be so or not, it was not
+till Miller met with James Symington that the idea assumed a practical
+form.
+
+In 1786 James Symington, then joint-engineer with his brother George, to
+the Wanlockhead Mines, was struck with the idea which, as we have seen,
+several other ingenious minds were also busy with about the same
+time,--of rendering the steam-engine available for locomotion both on
+land and sea. After much study and reflection, he succeeded in embodying
+the idea in a working model. It was supported on four wheels, which were
+moved in any direction by means of a small steam-engine, and could carry
+16 cwt., besides coals, water, &c. It was exhibited in Edinburgh in the
+summer of 1786, and made a considerable sensation. Mr. Miller, fond of
+all such inventions, did not fail to get a sight of Symington's
+locomotive engine, the first time he was in town. He was delighted with
+its ingenuity and completeness, and procured an interview with the
+author. Of course, Miller was full of his own experiments, and told
+Symington the whole story of his efforts to propel vessels by
+paddle-wheels, and the want of some stronger, and more constant power
+than that of men to turn the capstan, upon which the motion of the
+wheels depended. Symington at once expressed the opinion he had
+formed,--that steam was equally available for vessels as for carriages,
+and showed him how the steam-engine which he had devised for his
+locomotive could be applied to the paddle-wheels. Miller was so much
+struck by his statements, which he illustrated by reference to the
+model, that he determined to have an engine made on the same plan, and
+fitted into one of his double boats. Accordingly, an engine was built
+under Symington's directions and superintendence, sent to Dalswinton,
+and put together in October 1788. The engine, in a strong oak frame, was
+placed in the one half of a double pleasure-boat, the boiler occupying
+the other half, and the paddle-wheels being fixed in the middle.
+
+The autumn was withering into winter, the yellow leaves were swirling to
+the ground with every little breath of wind, and the boughs were
+beginning to show forth bare and grim, when the little boat was launched
+upon the bosom of Dalswinton Loch. At length all the preparations were
+finished, and on the 14th November Mr. Miller had the delight of seeing
+the vessel gliding over the mimic waves of the lake at the rate of five
+miles an hour. The company on board the boat on that memorable occasion
+were--Mr. Miller himself, of course, nervous with pleasure and
+exultation; Taylor, the tutor; Alexander Nasmyth (the well-known
+landscape painter, and father of the man who, in the next generation,
+was to invent the wonderful steam-hammer, that knocks masses of iron
+about like putty, and can yet so moderate its force as to crack a nut
+without bruising the kernel); a brisk stripling with strongly marked
+features, by name Harry Brougham, afterwards to be Lord Chancellor of
+England, and perhaps the most many-sided genius of his time; and--last
+and greatest of the group--there was one of Mr. Miller's tenants, the
+farmer of Ellisland,--Robert Burns, the great bard of Scotland, enjoying
+to the full, no doubt, the novelty of the expedition, but, we must
+suppose, unconscious of its import and grand future consequences, since
+he has accorded it no commemorative verse. "Many a time," says Mr. James
+Nasmyth, son of the distinguished painter, "I have heard my father
+describe the delight which this first and successful essay at steam
+navigation yielded the party in question. I only wish Burns had
+immortalized it in fit, clinking rhyme, for, indeed, it was a subject
+worthy of his highest muse."
+
+The experiment was next tried on a large scale with a canal boat, on the
+Forth and Clyde Canal, but one of the wheels broke. Not to be balked,
+Symington had stronger wheels made, and the next time the steam was put
+on, the vessel went off at the rate of seven miles an hour. The
+experiment was several times repeated with success. The vessel, however,
+was so slight, that many more trips would have knocked it to pieces; and
+it was therefore dismantled. The fitting up of these vessels, and the
+working of them, formed a heavy drain upon Mr. Miller's purse; and
+having laid satisfactory proof before the world that the thing could be
+done, he relinquished the enterprise, and left it to be worked out by
+others. Just then, however, no one came forward to fill his place; and
+for some years the idea slumbered.
+
+In 1801 Symington could not afford to indulge in further efforts at his
+own expense, but he found a patron in Lord Dundas, who commissioned him
+to construct a steam-tug for dragging canal boats. A stout, serviceable
+tug was built; and a series of experiments entered upon to test her
+efficiency, which cost upwards of L3000. One bleak, stormy spring-day in
+1802, the people on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal might have
+been seen staring with wonder, at the short, stumpy little tug pushing
+gallantly on at the rate of three or four miles an hour, with a strong
+wind right in her teeth, that no other vessel could make head against,
+and two loaded vessels (each of more than 70 tons burden) in tow. By
+itself, the tug could do six miles an hour without any great strain. The
+company made some objection, however, about the banks of the canal being
+injured, and the tug fell into disuse. It served an important end,
+though, in giving both Fulton and Bell a basis for their operations, and
+must be considered the parent of our modern steam-craft.
+
+
+
+
+II.--ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+After Dr. Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom, had retired
+penniless from his manufacturing enterprises, and had taken up his abode
+in London, one of the constant visitors at his modest residence in
+Marylebone Fields, was a thin, sharp-featured American, about
+twenty-eight years of age, an artist by profession, and formerly student
+of Benjamin West, who, however, was now much more interested in the art
+of engineering than the art of painting. From an early age he had shown
+a taste for mechanics, and was fond of spending his play-hours at school
+loitering about workshops and factories, watching the men at their work,
+and studying the machines and instruments they used. This sojourn in
+England had brought him into contact with the Duke of Bridgewater, the
+great canal projector, and Lord Stanhope, well known for his
+improvements in the printing press and other contrivances, in whose
+company his boyish bent towards mechanics was revived, and became quite
+a passion with him. He threw aside his brushes and palette, and applied
+himself to his favourite pursuit with heart and soul. Having formed the
+acquaintance of Cartwright, he became a daily visitor at his house, and
+the enthusiastic, good-natured doctor and he would sit debating for
+hours the great problem: "Whether it were practicable to move vessels by
+steam?" Fulton, eager, restless, vivacious, with pencil in hand, was
+perpetually sketching plans of paddle-wheels; while the doctor, calm,
+dignified, and earnest, equally engrossed in the subject, was contriving
+various modes of bringing steam to act upon them. Neither of them had
+any doubt that the thing could be done, but the "how" long baffled them;
+and even though the doctor constructed "the model of a boat, which,
+being wound up like a clock, moved on the water in a highly satisfactory
+manner," nothing practical came of their cogitations till some years
+after.
+
+While on a visit to Paris, Fulton was struck with the injury which
+standing navies of men-of-war inflicted on the mercantile marine, and
+gave his whole attention, as he says, "to find out the means of
+destroying such engines of oppression, by some method which would put it
+out of the power of any nation to maintain such a system, and compel
+every government to adopt the simple principles of education, industry,
+and a free circulation of its produce." The means presented itself to
+his mind in the shape of an explosive shell, called the torpedo, by
+which any ship of war could be blown to pieces; and for six or seven
+years he occupied himself in fruitless attempts to get first the
+government of France, and then that of England, to take up his project.
+He did not abandon his schemes with regard to steam-vessels, however;
+but, under the auspices of Mr. Livingstone, the American ambassador,
+made several experiments. One vessel of considerable size broke through
+the middle when the engines were placed on board, but a second one was
+rather more successful, though but a slow rate of movement was attained.
+His project came under the notice of Napoleon, then First Consul, who
+did not fail to appreciate its value. "It was," he said, "capable of
+changing the face of the world;" and he directed a commission to inquire
+into its merits. Nothing came of it, however.
+
+Shortly after, Fulton visited Scotland, and got an introduction to
+Symington, whom he pressed for a sight of his boat. Symington generously
+consented, and gave him a short sail on board the steam-tug. Fulton made
+no concealment of his intention of starting steamboats in his own
+country, whither he was about to return, and asked Symington to allow
+him to make a few notes of his observations on board. Symington had no
+objections; and, therefore, he says, "Fulton pulled out a memorandum
+book, and after putting several pointed questions respecting the general
+construction and effect of the machine, which I answered in a most
+explicit manner, he jotted down particularly everything then described,
+with his own remarks upon the boat while moving with him on board along
+the canal." Fulton was very liberal in his promises not to forget his
+assistance, if he got steamboats established in America; but Symington
+never heard anything more of him.
+
+Fulton was at New York in 1806, and busy getting a steamboat put
+together. It was a costly undertaking, and he had little spare cash of
+his own; so he offered shares in the concern to his friends, but no one
+would have anything to do with so ridiculous a scheme, as they thought.
+"My friends," says Fulton, "were civil, but shy. They listened with
+patience to my explanations, but with a settled cast of incredulity on
+their countenances. I felt the full force of the lamentation of the
+poet,--
+
+    'Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land,
+    All shun, none aid you, and few understand.'
+
+As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building-yard while my
+boat was in progress, I have often loitered, unknown, near the idle
+groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various
+inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was
+uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh rose at my
+expense, the dry jest, the wise calculation of losses and expenditure,
+the dull, but endless repetition of 'the Fulton Folly.' Never did a
+single encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish, cross my
+path."
+
+Let them laugh that win. The success which shortly attended Fulton's
+scheme turned the tables upon those who had mocked at him. The
+_Clermont_ was completed in August 1807, and the day arrived when the
+trial was to be made on the Hudson river. "To me," wrote Fulton, "it was
+a most trying and interesting occasion. I wanted some friends to go on
+board to witness the first successful trip. Many of them did me the
+favour to attend as a mark of personal respect; but it was manifest they
+did it with reluctance, fearing to be partners of my mortification, and
+not of my triumph. The moment arrived in which the word was to be given
+for the vessel to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was
+anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad, and weary. I
+read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my
+efforts. The signal was given, and the boat moved on a short distance,
+and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding
+moment now succeeded murmurs of discontent and agitation, and whispers
+and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated--'I told you so; it is a
+foolish scheme; I wish we were well out of it.' I elevated myself on a
+platform, and stated that I knew not what was the matter; but if they
+would be quiet, and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or
+abandon the voyage. I went below, and discovered that a slight
+misadjustment was the cause. It was obviated. The boat went on; we left
+New York; we passed through the Highlands; we reached Albany! Yet even
+their imagination superseded the force of fact. It was doubted if it
+could be done again, or if it could be made, in any case, of any great
+value."
+
+The simple-minded country folk on the banks of the Hudson were almost
+frightened out of their wits at the awful apparition which they saw
+gliding along the river, and which, especially when seen indistinctly
+looming through the night, looked to their bewildered eyes, "a monster
+moving on the water, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames
+and smoke." Pine-wood was used for fuel, and whenever the fire was
+stirred, a great burst of sparks issued from the chimney. "This uncommon
+light," says Colden, the biographer of Fulton, "first attracted the
+attention of the crews of other vessels. Notwithstanding the wind and
+tide were adverse to its approach, they saw with astonishment that it
+was rapidly coming towards them; and when it came so near that the noise
+of the machinery and paddles were heard, the crews in some instances
+shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight, and others left
+their vessels to go on shore; while others, again, prostrated
+themselves, and besought Providence to protect them from the approach of
+the horrible monster which was marching on the tides, and lighting its
+path by the fires which it vomited."
+
+With the novelty of the spectacle its terror died away, and people soon
+got tired of rushing out to see the remarkable machine that had once
+seemed so miraculous to them. The _Clermont_ soon began to travel
+regularly as a passage-boat between Albany and New York, other
+steam-vessels were constructed on its model, and by degrees the steam
+marine of America grew into the host it is at present. Thirty years
+after the first experiment on the Hudson, it was calculated 1300
+steamboats had been built in the States.
+
+Fulton did not live long to enjoy his triumphs. He died in 1815, having
+been actively engaged in promoting steam navigation to his last hours.
+
+
+
+
+III.--HENRY BELL.
+
+
+The honour which in America attached to Fulton as the man who first
+brought the steamboat into use, and to the River Hudson as being the
+scene of the experiment, in our own country fell (in a somewhat less
+degree, being subsequent), to Henry Bell, and the River Clyde.
+
+Brought up as a millwright, Bell, from want of funds to start in
+business, was obliged for many years to gain his living as a common
+carpenter in Glasgow, where he was noted among the trade as being very
+fond of "schemes," and suspected on that account by narrow-minded folk
+of being not very reliable in the lower branches of his craft. Scheme
+after scheme issued from his fertile mind; but he was rash and hasty in
+working them out, and few proved of much worth. Steam navigation being
+one of the vexed problems of the time, had every fascination for his
+peculiar genius; and he seems to have been brooding over it as the last
+century was closing, and the present opening upon the world. When Fulton
+visited Symington's invention, Bell appears to have accompanied him, and
+to have afterwards corresponded with him on the subject. "This," he
+says, "led me to think of the absurdity of writing my opinions to other
+countries, and not putting it in practice myself in my own country; and
+from these considerations I was roused to set on foot a steamboat, for
+which I made a number of different models before I was satisfied."
+Having removed to the little village of Helensburgh, on the banks of the
+Clyde, and there established a hotel and bath-house, which his wife
+managed, he endeavoured to work the passage-boats by which visitors were
+brought to the place, by means of paddle-wheels worked by the hand,
+instead of oars; but the plan did not succeed very well, for the same
+reason that led to Mr. Miller's abandonment of it--the inefficiency of
+manual power, which could not be applied with sufficiently sustained and
+continuous force. He therefore gave it up, and turned his attention to
+the employment of steam power for the same purpose. Of course, he was
+laughed at for his pains; and Henry Bell's project for having steamers
+on the Clyde became a standing joke among the frequenters of the
+watering-place. Even after the permanent success of Fulton's scheme was
+known, people would not moderate their incredulity; but Bell's faith,
+which had never wavered, was now confirmed, and he set about the work
+with redoubled energy.
+
+In 1811, Bell, having procured the necessary funds, had a steam-boat
+built of twenty-five tons and four horse power. He named it the _Comet_,
+because a comet had just then appeared in the north-west of Scotland.
+The _Comet_ began to run regularly between Glasgow and Helensburgh in
+January 1812, and continued to ply successfully during the summer of
+that year. At first, however, she brought rather loss than gain to her
+projector. People were shy of trusting themselves on board, and parties
+interested in the stage-coaches and sailing vessels, spread all sorts of
+absurd reports about her. It was not till she had gone for some time
+without accident, that tourists began to think they might as well save
+their money and their time by patronizing the new mode of conveyance. In
+the second year Bell took the _Comet_ off the Clyde, and sent her on a
+tour round the open coasts of the three kingdoms. Before long the safety
+and utility of steam navigation was admitted on all hands, and numerous
+rival enterprises were on foot. In 1820 the _Comet_ was lost between
+Glasgow and Fort William; and in the following year another of Bell's
+vessels was burnt to the water-edge--two misfortunes that carried L3000
+out of his pocket. His rivals, with abundant capital, soon drove him out
+of the field, and Bell sank into poverty and neglect. A small annuity
+from the Clyde trustees, and a subscription among his friends, to keep
+him from starving, were all the rewards he ever received for his
+enterprise and perseverance. He died in 1830 in the sixty-fourth year of
+his age.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--OCEAN STEAMERS.
+
+
+In the quarter of a century which elapsed between 1812, when the _Comet_
+first began to churn the waters of the Clyde, and 1837, steam navigation
+progressed steadily and surely. At first, content with plying along
+rivers and quiet bays, steamers by-and-by ventured out upon the open
+sea. We owe the regular establishment of deep-sea packets to the courage
+and enterprise of Mr. David Napier of Glasgow, "who," says Mr. Scott
+Russell, "has effected more for the improvement of steam navigation than
+any other man." He was quick to appreciate the capabilities of
+steam-vessels, and saw that they were fit for something more than mere
+inland voyages. Before starting one of them upon the open sea, however,
+he carefully estimated the danger to be encountered and the difficulties
+to be overcome. He took passage at the worst season of the year in one
+of the sailing vessels which formerly plied between Glasgow and Belfast,
+and which often required a week to perform a journey that is now done by
+steam in a few hours.
+
+Stationing himself on an elevated part of the deck, he kept a close
+watch on the movements of the vessel, observing the tossing to which she
+was subjected by the waves, the extent of the dip when she sank into a
+trough, the height of elevation when lifted on the summit of a wave, and
+calculating in his mind how all this would tell on the paddle-wheels.
+Through the roughest of the storm, when the vessel was pitching worst,
+and the wind blowing at its fiercest, he kept his place on deck,
+regardless of the drenching spray and the blast that almost carried him
+off his legs. When at length he had satisfied himself by the observation
+of his own eyes and inquiries of the captain and crew, that there was
+nothing in the voyage which a steamer could not encounter, he retired
+contentedly to his cabin, leaving everybody astonished at his strange
+curiosity respecting the effect of rough weather on the ship.
+
+Not long after David Napier started the _Rob Roy_ steam-packet between
+Greenock and Belfast, and afterwards between Dover and Calais. In the
+course of two or three years more he had established steam communication
+between Holyhead and Dublin, Liverpool and Greenock, and various other
+parts. The length of each unbroken passage was then considered the great
+difficulty; but as steamers got improved both in form and machinery,
+passages of greater length were successfully accomplished. Steamers
+traversed in all directions the German Ocean, the Mediterranean, the
+Baltic, and, in short, all the waters on the eastern side of the
+Atlantic; and were in use upon all the rivers and lakes of any size in
+Europe.
+
+At length, in 1836, the startling project was set on foot of superseding
+the far-famed New York and Liverpool packet ships by a fleet of
+steam-ships. Before this the _Savannah_, a steam vessel of 300 tons,
+had, in 1819, crossed from New York to Liverpool in twenty-six days,
+partly with sails and partly with steam; and another steam vessel had,
+in 1825, made the voyage from England to Calcutta; but one swallow does
+not make a summer, and many learned folks, on both sides of the
+Atlantic, shook their heads doubtfully at the daring scheme of regular
+steam communication across 13,000 miles of ocean. The experiment was to
+be made, however; and on the 4th April 1838, the _Sirius_, of 700 tons
+and 320 horse power, sailed from Cork for the far West. Four days after
+the _Great Western_ followed in her wake from Bristol.
+
+Great was the excitement in New York as the time drew nigh when the
+_Sirius_ was considered due. For days together the Battery was crowded
+with anxious watchers, from the first breaking of the cold, grey dawn
+till night dropped its dark curtain on the scene. At that time a
+telescope was a thing to be begged, borrowed, or stolen,--to be got,
+somehow or other, if only for a minute,--and a man who possessed one was
+to be looked up to, made much of, and, if possible, coaxed out of the
+loan of it. All day long a hundred telescopes swept the sea. The ocean
+steamer was the great topic of the hour, and "any appearance of her?"
+the constant question when two people met. On St. George's day, the 23d
+April, a dim, dusky speck on the far horizon grew under the eye of the
+thousands of breathless watchers into a long train of smoke, beneath
+which, as the hours wore on, appeared the black prow of a huge
+steam-boat. There she was, long looked for come at last; and with the
+American colours at the fore, and the flag of Old England rustling at
+the stern, the _Sirius_ swept into the harbour amidst the cheers of the
+multitude, the ringing of the city bells, and the firing of salutes. The
+excitement reached its climax, and the shouting and firing grew
+deafening, when, some few hours later on the same auspicious day, the
+_Great Western_ came to anchor alongside of her rival.
+
+Twenty-two years have passed since then, and the marvel of 1838 has
+become a mere everyday affair. There are some fourteen different lines
+of steamers, comprising more than fifty vessels, running between the
+United States and Europe, to say nothing of the magnificent steam fleets
+of the Peninsular and Oriental, the Royal West India, British and North
+American, Pacific, Australian, South Western, and other companies.
+
+The employment of iron in the construction of ships, thus securing at
+once lightness and strength, and the invention of the screw propeller,
+in 1836, by Mr. J. P. Smith, a farmer at Hendon, by means of which a
+vessel can combine all the qualities of a first-rate sailing ship with
+the use of steam power, gave a great impulse to steam navigation, which
+is still making steady and continuous progress. From one steam vessel
+in 1812 the number in the kingdom has risen successively to 20 in 1820,
+824 in 1840, and over 2000 in 1860. During 1858, 153 steamers were built
+in the United Kingdom, of which 112 were of iron. It is interesting to
+observe the advance in size of the steam vessels from their first
+introduction on the Clyde.
+
+                                                  Length.     Breadth.
+    1812. Comet                                   40 feet   10-1/2 feet.
+    1825. Enterprise (built expressly to go to
+          India, coaling at intermediate
+          stations)                              122  "     27      "
+    1835. Tagus (for Mediterranean)              182  "     28      "
+    1838. Great Western (the first ship built
+          expressly for Transatlantic service)   236  "     35-1/2  "
+    1844. Great Britain (the first large screw
+          ship, and largest iron ship up to that
+          time)                                  322  "     51      "
+    1853. Himalaya (iron)                        370  "     43-1/2  "
+    1856. Persia (do.)                           390  "     45      "
+    1859. Great Eastern (do.)                    680  "     83      "
+
+In the interval between 1812 and 1870 the number of steamers in the
+United Kingdom has increased from one to nearly three thousand; and the
+ocean-going steamer of 1870 is nearly six times the length of that of
+1825, and seventeen times the length of the _Comet_, while the
+difference in tonnage is still greater. How Fulton or Bell would open
+their eyes at the sight of a vast moving city, such as the Big Ship, an
+eighth of a mile in length, propelled by both paddle-wheels and screw,
+each worked by four huge engines!
+
+
+
+
+Iron Manufacture.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY CORT.
+
+
+
+
+Iron Manufacture.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY CORT.
+
+
+The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age.
+We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal--every
+day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where
+the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The
+invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing
+machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a
+cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. The land is
+covered with a net-work of iron rails, traversed by iron steeds--gulfs
+and valleys are spanned by iron arches and iron tubes--huge ships of
+iron ride upon the deep. Even stones and bricks are being discarded for
+this all-useful substance, and of iron we are building houses, palaces,
+theatres, churches, and spacious domes. There is no end to its uses.
+
+And yet, it is only between seventy and eighty years ago since Britain,
+the richest of all countries in native ore, was dependent upon others
+for her supply of the manufactured metal. We wanted but little iron in
+those days, compared with the present demand, and yet that little we
+could not furnish ourselves with. As much as a million and a half
+a-year went out of our pockets to purchase wrought iron from Sweden
+alone, and we were good customers to Russia as well. All the iron that
+our country could then produce was some 17,000 tons. The man who showed
+us how to turn our own ore to account, who rendered us independent of
+all other countries for our supply, and made us the great purveyors of
+wrought iron to the world, who opened up to us this great source of
+national wealth, was Henry Cort of Gosport.
+
+The great difficulty which he solved was how to get wrought iron out of
+the crude iron as it came from the smelting furnace, without using
+charcoal. With but a small tract of country, densely peopled, we had but
+a scant supply of wood at our command. The great forests which once
+overspread the land were gradually vanishing, partly before the spread
+of population and the growth of towns, and partly from the inroads made
+on them by the demand for timber. Formerly, the first transformation of
+the ore into pig iron (the crude form of the manufactured metal) was
+effected by means of wood; and the consumption was so great that an Act
+was passed in 1581 restraining its use. Soon afterwards Lord Dudley
+discovered that coal would answer the purpose just as well, and obtained
+a patent of monopoly. He reaped but little profit from his invention,
+however, for his iron-works were destroyed by a mob; and it was not till
+a century afterwards, when people got more alarmed at the growing
+scarcity of timber, and the increased demand for it, that the plan was
+generally adopted. This was one step in the right direction, but another
+yet remained to be made, for the manufacture was still hampered in our
+country by the want of wood for the second process--the conversion of
+crude into malleable iron, in which state alone it is fit for service.
+
+About the year 1785, Henry Cort, iron-master, of Gosport, after many
+years of patient and wearisome research, of anxious thought, and
+indefatigable experiment, in which he spent a private fortune of some
+L20,000, perfected a couple of inventions of priceless value. The first
+was the process of converting pig iron into wrought iron by the flame of
+pit coal in a puddling furnace, thus dispensing with the use of
+charcoal,--the cost and scarcity of which had before formed such a dead
+weight on the trade, and placed us at such a disadvantage compared with
+Sweden and Russia. The second was a further process for drawing the iron
+into bars by means of grooved rollers. Till then, this operation had to
+be performed with hammer and anvil, and was very tedious and laborious.
+The new system not only reduced the cost and labour of producing iron to
+one-twentieth of what they were previously, but greatly improved the
+quality of the article produced.
+
+It is not easy to estimate all that Henry Cort's inventions have done
+for this country. Without them we should have lost an overflowing and
+inexhaustible source of national wealth, and, moreover, large sums would
+have been taken out of the country in the purchase of wrought metal; we
+should never have been able to give full scope to the great mechanical
+inventions brought forth towards the close of the last, and the opening
+of the present century; we should have been debarred from taking rank as
+the great engineers and engine-makers for the rest of the world. The
+direct gain to this country from the inventions of Henry Cort, which
+enabled us to work up our own iron, has been calculated as equal by this
+time to not less than a hundred millions; and it is hardly possible to
+exaggerate the benefits which it has conferred. Lord Sheffield's
+prophecy, that the adoption of these processes would be worth more to
+Britain than a dozen colonies, may be said to have been fulfilled.
+
+Like many another benefactor of his country, Cort got little good out of
+his invention for himself. He took out a patent for his process, and
+arranged with the leading iron-masters to accept a royalty of ten
+shillings a ton for the use of them. With a large fortune in prospect,
+his purse was just then exhausted by the expenses he had incurred in
+experiments and researches; and he had to look out for a capitalist to
+aid him in working the patent on his own account. As ill luck would
+have it, he entered into partnership with a certain Adam Jellicoe, then
+deputy-paymaster of the navy. Jellicoe was considered a man of
+substance, and a "thoroughly respectable" character. He was to advance
+the ready money, and to receive in return half of the profits of the
+trade, Cort assigning to him, by way of collateral security, his patent
+rights. For a year or two all went well. The patent was everywhere
+adopted, and Cort's own iron works drove a lucrative and growing trade.
+He seemed in a fair way of getting back the fortune he had spent in
+bringing out the inventions, doubled or trebled, as he well deserved.
+The respectable Jellicoe was seized with a mortal sickness: at his death
+his desk was filled by another, his books were examined, and it turned
+out that he had been robbing the government for many a year back, and
+was a large defaulter. Cort, of course, had nothing to do with this
+villany, but he had to pay the penalty of it. As Jellicoe's partner he
+was responsible, in those days of unlimited liability, for all
+Jellicoe's debts; but that was not the worst of it. The treasurer of the
+navy was not content to exact only the payment of Jellicoe's
+defalcations, as he had no doubt a right to do, but confiscated the
+whole of Cort's patent rights, business, and property, which would have
+paid the debt seven or eight times over, had it been fairly valued.
+
+This incident has never been properly cleared up, but what glimpses of
+its secret passages have been obtained, seem to indicate clearly enough
+that poor Cort was the victim, not of one, but of two or more swindlers.
+To the day of his death he never could obtain a distinct account of the
+proceedings; and when, after his death, a Royal Commission was appointed
+to inquire into the matter, the treasurer of the navy and his deputy
+took care, a week or two before the Commission met, to indemnify each
+other by a joint release, and to burn their accounts for upwards of a
+million and a half of public money, for the application of which they
+were responsible, as well as all papers relating to Cort's case. When
+the Commission met, and the treasurer and his deputy were called before
+it, they refused to answer questions which would criminate themselves.
+
+His connection with Jellicoe was, of course, the ruin of Henry Cort. He
+had no means of re-establishing himself in business; he was robbed of
+all income from his patents; and he died ruined and broken-hearted ten
+years after, leaving a family of nine children, without a sixpence in
+the world. Four of these children now survive--old, infirm, and
+indigent--only saved from being dependent upon parish bounty by
+pensions, amounting in the aggregate to L90 per annum. Well may it be
+said, "There should be more gratitude in our Iron Age to the children of
+HENRY CORT."
+
+
+
+
+The Electric Telegraph.
+
+
+  I.--MR. COOKE.
+ II.--PROFESSOR WHEATSTONE.
+III.--THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.
+
+
+
+
+The Electric Telegraph.
+
+    "Speak the word and think the thought,
+    Quick 'tis as with lightning caught--
+    Over, under lands or seas,
+    To the far antipodes;
+    Here again, as soon as gone,
+    Making all the earth as one;
+    Moscow speaks at twelve o'clock,--
+    London reads ere noon the shock."
+
+
+
+
+I.--MR. COOKE.
+
+
+Of all the marvels of our time, the most marvellous is the subjugation
+of the electric fluid, that potent elemental force,--twin brother of the
+fatal lightning,--to be our submissive courier, to bear our messages
+from land to land, and "put a girdle round about the earth in forty
+minutes." The Prospero that tamed this Ariel was no individual genius,
+but "two single gentlemen rolled into one." The idea of employing the
+electric current for the conveyance of signals between distant points,
+can be traced pretty far back in date; but to Mr. Cooke and Professor
+Wheatstone is undoubtedly due the credit of having made the electric
+telegraph an actual and accomplished fact, and rendered it practicable
+for everyday uses.
+
+Having served for a number of years as an officer in our Indian army,
+Mr. Cooke came back to Europe to recruit his health in the beginning of
+1836, and took up his abode at Heidelberg. He found agreeable
+occupation for his leisure in the study of anatomy, and in the
+construction of anatomical models for his father's museum at Durham,
+where he was a professor in the university. Entirely self-taught in this
+delicate art, Mr. Cooke applied himself to it with characteristic
+ardour, and attained remarkable skill. One day he happened to witness
+some experiments which were made by Professor Moencke, to illustrate the
+feasibility of electric signalling. A current of electricity was passed
+through a long wire, and set a magnetic needle at the end quivering
+under its influence. The experiment was a very simple one, and not at
+all novel; but Cooke had never paid any attention to the subject before,
+and was much struck with what he saw. He became strongly impressed with
+the possibility of employing electricity in the transmission of
+telegraphic intelligence between distant places. From the day he
+witnessed the experiments in Professor Moencke's classroom, he forsook
+the dissecting knife, threw aside his modelling tools, and applied
+himself to the realization of his conception. With such ardour and
+devotion did he labour, and such skill and ingenuity did he bring to the
+work, that within three weeks he had constructed a telegraph with six
+wires, forming three complete metallic currents, and influencing three
+needles, by the varied inclination of which twenty-six different signals
+were designated. In that short time he had also invented the detector,
+by which injuries to the wires, whether from water, fracture, or
+contact with substances capable of diverting the current, were readily
+traced, and the alarum, by which notice is given at one end of the wire
+that a message is coming from the other. Both these contrivances were of
+the utmost value,--indeed, without them electric telegraphy would be
+impracticable,--and are still in use. Possessing more of a mechanical
+than a scientific genius, Mr. Cooke bestowed more of his time and
+ingenuity on the perfection of a telegraph to be worked by clock
+mechanism, set in action by the withdrawal of a detent by an electro
+magnet than in the completion of the electric telegraph pure and simple.
+
+Soon after having invented his telegraph, he came over to London, and
+spent the rest of the year in making a variety of instruments, and in
+efforts to get his telegraph introduced on the Liverpool and Manchester
+Railway. He found an obstacle to the complete success of his mechanical
+telegraph, in the difficulty of transmitting to a distance sufficient
+electric power to work the electro magnet upon which its action
+depended. A friend advised him to consult Professor Wheatstone, then
+known to be deeply engaged in electrical experiments, with a view to
+telegraphy; and accordingly, an interview between them took place in
+February 1837.
+
+
+
+
+II.--PROFESSOR WHEATSTONE.
+
+
+Mr. Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S., and Professor of Experimental Philosophy
+in King's College at the time of that interview, had made considerable
+advances in the scientific part of the enterprise. At the commencement
+of his career as a maker and seller of musical instruments in London, he
+was led to investigate the science of sound; and from his researches in
+that direction, he was led--much as Herschel was led--to devote himself
+to optics, and to study the philosophy of light. He was the first to
+point out the peculiarity of binocular vision, and to describe the
+stereoscope, which has since become so popular an instrument. Gradually,
+however, his thoughts and researches came to be steadfastly directed to
+the application of electricity to the communication of signals. In
+determining the rate at which the electric current travels through a
+wire he had laid down, he made an important stride towards the end in
+view. He proved by a series of most ingenious experiments, that one
+spark of electricity leaps on before another, and that its progress is a
+question of time. He found that electricity travels through a _copper_
+wire as fast as, if not faster, than light, that is, at the rate of
+200,000 miles in a second; but through an _iron_ wire, electricity moves
+at the rate of only 15,400 miles in a second. In 1836 Mr. Wheatstone had
+begun experiments in the vaults of King's College, with four miles of
+wire, properly insulated, and was working out the details of a
+telegraph, the scientific principles of which he had already laid down.
+He had discovered an original method of converting a few wires into a
+considerable number of circuits, so that the greatest number of signals
+could be transmitted by a limited number of wires, by the deflection of
+magnetic needles. Mr. Wheatstone, however, was somewhat backward in the
+mechanical parts of the scheme, and the meeting between him and Cooke
+was therefore of the greatest benefit to both, and an admirable
+illustration of the old proverb, that two heads are better than one. Had
+they never been brought together,--had they kept on working out their
+own ideas apart--each would, no doubt, have been able to produce an
+electric telegraph; but a great deal of time would have been lost, and
+their respective efforts less complete and valuable than the one they
+effected in conjunction. Cooke wanted sound, scientific knowledge;
+Wheatstone wanted mechanical ingenuity; and their union supplied mutual
+deficiencies. A partnership was immediately formed between them. Before
+their combined genius all difficulties vanished; and in the June of the
+same year they were able to take out a patent for a telegraph with five
+wires and five needles. Their respective shares in its invention are
+clearly marked out by Sir J. Brunel and Professor Daniell, who, as
+arbiters between the two upon that delicate question, gave the
+following award in 1841:--
+
+"Whilst Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom
+this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried
+out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a
+work of national importance; and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as
+the scientific man whose profound and successful researches had already
+prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical
+application,--it is to the united labours of two gentlemen so well
+qualified for mutual assistance, that we must attribute the rapid
+progress which this important invention has made during the five years
+since they have been associated."
+
+Shortly after the taking out of a patent, wires were laid down between
+Euston Square Terminus and Camden Town Station, on the North-Western
+Railway; and the new telegraph was subjected to trial. Late in the
+evening of the 25th July 1837, in a dingy little room in one of the
+Euston Square offices, Professor Wheatstone sat alone, with a hand on
+each handle of the signal instrument, and an anxious eye upon the dial,
+with its needles as yet in motionless repose. In another little room at
+the Camden Town Station, Mr. Cooke was seated in a similar position
+before the instrument at the other end of the wires, along with Mr., now
+Sir Charles Fox, Robert Stephenson, and some other gentlemen. It was a
+trying, agitating moment for the two inventors,--how Wheatstone's pulse
+must have throbbed, and his heart beat, as he jerked the handle, broke
+the electric current, and sent the needles quivering on the dial; in
+what suspense he must have spent the next few minutes, holding his
+breath as though to hear his fellow's voice, and almost afraid to look
+at the dial lest no answer should be made; with what a thrill of joy
+must each have seen the needles wag knowingly and spell out their
+precious message,--the "All's well; thank God," that flashed from heart
+to heart, along the line of senseless wire. "Never," said Wheatstone,
+"did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before, as when all alone in the
+still room I heard the needles click; and as I spelled the words, I felt
+all the magnitude of the invention now proved to be practicable beyond
+cavil or dispute."
+
+A few days before this trial of the telegraph in London, Steinheil, of
+Munich, is said to have had one of his own invention at work there; and
+it is a difficult question to decide whether he or Cooke and Wheatstone
+were the first inventors. It is, however, a question of no consequence,
+as each worked independently. Since the first English electric telegraph
+was patented, there have been a thousand and one other contrivances of a
+similar kind taken out; but it may be doubted whether, for practical
+purposes, the original apparatus, with the improvements which its own
+inventors have made on it, is not still the best of them all.
+
+From being used merely to carry railway messages, the telegraph was
+brought into the service of the general public; the advantages of such
+almost instantaneous communication were readily appreciated; and eight
+years after Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone took out their patent, lines of
+telegraph to the extent of 500 miles were in operation in England upon
+the original plan. In 1855 telegraphic correspondence had become so
+general, that the Electric Telegraph Company was started to supply the
+demand. In that establishment the Needle Telegraph of Wheatstone and
+Cooke is the one generally used, with the Chemical Recording Telegraph
+of Bain for special occasions. By means of the latter, blue lines of
+various lengths, according to an alphabet, are drawn upon a ribbon of
+paper, and as many as 20,000 words can be sent in an hour, though the
+ordinary rate is 100 per minute. In the purchase of patent rights alone,
+the Company have spent L170,000, and they are every year adding to the
+length of their wires. In June 1850 they had 6730 miles of wires, and
+despatched 29,245 messages a year. In December 1853 they had 24,340
+miles of wires, and despatched 212,440 messages a-year. Their lines now
+extend over a much larger mileage, and convey a greatly increased number
+of messages. The Magnetic Telegraph Company have also a large extent of
+wires, and do a considerable business.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.
+
+
+The land telegraph having had such success, the next step was to carry
+the wires across the deep, and link continent to continent,--an
+all-important step for an island kingdom such as ours, with its legion
+of distant colonies. The success of a submerged cable between Gosport
+and Portsmouth, and of one across the docks at Hull, proved the
+feasibility of a water telegraph, at least on a small scale, and it was
+not long before more ambitious attempts were made. On the 28th of August
+1850, a cable, 30 miles long, in a gutta percha sheathing, was stretched
+at the bottom of the straits between Dover and Cape Grisnez, near
+Calais. Messages of congratulation sped along this wire between England
+and France; and although a ridge of rocks filed the cable asunder on the
+French coast, the suspension of communication was only temporary. The
+link has once more been established, and is in daily use. The first news
+sent by the wire to England was of the celebrated _coup d'etat_ of the
+2d December, which cleared the way for Louis Napoleon's ascent of the
+throne. Numerous other cables have since been sunk beneath the waters;
+complete telegraphic communication has just been established between
+England and India, and will, no doubt, before long be extended to
+Australia.
+
+The greatest enterprise of this kind, however, still remains
+unaccomplished--that is, the laying of the Atlantic cable. A company was
+started in 1856 to carry out this great enterprise, the governments of
+Great Britain and the United States engaging to assist them, not only
+with an annual subsidy of L10,000 a-year for twenty-five years, but to
+furnish the men and ships required for laying the cable from one side of
+the Atlantic to the other. The chief difficulty which engaged the
+attention of Mr. Wildman Whitehouse and the other agents of the notable
+enterprise was the enormous size of the cable which, it was thought,
+would be necessary. The general belief at that time was, that the
+greater the distance to be traversed, the larger must be the wire along
+which the electric current was to pass, and that the rate of speed would
+be in proportion to the size of the conductor. Mr. Whitehouse, however,
+thought it would be as well to begin by making sure that this was really
+the case, and that a monster cable was essential; and after some three
+thousand separate observations and experiments, was delighted to find
+that the difficulty which stared them in the face was imaginary. Instead
+of a large cable transmitting the current faster than a small one, he
+ascertained beyond a doubt, that the bigger the wire, the slower was the
+passage of the electricity. It would be needful, therefore, to make the
+cable only strong enough to stand the strain of its own weight, and
+heavy enough to sink to the bottom. A single wire would have been quite
+sufficient, but a strand of seven wires of the finest copper was used
+for the cable, so that the fracture of one of them might not interfere
+with the communication,--as long as one wire was left intact the current
+would proceed. A triple coating of gutta percha, to keep the sea from
+sucking out the electricity, and a thick coating of iron wire, to sink
+the cable to the bottom and give it strength, were added to the copper
+rope, and then the cable was complete. No less than 325,000 miles of
+iron and copper wire were woven into this great cable,--as much as might
+be wound thirteen times round the globe; and its weight was about a ton
+per mile. The length of the cable was 18,947 miles--some 600 miles being
+allowed to come and go upon, in case of accidents.
+
+The end of July 1857 was selected for the sailing of the ships that were
+to lay the cable, as fogs and gales were then out of season, and no
+icebergs to be met with. On the 8th of August, the _Agamemnon_ (English)
+and _Niagara_ (American), with four smaller steamers to attend them, and
+each with half of the mighty cable in her hold, got up their steam and
+left Valentia Harbour. One end of the cable was carried by a number of
+boats from the _Niagara_ on shore, where the Lord-Lieutenant was in
+waiting to receive it, and place it in contact with the batteries, which
+were arranged in a little tent upon the beach. A slight accident to the
+cable for a little while delayed the departure of the ships; but by the
+10th they had got 200 miles out to sea, and so far the cable had been
+laid successfully. Messages passed and repassed between the ships and
+the shore. The next day the engineer discovering that too much cable was
+being paid out, telegraphed to the people on board to put a greater grip
+on it; the operation was clumsily managed, and the cable snapped,
+sinking to a depth of 12,000 feet.
+
+Not disheartened, however, the Company replaced the lost portion of the
+cable; the Government again furnished ships and men, and the cable was
+actually laid at the bottom of the Atlantic from Valentia Bay to Trinity
+Harbour.
+
+Addresses of congratulation passed between the Queen and the President
+of the States, and numerous messages were transmitted. But gradually the
+signals grew fainter and more faint, till they ceased altogether. The
+cable was stricken dumb. A little to the north of the fiftieth parallel
+of latitude, at the bottom of the Atlantic, where the plateau is
+unbroken by any great depression, some 1500 miles of the disabled cable
+were lying, on a soft bed of mud, which was constantly thickening, at a
+depth of from 10,000 to 15,000 feet.
+
+The importance of telegraphic communication between England and the
+United States was, however, so obvious that its projectors were not to
+be daunted by the failure they had sustained. Nor was it altogether a
+failure. They had proved that a cable _could_ be laid, and messages
+flashed through it. What was wanted was evidently a stronger cable,
+which should be less liable to injury, and more perfect in its
+insulation of the telegraphic wires.
+
+From 1858 to 1864, the Company were engaged in the difficult task of
+raising fresh funds, and in endeavouring to secure grants from the
+British and American Governments. Their men of science, meanwhile, were
+devising improvements in the form of cable, and contriving fresh
+apparatus to facilitate its submersion. Eventually the Telegraph
+Construction and Maintenance Company, an union of the Gutta Percha
+Company with the celebrated firm of Glass and Elliott, constructed an
+entirely new cable, which was not only costlier, but thicker and
+stronger than the preceding one. The conductor, three hundred pounds per
+mile, and one-seventh of an inch thick, consisted of seven No. 18 copper
+wires, each one-twentieth of an inch in thickness. The core or heart of
+the cable, says a writer in "Chambers's Encyclopaedia," was formed of
+four layers of gutta percha alternating with four of Chatterton's
+compound (a solution of gutta percha in Stockholm tar); the wire and
+conductor being seven hundred pounds per mile, and nine-twentieths of an
+inch thick. Outside this was a coating of hemp or jute yarn, saturated
+with a preservative composition; while the sheath consisted of ten iron
+wires, each previously covered with five tarred Manilla yarns. The whole
+cable was an inch and one eighth thick, weighed thirty-five and
+three-quarter hundredweights per mile, and was strong enough to endure a
+breaking strain of seven tons and three-quarters. During the various
+processes of manufacture, the electrical quality of the cable was tested
+to an unusual extent. The portions of finished core were tested by
+immersion in water at various temperatures; next submitted to a pressure
+of six hundred pounds to the square inch, to imitate the ocean pressure
+at so great depth; then the conducting power of the copper wire was
+tested by a galvanometer; and various experiments were also made on the
+insulating property of the gutta percha. The various pieces having been
+thus severely put to the proof, they were spliced end to end, and the
+joints or splicings tested. In a word, nothing was left undone that
+could insure the success or guarantee the stability of the new cable.
+
+When completed, the cable measured two thousand three hundred miles, and
+weighed upwards of four thousand tons. It was felt that such a burden
+could only be intrusted to Brunel's "big ship," the _Great Eastern_. For
+this purpose three huge iron tanks were built, in the fore, middle, and
+aft holds of the vessel, each from fifty to sixty feet in diameter, and
+each twenty and a half feet in depth; and in these the cable was
+deposited in three vast coils.
+
+On the 23rd of July 1865, the _Great Eastern_ left Valentia, the
+submarine cable being joined end to end to a more massive shore cable,
+which was hauled up the cliff at Foilhummerum Bay, to a telegraph-house
+at the top. The electric condition of the cable was continually tested
+during the ship's voyage across the Atlantic; and more than once its
+efficiency was disturbed by fragments of wire piercing the gutta percha
+and destroying the insulation. At length on August 2nd, the cable
+snapped by overstraining, and the end sank to the bottom in two thousand
+fathoms water, at a distance of one thousand and sixty-four miles from
+the Irish coast. Attempts were made to recover it by dredging. A
+five-armed grapnel, suspended to the end of a stout iron-wire rope five
+miles long, was flung overboard; and when it reached the bottom, the
+_Great Eastern_ steamed to and fro in the direction where the lost cable
+was supposed to be lying; but failure followed upon failure, and the
+cable was never once hooked. There remained nothing to be done but for
+the _Great Eastern_ to return to England with the news of her
+non-success, and leaving (including the failure of 1857-8) nearly four
+thousand tons of electric cable at the bottom of the ocean.
+
+The promoters of ocean telegraphy, however, were determined to be
+resolute to the end. A new Company was formed, new capital was raised,
+and a third cable manufactured, differing in some respects from the
+former. The outside jacket was made of hemp instead of jute; the iron
+wires of the sheath were galvanized, and the Manilla hemp which covered
+them was not tarred. Chiefly through the absence of the tar, the weight
+of the cable was diminished five hundred pounds per mile; while its
+strength or breaking strain was increased. A sufficient quantity of this
+improved cable was made to cross the Atlantic, with all due allowance
+for slack; and also a sufficient quantity of the 1865 cable to remedy
+the disaster of that year.
+
+On July 13th, 1866, the _Great Eastern_ once more set forth on her
+interesting voyage, accompanied by the steamers _Terrible_, _Medway_,
+and _Albany_, to assist in the submersion of the cable, and to act as
+auxiliaries whenever needed. The line of route chosen lay about midway
+between those of the 1858 and 1865 cables, but at no great distance from
+either. The _Great Eastern_ exchanged telegrams almost continuously with
+Valentia as she steamed towards the American continent; and great were
+the congratulations when she safely arrived in the harbour of Heart's
+Content, Newfoundland, on the 27th.
+
+Operations were next commenced to recover the end of the 1865 cable, and
+complete its submergence. The _Albany_, _Medway_, and _Terrible_ were
+despatched on the 1st of August, to the point where, "deep down beneath
+the darkling waves," the cable was supposed to be lying, and on the 9th
+or 10th they were joined by the _Great Eastern_, when grappling was
+commenced, and carried on through the remainder of the month. The cable
+was repeatedly caught, and raised to a greater or less height from the
+ocean bed; but something or other snapped or slipped every time, and
+down went the cable again. At last, after much trial of patience, the
+end of the cable was safely fished up on September 1st; and electric
+messages were at once sent through to Valentia, just as well as if the
+cable had not had twelve months' soaking in the Atlantic. An additional
+length having been spliced to it, the laying recommenced; and on the 8th
+the squadron entered Heart's Content, having thus succeeded in laying a
+second line of cable from Ireland to America.
+
+The two cables, the old and the new, continued to work very smoothly
+during the winter of 1866 and 1867; but in May 1867, the new cable was
+damaged by an iceberg, which drifted across it at a distance of about
+three miles from the Newfoundland shore. The injury was soon repaired;
+but again, in July 1867, the same cable broke at about fifty miles from
+Newfoundland.
+
+The earlier cable continued to work for several years, but both cables
+gave way towards the close of the autumn of 1870. No special
+inconvenience was felt, however, as two years ago a French line of
+cable was laid down between Europe and America; the _Great Eastern_
+being again employed, and the operations being conducted under the
+superintendence of English electricians. The two British cables will
+probably be repaired in the spring of the present year (1871).
+
+Submarine cables have multiplied recently, and almost every ocean flows
+over the mysterious wires which flash intelligence beneath the rolling
+waters from point to point of the civilized world. By a telegraph-cable,
+which is partly submarine, the India Office in Westminster is united
+with the Governor-General and his Council at Calcutta. There is also
+communication between Singapore and Australia, and the network of ocean
+telegraphy is being so rapidly extended that, before long, the British
+Government in the metropolis will be enabled to convey its instructions
+in a few hours to the administrative authorities in every British
+colony. And thus the words which the poet puts into the mouth of "Puck"
+will be nearly realized in a sense the poet never dreamed of--"I'll put
+a girdle round about the world in forty minutes."
+
+
+
+
+The Silk Manufacture.
+
+
+  I.--JOHN LOMBE.
+ II.--WILLIAM LEE.
+III.--JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD.
+
+
+
+
+The Silk Manufacture.
+
+
+
+
+I.--JOHN LOMBE.
+
+
+In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, a couple of Persian monks, on a
+religious mission to China, brought away with them a quantity of
+silkworms' eggs concealed in a piece of hollow cane, which they carried
+to Constantinople. There they hatched the eggs, reared the worms, and
+spun the silk,--for the first time introducing that manufacture into
+Europe, and destroying the close monopoly which China had hitherto
+enjoyed. From Constantinople the knowledge and the practice of the art
+gradually extended to Greece, thence to Italy, and next to Spain. Each
+country, as in turn it gained possession of the secret, strove to
+preserve it with jealous care; but to little purpose. A secret that so
+many thousands already shared in common, could not long remain so,
+although its passage to other countries might be for a time deferred.
+France and England were behind most of the other states of Europe in
+obtaining a knowledge of the "craft and mystery." The manufacture of
+silk did not take root in France till the reign of Francis I.; and was
+hardly known in England till the persecutions of the Duke of Parma in
+1585 drove a great number of the manufacturers of Antwerp to seek
+refuge in our land. James I. was very anxious to promote the breed of
+silkworms, and the production of silken fabrics. During his reign a
+great many mulberry-trees were planted in various parts of the
+country--among others, that celebrated one in Shakspeare's garden
+at Stratford-on-Avon--and an attempt was made to rear the worm
+in our country, which, however, the ungenial climate frustrated.
+Silk-throwsters, dyers, and weavers were brought over from the
+Continent; and the manufacture made such progress that, by 1629, the
+silk-throwsters of London were incorporated, and thirty years after
+employed no fewer than 40,000 hands. The emigration from France
+consequent on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) added not
+only to the numbers engaged in the trade, but to the taste, skill, and
+enterprise with which it was conducted. It is not easy to estimate how
+deeply France wounded herself by the iniquitous persecution of the
+Protestants, or how largely the emigrants repaid by their industry the
+shelter which Britain afforded them.
+
+Although the manufacture had now become fairly naturalized in England,
+it was restricted by our ignorance of the first process to which the
+silk was subjected. Up till 1718, the whole of the silk used in England,
+for whatever purpose, was imported "thrown," that is, formed into
+threads of various kinds and twists. A young Englishman named John
+Lombe, impressed with the idea that our dependence on other countries
+for a supply of thrown silk prevented us from reaping the full benefit
+of the manufacture, and from competing with foreign traders, conceived
+the project of visiting Italy, and discovering the secret of the
+operation. He accordingly went over to Piedmont in 1715, but found the
+difficulties greater than he had anticipated. He applied for admittance
+at several factories, but was told that an examination of the machinery
+was strictly prohibited. Not to be balked, he resolved, as a last
+resort, to try if he could accomplish by stratagem what he had failed to
+do openly. Disguising himself in the dress of a common labourer, he
+bribed a couple of the workmen connected with one of the factories, and
+with their connivance obtained access in secret to the works. His visits
+were few and short; but he made the best use of his time. He carefully
+examined the various parts of the machinery, ascertained the principle
+of its operation, and made himself completely master of the whole
+process of throwing. Each night before he went to bed he noted down
+everything he had seen, and drew sketches of parts of the machinery.
+This plot, however, was discovered by the Italians. He and his
+accomplices had to fly for their lives, and not without great difficulty
+escaped to a ship which conveyed them to England.
+
+Lombe had not forgotten to carry off with him his note-book, sketches,
+and a chest full of machinery, and on his return home lost no time in
+practising the art of "throwing" silk. On a swampy island in the river
+Derwent, at Derby, he built a magnificent mill, yet standing, called the
+"Old Silk Mill." Its erection occupied four years, and cost L30,000. It
+was five storeys in height, and an eighth of a mile in length. The grand
+machine numbered no fewer than 13,384 wheels. It was said that it could
+produce 318,504,960 yards of organzine silk thread daily; but the
+estimate is no doubt exaggerated.
+
+While the mill was building, Lombe, in order to save time and earn money
+to carry on the works, opened a manufactory in the Town Hall of Derby.
+His machinery more than fulfilled his expectations, and enabled him to
+sell thrown silk at much lower prices than were charged by the Italians.
+A thriving trade was thus established, and England relieved from all
+dependence on other countries for "thrown" silk.
+
+The Italians conceived a bitter hatred against Lombe for having broken
+in upon their monopoly and diminished their trade. In revenge,
+therefore, according to William Hutton, the historian of Derby, they
+"determined _his_ destruction, and hoped that of his works would
+follow." An Italian woman was despatched to corrupt her two countrymen
+who assisted Lombe in the management of the works. She obtained
+employment in the factory, and gained over one of the Italians to her
+iniquitous design. They prepared a slow poison, and administered it in
+small doses to Lombe, who, after lingering three or four years in agony,
+died at the early age of twenty-nine. The Italian fled; the woman was
+seized and subjected to a close examination, but no definite proof could
+be elicited that Lombe had been poisoned. Lombe was buried in great
+state, as a mark of respect on the part of his townsmen. "He was," says
+Hutton, "a man of quiet deportment, who had brought a beneficial
+manufactory into the place, employed the poor, and at advanced
+wages,--and thus could not fail to meet with respect; and his melancholy
+end excited much sympathy."
+
+
+
+
+II.--WILLIAM LEE.
+
+
+In the Stocking Weavers' Hall, in Redcross Street, London, there used to
+hang a picture, representing a man in collegiate costume in the act of
+pointing to an iron stocking-frame, and addressing a woman busily
+knitting with needles by hand. Underneath the picture appeared the
+following inscription: "In the year 1589, the ingenious William Lee,
+A.M., of St. John's College, Cambridge, devised this profitable art for
+stockings (but, being despised, went to France), yet of iron to himself,
+but to us and to others of gold; in memory of whom this is here
+painted." As to who this William Lee was, and the way in which he came
+to invent the stocking-frame, there are conflicting stories, but the
+one most generally received and best authenticated is as follows:--
+
+William Lee, a native of Woodborough, near Nottingham, was a fellow of
+one of the Cambridge Colleges. He fell in love with a young country
+lass, married her, and consequently forfeited his fellowship. A poor
+scholar, with much learning, but without money or the knowledge of any
+trade, he found himself in very embarrassed circumstances. Like many
+another "poor scholar," he might exclaim:--
+
+    "All the arts I have skill in,
+            Divine and humane;
+    Yet all's not worth a shilling;
+    Alas! poor scholar, whither wilt thou go?"
+
+His wife, however, was a very industrious woman, and by her knitting
+contributed to their joint support. It is said--but the story lacks
+authentic confirmation--that when Lee was courting her, she always
+appeared so much more occupied with her knitting than with the soft
+speeches he was whispering in her ear, that her lover thought of
+inventing a machine that would "facilitate and forward the operation of
+knitting," and so leave the object of his love more leisure to converse
+with him. "Love, indeed," says Beckmann, "is fertile in invention, and
+gave rise, it is said, to the art of painting; but a machine so complex
+in its parts, and so wonderful in its effects, would seem to require
+longer and greater reflection, more judgment, and more time and patience
+than could be expected of a lover." But afterwards, when Lee, in his
+painfully enforced idleness, sat many a long hour watching his wife's
+nimble fingers toiling to support him, his mind again recurred to the
+idea of a machine that would give rest to her weary fingers. His
+cogitations resulted in the contrivance of a stocking-frame, which
+imitated the movements of the fingers in knitting.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM LEE, THE INVENTOR OF THE STOCKING-FRAME. Page
+226.]
+
+Although the invention of this loom gave a great impulse to the
+manufacture of silk stockings in England, and placed our productions in
+advance of those of other countries, Lee reaped but little profit from
+it. He met with neglect both from Queen Elizabeth and James I.; and, not
+succeeding as a manufacturer on his own account, went to France, where
+he did very well until after the assassination of Henri IV., when he
+shared the persecutions of the Protestants, and died in great distress
+in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+III.--JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD.
+
+
+Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name,
+and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our
+time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both
+of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for
+education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed
+to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his
+favourite occupation was the construction of little models of houses,
+towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much
+taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited
+his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of
+improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set
+up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman,
+he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to
+sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the
+dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to
+sell the house his father had left him,--the last remnant of his little
+heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving,
+type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not
+a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service
+with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a
+little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours
+by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The
+idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to
+dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the
+stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was
+sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the
+people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for his
+life on the reduction of the city, and with his son--a lad of
+sixteen--joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the
+field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to
+Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard
+of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare
+subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared
+her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its
+scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself
+with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had,
+before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National
+Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze
+medal and a ten years' patent.
+
+During the peace of Amiens, Jacquard happened to take up a newspaper in
+a _cabaret_ which he frequented, and his eye fell on a translated
+extract from an English journal, stating that a prize was offered by a
+society in London for the construction of a machine for weaving nets. As
+a mere amusement he turned his thoughts to the subject, contrived a
+number of models, and at last solved the problem. He made a machine and
+wove a little net with it. One day he met a friend who had read the
+paragraph from the English paper. Jacquard drew the net from his pocket
+saying, "Oh! I've got over the difficulty! see, there is a net I've
+made." After that he took no more thought about the matter, and had
+quite forgotten it, when he was startled by a summons to appear at the
+Prefectal Palace. The prefect received him very kindly, and expressed
+his astonishment that his mechanical genius should so long have remained
+in obscurity. Jacquard could not imagine how the prefect had discovered
+his mechanical experiments, and began vaguely to dread that he had got
+into some shocking scrape. He stammered out a sort of apology. The
+prefect was surprised he should deny his own talent, and said he had
+been informed that he had invented a machine for weaving nets. Jacquard
+owned that he had.
+
+"Well, then, you're the right man, after all," said the prefect. "I have
+orders from the emperor to send the machine to Paris."
+
+"Yes, but you must give me time to make it," replied Jacquard.
+
+In a week or two Jacquard again presented himself at the palace with his
+machine and a half manufactured net. The prefect was eager to see how it
+worked.
+
+"Count the number of loops in that net," said Jacquard, "and then strike
+the bar with your foot."
+
+The prefect did so, and was surprised and delighted to see another loop
+added to the number.
+
+"Capital!" cried he. "I have his majesty's orders, M. Jacquard, to send
+you and your machine to Paris."
+
+"To Paris! How can that be? How can I leave my business here?"
+
+"There is no help for it; and not only must you go to Paris, but you
+must start at once, without an hour's delay."
+
+"If it must be, it must. I will go home and pack up a little bundle, and
+tell my wife about my journey, I shall be ready to start to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow won't do; you must go to-day. A carriage is waiting to take
+you to Paris; and you must not go home. I will send to your house for
+any things you want, and convey any message to your wife. I will provide
+you with money for the journey."
+
+There was no help for it, so Jacquard got into the carriage, along with
+a gendarme who was to take charge of him, and wondered, all the way to
+Paris, what it all meant. On reaching the capital he was taken before
+Napoleon, who received him in a very condescending manner. Carnot, who
+was also present, could not at first comprehend the machine, and turning
+to the inventor, exclaimed roughly, "What, do you pretend to do what is
+beyond the power of man? Can you tie a knot in a stretched string?"
+Jacquard, not at all disconcerted, explained the construction of his
+machine so simply and clearly, as to convince the incredulous minister
+that it accomplished what he had hitherto deemed an impossibility.
+
+Jacquard was now employed in the Conservatory of Arts and Manufactures
+to repair and keep in order the models and machines. At this time a
+magnificent shawl was being woven in one of the government works for the
+Empress Josephine. Very costly and complicated machinery was employed,
+and nearly L1000 had already been spent on it. It appeared to Jacquard
+that the shawl might be manufactured in a much simpler and less
+expensive manner. He thought that the principle of a machine of
+Vaucousin's might be applied to the operation, but found it too complex
+and slow. He brooded over the subject, made a great many experiments,
+and at last succeeded in contriving an improved apparatus.
+
+He returned to Lyons to superintend the introduction of his machine for
+figure-weaving and the manufacture of nets. The former invention was
+purchased for the use of the people, and was brought into use very
+slowly. The weavers of Lyons denounced Jacquard as the enemy of the
+people, who was striving to destroy their trade, and starve themselves
+and families, and used every effort to prevent the introduction of his
+machine. They wilfully spoiled their work in order to bring the new
+process into discredit. The machine was ordered to be destroyed in one
+of the public squares. It was broken to pieces,--the iron-work was sold
+for old metal, and the wood-work for faggots. Jacquard himself had on
+one occasion to be rescued from the hands of a mob who were going to
+throw him into the Rhone.
+
+Before Jacquard's death in 1835, his apparatus had not only made its way
+into every manufactory in France, but was used in England, Switzerland,
+Germany, Italy, and America. Even the Chinese condescended to avail
+themselves of this invention of a "barbarian."
+
+Jacquard's apparatus is, strictly speaking, not a loom, but an appendage
+to one. It is intended to elevate or depress, by bars, the warp threads
+for the reception of the shuttle, the patterns being regulated by means
+of bands of punched cards acting on needles with loops and eyes. At
+first applied to silk weaving only, the use of this machine has since
+been extended to the bobbin net, carpets, and other fancy manufactures.
+By its agency the richest and most complex designs, which could formerly
+be achieved only by the most skilful labourers, with a painful degree of
+labour, and at an exorbitant cost, are now produced with facility by the
+most ordinary workmen, and at the most moderate price.
+
+Of late years the silk manufacture has greatly improved, both in
+character and extent. The products of British looms exhibited at the
+Great Exhibition of 1862 vied with those of the Continent. Every year
+upwards of L2,300,000 worth of silk is brought to England; and the silk
+manufacture engages some L55,000,000 of capital, and employs eleven to
+twelve hundred thousand of our population.
+
+
+
+
+The Potter's Art.
+
+
+  I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.
+ II.--BERNARD PALISSY.
+III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.
+
+
+
+
+The Potter's Art.
+
+
+
+
+I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.
+
+
+There can be little doubt as to the antiquity of the pottery
+manufacture. It probably had its origin in that of bricks, which at a
+very early date men made for purposes of construction; but it is not
+impossible that he had previously contrived to fabricate the commoner
+articles of domestic economy, such as pans and dishes, of sun-dried
+clay.
+
+Bricks, as everybody knows, are fashioned out of a coarse clay, such as
+we meet with in very numerous localities. After mixing up with water a
+kind of paste out of these clayey earths, the moulder works up the paste
+into the shape of bricks, and they are then exposed to the heat of the
+kiln. Sometimes it was thought sufficient to dry these bricks in the
+rays of a burning sun; but, so dried, their solidity is very
+inconsiderable. Baked bricks owe their redness of colour to the oxide of
+iron which they contain. They are either moulded with the hand or cast
+in rectangular frames of wood, dusted with sand. To bake them, they are
+piled up in huge stacks, in which intervals are left for storing and
+kindling the fuel. They are also baked in kilns.
+
+The commoner pottery wares are manufactured with the coarse impure
+clays, which are allowed to rot in trenches for several years to render
+them more plastic. Flower-pots, sugar-pans, vases, and other and more
+graceful articles, are moulded on the potter's wheel.
+
+Now, this potter's wheel is one of the most ancient instruments of human
+industry, one of the earliest inventions by which man utilized and
+economized his labour. It consists of a large disc of wood, to which a
+rotatory motion is given by the workman's foot. A second and smaller
+disc, on which is placed the paste for working, is fixed upon the upper
+extremity of the vertical axis to which the larger and inferior disc is
+attached. Seated on his bench, the workman places in the centre of the
+disc a certain quantity of soft moist clay, and turning the wheel with
+his foot, moulds the said paste with both hands, until it assumes the
+desired shape. You can imagine no prettier spectacle than that of a
+skilful potter causing the clay, under his nimble fingers, to assume the
+most varied forms. It seems as if by miracle the vase was created
+suddenly, and the rude clay sprang into a life and beauty of its own.
+
+The Campanian potteries, improperly but commonly called the Etruscan,
+and the ancient Greek wares, belong to the class of soft and lustrous
+potteries which are no longer manufactured. The Etruscan vases are the
+most remarkable specimens of the ancient potter's art; pure, simple, and
+elegant in form, they cannot be surpassed by any efforts of the modern
+potter. The paste of which they are made is very fine and homogeneous,
+coated with a peculiar glassy lustre, which is thin but tenacious, red
+or black, and formed of silica rendered fusible by an alkali. They were
+baked at a low temperature. In this ware, which was in vogue between 500
+and 320 B.C., the Aretine and Roman pottery originated. The former was
+manufactured at Arezzo or Arretium.
+
+The knowledge of glazes, which was acquired by the Egyptians and
+Assyrians, seems to have been handed down to the Persians, Moors, and
+Arabs. Fayences, and enamelled bricks and plaques, were commonly used
+among them in the twelfth century, and among the Hindus in the
+fourteenth. The celebrated glazed tiles, or _azulejos_, which contribute
+so much to the beauty of the Alhambra, were introduced into Spain by the
+Moors about 711 A.D. In Italy, it is supposed, they were made known as
+early as the conquest of Majorca by the Pisans, in 1115 A.D. But
+Brongniart places their introduction three centuries later, or in 1415,
+and says this peculiar kind of ware was called _Majolica_, from Majorica
+or Majorca. This, however, seems to have been the Italian enamelled
+fayence, which was used for subjects in relief by the celebrated
+Florentine sculptor, Luca della Robbia.
+
+Robbia had been bred to the trade of a goldsmith--in those days a trade
+of great distinction and opulence--but his artistic tastes could not be
+controlled, and he abandoned it to become a sculptor. A man of a
+singularly enthusiastic and ardent nature, he applied himself arduously
+to his new work. He worked all day with his chisel, and sat up, even
+through the night, to study. "Often," says Vasari, "when his feet were
+frozen with cold in the night time, he kept them in a basket of shavings
+to warm them, that he might not be compelled to discontinue his
+drawings." Such devotion could hardly fail to secure success. Luca was
+recognised as one of the first sculptors of the day, and executed a
+number of great works in bronze and marble. On the conclusion of some
+important commissions, he was struck with the disproportion between the
+payment he received and the time and labour he had expended; and,
+abandoning marble and bronze, resolved to work in clay. Before he could
+do that, however, it was necessary to discover some means of rendering
+durable the works which he executed in that material. Applying himself
+to the task with characteristic zeal and perseverance, he at length
+succeeded in discovering a mode of protecting such productions from the
+injuries of time, by means of a glaze or enamel, which conferred not
+only an almost eternal durability, but additional beauty on his works in
+terra cotta. At first this enamel was of a pure white, but he afterwards
+added the further invention of colouring it. The fame of these
+productions spread over Europe, and Luca found abundant and profitable
+employment during the rest of his days, the work being carried on, after
+his death, by brothers and descendants.
+
+
+
+
+II.--BERNARD PALISSY.
+
+
+The next great master in the art was Bernard Palissy,--a man
+distinguished not only for his artistic genius, but for his
+philosophical attainments, his noble, manly character, and zealous
+piety. Born of poor parents about the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, Bernard Palissy was taken as apprentice by a land-surveyor, who
+had been much struck with the boy's quickness and ingenuity.
+Land-surveying, of course, involved some knowledge of drawing; and thus
+a taste for painting was developed. From drawing lines and diagrams he
+went on to copy from the great masters. As this new talent became known
+he obtained employment in painting designs on glass. He received
+commissions in various parts of the country, and in his travels employed
+his mind in the study of natural objects. He examined the character of
+the soils and minerals upon his route, and the better to grapple with
+the subject, devoted his attention to chemistry. At length he settled
+and married at Staines, and for a time lived thriftily as a painter.
+
+One day he was shown an elegant cup of Italian manufacture, beautifully
+enamelled. The art of enamelling was then entirely unknown in France,
+and Palissy was at once seized with the idea, that if he could but
+discover the secret it would enable him to place his wife and family in
+greater comfort. "So, therefore," he writes, "regardless of the fact
+that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for these enamels as a
+man gropes in the dark. I reflected that God had gifted me with some
+knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him
+to give me wisdom and skill."
+
+[Illustration: PALISSY THE POTTER. Page 242.]
+
+He lost no time in commencing his experiments. He bought a quantity of
+earthen pots, broke them into fragments, and covering them with various
+chemical compounds, baked them in a little furnace of his own
+construction, in the hope of discovering the white enamel, which he had
+been told was the key to all the rest. Again and again he varied the
+ingredients of the compositions, the proportions in which they were
+mixed, the quality of the clay on which they were spread, the heat of
+the furnace to which they were subjected; but the white enamel was still
+as great a mystery as ever. Instead of discouraging, each new defeat
+seemed to confirm his hope of ultimate success and to increase his
+perseverance. Painting and surveying he no longer practised, except when
+sheer necessity compelled him to resort to them to provide bread for his
+family. The discovery of the enamel had become the great mission of his
+life, and to that all other occupations must be sacrificed. "Thus
+having blundered several times at great expense and through much
+trouble, with sorrows and sighs, I was every day pounding and grinding
+new materials and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money, and
+consumed my wood and my time." Two years had passed now in fruitless
+effort. Food was becoming scarce in the little household, his wife worn
+and shrewish, the children thin and sickly. But then came the thought to
+cheer him,--when the enamel was found his fortune would be made, there
+would then be an end to all his privations, anxieties, and domestic
+unhappiness, Lisette would live at ease, and his children lack no
+comfort. No, the work must not be given up yet. His own furnace was
+clumsy and imperfect,--perhaps his compositions would turn out better in
+a regular kiln. So more pots were bought and broken into fragments,
+which, covered with chemical preparations, were fired at a pottery in
+the neighbourhood. Batch after batch was prepared and despatched to the
+kiln, but all proved disheartening failures. Still with "great cost,
+loss of time, confusion, and sorrow," he persevered, the wife growing
+more shrewish, the children more pinched and haggard. By good luck at
+this time came the royal commissioners to establish the gabelle or tax
+in the district of Saintonge, and Palissy was employed to survey the
+salt marshes. It was a very profitable job, and Palissy's affairs began
+to look more flourishing. But the work was no sooner concluded, than
+the "will o' the wisp," as his wife and neighbours held it, was dancing
+again before his eyes, and he was back, with redoubled energy, to his
+favourite occupation, "diving into the secret of enamels."
+
+Two years of unremitting, anxious toil, of grinding and mixing, of
+innumerable visits to the kiln, sanguine of success, with ever new
+preparations; of invariable journeys home again, sad and weary, for the
+moment utterly discouraged; of domestic bickerings; of mockery and
+censure among neighbours, and still the enamel was a mystery,--still
+Palissy, seemingly as far from the end as ever, was eager to prosecute
+the search. He appeared to have an inward conviction that he would
+succeed; but meanwhile the remonstrances of his wife, the pale, thin
+faces of his bairns, warned him he must desist, and resume the
+employments that at least brought food and clothing. There should be one
+more trial on a grand scale,--if that failed, then there should be an
+end of his experiments. "God willed," he says, "that when I had begun to
+lose my courage, and was gone for the last time to a glass-furnace,
+having a man with me carrying more than three hundred pieces, there was
+one among those pieces which was melted within four hours after it had
+been placed in the furnace, which trial turned out white and polished,
+in a way that caused me such joy as made me think I was become a new
+creature." He rushed home, burst into his wife's chamber, shouting, "I
+have found it!"
+
+From that moment he was more enthusiastic than ever in his search. He
+had discovered the white enamel. The next thing to be done was to apply
+it. He must now work at home and in secret. He set about moulding
+vessels of clay after designs of his own, and baked them in a furnace
+which he had built in imitation of the one at the pottery. The grinding
+and compounding of the ingredients of the enamel cost him the labour,
+day and night, of another month. Then all was ready for the final
+process.
+
+The vessels, coated with the precious mixture, are ranged in the
+furnace, the fire is lit and blazes fiercely. To stint the supply of
+fuel would be to cheat himself of a fortune for the sake of a few pence,
+so he does not spare wood. All that day he diligently feeds the fire,
+nor lets it slacken through the night. The excitement will not let him
+sleep even if he would. The prize he has striven for through these weary
+years, for which he has borne mockery and privation, is now all but
+within his grasp; in another hour or two he will have possessed it.
+
+The grey dawn comes, but still the enamel melts not. His boy brings him
+a portion of the scanty family meal. There shall soon be an end to that
+miserable fare! More faggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and
+the sun rises on the third day of his tending and watching at the
+furnace door, but still the powder shows no signs of melting. Pale,
+haggard, sick at heart with anxiety and dread, worn with watching,
+parched and fevered with the heat of the fire, through another, and yet
+another and another day and night, through six days and six nights in
+all, Bernard Palissy watches by the glaring furnace, feeds it
+continually with wood, and still the enamel is unmelted. "Seeing it was
+not possible to make the said enamel melt, I was like a man in
+desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled to
+myself that in my mixture there might be some fault. Therefore I began
+once more to pound and grind more materials, all the time without
+letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound,
+grind, and maintain the fire. I was also forced to go again and purchase
+pots in order to prove the said compound, seeing that I had lost all the
+vessels which I had made myself. And having covered the new pieces with
+the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, keeping the fire still at
+its height."
+
+By this time it was no easy matter to "keep the fire at its height." His
+stock of fuel was exhausted; he had no money to buy any more, and yet
+fuel must be had. On the very eve of success--alas! an eve that so
+seldom has a dawn--it would never do to lose it all for want of wood,
+not while wood of any kind was procurable. He rushed into the garden,
+tore up the palings, the trellis work that supported the vines, gathered
+every scrap of wood he could find, and cast them on the fire. But soon
+again the deep red glow of the furnace began to fade, and still it had
+not done its work. Suddenly a crashing noise was heard; his wife, the
+children clinging to her gown, rushed in. Palissy had seized the chairs
+and table, had torn the door from its hinges, wrenched the window frames
+from their sockets, and broken them in pieces to serve as fuel for the
+all-devouring fire. Now he was busy breaking up the very flooring of the
+house. And all in vain! The composition would not melt.
+
+"I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted
+and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further to console me, I was
+the object of mockery; even those from whom solace was due, ran, crying
+through the town that I was burning my floors. In this way my credit was
+taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman," if not, as he tells us
+elsewhere, as one seeking ill-gotten gains, and sold to the evil one for
+filthy lucre.
+
+He made another effort, engaged a potter to assist him, giving the
+clothes off his own back to pay him, and afterwards receiving aid from a
+friendly neighbour, and this time proved that his mixture was of the
+right kind. But the furnace having been built with mortar which was full
+of flints, burst with the heat, and the splinters adhered to the
+pottery. Sooner than allow such imperfect specimens of his art to go
+forth to the world, Palissy destroyed them, "although some would have
+bought them at a mean price."
+
+Better days, however, were at hand for himself and family. His next
+efforts were successful. An introduction to the Duke of Montmorency
+procured him the patronage of that nobleman, as well as of the king. He
+now found profitable employment for himself and food for his family.
+"During the space of fifteen or sixteen years in all," he said
+afterwards, "I have blundered on at my business. When I had learned to
+guard against one danger, there came another on which I had not
+reckoned. All this caused me such labour and heaviness of spirit, that
+before I could render my enamels fusible at the same degrees of heat, I
+verily thought I should be at the door of my sepulchre.... But I have
+found nothing better than to observe the counsel of God, his edicts,
+statutes, and ordinances; and in regard to his will, I have seen that he
+has commanded his followers to eat bread by the labour of their bodies,
+and to multiply their talents which he has committed to them."
+
+When the Reformation came, Palissy was an earnest reformer, on Sunday
+mornings assembling a number of simple, unlearned men for religious
+worship, and exhorting them to good works. Court favour exempted him
+from edicts against Protestants, but could not shield him from popular
+prejudice. His workshops at Saintes were destroyed; and to save his
+life and preserve the art he had invented, the king called him to Paris
+as a servant of his own. Thus he escaped the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew. Besides being a skilful potter, Palissy was a naturalist of
+no little eminence. "I have had no other book than heaven and earth,
+which are open to all," he used to say; but he read the wondrous volume
+well, while others knew it chiefly at second-hand, and hence his
+superiority to most of the naturalists of the day. He was in the habit
+of lecturing to the learned men of the capital on natural history and
+chemistry. When more than eighty years of age he was accused of heresy,
+and shut up in the Bastille. The king, visiting him in prison, said, "My
+good man, if you do not renounce your views upon religious matters, I
+shall be constrained to leave you in the hands of my enemies." "Sire,"
+replied Palissy, "those who constrain you, a king, can never have power
+over me, because I know how to die." Palissy died in prison, aged and
+exhausted, in 1590, at the age of eighty.
+
+Before his death his wares had become famous, and were greatly prized.
+The enamel, which he went through so much toil and suffering to
+discover, was the foundation of a flourishing national manufacture.
+
+
+
+
+III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.
+
+
+Josiah Wedgwood, whose name in connection with pottery-ware has become a
+household word amongst us, was the younger son of a potter at Burslem,
+in Staffordshire, who had also a little patch of ground which he farmed.
+When Josiah was only eleven years old, his father died, and he was thus
+left dependent upon his elder brother, who employed him as a "thrower"
+at his own wheel. An attack of smallpox, in its most malignant form,
+soon after endangered his life, and he survived only by the sacrifice of
+his left leg, in which the dregs of the disease had settled, and which
+had to be cut off. Weak and disabled, he was now thrown upon the world
+to seek his own fortune. At first it was very uphill work with him, and
+he found it no easy matter to provide even the most frugal fare. He was
+gifted, however, with a very fine taste in devising patterns for
+articles of earthenware, and found ready custom for plates,
+knife-handles, and jugs of fanciful shape. He worked away industriously
+himself, and was able by degrees to employ assistance and enlarge his
+establishment. The pottery manufactures of this country were then in a
+very primitive condition. Only the coarsest sort of articles were made,
+and any attempt to give elegance to the designs was very rare indeed.
+All the more ornamental and finer class of goods came from the
+Continent. Wedgwood saw no reason why we should not emulate foreigners
+in the beauty of the forms into which the clay was thrown, and made a
+point of sending out of his own shop articles of as elegant a shape as
+possible. This feature in his productions was not overlooked by
+customers, and he found a growing demand for them. The coarseness of the
+material was, however, a great drawback to the extension of the trade in
+native pottery; and it seemed almost like throwing good designs away to
+apply them to such rude wares. Wedgwood saw clearly that if earthenware
+was ever to become a profitable English manufacture, something must be
+done to improve the quality of the clay. He brooded over the subject,
+tested all the different sorts of earth in the district, and at length
+discovered one, containing silica, which, black in colour before it went
+into the oven, came out of it a pure and beautiful white. This fact
+ascertained, he was not long in turning it to practical account, by
+mixing flint powder with the red earth of the potteries, and thus
+obtaining a material which became white when exposed to the heat of a
+furnace. The next step was to cover this material with a transparent
+glaze; and he could then turn out earthenware as pure in quality as that
+from the Continent. This was the foundation not only of his own fortune,
+but of a manufacture which has since provided profitable employment for
+thousands of his countrymen, besides placing within the reach of even
+the humblest of them good serviceable earthenware for household use.
+
+The success of his white stoneware was such, that he was able to quit
+the little thatched house he had formerly occupied, and open shop in
+larger and more imposing premises. He increased the number of his hands,
+and drove an extensive and growing trade. He was not content to halt
+after the discovery of the white stoneware. On the contrary, the success
+he had already attained only impelled him to further efforts to improve
+the trade he had taken up, and which now became quite a passion with
+him. When he devoted himself to any particular effort in connection with
+it, his first thought was always how to turn out the very best article
+that could be made--his last thought was whether it would pay him or
+not. He stuck up for the honour of old England, and maintained that
+whatever enterprise could be achieved, that English skill and enterprise
+was competent to do. Although he had never had any education himself
+worth speaking of, his natural shrewdness and keen faculty of
+observation supplied his deficiencies in that respect; and when he
+applied himself, as he now did, to the study of chemistry, with a view
+to the improvement of the pottery art, he made rapid and substantial
+progress, and passed muster creditably even in the company of men of
+science and learning. He contributed many valuable communications to the
+Royal Society, and invented a thermometer for measuring the higher
+degrees of heat employed in the various arts of pottery.
+
+Again his premises proved too confined for his expanding trade, and he
+removed to a larger establishment, and there perfected that
+cream-coloured ware with which Queen Charlotte was so delighted, that
+she ordered a whole service of it, and commanding that it should be
+called after her--the Queen's Ware, and that its inventor should receive
+the title of the "Royal Potter."
+
+A royal potter Wedgwood truly was; the very king of earthenware
+manufactures, resolute in his determination to attain the highest degree
+of perfection in his productions, indefatigable in his labours, and
+unstinting in his outlay to secure that end. He invented altogether
+seven or eight different kinds of ware; and succeeded in combining the
+greatest delicacy and purity of material, and utmost elegance of design,
+with strength, durability, and cheapness. The effect of the improvements
+he successively introduced into the manufacture of earthenware is thus
+described by a foreign writer about this period: "Its excellent
+workmanship, its solidity, the advantage which it possesses of
+sustaining the action of fire, its fine glaze, impenetrable to acids,
+the beauty and convenience of its form, and the cheapness of its price,
+have given rise to a commerce so active and so universal, that in
+travelling from Paris to Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the furthest port
+of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to the extremity of the south of France,
+one is served at every inn with Wedgwood ware. Spain, Portugal, and
+Italy are supplied with it, and vessels are loaded with it for the East
+Indies, the West Indies, and the continent of America." Wedgwood
+himself, when examined before a committee of the House of Commons in
+1785, some thirty years after he had begun his operations, stated that
+from providing only casual employment to a small number of inefficient
+and badly remunerated workmen, the manufacture had increased to an
+extent that gave direct employment to about twenty thousand persons,
+without taking into account the increased numbers who earned a
+livelihood by digging coals for the use of the potteries, by carrying
+the productions from one quarter to another, and in many other ways.
+
+Wedgwood did not confine himself to the manufacture of useful articles,
+though such, of course, formed the bulk of his trade, but published
+beautiful imitations of Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan vases, copies of
+cameos, medallions, tablets, and so on. Valuable sets of old porcelain
+were frequently intrusted to him for imitation, in which he succeeded so
+well that it was difficult to tell the original from the counterfeit,
+except sometimes from the superior excellence and beauty of the latter.
+When the celebrated Barberini Vase was for sale, Wedgwood, bent upon
+making copies of it, made heavy bids against the Duchess of Portland
+for it; and was only induced to desist by the promise, that he should
+have the loan of it in order that he might copy it. Accordingly, the
+duchess had the vase knocked down to her at eighteen hundred guineas,
+and Wedgwood made fifty copies of it, which he sold at fifty guineas
+each, and was thus considerably out of pocket by the transaction. He did
+it, however, not for the sake of profit, but to show what an English
+pottery could accomplish.
+
+Besides copying from antique objects, Wedgwood tried to rival them in
+the taste and elegance of original productions. He found out Flaxman
+when he was an unknown student, and employed him, upon very liberal
+terms, to design for him; and thus the articles of earthenware which he
+manufactured proved of the greatest value in the art education of the
+people. We owe not a little of the improved taste and popular
+appreciation and enjoyment of the fine arts in our own day to the
+generous enterprise of Josiah Wedgwood, and his talented designs.
+
+In order to secure every access from the potteries to the eastern and
+western coasts of the island, Wedgwood proposed, and, with the aid of
+others whom he induced to join him, carried out the Grand Trunk Canal
+between the Trent and the Mersey. He himself constructed a turnpike road
+ten miles in length through the potteries, and built a village for his
+work-people, which he called Etruria, and where he established his
+works. He died there in 1795, at the age of sixty-five, leaving a large
+fortune and an honoured name, which he had acquired by his own industry,
+enterprise, and generosity.
+
+A remarkable memorial to the genius and artistic labours of Wedgwood was
+erected in 1863, and some reference to it should undoubtedly be made in
+these pages.
+
+It is a twofold memorial: a bronze statue at Stoke-upon-Trent, and a
+memorial institute, erected close to the birth-place of the Great Potter
+at Burslem. The foundation-stone was laid on the 26th of October by the
+Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in
+the presence of a very large and enthusiastic assemblage. The Chancellor
+delivered a public address, which in eloquent terms did homage to
+Wedgwood's great mental qualities and his services to his country.
+
+He described as his most signal and characteristic merit, the firmness
+and fulness of his perception of the true law of what we term industrial
+art, or, in other words, of the application of the higher art to
+industry--the law which teaches us to aim first at giving to every
+object the greatest possible degree of fitness and convenience for its
+purpose, and next at making it the article of the highest degree of
+beauty, which compatibly with that fitness and convenience it will
+bear--which does not substitute the secondary for the primary end, but
+recognizes as part of the business the study to harmonize the two.
+
+Mr. Gladstone observed, that to have a strong grasp of this principle,
+and to work it out to its results in the details of a vast and varied
+manufacture, was a praise high enough for any man, at any time and in
+any place. But he thought it was higher and more peculiar in the case of
+Wedgwood than it could be in almost any other case. For that truth of
+art which he saw so clearly, and which lies at the root of excellence,
+is one of which England, his country, has not usually had a perception
+at all corresponding in strength and fulness with her other rare
+endowments. She has long taken a lead among the European nations for the
+cheapness of her manufactures, not so for their beauty. And if the day
+should arrive when she shall be as eminent for purity of taste as she is
+now for economy of production, the result will probably be due to no
+other single man in so remarkable a degree as to Josiah Wedgwood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We conclude with a lively extract from the Chancellor's exhaustive and
+interesting address:--
+
+"Wedgwood," he says, "in his pursuit of beauty, did not overlook
+exchangeable value or practical usefulness. The first he could not
+overlook, for he had to live by his trade; and it was by the profit
+derived from the extended sale of his humbler productions that he was
+enabled to bear the risks and charges of his higher works. Commerce did
+for him what the King of France did for Sevres, and the Duke of
+Cumberland for Chelsea, it found him in funds. And I would venture to
+say that the lower works of Wedgwood are every whit as much
+distinguished by the fineness and accuracy of their adaptation to their
+uses as his higher ones by their successful exhibition of the finest
+arts. Take, for instance, his common plates, of the value of, I know not
+how few, but certainly of a very few pence each. They fit one another as
+closely as cards in a pack. At least, I for one have never seen plates
+that fit like the plates of Wedgwood, and become one solid mass. Such
+accuracy of form must, I apprehend, render them much more safe in
+carriage....
+
+"Again, take such a jug as he would manufacture for the wash-stand table
+of a garret. I have seen these made apparently of the commonest material
+used in the trade. But instead of being built up, like the usual and
+much more fashionable jugs of modern manufacture, in such a shape that a
+crane could not easily get his neck to bend into them, and the water can
+hardly be poured out without risk of spraining the wrist, they are
+constructed in a simple capacious form, of flowing curves, broad at the
+top, and so well poised that a slight and easy movement of the hand
+discharges the water. A round cheese-holder or dish, again, generally
+presents in its upper part a flat space surrounded by a curved rim; but
+the cheese-holder of Wedgwood will make itself known by this--that the
+flat is so dead a flat, and the curve so marked and bold a curve; thus
+at once furnishing the eye with a line agreeable and well-defined, and
+affording the utmost available space for the cheese. I feel persuaded
+that a Wiltshire cheese, if it could speak, would declare itself more
+comfortable in a dish of Wedgwood's than in any other dish."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The worthiest successor to Wedgwood whom England has known was the late
+Herbert Minton, who was scarcely less distinguished than his predecessor
+for perseverance, patient effort, and artistic sentiment. We owe to him
+in a great measure the revival of the elegant art of manufacturing
+encaustic tiles.
+
+The principal varieties of ceramic ware now in use are:--1. Porcelain,
+which is composed, in England, of sand, calcined bones, china-clay,
+and potash; and, at Dresden, of kaolin, felspar, and broken
+biscuit-porcelain; 2. Parian, which is used in a liquid state, and
+poured into plaster-of-paris moulds; 3. Earthenware, the _Fayence_ of
+the Italians, and the _Delft_ of the Dutch, made of various kinds of
+clay, with a mixture of powdered calcined flint; and, 4. Stoneware,
+composed of several kinds of plastic clay, mixed with felspar and sand,
+and occasionally a little lime.
+
+It is estimated that our English potteries not only supply the demand
+of the United Kingdom, but export ware to the value of nearly a million
+and a half annually. The establishments are about 190 in number; employ
+75,000 to 80,000 operatives; and export 90,000,000 pieces.
+
+
+
+
+The Miner's Safety Lamp.
+
+
+    SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
+
+
+
+
+The Miner's Safety Lamp.
+
+
+
+
+SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
+
+
+"What's that? Is the house coming down?" cried Mr. Borlase, the
+surgeon-apothecary of Penzance, jumping out of his cozy arm-chair, as a
+tremendous explosion shook the house from top to bottom, making a great
+jingle among the gallipots in the shop below, and rousing him from a
+comfortable nap.
+
+"Please, sir," said Betty, the housemaid, putting her head into the
+room, "here's that boy Davy been a-blowing of hisself up agen. Drat him,
+he's always up to some trick or other! He'll be the death of all of us
+some day, that boy will, as sure as my name's Betty."
+
+"Bring him here directly," replied her master, knitting his brow, and
+screwing his mild countenance into an elaborate imitation of that of a
+judge he once saw at the assizes, with the black cap on, sentencing some
+poor wretch to be hanged. "Really, this sort of thing won't do at all."
+
+Only, it must be owned, Mr. Borlase had said that many times before, and
+put on the terrible judicial look too, and yet "that boy Davy" was at
+his tricks again as much as ever.
+
+"I'll bring as much as I can find of him, sir," said Betty, gathering up
+her apron, as if she fully expected to discover the object of her search
+in a fragmentary condition.
+
+Presently there was heard a shuffling in the passage, and a somewhat
+ungainly youth, about sixteen years of age, was thrust into the room,
+with the due complement of legs, arms, and other members, and only
+somewhat the grimier about the face for the explosion. His fingers were
+all yellow with acids, and his clothes plentifully variegated with
+stains from the same compounds. At first sight he looked rather a dull,
+loutish boy, but his sharp, clear eyes somewhat redeemed his expression
+on a second glance.
+
+"Here he is, sir," cried Betty triumphantly, as though she really had
+found him in pieces, and took credit for having put him cleverly
+together again.
+
+"Well, Humphrey," said Mr. Borlase, "what have you been up to now?
+You'll never rest, I'm afraid, till you have the house on fire."
+
+"Oh! if you please, sir, I was only experimenting in the garret, and
+there's no harm done."
+
+"No harm done!" echoed Betty; "and if there isn't it's no fault of
+yours, you nasty monkey. I declare that blow up gave me such a turn you
+could ha' knocked me down with a feather, and there's a smell all over
+the house enough to pison any one."
+
+"That'll do, Betty," said her master, finding the grim judicial
+countenance rather difficult to keep up, and anxious to pronounce
+sentence before it quite wore off. "I'll tell you what it is, young
+Davy, this sort of thing won't do at all. I must speak to Mr. Tonkine
+about you; and if I catch you at it again, you'll have to take yourself
+and your experiments somewhere else. So I warn you. You had much better
+attend to your work. It was only the other day you gave old Goody Jones
+a paperful of cayenne instead of cinnamon; and there's Joe Grimsly, the
+beadle, been here half a dozen times this day for those pills I told you
+to make up, and they're not ready yet. So just you take yourself off,
+mind your business, and don't let me have any more nonsense, or it'll be
+the worse for you."
+
+And so the culprit gladly backed out of the room, not a whit abashed by
+the reprimand, for it was no novelty, to begin his experiments again and
+again, and one day, by way of compensation for keeping his master's
+household in constant terror of being blown up, to make his name
+familiar as a household word, by the invention of a little instrument
+that would save thousands and thousands from the fearful consequences of
+coal-pit explosions.
+
+The Mr. Tonkine that his master referred to was the self-constituted
+protector of the Davy family. Old Davy had been a carver in the town,
+and dying, left his widow in very distressed circumstances, when this
+generous friend came forward and took upon himself the charge of the
+widow and her children. Young Humphrey, on leaving school, had been
+placed with Mr. Borlase to be brought up as an apothecary; but he was
+much fonder of rambling about the country, or experimenting in the
+garret which he had constituted his laboratory, than compounding drugs
+behind his master's counter. As a boy he was not particularly smart,
+although he was distinguished for the facility with which he gleaned the
+substance of any book that happened to take his fancy, and for an early
+predilection for poetry. As he grew up, the ardent, inquisitive turn of
+his mind displayed itself more strongly. He was very fond of spending
+what leisure time he had in strolling along the rocky coast searching
+for sea-drift and minerals, or reading some favourite book.
+
+    "There along the beach he wandered, nourishing a youth sublime,
+    With the fairy-tales of science, and the long result of time."
+
+In after life he used often to tell how when tired he would sit down on
+the crags and exercise his fancy in anticipations of future renown, for
+already the ambition of distinguishing himself in his favourite science
+had seized him. "I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth," he wrote
+in his memorandum-book, "to recommend me; yet if I live, I trust I shall
+not be of less service to mankind and my friends than if I had been born
+with all these advantages." He read a great deal, and though without
+much method, managed, in a wonderfully short time, to master the
+rudiments of natural philosophy and chemistry, to say nothing of
+considerable acquaintance with botany, anatomy, and geometry; so that
+though the pestle and mortar might have a quieter time of it than suited
+his master's notions, Humphrey was busy enough in other ways.
+
+[Illustration: HUMPHREY'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE DIFFUSION OF HEAT. Page
+267.]
+
+In his walk along the beach, the nature of the air contained in the
+bladders of sea-weed was a constant subject of speculation with him; and
+he used to sigh over the limited laboratory at his command, which
+prevented him from thoroughly investigating the matter. But one day, as
+good luck would have it, the waves threw up a case of surgical
+instruments from some wrecked vessel, somewhat rusty and sand clogged,
+but in Davy's ingenious hands capable of being turned to good account.
+Out of an old syringe, which was contained in the case, he managed to
+construct a very tolerable air pump; and with an old shade lamp, and a
+couple of small metal tubes, he set himself to work to discover the
+causes of the diffusion of heat. At first sight the want of proper
+instruments for carrying on his researches might appear rather a
+hindrance to his progress in the paths of scientific discovery; but, in
+truth, his subsequent success as an experimentalist has been very
+properly attributed, in no small degree, to that necessity which is the
+parent of invention, and which forced him to exercise his skill and
+ingenuity in making the most of the scanty materials at his command.
+"Had he," says one of his biographers, "in the commencement of his
+career been furnished with all those appliances which he enjoyed at a
+later period, it is more than probable that he might never have acquired
+that wonderful tact of manipulation, that ability of suggesting
+expedients, and of contriving apparatus, so as to meet and surmount the
+difficulties which must constantly arise during the progress of the
+philosopher through the unbeaten track and unexplored regions of
+science!"
+
+While Davy was thus busily engaged qualifying himself for the
+distinguished career that awaited him, Gregory Watt, the son of the
+celebrated James Watt, being in delicate health, came to Penzance for
+change of air, and lodged with Mrs. Davy. At first he and Humphrey did
+not get on very well together, for the latter had just been reading some
+metaphysical works, and was very fond of indulging in crude and flippant
+speculations on such subjects, which rather displeased the shy invalid.
+But one day some chance remark of Davy's gave token of his extensive
+knowledge of natural history and chemistry, and thenceforth a close
+intimacy sprang up between them, greatly to the lad's advantage, for
+Watt's scientific knowledge set him in a more systematic groove of
+study, and encouraged him to concentrate his energies on his favourite
+pursuit.
+
+Another useful friend Davy also found in Mr. Gilbert, afterwards
+President of the Royal Society. Passing along one day, Mr. Gilbert
+observed a youth making strange contortions of face as he hung over the
+hutch gate of Borlase's house; and being told by a companion that he was
+"the son of Davy the carver," and very fond of making chemical
+experiments, he had a talk with the lad, and discovering his talents,
+was ever afterwards his staunch friend and patron.
+
+Through his two friends, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Watt, Davy formed the
+acquaintance of Dr. Beddoes, who was just setting up at Bristol, under
+the title of Pneumatic Institution, an establishment for investigating
+the medical properties of different gases; and who, appreciating his
+abilities, gave him the superintendence of the new institution.
+
+Although only twenty years of age at this time, Davy was well abreast of
+the science of the day, and soon applied his vigorous and searching
+intellect to several successful investigations. His first scientific
+discovery was the detection of siliceous earth in the outer coating of
+reeds and grasses. A child was rubbing two pieces of bonnet cane
+together, and he noticed that a faint light was emitted; and on striking
+them sharply together, vivid sparks were produced just as if they had
+been flint and steel. The fact that when the outer skin was peeled off
+this property was destroyed, showed that it was confined to the skin,
+and on subjecting it to analysis silex was obtained, and still more in
+reeds and grasses.
+
+As superintendent of Dr. Beddoe's institution, his attention was, of
+course, chiefly directed to the subject of gases, and with the
+enthusiasm of youth, he applied himself ardently to the investigation of
+their elements and effects, attempting several very dangerous
+experiments in breathing gases, and more than once nearly sacrificing
+his life. In the course of these experiments he found out the peculiar
+properties of nitrous oxide, or, as it has since been popularly called,
+"laughing gas," which impels any one who inhales it to go through some
+characteristic action,--a droll fellow to laugh, a dismal one to weep
+and sigh, a pugnacious man to fight and wrestle, or a musical one to
+sing.
+
+At twenty-two years of age, such was the reputation he had acquired,
+that he got the appointment of lecturer at the Royal Institution, which
+was just then established, and found himself in a little while not only
+a man of mark in the scientific, but a "lion" in the fashionable world.
+Natural philosophy and chemistry had begun to attract a good deal of
+attention at that time; and Davy's enthusiasm, his clear and vivid
+explanations of the mysteries of science, and the poetry and imagination
+with which he invested the dry bones of scientific facts, caught the
+popular taste exactly. His lecture-room became a fashionable lounge, and
+was crowded with all sorts of distinguished people. The young lecturer
+became quite the rage, and was petted and feted as the lion of the day.
+It was only six years back that he was the druggist's boy in a little
+country town, alarming and annoying the household with his indefatigable
+experiments. He could hardly have imagined, as one of his day-dreams at
+the sea-side, that his fame would be acquired so quickly.
+
+In spite of all the flatteries and attentions which were showered upon
+him, Davy stuck manfully to his profession; and if his reputation was
+somewhat artificial and exaggerated at the commencement, he amply earned
+and consolidated it by his valuable contributions to science during the
+rest of his career.
+
+The name of Humphrey Davy will always be best known from its association
+with the ingenious safety lamp which he invented, and which well
+entitles him to rank as one of the benefactors of mankind. It was in the
+year 1815 that Davy first turned his attention to this subject. Of
+frequent occurrence from the very first commencement of coal-mining, the
+number of accidents from fire-damp had been sadly multiplied by the
+increase of mining operations consequent on the introduction of the
+steam engine. The dreadful character of some of the explosions which
+occurred about this time, the appalling number of lives lost, and the
+wide-spread desolation in some of the colliery districts which they had
+occasioned, weighed heavily on the minds of all connected with such
+matters. Not merely were the feelings of humanity wounded by the
+terrible and constant danger to which the intrepid miners were exposed,
+but it began to be gravely questioned whether the high rate of wage
+which the collier required to pay him not only for his labour, but for
+the risk he ran, would admit of the mines being profitably worked. It
+was felt that some strenuous effort must be made to preserve the miners
+from their awful foe. Davy was then in the plenitude of his reputation,
+and a committee of coal-owners besought him to investigate the subject,
+and if possible provide some preventative against explosions. Davy at
+once went to the north of England, visited a number of the principal
+pits, obtained specimens of fire-damp, analyzed them carefully, and
+having discovered the peculiarities of this element of destruction,
+after numerous experiments devised the safety-lamp as its antagonist.
+
+The principles upon which this contrivance rests, are the modification
+of the explosive tendencies of fire-damp (the inflammable gas in mines)
+when mixed with carbonic acid and nitrogen; and the obstacle presented
+to the passage of an explosion, if it should occur, through a hole less
+than the seventh of an inch in diameter; and accordingly, while the
+small oil lamp in burning itself mixes the surrounding gas with carbonic
+acid and nitrogen, the cylinder of wire-gauze which surrounds it
+prevents the escape of any explosion. It is curious that George
+Stephenson, the celebrated engineer, about the same time, hit on much
+the same expedient.
+
+To control a "power that in its tremendous effects seems to emulate the
+lightning and the earthquake," and to enclose it in a net of the most
+slender texture, was indeed a grand achievement; and when we consider
+the many thousand lives which it has been the means of saving from a
+sudden and cruel death, it must be acknowledged to be one of the noblest
+triumphs, not only of science, but of humanity, which the world has ever
+seen. Honours were showered upon Davy, from the miners and coal-owners,
+from scientific associations, from crowned heads; but all must agree
+with Playfair in thinking that "it is little that the highest praise,
+and that even the voice of national gratitude when most strongly
+expressed, can add to the happiness of one who is conscious of having
+done such a service to his fellow-men." Davy himself said he "valued it
+more than anything he ever did." When urged by his friends to take out a
+patent for the invention, he replied,--"No, I never thought of such a
+thing. My sole object was to serve the cause of humanity, and if I have
+succeeded, I am amply rewarded by the gratifying reflection of having
+done so."
+
+The honours of knighthood and baronetage were successively conferred on
+Davy as a reward for his scientific labours; and the esteem of his
+professional brethren was shown in his election to the President-ship
+of the Royal Institution, in which, oddly enough, he was succeeded by
+his old friend Mr. Gilbert, who had first taken him by the hand, and
+whom he had got ahead of in the race of life.
+
+Davy died at Geneva before he had completed his fifty-first year, no
+doubt from over-exertion and the unhealthy character of the researches
+he prosecuted so recklessly. Assiduous as he was in his devotion to his
+favourite science, he found time also to master several continental
+languages; to keep himself well acquainted with, and also to contribute
+to the literature of the day; and to indulge his passion for
+fly-fishing, at which he was a keen and practised adept.
+
+Eminent as were the talents of Sir Humphrey Davy, and valuable as his
+discovery of the safety-lamp has proved, it is but fair to own that his
+credit to the latter has been very openly denied. Two persons of
+scientific celebrity have been put forward as the real inventors of the
+safety-lamp--namely, Dr. Reid Clanny of Newcastle, and the great
+railway-engineer, George Stephenson. Of Clanny's safety-lamp a
+description appeared in the _Philosophical Transactions_ in 1813--that
+is, ten years before Sir Humphrey made his communication to the Royal
+Society. However, it was a complicated affair, which required the whole
+attention of a boy to work it, and was based on the principle of forcing
+in air through water by the agency of bellows.
+
+Stephenson's was a very different apparatus. In its general principle it
+resembled Davy's, the chief difference being, that he inserted a glass
+cylinder inside the wire-gauze cylinder, and inside the top of the glass
+cylinder a perforated metallic chimney--the supply of air being kept up
+through a triple circle of small holes in the bottom.
+
+Stephenson's claim has, of course, been disputed by the friends and
+admirers of Sir Humphrey Davy; but Mr. Smile has conclusively proved
+that his lamp, the "Geordy," was in use at the Killingworth collieries
+at the very time that Davy was conducting the experiments which led to
+his invention. It is not to be inferred, however, that Davy knew aught
+of what Stephenson had accomplished. It seems to be one of those rare
+cases in which two minds, working independently, and unknown each to the
+other, have both arrived simultaneously at the same result.
+
+
+
+
+Penny Postage.
+
+
+    SIR ROWLAND HILL.
+
+
+
+
+Penny Postage.
+
+    "He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
+    News from all nations lumb'ring at his back,--
+    Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks;
+    Births, deaths, and marriages; epistles wet
+    With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks
+    Fast as the periods of his fluent quill;
+    Or charged with am'rous sighs of absent swains,
+    Or nymphs responsive."
+
+                                                                 COWPER.
+
+
+The growth of the postal system is a sure measure of the progress of
+industry, commerce, education, and all that goes to make up the sum of
+civilization; and there is no more striking illustration to be found of
+the strides which our country has made in that direction since the
+century began than the introduction of a cheap and rapid delivery of
+letters, and the craving which it has at once satisfied and augmented.
+Nothing gives us so forcible an idea of the difference between the
+Britain of the present day and the Britain of the Stuart or even of the
+Georgian period, than the contrast between the postal communication of
+these times and of our own. The itch of writing is now so strong in us,
+we are so constantly writing or receiving letters, our appetite for them
+is so ravenous, that we wonder how people got on in the days when the
+postman was the exclusive messenger of the king, and when even majesty
+was so badly served that, as one old postmaster[D] wrote in
+self-exculpation of some delay, "when placards are sent (to order the
+immediate forwarding of some state despatches) the constables many times
+be fayne to take the horses oute of plowes and cartes, wherein," he
+gravely adds, "can be no extreme diligence." It was a sure sign that the
+country was going ahead when Cromwell (1656) found it worth while to
+establish posts for the people at large, and was able to farm out the
+post office for L10,000 a year. The profits of that establishment were
+doubled by the time the Stuarts returned to the throne, and more than
+doubled again before the close of the seventeenth century. The country
+has kept on growing out of system after system, like a lad out of his
+clothes, and at different times has had new ones made to its measure.
+Brian Tuke's easy plan of borrowing farmers' horses on which to mount
+his emissaries, gave place to regular relays of post-boys and
+post-horses; and, in course of time, when the robbery of the mails by
+sturdy highwaymen had become almost the rule, and their safe conveyance
+the exception, post-boys were in turn supplanted by a system of
+stage-coaches, convoyed by an armed guard. This was thought a great
+advance; and so it was. A pushing, zealous man named Palmer originated
+the scheme. Amidst many other avocations, he found time to travel on the
+outside of stage-coaches, for the sake of talking with the coachmen and
+observing the routes, here, there, and everywhere all over England, and
+thus matured all the details of his plan from personal experience. "None
+but an enthusiast," said Sheridan in a rapture of admiration in the
+House of Commons, "could have conceived, none but an enthusiast could
+have practically entertained, none but an enthusiast could have carried
+out such a system."
+
+Still, in spite of the exactitude with which Palmer's scheme was
+declared to fit the wants of the country, it soon began to be grown out
+of like the rest. It became too short, too tight, too straitened every
+way, and impeded the circulation of correspondence,--no unimportant
+artery of our national system. The cost of postage was too high, the
+mode of delivery too slow, and the consequence was, that people either
+repressed their desire to write letters, or sent them through some
+cheaper and illegitimate channel. Sir Walter Scott knew a man who
+recollected the mail from London reaching Edinburgh with only a single
+letter. Of all the tens of thousands of the modern Babylon, only one
+solitary individual had got anything to say to anybody in the metropolis
+of the sister kingdom worth paying postage for. "We look back now,"
+writes Miss Martineau, "with a sort of amazed compassion to the old
+crusading times, when warrior-husbands and their wives, grey-headed
+parents and their brave sons, parted with the knowledge that it must be
+months or years before they could hear of one another's existence. We
+wonder how they bore the depth of silence! And we feel the same now
+about the families of Polar voyagers. But, till a dozen years ago, it
+did not occur to many of us how like this was the fate of the largest
+class in our own country. The fact is, there was no full and free
+epistolary intercourse in the country, except between those who had the
+command of franks. There were few families in the wide middle class who
+did not feel the cost of postage a heavy item in their expenditure; and
+if the young people sent letters home only once a fortnight, the amount
+at the year's end was a rather serious matter. But it was the vast
+multitudes of the lower orders who suffered like the crusading families
+of old, and the geographical discoverers of all times. When once their
+families parted off from home it was a separation almost like that of
+death. The hundreds of thousands of apprentices, of shopmen, of
+governesses, of domestic servants, were cut off from family relations as
+if seas or deserts lay between them and home. If the shilling for each
+letter could be saved by the economy of weeks or months at first, the
+rarity of correspondence went on to increase the rarity; new interests
+hastened the dying out of old ones; and the ancient domestic affections
+were but too apt to wither away, till the wish for intercourse was gone.
+The young girl could not ease her heart by pouring out her cares and
+difficulties to her mother before she slept, as she can now, when
+the penny and the sheet of paper are the only condition of the
+correspondence. The young lad felt that a letter home was a serious
+and formal matter, when it must cost his parents more than any
+indulgence they ever thought of for themselves; and the old fun and
+light-heartedness were dropped off from such domestic intercourse as
+there was. The effect upon the morals of this kind of restraint is
+proved beyond a doubt by the evidence afforded in the army. It was a
+well-known fact, that in regiments where the commanding officer was kind
+and courteous about franking letters for the privates, and encouraged
+them to write as often as they pleased, the soldiers were more sober and
+manly, more virtuous and domestic in their affections, than where
+difficulty was made by the indolence or stiffness of the franking
+officer."
+
+Under the costly postal system, the revenue of the post office did not,
+as it had hitherto done, and should have continued to do, keep pace with
+the progress of the country. The appetite for communication between
+distant friends or men of business was evidently either decaying, or
+finding vent in an unlawful way. The latter was chiefly the case. There
+were vast numbers of people separated from each other by long weary
+miles, too many to permit of visits, who could not resist writing to
+each other,--the doating parent to the child, the lover to his
+mistress, the merchant to his agents, the lawyer to his clients. Those
+who could not afford postage, were the very class who could not get
+franks; for the principle was, that those who could best afford postage
+money should have plenty of franks, which were, of course, quite out of
+the way of poor, humble folks,--the fat sow had his ear well greased,
+the lean, starving one had to consume his own fat, like the bear, or go
+without. The consequence was, that those who were eager to write and
+could not get letters through the post, found other means of forwarding
+them to the evasion of the law. There was no limit to the exercise of
+ingenuity in this direction. Three or four letters were written on one
+piece of paper, to be cut up and distributed separately by one of the
+recipients; newspapers were turned into letters by underscoring or
+pricking with a pin the letters required to form the various words of
+the communication; some peculiarity in the style of address on the
+outside was arranged between correspondents, the sight of which was
+enough to indicate a message, and the letter was then rejected, having
+served its purpose; and so on, in a hundred other ways, fraudulent means
+were found of evading the law. Some carriers had a large and profitable
+business in smuggling letters. In many populous districts the number of
+letters conveyed by carriers at a penny each in an illegal way far
+exceeded those sent through the post. In Manchester, for every letter
+that went by the postman, six went by the carrier; and in Glasgow the
+proportion was as one to ten. All this was notorious. The most
+honourable people saw no great harm in cheating the post to send a word
+of comfort or encouragement to an absent friend,--it was a vice that
+leaned to virtue's side. But it was a bad thing for the country that
+people should be driven to such devices, in obeying a natural and proper
+impulse. The man who began by smuggling letters, might end by smuggling
+tobacco or brandy; and the system was morally pernicious. All felt the
+evil, but remedy seemed impossible. As the urgency for a change grew to
+a head, the man came to effect it,--a man "of open heart, who could
+enter into family impulses; a man of philosophical ingenuity, who could
+devise a remedial scheme; a man of business, who could fortify such a
+scheme with impregnable accuracy"--that man was Rowland Hill.
+
+When quite a young man, on a pedestrian excursion through the lake
+district, Rowland Hill, passing a cottage door, observed the postman
+deliver a letter to a woman, and overheard her, after looking anxiously
+at the envelope, and then returning it, say she had no money to pay the
+postage. The man was about to put it back in his wallet and pass on, for
+it was an every-day thing for him to receive such a reply from the poor
+countryfolk, when Mr. Hill in his goodness of heart, out of compassion
+for the woman, stepped forward and paid the shilling, regardless of
+many shakes of the head, and hints of remonstrance from her, which he
+interpreted as merely unwillingness to trespass on a stranger's bounty.
+As soon as the postman was out of sight she broke the seal, and showed
+him why she did not want him to pay for the letter. The sheet was a
+blank, and the envelope had served as a means of communication between
+her and her correspondent. It appeared that she had arranged with her
+brother, that as long as all went well with him he should send a blank
+sheet in that way once a quarter, and thus she had tidings of him
+without paying the postage.
+
+As he pursued his walk, Mr. Hill could not help meditating on the
+incident, which had made a deep impression on his mind. He could not
+blame the poor woman and her brother for the trick they had played upon
+the post office in order to correspond with each other; and yet he felt
+there must be something wrong in a system which put it out of their
+reach, and of others similarly circumstanced, to do so in a lawful
+manner. Every country post-master had a budget of touching stories of
+poor folk who were tantalized with the sight of a letter from some dear
+one, full, perhaps, of kind words and cheering news, or asking sympathy
+and condolence in misfortune, or transmitting money to help them in
+their straits; as well as of countless little frauds of the sort
+described, which they could not always harden themselves to circumvent
+and punish, so piteously eager did the poor souls appear to be to get
+word of their friends. And yet, in spite of all sorts of frauds, to
+people in humble life letters came like "angels' visits, few and far
+between."
+
+Mr. Hill asked himself whether there was no means of lessening the cost
+of postage, whether the government could not afford to charge a lower
+rate, or manage to get the work done more cheaply? Keeping his ears and
+eyes open, always on the alert to pick up a fact as regarded the
+present, or a hint for the future, examining the mode of carriage and
+delivery, the routes chosen, and the time occupied, Mr. Hill, after a
+while, arrived at the conviction, that the postage rates might not only
+be reduced, but that the transmission of letters might be more quickly
+performed by a remodelling of the system. He ascertained that the cost
+of mere transit incurred upon a letter sent from London to Edinburgh, a
+distance of 400 miles, was not more than a thirty-sixth part of a penny,
+and that, therefore, there was a margin, under the existing charge, of
+11-35/36d. for extra expenses and profit. He observed that the twopenny
+posts of London and other large towns were found to answer very well,
+although people, being within easy distances of each other, did not need
+so much as in the country to correspond in writing, and that the
+carriers, in spite of the illegality of the traffic, had loads of
+letters to deliver at a penny each, and that penny paid them for their
+trouble, as well as their risk of detection. He therefore came to the
+conclusion, that what was wanted, and what it was quite possible to
+establish, was a uniform penny postage rate over the whole of the United
+Kingdom. He calculated that if that were adopted, the number of people
+then in the habit of writing letters would write a great many more than
+ever; that others, who had been precluded by the expense from
+corresponding, would come into the field; and that hundreds of letters
+forwarded illegally would now pass through the post, so that the number
+of letters sent by post would be increased fourfold, and the revenue, at
+first, perhaps a trifle curtailed, would soon mount up again.
+
+The post-office authorities were greatly shocked and disgusted at so
+audacious and utopian a proposal. But the public were greatly delighted
+with it, only doubting whether it was not too good news to be true.
+First by means of an anonymous pamphlet, then by direct and personal
+application to the government, Mr. Hill endeavoured to get his plans
+taken into consideration--no easy matter, for circumlocution officials
+had passed from contemptuous indifference to active hostility, as they
+gradually discovered how formidable an antagonist in the truth and
+accuracy of his calculations, the sincerity and earnestness of his
+purpose, they had to deal with. It was a great national cause Mr. Hill
+was fighting, and he was not to be put down. The people took his side,
+Parliament granted an inquiry, and the result was a report in favour of
+his scheme. On the 17th of August 1839--why is not the anniversary kept
+with rejoicings?--penny postage became the law of the land.
+
+During the last weeks of the year a uniform fourpenny rate was charged
+by way of accustoming people to the cheap system, and saving official
+feelings from the rude shock of a sudden descent from the respectable
+rate of a shilling, to the vulgar one of a penny. On the 10th January
+1840 the penny system came into force. At first Mr. Hill availed himself
+of a suggestion thrown out some years before by Mr. Charles Knight, that
+the best way of collecting the penny postage on newspapers would be to
+have stamped covers; but subsequently stamped envelopes were done away
+with, and queen's heads introduced. The franking privilege, of course,
+died with the dear postage.
+
+Upon the adoption of the scheme, Mr. Hill received an appointment in the
+post office in order to superintend its working; but he had an uneasy
+berth of it. His plan was adopted only in part,--the postage rate was
+lowered, while the other compensating and essential features were thrown
+aside; official jealousy of reform showed itself in various attempts to
+thwart his efforts, and to fulfil its prediction of failure to the
+scheme. The consequence was, that the immediate results were not so
+satisfactory as could have been wished. The increase in the number of
+letters was certainly very great. During the last month of the old
+system the total number of letters passing through the post office was
+little more than two millions and a half, of which only a fifth were
+paid letters; while a twelvemonth after the introduction of the new
+system the total number of letters had risen to nearly six millions per
+month, of which the unpaid letters formed less than a twelfth part. Very
+heavy expenses, however, not connected with the new plan, had been
+incurred; and the consequence was, that the profits of the post office
+were only a fourth of what they had been. Advantage was taken of this to
+get Mr. Hill ousted from his post; but, after he had transferred his
+services for some years to the management of the London and Brighton
+Railway, the authorities were glad to receive him back again, to place
+the remodelling of the system in his hands, and to allow him to
+introduce the other parts of his scheme which had before been neglected.
+In this work Mr. Hill was busily engaged for a number of years, and most
+of his plans were gradually carried out with great advantage to the
+public. In 1846 a public testimonial of L13,360 was presented to Mr.
+Hill in acknowledgment of his distinguished services to the country; and
+at a later date he was made a Knight of the Bath.
+
+Cheap postage has now been fairly tried, and must be pronounced a grand
+success. It has become part and parcel of our national life, and has
+been found precious as the gift of a new faculty. We should miss the
+loss of cheap and rapid correspondence with our friends and
+acquaintances almost as much as the loss of speech or the loss of sight.
+The postman has now to find his way to the humblest, poorest districts,
+where twenty years back his knock was never heard; and what was once a
+rare luxury, has now come to be considered a common necessary of life.
+Instead of only seventy-six millions of letters passing through the post
+in a year, as in 1838, the number has risen to between seven and eight
+hundred millions. On the average every individual in England receives
+twenty-eight letters a-year (in London the individual average is
+forty-six), in Scotland eighteen, and in Ireland nine.
+
+The gross revenue derived from these sources is over four millions; and
+some of the railway companies each make more money out of the conveyance
+of the mails in a year, than the annual revenue of the whole kingdom in
+the days of William and Mary.
+
+The moral and social effects of the cheap postage are incalculable. It
+has tended to strengthen and perpetuate domestic ties, to bring the most
+scattered and distant members of a family under the benign influences of
+home, and to foster feelings of friendship and sympathy between man and
+man. Upon the education and intelligence of the people, too, it has
+had, concurrently with other causes, a marked effect. Many who looked
+upon the art of writing as only a temptation to forgery, were induced to
+take pen in hand and master the science of pot-hooks and hangers, for
+the sake of corresponding with their friends, and of being able to read
+the letters they received. In 1839 a third of the men and half of the
+women who were married, according to the registrar's returns, could not
+sign their own names; in 1857 that was the case with only a seventh of
+the men, and a fifth of the women; and not a little of this advanced
+education may be attributed to the impulse given by the introduction of
+cheap postage.
+
+Nor have the advantages derived from the post office by the great body
+of the public ended here. It has shown itself the most progressive
+department of the government, and has undertaken many benevolent
+branches of work which were never contemplated by Sir Rowland Hill. Thus
+it carries on an extensive savings-bank system, worked out by Mr. Frank
+Ives Scudamore, adopted by Mr. Gladstone when Chancellor of the
+Exchequer, and established by Act of Parliament in 1861. This valuable
+department, whose operations are now of a very extensive character,
+keeps a separate account for every depositor, acknowledges the receipt,
+and, on the requisite notice being furnished, sends out warrants
+authorizing post-masters to pay such sums as depositors may wish to
+withdraw. The deposits are handed over to the Commissioners for the
+reduction of the National Debt, and repaid to the depositors through the
+post office. The rate of interest payable to depositors is two and a
+half per cent. Each depositor has his savings-bank book, which is sent
+to him yearly for examination, and the increasing interest calculated
+and allowed.
+
+The post office now acts, too, as a life-insurance society, offering
+advantages to the operative which no other society can offer, and which
+the public are beginning to appreciate.
+
+In 1869 the entire telegraphic system of the United Kingdom passed into
+the hands of the post office, whose administrators have shown themselves
+anxious to offer increased facilities to the public for the transaction
+of business. The number of telegraphic stations has been greatly
+increased, and the rate reduced at which messages are flashed from one
+part of the island to the other.
+
+Finally, a recent innovation, made entirely in the interest of the
+public weal, is the introduction of _Halfpenny Post Cards_. On one side
+of these missives the sender writes the name and address of his
+correspondent; on the other, the communication intended for him. The
+card already bears a halfpenny stamp impressed, and nothing more remains
+to be done but to deposit it in the nearest office or pillar-post. We
+think, then, it may fairly be said that the post office has shown itself
+anxious to "keep abreast" with the ever-increasing wants of the
+commercial classes of Great Britain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While these pages are passing through the press, the following
+particulars, apparently issued under official direction, have attracted
+our attention. We append them here, as they cannot fail to interest the
+reader:--"It appears that there are in the United Kingdom 6 miles 712
+yards of _pneumatic tubes_ in connection with the postal telegraphic
+system (1871). Of these, 4 miles 638 yards exist in London, and 2 miles
+74 yards in the provinces--the latter being confined to Liverpool,
+Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow. Of the total length of tubes now
+existing, only 2 miles 1324 yards existed prior to the transfer of the
+telegraphs to the post office; so that no less than 3 miles 1148 yards
+have been laid since that date; or, in other words, the system has been
+considerably more than doubled in less than a year. The total length of
+new tubes ordered and in progress exceeds 3 miles, and when these are
+completed, the system will be nearly 10 miles in length. All of the
+tubes in the provinces, and all but two of those in London, are worked
+on Clark's system. The two which form an exception are those between
+Telegraph Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand, which are worked on Siemens'
+system. The former are made of lead, with a diameter varying from 1-1/4
+to 2-1/4 inches--the more frequent size being 1-1/2 inches. The latter
+are made of iron, and have a diameter of 3 inches. The idea of iron
+tubes worked on Siemens' principle is derived, we believe, from Berlin,
+where the system is entirely of this description; and of the new tubes
+in progress, that from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Temple Bar will be of
+this kind. All of the tubes now in existence are worked in both
+directions by means of alternate pressure and vacuum; the motive power,
+in the shape of a steam-engine, being stationed at the central office,
+with which the out-stations have communication by this means. It is
+interesting to note the difference of time occupied by the different
+tubes in London in passing the 'carriers' through from one end to the
+other--the speed being governed by the length and diameter of the tube,
+and by the circumstance whether it is carried in a straight line, or has
+to encounter sharp curves and bends on its way. The great advantage of
+this means of communication, for short distance, over the electric is,
+that the tubes are not liable to sudden blocks of work as the wires are,
+and that a dozen or more messages may be sent through, at one blow, if
+desired. For local telegraphs in great towns the pneumatic system is
+invaluable, and is certain to be greatly extended under the postal
+administration."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Brian Tuke, master of the post to King Henry VIII.
+
+
+
+
+The Overland Route.
+
+
+    LIEUTENANT WAGHORN.
+
+
+
+
+The Overland Route.
+
+
+
+
+LIEUTENANT WAGHORN.
+
+
+Worthy to stand on a par with, or at lowest, in the very next rank to,
+the men who originate great inventions, are those whose foresight and
+energy discover the means of extending their utility; and in shortening
+the journey between Europe and India, by the establishment of the
+overland route, Lieutenant Waghorn practically achieved as great a
+triumph over time and space, as if he had invented a machine for the
+purpose that would have traversed the old route in the same time.
+
+It was in 1827 that Thomas Waghorn first promulgated the idea of steam
+communication between our Eastern possessions and the mother country. He
+was then twenty-seven years of age, and had just returned to Calcutta
+from rough and arduous service in the Arracan war. When a midshipman of
+barely seventeen, he had passed the "navigation" examination for
+lieutenant,--the youngest, it appears, who ever did so; but although,
+consequently, eligible for that rank, he had never reached it up to this
+time, in spite of the distinction he had acquired in various actions.
+His health had been so much shattered by a fever caught in Arracan, that
+he had to return to England; but he did not leave Calcutta without
+communicating his design to the government there, and obtaining a letter
+of credence from Lord Combermere (then vice-president in council) to the
+East India Company, recommending him, in consequence of his meritorious
+conduct in the recent war, "as a fit and proper person to open steam
+navigation with India, _via_ the Cape of Good Hope."
+
+The idea, however, was just then in advance of the time, and all
+Waghorn's agitation in its favour proved of no avail. In the meantime,
+the idea of saving the time spent in "doubling the Cape," by means of a
+route through the Mediterranean, across the Isthmus of Suez, and down
+the Red Sea, had occurred to him; and in 1829 he procured a commission
+from the East India Directory to report on the probability of Red Sea
+navigation, and at the same time to convey certain despatches to Sir
+John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay.
+
+He got notice of this mission on the 24th October, and was desired to be
+at Suez by the 8th December, in order to catch the steamer _Enterprise_,
+and proceed in her to India. He took only four days to make ready for
+the journey, and on the 28th left London on the top of the _Eagle_
+stage-coach from Gracechurch Street. Circumstances were anything but
+propitious all through this expedition of his; and yet he defied and
+disregarded them all. Bridges broke down at central points, falling
+avalanches had to be kept clear of, an accident disabled the steamer,
+and he had to go some hundred and thirty miles out of his way in
+consequence. In spite of all that, he dashed through five kingdoms, and
+reached Trieste in nine days, or little more than half the time occupied
+by the post-office mails on the same journey. Impatient of delay, he
+learned that an Austrian brig had left for Alexandria the night before,
+but the breeze had fallen, and she was still to be caught a glimpse of
+from the hill-tops. A fresh posting carriage was got out, and off he
+went in chase of the vessel, hoping to make up to her at Pesano, twenty
+miles down the Gulf of Venice. The calm still prevailed; and as he went
+dashing along he could catch sight, now and then, as the carriage passed
+some open part of the road and disclosed the sea, of the brig creeping
+lazily along. Every hour he gained on her; instead of a dull, black
+speck upon the horizon, he began to make out her hull, her sails, and
+rigging. He urged the post-boys with redoubled vehemence--kept them
+going at a furious pace. He was within three miles of the vessel--it was
+crawling, he was flying--another half hour would see him safe on board,
+and then heigh for India. But stay, surely that was the wind among the
+trees; could the breeze have risen? It had indeed. A strong northerly
+wind sprang up; gradually the sails of the brig swelled out before
+it, and poor Waghorn, with his panting, jaded horses, was left far
+behind. The chase was hopeless now--so he went back mournfully to
+Trieste--"exhausted in body with fatigue, and racked by disappointment
+after the previous excitement."
+
+The next ship, a Spanish one, was not to sail for three days. That was
+more than Waghorn could endure; he went to the captain, urged him,
+bribed him with fifty dollars to make it two days, instead of three, and
+succeeded. In eight and forty hours he was somewhat consoled for his
+former discouragement, to find himself at length at sea. In sixteen days
+he was at Alexandria, and after a rest of only five hours there, hired
+donkeys and was off to Rosetta. The donkeys were in the conspiracy
+against him, as well as the wind and the avalanches. The first day they
+trotted and walked along as brisk as may be, and our indefatigable
+traveller worked them well. It is well known that the donkey of the east
+is a paragon of wisdom, compared with his dunce of a brother in Europe;
+and upon a night's reflection, Mr. Waghorn's donkeys seem to have
+clearly perceived that he had no notion of easy stages, and was bent on
+keeping them going as fast as he could, and as long as daylight
+suffered. So the second day they managed to stumble, and limp, and fall
+down intentionally four or five times, and to put on a pitiful
+affectation of fatigue and weariness,--a common dodge, the drivers said,
+of those knowing animals.
+
+Fortunately he was soon able to dispense with the deceitful donkeys; and
+embarking on the Nile, undertook to navigate the boat himself, in order
+to take soundings and make observations in regard to the route. After
+brief repose at Rosetta, he set out for Cairo on a _cange_, a sort of
+boat of fifteen tons burthen, with two large latteen sails. The captain
+undertook to land him at Cairo in three days and four nights; but the
+boat went aground on a shoal, and after tacking for five days and
+nights, Waghorn lost all patience, and proceeded to his destination upon
+donkeys. He crossed the desert from Cairo to Suez in four days, on two
+of which he travelled seventy-four miles. He was thus able to keep his
+appointment and be at Suez by the 8th December, but there was no sign of
+the steamer. The wind was blowing right in her teeth; so after waiting
+two days, with feverish impatience, Mr. Waghorn determined to sail down
+the centre of the Red Sea, in an open boat, in the hope of meeting the
+steamer somewhere above Cossier. All the seamen of the locality held up
+their hands at the proposal of the mad Englishman, and tried to dissuade
+him. It was the opinion, he knew, of nautical authorities at the time,
+that the Red Sea was not navigable. But he could not rest quiet at Suez;
+he had important despatches to deliver; he was commissioned to inquire
+into the navigability of these waters; and out he would go in an open
+boat, let folk say what they would, and so he did.
+
+"He embarked," says the narrator of his "Life and Labours," in
+_Household Words_,[E] "in an open boat, and without having any personal
+knowledge of the navigation of this sea, without chart, without compass,
+or even the encouragement of a single precedent for such an
+enterprise--his only guide the sun by day, and the north star by
+night--he sailed down the centre of the Red Sea. Of this most
+interesting and unprecedented voyage Mr. Waghorn gives no detailed
+account. All intermediate things are abruptly cut off with these very
+characteristic words: '_Suffice it_ to say, _I arrived_ at Juddah, 620
+miles in six and a half days, in that boat!' You get nothing more than
+the sum total. He kept a sailor's log-journal; but it is only meant for
+sailors to read, though now and then you obtain a glimpse of the sort of
+work he went through. Thus: '_Sunday, 13th_--Strong, N.W. wind, half a
+gale, but scudding under storm-sail. Sunset, anchored for the night.
+Jaffateen Islands out of sight to the N. Lost two anchors during the
+night,' &c. The rest is equally nautical and technical. In one of the
+many scattered papers collected since the death of Mr. Waghorn, we find
+a very slight passing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which,
+however, he calmly says, were 'inseparable from such a voyage under such
+circumstances,'--but not one touch of description from first to last. A
+more extraordinary instance of great practical experience and
+knowledge, resolutely and fully carrying out a project which must of
+necessity have appeared little short of madness to almost everybody
+else, was never recorded. He was perfectly successful, so far as the
+navigation was concerned, and in the course he adopted, notwithstanding
+that his crew of six Arabs mutinied. It appears (for he tells us only
+the bare fact) they were only subdued on the principle known to
+philosophers in theory, and to high-couraged men, accustomed to command,
+by experience,--namely, that the one man who is braver, stronger, and
+firmer than any individual of ten or twenty men, is more than a match
+for the ten or twenty put together. He touched at Cossier on the 14th,
+not having fallen in with the _Enterprise_. There he was told by the
+governor that the steamer was expected every hour. Mr. Waghorn was in no
+state of mind to wait very long; so, finding she did not arrive, he
+again put to sea in his open boat, resolved, if he did not fall in with
+her, to proceed the entire distance to Juddah--a distance of 400 miles
+further. Of this further voyage he does not leave any record, even in
+his log, beyond the simple declaration that he 'embarked for Juddah--ran
+the distance in three days and twenty-one hours and a quarter--and on
+the 23d anchored his boat close to one of the East India Company's
+cruisers, the _Benares_.' But now comes the most trying part of his
+whole undertaking--the part which a man of his vigorously constituted
+impulses was least able to bear as the climax of his prolonged and
+arduous efforts, privations, anxieties, and fatigue. Repairing on board
+the _Benares_ to learn the news, the captain informed him that, in
+consequence of being found in a defective state on her arrival at
+Bombay, 'the _Enterprise_ was not coming at all.' This intelligence
+seems to have felled him like a blow, and he was immediately seized with
+a delirious fever. The captain and officers of the _Benares_ felt great
+sympathy and interest in this sad result of so many extraordinary
+efforts, and detaining him on board, bestowed every attention on his
+malady."
+
+It was six weeks before he could proceed by sailing vessel to Bombay,
+where he arrived on the 21st March, having, in spite of all the
+drawbacks in his way, accomplished the journey in four months and
+twenty-one days--quite an extraordinary rapidity at that time. Had he
+escaped the fever at Juddah, and fallen in with the _Enterprise_ at the
+right time, nearly two months might have been saved.
+
+He had proved the practicability of the overland route, and he now
+devoted himself to its establishment. In an address to the Home
+Government and the East India Company, he thus expresses his views:--
+
+"Of myself, I trust I may be excused when I say, that the highest object
+of my ambition has ever been an extensive usefulness; and my line of
+life--my turn of mind--my disposition, long ago impelled me to give all
+my leisure, and all my opportunities of observation, to the introduction
+of steam-vessels, and permanently establishing them as the means of
+communication between India and England including all the colonies on
+the route. The vast importance of three months' earlier information to
+his Majesty's government, and to the Honourable Company,--whether
+relative to a war or a peace--to abundant or to short crops--to the
+sickness or convalescence of a colony or district, and oftentimes even
+of an individual; the advantages to the merchant, by enabling him to
+regulate his supplies and orders according to circumstances and demands;
+the anxieties of the thousands of my countrymen in India for accounts,
+and further accounts, of their parents, children, and friends at home;
+the corresponding anxieties of those relatives and friends in this
+country;--in a word, the speediest possible transit of letters to the
+tens of thousands who at all times in solicitude await them, was, to my
+mind, a service of the greatest general importance; and it shall not be
+my fault if I do not, and for ever establish it."
+
+The scheme which he thus resolutely and enthusiastically declared his
+adoption of, he lived to carry out, but at the cost of years of weary
+advocacy, agitation for help, desperate attempts on his own account, or
+in conjunction with a few enterprising associates, in the teeth of
+constant discouragement, official indifference, jealousy, and disguised
+hostility. The East India Company told him there was no need of steam
+navigation to the East at all, ordered him to mind his own business and
+return to field service, circulated reports of his insanity through
+their agents in Egypt when Waghorn went there to enlist the Pasha in his
+cause. The overland route, however, was no theory, but an undoubted
+fact. Waghorn never for a moment relaxed his grasp of it, or doubted its
+value; and in the end, after unheard of difficulties, disappointments,
+and opposition, into the long, painful story of which we need not enter,
+succeeded in establishing the overland route. When he left Egypt in
+1841, he had provided English carriages, vans, and horses, for the
+conveyance of passengers across the desert, placed small steamers on the
+Nile and Alexandrian Canal, and built the eight halting-places on the
+desert between Cairo and Suez. He also set up the three hotels in the
+same quarter "in which every comfort, and even some luxuries, were
+provided and stored for the passing traveller,--among which should be
+mentioned iron tanks with good water, ranged in cellars beneath;--and
+all this in a region which was previously a waste of arid sands and
+scorching gravel, beset with wandering robbers and their camels. These
+wandering robbers he converted into faithful guides, as they are now
+found to be by every traveller; and even ladies with their infants are
+enabled to cross and re-cross the desert with as much security as if
+they were in Europe."
+
+In acknowledgment of his services, Mr. Waghorn received the rank of
+lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a grant of L1500, and an annuity of L200
+a-year from Government, and another annuity of L200 from the East India
+Company; but he did not live long to enjoy his well-earned rewards. The
+care, and anxiety, and fatigue he had undergone had shattered his
+constitution. Through some misunderstanding or mismanagement on the part
+of the East India Company, rivals were allowed to step in and carry off
+the chief profits of the overland system, and his last years were
+embittered by various disputes with the authorities. He died in the end
+of 1849, by years only in the prime of life; but old, and worn by his
+labours before his time. Such was the career of the "pioneer of the
+Overland Route."
+
+But in connection with England's route to India, the name of Monsieur de
+Lesseps must never be forgotten, nor the great enterprise which, at so
+much cost, and in spite of so many obstacles, he successfully carried
+out--the Suez Canal. When he first projected it he met with most of the
+obstacles which are thrown in the way of great inventions. England,
+jealous of a scheme which seemed likely to throw into the hands of a
+foreign power the nearest route to her beloved India, stood sullenly
+aloof, and refused to contribute moral or pecuniary support; while some
+of the most eminent English and foreign engineers openly declared that
+it could never be carried out. M. de Lesseps, however, was one of those
+men who, when they have seized a great idea, can never be thrown off it.
+It had taken full possession of his imagination, judgment, and
+intellect! he felt that it _could_, and he determined that it _should_
+be realized. He conquered every difficulty: he raised funds; he secured
+the support of his own government; and in 1856 he obtained from the
+Pasha of Egypt the exclusive privilege of constructing a ship-canal from
+Tyneh, near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium, to Suez.
+
+M. de Lesseps determined that his canal should be cut in a straight
+line, with an average width of 330 feet, and at an uniform depth of 20
+feet under low-water mark, while at each end was to be constructed a
+sluice-lock, 330 feet long by 70 wide. Further, at each end he proposed
+to execute a magnificent harbour; that at the Mediterranean end was to
+be extended five miles into the sea, so as to obtain a permanent depth
+of water for a ship drawing twenty-three feet, on account of the
+enormous quantity of mud annually silted up by the Nile; that at the Red
+Sea end was to be three miles long.
+
+In 1865 the great canal was begun. The Mediterranean entrance is at Port
+Said, about the middle of the narrow neck of land between Lake Menzaleh
+and the sea, in the eastern part of the Delta. Thence it is carried for
+about twenty miles across Menzaleh Lake, being 112 yards wide at the
+surface, 26 yards at the bottom, and 26 feet deep. On each side an
+artificial bank rises some 15 feet high. The distance thence to Abu
+Ballah Lake is 11 miles, through ground which varies from 15 to 30 feet
+above the level of the sea. This lake being traversed, there is land
+again--a troublesome and shifty soil--to Timsah Lake, the canal being
+cut at a depth below the sea-level of 50 to 100 feet. On the shore of
+Timsah Lake has risen a new and busy town, the central point of the
+canal, and named Ismailia, in honour of the present Pasha of Egypt.
+
+A space of eight miles intervenes between the Timsah Lake and the Bitter
+Lakes, and in this space the cuttings are very deep and difficult. The
+soil being almost purely sand, the constant labour of powerful dredging
+machines is constantly required, to prevent the channel from filling up.
+The deepest cutting occurs at El Guisr, or Girsch, and is no less than
+85 feet below the surface: at the water-level it is 112 yards wide, at
+the summit-level 173 yards. In traversing the Bitter Lakes the course of
+the canal is marked by embankments. From the southern end of these lakes
+to Suez, a distance of about thirteen miles, the cuttings are heavy and
+deep.
+
+After many discouraging failures, M. de Lesseps' great work was
+completed last year, and the formal opening of the canal took place in
+the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and a goodly number of
+princes, potentates, and distinguished personages. It is now open to
+navigation from end to end, and ships of considerable tonnage have
+successfully accomplished the passage. Whether the canal is a
+_commercial_ success may still be doubted. The cost of further deepening
+and enlarging it, and of maintaining its banks and harbours, amounts to
+a sum which, as yet, the traffic charges are not at all likely to
+defray. But, in an engineering sense, the Suez Canal is one of the
+wonders of this wonderful nineteenth century.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] August 17, 1850.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Beautifully Illustrated Works.
+
+
+EARTH AND SEA. From the French of LOUIS FIGUIER. Translated, Edited, and
+Enlarged by W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS, Illustrated with Two Hundred and
+Fifty Engravings by FREEMAN, GIACOMELLI, YAN D'ARGENT, PRIOR, FOULQUIER,
+RIOU, LAPLANTE, and other Artists. Imperial 8vo. Handsomely bound in
+cloth and gold. Price 15s.
+
+This volume is founded upon M. Figuier's "_La Terre et Les Mers_," but
+so many additions have been made to the original, and its aim and scope
+have been so largely extended, that it may almost be called a new work.
+These additions and this extension were deemed necessary by the Editor,
+in order to render it more suitable for the British public, and in order
+to bring it up to the standard of geographical knowledge.
+
+
+THE DESERT WORLD. From the French of ARTHUR MANGIN. Translated, Edited,
+and Enlarged by the Translator of "The Bird," by Michelet. With One
+Hundred and Sixty Illustrations by W. FREEMAN, FOULQUIER, and YAN
+D'ARGENT. Imperial 8vo, full gilt side and gilt edges. Price 12s. 6d.
+
+    SATURDAY REVIEW.--"_The illustrations are numerous, and
+    extremely well cut. Two handsomer and more readable volumes than
+    this and 'The Mysteries of the Ocean' it would be difficult to
+    produce._"
+
+
+THE MYSTERIES OF THE OCEAN. From the French of ARTHUR MANGIN. By the
+Translator of "The Bird." With One Hundred and Thirty Illustrations by
+W. FREEMAN and J. NOEL. Imperial 8vo, full gilt side and gilt edges.
+Price 10s. 6d.
+
+    PALL MALL GAZETTE.--"_Science walks to-day in her silver
+    slippers. We have here another sumptuously produced popular
+    manual from France. It is an account, complete in extent and
+    tolerably full in detail, of the Sea. It is eminently
+    readable.... The illustrations are altogether excellent; and the
+    production of such a book proves at least that there are very
+    many persons who can be calculated on for desiring to know
+    something of physical science._"
+
+
+THE BIRD. By JULES MICHELET, Author of "History of France," &c.
+Illustrated by Two Hundred and Ten Exquisite Engravings by GIACOMELLI.
+Imperial 8vo, full gilt side and gilt edges. Price 10s. 6d.
+
+    WESTMINSTER REVIEW.--"_This work consists of an exposition of
+    various ornithological matters from points of view which could
+    hardly be thought of, except by a writer of Michelet's peculiar
+    genius. With his argument in favour of the preservation of our
+    small birds we heartily concur. The translation seems to be
+    generally well executed; and in the matter of paper and
+    printing, the book is almost an _ouvrage de luxe_. The
+    illustrations are generally very beautiful._"
+
+    THE ART JOURNAL.--"_It is a charming book to read, and a most
+    valuable volume to think over.... It was a wise, and we cannot
+    doubt it will be a profitable, duty to publish it here, where it
+    must take a place second only to that it occupies in the
+    language in which it was written.... Certainly natural history
+    has never, in our opinion, been more exquisitely illustrated by
+    wood-engraving than in the whole of these designs by M.
+    Giacomelli, who has treated the subject with rare delicacy of
+    pencil and the most charming poetical feeling--a feeling
+    perfectly in harmony with the written descriptions of M.
+    Michelet himself._"
+
+
+
+
+THE "SCHOeNBERG-COTTA" SERIES OF BOOKS.
+
+_In Cloth Binding, 6s. 6d. each; in Morocco, 12s. each._
+
+
+CHRONICLES OF THE SCHOeNBERG-COTTA FAMILY.
+
+    THE TIMES.--"_We are confident that most women will read it with
+    keen pleasure, and that those men who take it up will not easily
+    lay it down without confessing that they have gained some pure
+    and ennobling thoughts from the perusal._"
+
+
+DIARY OF MRS. KITTY TREVYLYAN: A Story of the Times of Whitefield and
+the Wesleys.
+
+    GLASGOW CITIZEN.--"_The various characters are well
+    discriminated, and the story flows on naturally and pleasantly
+    to the end._"
+
+
+THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: A Story of the Civil Wars.
+
+    DAILY REVIEW.--"_It is the most interesting of all the
+    authoress' productions._"
+
+
+ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA: A Story of the Commonwealth and the
+Restoration.
+
+    ATHENAEUM.--"_A good deal of ingenuity has been employed for the
+    purpose of grouping together many of the well-known characters
+    of that day; and in spite of the general gravity of the
+    narrative, there is evidence of a considerable sense of quiet
+    humour both in the characters and in the language employed._"
+
+
+WINIFRED BERTRAM, AND THE WORLD SHE LIVED IN.
+
+    ECLECTIC.--"_Very acceptable to many thousands, and only needing
+    to be mentioned to be sought for and read._"
+
+
+THE MARTYRS OF SPAIN AND THE LIBERATORS OF HOLLAND; or, The Story of the
+Sisters Dolores and Costanza Cazalla.
+
+
+SKETCHES OF CHRISTIAN LIFE IN ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME.
+
+
+DIARY OF BROTHER BARTHOLOMEW, WITH OTHER TALES AND SKETCHES OF CHRISTIAN
+LIFE IN DIFFERENT LANDS AND AGES.
+
+
+WANDERINGS OVER BIBLE LANDS AND SEAS. With a Photograph, and other
+Illustrations.
+
+
+WATCHWORDS FOR THE WARFARE OF LIFE (From the Writings of Luther).
+Translated and Arranged by the Author of "The Schoenberg-Cotta Family."
+
+
+POEMS. By the Author of "Chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta Family."
+CONTENTS:--The Women of the Gospels--The Three Wakings--Songs and
+Hymns--Memorial Verses. Crown 8vo, gilt edges.
+
+
+
+
+VALUABLE WORKS.
+
+
+BY THE REV. J. C. RYLE, B.A.
+
+THE CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE LAST CENTURY; or, England a Hundred Years
+Ago. By the Rev. J. C. RYLE, B.A., Christ Church, Oxford, Author of
+"Expository Thoughts," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 7s. 6d.
+
+    PALL MALL GAZETTE.--"_Mr. Ryle has evidently a complete
+    acquaintance with his subject, such as a mere critical historian
+    would never be likely to acquire; and we believe there is no
+    book existing which contains nearly the same amount of
+    information upon it._"
+
+
+BY THE REV. WILLIAM ARNOT.
+
+LAWS FROM HEAVEN FOR LIFE ON EARTH--ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOOK OF
+PROVERBS. New Edition. Complete in One Volume. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price
+7s. 6d.
+
+    FAMILY TREASURY.--"_A noble volume by one of the freshest and
+    most vigorous writers of the present day."_
+
+THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. Crown 8vo, cloth antique. Price 7s. 6d.
+
+    REV. JAMES HAMILTON, D.D.--"_The best family book on the
+    Parables._"
+
+    SPURGEON.--"_Mr. Arnot is the fittest man living to expound the
+    Parables, for he is himself a great master of metaphorical
+    teaching. In the valuable work before us there is, as is usual
+    with the author, much striking originality, and much unparaded
+    learning. The first will make it popular, the second will
+    commend it to the thoughtful. Many writers have done well upon
+    this subject, but in some respects, as far as space would permit
+    him, our friend excels them all. 'The Parables' will be a fit
+    companion to 'The Proverbs,' and both books will be immortal._"
+
+
+BY THE REV. A. A. HODGE, D.D.
+
+OUTLINES OF THEOLOGY. Edited by the Rev. W. H. GOOLD, D.D., Professor of
+Biblical Literature and Church History, Edinburgh. Crown 8vo. Price 6s.
+6d.
+
+    SPURGEON.--"_We can best show our appreciation of this able Body
+    of Divinity by mentioning that we have used it in our college
+    with much satisfaction both to tutor and students. We intend to
+    make it a class-book, and urge all young men who are anxious to
+    become good theologians to master it thoroughly. Of course we do
+    not endorse the chapter on baptism. To a few of the Doctor's
+    opinions in other parts we might object, but as a Hand-book of
+    Theology, in our judgment, it is like Goliath's sword--'there is
+    none like it.'_"
+
+THE ATONEMENT. Edited by the Rev. W. H. Goold, D.D., Crown 8vo. Price
+5s.
+
+    EXTRACT FROM LETTER BY THE AUTHOR TO THE EDITOR OF THIS
+    EDITION.--"_This work has been written with a view to meet the
+    rationalistic speculations of the present day as to the nature
+    of sin, the extent of human depravity and moral ability, the
+    nature of our connection with Adam, the nature and extent of the
+    Atonement, &c. &c. So much has been written that is positively
+    false, or fatally defective, by Maurice, Jowett, Bushnell, and
+    others, that it appeared high time that those who love the truth
+    should rouse themselves to do what they can to defend and exalt
+    it._"
+
+
+BY THE REV. ISLAY BURNS, D.D.
+
+HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST: With a Special View to the Delineation
+of Christian Faith and Life. With Notes, Chronological Tables, Lists of
+Councils, Examination Questions, and other Illustrative Matter. (From
+A.D. 1 to A.D. 313.) Crown 8vo, cloth antique. Price 5s.
+
+
+
+
+Beautifully Illustrated Books for the Young.
+
+
+THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON; or, Adventures of a Shipwrecked Family on a
+Desolate Island. A New and Unabridged Translation. With an Introduction
+from the French of CHARLES NODIER. Illustrated with upwards of Three
+Hundred Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 6s.
+
+This is a new and _unabridged translation_ of a work which has acquired
+a great and well-merited popularity from its happy combination of
+instruction and amusement, of the interest of romance with the
+discoveries of science.
+
+
+PAUL AND VIRGINIA. From the French of BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE. An
+Entirely New Translation, with Botanical Notes, and upwards of Ninety
+Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 4s.
+
+
+THE WORLD AT HOME: Pictures and Scenes from Far-off Lands. By MARY and
+ELIZABETH KIRBY. With upwards of One Hundred and Thirty Illustrations.
+Square 8vo. Cloth, richly gilt. Price 6s.
+
+    THE TIMES.--"_An admirable collection of adventures and
+    incidents in foreign lands, gleaned largely from foreign
+    sources, and excellently illustrated._"
+
+    BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.--"_A very charming book; one of the
+    best popular wonder-books for young people that we have seen. In
+    language of singular simplicity, and with a very profuse use of
+    very effective woodcuts, the distinctive features of far-off
+    lands--their natural history, the manners and customs of their
+    inhabitants, their physical phenomena, &c.--are brought home to
+    the fireside in a way to entrance alike the children of five or
+    six years old, and the older folk who instruct them. No better
+    book has appeared this season._"
+
+
+BOOK FOR BOYS--ILLUSTRATED BY GUSTAVE DORE.
+
+GEOFFREY THE KNIGHT. A Tale of Chivalry of the Days of King Arthur. With
+Twenty Full-page Engravings by GUSTAVE DORE. Post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt
+edges. Price 4s.
+
+    THE SCOTSMAN.--"_'Geoffrey the Knight' appears now in perhaps
+    the most attractive form it has yet assumed. Printed in the best
+    style, it is still further enriched by a number of admirable
+    engravings by Gustave Dore, illustrating all the most thrilling
+    adventures related._"
+
+
+CATS AND DOGS; or, Notes and Anecdotes of Two Great Families of the
+Animal Kingdom. By Mrs. HUGH MILLER. New Edition. With upwards of Forty
+Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+    THE TIMES.--"_A full and well-written account of both the feline
+    and the canine species. It is filled with spirited engravings,
+    many of which, giving pictures of tiger and lion hunting, will
+    have special attractions for the Gordon Cummings and Gerrards
+    and Livingstones of the future, who are now in our
+    school-rooms._"
+
+
+NEW GIFT-BOOK FOR BOYS.
+
+THE PLAYGROUND AND THE PARLOUR. A Hand-Book of Boys' Games, Sports, and
+Amusements. By ALFRED ELLIOTT. With One Hundred Illustrations. Post 8vo.
+Price 3s. 6d.
+
+    ILLUSTRATED TIMES.--"_We have not for some time seen any Book of
+    Sports better got up or more carefully compiled than this._"
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR BOYS.
+
+
+THE FOREST, THE JUNGLE, AND THE PRAIRIE; or, Scenes with the Trapper and
+the Hunter in Many Lands. By ALFRED ELLIOTT. With Thirty Engravings.
+Post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 5s.
+
+    DAILY NEWS.--"_An excellent volume, in which lessons in zoology
+    are communicated whilst the reader accompanies the hunter in the
+    jungles of India, the lairs of Africa, the prairies of America,
+    and the plains of Ceylon._"
+
+
+BY R. M. BALLANTYNE.
+
+_New and Cheaper Editions._
+
+THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS: A Tale of the Far North. With Illustrations. Post
+8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+UNGAVA: A Tale of Esquimaux Land. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth.
+Price 3s.
+
+THE CORAL ISLAND: A Tale of the Pacific. With Illustrations. Post 8vo,
+cloth. Price 3s.
+
+MARTIN RATTLER; or, A Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil. With
+Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+THE DOG CRUSOE AND HIS MASTER: A Tale of the Western Prairies. With
+Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+THE GORILLA HUNTERS: A Tale of Western Africa. With Illustrations. Post
+8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+THE WORLD OF ICE; or, Adventures in the Polar Regions. With Engravings.
+Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+
+BY J. H. FYFE.
+
+MERCHANT ENTERPRISE; or, the History of Commerce from the Earliest
+Times. Caravans of Old--The Phoenicians--Marts of the Mediterranean, &c.
+With Eight Illustrations from designs by CLARK STANTON, Esq., R.S.A.
+Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+BRITISH ENTERPRISE BEYOND THE SEAS; or, The Planting of our Colonies.
+Illustrated. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s.
+
+TRIUMPHS OF INVENTION AND DISCOVERY. Illustrated. Post 8vo, cloth extra.
+Price 2s. 6d.
+
+
+BY W. H. G. KINGSTON.
+
+_New Editions, Illustrated._
+
+ROUND THE WORLD: A Tale for Boys. With Fifty-two Engravings. Post 8vo,
+cloth extra. Price 5s.
+
+OLD JACK: A Sea Tale. With Sixty Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra.
+Price 5s.
+
+MY FIRST VOYAGE TO SOUTHERN SEAS. With Forty-two Engravings. Post 8vo,
+cloth extra. Price 5s.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
+
+   ART JOURNAL.--"_Among the best Publishers of Books for the Young
+   we must rank the names of the Messrs. Nelson._"
+
+
+AFAR IN THE FOREST; or, Pictures of Life and Scenery in the Wilds of
+Canada. By Mrs. TRAILL, Author of the "Canadian Crusoes," &c.
+Illustrated. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s.
+
+FAITHFUL AND TRUE; or, The Evans Family. By the Author of "Tony Starr's
+Legacy," &c. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+THINGS IN THE FOREST. By MARY AND ELIZABETH KIRBY. Foolscap 8vo, cloth.
+Price 1s. 6d.
+
+THE HISTORY OF A PIN. By F. M. S. Illustrated. Foolscap 8vo, cloth.
+Price 1s. 6d.
+
+OLD ROBIN AND HIS PROVERB. By Mrs. HENRY F. BROCK. Foolscap 8vo, cloth.
+Price 1s. 6d.
+
+TRUTH IS ALWAYS BEST; or, A Fault Confessed is Half Redressed. By MARY
+AND ELIZABETH KIRBY. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+TRUTHS AND FANCIES FROM FAIRY LAND; or Fairy Stories with a Purpose.
+With Four Steel Plates. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+SCENES OF THE OLDEN TIME. By the Author of "Records of Noble Lives,"
+"The Boy Makes the Man," &c. With Four Steel Plates. Foolscap 8vo,
+cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+ALICE STANLEY, and other Stories. By Mrs. S. C. HALL. With Four Steel
+Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+THE PLAYFELLOW, and other Stories. By Mrs. S. C. HALL. With Four Steel
+Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+THE WAY OF THE WORLD, and other Tales. By Mrs. S. C. HALL. With Four
+Steel Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+STORIES FROM GREEK MYTHOLOGY. By the Rev. JAMES WOOD. With Four Steel
+Plates. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+
+_New Illustrated Edition._
+
+PAUL AND VIRGINIA. With Seventy Cuts. Royal 32mo, cloth, gilt edges.
+Price 1s.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
+
+
+ISABEL'S SECRET; or, A Sister's Love. By the Author of "The Story of a
+Happy Little Girl." Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+ANNA LEE: The Maiden--The Wife--The Mother. By T. S. ARTHUR. Post 8vo,
+cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+TRUE RICHES; or, Wealth without Wings. By T. S. ARTHUR. With Five
+Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+WOODLEIGH HOUSE; or, The Happy Holidays. With Eight Engravings. Post
+8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+MISSIONARY EVENINGS AT HOME. By H. L. L. Post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt
+edges. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+THE GOLDEN MISSIONARY PENNY, and other Addresses to the Young. By the
+late Rev. JAMES BOLTON, Kilburn. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+MARION'S SUNDAYS; or, Stories on the Commandments. With Engravings.
+Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s.
+
+ANNALS OF THE POOR. With Memoir of the Author. With Eight Plates printed
+in Colours. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s.; or, cloth extra, gilt edges,
+price 3s.
+
+NELLY NOWLAN'S EXPERIENCE, and other Stories. By Mrs. S. C. HALL.
+Illustrated. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s.
+
+THE STORY OF THE WHITE-ROCK COVE. A Tale for the Young. With Six
+Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s.
+
+FAR AND NEAR; or, Stories of a Christmas Tree. By ITA. With Coloured
+Frontispiece. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY: A Tale of Domestic Life. Foolscap 8vo, cloth.
+Price 2s.
+
+THE WORLD'S BIRTHDAY. By the Rev. Professor L. GAUSSEN. With Plates.
+Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+WOODRUFF; or, "Sweetest when Crushed." A Tale. By Mrs. VEITCH. Foolscap
+8vo, cloth. Price 2s.
+
+THE REGULAR SERVICE; or, the Story of Reuben Inch. By the Author of
+"Village Missionaries," "Under the Microscope," &c. Illustrated. Post
+8vo, cloth. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+
+
+
+THE A. L. O. E. SERIES OF BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
+
+BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED AND ELEGANTLY BOUND.
+
+    CHURCH OF ENGLAND SUNDAY-SCHOOL MAGAZINE.--"_With A. L. O. E.'s
+    well-known powers of description and imagination, circumstances
+    are described and characters sketched, which we believe many
+    readers will recognize as their own._"
+
+
+_Post 8vo, Cloth._
+
+CLAUDIA. A Tale. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+HEBREW HEROES. A Tale founded on Jewish History. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+ON THE WAY; or Places Passed by Pilgrims. Illustrated. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+THE TRIUMPH OVER MIDIAN. Illustrated. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+HOUSE BEAUTIFUL; or, The Bible Museum. Illustrated. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+RESCUED FROM EGYPT. Illustrated. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+PRIDE AND HIS PRISONERS. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+THE GOLDEN FLEECE. Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+THE ROBY FAMILY. With Seven Illustrations. Gilt edges. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+THE ROBBERS' CAVE: A Story of Italy. With Seven Illustrations. Gilt
+edges, with beautifully illuminated side. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+OLD FRIENDS WITH NEW FACES. Vignette Title. Gilt edges. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+STORY OF A NEEDLE. With Seven Illustrations. Gilt edges, with
+beautifully illuminated side. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+MY NEIGHBOUR'S SHOES; or, Feeling for Others. Illustrated. Gilt edges,
+with beautifully illuminated side. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+
+_Foolscap 8vo, Cloth._
+
+IDOLS IN THE HEART. A Tale. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+THE SILVER CASKET; or, Love not the World. A Tale. Illustrated. Price
+3s.
+
+WAR AND PEACE. A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul. Illustrated. Price 3s.
+
+THE HOLIDAY CHAPLET. Illustrated. Cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 3s.
+
+THE SUNDAY CHAPLET. Illustrated. Cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 3s.
+
+MIRACLES OF HEAVENLY LOVE IN DAILY LIFE. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+WHISPERING UNSEEN; or, "Be ye Doers of the Word, and not Hearers Only."
+Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+PARLIAMENT IN THE PLAY-ROOM. Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+THE MINE; or, Darkness and Light. Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+FLORA; or, Self-Deception. Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+THE CROWN OF SUCCESS; or, Four Heads to Furnish. Price 2s. 6d.
+
+ZAIDA'S NURSERY NOTE-BOOK. A Book for Mothers. Price 2s.
+
+POEMS AND HYMNS. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+RAMBLES OF A RAT. Illustrated. Price 2s.
+
+STORIES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS. Illustrated. Price 1s. 6d.
+
+WINGS AND STINGS. 18mo Edition. Illustrated. Price 1s.
+
+
+_New Editions, Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth Extra._
+
+THE YOUNG PILGRIM. A Tale Illustrating the Pilgrim's Progress. With
+Twenty-Seven Engravings. Price 4s.
+
+THE SHEPHERD OF BETHLEHEM. With Forty Engravings. Price 5s.
+
+EXILES IN BABYLON; or, Children of Light. Thirty-four Cuts. Price 5s.
+
+PRECEPTS IN PRACTICE. With Forty Engravings. Price 4s.
+
+THE GIANT-KILLER. With Forty Engravings. Price 4s.
+
+FAIRY KNOW-A-BIT. With Thirty-four Illustrations. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+T. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.
+
+[Transcriber's Note:
+
+Ligature occurrences of oe have been represented as two separate letters,
+such as in "Koenig" and "Phoenicians".
+
+The following alterations have been made to the text as originally
+printed:
+   Page 30: Changed quotes from double to single: 'Recuyell of the
+            Historyes of Troye,'
+   Page 64: "reader." changed to "reader,"
+   Page 65: "home," changed to "home."
+   Page 128: Added closing quote: ... and working efficiency."
+   Page 131: Added closing quote: ... of solid masonry."
+   Page 136: "porportion" changed to "proportion"
+   Page 166: "better then an arm" changed to "better than an arm"
+   Page 187: "paddle-wheels Through" changed to "paddle-wheels. Through"
+   Page 197: "a mortal sickness:" changed to "a mortal sickness;"
+   Page 249: "own, Thus" changed to "own. Thus"
+   Page 250: "condition Only" changed to "condition. Only"
+   Page 295: Changed double quotes to single quotes: passing the
+             'carriers' through
+   Page 295: Added closing quote: ... under the postal
+             administration."
+   Page 315: Added closing quote: ... present day."
+   Page 316: "Dore" changed to "Dore"
+]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in
+Art and Science, by J. Hamilton Fyfe
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