done up in glass tubes, lying like dolls in a
cradle; and here is the " dioptric holophote"—
how fond people are of hard names—which is a
mass of class circles and circular bands, full of
prismatic colours, and very beautiful to look
upon. Close at hand is the case of mortars,
wnere the monster mortar gradually lessens into
the most dainty little creature, not larger than
my little boy's ally-tor, and where there are
sections of shells—things cut in halves to show
what is in the inside filled—with coal-dust for
powder, and some with bullets among the
powder, in pretty geometrical patterns; and then
we come to the iron hoops or trips, which have
taken the place of the old calthrops, and are to
fling down and lame the enemy's horse, as you
see in the wooden toy-horse, with its cut legs
besmeared with red ochre, and the staring-eyed
doll on its back sitting in sublime indifference and
contempt of danger; and we pass by the cases
of streaked brown guns, and grand swords with
their gilded scabbards and jewelled bands, decked
out in all the foppery of war, but as yet innocent
and undefiled; and so on through the nave to
the western annexe, where the machinery lives.

Wheels whirling like mad, and endless bands
quivering like tortured snakes; a sloppy floor;
begrimed workmen of all nations; a prevailing
smell of oil and steam, and a deafening noise
of click and whirr, where nothing dominated
and all distracted; daft engines pounding away
at nothing, and the regulator balls flying wide
and wild; cotton-spinning frames travelling backwards
and forwards in a monotonous caged
wild-beast sort of manner; a steam-engine with a
howdah, in ludicrous confusion of Manchester
and Tippoo Sahib; a big sand-crushing machine
with stones like the most tremendous mill-hoppers,
—mill-hoppers magnified, mill-hoppers that
ground the corn for the ogre giants' bread; a
sugar-mill monster, more finished and
scientific-looking, and with a certain inner soul of
intelligence shining through its complicated
arrangements; a machine that patted a bit of
rotten wood as gently as a baby, and more
gently, then, becoming angry at some liberty
which its keeper took with it, opened its iron
jaws with a roar, and smashed the sticks to
splinters; a fidgety machine, always dancing
up and down, just like a person with St.Vitus's
dance, or a circumscribed tarantula; an
air-blowing leviathan, good for blowing up furnace
fires—also one of the complications sought to be
explained and taught me, which only stupified
and left me in greater ignorance than before;—
these were the things I noticed first of all,
and these left the greatest impression on me,
before I could sift my sudden influx of ideas.

Then there was a creature like a grey
boa-constrictor, smooth and supple—but I forget
its special uses; and a twisted cylinder of endless
knives for shearing velvet; and a leathern
band of the finest steel wires set in like bristles,
used now instead of the old-fashioned teazle for
carding wool, as soft to the touch as a baby's
brush, or as a bit of elastic velvet itself; and a
thing like an alchemist's table, all green and
brass-work and mystic shapes and undefined
purpose, which, however, turned out to be only
a bit of harmless steam-engine mystery; and
broken guns split up like rotten wood, and
masses of broken metal everywhere, to show the
strength and quality, and what strain it took
before it parted; and a machine for weaving
carpets—I think it was—with two angry and
impetuous creatures at either side, which came
forward with a rush and a hiss, and slapped
vigorously at the cloth; but I believe they were
only usefully employed in throwing the shuttle.
And everywhere was the smell of oil, and
everywhere were wet floors, and grimy workmen with
their united Babel of tongues, and steam-engines
passionately busy about nothing, and the
undefined sense of danger, and a blow up somewhere.

Then there was the grand majestic centrifugal
pumping machine with its foaming apron and
lily-shaped jets, where one got fine effects of
light and colour in the sunshine, and all the rest
of the machinery around got perpetual showers
of spray; and a huge hammer going lazily up
and down, like a lion mumbling a bone—a huge
sleepy thing, utterly destructive in its quiet
power when fairly roused to work; and the
model of the Austrian steam-ship the Franz
Josef, moving its bright tin paddles that moved
nothing else; and there was the model of the
best wrought-iron bridge ever made, said my
engineering friend, by Austria too—two
hundred and seventy feet in span, and thirty-six in
breadth, and without vibration; and a sledge
railway, which, by machinery,—lifting up
something or letting down something as occasion
requires—is made either a wheeled carriage
rolling easily, or a heavy sledge dragging its slow
length, and scarce able to be moved at all—in
fact, a new and capital kind of railway break;
and this was French, which irritated my
engineering friend to acknowledge, he being a
Gallophobist (doesn't that mean a Gaul hater,
and are not the Gauls the French?) of the
deepest grade. And there was the French
screw paddle, about which such a terrible story
is told, and which indeed looks as much like a
guillotine as anything else; and a New Brunswick
steam-engine, with a cow-catcher and snow
plough in front, so suggestive of the unhedged
country and inclement climate of that place;
a Yankee boiler, like a string of beads; and a
railway waggon made in a day, wheels melted,
forged, tired, and all; and a big blue plough,
with a shark's teeth row of shares, worked by
steam; and clod-crushing machines, very pretty
and like fortification works; and several other
agricultural implements which are to do away
with Hodge and his heavy fingers, and inaugurate
a new era down among the clay lands. And
there are all manner of fire-engines; and a
bottle-filling and corking machine; and a three-cornered
paper bag-making machine; and Bray's
traction engine that frightened the Hampstead
omnibus; and a creature that pats down its own
rails, or rather its own iron feet, and walks over
the land where it lists, like a man; and a
locomotive for walking on the ice; and a great