I Cornell University fj Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924086360942 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 086 360 942 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1999 Olarttell Iniuecattg Stbtacg 3tt|ara, -Nem lork LIBRARY OF LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE A.B..A.M.. COLUMBIAN COLLEGE/71 . '73 WASHINGTON. D. C. THE GIFT OF MRS. MARY A. WYNNE AND JOHN H. WYNNE CORNELL '98 1922 WORKS BY DR. WYNTER. Crown %vo., price 6s., Eighth Edition. OUR SOCIAL BEES. (First Series.) Pictures of Town and Country, and other Papers. Content;^. The Great Military Clothing Es- tablishment at Pimlico Thoughts about London Beggars Wenham Lake Ice Candle Making Woman's Work The Turkish Bath The Nervous System of the Me- tropolis Who is Mr. Renter ? Our Modem Mercury The Sewing-Machine The Times Advertising Sheet Old Things by Nevf Names A Suburban Fair A Fortnight in North Wales The Aristocratic Rooks The Englishman Abroad A Gossip about the Lakes Sensations of a Summer Night and Morning Physical Antipathies The Philosophy of Babydom Brain Difficulties Human Hair "These papers are characterized by the same breadth of view, the same felicity of language, the same acuteness of thought, which distin- guished the ' Curiosities of Civilization.' So long as Dr. Wynter con- tinues to write papers similar to those in the volume before us, and in ' Curiosities of Civilization, ' so long vrill the republication of those papers be welcomed by the public. " — Standard. The Post-office London Smoke Mock Auctions Hyde Park The Suction Post St George and the Dragon The India-rubber Artist Our Peck of Dirt The Artificial Man Britannia's Smelling-bottle The Hunterian Museum at the College of Surgeons A Chapter on Shop Windows Commercial Grief Orchards in Cheapside The Wedding Bonnet Aerated Bread The German Fair Club Chambers for the Married Needle-making Preserved Meats London Stout Palace Lights, Club Cards, and Bank Pens Crown Zvo., price (ss., Seventh Edition. CURIOSITIES OF CIVILIZATION. Being Essays from the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. Contents. The London Commissariat Food and its Adulterations Advertisements The Zoological Gardens Rats Woolwich Arsenal Shipwrecks Lodging, Food, and Dress of Soldiers The Electric Telegraph Fires and Fire Insurance The Police and the Thieves Mortality in Trades and Professions Lunatic Asylums Crown 8w., cloth, price 6^., Second Edition. SUBTLE BRAINS AND LISSOM FINGERS. Being some of the Chisel-marks of an Industrial and Scientific Progress ; and other Papers. Contents. The Buried Roman City in Britain Dining-rooms for the Working- Classes " Silvertown " Railways and City Population Advertising A Day with the Coroner Vivisection The English in Paris The New Hotel System The Times Newspaper of 1 798 The Restoration of our Soil The Under-Sea Railroad Half-hours at the Kensington Museum Oh, the Roast Beef of Old Eng- land ! Mudie's Circulating Library Physical Education Fraudulent Trade Marks Advice by a Retired Physician Superstition : . Where does it End? The Clerk of the Weather The New Counterblast to To- bacco Portsmouth Dockyard Air Traction Village Hospitals Illuminations Railways, the Great Civilizers Boat-building by Machinery On Taking a House The Effects of Railway Travelling upon Health Photographic Portraiture The Working Men's Flower-shov^ Doctor's Stuff Messages under the Sea Smallpox in London Town Telegraphs Hospital Distress The Bread we Eat Excursion Trains Early Warnings Pacini. A Garden Scene Westminster Cloisters Be Trustful Autumn on the Hill Side A Water Sketch The Two Pictures My Room in the Country Associations of a Shell The Ancient Garden The Passing of the Storm The Deserted Cottage Life after Death "About the pleasantest book of short collected papers of chit-chat, * blending information and amusement ' and not overtaxing the atten- tion or intelligence, that we have seen for a long while." — Reader. "Whatever Dr. Wynter pleases to publish we accept thankfully. His clever and delicate workmanship ennobles the lightest material which he touches." — Guardian. LONDON: ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY. OUR SOCIAL BEES. OUR SOCIAL BEES. ^ttontr ^mti. ANDREAV ^YNTER, M.D. M.R.C.P. LOND. Author of " Subtle Brains aitd Lissom Fingers,^ " Curiosities of Civilization,'" t. the Match-Box. ment inquiry is to see what precautions can be taken to prevent this horrible jaw-rotting, and many sugges- tions have been made. For instance, it is proposed by Dr. Bristowe that the workmen shall keep their mouths shut whilst at work, and in this manner pre- vent the phosphoric fumes from entering ; the wearing of respirators is suggested by Dr. Salter ; but those who know how reckless workmen are, and, even when their own lives are concerned, cannot be induced to adopt such precautions, put little faith in such expedients. In the dry-grinding of steel forks at Sheffield, perhaps the most deadly trade in existence, such respirators were once introduced, but the men would not wear them ; and in the many preparations of arsenical pigments, which are so destructive, the like disregard of all precaution is noticeable among the workers. In Prussia, the Government, to a cer- tain extent, provides against the danger, by pro- hibiting any person who has hollow teeth from working in the lucifer-match manufactories ; but all these operations are only partially operative — the grand object is to get rid of the preparation of phos- phorus altogether which brings about such deplorable results ; and this, we are glad to say, can be done. At present the vast majority of matches are made of common phosphorus, a highly inflammable mate- rial, independently of its disease-producing tenden- cies. Of these matches some contain very much more phosphorus than others. The common " Con- Death in tlie Match-Box. 213 • greves " are called " damp proof " matches, in which a comparatively small percentage of phosphorus is used, and silent matches. These latter are by many persons much preferred for domestic use, in consequence of their not spluttering when lighted, and from their being less sulphurous ; but they contain the largest percentage of phosphorus, and consequently their production produces the largest amount of disease. But there is another kind of match made with what is termed red or amorphous phosphorus. This singular substance has not very long been discovered : it is nothing more than common phosphorus enclosed in a cylindrical iron vessel, and exposed continuously for a month or six weeks to a temperature of from 400 to 500°. By this simple baking, it becomes changed entirely in all its qualities, the most notable of which is its inignitability under any temperature less than 500°. Attempts have been made to pro- duce matches by the mixture of this amorphous phosphorus with chlorate of potass ; but the process of mixing these two materials is so dangerous that the manufacture has been given up. There is an old adage, however, that there are more ways of killing a dog than drowning him, and we are glad to see that amorphous phosphorus and chlorate of potass have been at length brought together in a very effectual manner, and, what is more to the purpose, with entire impunity to the match- maker from his old disease. Messrs. Bryant & May 2 14 Death in the Match-Box. have solved the difficulty in their patent safety- matches. The peculiarity of these consists in the fact that the match can only be struck by rubbing it on the prepared surface, friction alone not being sufficient. The match is dipped in chlorate of potass (its chief ingredient), mixed with red lead, black oxide of manganese, sulphuret of antimony, and ■glue ; whilst the box, in lieu of sand-paper, is smeared with amorphous phosphorus, sulphuret of antimony, and glue. Thus, without the box the match is worthless. There are certain inconve- niences attending this divorce, but the advantages are, on the other hand, very great. The accidents that happen to ordinary lucifer matches, in conse- quence of their spontaneous combustion in hot weather, is a well-recognised cause of many disas- trous conflagrations. We have ourselves heard the late Mr. Braidwood deplore the immense loss of property brought about by this cause. Again, the very slight amount of friction required to light them is another cause of fires ; even mice and rats gnawing wax vestas have been known to fire the match by their teeth touching the phosphorus. Accidents to life are continually taking place through ladies accidentally treading on matches carelessly thrown upon the ground. Lucifer matches are a well-known cause of fire, both accidental and incendiary, in the agricultural districts. The matches which the boy "keeping" Death in the Match-Box. 215 birds always has about him are often used to fire a stack. The labourer thrashing in the barn, or work- ing in the stable, will often pull out a congreve, and by accident let one fall ; something crushes it, and a fire happens in a moment. So well are some fire-offices aware of their losses from this cause, that in their policies they insert a clause pro- hibiting the carrying of lucifer matches by farm- servants. The general use of the new kind of match would at once do away with all fear of accidental fires arising from their use. At all events, Dr. Bristowe acknowledges that the only effectual method of preventing the deplorable disease under which the match-maker now suffers, is the pro- hibition of the use of common phosphorus altogether ; and we think that, if the legislature does not adopt this precaution, society should; as it is nothing less than criminal to persist in the use of an article which causes such misery, when a perfectly harmless method of manufacture is in full operation, without causing the slightest derangement of health to the workers in it. ( 2l6 ) A FEW WORDS ON OUR MEAT. I HAT is it that makes the butcher's bill so heavy of late years ? This is a ques- tion which every one is asking, and to which no satisfactory reply can be obtained. We find by the annual imports that the live stock of the island is being very largely increased, and the natural result, we should fancy, would be that meat would fall in price ; but if you ask any housekeeper, the answer is, that on the average throughout the country meat is a penny a pound dearer than it was twenty years ago. The reply to the question house- keepers have so often asked in vain has been at length given in the Fifth Report of the Medical Officer of Health to the Privy Council. The growing reports of the increasing consumption of diseased meat having led " my lords" of the Privy Council to order an inquiry to be made into a matter so closely concerning the public health, Mr. Gamgee, the pre- sident of the Edinburgh New Veterinary College, was deputed to report upon the subject, and this report throws a light upon the whole question, which A Few Words 07i Our Meat. 217- not only explains the reason of the dearness of meat, but gives us hints with respect to the quality of some of it which will astonish and alarm the public. We have all heard incidentally of a fatal disease among horned cattle, but few will be prepared for the enormous mortality that has been going on for years, decimating these beasts. Mr. Gamgee tells us that in the year i860 no less than 374,048 horned cattle, worth 3,805,938/., perished of disease, and that during the six years ending in i860 the total loss was 2,255,000, valued at 25,934,650/. Taking this tremendous mortality into consideration,, we think we need not complain at having to pay a penny a pound dearer for our beef than we used to do. The reduction of the tariff, which gave Sir Robert Peel such undying fame, and which was to have made England the market of the world for corn and cattle, has unfortunately totally failed to fulfil the promises of free-traders in respect to the latter item, as far as the consumers are concerned, inasmuch as we imported what we did not bargain for — a disease hitherto unknown to our stock- breeders, which has actually swept off four times as many beasts as have been imported into these islands. One half of this tremendous mortality is due to pleuro-pneumonia, or lung fever, which is infectious to the last degree, especially where the cattle are crowded in sheds, under cover. Thus out of a total of 1,839 milking-cows kept in %Z dairies 2i8 A Few Words on Otir Meat. in Edinburgh, in the year ending ist January, 1862, no less than 1,075 fell victims to this disease. In Dublin, again, we find the mortality, taking the average of the last twenty years, was nearly as high, for out of 315 dairy cows kept within that period, 161 became diseased and were obliged to be killed. The annual loss among sheep, through disease, is estimated at 1,600,000/. ; and among pigs at 1,209,000/. What becomes of all these diseased beasts .'' Fully one-fifth of them are sold to the butchers, the major portion for human consumption, and the remainder to feed, and, in many cases, to disease pigs. Every now and then we hear through the newspapers that some unprincipled butcher is fined for exposing dis- eased or tainted meat for sale in Newgate Market ; but these proceedings give not the faintest idea of the trade that is being carried on in animal food that is not fit for human consumption. In fact, many of the butchers themselves are unaware of the poisonous stuff they are supplying to the public, inasmuch as large quantities of meat are purchased at Newgate in the dead-meat market, the carcases having been prepared in distant parts of the country. In many cases it is only the viscera, such as the lungs, as in the deaths from pleuro-pneumonia, that is to outward appearance diseased ; this being removed, leaves the muscular fibre but little changed in appearance, but still unwholesome, and to a certain A Few Words on Our Meat. 219 degree poisonous. It does not always happen, hovvr- ever, that town butchers are so blameless. Mr. Gamgee describes a process called "polishing car- cases," by which they ingeniously manage to make diseased, lean carcases look like good fat meat. This is managed by killing a good fat ox at the same time that a number of diseased and lean animals are being killed. When the lean kind have been skinned, their flesh is rubbed over from the fat of the healthy ox. In order to spread this fat equally, hot cloths are used to distribute it over the carcase and give it an artificial gloss, and an appear- ance of being generally fat. The diseased organs of animals, however bad, are not wasted. They are either given to pigs, or taken direct to the sausage makers. Nothing seems too bad for the makers of these atrocious compounds. " I have seen," says Mr. Gamgee, " carcases dressed, and portions of them pre- pared for sale as sausage meat and otherwise, although thoracic disease had gone on to such an extent that gallons of fetid fluid were removed from the pleural sacs, and that large abscesses exist in the lungs." One of the most pestilential of the diseases that attack stock of all kinds is anthrax, a blood disease, which .shows itself in boils, and carbuncles, and gangrenous complications. Even beasts dying of so loathsome a disease as this find their way to the butchers' shops. It has been proved that pigs par- taking of this poisoned flesh have become infected 220 A Few Words on Our Meat. with carbuncular irruptions, and there seems good reason to believe that the great prevalence of carbun- cular irruptions in the human subject, noticed within these last twenty years, is due to the use of this class of diseased meat. Dr. Livingstone remarks " that whenever the natives of Africa ate the flesh of an animal that had died of pleuro-pneumonia, they always suffered from carbuncle." One of the most common diseases prevalent among stock is the measles in pigs. The term is rather inappropriate, as the measle is nothing less than the larvae of the tape-worm. The Irish say that " there is no pig without its measle." So common is this affection among Irish pigs, that it has created a new profession among those who deal in these animals, called "measle triers." Mr. Gamgee says, before the animals are paid for they are examined by a measle trier, a man who proceeds to work with a short and stout stick, a penknife, and an assistant. The pig is caught by his hind legs, then by a fore one, and then turned up ; the stick is forced into the mouth and turned down on the ground, with a knee placed upon it, inflicting pain, and bruising sadly the pig's upper jaw. The tongue is then drawn out and wiped, and measles looked for, or felt for, beneath or at the root of the tongue. When it can't be found there and the seller denies the fact of measles being present, the measle trier has to cut into the tongue and draw out the larvje. A Few Words on Our Meat. 221 It is not very satisfactory to hear that nearly all the measly pigs find their way to London, the Irish being too knowing to eat them. Mr. Gamgee tells us that there cannot be less than 50,000 measly pigs in Ireland, and that for every measly pig at least one person contracts tape-worm, hence the prevalence of that parasite in the human intestines. It has long been a puzzle how the larvae of the tape-worm cauld enter the stomach of man, alive, considering that the heat of cooking generally kills them ; but it is pretty ■certain that they are not always killed in the curing and smoking of ham and bacon, and in this manner it is supposed to obtain access to the human intes- tines. Measles are never found in Wiltshire bacon, therefore we should advise all our readers who wish to avoid this unpleasant parasite, to confine them- selves to the home-bred article. Another circum- stance which tends to make pork at times unwhole- some is the practice of feeding pigs with all kinds of offal. It is very common to give them the diseased viscera of all animals that have died, and in many cases their flesh is thereby rendered poisonous. Mr. Gamgee says, that sows fed on horseflesh and other offal always die shortly after they have farrowed, and that young pigs fed on flesh soon die. All carni- vorous pigs may be known by their soft diffluent fat. Mr. Huxtable, the famous pig breeder, is accustomed to fatten his stock by giving them a slice of fat bacon every morning. We hope after the evidence 222 A Few Words oji Our Meat. given by Mr. Gamgee that he will no longer pursue this objectionable practice. There is a great tempta- tion to feed pigs on offal, as they so speedily make flesh on 'this diet. For this reason many butchers breed pigs, and let them find their living in their slaughter-houses. Beware, therefore, good reader, of butcher pork. We are told that in the great establishments in France for the rearing of chickens and fowls, they are fed upon horse flesh, which they eat vora- ciously. If carnivorous feeding makes our pigs' flesh poisonous, it is very probable that a like system of feeding will make our delicate chicken meat a curse rather than a blessing to invalids. We may feel pretty sure that the horse flesh is not of the most healthy kind, or of the freshest quality. This rank food is not given primarily with the idea of fattening the fowls, but for its known quality of stimulating them to lay eggs, a carnivorous feeding hen, it is asserted, never failing to give her egg a day the whole year round ; a discovery this not very refreshing to the lovers of new-laid eggs, as so many of them now find their way here from France. To revert again, however, to the causes at work affecting the healthy quality of our meat, we may refer to the very unnatural manner in which our live- stock is fattened. Some time before Christmas all animals intended to compete for the great Smithfield prizes at the Agricultural Shov/ are dosed with oil- A Few Words on Our Meat. 223 cake and other carbonaceous materials, at the same time that they are stall-fed and deprived of all exer- cise. The result, in the butcher's eye, is " a per- fect picture" of a beast, for which the breeder is rewarded by the judges with a handsome prize. But, in reality, these prize-beasts are all, more or less, diseased by this over-feeding on highly-stimulating food. Mr. Gamgee tells us of severe outbreaks of disease in cattle incidental to plethora — the blood becomes poisoned by the amount of carbon they are supplied with — the fat and flesh increase, especially the fat, in a remarkable manner, and the breeder profits, but the result is not so satisfactory to the consumer. The fine ruddy beef overwhelmed in fat we see adorned with holly at Christmas is, in reality, diseased food. We are loth to disparage the Roast Beef of Old England, but this over-fed prize meat deserves no quarter. Some two or three years since, Mr. Gant, of the Royal Free Hospital, suspecting that the extraordinary high-pressure work suddenly put upon the great internal organs — such as the liver, heart, and lungs — of young animals thus fattened for the market, must be highly prejudicial to their health, determined to note some of these prize-beasts, and then to follow them up to the slaughter-house and hold a post-mortem upon them. This he did : and the result was, that he found their hearts were all affected with " fatty " degeneration — a disease which affects humanity as well as beasts among that well- -224 -^ F'^'^ Words on Otir Meat. to-do portion of mankind who love their stomachs "not wisely, but too well," and who neglect those exercises of the body which will alone permit a man thus to indulge. The heart thus damaged, the whole circulation is interfered with, and the animal can by no means be said to be healthy. Such meat may therefore be justly classed under the head of adult- erated food. It is bad enough to find our bread falsi- fied in the course of its manufacture by man, but it is outrageous to find the poor beasts subjected to a similar falsification, making them miserable whilst in this life, and, to a certain extent, deleterious as food when dead ; and, above all, it is truly monstrous to find a gigantic association, with dukes as presidents and experts as judges, selecting these bulky, apo- plectic, plethoric, heart-diseased beasts as models of feeding, as fine examples of good meat, and as flowers of produce to be held up as patterns to the energetic stock-breeders of the land. The question is, however, can we in any way pre- vent the evils we have pointed out, and restore the meat we eat to its natural healthy condition, before free-trade introduced foreign diseases among our stock, and high feeding and fattening further deteri- orate it } It is quite clear that the only means of insuring the slaughtering of healthy beasts must be the introduction of some measure that covers the whole country. The rapidly growing practice of killing and dressing the meat in the country, and A Fciu Words on Our Meat. 225 then forwarding it by rail, altogether frustrates any plan of mere inspection of metropolitan slaughter- houses ; and we are told it is not sufficient to inspect the dead-meat market at Newgate, inasmuch as there is much meat unquestionably diseased which does not look bad to the eye. Mr. Gamgee, for instance, says : " Many of the worst forms of disease are very sudden, and only slightly affect the colour and texture of the muscular apparatus. A fine fat bullock with florid meat may have died from splenic apoplexy, or been merely killed proforniA when already on the point of death. Remove the spleen, and the carcase appears sound ! Yet dogs and pigs in this country die from eating, although first cooked, any portion of such cattle." It must be remembered, that town butchers send to the dead-meat markets occasionally, as they cannot get sufficient of their own killing. Thus it will be seen that poisonous and unhealthy meat is as likely to reach the tables of the rich as those of the poor and middle classes. We have heard of persons being poisoned by eating a mutton-chop. Such dietetic eccentricities are generally ascribed to some peculiar idiosyncrasy of the individual so suffering. The effect of diseased mutton upon the stomach would, however, much more satisfactorily account for such a mishap. It is clear from what we have said, that a strict watch must be kept over the country slaughter-houses, as well as those in town, if we wish to prevent the bringing of diseased meat to town for sale. Q 226 A Few Words on Our Meat. The wilful spoiling of meat by the errors of diet is, we are glad to see, on the decrease, as the judges at our fat-cattle shows, in obedience to the public voice, have of late inclined to discourage the over- feeding of cattle, and look more now to their good points than to their powers of contributing to the grease-pot. As the public voice cannot, however, reach the fraudulent meat purveyors, we must look to the Board of Health for protection against them, and upon the foundation of this Report we think the Legislature will feel inclined to act. 227 HUMAN WASTERS. |MIDST the innumerable waste objects that of late years science has utilized, there is one, the most important of all others, we have neglected in this England of ours — the paradise for asylums for the distressed and helpless of all classes and degrees. The human waster — for until lately the idiot and the imbecile has been looked upon as such — has not only been a curse to himself, jeered at in the village, hooted, pelted, treated by other boys like one of the lower animals, and, conse- quently, often goaded into the commission of great crimes, but he has been a cause of infinite misery to others — his condition, in many cases, causing the waste of a sane life in order to take care of him. It is somewhat strange that, whilst efforts to improve the condition of these poor creatures have long been made on the Continent and in America, it is only within these twelve years that we have attempted to improve the mental condition of the imbecile, and to place him on the stage of life as a self-reliant being, Q2 228 Human Wasters. capable of earning his own living. It is said that thirty-five per cent, of these poor creatures are capable of being so elevated. This is, perhaps, too high an estimate; but there can be no doubt whatever that a very great number, by judicious and careful training, can be reclaimed from mere slavering idiots, incapable even of producing articulate sounds, or of the simplest acts of volition, and turned into very tolerable workmen, capable of living by the labour of their hands and brains. Fifty years ago the ablest psychologists did not believe such an amelioration of their condition possible. Esquirfel thought that, men- tally, they were incapable of improvement, and the lawyers, of course, followed suit. Those who travel on the Brighton Railway must have noticed the handsome pile of buildings at Earls- wood, near the Redhill Station. This building was erected about seven years since, and is the sole asy- lum in this country devoted to the education of im- beciles above the pauper class. As the rules of the establishment are calculated to exclude all those cases which are incurable, the visitor must not expect to find here any of the very lowest forms of idiots — beings that can by no stretch of reason be called human, but rather agglomerations of flesh and bone, incapable of motion or sensation, and enjoying no special sense of any kind ; these are to be sought in pauper asylums, and form the most terrible and loathsome of their inmates. The object of Earlswood Human Wasters. 229 is to develop, as far as possible, those congenitally deficient, mentally and physically, and not to clog its wards with creatures in some particulars below the condition of the zoophyte. At the invitation of Dr. Down, the medical super- intendent, we made the tour of the asylum ; and cer- tainly we were not prepared to find anything like the order and the perfect obedience that reigns through- out the whole asylum. Those who have seen idiots only in our lunatic asylums and workhouses, where they are tolerated rather than treated, would scarcely recognize the nature of the institution. The " boys " and " girls '' at Earlswood put on the appearance of a large school, and they go about their duties with an alacrity and a will that seems utterly opposed to the usual habits of imbeciles. And, indeed, the change they undergo, after being tutored by the daily rou- tine of the establishment, is often surprising to their instructors themselves. The majority of the patients, when admitted, are mischievous and destructive in the extreme, destroy- ing their clothes on the slightest provocation, eating their food like beasts, not knowing their right hand from their left, and often deficient in the power of performing any volitional act ; as to dressing them- selves, it is quite out of the question. In all these matters they have to receive instruction. Instead of tearing his clothes, the patient's destructive habits are turned to some useful purpose ; fibrous sub- 230 Human Wasters. stances that require to be divided are put into his hands ; instead of being scolded and beaten for ac- complishing his purpose, he finds that he is petted and praised, and his very evil propensity is made a means of leading him into habits of obedience and usefulness. One cannot be in the wards of this institution many minutes without perceiving that, whatever may be the age of the patient, the intellect, in many par- ticulars, is that of a very young child. The process of development in them has been arrested at a very early stage ; consequently they have to be instructed in the most elementary offices, and the method of instruction is the same we find doing our work so efficiently in the nursery. The faculty of imitation is the lever which the teachers use in those elementary finger lessons most of the inmates have to begin with. Twenty or thirty girls, for instance, were busily employed in one of the school-rooms learning to unbutton and to button gaiters, to tie strings, and even to pin their clothes together. Some of the children, through long practice, can do this perfectly, and these are distributed through the ranks of those who are untaught, and at the word of command the lesson begins. On the same principle, the Cingalese, when they have caught a troop of wild elephants, turn some tame elephants among them, and thus they are speedily taught to do all that is wanted of them. Human Wasters. 231 Instruction in eating with a knife and fork is given in the same simple manner, and very speedily chil- dren that fed themselves, on admission, with their hands, and scarcely knew how to do that well, are brought to take their dinner like other people. We witnessed the five hundred children in the establish- ment taking this meal, from a small balcony over- looking the spacious dining-hall, and we could not detect any one of them eating other than properly. When perfect command of the fingers is obtained, they are instructed in classes in the movements of the limbs. The fire that seems to light up the dullest face when these exercises are going on, is a sure proof of the attention being paid to the lesson. The power of attention is one of the feeblest the imbecile possesses ; accordingly, it is never distressed in these school-lessons — they are hurried from one room to another, and constant change is of the very essence of success. The powers of speech are exercised by what is called the "bell-pulling lesson." The children all imitate, by their actions, bell-ringers, and, as they pull, they sing together some such doggerel rhymes as children do in play. This lesson exercises the tongue, the lips, and the sense of time and tune ; for they all sing together, and the ear is rarely distressed by any discordance. We could not help comparing the articulate and not unpleasing sounds we heard in this bell-pulling lesson with the fearful howling, worse 232 Hitman Wasters. than that of a wild beast, which once struck our ear, as a troop of poor pauper imbeciles passed us in their evening walk. The infinite pains the patients require to teach them the most simple actions which ordinary children acquire by themselves almost imperceptibly, is a measure of the feebleness of their perceptive qualities. Once having conquered these little pre- liminary difficulties, their progress is more rapid ; but still the process is tedious, for it must be remembered they have to learn everything. Form and colour lessons, especially, are essential, if they are to be- come workmen and workwomen. Accordingly, the industrial and the intellectual lessons go on at the same time. We saw a group of lads putting square pegs into square holes, others fitting oval and other forms into corresponding recesses. In this way the eye is taught to appreciate accurately how to fit things together. Some of the lads, who show an in- clination that way, also learn drawing ; and we were astonished at nothing so much as the very admirable copies of Landseer and Phillips we saw done in crayons, by one of these students. These pictures were as perfectly copied as they could have been done by any of the prizemen of the Schools of Art. In all probability the draughtsman could not sketch the simplest form from nature, but, as far as mechani- cal imitation was concerned, the result was perfect. Possibly our readers had an opportunity of in- specting these and other results of educated idiot Huma?i Wasters. 233 labour at the fancy fair held last year in the metro- polis. All these exercises greatly facilitate the boys in the learning of the various handicrafts carried on in the workshops of 'the establishment. The tailors' shop turns out all the clothes used by the inmates, the shoemakers' shop makes and mends, and the car- penters do the repairs and make the articles wanted on the premises. One is reminded, at every step we take, of the infantile nature of the brains we see around us ; all their actions, even of men of eighteen and twenty, we see repeated in our own nurseries by children of three and four. The eagerness with which the workmen run up and show how well they can do what they are about, the pleasure with which a little praise is received by them, all testify to the arrest of development their brains have undergone at a very early age. Although the training they have expe- rienced leads them to habits of industry and obedience which assimilate them in their movements to ordinary boys and girls, yet one cannot mistake their mental condition, on a close examination, for one instant. In nearly every case the head is misformed, being cither unsymmetrical or undersized. The uninitiated, however, are apt to make strange mistakes with respect to the powers of improvement of the patients from the appearance of the head alone. Some of the most hopeless cases have often the best-looking heads and the most regular features ; and, on the other hand, the smallest heads, that would at once be de- 234 Htnnan Wasters. nounced as typical of the true idiot, have proved com- parativ.ely intellectual. Dr. Down gives it as his opinion, and it is a very valuable one, that the con- genital imbecile is far more likely to show good re- sults from his training, than the boy with a merely damaged brain. It cannot fail to be remarked that a very large per centage of the lads have some obli- quity of vision ; there is a twist in the visual organ which corresponds to the cerebral twist which dis- tinguishes them ; and this fact gives some foundation to the popular prejudice against squint-eyed people, and a belief in a moral obliquity of vision corre- sponding to the physical strabismus. There is a farm of upwards of a hundred acres attached to the asylum, and stock enough kept on it to supply the dairy requirements of the asylum. The least intellectual of the patients, but who yet possess good physical health, are employed about the farm, and are especially fond of the work. Feeding the animals is very congenial employment to them, and several of the lads are good milkers — an occupation which is not so very easy to some sane people. The piggery, again, is a very pleasant scene of operations, and certainly the animals we saw possessed good points, which would have won prize medals for them had they belonged to the late Prince Consort. The training of the girls, like that of the boys, is calculated to practise them in all domestic operations. They scrub, work at the needle, attend to the linen. Hwnan Wasters. 235 and do all the necessary offices of the ward-rooms, and are made useful in the kitchen as scullery-maids, in washing up. Consequently, when the five years, the time for which those upon the foundation are elected, have elapsed, they return to their homes, quite capable of assisting in the household, instead of being a drag upon their parents, and a constant source of misery and care to them. We trust our lady reader will not be offended if we tell her that we saw some specimens of that fashionable occupation — Berlin wool-working — admirably done by some poor idiots in this asylum. Dr. Down speedily found out, however, that, not- withstanding the value of associating idiots together in classes, regarded inan educational point of view, yet that it was injurious to them in respect of self- reliance. It is not enough to make a man a good carpenter ; he must be taught to deal with sane people, as he must do, if he is ever to mix with the world again, and earn his own livelihood. In this respect it was found that he was less capable after a residence at Earlswood than he was when running about the town or village, a butt to every other boy, but still learning something from his tormentors ; he would go some simple errand to the village shop, for instance, and know the value of his pence. This Dr. Down found his little charges were quite igno- rant of, and it led to one of the most interesting methods of instruction in the establishment. We 236 Huvian Wasters. allude to the "shop lesson." V/c all know what a favourite amusement it is in the nursery to play at " keeping shop," and the hours of amusement a few bits of broken biscuit and a bit of board for a counter will afford a troop of children, in making believe to buy and sell. In our opinion, it was a real inspiration of genius which led Dr. Down to imitate the play of the nursery ; for his patients are but children, and have all the instincts, amusements, and habits of our little ones. The room in which this lesson is taught is fitted up with small drawers, such as we see in a general shop. On these drawers the names of the different articles they contain are written, such as sugar, soap, starch, nutmegs, nuts, twine — indeed, the common run of articles to be found in the village general shop. The boys are ranged one above another, on rows of seats, and the counter, with scales and weights and mea- sures, is placed in the middle of the room. The in- structor calls out for a shopman, and half-a-dozen eager voices proclaim their willingness to take upon themselves the duty. One is selected, steps down, and places himself behind the counter. The master then asks who wishes to buy. There is the same con- tention of voices, all willing to take part in the play, and at last one is chosen. It is really a good study of fun to watch the buyer and seller commence opera- tions. The customer makes believe to enter, and if the seller does not immediately salute him in the Huvian Wasters. 237 most polite manner, the customer gravely tells him what he ought to do. Now commences the process of sale. The customer, evidently with an eye to his stomach, demanded a quart of Spanish nuts. The shopman marched to the drawers and deliberately read them down until he came to " nuts." Then com- menced the process of measuring and the scru- tiny of the measures to find the right one. This process was watched with the most intense eagerness by the audience, and every mistake was corrected immediately by some one of the boys. Now came the still more puzzling matter of calculating the pay- ment, and of giving change. It was often a curious struggle between buyer and seller, as to which should manage to throw upon the other the difficulty of calculating ; sometimes the purchaser throwing down a shilling and archly asking the shopman to give him back the right change, which, of course, he objected to do. The audience above, however, very much helped the players in the drama by their remarks ; a good calculator prompting the purchaser, whilst the others would be making remarks upon the dearness of the nuts, the correct value of which some of them at least were well acquainted with. The instructor, who stood by, saw that the transaction was carried on properly, and when the boy had paid the money he opened his jacket pocket, and the instructor, making believe to pour the nuts into it, adroitly put them back into the drawer, to the great annoyance of the 238 Hznnan Wasiers. purchaser, but to the uproarious amusement of the audience. The amount of instruction conveyed by this practical lesson to the class is immense, and we trust that many more shops will be opened for their instruction, beyond the general shop, which is very well as a beginning. Some of the lads are now sent on small errands to the neighbouring village, and one of the inmates acts as postman to the establish- ment. Two days are set apart in the week for special amusement, but even the amusements are intended to afford instruction. The gallantishow, for instance, is a most powerful means of teaching the patients the common objects of nature, and the little stories or dramas in which these are introduced show their rela- tion to each other. By means of the lime-light, move- able figures of animals and human figures are cast upon a white sheet, and this shadow pantomime strikes the feeble mind most forcibly. " Punch " is also performed, and the destructive organs, which are ' always predominant in the imbecile, are greatly ex- cited by the twhacks Punch deals to his wife. Whilst the condition of all the inmates is far more favourable, we will venture to say, than the outside world has any conception of, there are certain show- boys that really evince a marvellous ability in certain special directions ; so much so, indeed, that they would lead persons, judging from their performances in the particular matters in which they excel, to deny their Human Wasters. 239 imbecility altogether. For instance, there is the his- torian, a "boy" of two or three and twenty — they are all called boys, whatever age they may be, and they really are so in intellect — who will go through the whole " History of England," from the Conquest to the present time, without making an error. He would take very high marks in the Civil Service ex- amination on this subject ; but if asked any question of the most ordinary kind out of this particular line, he would be completely dumbfounded. His memory for occurrences in history appears to be quite me- chanical — it is Mangnall's " Questions and Answers " to the letter. If, in his recital, he happens to make a mistake, he goes back until he recovers the right word or the right form of expression. We could not help thinking, whilst he was thus " trying back," of the calculating machine of Babbage, which retraces its steps on the commission of an error in just the same manner. The fact of this patient possessing the quality of memory in such a perfect degree, is only another example of the fallaciousness of imputing any high quality of brain to the person possessing it. Morphy, the chess-player, once told us that if he only once read a column of the Times, he could re- peat it from the beginning to the end, without omit- ting a word. The brain, in his case, as in that of the patient in the asylum, would appear to take off a proof, as it were, of the type they had read from, and this they could do at any time. They saw it in their 240 Human Wasters. minds, as they would see a picture. There is another patient here who has a most remarkable memory for the date of events. We came upon him in the green- house, and Dr. Down asked him the time when a -certain event occurred. He answered immediately, giving, not only the year, month, and day, but the very minute. A still more extraordinary, and, to us, far higher special quality of mind, is evinced by a poor imbecile that cannot even speak intelligently. He seems to have the quality of constructiveness in great perfection. Shipbuilding, however, seems to be liis forte. The superintendent's attention was directed to him by finding that he was for ever occupying himself with cutting out the hulls of ships. Perceiv- ing this tendency. Dr. Down gave him a treat to Woolwich Dockyard. The visit seemed to have lighted up the faculty in a remarkable manner : he at once threw aside the solid wooden models he had before been working upon, and determined to build a frigate as he perceived they were built by the shipwrights. This he did most carefully, making working drawings of the lines of the vessel beforehand, including mid- ship sections, longitudinal sections, &c., all of them being done, apparently, with mathematical accuracy. Upon these lines the vessel was built, timber by tim- ber, and plank by plank (the latter being bent to the proper curve by steam), coppered and fastened, rigged, and furnished in every respect in a very ela- borate and workmanlike manner. In only one Hiaiiau Wasters. 241 respect could it be told from any ordinary model, such as practised hands would have turned out — the blocks of the rigging were at least ten times as large as they should have been. He was told of this error in the beginning, but he would never admit it, until, on trying to float his vessel, he found she was top- heavy, and turned over ; then, slowly, he admitted his mistake. The progressive element in this lad's brain is, however, very strong. He now designs to build a model of the Great Eastern, thirteen feet in length, and we saw in his workshop the lines of the new vessel already drawn upon the board. We could scarcely believe that an individual possessing such qualities, and especially possessing such a desire to improve, could be feeble-brained ; but, on meeting with him, we found that, although not dumb, he could not put two intelligible words together ; indeed, he gave us to understand that it was best to draw Vv-hat he had to say, and, in fact, he explained himself by a series of hieroglyphics and motions of the hand. In every respect but in his ability to construct he was a very poor creature indeed. These cases remind us of the idiot at Berne, whose sole employment, and that in which he greatly ex- celled, was in drawing cats in every conceivable atti- tude and expression of countenance. In sane life, how often we find that a man who possesses a genius in one direction is little better than a fool in all others. 242 Human Wasters. These special cases, possessing special qualities of mind, would appear to indicate that special por- tions of the brain are set apart for the performance of special acts, and that they may remain in a healthy condition whilst all the other parts are deficient or diseased. The founders of phrenology would have liked to see the imbeciles we have referred to pos- sessing such special powers. Although the majority of the inmates belong to the working class, and are supported by the charity, there are other paying cases of a superior character. These are divided into patients making normal pay- ments of fifty guineas per annum, reduced in special cases to thirty-five guineas ; these associate with those on the foundation. A still higher class, paying one hundred guineas per annum, have private rooms in association ; and the highest of all, paying one hundred and fifty guineas, have separate rooms and nurses. The two latter classes of paying patients are lodged and boarded in one of the wings, quite separate from the rest of the patients ; but they are all instructed in common, an intellectual classification being the only one adopted. By this method all classes receive the same educational advantages, without interfering with their social standing ; the latter being a matter which concerns the parents rather than the children, who appear happily ob- livious to all questions of rank or position — the poor man's son and the gentleman's taking part in Human Wasters. 243 their games and studies as brothers would to- gether. When we see the admirable results of the teaching of idiots at Earlswood, we cannot help asking how it is we have so few of these establishments in this country. In addition to the asylum over which Dr. Down so admirably presides, there is but one other — Essex Hall — in which any attempt is made to ele- vate the human waster one step in the scale of intelli- gence. Yet the grain is ripe for the sickle. On January 1st, 1863, there were, according to the return of the Poor-Law Board, no less than 13,126 imbeciles to be found in our workhouses and pauper lunatic asylums, living the life of beasts, and dying in the same abject condition. If it be really true that thirty-five per cent, of these are so far capable of im- provement as to be able to support themselves, the State is doing a cruel thing in withholding instruction from them. Instead of one, we ought to have a dozen Earlswoods ; and we trust this great want will speedily be brought under the notice of the Legislature. R 2 244 THE CITY COMPANIES. [;HE public are now and then informed that some great personage has become a fish- monger. The Prince of Wales became a member of that wet profession not long since ; and people are astonished to find, when any civic election is going on in the City, how many spectacle-makers are among the candidates ; indeed, if we were to judge from their number, we might imagine that Londoners suffered from very imperfect eyesight. It is all very well for princes to play at being trades- men ; but it is no mere optical delusion that our merchants, ambitious of filling the chair of the first magistrate, can only do so by turning, by name at least, lens-maker, or craftsman of one or another of the City great Companies, which of old represented the trading greatness of the Metropolis. At the present day the City Companies are only shadows of what they were in the past ; indeed, they are little better than chartered associations for the distribution of the splendid patronage left to them by past generations, and trustees for almsgiving on a very splendid scale. Tlie City Companies. 245 Out of the eighty-two companies which still sti'uggle to keep their heads above water, there are only a very few that may be termed working companies, or companies still possessing trade privileges. There are the Goldsmiths' Company, which still possesses the right of assaying all the gold and silver manufac- tured, and of stamping on these metals the hall mark ; the Apothecaries', which sells drugs in its hall, and possesses the right of entering shops within its juris- diction and testing for adulterations ; the Stationers', which claims a certain superintendence over the booksellers; the Painter-stainers and the Coachmakers' companies, which now and then exhibit some spas- modic action in the way of an exhibition of works of their craftsmen ; and, finally, the Gunsmiths', which possesses the privilege of trying all the London-made guns. Beyond these, the companies chiefly maintain their existence on good dinners, loving cups, and the power of giving good things away, including twelfth-night cakes to themselves annually, hand- some fees for attendance, and certain old ceremonies in the manner of the election of their officers, which we shall allude to presently — healthy exercises these, calculated to extend their longevity to an indefinite period. Of course there are very few veritable tradesmen to be found among them ; for instance, the Mercers', which stands first among the twelve great companies, cannot count a single member of the craft among its livery ! What pretence the Bowyers 246 The City Companies. and the Fletchers have had to call themselves a trade, (except it be that of toy-makers), since the days of Queen Bess, we cannot tell. The Pinmakers, thirty years ago, were reduced to two members, who have long since, we suppose, been gathered to their fathers; the Musicians, the Inn- keepers, and the Masons, indeed all the minor com- panies who are not supported by large funded pro- perty handed down to them, are virtually defunct. The "twelve," however, will never willingly die so long as they have money in the Funds, and the power of distributing it. Their names, and the order in which they stand, are 'as follows : — The Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Taylors, Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmon- gers, Vintners, and Clothworkers. All of these com- panies still possess halls, stowed away mostly in nar- row streets within the City limits, unknown to fame. Two, however, form conspicuous objects — the Fish- mongers' Hall, facing London Bridge, and the Gold- miths' Hall, behind the Post Office. Those who pass Cheapside daily are perhaps aware of a narrow fa9ade hemmed in between old-fashioned brick houses, on which, over an iron gateway, two cherubs, that ought to be subjected to a course of Ban- tingism, sprawl in a condition of nudity. This is the entrance to the hall of the leading company of Mer- cers. These halls, like the companies themselves, have lost all their old grandeur and traditional cha- TJie City Companies. 247 racter. The Great Fire demolished the whole of them, with the exception of the smaller halls of the Leather- sellers, in Bishopsgate Street, and of the Carpenters, at London Wall, which, however, give no indications of the magnificence of those belonging to the great companies in early times. These were fashioned out of the deserted mansions of the nobility. Thus, the Grocers established themselves in the town mansion of the Lords Fitzwalter ; the Drapers' Hall was the mansion of Lord Cromwell. Both of these halls re- tain portions of their original fine gardens. The Salters' hall was the town mansion of the Earls of Oxford. After the Reformation many of the com- panies bought old religious houses, and, with certain modifications, established themselves therein. The Leathersellers located themselves in the nunnery of St. Helen's, and the Pinners occupied the Austin- Friars' hall. These old houses, fitted up with good old halls, or chapels which were convertible into the same purpose, afforded ample room for the famous hos- pitality these guilds exercised in the old time. In- deed, their magnificence may be judged by the fact, that while they were in existence there was no Man- sion House for the chief magistrate, and the lord mayor generally gave his entertainments and kept his state in one or another of them, generally in the one belonging to his own company. In looking back at the records of the companies, one cannot fail to be struck with the taste of these 248 TIic City Companies. old worthies for all kinds of festivity, merry-making, and shows. It really seems that the Englishman of the present day is a very different creature from the Englishman of three or four centuries ago. In the Catholic times, he appears to have been more like the Frenchman or the Italian, wearing his bonnet with a difference, of course ; but still possess- ing a love of pleasure and a fondness for display strangely in contrast with his present character. What with the " ridings out against great personages," the setting of the midsummer watch, the trade pageants, the burials in state of their members, and their end- less banquets and festivities, we scarcely know how they got through any business at all. Looking at them as we do through the haze of time, they all seem to have been more like " noble boys at play '' than the discreet sad men they picture themselves to have been. In the early days, the palmy days of these guilds, The Hall was in truth the centre and heart, as it were, of the craft to which it belonged. The various companies exercised almost despotic power over their members, especially over all matters relating to their trade. They made their rounds and saw that no member was adulterating his goods, or giving short weight or measure. The Drapers, as well as the Merchant Taylors, used to have a standard, or yard measure of silver, with which they visited the City fairs, where cloth was principally sold, and measured The City Companies. 249 off every man's bales. The Grocers made the same scrutiny into the shops of their craft, and doubtless prevented the pepper from being dusted, and the sugar from being sanded ; they also maintained a strict line of demarcation between different trades. The mercer sold silk mercery, and nothing more ; the haber- dasher, haberdashery ; the vintners, wine ; and the beersellers, beer. A man of the latter craft who should have posted up a placard outside of his door " Old crusty Port at 3^-. 9^.," would have been mulcted by his fellowship in a fine; and if he insisted, he would have been turned out of the company. When trades in the old time were mapped out in this way, they were also generally carried on pretty much in the same locality. Thus, the fishmongers were to be found in Tower Street and Fish Street Hill, as they are at present ; fripperers (old apparel sellers), and upholders, or upholsterers, congregated on Ludgate- Hill ; the mercers and haberdashers in West Cheape, and the goldsmiths also frequented this great tho- roughfare ; the brewers kept, as they do now, near the Thames. In reference to the power of the com- panies with respect to fining for adulterating, it would appear that this power was not wholly possessed by themselves. Numbers of other companies had it in their poAver to make complaints before the lord mayor of the misdoings of any cr-aft ; and the only event civic history relates of the celebrated Richard Whit- tington is that he was a terror to the brewers, several 250 Tlie City Companies. members of which craft he prosecuted and punished for giving bad measure. We are sorry to add that it is recorded that the Brewers' Company at length mollified him by a present of two pipes of red wine, costing no less than 7/. 3^. A/i., a large sum in his day. Bribes to powerful persons were quite a matter of course in those days, as we fear they are even now, only given in a more refined and second-hand manner. In the early times these trade guilds were semi- religious bodies, and all their afiairs had an ecclesias- tical element in them. They all had their patron saints, who were generally chosen for their associa- tions with their particular craft. Thus, the Fish- mongers' was St. Peter ; the Drapers', the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lamb; the Goldsmiths', St. •Dunstan. Upon these saints' days their grand fes- tivals and shows were always held. They kept a mortuary priest, sometimes two, who attended the obits of all deceased members, and they maintained perpetual lights on the different altars erected to their deceased worthies. The estates left to the companies in trust to maintain these altars and chantries formed a very large part of their property ; and when they were seized by Edward VI. a very great blow was dealt at their power and consequence, as they had to redeem them by the sale of other property. When any very eminent member of their craft died, the whole livery attended his funeral. All the companies The City Companies. 251 had a state hearse-cloth, or pall, which was used on these grand occasions. The Saddlers' Company still preserve theirs ; and the Fishmongers' great pall is one of the famous sights of that great company. It was not a mere cloth of black velvet, such as we now use, although they used such on ordinary occasions, but a splendidly embroidered affair, a description of which will not, perhaps, be here out of place. " It consists of a centre slip about twelve feet long and two feet and a half wide, and two shorter sides, each eight feet eleven inches long, by one foot four inches wide, and when laid over the coffin must have totally enveloped it ; but it is without corner folds, like our modern palls. * * * The pattern of the central part is a sprig or central flower, the latter of which is composed of gold network bordered with red, and the whole whereof reposes on a smooth solid ground of cloth of gold. The end pieces and side borders to this middle slip are worked in different pictures and representations. The end pieces con- sist of a very rich and massy wrought picture, in gold and silk, of the patron, St. Peter, in pontificalibiis. He is seated on a superb throne, his head crowned with the papal tiara. One hand holds the keys, and the other is in the posture of giving the benediction. On each side of the saint is a kneeling angel, censing him with one hand, and holding a sort of golden vase with the other. * * The angels' wings, according to the old custom in such representations, are composed of 252 The City Companies. peacocks' feathers, in all their natural, vivid colours ; the outer robes are gold, raised with crimson ; their under-vests white, shaded with sky blue ; the faces are finely worked in satin, after nature, and they have long yellow hair. The side pieces are pictures equally elaborately wrought of Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter. The entire pall has a fringe of two inches in depth of gold and purple silk threads." This pall is supposed to be the last Catholic pall used by the company a short time before the change of faith ; hence its splendid condition, and the vivid- ness of its colours. On the burial, in 1524, of Sir Thomas Lovell (who built Lincoln's Inn Gateway), at Holywell Nunnery, Shoreditch, we catch a glimpse of the habit our fathers had of turning events of such solemnity into feasts ; for we find that " there was a drynkynge in all the cloisters, the nuns' hall, the par- lors of the said place, and everywhere ells for as many as would come, as well the crafts of London as gen- tlemen of the Inns of Court." This seems to have been the universal practice at the time. At ordinary funerals the bearers were regaled with beer and ale in the churches ; and on such grand occasions as the one above noticed the company, after attending the state funeral, always dined together in their hall. These feasts were an odd mixture of strong and deli- cate meat. Roasted swans — standard swans set up- right in the dish, — was a very favourite dish in those days ; boar, conger, lampreys, and coney standard, or Tlic City Companies. 253 rabbits set upright, are also continually mentioned ; and besides these, we find "sea hog,'' or porpoise, spoken of in those feasts as a standard dish. These sea-hogs must have been a monstrous size some- times, as we find that when a cart is required to bring them to the kitchen an extra allowance is to be made for carriage. With these grosser dishes, however, we find some lighter courses of a more delicate charac- ter, such as white mottrews, leche lombard, great birds with little ones together, fritters, payne puff, frumenty, or wheat boiled in milk, was also a favourite dish, and the drink was .some red wine of the claret kind. Rude as was the magnificence of the grand dinners of these trade guilds, in one respect they far sur- passed those of modern days. They admitted the ladies, not to peep at their gross feeding from some far-off gallery, but to sit with them at the best places of the board. Not only were the fair sex invited, but the members were directed to bring them, under penalties of disobedience. In the early times women as well as men were members of these guilds ; and every member's betrothed was expected to come, and was considered as good as one of the livery. In the early part of the 17th century the ladies are no longer found gracing the board, but even as late as 1687 we find one very notable exception, when Sir John Peake, Lord Mayor, was entertained by the Mercers' Company. The coat and crest of this com- 254 Tlie City Companies. pany is a virgin with dishevelled hair, and this virgin and mystery they always made the most of in their trade pageants. The maiden chariot in which she generally rode on these occasions was made of beaten and embossed silver, drawn by nine white Flemish mares, three abreast, in rich trappings of silver and white feathers. The lady was splendidly attired in white satin, adorned with jewels, and was surrounded by young ladies representing all the virtues; but what comes next is the most astounding. The virgin and all her fair- bevy of attendants had their table pro- vided for them in the hall, and dined in state on the dais. Imagine the sensation such a bevy of virgins must have made among the younger members of the craft! These ladies were not, however, of doubtful character, such as we imagine would be likely to offer themselves for these public shows ; but their respect- ability was guaranteed by a committee chosen to select them: at least such was the case in 1704, when Sir William Gore was entertained by the Mercers, for we find it recorded that the virgin on that occasion was "a young and beautiful gentlewoman, of good parentage, religious education, and unblemisht repu- tation ; " and we must of course suppose that all her handmaidens were to match. A reredos or screen generally ran across these old halls, to divide them from the buttery hatch, as we see it now does in the dining-hall of the Middle Temple. In the gallery above this the musicians 77^1? City Companies. ■ 255 were posted, and we find it was the custom " to send the hat round " for these worthies, as we see it re- corded that at a dinner of the Brewers' Company the clerk collected 2od. in the hall for " the harper min- strel." We must suppose that on state occasions a certain staid and sad gravity was maintained ; but on ordinary festivals, after dinner, the pageants com- menced. This was a much easier matter to manage than may be imagined. The pageant was generally kept in the open timber roof; it was let down with cords, and the simple play began. In the early days it was illustrative of some Scripture passage, such as Noah descending from the ark with his sons, or the sacrifice of Isaac ; and our forefathers, after they had had their dinner and wine, were wonderfully tolerant of all shortcomings. Like boys at play, the same old toy afforded them amusement for a very long time. On grand occasions, when -they indulged in out-of- door pageants, they threw an air of poetry into these displays. When, for instance, a lord mayor was chosen from their guild, some special entertainment was made to entertain him in his passage through the streets, or along the river; for there were water pageants as well as land pageants. The land pageants were exhibited on a movable stage. Poets, we are told, were engaged to compose what were called "projects," or arrangements of scenes, with character, song, and dialogue descriptive of the company of the lord mayor elect. In the water spectacle of Sir 256 The City Companies. Thomas Middleton, grocer, in 1613, the pageant con- sisted of " five islands, artfully garnished with all manner of Indian fruit trees, drugges, spiceries, and the like, the middle island having a faire castle espe- cially beautiful," in allusion to the forts of the newly established East India Company, which gave an im- mense impetus to the trade of the company. These islands must have been movable ones, placed on boats. All the other great companies had solemn entertain- ments on the occasion of having a lord mayor elected from their body ; so that with the home plaything kept in the roof of the halls, the royal pageants, when kings entered or returned from the wars (such as those given to Henry V. after Agincourt, and to Henry VII. after Bosworth), and the setting of the Midsummer watch, — a kind of civic guard for the protection of the City, in which all the companies vied with each other in the magnificent manner in which they turned ■out their contingent to this grand Middle-ages pro- cession—we may imagine what a merry time those old gentlemen had whose effigies we see on old monu- ments, the very pictures of sad sedateness and gravity, which, in common with many of our notions of the habits of our forefathers, are wholly delusive. But if the City Companies knew how to amuse themselves, they also in time of necessity played an important part in the affairs of the country. Henry VII. early saw the value of these bodies as a protec- tion to the crown against the nobility, and he ingra- The City Companies. 257 tiated himself with them by becoming a member of the Taylors' Company, and sat with them in the open hall, clothed in the livery of their craft. James I. became a member of the Clothworkers' Company, and the grand festival given on the occasion of his inauguration was celebrated by two events. Inigo Jones arranged the pageant ; and in the old hall of the company the glorious anthem, " God, save the King," was first heard. Dr. John Bull having com- posed it for the ceremony. Charles 1 1, and William III. were also members of City companies. But this con- nection of the companies with royalty was dearly purchased, as they speedily came to be looked upon as milch cows in all cases of state impecuniosity. Henry VIII., in IS4S, first opened their purse-strings by borrowing a sum of 21,263/. ^^- ^^- towards carry- ing on his wars in Scotland. On another occasion, having sent his commissioners to assess the com- panies. Alderman Richard Read was bold enough to object to it as an arbitrary measure ; but the King speedily put an end to any attempt at opposition by seizing the alderman, and sending him as a foot soldier to the Scotch wars. The exactions upon the companies went on increasing from this time until that of William III., and the vast riches of the com- panies were greatly reduced thereby. These bodies gave not only in purse, but in person. On the first threat of the Spanish Armada, the government of Elizabeth demanded 10,000 men of the City, fully S 258 The City Companies. equipped. These they furnished by impressment, to- gether with thirty-five ships. Several other draughts of soldiers were made upon them ; and we all know how boldly the 10,000 train bands served the nation in its time of utmost need, marching to the relief of Gloucester during the civil war, and thereby settling the fate of Charles. They were also foremost in all adventures. They contributed towards the expenses of fitting out Sebastian Cabot's expedition from Bristol, which resulted in the discovery and annexa- tion to the English crown of North America. They helped to settle Virginia, and in doing so we fear they acted in a rather arbitrary manner towards the poor of the City, shipping them off to the new land without particularly consulting their inclination ; and they also largely embarked in settling Ulster, under James I., and thereby laid the foundation of those Irish estates which are to this day the best adminis- tered in that country. Trade, for the protection of which they had originally been founded, began to struggle against their restrictions as early as the days of the Tudors, and their fate was sealed by the rapid progress which the country was making in mercantile pursuits, before the advent of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth men, who drained their coffers to the dregs, or the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed all their halls and melted their plate, with two or three insignificant exceptions, and also their house property in the City ; and finally, the destruction of the ancient TJie City Companies. 259 charters which gave them such special trade powers, by Charles II., dealt them their death-blow as powers in the State. But their splendid charities and their great schools, founded in ancient times, their exhi- bitions to our universities, still remain, augmenting in value every year in consequence of the vast in- crease in the value of their estates. What their worth would have been had the Crown not despoiled them centuries since, we scarcely like to calculate, seeing that many of them consisted of land now within the limits of the metropolis, and often in posi- tions where ground is valued by the hundred thou- sand pounds an acre. Perhaps it is well that this property is dispersed, as it has proved to be far too valuable to rest under the governance of any chartered bodies of men. About the beginning of the Stuart period, perhaps, the companies were in the most flourishing condition. Certainly, the entertainments they gave to princes were magnificent. Their sideboards abounded with curious plate, their halls and gardens were on a scale of great magnificence, and they formed the centre of little communities, to whom they diffused their bounty. The City halls had attached to them granaries, well stored, in case of a dearth of corn in the City — a very common occurrence, as but little was grown in the country, and we had mainly to depend upon that imported from abroad. The corn- metage duties, levied to this day, are a remnant of S 2 26o The City Companies. the privileges attaching to these City granaries. Dep6ts of coals were also attached to the various halls, to be given in hard seasons to the poor ; and, finally, the almshouses of the craft were assembled around them, in which dwelt their almsmen, who were called upon to swell the pageants of their com- panies on all grand occasions. The liveries of the crafts, in early days, were so bright that, when the companies turned out, they must have made a sight more like those we read of in Italian history than such as we are accustomed to find among English- men now-a-days. The very names of the colours used are full of picturesqueness. There were murrey and plunket, and murrey and plunket-colestyne, san- guine, mustard villars, scarlet and puke, &c. These were all bright hues, and the wearers of them must have made up a picture, on grand occasions, worthy of a carnival at Venice. The Great Fire swept away all this finery, demolished the grand halls, filled its maw with all the pageants hanging in the roofs, melted the "loving-cups " and "grand salts" — marks of demarcation between the upper and lower ends of the tables, — and finally made an end of most of the elements of the picturesque in the habits of the crafts- men. When the halls were rebuilt — and it is won- derful with what alacrity this was done, all the companies occupying their new houses, and going on as of old, within three years of the calamity which made a clean sweep of the City, — it was done in the The City Companies. 261 ugly and formal style of the period, and there is not one of them now existing, in the many out-of-the- way corners of the City, that in any way recalls the ancient glories of these famous trading guilds. Some old customs, however, still linger. The swans that they used to breed for their feasts they still go up the river to " count " on Swanhopping-day — the old state barge, the Maria Wood, until lately, being called into requisition for these occasions. Dog- get's " coat and badge," the gift of a member of the Fishmongers' Company, is still rowed for by the London watermen, although what possible use the costume can now be of, we do not know. Lord Mayor's Show continues, shorn of its fair proportions, the water processions in the gay barges having been given up within these last three or four years. The picturesque method of declaring the election of mas- ters and wardens of the companies still remains, how- ever. The real elections are made in secret, some days previously to the election dinners, on which occa- sions, after the sumptuous banquets, which the com- panies have by no means foregone, the old masters and wardens enter with garlands on their heads ; these are taken off, and there is a great make-believe show of seeing whom among the assistants, who form the executive of the company, these garlands will fit. By some singular coincidence it is at last found that they fit those previously chosen to fill these posts of honour and emolument. These garlands are of 262 Tfie City Companies. velvet, ornamented with the badge of the company. It must certainly look rather odd to see prosaic Eng- lishmen of the present day, with great red faces, buried in stick-up collars, masquerading after this fashion ; but, as they swear to do away with no old custom on these occasions, and ratify their oath by quaffing from the " loving-cup," they must be left, we suppose, to their devices. t 263 ) PHO TO-SCULP TURE. |F we look at the mass of photographs taken a dozen years ago, they clearly give evi- dence of decay; the yellow tint of the paper testifying to some chemical change taking place in the colour of the chemicals with which they have been washed. As years pass by this tint darkens, and the clear image necessarily becomes confused and faint. If this slow process of decay is to be traced in the better class specimens of the art, inferior photograph pictures may be expected to decay apace. Indeed, we know that the slightest carelessness in the operation of washing the photograph after it is printed, is sure to entail the destruction of the picture, sooner or later ; and when we remember the inartistic man- ner in which some of these portraits are produced by ignorant persons, we may feel sure that they are not destined to preserve very long the image painted upon them by the pencil of Light. Since photography has swept away the whole race of miniature-painters. 264 Photo- Sculpture. — with two or three eminent exceptions — it is cer- tainly a sad thing to contemplate the effacement of the likenesses that have long been cherished with affection, and, perchance, bathed with tears. We have so long flattered ourselves that the cm^te de visite confers upon us a certain immortality, that it gives us a shock to find that we have been deceived, and that all the infinite beauty of the Sun's pencil will probably be survived by the clumsy silhouettes which have been cut out with the scissors. Such being the evanescent character of photography, it is at least cheering to find that a new art has been discovered, which enables us to transfer its delicate drawing to a material more enduring than paper. The art of photo-sculpture was discovered two years since, by M. Will^me, a sculptor in Paris, and it promises to be a great handmaid to the art of which he is a professor. Already a company has been formed in Paris, and is working his patent, and an English company is about to be constituted for the same purpose. When we look at portraits in the stereoscope, we seem to look upon the living person, rather than on mere photographic drawings. The solidity given by this clever optical instrument transfers the carte de visite into a miniature statuette; and the only regret of old was that we could not transfer the beau- tiful illusion to plaster or stone. What we then wished Photo-Sculpture. 265 for we have, at last, obtained through the ingenuity of M. Will^me. In the productions of photo-sculpture we see the images of the stereoscope turned into stone. It may seem astounding that the photographic art should be enabled to impress itself upon the mate- rials used by the sculptor ; and the process by which it does so requires some little explanation. The per- son sitting for his bust or statuette must first go through the process of having photographic pictures made of his whole figure and features, as seen from different points of view. In order to obtain these he has to enter the camera-room, which, in Paris, is a large, circular apartment, lighted from the top. The sitter is placed in the desired attitude, or pose, on a raised round platform, exactly in the centre of the apartment. This circular platform is divided at its base into twenty-four equal segments, and each of these segments is commanded, as it were, by a camera, placed in the circular wall of the apartment, at equal distances apart. At a given signal, twenty- four photographs are taken of the sitter simultane- ously : thus a perfect view of every part of his figure and features is obtained in the twenty-four lineal sec- tions of himself, fixed upon the cartes de visite. But, asks the reader, how can these flat portraits be made to yield a statuette or a bust .■■ This is done by a purely mechanical process, the first step towards which is the enlargement of the cartes de visite. 266 Photo- Sculpture. By means of a solar camera, or a magic lantern, these are enlarged to the size required, and their out- lines and leading details are transferred with a pencil to large pieces of drawing-paper, which form the working drawings of the sculptor. He now has to transfer these outlines and details to the lump of clay which is to form his model. This is done by means of the pantograph — a well-known instrument in the arts, the office of which is to transfer the lines it fol- lows, with a tracer placed at one end of the instru- ment, to a knife or style placed at the other end, with mathematical accuracy. This part of the operation is conducted by two persons : one applies the tracer to the outlines of the enlarged photograph, the other directs the style or cutter to the lump of clay upon which these outlines have to be cut. The rapidity with which the lump of clay is transformed into the rude outline of a human figure, as the operation goes on, is perfectly marvellous. A few swift cuts give the leading outlines ; and when these are accomplished, the artist proceeds more carefully to finish the inter- mediate parts, and to put in the details, by means of the same agency. The pedestal on which his clay is placed is marked out into twenty-four divisions, like the platform on which the sitter is posed ; the artist has, therefore, only to refer to the number inscribed on the pedestal supporting his clay, and then to the number of the lineal section, to be enabled to trace it at once, or to Photo-Sculpture. 267 make any correction, if it is needed. By this me- chanical contrivance, the most delicate details of dress, of form, or of feature, are impressed at once upon the clay direct from nature itself. The creases of the clothes, the peculiarities of attitude and of form, which enable us to identify an old friend even at a distance, are caught and fixed upon the clay in a manner few artists could achieve, and none with such absolute faithfulness as is done by this process. The art of photo-sculpture by no means supersedes the hand of the skilled artist ; it merely plays the part of a faithful assistant, giving accurate outlines to his clay. It does not pretend to impress mind upon it ; that must be left, as of old, to the artist. The deli- cate details — the life and fire which the human intel- lect alone can impart to the clay — must still be left to the sculptor to carry out. This he can do with ease and rapidity ; for all the rough hewing, so to speak, has been done for him, and in the most unerring manner. The spectator cannot fail to be struck with the similarity presented by statuettes and figures pro- duced by the photo-sculpture process, to the images seen in the stereoscope. The same beautiful and true drawing, the same delicate detail, which seems beyond the reach of the human hand to accomplish, is always present. The ease of attitude they present is quite another thing from the affected posturising the sta- tuary but too often adopts with the idea of giving 268 Photo- Sculpture. grace ; and it is singular to notice the dignity which is given to even the prosaic clothes of the sitter, by simply allowing the garment to adapt itself to the body naturally, as it always does in these pieces of photo-sculpture, and which it never does in the arti- ficially arranged drapery of the majority of artists. Photo-sculpture at once abolishes many of the te- dious processes which the sitter of old had to endure in the studio of the statuary. It is only necessary that he should sit long enough to give time for his photo- graph to be taken, and he never need see the sculptor at all. All the disagreeable processes of taking models of the face with plaster of Paris, and the numerous sittings required to complete the work, are abolished by the introduction of the new method. The time and trouble thus saved will greatly reduce the price of busts and statuettes. Hitherto these works of art have been viewed as luxuries, which the rich only can indulge in ; but the new art will bring them within the means of the middle classes. Unlike the photograph, these modelled likenesses will last as long as the material of which they are made. Of course, only the original model is worked by the process we have mentioned. From this, as by the old method, any number of copies may be taken, by the ordinary process of cast-taking ; consequently, we may expect to see busts of celebrated personages multiplied and produced at a very low price. It will readily be seen that photo-sculpture will Photo-Sculpture. 269 prove a valuable handmaiden to art in a thousand ways. The power of reproducing delicate pieces of sculpture without even touching them, will in many cases prove very valuable. Many works of art are so precious, that their owners will not permit casts to be taken of them ; but they cannot object to their being exposed to the gaze of a set of cameras, and that will be sufficient to afford all the elements for their exact reproduction. But it strikes us that the art will be of still greater use to the lovers of natural history. The zoologist, for instance, will be able to give us by its agency more perfect models of animal life than we have ever yet possessed. A lion, for instance, would make an awkward sitter to a sculptor, but the camera would draw him all round with its instantaneous pencil, and then the artist could proceed with his labours at his ease. Of old, the fact of producing exact models of persons and living things without touching them, and even without their knowledge, would have been considered the work of nothing leg's than witchcraft, and would have subjected those who practised the art to the cruel death inflicted on suspected persons. Luckily, we live in a more en- lightened age, and the invention of photo-sculpture, instead of bringing M. Will^me to the stake, will simply bring him fame and an ample fortune. Some of the illustrations of this new invention are charming specimens of the art. The statuette of Sir Rowland 270 Photo-Sculpture. Hill, for instance, is admirable. The ordinary clothes he wears do not look mean, as they would if modelled by the artist, but wear the exact aspect of nature. Some dancing-girls produced by this process are ex- quisite ; the very swing of the garments is given, and the figures seem to float in the air. The statuettes of little children, again, are delightful. The simplicity of nature is caught by this new process in the hap- piest manner, and we never need fear that any change will take place in the solid material of which they are made. 271 "^ZZ> CLO\" ilOLERIDGE once asked one of that peripa- tetic race, who are so very solicitous about our cast-off garments, why it was he and his tribe invariably called out " Old Clo'." " If, sir," said he, " you had to call ' Old Clothes ' as often as I have, you would be very glad to call ' Old Clo'.' " The answer was so sensible, that the folly seemed on the part of the essayist in asking the question. These old-clothesmen, dingy, greasy, and importunate, are workers in our great social hive of far greater im- portance than most people suspect. They may be looked upon as superior scavengers, whose duty it is to relieve us of our rejected garments, and to put them again into circulation among different classes of the population, home and foreign. The old-clothesman proper is invariably a Jew, but amongst the most indigent of that clever people. Nevertheless, when he is offered a bargain, it is always found that he is in possession of capital sufficient for the occasion. The explanation of this apparently 2/2 " Old cur anomalous circumstance is a very creditable one to the richer members of the Hebrew community, who are in the habit of lending weekly sums to these col- lectors, who return the money every Saturday night. They are charged no interest for the use of the money, and we are informed that defalcations are never known among them. The greater portion of our cast-off clothes find their way to the auction mart in Houndsditch, through the agency of these men ; but at certain seasons of the year, the inevitable " coster,'' who is always on the look-out for profitable speculations, supplements the regular " old clo' " man, and for the time, we fancy, supersedes him. Many people, who have an objection to take money of a poor man for cast-off clothes, have no objection to barter them away for articles of use or ornament ; consequently, when the spring comes round, we find the street-hawkers' barrows sud- denly blooming with flowers, with which they coax many a man's third-best coat from his good lady at home, who cannot resist their importunate appeals, especially when backed by such charming flowers. By the combined powers of persuasion of these two classes of collectors, an enormous number of old gar- ments find their way every day to Houndsditch Old Clothes Exchange, which forms the centre of the trade in the metropolis, and whence the frowsy gar- ments are again distributed, disguised in a thousand ways, for foreign and home consumption. " Old Clo'." 27Z We must not forget, however, still another class of collectors, who pride themselves upon a position far above those we have mentioned — those who adver- tise for articles of wearing apparel " for exportation to Australia." There are many persons who object to sell their old clothes, for fear they may be recog- nized on the backs of strangers by their friends : this little fib touching the demand for the cast-off gar- ments on the part of our children on the other side of the Pacific, is invented to calm the fears of numerous persons on this head. Gold-diggers and sheep- farmers are far too well off to require our leavings ; indeed, the circulation of old clothes is rather towards the old country, an immense amount arriving every year for purposes we shall mention presently. The Old Clothes Exchange, then, which we may term the heart of the trade, is one of the most curi- ous places in London. Before any person is allowed to enter the enclosure he must pay a halfpenny, which goes into the pocket of the proprietor of the Exchange. The market is divided into two large spaces, partly open and partly covered in. The dealers meet here every morning except Saturday ; and here they turn out their bags, containing the collection of the preceding day, and the exchange begins. The volubility of the salesmen, the stench of the filthy and frowsy clothes, the eagerness with which bargains are carried on, render the scene curi- ous, if not particularly odorous. But clothes are sold T 274 " Old Clo'." here as well as exchanged. Wholesale dealers, whose transactions are on a very large scale, attend the mar- ket, and purchase articles in their own particular line. Some of these only purchase for the Irish market. To see the piles of clothes regularly built up, and forming bales ten feet square, which are almost daily forwarded to the sister country, one would imagine that Pat never had anything on his back but the leav- ings of England. Others are exported to Holland ; but to the latter country a superior class of old gar- ments is sent. The red coats of our infantry are largely purchased for this market ; and on inquiry we find that they are converted into under-waistcoats, which the lower-class Dutchmen wear next to their skins. The damp of Holland necessitates the use of warm clothing, and there is a prejudice in favour of the colour red — or rather, we should not say preju- dice, but a popular feeling, founded on a philosophical truth, as it is well known that red absorbs heat better than any other colour. A very large amount of black clothing, which is not good enough to be revived and worn again, is exported to France to make caps. Indeed, the desti- nation of most black cloth before it falls into the con- dition of " a land rag " for manure, is to make caps. Cloth that the French will not take for this purpose goes to Russia and Poland. The class of second-hand clothes most eagerly sought after by the collectors are regimentals, state liveries, and uniforms of all " Old Clo'." 275 kinds. A large dealer in these garments showed us over his store the other day, and the wardrobe in his possession was certainly most surprising. When the liveries are much worn, the gold braid is stripped off them, and the cloth is cut up for other purposes ; but well-preserved regimentals and liveries are amongst the most valuable articles of export. Perhaps the very best scarlet uniforms are kept in this country, to be sold to the costumiers who provide for masque- raders ; but those that are a little worn go abroad, and are sold in the great German fairs, for the pur- pose of making facings for some of the civic officials of the Northern powers. A far more glorious destiny, however, awaits the liveries of our civic chief magistrates. Large pack- ages of these, together with royal uniforms, beadles' coats, and court suits, regularly find their way to the Gold Coast, to adorn the manly forms of the black chiefs. A field-marshal's hat, for instance, is sure to find its resting-place on one of their woolly heads. In some unaccountable manner, a large amount of valu- able seamen's clothing is always passing through the hands of the Jews in this market. Monkey-jackets, that cost, say, seventeen shillings apiece, can be pur- chased here, we are told, in any numbers for eight shillings each. We can understand the Government storekeepers getting rid of the old round jackets which they may have in store, as the sailors will not wear them any longer ; and the old square-toed shoes,, T 2 2/6 " Old Clo'." again, do not suit Jack's fancy, consequently they must be disposed of by auction ; but there is some mystery about these monkey-jackets, which the dealers do not feel inclined to clear up. Besides the Clothes Exchange — which is divided into portions, one for male and the other for female attire — there is a separate building for second-hand clothes of the two sexes. Old clothes, before being offered for sale, have to be " clobbered " — in other words, patched and sewn— so as to be in a wearable condition. Piles of these clobbered clothes of every description, from the corduroy and moleskin suits of the labourer, to the black cloth suit of the gentleman, are exposed for sale on forms and benches ; heaps of boots, patched and cobbled, and hats revived and pressed, so as to look almost as good as new, are eagerly pressed upon your attention by Hebraic salesmen. In the women's department you see hun- dreds of black silk dresses, which seem to be the most saleable commodity, hanging up. They are displayed in the most taking manner, and the handsome cha- racter of some of these garments seems strangely out of keeping with the rough and dirty-looking aspect of the market itself With a lively recollection of the bright bandanas adorning Petticoat Lane of old, we asked a hook- nosed, gaudily-dressed young woman how it was none of them were to be seen in the market. " Ah ! " she said, " you gents with your cambric wipes have spoilt " Old cur 277 that trade," at the same time giving a knowing wink. "Thank goodness ! " thought we, " this simple change in fashion has put temptation out of the path of many a poor lad, and the occupation of an Old Fagin and his school of young thieves is gone." Old skirts, crinolines, stays, every article of female attire, may be purchased here for pence ! Women's clothes are very rarely exported. Old silk garments are cut up for the linings of hats and caps, and for the purpose of translating them into children's tunics, little frocks, spencers, &c. The " translators," male or female, occupy themselves with selecting the best pieces of old clothes, woollen and silk, and turning them into other garments. Old frock-coats, for in- stance, when too threadbare to be sold as second- hand goods, are peculiarly available for the translator. The skirts of a coat are rarely much worn, and they will generally make very good waistcoats, knicker- bockers, and spencers, and they are never too bad to turn into caps. Very old silk is variously utilised, as we shall show woollen rags are. Some of it is torn up, and woven again into winseys ; but the larger portion, finely shredded, goes to stuff Toral- lums, or " bed improvers." Although very large quan- tities of old boots and shoes are sold in the Exchange every day, the greater proportion find their way to Monmouth Street, Seven Dials. The process of " clobbering," where this article is concerned, degene- rates into downright cheating. Where there are holes 278 « Old Clo'." in the upper leathers, new pieces are neatly let in, and then the heel-ball is applied to make the whole appear sound leather. Again, where there are holes in the sole, new pieces are let in, and the spot is covered with what in the trade is termed a "smother," or a preparation of dirt, which looks like the dust of the road. The translation of adults' shoes into chil- dren's shoes is a more legitimate occupation. If it were not for the men who practise this art, we scarcely know how the very poor children would ever get shod, as their parents could not pay the price demanded for the cheapest new shoes. Old clothes, when they have been worn to rags at home and abroad, return once more into the hands of the dealers. They are now past " clobbering," " revi- ving," or " translating ; " they are, in fact, at the lowest point of Fortune's wheel, but the next turn puts them at its highest point again. All the world — thanks to Mr. Ferrand — has heard of "shoddy" and mungo. The former is a preparation of wool made from the thrice-worn and greasy old clothes of Europe. The latter is woollen fibre, made from the cuttings of new cloth. Shoddy and mungo, then, are the foundations upon which a new series of clothes for the million are built up. It would really seem as though woollen fibre were indestructible. The oldest of old clothes are destined to re-appear again in the fashionable world. The old woollen rag having been reduced to its original fibre by the " devil " — a huge- " Old Clo'." 279 toothed wheel— it is mixed with fresh wool, and con- verted into the Petershams, the Talmas, the pilot cloths, and other fabrics of which paletdts are made for the fashionable world. The seat of this wonder- ful conversion from old to new cloths are the three towns of Leeds, Dewsbury, and Batley, in Yorkshire. The two latter towns are wholly given up to the manu- facture of shoddy, &c. ; and it is computed that they add annually about sixty million pounds of raw mate- rial to the woollen trade. In other words, the old clothes that pour into these three towns afford an amount of woollen fibre equal to the addition of the fleeces of eight millions of sheep. This enormous trade has sprung up within the pre- sent century, the very first shoddy mill being estab- lished in 1813. The produce of this shoddy is woven into fabrics ranging in value from one shilling to ten shillings a yard. Were it not for this utilisation of what was once a refuse material, the woollen clothing of the country would have risen to a price beyond the means of the working population, instead of con- stantly falling in cost as it has done. And it is not only our woollen garments of which we see the resur- rection in this wonderful manner, but also our hosiery, our stockings, flannels, drawers, &c. ; in fact, every- thing that is constructed of fibrous wool is destined to be converted by the " devils " into what is termed "soft shoddy." Who shall say whose old clothes some of us stand up in } The Pythagorean idea of 28o " Old Clo'." the transmigration of souls is certainly true of the coverings of our bodies. There were a large number of fabrics, termed " union fabrics," composed of cotton and wool inter- woven, such as alpacas, &c., which were not available for shoddy, in consequence of the mixture with the wool of cotton, or vegetable fibre ; and which could not be turned into paper by reason of the woollen fibres, which would speckle the sheets. In conse- quence of this unfortunate alliance, it was of little or no value ; but within these last six years, a method has been patented by which these otherwise useless rags have been separated into their animal and vege- table elements, each of which is now available. This is done by placing the rags in a steam digester, heated to a pressure of three to five atmospheres. This heat reduces the woollen fibre to a brown sub- stance, which crumbles to pieces on being handled, and leaves the cotton or vegetable fibre uninjured. The woollen powder forms an admirable manure, very rich in all fertilising qualities, whilst the cotton fibre is good paper-making material. There were several specimens of these residuary products in the Great Exhibition of 1862. Thus, the last difficulty our manufacturers have met with in the utilisation of old clothes has been conquered by science. Possibly the paper on which we write has formed portions of the material of our wife's dress ; and it is equally possible that the "Oidcio'r 281 bread we eat at luncheon found its elements of growth in the same old gown, for the ulmate of ammonia (under which name the new woollen manure is known) is largely employed as manure by farmers. Thus it will be seen, as civilisation advances, man, like nature, learns the art of utilising everything ; and as we go on increasing in knowledge, we doubt not but that production of every kind will be cheapened by the simple process of re-conversion. In nature there is no such thing as waste ; nothing, in fact, is lost ; and, as far as old clothes at least are concerned, we think we have shown that the requirements and necessities of man have taken a lesson out of the book of our great mother. 282 LONGEVITY. iHE question of longevity has of late been well aired in the public press, but it does not appear that much light has been thrown upon the matter : indeed, the only new ele- ment observable in the discussion is the one of doubt introduced by the late Sir Cornewall Lewis : and, in such a case, the still more authoritative name of the Registrar-General. That very many old people set themselves down as much older than they really are, may fairly be conceded. When a person's age be- comes remarkable, he is vain of its possession, as it is often the only point which distinguishes him from the crowd, and in the majority of instances he makes the most of it. But granted that there have been a great number of sham centenarians, we cannot for all that give up a belief in the power of the human frame to compass more than five score years. In a vast forest of trees there will be one or two venerable patriarchs that may have seen the lapse of hundreds of years. If then one seed shall have vitality enough to have lived down successions of its Longevity. 283 fellows, when all the circumstances of climate and soil are identical, it may, we think, readily be con- ceded that the human vis vitcB may be prolonged in some rare instances even to double its ordinary duration. Accidents and diseases cut off the majority of mankind before their time. Some are lucky enough to escape these sources of mortality ; and when the original frame is healthy, there is nothing so remark- able in its sustension through a comparatively long period of time. Old Jenkens, the most extreme example of longevity of which we have any authentic account, passed through a measure of time to which others of the race may at long intervals attain. It may be urged that the testimony of an old and illiterate man is not to be depended upon ; and possi- bly, if there were nothing but this to be given in proof of his extreme old age, the case may be looked upon as very doubtful ; but even then we can scarcely believe that he merely dreamed a fact which in a great measure settled his high antiquity — namely, that in his boyhood he was employed to take a horse- load of arrows from his native place to Northallerton, for the use of the Earl of Surrey at the battle of Flodden Field, which was fought in the year 15 13. Old Jenkens must have had a very picturesque memory indeed to invent such a circumstance. Taking for granted, however, that he did make this journey, it was well calculated to make an impression upon his mind which lasted to the latest moment of 284 Longevity. his life. It must be remembered that the very old recollect with extreme vividness events which have occurred in their boyhood ; we may therefore put more trust in their memory of very early events, than in those which have occurred at a later period of their lives. The old man used to say, that, whilst in the service of Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, he had often seen the Abbot of Fountains, a very jolly priest, at his master's table. Now as this monastery was suppressed in the year 1537, or thereabouts, it gives another indication of his age which seems to be about as trustworthy as any personal testimony well could be. But, independently of this evidence, we have the statement of another person, who, curious to see this animated fossil, went to his cottage for that purpose. Here, in the garden, he met an old man apparently upwards of a hundred years of age, whom he took for the veritable Henry Jenkens, but he was soon undeceived by the old man, who, in reply to his interrogatory, said, " It's my fayther you want, he is yonder ; " and true enough, a little farther on, the veritable relic was found. We very much ques- tion if such testimony is not of more value than a mere register of birth and death, for we know such evidence is often untrustworthy. Parish clerks of old were not very literate men ; and even now what means has a registrar of testing the correctness of entries of births and deaths, which those who make them may have the best possible reasons for falsi- Longevity. 285 fying ? Again, the dates on tombstones are well known to be unreliable, as they are often falsified either for mischief or through carelessness. The testi- mony of contemporaries, especially when events have taken place in country villages where everybody is known, is, we think, as good evidence as the mere strokes of the pen made by clerks who have no knowledge of the facts which they record. If, how- ever, sceptics must have documentary evidence of a circumstance which was patent to the whole country- side, we have the best of all such proof in the fact that the registers of the Court of Chancery prove that he gave evidence one hundred and forty years before his death. Thomas Parr, the Shropshire man, worked as a labourer until his 130th year, and at 152 years of age he made a journey to London. The old Countess of Desmond, again, is another very remarkable instance of the power some persons have possessed of retaining their accustomed vigour up to a period double that of ordinary old age. This very remark- able old lady — a true Geraldine — was born in 1464, and whilst yet in her teens was married to her kins- man, who ultimately became the tenth Earl of Des- mond. At her bridal she danced with the Duke of York, afterwards Richard the Third, and described him as a straight and well-formed young man ; so much for the "hunchback" history has given him. This remarkable old lady survived all her kinsmen. 286 Longevity. and was in her latter years reduced to great poverty in consequence of her estate being appropriated by the EngHsh settlers. Fynes Morayson, in his " Tour of Ireland," in 1613, describes the old lady, then in her 139th year, as " being able to go on foot four or five miles to the market towne (Youghal), and using weekly so to doe." But she was destined to take a much longer journey than this, for ultimately, being wholly despoiled by the English settlers, she deter- mined to seek redress from the king. In order to do this, being without adequate means for such a journey, she had to beg a passage in a sailing-vessel to Bristol, and when arrived there, to make her way across England — remember, reader, this famous old lady was in her 1 39th year ! She arrived in Bristol with her daughter, a very old woman, and so infirm, that she could not attempt the journey on foot. Consequently a small wheeled vehicle was procured, in which the infirm daughter was placed, and thus along the horrible Great Western Road of those days this sad cavalcade pursued its way — the old countess trudging beside the cart on foot. The wonderful vigour of the old countess was equal to the task however, which would have killed the majority of her sex even at an early age. The king granted her suit, and she trudged her weary way back as before. Even this journey was not too much for her, as she survived a year afterwards, and then met her death in a perfectly accidental manner, as is thus related in Longevity. 287 the Earl of Leicester's "Table Book :"— " Shee might have lived much longer had shee not mett with a kind of violent death ; for shee must needs climb a nutt-tree, to gather nutts, soe, falling down, shee hurt her thigh, which brought on a fever, and that brought death." Well might Thomas Moore, in his " Fudge " papers, term her a " frisky old girl ! " The histories of these three old people all testify to one fact, the superabundance of life they possessed up to the latest hour of their lives. It must be remembered that when we speak of human life ex- tending over these long periods of time, we must not suppose that the same identical body has enshrined the spirit through all that period. In the early years of life every portion of the human frame is renewed annually. As life progresses, the process of recon- struction becomes more slow and debilitated, and in the last years of the centenarian, reconstruction almost ceases. It will be remembered that the faces of the very old are seamed in every direction by wrinkles. This is owing to the fact that the skin is no longer thrown off as it is in youth — like the outer bark of a tree it becomes tough and consolidated, and by the absorption of the subcutaneous fat, this consolidated horn, for it is nothing less, falls into folds. Now, as the human machine may be said to wind itself up ; just as the original life is strong or feeble, will this winding-up process be continued many or few times. There are watches that require winding-up every day. 288 Longevity. and eight-day clocks that more than see the week out, and clocks with powerful weights descending through long distances which make the circle of the year. The centenarians we have mentioned worked with these long-descending weights. In the case of two of them, the wheels of life appear to have been stopped by extraneous causes. Indeed it has been observed that in many of these cases of extreme old age, nature has made extraordinary attempts to renew its youth. Hufeland says, in several instances of great age it has been remarked that persons in their sixtieth or seventieth year, when others cease to live, acquired new teeth and new hair ; and his translator, Erasmus Wilson, adds, " I have mentioned several instances of very old persons in whom the natural colour of the hair returned after they had been for years before grey." This was the case with John Weeks, who lived to the age of 1 14. Sir John Sinclair reports a similar circumstance in an old Scotchman who lived to be no: and Susan Edwards, when in her 95th year, recovered her black hair, but became again grey previously to her death, at the age of 105. Thus the fable of old .lEson renewing his youth has some foundation in nature after all. Instances of persons living to a very great age are much more numerous than is generally imagined. In the board- room of St. Margaret's workhouse, Westminster, is a portrait of Margaret Patten, a Scotchwoman, who was brought to London to prepare Scotch broth for King Longevity. 289 James II. She died in the workhouse in 1739, aged 136; and in 1727, a man of the name of Effingham died in Cornwall at the age of 144; and in 1772, a Dane named Draakenberg died in his 146th year. It is remarkable that all the very long-lived persons have been inhabitants of Northern Europe. England, Scotland, and Ireland, Sweden, Nonvay, Denmark, and Russia, have all contributed remarkable examples of longevity. At the census of 1851, three hundred and nine- teen persons (one hundred and eleven men and two hundred and eight women) returned themselves as ranging between 100 and 1 19 years of age. Of these sixty-nine were described as widows of no occupa- tion (possibly annuitants.'), sixteen as agricultural labourers, male and female, and nineteen as farmers. The census of 1861 gives a list of only 201 cen- tenarians who were born before the conquest of Canada, and before George III. was king. It is observable that more women attain to old age than men, but the greater strength of the latter is neces- sary to attain to the extreme limits of human life. Haller, who has collected the greatest number of instances of longevity, thus tabularises them : Of Men who lived from 100 to 1 10, there have been no to 120 120 to 130 130 to 140 140 to 150 169 U 1000 60 29 IS 6 I 290 Longevity. Hufeland, generalizing from these facts, thinks that the organisation and vital powers of man are able to support a duration and activity of 200 years ! This is of course only an individual opinion, which must be taken for what it is worth, but there can be no manner of doubt that as civilization advances, the whole mass of human life is being lifted and lengthened. The causes of disease are slowly being eliminated. As compared with 100 years ago, the present duration of life is as four to three. This being the case, there is every reason to suppose that ex- ceptional lives will tower above the general level of longevity as they did of old. Sometimes when any old lives are linked together, they are enabled to transmit the memory of events over intervals of time which are perfectly startling. One person conversing with another has been known to carry us back into the actual presence of circum- stances the printed records of which have mainly perished, or at least lived in the black-letter or worm-eaten paper only to be found in the library of the antiquary. It seems strange to be told that, as late as the year 1780, there was a Spitalfields weaver alive who had witnessed the execution of Charles I., and of a Cumberland woman alive in 1766 who remem- bered the siege of Carlisle by Cromwell. If this woman had ever conversed with Dr. Routh, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, who was ten years old at the time of her death, we should have had an Longevity. 291 old gentleman alive only eleven years ago who had been in direct conversation with one of the witnesses of a siege in the Great Rebellion. But perhaps the most extraordinary length of time bridged over by two lives is that mentioned by Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A., who relates that he knew a gentleman who had often heard his father say that he had conversed with one Peter Gordon, who died in the year 1786 at the age of 127, who, when a boy, had heard Henry Jenkens give evidence in a court of justice of his having carried arrows to Flodden Field. The imagination almost refuses to believe that the span of life in two persons should have touched the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries — that these two individuals should have ranged over events in our history beginning with a border warfare in the days of bows and arrows, and ending at a time when India had been virtually conquered nine years at the battle of Pondicherry. When one is asked what are the causes of lon- gevity, it may be pretty safely answered that a good digestion is at the bottom of the whole business. The perfect action of the organ by which the frame is nourished must clearly be of the first moment. Whether the assertion of the cynic that, in addition to a good digestion, a bad heart is also necessary, ' may perhaps be open to doubt. That insensibility to the sufferings of others relieves us of much mental anguish — a great cause of decay — there can be little U 2 292 Longevity. doubt ; but, on the other hand, the pleasurable emotions that spring from a pure heart are of infinite potency in prolonging life. It is the little worrying cares that nag at the springs of existence. Great natural philosophers, great painters, and great poets, have lived long. Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, sur- vived to a good old age. So did Herschel and his sister Lucretia, although she spent 'many years of nights in the observatory assisting her brother in his labours. It may be that the calm contemplation of other worlds so lifts the mind above the petty cares of this, that the body has little cause to grow old. Swift, Corneille, Young, Goethe, Anacreon, Sophocles, and Wordsworth, all lived beyond the appointed three score and ten years ; and the longevity of some of the greatest painters has been remarkable. Titian and Michael Angelo both lived to the age of 96. It is also a daily matter of remark that great lawyers attain to a long age. Within our own memory three law lords — Eldon, Stowell, and Lyndhurst — passed their 90th year. We apprehend, however, that much of this connection of great age with great offices is patent enough to life actuaries. Lawyers, for in- stance, are not appointed to the great offices of State until they have passed all the more dangerous epochs of human life, and when the chances of existence are materially enhanced. At the same time it must be conceded that great fame of an enduring character must be dependent upon pro- Longevity. 293 longed vitality. A man's reputation, if it is sustained with full vigour in popular estimation, increases with his increasing years. The spectacle of Lord Eldon working by his solitary lamp up to the latest day of his life, impressed the public mind with his prodi- gious powers ; and we can understand the almost superstitious veneration with which Michael Angelo and Titian were contemplated by their contempora- ries, who beheld them dying almost with their brushes in their hands. But, after all, these exceptional cases prove but little. They are good examples of the powers of a sound constitution sustained by a vigorous flame of life to keep the human machine going for a very long period, even in the face of great mental and bodily wear and tear ; but they say nothing as to the effect of particular occupations on classes. The conclusions all actuaries have arrived at is, that the longest lives are those of agricultural labourers whose conditions are favourable enough to enable them to become members of Friendly Societies. Both Jenkens and Parr were children of the soil : thus science and theory are in this matter in accord. On the other hand, kings and princes sink to the lowest place in the scale of life. The power persons who have lived to a remarkable age have of transmitting longevity to their posterity is also very remarkable. The great-grandson of old Parr died in Cork only a few years ago at the age of 294 Longevity. 103 ; and the son of old Jenkens appeared, as we have seen, to have reached to a hundred even in his father's lifetime. The Costello family in county Kilkenny afford remarkable instances of the long life which seems hereditary in some families. Mary Costello, who died in 1824, lived to the age of 102, and her brother to upwards of 100 ; their mother also attained the age of 102, their grandmother a similar age, and their great-grandmother's life was lengthened to the span of 125 years ! Sometimes all the members of a family appear to have derived a remarkable stock of longevity from their parent. A lady who died in 1836 in the Edgeware Road, in her 103rd year, had three sisters who lived to the respective ages of 107, 105, and 100 years. It would be a curious experiment to intermarry the children of families remarkable for longevity, in order to discover if by this means, a race could be raised capable of resisting the inroads of time beyond the ordinary length of human, life. Peculiarities in the animal and vegetable world are perpetuated in this manner, we know, and there would seem to be no reason why the peculiarity of longevity should not be produced by the careful selection of parents endowed with the gift of long life. We all know that intermarriages between families afflicted with some constitutional taint inevitably tend to shorten the life of its offspring, and we may therefore very fairly assume that a selection of lives possessing Longevity. 295 presumably a superabundance of vitality would have a tendency to perpetuate a very long-lived stock. Had the children of Jenkens and Parr, for instance, married, we cannot doubt but that they would have transmitted to their descendants no small portion of that gift of longevity for which their sires had been so famous. Possibly, 'however, mankind may think that, after all, the gift is of a very doubtful value, and that the passage of human life through this vale of tears is not so happy that we should desire to see it materially prolonged. ( 296 ) THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. ilS we enter Lamb's Conduit Street from Holborn, in the dim distance the per- spective is terminated by a quaint old- fashioned-looking building, which reminds us of the early days of the last century, and of a worthy old sea-captain, from whose charitable heart it took its rise. Those who remember Hogarth's famous por- trait — in the International Exhibition of 1862 — of Captain Coram, the ruddy, rough-rinded old mariner, with the clear blue eye and cheery smile, see in him a founder of a charitable institution that realizes one's ideal of such a character. A man who had knocked about ik the world — who, we should say, had run away when a boy to sea, — and who we know became master of a trading vessel, and for the best part of his life traded to, and finally lived in, the American colonies ; and while he bartered and adventured, like another Penn, made terms for the poor Indians, in order to protect them against the rapacity of the settlers. A worthy man, who, in an age of violence and selfishness, thought more of Tlie Foundling Hospital. 297 others than of himself. In the latter years of his life he returned to this country, and being still engaged in matters pertaining to the sea, about the beginning of the Georgian era he took up his quarters at Rotherhithe. Whilst passing between that suburb and London, on his daily avocation — it surely must in those days have been a rural walk — his attention was drawn to a practice which marked the disregard of human life, especially of infant life, induced, perhaps, by the unsettled condition of the marriage law, and the great prevalence of illegiti- macy at the beginning of the last century. When we hear of " the frequent exposure of deserted children in the highways " which smote the tender heart of the old sailor in his daily walks, we are reminded of the disregard of public decency which we hear of as existing in China at the present day ; and it certainly is a little startling to find that in this particular the habits of this country were not one whit in advance of those of the much-contemned Celestials. The value set upon human life by a community may be considered a test of the amount of its civilization ; and when we remember that, at the time we refer to, scores of men were hung daily for the most inconsiderable crimes, we have one end of the measure of public brutality, whilst the other was marked by the " frequency " with which naked young children were left to perish by the wayside like so many blind puppies. Plenty of very fine 298 The Foundling Hospital. people, with doubtless plenty of the very fine feeling of the period, passed by and took no notice of these poor perishing brats ; and it was left for the rough old son of the sea — to whom the gold-caned gentry would have denied the possession of any sensibility at all — to take compassion upon these infants, and, after seventeen years of persistent labour, to found the noble institution — the Foundling Hospital, which we trust may flourish to the end of time. In many a great public ceremonial, the bright- looking little Foundling girls, in their white aprons and quaint high mob caps, come across our vision and remind us of the old mariner, and give us assurance that Shakspeare, for once, was not right when he said that the records of the good deeds done by man were " writ in water." His indefatigable exertions in favour of the estab- lishment of the Foundling Hospital were crowned with success towards the end of the year 1739, when a Royal Charter of Incorporation was obtained. He himself notices that his success depended greatly upon the assistance by the ladies, to whom, like a man of the world, he was wise enough to address himself But even to their compassion he did not always obtain access ; for he tells us that having gone to St. James's Palace, to present a memorial on the subject to Her Royal Highness the Princess Amelia, he was met by the Lady Isabella Finch, the lady-in-waiting, who, to use his own language, " gave TJte Foundling Hospital. 299 me very rough words, and bade me begone with my petition, which I did, without opportunity of present- ing it." At the commencement, the charity was located in Hatton Garden, and it was not until the year 1741 that the Governors thought of building the present Hospital. Fresh air is as necessary for children as for plants : and the Governors — wandering round the suburbs in search of balmy zephyrs, found them — ^where does our reader think ? — in Lamb's Conduit Fields. It is really refreshing, in these days of the Great Babel, to think of the time when five minutes' walk out of Holborn would lead you into green fields, where the boys went birds'- nesting. The Governors bought fifty-five acres of these fields of the Earl of Salisbury for 5,500/., doubtless thinking it a very extravagant purchase ; but the Earl would not sell less, and so the Hospital arose in the middle of green meadows. The west wing was completed first, and the east wing after- wards ; the chapel, connecting the two, being finished last, the first admission of children took place in 1 74 1. The following advertisement having previously appeared in the public papers : — TO-MORROW, at eight o'clock in the evening, this house will be opened for the reception of twenty children under the following regulations. These regulations were, that no child was to be ad- mitted above the age of two months, or with conta- gious disease. The person bringing the child was 300 The Foundling Hospital. directed to come in at the open gate and ring a bell at the inner gate, deliver the child, and not go away until the child was either returned, or notice given of its reception. No questions were to be asked of the person bringing the child. Thus, at the very outset of the Institution, the ideas of Captain Coram were disregarded ; the children so received were neither true foundlings, such as are put into the tour in foreign institutions of this kind, nor was there that due and proper care taken in setting on foot so necessary an establishment. The humane idea of Coram was, that not only the child should be rescued from the chance of being deserted, but that the mother should also be reclaimed to the paths of virtue. This was a very different scheme from that sanctioned by the Governors, which was nothing less than a premium to cruel mothers to cast upon the charity the care of their offspring. The Governors, in- deed, appeared to be desirous of .following the exam- ple of foreign foundling hospitals, forgetting the very existence of our poor-law. So the good captain with- drew altogether from the direction of the Institution. As the terms on which these " little responsibilities " were received became known, the supply of course quite outgrew the accommodation. Crowds of women besieged the door on taking-in day, and presented the spectacle so adverse to all natural instinct of fighting among themselves for the first opportunity of getting rid of their infants. At last this method of admission The Foundling Hospital. 301 became so scandalous, that it was determined to admit the children by ballot. But the Governors, who had long been desirous of making it a Foundling Hospital on the largest scale — in the known favour- able inclinations of the King towards them — found their opportunity for pushing their scheme. London was not a sufficient field for their exertions, and they determined to obtain a Parliamentary grant, and open the Institution to the illegitimate children of the entire kingdom. By a resolution of the House of Commons this was effected, and it was determined not only to open the gates to all comers under the age of two months, but to appoint places in all coun- ties, ridings, and divisions of the kingdom for the collection of these little forsaken ones. In order to forward them, a branch of the carrying trade was established, and they arrived in London in increasing numbers from the most distant parts of the country. A large price was paid at first for their conveyance, which more than hints at the position of the parents ; and as the carriage was prepaid, there was a strong inducement on the part of the carriers to get rid of their burthens on the way. Many of the infants were drowned; all of them were neglected; and that, in the large majority of cases, was equal to their death. It was publicly asserted in the House of Commons that one man having the charge of five infants in baskets — they appeared to have been packed like so many sucking-pigs — and happening to get drunk on 302 The Foundling Hospital. his journey, he lay asleep all night on a common, and in the morning three out of the five were found dead. In another case eight children were brought out of the country at one time in a waggon, of which seven died before it reached London, and the child that lived only owed its preservation to its mother, whose solicitude on its behalf led her to follow the waggon on foot, and suckle it when occasion afforded. The poor-law authorities, of course, were not slow in relieving the rates out of the public purse. Infants deposited at the workhouse, or born in it, were, on the first opportunity, packed off to London, and we may guess the misery many mothers must have suffered at thus having their children taken by vio- lence from them. Even the clothing in which the children was dressed was often stolen on the way, and the babes were deposited in the basket just as they were born. It is reported that a worthy banker in the north of England — received into the Hospital at this time, in after life being anxious to make some inquiry into his origin — applied at the Hospital, when all the information he could obtain from this source was, that it appeared on the books of the establish- ment that he was put into the basket at the gate naked ! On the very first day of this general reception of infants, 117 children were deposited in the basket. Indeed they must have been put in even faster than they well could be taken out. The easy manner in The Foundling Hospital. 303 which they were thus disposed of, led naturally to suspicion, on the part of neighbours, that they had not been fairly dealt with ; and a person was actually tried for infanticide, and would have been hung, were it not that he was able to prove that the crime was committed by the carrier. In order to secure the parents against any such suspicion, in the year 1757, the following notice was issued by the Governors : — Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed AND Deserted Children. " Whereas it has happened that persons who have put children into the Hospital have been, by the negligence of others, accused of destroying the same, and have been obliged, in order to clear them- selves, to procure certificates from the hospital of such children. The Governors and Guardians of the Hospital recommend it to all persons bringing children, that they leave some token by which, in case any such certificate shall be wanted, it may be found out whether such children have been taken in at the Hospital, it being impossible, without some such token, to give such certificate, as no questions are to be asked by the servants attending to receive children, except whether they are baptized or not. " By order of the General Committee, " J. CoLLlNGwrooD, Secretary." From this date all the children received had some token attached to their person, and in the course of time a goodly collection of these having accumulated, some fifty years ago, the Governors, with a pardonable curiosity, examined them — many of them sad tear- drops of the mother's heart, intended one day to help them in identifying their little ones Fate had now sun- dered from them, and in the large Board-room of the 304 TJie Foundling Hospital. Institution there they now lie exposed to the public gaze — little secret trinkets, which it was once believed none but the poor mother in a joyful moment would ever look upon again. One feels a certain melancholy in looking upon these passionate marks of affection sewed up in little baby clothes more than a hundred years ago. With what religious care many of them were afifixed, and how the mother, with bright imagination inspired by maternal love, looked forward to some possible time when, with the counterpart of the token in her possession, she should claim her grown-up child — all the more beautiful in her heart for the misery its birth had entailed upon her. Alas ! how we promise ourselves that we will never neglect the graves of our little ones ; how we vow that we will water them with our tears ; but time passes, the hand of the healer is upon us ; the weeds grow about the little headstones, which sink upon one side, and by degrees all the care bestowed in the moment of bitter grief is resolved into the lap of our common mother earth! So it was with the poor mothers who gave their little ones to the Foundling a hundred years and more ago. At first they came often to look after them, then more seldom, and soon not at all. By the presence of these tokens in the glass cases we know that many of these foundlings never saw the mothers they belonged to again : as their affection grew more slack, the world, or the fear of the world's scorn, pressed them away from the The Foundling Hospital. 305 maternal heart altogether. In all human probability, indeed, not one of those young infants is now alive. Let us look over these tokens in the glass case. What a singular diversity they present. Coins of an ancient date seem to have been the favourite articles used for this purpose ; but there are many things of a more curious nature. A playing card — the ace of hearts, with a dolorous piece of verse written upon it ; a ring with two hearts in garnets, broken in half, and then tied together ; three or four padlocks, intended, we suppose, as emblems of security ; a nut ; an ivory fish ; an anchor ; a gold locket ; a lottery ticket. Sometimes a piece of brass, either in the shape of a heart or a crescent moon, was used as a distinguish- ing mark, generally engraved with some little verse or legend. Thus one has these words upon it, " Tu amove hcec sunt vitce ;" another has this bit of doggrel— " You have my heart ; Thoiigh we must part." Again, a third has a hand engraved upon it holding a heart. Whilst we were musing over these curious mementoes of the past, the obliging Secretary of the Hospital brought us a large book, evidently bulged out with enclosures between its leaves : this proved to be a still more curious recollection of the past, as it enclosed little pieces of work, or some article of dress worked by the mother as a token, with some appeal for kind treatment attached. In many cases X 3o6 The Foundling Hospital. the token was a finely- worked cap, quaintly fashioned in the mode of the time ; sometimes it was a fine piece of lace. We remarked a book-marker worked in beads, with the words, " Cruel separation ; " and again, a fine piece of ribbon the mother had evidently taken from her own person. All of these tokens in the book indicated that the parent was of the better class — many of them that they were of the best class. In the days when Fleet marriages, and the little chapel in Curzon Street, May Fair, were in vogue, we fear female virtue even in the upper classes was not held of much account. Some of the letters, however, were clearly impudent attempts upon the credulity of the Governors. Thus the very first child re- ceived had the following doggrel lines affixed to its clothes — " Pray use me well, and you shall find My father will not prove unkind Unto that nurse who's my protector. Because he is a benefactor." Another is in a similar strain. The hint at the parentage would, we should think, have told against the admission of the babe, had it not been received in the days of their indiscriminate reception. Here is another — " C C . bom the 27th of November, christened the 7th of December, 1757. " It is earnestly entreated that the child may be taken care of, as the disconsolate parents hope to be in a position to own it, as it belongs The Foundling Hospital. 307 to a benefactor of the Hospital. The token is a silver penny gilt with gold of King Charles the Second, of the date 1677, marked with a. crown and a C under it. " For neither want of affection nor honesty of intention, but from an absolute disability of providing for it. " To the care and instruction of this hospital, under the direction of Divine Providence, the anxious parents, particularly the fond mother, afflicted to be torn thus from her beloved child, commits and earnestly recommends her tender babe, wishing she was so happy as to be in a capacity of discharging the duty of a good mother towards it, but submitting to the will of God, to whom she heartily prays, and in whom she trusts, for a blessing on this her dear infant, and hoping that the before-mentioned care and instruction will be dealt impartially to it, as to all the rest of the innocent children who are dependent upon this excellent charity. "Note. — It is desired earnestly that this paper, of which they have an exact copy, this copper piece and the clothes it has on, may be carefully preserved, with every the least mark or token whereby the parents may recollect their own offspring, as they fully propose, if blessed with life, to take it into their own hands, sooner or later, whenever it shall please God to enable them so to do. " This child was bom Friday, September the 9th, 1757, and christened by the name of W G ." We have scratched out all but the first letters of the name, in accordance with the request of the Secre- tary of the Hospital ; but it can make little difference now to any one who W. G. was, as " the anxious parents," particularly the " fond mother," never accomplished her hope of reclaiming him, and he has now long passed beyond the love of parents, or the care of what the world may say about him or them. Under date May, 1758, we find another memo- randum attached to a child, which marks the un- X 2 3o8 The Foundling Hospital. blushing misuse which was made of the charity in the days of the Parliamentary grant : — " This child is the son of a gentleman and a young lady of fashion. You may assure yourselves that the moment some circumstance will admit (which, for the honour of both, is and must be at present a secret), it will be taken away, and this noble foundation be remitted all their expenses. You are requested to call it (if agreeable to your rules) Frederick : it is not to be doubted but that the utmost care will be taken of it " Yours, && " N.B. It is not christened." Before the use of tokens was insisted upon, the only means of identification open to the Governors was the method in which the infant was dressed. Some of the entries show that the " quality " were by no means above taking advantage of the Found- ling. Thus, under date 1741, on the very opening of the institution, we find the following record : — " A male child, about a fortnight old, very neatly dressed ; a fine Holland cap, with a cambric border, white corded dimity sleeves, the shirt ruffled with cambric. " Again — " A male child, a week old; a Holland cap with a plain border, edged biggin and forehead cloth, diaper bib, shaped and flounced dimity mantle, and another Holland one ; Indian dimity sleeves turned up with stitched Holland, damask waistcoat, Holland ruffled shirt." This poor baby of a week old must have looked like a gallant in full fig. Doubtless these costly dresses were used with the idea that special care The Foundling Hospital. 309 would be taken of the wearers ; but this was a vain hope, the offspring of the drab and of the best quality stood on an equal footing inside the Found- ling gates, and in after years their faces only — ^that invariable indication of breed — proved their only distinguishing mark. The door of Parliament opened for the indiscrimi- nate admission of illegitimate children from all quarters speedily admitted a perfect flood of them. In the first year the numbers were 3,296, in the second year 4,085, in the third year 4,229, and during less than ten months of the fourth year — when Parliament, terrified at this augmenting charge of infantry, withdrew its sanction to the system — to 3,324, or no less than 14,934 babes in less than four years. Of course the task of wet-nursing such a multitude of infants was next to impossible, and we all know what must have been the result of feeding little ones by hand, impoverished by previous star- vation and neglect. Out of this army of children only 4,400 lived to be apprenticed, being a mortality of no less than 70 per cent. So much for an institu- tion established with the idea of saving infant life. This massacre of the innocents was accomplished at a cost to the nation of 500,000/. If Captain Coram could have arisen from his tomb under the chapel, he would have been horrified to find the institution thus turned into a receptacle for the fruits of immo- rality and an instrument of death. Even those who 3 lo The Foundling Hospital. did grow up to the age of apprenticeship were necessarily small from the number neglected by the Governors. The object was to get them out into service as soon as possible, and in order to effect this a premium was offered to employers to take them ; consequently they fell into the hands of the needy ; some were sent to the woollen manufactories in the north ; the young girls were apprenticed to good, bad, and indifferent employers, whose characters do not appear to have been inquired into. Two of these poor foundlings were the victims of the noto- rious Mother Brownrigge, and were by her beaten to death in a cellar which exists to this day scarcely without hearing of the Hospital doors. Mrs. Fry compared the sounds of the wards of the Hdpital des Enfans Trouves, Paris, to the bleating, faint and pitiful, of a flock of young lambs ; and a lady who not unfrequently visited the institution said that she never remembered examining the long array of clean white cots that lined the walls without finding one or more dead. The same writer, speaking of the La Curcia in Spain, says : " On entering the portico we heard a distant sound as of innumerable litters of puppies whining." The mor- tality in these institutions was even more frightful than with us. In Paris it was 80 per cent., in Mar- seilles 90 per cent, and in Dublin 91 per cent. In fact, young children brought up as most illegitimate children are, by hand, almost inevitably die, even The Foundling Hospital. 311 when taken to the poor-house. The writer (J. B.) of an interesting essay on Infanticide, says : " Some time ago a gentleman resident in London, had an infant left at the door of his house, and having no desire to support other people's children, he sent it to the workhouse. ' Ah,' said the parish crone, as the servant handed it in, ' it's sure to die, — ^they all die here ; we feed 'em on our workhouse bread, and that's enough ! ' " But to return to the Foundling Hospital. The Government having withdrawn their grant and dis- countenanced it, the Governors were left to their own devices to recruit their empty exchequer, for all the old friends had deserted it when Parliament took it into its keeping. This they did by the very notable plan of taking in all children that offered, accompanied by a hundred-pound note, no questions being asked, nor clue to their parents being received ! Of course this was nothing less than a premium upon pure profligacy, as none but the wealthy classes could deposit children on such terms. This system lasted, nevertheless, for upwards of forty years, until 1801 ; and of all the children so received, no sign of their " belongings " is left behind. If there had been, it is not likely that the Governors would expose them to the public gaze as they do those of an earlier date, otherwise we should be able to look upon fine laces enough, and possibly we might see the names of individuals that are now well known. 312 The Foundling Hospital. The present plan of admitting children dates from the abolition of these hundred-pound infants. The following conditions must be complied with before any admission can take place : — 1. That the child must be illegitimate, except the father be soldier or sailor killed in the service of his country. 2. That the child be born, and its age under twelve months. 3. That the petitioner shall not have made any application to any parish respecting its maintenance, or have been delivered in any parish workhouse. 4. That the petitioner shall have borne a good character previous to her misfortune, or delivery. 5. That the father shall have deserted his offspring, and be not forthcoming, that is, not to be found, or compellable to maintain his child. The mother is obliged to attend before the Board, and tell her story, and inquiries are afterwards set on foot in as secret a manner as possible, to verify her statement. The object of the charity is not only to save the life of the child, but to hide the shame of the mother, by giving her time to retrieve her faults. The world is but too prone to be hard upon poor women who have made a slip of this nature, and but too often their own sex affix a kind of moral ticket- of-leave to them, .which effectually prevents their The Foundling Hospital. 313 regaining their position. Under the contumely and the desperation such treatment reduces them to, the poor creature sometimes sacrifices not only her own life, but that of the unhappy child. Immediately the infant is received into the house it is baptised. Of old, contributions were laid upon every name illustrious in the arts and sciences. When these were exhausted, all our naval heroes were laid under contribution ; then our famous poets once more — in name at least — walked the earth. The Miltons, Drydens, and Shakspeares, that flou- rished within the walls of the Foundling in the last century must have made it a perfect Walhalla. Let no man flatter himself that he is descended from our famous bards upon the strength of a mere name, how- ever uncommon, lest some spiteful genealogist should run him to earth at the end of Lamb's Conduit Street. We wonder how many of those who claimed the blood of the bard of Avon in the late newspaper discussion may be traced back to Captain Coram's fostering asylum .? When the Foundling was first opened, noble lords and ladies stood sponsors to the little ones, and gave them their own names. As these foundlings grew up, however, more than one laid claim to a more tender relationship than was altogether convenient. Now-a-days it is thought best to fall back upon the Brown, Jones, and Robinson class of names of ordinary life to be found in the Directory. The 314 The Foundling Hospital. Governors, however, act in a perfectly impartial manner in this respect. A list of names is made out beforehand, and as the children arrive they are fitted to them in regular order. As soon as they are baptised they are despatched into the country, where wet-nurses have been provided for them. Within a distance of twenty miles, in Kent and Surrey, there are always about 200 of these foundlings at nurse Every child has its name sewn up in its frock, and also a distingushing mark hung round its neck by a chain, which the nurse is enjoined to see is always in its place. These children are regularly inspected by a medical man, and the greatest care is taken that due nourishment is afforded to the babes. When the nurse cannot do this, a certain amount of milk is required to be given. The foster children whilst at nurse are under the observation of visitors in the neighbourhood. When Hogarth lived at Chiswick, he and his wife took charge of a certain number of these little ones, and it is pleasant to read the faded accounts in the handwriting of the great painter, in which he shows that the interest he took in the charity was of the most intimate kind — that he; not only enriched it with the gift of his pencil, as we shall presently show, but also with his tender solici- tude for the foundlings, who could make him no return for the care with which he watched over them. The foster children, as a rule, are very well taken care of ; a large percentage indeed surviving the The Foundling Hospital. 315 maladies of childhood, which they certainly would not have done, under the peculiar circumstances of their birth, outside the walls of the asylum. But what becomes of the children of the foster mothers ? At the age of four they are returned to the Found- ling Hospital, but in very many cases the solicitude of their foster mothers does not cease with their care of the little ones, as they continually call to inquire after them, and they in return look upon them as their parents. The education they receive at the Found- ling is confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic, and they are also taught part-singing. Those who have attended the Foundling Hospital chapel must have been charmed with the beautiful effect of the fresh young voices swelling from the pyramid of little ones ranged on each side, and towering to the top- most pipes of the great organ (the gift of Handel), the girls in their quaint costume and high mob caps, the boys in their very ugly uniform. At fifteen the boys and girls are apprenticed, the boys to tradesmen, and the girls to private families as domestic servants ; and we hear that, as a rule, they turn out very well. The Governors make a very strict inquiry into the characters of those wishing to receive them before they are permitted to be apprenticed, and they desire regular reports to be sent to them of the conduct of their wards. Whilst the term of their apprenticeship lasts, the Governors continue their careful watch over them ; and when they are out of their time, means are 3 1 6 The Foundling Hospital. afforded the boys of setting out in life as artizans ; whilst the girls are, if well behaved, entitled to a marriage portion. But even at the termination of apprenticeship all connection with the Hospital does not necessarily cease, as many of them return to it as their home when in necessity, and, if well behaved, they are never denied assistance. Some of the chil- dren, crippled and helpless, remain for their whole lives as pensioners upon the bounty of the institution. It is certainly very remarkable to see babies in arms, noisy boys and girls, and very old men and women — those just entering life and those about to leave it — all under the same roof : the elder ones forming a part of its history for upwards of half a century, some of the others perchance destined to be its inmates for another threescore years. The fact is in itself a great testimony to the enduring nature of the interest taken by the Governors in the inmates. Those boys who have an ear for music are instructed in the use of wind instruments, and we heard a very capital selection of music performed in the music-hall of the establishment by these young musicians. As they attain proficiency, these lads are appointed to be bandmen of the regiments of household troops quartered near the metropolis, and some of the best performers in them came originally from the Foundling. Dr. Burney proposed, and very nearly carried, a resolution to establish a conservatory of music, towards The Foundling Hospital. 317 the latter end of the last century, under " the very wing of the Foundling," as the loquacious Fanny E relates; but some of the Governors, with a narrow idea of their duty, opposed the scheme, and it was dropped, but we see the idea cropping up again with admirable results. Neither must we forget to mention that the famous chapel of the Foundling rose at the sound of the sublime music of Handel. That great musician gave many performances within the building of his genial patrons, he himself pre- siding at the organ in the chapel, which was in fact his gift. At these performances all the fashion of the town used to be present, and as the admission fee was large, the charity netted on more than one occa- sion 2000 guineas. The charges of the performers in his day afford a remarkable contrast to those given at the present time for similar performances in the Crystal Palace or Exeter Hall. Imagine our great sopranos, contraltos, and tenors singing in the "Messiah" being satisfied with a payment of 57/. divided between them ! Painting was not behind its sister art in con- tributing to the embellishment of the Foundling. Hogarth, Gainsborough, Hayman, Highmore, and Wilson, contributed pictures to decorate the walls of the court-rooms. These pictures represent the very infancy of painting in this country, and that exhibi- tion to the public afforded the first hint for an exhibition of British art which afterwards culminated 3 1 8 The Foundling Hospital. in the establishment of the Royal Academy. On Sunday, after morning service, the court-rooms, form- ing a charming picture gallery of early English art, are thrown open to the public — indeed this, our first picture gallery, remains, with that of Hampton Court, the only other exhibition of art that is open to the public on a Sunday. Hogarth's " March to Finchley " came into the possession of the charity in a very remarkable manner. The painter disposed of it by lottery, and all the tickets not having been sold, those that remained, including the winning number, were presented to the charity by the painter. Thus the brightest time of the sister arts of painting and music are associated with this quaint old institution. Of the 500 children that are on the books of the Hospital, 200, as we have said, are laying in a stock of health in the cottages and amid the orchards of Surrey and Kent, the other 300 are to be seen within the walls of this building, in itself one of the most open and healthful spots in the metropolis. It is true it does not stand as of old in the centre of Lamb's Conduit Fields, for the town has crept up and devoured them; but it will be observed that the squares that flank the institution on either hand have no houses on the sides next to the hospital, conse- quently these large enclosures act as supplementary lungs to the ample gardens and grounds of the insti- tution itself Nevertheless, the Governors at the end of the last century let off enough of their land for The Foundling Hospital. 319 building purposes to bring in upwards of 5,500/. per annum, or as much as they originally gave for the fee-simple of the whole estate to the Earl of Salisbury. As the property was let on building leases for 99 years, large house property will fall into the hands of the charity in about 35 years from the present time; possibly by that period, if not before, the Foundling will be transplanted to the better air of the country, as the Charter House School, and possibly West- minster School, will be ; for why should we keep young children in the midst of a smoky town, when cheaper and better air can be provided for them in fields far away and brighter than were even the Lamb's Conduit Fields of old 1 We should not dream of planting a nursery-ground in the metropolis from choice; and children, it should be remembered, flourish just as ill as roses in contaminated air. When this institution is removed to "fresh fields and pastures new," the sale of their land for building purposes will probably bring them in an income of upwards of 50,000/. a-year, and the charity will possess the means of vastly increasing the field of its usefulness. ( 320 ) A WORD ABOUT WINES. |HE run upon two classes of wines, to the exclusion of all others, is prejudicial in more ways than one; but it is prin- cipally open to the objection, that foreigners, find- ing that our tastes are so inexorably fixed, sophis- ticate every wine, white or red, suitable to the pur- pose, so as to represent these products of Cadiz and Oporto ; and finding the habit constant, and themselves secure, have at length formed mighty establishments, in order to cheat the Englishman both in pocket and in health. Since Gladstone's tariff has come into operation, all our readers must have noticed the great strides the wine trade has taken. Of old, if we wanted a single bottle of wine, we scarcely knew where to go for it ; we should as soon have thought of sending to one of the old-fashioned wine-merchants for it as of asking one of the Rothschilds to do a little bill for us. But now we have changed all that. Every grocer who can manage to partition off a corner A Word about Wines. 321 of his shop-window, styles himself wine-merchant, and the passer-by is tempted by " taking " labels to " try our fine crusted port at 2s. gd.," the article being represented by a couple of bottles clogged with the mighty cobweb of centuries — equally with the wine manufactured. "Our excellent dinner sherry at IS. 8d. " is thrust prominently forward, with an assumption of knowledge on the part of the vendor which, considering his mitier, is excessively absurd. If the reader will take our word for it, these wines are as innocent of ever having come from Spain or Portugal as was the excellent gooseberry-wine his grandmother used to regale him with in his youth. The vile stuff to which we refer is mainly concocted in the free city of Hamburg. Immense establish- ments in that city, representing a very large capital, are now flourishing upon the credulity of our country- men, whose coarse and depraved taste the worthy burghers of that commercial emporium have accu- rately gauged. Hamburg port, which is in fact the " crusty " article that adorns the grocers' windows, consists merely of Elbe water, mixed with a very little wine of the cheapest kind, strengthened and " for- tified " up to the English standard of potency with potato spirit, and flavoured with various ethers to give "bouquet," and coloured with elder wine to afford the rich ruby tint the innocent drinker, as he screws up his eye and holds the glass between Y 322 A Word about Wines. himself and the light, notices so approvingly to himself. Elbe sherry is made in just the same manner, with the difference that burnt sugar gives the necessary tint to convert it into " excellent brown sherry." Latterly, the excise authorities have been so well informed of the horrible trash imported from Ham- burg, that they have refused to pass it at the low wine duty, and have charged it with the higher one, as mixed spirits ! It will be remembered that this fact came out in a late trial before Baron Bramwell, in which the Messrs. Banner, wine importers, brought an action against a shipper, in consequence of being supplied with a parcel of wine which was charged with the mixed spirit duty of fourteen shillings a gallon, in lieu of the two-shilling duty levied upon a former parcel of this so-called light wine received from him. In consequence, therefore, of Hamburg being a suspected port, the merchants of that place have now adopted the expedient of shipping their fraudulent wares to Cadiz and Oporto, and again reshipping them to England. This fact will account for the singular circumstance, that although port wine is no longer taken so liberally by the better classes, and that even sherry is getting too hot for their mouths, yet that the imports of the former have not materially decreased, whilst those of the latter have indeed augmented. This has been a great puzzle to all those who fancied that the A Word about Wines. 323 new tariff would have very rapidly shown a great preference for the lighter wines ; but a taste is not altered in a day, and the upper ten thousand having of old set the fashion for port and sherry, the lower middle classes, and even working men, are now following such incompetent leaders. An importer of Hamburg wine, who has lately written very indignantly to the Times in defence of that spurious manufacture, asserts that "the wines are simply blended, sweetened, and fortified," just, in fact, as other wines are that Englishmen have been in the habit of accepting as pure. But a little inquiry into the prime cost of wine in the countries of their production will prove that this statement cannot be true. For instance, a wine- merchant, who knows the trade well, writes us to the following effect : — " The lowest quoted prices from the trade circulars for German wines is 5/. per aum of thirty gallons, i. e., 3J. ^d. per gallon, or 6s. Bid. per dozen, with- out duty, but advancing in price to 60/. per aum ; for French wines 61. per hogshead, being 2s. yd. per gallon, equal to 5^. 2d. per dozen, without duty (and these qualities are so poor as to be scarcely drinkable) ; for Spanish (sherry) wine 27/. per butt, or 5 J. per gallon, equal to los. a dozen, without duty." These are the prices in wine- producing countries, one of which Hamburg is not. The importer, however, who so indignantly Y 2 324 A Word about Wines. complains that its purity is doubted, tells us in his circular that he is able to import an ex- cellent port wine to sell at London for ii/. per butt of i88 gallons, which, after deducting cost of casks, freight, &c., would make the prime cost, without allowing for his profit, but lo/. : equal to is. \od. per gallon, or 3^. 8^. per dozen in bond ! Unless the " blending " possibly consists partly of a mixture of water, &c., we really are puzzled to see how any wine can by any pos- sibility come in at the price the importer offers it for sale. If, however, water is one of the con- stituents, it is easy to imagine such a dilution as would leave the shipper a rare profit, and the drinker a defrauded ninny, paying the price of wine for dippings from the river Elbe. Possibly we shall receive some enlightenment on this head from the following advertisement which we cut from the Times of the 29th of September last :— PARTNER WANTED.— A practical Distiller, having been experimenting for the last seventeen years, can now produce a fair Port and Sherry by fermentation without a drop of the grape juice, and wishes a party with from 2,000/. to 3,000/. capital to es- tablish a house in Hamburg for the manufacture of his wines. Has already a good connection in business. Apply to . " We will not give the address of this adept in " applied chemistry," lest he should be torn to pieces by the trade for his indiscretion ; but it is A Word about Wines. 325 now clear how matters are managed ; and if the simple public are tempted by Hamburg port and Elbe sherry, or by the stuff fraudulently ticketed as coming from Cadiz or Oporto in the grocers' windows — why, so much the better for the doctors. At the same time we should really like to know why a smasher is to be punished for passing bad money, whilst the concoctors of these counter- feits, who not only cheat the purchaser out of his money but out of his health at the same time, are permitted to carry on this trade in the most unblushing manner. Members of the Temperance League, and the supporters of the Maine Liquor Law, should feel a deep interest in the growing taste for light wines, as it will tend far more powerfully than any restrictions to abolish the drinking habits of the country. If we adopted the habit of foreigners of drinking light wines at the dinner as a beverage, it would naturally follow that the old custom of dram-drinking at dessert — for hot sherry and brandied port are nothing better — would be abolished, and we should join the ladies at once in the drawing-room instead of sitting by ourselves for the mere sake of emptying the decanters. The days have gone by, it is true, when the host would not allow his guests to depart until they had each put three or four bottles of port under their belts ; but there can be no doubt that after a regular dinner 326 A Word about Wines. party we all feel ourselves the worse the next morning for our libations, notwithstanding that we are politely told there is not " a headache in a hogshead " of the wine we are drinking. Our reader must not imagine that because he drinks '34 port that he can escape these after-claps. The very purest vintage of this fine old Tory liquor is dosed with brandy both on leaving Oporto and on arriving in this country, which amounts in the aggregate to between thirty and forty per cent. Now we want vinous strength in our wines, and we can perhaps bear a fuller-bodied quality than more southern nations ; but the mixture of alcohol with it is by no means a sub- stitute for the natural strength called forth by its own vinous fermentation. The one makes the heart merry without making the head dull ; the other behaves in a directly opposite manner. • Inconceivable as it may appear, the brandy with which young port and sherry are drugged renders it perfectly undrinkable to the delicate palates to which it is addressed. It has therefore to be laid by for years to ripen, as it is termed ; in other words, to get rid of the alcohol put into it : hence the extraordinary cost of all old wines of this class, the purchaser, in fact, paying for the loss of time that has been squandered in spoiling a natural vintage in order to bring it down to an acquired and barbarous taste. A Word about Wines. 327 Originally we were a claret-drinking nation. In the time of Henry II., when Guienne belonged to the Crown of England, claret was the sole drink of the better classes ; indeed, up to the time of Charles II. it was the chief wine drunk in England. The assertion, therefore, that there is a national liking for brandy-drugged wine is simple nonsense. Port wine was introduced by the Methuen treaty in 1703, in order to spite the French, who plotted with the Stuart dynasty in order to overturn our Revolution in 1688. Political reasons rather than national predilections have caused this wine to hold its ground for a century and a half. It must not be supposed that the adulterations of which it stands convicted are of yesterday. Even as early as the year 1754 — or about fifty years after the English market had become the monopoly of the Portuguese for wines — a dispute had arisen between the British factory at Oporto and the wine-producers of the Alto-Douro. The former complained that they could no longer get their wine pure as they used to do ; that its fermentation was stopped before being completed by the practice of throwing in brandy, which the " factory " characterized as " diabolical ;" and they hinted at the use of other "confections which render it an artificial drink." The wine- growers immediately replied with a hi quoqite. They charged "the gentlemen of the north" with 328 A Word about Wines. having demanded that the finer qualities of the wine should be sacrificed to its potency, "and" [we quote from a document of the period] " they wished that it should advance even further than its natural capabilities would admit ; and on being drunk, that it should be a potable fire in spirit, an in- flammable powder in fierceness, an ink in colour, a Brazil in sweetness, and an India in aroma." No doubt the Portuguese had truth on their side, for they could have had no reason for going to the expense of falsifying their wines unless such falsi- fications had been demanded. However, the com- plaints of the " factory " were eventually listened to, and a monopoly was established under the design- ation of the Royal Wine Company. All the elderberry-trees were ordered to be rooted up in the wine districts, and various other regulations were made as to the proper fermentation of the wine, the use of " jerupiga " being prohibited. As our innocent reader may not know of what this article, on which the body, sweetness, and blackness of our present port consists, we will enhghten him. Jerupiga, then, is a decoction manufactured after the following approved recipe: — " To fifty-six pounds of dried elderberries, and sixty pounds of coarse brown sugar, or treacle, add seventy-eight gallons of unfermented grape-juice and thirty-nine gallons of the strongest brandy. Mix all thoroughly together." The regulations imposed by the Royal Wine A Word about Wittes. 329 Company, no doubt, improved the quality of the wine ; but when this company was broken up, the elderberry-trees were again allowed to grow, and all the old tricks of the adulterator were revived ; so much so, that in 1844, Mr. James Forrester, a wine- grower in the Alto-Douro, and a wine-merchant, made some attempts to bring about a reform of the abuses which had crept into the method of manufac- ture, and for that purpose endeavoured personally to enlist the sympathies of the wine-growers. His work, entitled "A Word or Two on Port Wine," certainly threw a light upon the tricks of the trade which startled not a few. But it is quite clear that the reform never was accomplished, and the wine which at that day he asserted was disappearing from the table of gentlemen, has, in fact, vastly further deteriorated in the inferior qualities now that the taste for it has descended to a third-class people, who know nothing about natural flavours, and in whom its most appreciated qualities are just those of being hot, sweet, and strong. Upon the first introduction of port wine, the wits turned upon it all the vials of their wrath. In the "Farewell to Wine," published in 1693, there is a tavern dialogue which hits to the life all the short- comings of the new beverage : — "Some claret, boy." " Indeed, sir, we have none. Claret, sir ? Lord ! there's not a drop in town. But we have the best red port." 330 A Word about Wines. " What's that you call Red port?" " A wine, sir, comes from Portugal. I'll fetch a pint, sir." " Ah, how it smells ! Methinks a real pain Is by its odour thrown upon my brain. I've tasted it ; 'tis spiritless and flat. And has as many different tastes As can be found in any compound pastes." The taster must have quaffed by anticipation a genuine bottle of Hamburg port, the description is so perfect. In time, however, the national taste became degraded to the level of the liquor, and per- haps at the time of the Regency, when port was drunk in the largest quantities, our upper classes were the most besotted gentlemen in Europe ; not perhaps because they drank more than foreigners, but because they drank it three times as strong, and by no chance pure. Dr. Druett, who has written a singularly-interesting little treatise upon the light wines of Europe, enters into the nature of the concoctions that are now being forced upon the English market. "No port wine," he says, "can be shipped from Oporto to England unless ' approved ' and unless it receives a 'bilhete,' or ticket of approbation, from persons authorized by Government. To be 'ap- proved,' port wine must possess certain qualities which the grape-juice alone cannot impart. It must possess body, sweetness, and colour, enough to qualify it for ' benefiting ' other wines ; or, in the A Word about Wines. 331 words of the law, para si, e para dar. This disposi- tion is founded on the notion that port is required by us principally for blending with other wines. This has led to the production of that artificial, thick, strong, and sweet compound in such great demand for tavern use in England. A simple, unloaded wine cannot lawfully receive a bilhete, but must be shipped under a purchased one. Pure port wine, unknown in this country, unbrandied and unsweetened with jerupiga, is a wine of Burgundy character, and quite unlike the stuff commonly known as port." So much for port, which our fathers swore by, which is still cherished by those who have been accustomed to it all their lives, who have laid down cellars of it, and fancy they can distinguish be- tween bottles of every fine vintage within these last thirty years. The genuine-old-port drinker will stick to his colours to the last ; but the rising gene- ration, who have their tastes to form, will not lose by listening to the tale we have told them. Its sister, sherry, is quite as great an offender against the public stomach. We do not allude to Hamburg sherry now, as that has been discussed, but to the much-sought-after high-priced qualities which really come from Spain. Let us hear the testimony of a vintner, Mr. Shaw, who has written a work on "Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar," and who ought, therefore, to know something about the tricks of the trade. He says, — 332 A Word about Wines. "One can no more drink in Spain the sherry usually consumed in England than he can in Oporto the usual English port. About six gallons of spirits are put into a butt of sherry after fermenta- tion, and generally about four gallons more previous to its being shipped. It is almost quite pale at first. The very dark brown is made at St. Lucars, in the following manner: — Twenty or thirty gal- lons of must (unfermented juice) are put into an earthen vessel, and heated until not more than a fifth part remains, when it looks and tastes like treacle. It is turned into a cask containing more must, which causes it to ferment, and the result is a very full, luscious wine, which, if originally good, becomes, after many years, invaluable for giving softness, richness, and colour to others. Large quantities of this product, when new, are used to colour and to cover the harsh thinness of poor qualities. It is for this reason that it is called the ' Doctor,' and many a butt that comes to England to be sold as ' curious old brown,' at an immense price, has to thank the old boiled musto stocks for its character." It is such a settled thing to mix and qualify port and sherry up to a given standard, that our best and most respectable wine-merchants do it without the slightest idea that they are committing any wrong, or that they are doing any violence to the wine. Yet nothing is more certain than that it A Word about Wines. 333 is impossible to mingle different vintages without de- stroying that peculiar vinous flavour which all true wine possesses. It is true that the quantity of brandy added to " fortify " these wines so tampered with, masks all imperfections of this character, but it is apparent instantly where the mixture takes place with virgin vintages only. If the cellarmen of our old-established wine-merchants were allowed to give us an insight into what goes on in their masters' vaults, we fancy the public would be astonished ; yet these gentlemen would be very in- dignant if their grocer were to send them sand in their sugar or chicory in their coffee. The only remedy the public have under present arrangements is to put aside these " doctored " wines altogether, and to stick to the pure light wines, which cannot be mixed. For some time the wind has veered round again towards the ex- cellent light wines of France. The Chancellor's new tariff has reversed the Methuen treaty, and we are beginning to see, after a lapse of more than a century and a half, claret served over the counter at the vintners', and Burgundy taking the place of bitter beer. There is a dining-room near" St. Clement Dane's Church, in the Strand, where claret and Burgundy have almost wholly taken the place of beer and porter, each guest calling for his pint of light wine as naturally as they do in France. For business men, who are obliged to 334 -^ Word about Wines. dine in the middle of the day, these light wines are a great improvement upon the heavy stout, which renders men sleepy and unfit for work. Indeed, for the matter of that, light wine would prove an admirable substitute in many instances for tea, which, although it does not inebriate, yet has a tendency to increase nervous disorders. Children again — poor, white, appetiteless things, with weak digestions and flabby tongues — would receive immense benefit from the pure light wines that are now finding their way into the country. They come to us, however, like strangers : we look shyly at them, and pass by on the other side. This feeling is, however, wearing off, and we no longer are influenced by the dictum of the old-port school, which pronounces them to be trashy, sour, and undrinkable. It certainly says but little for the Englishman, who boasts so often that he is unprejudiced, that among the thousand vintages that are to be found in wine-producing countries, he has only hitherto believed in two, and not even in these when in a pure condition. We are told there are scores of wines in Spain and Portu- gal that we know nothing about. Hungary has only just made a lodgment with her full-bodied pure vintages ; and now Greece comes into the field with half a dozen charming wines, so " tender and true " in flavour, yet full in body, that it makes us gnash our teeth to think we have spent A Word about Wines. 335 our youth drinking headachy liquors, whilst such libations were running to waste in the Archipelago. The run that has lately taken place upon these wines is thoroughly deserved, and the agent of the Company, Mr. Denman, of Piccadilly, who has had the courage to believe his countrymen are superior to a degraded taste, even of a hundred and fifty years' standing, deserves our best thanks for introducing us to a really fresh pleasure, which requires no soda-water the day after. The St. Elie, a light wine, cheaper than most of the fabri- cated white wines of the shops, possesses all the qualities of the finest Amontillado sherry — dry, delicate, and yet possessing nearly twenty-six per cent, of vinous spirit — not brandy, but the pure alcohol, the product of the fermentation of the wine itself The red and white Keffesia, again, have both excellent qualities — the red Keffesia, being of a Burgundy character, with plenty of body. The value of all pure wines is that they arrive at perfection very early ; that is particularly the case with the Greek wines. Red Keffesia, laid by for a couple of years, rivals the finest Burgundy we have ever tasted. Then, again, there are half a dozen other wines grown on the same volcanic soil of the island of Santorin, namely Como, Patras, Hymet, Bostza, Samos, and Muscat, the last the character and flavour of a liqueur. Now we come to think of it, it seems to be really 336 A Word about Wines. providential that the oidium, or vine disease, made its appearance some years ago. The destruction of the vines in Spain and Por- tugal has sent the better qualities of their wines up to such prices that persons of moderate means have not been able to afford them ; consequently a fair field has been opened to rival vintages, which otherwise would have had the greatest difficulty in obtaining a footing in England. Luckily the blight came just at the right time : old tastes were becoming wearisome ; we no longer put implicit faith in the opinions of our fathers, many of the wisest of whom have dogmatized on the matter of wines most absurdly. For instance, the great Dr. Johnson used to say, in his sledge-hammer way, " Claret for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes ;" a sentiment which no doubt reflected the opinions of his day, but which we should think a sentiment worthy of the mind of a potboy. The truth is, that wine-merchants, having been accus- tomed to sophisticate John Bull's tipple so long with impunity, have overdone it ; the patient creature has at last kicked, and come round to appreciate a simple wine flavour, and left the fraudulent wine- concoctor aghast at his independence. As we write, the news comes to us that Portugal, perceiving in time the way the wind is setting in this country, has taken off all export duties on its wines. We may, therefore, expect soon to have A Word about Wines. 337 some of the many vintages of that country. Unso- phisticated port is, we are told, like Burgundy ; if so, the more we have of it the better ; but it certainly will not do to introduce it under the name of port. With that wine we associate certain compound tastes — the pure wine flavour of a natural wine will never satisfy that demand. Imagine the shock, good reader, it gives us to taste one flavour when we have prepared our palates for quite a different one — " a wine by any other name will not taste as sweet." Our words of caution will not be thrown away, however, upon those who are not aware that in drinking the vintages of the Alto-Douro they have been drinking something they did not bar- gain for, and paying for it an altogether outrageous, because fictitiously augmented, price. { 338 ) DISTINGUISHED SETTLERS FROM ABROAD. O U L D the illustrious author of the " Atlantis " revisit this earth, he would behold in Regent's Park that vision of his sagacious mind — the " tryal place for beasts and fishes," realized beyond his utmost hopes. In his day the fauna of the world was but little known, the great continents of the new world but little explored, and the mighty group of islands in the Southern Ocean were wholly undreamed of. The whole of Africa, with the exception of Egypt and its northern coast, was equally a terra incogtiita — that mighty land of savage beasts and of animal life in its thousand forms. The zoology of Lord Bacon's days may be likened to the contents of a shilling Noah's Ark, as compared with the infinite variety of living things with which the science is now familiar, and the rarer varieties of which are now to be seen in a beautiful garden within a mile and a half of Regent Street. Indeed, the travelling menagerie of our younger days, in which a few typical animals of Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 339 the more ferocious and terrible kind alone were to be found, constituted the principal knowledge the public possessed of the fauna of the globe. Now scarcely a day passes without finding these gardens enriched by some entirely new animal, or some rare variety of a well-known species. Here, caged and brought close within our vision, we have become familiar with their habits, and have learned to unlearn many of those marvellous travellers' tales we once so implicitly believed. Here, too, is a " tryal place for beasts and fishes ; " we have settled many matters which were once in doubt and obscurity. The Zoological Society indeed started into existence with a purely philosophical aim, such as " broad-browed Verulam " would have approved ; but of late years the necessity of pro- viding funds has led to a system of starring each season with some rare and strange animal. Yet, on the whole, it cannot be said that the society has forgotten the demands of science, or that it has neglected its opportunities as compared with other nations. In other countries we see features in their Zoolo- gical Gardens that we may copy with advantage. For instance, the fish-house at Hamburg is on a far nobler scale than our own. The walls are purely transparent, and the spectator sees the denizens of the ocean and the lake surrounding him on all sides and sporting about, as he would see them supposing z 2 340 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. he were submerged in the deep, and quietly inspect- ing them with his eyes open. At Antwerp, again, instead of the miserable cage in which the royal Eagles are confined in our garden, not much bigger, comparatively speaking, than the wire cover with which we protect our viands from the flies, there is a magnificent aviary of great height, in which the noble bird can at least air its wings ; whilst at Cologne, the Bear dens are not mere pits, as with us, but splendid establishments, where Bruin is not obliged to live in the bottom of a well. And lastly, at Paris, the wild Sheep and Goats have splendid paddocks, filled with rock-work, on which the animals can be seen in their more picturesque movements when climbing or jumping ; just such a place, in fact, as our own " great Cats " should have, if the promoters of the gardens were wise in their generation. Yet, on the whole, there can be no question that our own gardens contain by far the finest collection of beasts, and that the arrangements are better than can be found in any other country. No collection of animals in the world is for one moment, indeed, comparable with that to be found in Regent's Park ; and if the Society has failed in its scheme of acclimatization, which was promised on its establishment, it has done so because Nature has proved too strong for it. Another society has taken upon itself the duty of following up the plan of the original Society, and it remains to be seen Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 341 if its labours will be any more successful — at all events, we wish a happy result to their praise- worthy efforts. In these pages we desire to speak of the more recent arrivals from distant parts, and to note the more curious characteristics of the living things contained in these grounds with which the public are not perhaps very familiar. The more educated of the visitors are no longer satisfied, like children, with merely observing the form of the living creature : they are anxious to know something of its habits — to see, if possible, its instincts exercised (under such favourable conditions as can be af- forded) as they are in a state of nature; and in many cases the director of the gardens has been able to satisfy these desires. Let us instance the Beaver lodge. The original structure, as it stood a twelvemonth ago, seemed but a heap of mud, and nothing more ; but to those persons only moderately versed in natural history, it presented a sight never before witnessed in this country, or even in Europe, since the extinction of the Beaver in its rivers — the dwelling-place of the animal reared by its own sagacious labours, as in a state of nature. For a long time the male Beaver lived here a melancholy recluse; and when a female arrived, he showed such a savage spirit towards her, that it was thought best to separate their paddocks by a 342 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. fencing. "Distance lends enchantment to the view," says the poet; and as the two animals watched and sniffed at each other through the palings, the lord and master seemed to have come to a better state of mind with respect to his future mate — at all events, one night the female took a very decided step to renew the acquaintance, by burrowing under the dividing railing, and pre- senting herself to her mate in the most unreserved manner. This proceeding, altogether contrary to the general usages of courtship, was decidedly successful, and they lived for some time happily together. The commencement of the first lodge, or hut- building operation, was inaugurated by Mr. Bartlett, the superintendent of the gardens, who placed in the paddock an old box, mouth downward, with one end knocked out. The Beavers at once took to this shelter, and commenced piling upon it and around it the puddled clay with which they had been sup- plied, in one corner of their inclosure. Of course the reader expects to be told about the wondrous dexterity with which they plastered the work with their tails ; in truth, they did nothing of the kind, and all the stories about the animal using his tail as a trowel are pure myths, caused doubtless by the apparent applicability of that appendage to such a purpose. It is a rudder, and nothing more, to assist the animal in directing its course in the water, and is perfectly useless at plasterer's work. We regret Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 343 to have to demolish a favourite notion respecting this rodent, but the truth must be told. To return, however, to the Beaver's method of constructing his lodge. The clay, moistened with the little running stream close at hand, was carried by his fore paws, and dabbed on the roof he was making over the box ; this process of daubing and puddling was alternated by carefully placing branches across and athwart the mudwork, interlacing the former, and then filling up the interstices with the puddled clay — making, in short, a kind of wattle and dabwork, such as we find used in the construction of the cottages in Devonshire. With a recollection of his habits in some distant Canadian forest, where the Beavers, acting in association, speedily clear acres of ground of fine forest timber by the splendid action of their adze-like teeth, he commenced gnawing at an old piece of tough ash trunk left for his use. This trunk, eight inches in diameter, he nearly gnawed through with his powerful incisor in an hour and a quarter, and he would have entirely detached it from the large bole at its foot, but that it was rescued by the superintendent, and placed within an iron railing immediately in front of his lodge, as a trophy of his style of timber-felling, where it remained for some time, until it was re- moved to the new lodge. The tools with which they work are the two upper incisors, and they cut off chips with a crisp noise like 344 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. that made by a ship carpenter with his adze. All the large pieces he was allowed to carry away to the lodge, he took and placed on the work where it required strengthening. The astonishing vigour of these animals may be estimated when we say, that he rolled from one side of the inclosure to another a log of wood weighing half a hundred- weight. Working away at all hours, at last the box was covered with a large mound composed of sticks, small trees, and mud, which must have weighed many tons, and which could not have been less than eight or ten feet circumference at its base, and at least six feet high. The entrance to the lodge was as cunningly contrived as it would have been In the animal's native wilds. A hole was gnawed away at the back of the box, and in the earth behind a deep cavity was excavated, from which a shaft was run into the dam of water in front of the lodgfe. The water of course found its level, and flooded the excavations. From the back side of the excavation a gallery was now driven, which led up to the sleeping-place in the upper part of the mound. Here the bed was made where the pair bred about eighteen months ago, a circumstance which was un- known to the superintendent until one morning the young one was seen through some air-holes at the top of the lodge. The habit visitors have of feeding the animals, ended unfortunately in the instance of the Beavers. Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 345 The male animal and its little one died, as the superintendent believes, of too much bread. In their native state they feed mainly on willow bark ; but their bread diet, combined with the want of exercise consequent upon their enforced confine- ment, led to over-fatness, which produced disease, and ultimately carried them off. The superin- tendent, probably thinking that the melancholy associations connected with the old lodge would be better broken by change of scene, removed the mourning widow to ^ new habitation that had been partially constructed for her. In the midst of a circular pond, a well of masonry, some eight feet deep, was constructed, quite waterproof, into which sticks, broken up small, were rammed tight ; on the top of this an old box was placed, and the Beaver transferred to it. She speedily gnawed a hole in the bottom of the box as before, and burrowed into the bed of sticks, making two or three chambers and methods of ingress and egress. The box she covered over with earth and soil, as in the old house, binding the mound with large willow branches. But it is clear she pines to range a field, for at the present moment she has cun- ningly conveyed sods to the corner of the railed-in inclosure nearest to the canal, clearly with the intention of getting over and escaping ; the recol- lection of her escapade with her mate some time ago, — when she managed to get into the canal, and 346 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. remained swimming about there for several days, until captured by one of the bargemen and re- turned to the gardens, — no doubt still haunting her. Walking along the gravel walk thronged with holiday people, one feels not a little startled at finding one's self within thirty feet of a Beaver lodge, and its inmate busy at work upon it, appa- rently as unconscious of being watched as though it was in the depths of some Canadian forest. What lessons on natural history even this poor captive, pent up here, teaches us, which we should never realize from reading the books of the best naturalists ! Here we see nature herself at work, which is more than many of our naturalists them- selves have done. We bring savage life within our ken, and watch it as leisurely as the micro- scopist when bringing to sight hitherto invisible animalculae with his powerful lens. Twenty years ago the demand for the skins of the Beaver on the part of our hat manufacturers was so enormous, that the animal was threatened with extinction by the hunters. Of late years, however, silk has taken the place of beaver in this manufacture ; conse- quently the poor animal is not quite so disturbed as of old. Not far from the Beaver lodge are located the Cashmere Goats, which afford the soft, silky hair of which the famed Cashmere shawls are made. These animals seem in excellent condition. If DistingiiisJied Settlers from Abroad. 347 the gentleman, grateful for past favours, as he passes the lodge of the rodent, takes off his Beaver to the inmates, the lady, as an acknowledgment for her costly Cashmere, may salute these little Goats, whose ragged-looking but precious coats — more precious, indeed, than the fabled golden fleeces of antiquity — have contributed towards her adorn- ment. A male and female Rhinoceros, in addition to the old female that has been here for so many years, have lately been purchased. It is hoped they will breed, a hope also which extends towards the Hippopotami. The old female Rhinoceros has for years been labouring under a great infirmity of temper, so much so that, for the safety of the keeper, the corners of her den have been par- titioned off and provided with staircases, to afford a means of escape for him when she attempts to attack him, which she often does. A few years since, in her rage, she attempted to tear up the paving-stones with her mouth, and in doing so had the misfortune to put her jaw out, and it was months before she recovered the use of it, after most as- siduous nursing. These pachydermatous animals, sleepy and heavy as they look, are subject to seizures of frenzied rage of a most fearful kind. The old Hippopotamus some years ago nearly pulled down the iron railing running on one side of his inclosure, because he 348 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad: saw a workman who appeared to be his special aversion walking along it. Poor fellow! he has ceased to be the great star he was in the Great Exhibition year of 185 1, when he cleared ^10,000 for the Society, and, indeed, did much to bring the gardens into notoriety. The Indian Elephant we are all familiar with, crowned with his bouquet of smiling children sway- ing to and fro in his howdah; but the African variety of this sagacious beast is now for the first time represented in this garden. There are two of these animals : one about nine years of age, and a tiny baby elephant of two years, that has not yet cut its milk-teeth. A glance at these animals at once shows that they are a distinct species from the Indian specimen we see shuffling along with his living load outside. The head of the African Ele- phant is much smaller; the forehead, instead of rising up in a rounded ridge over the eyes, retreats ; the ears, on the other hand, are much larger in shape, almost like a kite, and folded flat on the top of the head. The orifice of the trunk, again, is very different ; instead of possessing only one prehensile lip on the upper side, the African Elephant's proboscis opens like the mouth of a snake, with two distinct lips, upper and under. Its feet, again, are of a more oval form than those of its Indian congener. These differences of the two species are even more marked than that Distingtiished Settlers from Abroad. 349 existing between the African and the Asiatic Lion. Whilst touching upon the larger mammalia, we must not forget to notice the rich collection of Bears now in the possession of the Society. The fine old specimens have died off — Prince Menschikoff, to wit, who must have boiled down into many hun- dredweights of prime grease ; also the fine black fellow that consumed such an infinity of cakes in the pit; but several new kinds have been added. The Japanese Bears, for instance, — queer little fellows, that amuse the children by their trick of turning a summersault every time they arrive at the end of their cage ; and the very droll-looking Malayan Bears, smooth-haired creatures, with heads more like bull-dogs than any Bears we have ever seen. The baby European Brown Bear, on the other hand, has a quaint, innocent-looking face, not unlike the little mouse-like physiognomies of Sir Joshua Reynolds's children. There has been a great mortality in the reptile- house. The huge Pythons have died, but they have been replaced ; not so, unfortunately, that curious animal the Cameleon. When alone, he refused to change his coat of ashen grey, but it was observed that when he was removed to fresh quarters, he generally put on the tinge of colour of the place in which he was. The rapid change of colour for which he is traditionally famous was not observed 3 so Distinguislied Settlers from Abroad. whilst he was in the possession of the Society. Such is the power of association in our ideas re- ceived in early life, that a Cameleon without his attendant disputants, such as we read of in the old "Speakers," does not seem a Cameleon at all, and the grey little fellow who kept so still upon the branch seemed to us an impostor. In the adjoining room, where the Sloths are located, a strange little visitor from South America has lately been placed — the Armadillo. This sin- gular creature, in its living cuirass, attracts attention by the extreme rapidity with which it runs about its cage ; and the legs being almost entirely hidden by the covering shell of the body, its method of progression reminds the spectator of the mechanical- clock mice we see in the toy-shops. But without the aid of the keeper we miss the most curious habit the beast has, of rolling itself into a ball on the least fright or apprehension of shock. We happened to have the attention of this worthy, who took the creature out for us when thus curled up with fear, and certainly its appearance was most extraordinary — the wedge-like head and tail fitting into each other as closely as a mortice and tennon joint. In fact, the ball was so perfect that you might have played cricket with it ; and by no effort could an enemy obtain an entrance into its perfectly-fitting globe-like shell. In this habit of defence it indeed resembles the Hedgehog Distinguisfied Settlers from Abroad, 351 and Woodlouse of our own land. Who does not remember the line in Tom Hood's " Haunted House "— The woodlouse dropp'd, and roU'd into a ball, Touch'd by an impulse occult or mechanic. It is a peculiarity of most of the curiosities in these Gardens, that the public never see them. The Apterix, a nocturnal bird from New Zealand, located in the Ostrich house, is never seen unless she is specially routed out from her den for a moment for inspection, when she presents the ap- pearance of a bunch of feathers, supported on spindle legs, which would allow the bird to topple over, were they not supplemented by a long bill, which rests upon the ground, and acts as a kind of supporting walking-stick. The olfactory nerves are 'situated near the extremity of the beak, and with this it probes the ground, scenting the worms upon which it feeds, far below the surface. The great interest of this bird consists in the fact that it is the last living representative, of which we have any knowledge, of a gigantic race of wingless birds that once existed in New Zealand. The visitor to the Museum of the College of Surgeons may have noticed the shank bones and the eggs of one of these birds, which must have been from twelve to fourteen feet in height, and an account of which has been given to the world by Professor 352 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. Owen. It is asserted, indeed, that whalers whilst ashore in the more secluded part of the middle island, have seen and been scared by this gigantic bird, which they term " the fireman." It would really seem as though nature had de- termined to construct a group of animals in Aus- tralia and the adjacent islands on a plan entirely different from that she employed in the old world. What an odd-looking animal, for instance, is the Ursine Dasyure, a marsupial, whose den adjoins those of the Kangaroos. This animal and the Tasmanian Thylacine are both most destructive to the Sheep, and are hunted to death as the Wolf was in our own land, consequently they are be- coming rarer every year. The Ursine Dasyure, as its name implies, belongs to the Bear tribe, but it undoubtedly more resembles a gigantic Mouse, with large and delicate ears. This beast walks with a very odd motion of its hind legs, which arises from paralysis, and it is a singular fact that the same disease killed a former Dasyure in these gardens. The stock-holders give it the name of the " Devil," in consequence of the devas- tations it commits among their flocks, and its determined method of showing fight when attacked, being a match for a powerful sheep-dog. We must confess its size does not seem to warrant such an assertion, but its bite is, we hear, very vicious and severe. Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 353 The Tasmanian Thylacine is a very different animal ; it is called the Tasmanian Wolf, not from any resemblance to that animal, but, we suppose, because it is so destructive to the Sheep. In its movements it is more like those of the Cat tribe, and, moreover, its coat has a greater resemblance to that of an Ocelot, than that of a Wolf ; its supple and pliant action resembling the former animal very exactly. The shape of its head has that peculiar blunt appearance which so many of the animals possess in the Australian group. Although a most remorseless war is kept up against this animal, yet such is its agility, bounding as it does up heights of from ten to twelve feet, that it bids fair to hold its ground for many years in the rocky glens of Tasmania, where it is found. There are some splendid speci- mens of Kangaroos in the adjoining . shed, and they have nearly all bred freely since they have been in their present quarters. Mr. Gould, the distinguished naturalist, dwells upon the excel- lence of Kangaroo meat for the table, and recom- mends its introduction into our English parks in the midland and southern counties. But the Kang- aroo has a very ugly habit of using its powerful hind quarters when angry, and his claws are so sharp, that he can with facility rip open a man, a contingency for which the best Kangaroo steak in the world would not afford any compensation. 2 A 354 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. English parks would be turned into zoological gardens without the protection of cages and keepers, if all the animals we may be able to acclimatise were turned into them. The Wapiti Deer, for instance, would breed, no doubt, freely enough, if allowed to range our parks, but it is scarcely necessary to say that at rutting time they would be exceedingly dangerous occupants of our home parks. Those who have seen the anger of these splendid Deer at such seasons when any person goes near their enclosure, must admit that our parks with such occupants would be extremely dangerous to walk in. The vigour with which they charge the iron railings of their enclosure when any stranger approaches is "a caution," to use an American phrase, which we should not neglect. The Sambur Deer, which is highly recommended as a park ornament, is also very dangerous at times ; one indeed nearly killed Lord Hill's son in a park where some of them had been located. We question much if the Highlands of Scotland would be suitable even for the hardy Wapiti Deer, know- ing as we do that they are accustomed to a cold dry climate, such as Canada. At all events, if we could acclimatise these Deer, or any of the fourteen varieties in these gardens which are said to be capable of living in our island, they would be only articles of luxury, and would in no way con- tribute towards the food of the people. Distinguislied Settlers from Abroad. 355 The south side of the gardens, where the Llamas of old used to be accommodated, is now devoted to the fine collection of Cranes and Waterfowl : yet it seems to us that some of this space might be apportioned to the larger carnivora with advantage. The Lions and Tigers, except at feeding-time, seem now to be very unattractive, and this, we feel certain, is purely attributable to the manner in which they are cooped up in their narrow dens. It is positively painful to watch these noble beasts pace up and down their narrow inclosures and fret against the bars, whilst there is so much room which might be appropriated to their use. It has long been in contemplation to sand over a certain area as an exercising ground for the "great Cats," and we feel certain that if the Society were to do this, it would afford a public sensation which would be highly remunerative. We know nothing of the Lion or the Tiger, as we now see them ; the supple action of the Leopard is lost in his cage, where he is now confined more cruelly than is a lark. A quarter of an acre well palisaded, into which these animals could be turned at intervals, would prove an immense attraction to the public, who seem to have lost their faith in the king of the forest and his congeners. A very curious bird, the Tallegalla, or Brush Turkey, is now located in the south-western part of the gardens, which is quite secluded from the 2 A 2 356 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. public eye, and consequently they know nothing about it. Yet in its habits it is one of the most singular of the feathered tribe the Society have in their gardens. Of course this odd bird is an Australian ; and of course it sets about the serious business of life in a manner totally different to that pursued by all other birds. It hatches its young, not by the warmth of its body, as is the ordinary method of incubation, but constructs a natural eccaleobion, by heaping together a mound of vegetable matter, in which it deposits its eggs, waiting patiently for the fermentative process to hatch them. Their eggs are at least four inches long, of an oblong form, not unlike, either in texture or form, an Alligator's eggs. The mound is scraped up by the male bird to a height of five or six feet ; and then the eggs, which often amount to three dozen, are placed among the heated mass in a ring at regular intervals, with their smaller ends pointing downwards, at least eighteen inches below the surface. Lest the temperature of the ferment- ing heap should become too great, the male bird is constantly on the watch, giving them air when the weather is hot at least twice in the day, and at all times keeping open a circular aperture in the centre of the mound, to prevent any constant increase of the temperature. The birds, when hatched, lie still in the heap until the third day, when they are capable of strong flight ; indeed. Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 357 one of the young ones being frightened on the third day, on one occasion, at once mounted on the wing, and forced its way through the strong iron netting which covers the enclosure. Of the large number of eggs this bird lays, but three or four ever come to maturity. That the heated mound has some peculiar influence in hatching the birds, which other means will not accomplish, is proved by the fact that the common hen, which hatches the eggs of the swan, equally large with those of the Brush Turkey, cannot bring the young forth ; neither can the artificial eccaleobion, which is so successful with the eggs of all other birds. These facts go to prove that there is some con- dition of heat which the fermentative process is alone capable of producing. The very small number of eggs hatched out in this country is attributable to the nature of the litter composing the heap. In Australia the grasses and vegetable matter are of a highly succulent nature, calculated to ferment and produce a much greater heat than the dry hay and other litter with which they are provided here. There are at present three pairs of these birds in the enclosure appropriated to them, and they have made three huge heaps of litter, which are filled with eggs, but they have come to nothing. Mr. Bartlett, fancying that the absence of rain during the past season may possibly have prevented the fermentative process going on, and consequently 358 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. that there was a deficiency of heat necessary to hatch the young, had one nest that was covered over regularly watered, but nothing came of it, and it is now ascertained that all the eggs are hope- lessly addled. The Monkey-house lately opened is a very great improvement upon the old one, the ventilation of which was so abominable that ladies were forced to avoid it. The present house is indeed a splendid conservatory, built entirely of iron and glass, and as light as day. The active Monkeys are no longer caged against the walls, but are located in the middle of the apartment, a perfect gymnasium fitted up with all the apparatus that even humanity could demand. That the building is intended lite- rally as a Conservatory as well as a Monkey-house, may be gathered from the creeping plants that are already making their way up the walls, and which will speedily cover the whole building. At present a profusion of potted flowers shed a perfume which keeps down the insufferable Monkey odour; but we fear a mixed perfume will by-and-by arise that will puzzle the nose. There is plenty of ventila- tion, however, and ample space, so we need not anti- cipate a return to the abominations of the old house. In the early days of that building it was heated by hot-air pipes, which so dried the atmosphere that the Monkeys died in large numbers. This was remedied by adopting an open fireplace, which Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 359 answered admirably. We perceive that hot-water pipes are used in the new house, but they are to be occasionally watered on the outside, to afford moisture to the air. The plants will also exhale a certain moisture, which will correct the tendency of hot iron to burn the air. The new Monkey- house is not so thickly inhabited as the old one, but the inmates are more rare. In consequence of being perpetually teazed by visitors, many of the old fellows had become so spiteful, that it was thought best to dispose of them. We wonder if these ill-conditioned brutes have fallen into the hands of the monkey boys, and are thus brought into still nearer contact with the public in quiet suburban districts t Some of the rare Monkeys and Lemurs are caged against the walls : the Capu- chin, with his intelligent little face and beautiful brown and black fur, and the Squirrel Monkey, are both located here. One of the latest arrivals in the Gardens is the Frugivorous Bat, — a very singular creature, with a fox-like head, and long black leathern wings, stretched upon an arm, at the end of which is a sharp claw, which it uses to climb with. The feet have five finger-like extremities, and by means of these claws and feet it crawls up the wires of its cage with great rapidity. It hangs suspended, head downwards, from a branch at night, folded about with its sombre wings. In India these Bats 360 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. sometimes, by their numbers, blacken the trees as they roost at night; and when disturbed, the whir of their wings is quite terrifying. One of the large central compartments in the middle of the building has been appropriated for the use of the new Orang. A male and female came alive, but the male died, and now his widow is obliged to bear her bereavement as best she can, which she manages to do pretty well, being plenti- fully consoled with nuts. It is not a full-grown animal, but it appears to be in good health. It uses its hands and moves about in a slow deliberate manner. It now refreshes itself by some solemn exercise with the trapeze ; or again, feeling a little cold, it returns to its house, entering in an erect posture, and, pulling out a horse-rug, deliberately places it shawl-ways over its shoulders. Then again, the grand self-possessed way in which it slowly cracks nuts in the presence of a gaping crowd, sufficient to flurry the calmest man, must be envied by the self-conscious nervous, human young monkeys who contemplate it with wonder from the other side of the iron netting. A couple of Chimpanzees have lately been added to the collection — certainly a more human-looking beast than the Orang. High over head — as a bust of Hercules may appropriately be placed in some gymnasium or stadium — a bronze bust of the terrible Gorilla looks Distmgtiis/ied Settlers from Abroad. 361 down upon the little Monkeys, and, for all we know, they look up at it in fear and wonder as their great king and master. The grand curiosity of the Gardens at the present moment is contained within a closed box close at hand, labelled " The Aye Aye." This strange animal is from that unknown land, Madagascar. Its habits are strictly nocturnal ; therefore it is never seen by the public, unless the keeper opens its cage and takes it from its retirement. The Aye Aye is allied to the Lemur tribe, but with some singular differences. No living specimen of this animal has ever before been in Europe, and so little is known about it, that there is a grand dispute as to the food it eats in a natural state, and its method of procuring it. Professor Owen has theorised upon the matter, and drawn certain conclusions from its form and organization. It is distinguished by very large ears, and by long curved claws on the ex- tremities, one of which is of a hooked nature. The Professor thinks the animal feeds upon grubs, the presence of which in the interior of woody matter it is enabled to ascertain by means of its largely de- veloped aural appendages — its ears being, in fact, out of all proportion to the rest of its body. When a grub is detected by sound, its teeth cut into the rind, and with its sharp claw it hooks the worm out. This is a purely theoretical view on the part of the Professor, for no one has ever seen the animal 362 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. conduct itself in this way. On the other hand, Mr. Bartlett, the superintendent of the Gardens, who has taken the trouble to sit up for a fortnight with the animal, in order to watch its habits, asserts that it lives upon the juices of plants ; that he has watched it gnaw the succulent food put into its cage, and that it persistently refuses to eat the meal worm, which he never knew any animal living on grubs yet refuse. So the matter stands at present. The western aviary contains some small birds which have attracted some attention, and which are new to the British public. At its south-east corner, the male Satin Bower Bird, which is now pretty well known to metropolitans, still survives, but as a disconsolate widower. The playing Bower looks very desolate, and we hope it will not be long before a fresh companion is procured for it. In the corner of the aviary apportioned to it, the visitor will see a collection of broom twigs, which may not attract his attention looking casually, but if he observes closely he will perceive that they form a portion of some regular construction ; not a nest certainly, for the twigs are not placed in a circle, as they would be in such a piece of bird architecture, but rather in the form of a tunnel open at the top. The twigs are bent in the form of a ship's ribs by the bird, and then the ends are stuck firmly into the ground. They are placed thickly together in a line with each other, having their concave Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 363 sides opposite, and extending some foot and a-half or two feet. Thus a bower is formed, which the male bird ornaments with bright parrot's feathers, such as are to be found plentifully in Australia, bits of glass, cloth, or any other odd scrap con- taining colour which the bird can pick up. It is known as a regular thief by the natives, who always search " the bower " in case they have lost anything, just as we search a magpie's nest under similar cir- cumstances. In this bower, or playing-place, in the mating season, the male bird paces to and fro with the most ridiculous action, putting on all the airs of a gallant in order to attract its mate. This is speedily done, and then the pair run in and out of the bower, just as our dancers perform the galop. This manoeuvre looks ridiculous enough, but if we knew all things, we do not doubt there is some wise purpose even in this "pretty fooling." The Grass Parakeet, which is so plentifully distributed over the Australian continent, is well represented here. It is as hardy as it is beautiful, and is confidently asserted to be living in England in a state of nature. The Wonga Wonga Pigeon is another bird that deserves the attention of the public, its introduction to this country as a domestic bird having been spoken of as very probable by the Acclimatization Society. In size it is much larger than our common pigeon, and its flesh, we are informed, is far superior 364 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. in flavour and whiteness to anything of the same tribe that we are acquainted with. The Victoria Crowned Pigeon may also be seen here, — a very beautiful bird, and well adapted by its habits to adorn the aviaries of this country. In contrast to these handsome specimens of the birds of the lately discovered land are the Laughing King- fishers. The English Kingfisher possesses no beauty of form, but its brilliant colours redeem it. The Laughing Kingfishers of Australia are still more un- gainly in form than the British variety, and are of an ugly drab colour marked with black. These birds are particularly large — as big as pigeons. They are, with- out doubt, powerful fishers, but they are anything but songsters ; indeed, their note or chatter is very dis- cordant, and when they all break out together, the noise is really horrid. There is also a very great rarity here which no casual visitor would ever dis- cover — the Tooth-billed Pigeon, or the little Dodo. It is a shabby-looking little bird, and only derives its importance from its curious beak, which allies it to that extinct bird the Dodo of the Mauritius, — the loss of which all ornithologists mourn with a grief that will not be comforted. There is no other specimen of this bird in Europe ; it must therefore be inspected with all the curiosity of a Queen Anne's farthing. Let us pass over to the Fish-house, and inspect the bright little birds which flash about like gems in Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. 365 the pretty enclosure. Mr. Bartlett has composed this little bit of " framed nature " with the eye of an artist. It is now nearly three years since this in- closure at the end of the fish-house was constructed, but we have seen no notice taken of the clever effect it produces. The end of the fish-house has been fitted up as a little living picture of a river- side scene, with its appropriate feathered inhabitants. The oblong space is open to the sky, an iron netting only intervening. The back of this space is filled up with the bark of the silver beech and other trees, broken into ledges, on which ferns grow and luxu- riate, and in the recesses of which the birds breed. The light falling as it does, is reflected with great brilliancy, and the mosses and verdure give the picture a complete air of nature. In the bottom of the inclosure is a pool swarming with fish, and margined here and there with sand. It is, as it were, a little piece of some bright river-side caught and caged, and exhibited to the public behind plate-glass. As we looked the Dab Chicks swam mei'rily about in the pool, and a Kingfisher, like a brilliant flashing jewel, fled past, skimmed the water, and returned to his perch with a glistening little silver fish in his beak ; he swallowed it, and fished again, but this time his prey was too big for him, it wriggled vigorously ; in vain he held it by the tail, and banged its head against a stone — it would not die, and eventually it fell into the water, where it was fast 366 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. recovering, when a Dab Chick swimming by espied it, and gobbled it up. A " cheap tripper " up from the country watched this little episode for a moment, then he burst out, " Well, I've a lived where king- fishers be all my life, and never seed such a sight as that ; who'd a thought o' coming to Lunnon to see such as that ! " Beside the Kingfishers and the Dab Chicks, there are Water Wagtails, the little Grebe, and Pied Grallina, an Australian water-bird, some- thing like a Magpie, only more delicately formed ; it is exhibited here for the first time. Of the zoophytes quietly feeding or throwing out their orange and white tentacles, Mr. Gosse and other writers have not left us a word to say. The fish, caged as it were in slices of the ocean and the river, we are sorry to find are not doing as well as might be wished ; there are vety many dead, and those that survive look but sickly, if we except the young Salmon, which have been hatched under the care of Mr. Frank Buckland, and which seem merry and vigorous, and afford a good prospect of ending this sublunary state in the best of all possible manners — on a dinner napkin. In perambulating the gardens, the visitor cannot help observing the great advance that has been made in grouping animals of the same class together. The Antelope-shed now contains a splendid col- lection of the rarer animals of that order which travellers in South Africa have lately made known Distinguished Settlers front Abroad. 367 to us. The Hartebeest, a very rare animal, the Springbok, the Lechd, another rare Antelope, and the Gnu, are all familiar to us by the volumes of Gordon Gumming and Sir Cornwallis Harris. Close to the Antelope-house is the Zebra-house, in which there are some new arrivals. Here we find an ad- mirable representation of the Horse tribe. Few persons will fail to be struck with the noble ap- pearance of the Kiang, or Wild Ass of Tibet which stands at least fifteen hands high. The Wild Ass of Kutch, and of Assyria, and the noble Burch- ill Zebra, should be seen, as few persons know to what perfection of form the wild varieties of our own dull beast attains in his native wilds. The cattle-shed is equally curious, containing specimens of the genus Bos, some of which we regret to say have fallen a prey to the Rinderpest. Among the more curious are the Brahmin cattle with their mild moonful eyes, and the Yac of Tibet, so overborne with its long fleece-like hair as to hide its legs, and make it look like a hobby-horse ; its young one, on the other hand, is covered with a soft curly coat, which likens it to a well-washed and combed poodle dog. Not far off is the American Bison, the very essence of clumsiness. In the space which lies between the new Monkey- house and the Crane-paddock is the Whale-pond, awaiting the coming Whale. At present a Sturgeon some three feet long occupies the pond, but it is 368 Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. hoped that at least a Porpoise will take up its quar- ters here before long, if not one of the smaller species of Whales, one of which has been exhibited in the pond of the New York Gardens for some time. Several Porpoises have been placed here at different times, but they have never lived more than one month. This mortality, according to the super- intendent of the gardens, is not attributable to the want of salt water, but to the diseased condition in which they are caught, the very fact of their being captured testifying to their feeble condition, and to their being beaten in-shore by their healthy companions. That sea water is not imperatively required by animals living in it, is proved by the fine condition of the two Seals, which have now lived in their pond some four years, with only the addition to it of a little rock salt. The Sturgeon, a fish that lives in both salt and fresh water, seems quite content with the latter, as the one in the pond has been there for one year, and is flourishing and growing. The Seals have not arrived at the per- fection of training which an animal of the same class has attained to at Boston, United States, which turns a barrel organ and plays a tune, but they are very tame, and they seem to suffer no dyspepsia from their daily meal of lolb. of whiting — rather expensive provender at this season in London. Whilst in the vicinity of the Whale-pond, we must not fail to visit the Swine-house, where there has Distinguished Settlers from Abroad. yjg been a new arrival from the Andeman Islands of a most curious Masked Hog. This animal is supposed to have come originally from Japan, and certainly its singular countenance, completely masked by folds of skin, and its limbs covered with warty knobs, we have seen more than represented in those grotesque carvings in ivory for which the Japanese are so famous. The loud chattering of the Australian Kingfisher — which is so invariably heard towards the dusk of the evening that it is known at home by the name of the settler's clock — warns us that we must take our leave of these deeply interesting gardens. As we go out through the upper park gate, the Sparrows hopping about remind us that whilst we are trying to bring in strange animals and birds from abroad to adorn our landscapes, please the eye, and add to our cuisine, these humble little grey birds are now introduced with tremendous applause by the inhabitants of Victoria, and the fact that many of them have been seen near the railway station in that city is chronicled in the papers with as much gusto as would have been the discovery of a rich " placer " there. Who would think that the unsentimental Englishman abroad would fall into such raptures about a bird for the destruc- tion of which the farmers in the old country are still offering a reward of a farthing a head .•" 2 B ( 370 ) FALSE HAIR .- WHERE IT COMES FROM. jE are told that when the gentleman on horseback the other day paraded up and down Rotten-row, with a lady's chignon on the top of his riding-stick, all the fair as he passed them involuntarily placed their hands at the back of their heads to see if theirs was missing. No circumstance could afford a better illustration of the universal use of false hair among womankind than this. Of old a woman must have arrived at a certain age before her pride would permit her to don the regulation " front " which at once placed her in the category of old women. Now Hebe herself is perfectly indifferent whether we know, or not, that she is indebted to other heads for her flowing locks. The consequence is, that the trade in human hair has of late assumed very large pro- portions, and its value has increased at a prodigious rate. Where does it all come from .-' a spectator naturally asks, as he surveys the harvest of locks hanging in the windows of the fashionable hair- False Hair: where it comes from. 371 dressers, or disposed in every conceivable form on the heads of waxen dummies. And little does the spectator think of the Bluebeard's cupboard he is asking admittance to, in putting this query. As a matter of course, all products required for the arti- ficial decoration of the person find their way prin- cipally to Paris, and we accordingly find that city is the emporium of the trade in human hair. One hundred tons weight of this precious ornament is, we are informed, annually taken there, whence it is distributed in a raw and manufactured state over the whole of Europe. If we could watch in secret the rape of each lock, we should be able to give a series of pictures of human agony such as life but rarely presents, for we may be sure that, as a rule, a young woman would almost as soon lose her life as that glorious appendage, on which so much of her beauty depends. The collectors of hair on the Continent are generally pedlars, or persons moving about the country on some other business, to which they add the trade of hair- purchasing. It is a singular fact that heretofore the agents employed in the collection of this pre- cious material have generally been ostensibly em- ployed in some other occupation. Arkwright, it will be remembered, did a little business in this line when travelling about the country collecting the spun yarn from the cottagers ; and a few years since the most extensive purchasers of hair abroad 2 B 2 372 False Hair : where it comes from. was a company of Dutch farmers, who supple- mented their own business in this manner. Perhaps the trade would be considered too infamous to be openly practised, hence this convenient mask. In one department of France, however, there ap- pears to have been no false shame on the part of the women with respect to parting with their hair, and this for a very obvious reason. The peasant girls of Brittany cover the head with .a picturesque white cap, which wholly hides the hair; hence in this quarter the sale of the article has been for a long time openly carried on. Mr. Francis Trollope, in his " Summer in Brittany " published a few years since, describes a most amusing scene at a fair in Collenee, where, he says, he saw several hair-dealers shearing the peasant girls like so many sheep. A crowd of fair Bretonnes surrounded each operator, and, as fast as sheared, he threw the long hair, tied up into a wisp, in a basket beside him. Whilst he was operating on one, the other girls stood waiting for their turn with their caps in their hands. The fashion which enforces the wearing of these close caps of course rendered these damsels callous to the loss of their hair, for which they generally got but a few sous, or a bright-coloured cotton handkerchief. We have no doubt that even the simple Bretons have by this time become awake to the increased value of the article they have to sell, and that silk has False Hair: witere it comes from. 373 taken the place of cotton in the exchange. Spain and the north of Italy also furnish considerable contributions to the collectors of these jet-black locks. The main crops of the golden hair now so much prized come from Germany, and the yellow hair from Holland. Is the glorious golden hair that the Venetian school of painters loved to depict still in existence .' If so, we should recommend some adventurous traveller in this line to journey southward, as some profit may be made out of the article, which is now selling at a famine price. In all Catholic countries one great source of supply is the convent. The splendid tresses the devotee dedicates to God somehow get back into the world again, and are offered up at the shrine of Vanity. This hair is known in the trade as church hair. In visiting a wholesale hair ware- house and manufactory lately we were shown some of these vestal tresses fresh from an English convent. Vanity of vanities ! — its next appearance, in all probability, will be on the head of some fast maiden of Belgravia, deftly woven with her own in order to enslave some eligible elder son. Although we use less false hair in England than in France, yet it is becoming almost a necessity among us. The Hairdressers' Journal, — ^which ought to be an authority on the point, — asserts that one woman in every ten in England uses more or less false hair with her own. The larger 374 False Hair: where it comes from. proportion of this comes from Paris, either raw or manufactured. The prevailing English colour is brown, and, as the home-grown article matches English heads better than any other, it demands a proportionately higher price. When we say that the prevailing English colour is brown, of course we refer to the better classes. There are, perhaps, a greater number of distinct shades of colour in English hair than in that of any other country, and this is accounted for by the mixture of races of which English men and women are built up. In many parts of the island the descendants of these nationalities still retain all the ancient pe- culiarities of their race ; in the south and south- west the flaxen hair of the Saxon still predominates among the peasantry ; in Wales the blue-black of the Celt is still maintained in all its integrity ; whilst in the north-eastern counties we see among the common people, who are tied to the soil, the reddish hair which they have inherited from their Danish ancestors. In the large towns, where these various elements commingle, and especially in the metropolis, an average brown tint is the prevailing colour — hence it is that of our more civilized element. Dr. Beddoes, a Bristol physician, has ingeniously argued that we are, year by year, becoming a darker-haired people, by reason of what he terms "conjugal selection." He examined the hair of 737 women, and of those he found False Hair: where it comes from. 375 that 22 had red hair, 95 fair hair, 240 brown, 336 dark brown, and that only 33 had black hair. This analysis overwhelmingly proves the pre- dominance of brown hair ; but then he asserts there is a disturbing element in the problem, which he thinks is calculated to reverse the ultimate result, and as this element is a very interesting one to the ladies, we beg their attention. Following those women in their conjugal relations, he found that of the 367 red, fair, and brown haired ones, which he rightly classed as fair, 32 per cent, were single, whilst of those who had dark brown and black hair, and were classed as black, only 21.5 per cent, were single ; and he accordingly comes to the conclusion that, in agreement with Dr. Darwin's theory of selection, the black-haired popu- lation must gradually swallow up all the others. We trust any light-haired beauty who reads this will not feel despondent ; we neither believe in the ingenious physician's figures, nor in the conclusion he draws from them. We are certain that men do not like dark women better than light-haired ones — fashion certainly does not say so. The poets, most undoubtedly, are of the opposite way of thinking; and if it is a law of English nature that dark women have the preference, how is it that, by the theory of selection, we have not become a black-haired race long ago .' The natural theory, undoubtedly, is, that the dark 3/6 False Hair: where it comes from. prefer the light, and vice versa ; and, by virtue of this law, a medium tone of colour is arising in this country — a fact which is exemplified on a still larger scale in Central Europe, where the fair-haired north and the black-haired south have commingled, and produced a population rejoicing in dark-brown hair. Hair merchants, by long experience, have acquired great proficiency in judging of the nationality of this article. One of the largest dealers in the trade informed us that he could tell in the dark the nationality of any piece of hair. This is done either by the sense of touch or smell. Some nations have much coarser hair than others ; indeed, there is a constant difference both with respect to length and weight. The average weight of a French head of hair (by which is meant the piece of long hair which forms a knot at the back of the head) is five ounces ; of Italian, six ounces ; of German, ten. This difference has much to do with its colour. A German, with the painstaking characteristic of his nation, has gone to the trouble of counting each individual hair in heads of four different colours. In that of a blonde he found 140,000 hairs ; in a brown, 109,440 ; in a black, 102,962 ; and in a red one, 88,740. Thus there are nearly twice as many hairs in the blonde tress, as in the red, which accounts for its superior flossy silkiness and greater weight. To see a hair merchant False Hair: where it conies from. 377 take up a long tress, sniff a long sniff, and say at once where it came from, is as refreshing as to see a wine-taster deciding a particular vintage of wine by its bouquet. It is possible the chemical constituents of the material in some measure leads him to a conclusion, as there is always found to be an excess of sulphur and oxygen in fair hair, and an excess of carbon in black hair. Local odours, again, are great tell-tales of the parts from which hair comes ; thus, Irish hair is distinguishable among others by the smell of peat smoke always to be found in it ; possibly Scotch hair, of the peasant class, of course, may be distinguished from that of her sister across the Channel by the delicate difference of this peat odour, just as we distinguish Irish from Scotch whisky. But there are two or three sources from which hair is obtained which, perhaps, in a still stronger manner, indicate the source from which it was last taken. The chijfon- ■niers who go about in Paris, morning and evening, picking out prizes from the gutter, have not over- looked human hair. By their agency the combings of the fair Parisienne are returned once more to the human head ; no doubt there is a dust-heap odour the hair merchant knows well. But there is still another kind of hair about which there is a deep mystery. A grim smile passes over the features of the hair merchant as he tells you that the long " leech " of hair (for .that is the trade 378 False Hair : where it comes from. name for the small parcels in which they are done up for sale, after being prepared and cleansed) is known as churchyard hair ! As he draws attention, with a certain subdued manner, to the squared end of the " leech," you perceive that the hairs have not been cut, but pulled out of the head with the bulb adherent ; sometimes this class of hair comes to market with pieces of the scalp-skin at the end. How this hair is obtained is a mystery which the trade does not care to fathom. When we so often hear of the desecration of churchyards, and the shovelling away of the old bones and decayed cofRns, we may perhaps make a shrewd guess at the source from which this hair comes. It must be remembered that hair is almost indestructible. The beautiful wig of auburn hair now in the British Museum, had lain in the tomb of a Theban mummy for upwards of two thousand years before it found its way to the national collection, yet that hair is as fresh as though it had just come from the hands of the hairdresser, and the curl is so strong in it that it cannot be taken out even by the application of heat. Churchyard hair is brought into the market by home as well as foreign col- lectors, and we cannot help suspecting that the gravedigger is no mean member of that craft The Englishwoman very rarely sells her hair — she must be reduced to the last condition of poverty before she would, consent to this sacrifice. But False Hair: wJiere it comes from. 379 there is a class who are compelled to do so. There can be little doubt that the majority of the long English tresses come from the heads of criminals. It is a cruel and a brutal thing to do : the osten- sible reason is cleanliness — but an enforced clean- liness, bought at the expense of the last remnant of self-respect left to the woman, and a cleanliness the more rigorously looked to because its results form the perquisite of the warders. If it is necessary that the charming locks of our fair should be sup- plemented from this source, they should at least be informed that they are never obtained without oaths, prayers, and blasphemous imprecations upon the despoilers, which the drawing-room belles little dream of, as those purchased tresses dance pen- dulous upon their cheek in the heated saloon. Fever, also, places his contributions in the hands of the hair merchant, and there is a sad suspicion that the mysterious woman that hovers about the house of the dead to perform its last offices does not, when an opportunity offers, allow it to escape. There are still other sources from which human hair is obtained, of a yet more repulsive nature, but we have said enough to show that when a lady buys false locks, she little knows the curious and mysterious tale each individual hair possibly could tell her. Some years ago, we now and then heard mysterious accounts of a certain Spring- heeled Jack who used to lie in wait for young 380 False Hair: wliere it comes from. girls with beautiful hair, for the purpose of forcibly despoiling them. Considering the immense rise that is year by year taking place in the value of this material, we feel no surprise at such tales — indeed, when we say that such is the demand for grey hair that we are obliged to rob goats and the mohair sheep to eke out our own scanty stores, we need not be surprised at anything. Raw hair comes from abroad in bales tied up in "leeches," and containing hairs of various lengths. The first step in its preparation is to cleanse it of its oily matter. This is done by rubbing it in fine sand, which completely absorbs all the fatty matter it contains. It is then carded by hand, the workman throwing the lock of hair with great rapidity over the iron teeth of the card, and speedily reducing it to a regular smoothness. The next step in the process is to select from the different "leeches" the different lengths of hair they con- tain ; these lengths are then matched with others ; and in this manner the "leech," as it is offered for sale, is perhaps the product of a dozen heads. The manufacturer has two markets to supply ; — the demand for simple uncurled locks for the pur- pose of plaiting, &c., with the natural hair ; and curled hair, for the needs of the wig and front makers, and for the thousand-and-one fashionings in which hairdressers now tempt our blooming belles. The curl is permanently fixed by twisting False Hair: where it conies from. 381 the hair tightly round small cylinders of wood, and then boiling them for a considerable time in water. At Messrs. Hovenden's, the largest hair merchants perhaps in this country, we saw thou- sands of these cylinders slowly drying, represent- ting in value a very large sum of money. The value of hair depends so much upon whose hands it is in, and the progressive stage at which it has arrived, that in this particular we can only liken it to the ascending value of iron from its raw con- dition of " pig '' up to its most perfect and expensive form — watch-springs. One thing is certain, — the original possessor parts with it for a mere nothing. As we have seen, the peasant woman of France sells her back hair for a few pence : when it passes out of the hands of the collectors it has risen to from four shillings to thirty shillings per pound, for average qualities. But the rarer kinds, both in colour, quality, and length, are so valuable that they are sold, even by the hair merchants, by the ounce. The longer the hair is, the more valuable, other conditions being equal. Messrs. Hovenden exhibited, in the feathers and fur department of the Great Exhibition of 1863, a head of hair which measured upwards of two yards in length. It was from the head of an English lady, and it must have trailed upon the ground when she was stand- ing up, even if she had been a very tall woman. As a rule, the greatest demand is for the medium 382 False Hair: where it comes from. brown colours, and for the obvious reason that that is the prevailing colour of England. But the precious colours are bright golden and white hair. We scarcely need look into the fashionable hairdressers' windows to perceive that fair golden hair is now the rage. As very few persons, however, possess just the true tint, the true opalescent gold which changes with every motion of the head — the colour, in short, which is the ideal of the poet — ladies are given to bleach their hair down to the required tone, and to mix — ^we may say flavour their tresses with the precious hair, just as your fraudulent Hambro^ sherry manufacturer flavours his made- up wines with a little of the true growth of Cadiz. This golden hair is now selling at the rate of from twelve to fifteen shillings the ounce, or at about three times the price of silver. But there is a rarer hair still. Youth and beauty in the race of vanity are outstripped by age. Grey hair is in such demand that, as we have before said, we are obliged to eke out our stores by resorting to mohair. Fine grey hair is now sold for a guinea an ounce, mainly for the purposes of the perukier. As soon as the precious material falls into the hands of this amiable functionary, art claims it for its own, and the price ascends to fa- bulous heights. But this branch of the subject we must leave for another paper. ( 383 ) A SERMON ON PRECIOUS STONES. lOSSIBLY the commercial value of colour was never exemplified in a stronger man- ner than in the matter of precious stones. Indeed, jewels often depend upon their tint only for their names and value ; the same identically composed precious stone being either an amethyst or piece of rock crystal, an oriental topaz or a ruby, by the addition or absence of a small portion of mineral pigment of different hue. Thus, a piece of rock crystal is comparatively valueless, whilst an emerald is one of the most costly of jewels; a ruby again is even more valuable than the diamond, whilst the topaz is of very inferior value. Even the faintest flush of colour often gives a value to the diamond which is far beyond its worth when pure — an instance this of the value of adul- teration. Mr. Harry Emanuel, whose work on precious stones has afforded us the material for this article, illustrates this fact by stating that a diamond, the worth of which, uncoloured, would have been (from its weight, four and three-quarter 384 A Sermon on Precious Stones. grains) only ^^22, was lately sold for ;^300, in con- sequence of possessing a vivid green tint. Although the diamond is not really the most valuable of jewels, yet as it is supposed to have precedence of all other gems, we shall speak of it first. Possibly, however, its commercial value is most constant of all jewels, as it is the subject of investment to a greater extent than any other. In times of commotion, kings or princes, and the wealthy — -generally subject to suffer from sweeping changes — look upon diamonds as their best friends ; their passports, in fact, to the attention of the foreigner. What pemmican is to meat, precious stones are to value. They are the concentrated essence of wealth — a king's ransom in the compass of a marble. Nations, civilised and only semi- civilised, believe in this currency ; it is a circular note that the bearer never need fear will be dis- honoured in whatever quarter of the globe he may happen to be. Diamonds and other precious stones, however, like gold, are liable to fluctuate in value according to the laws of supply and demand, like the meanest article of commerce. A revolution brings forth these " flowers of the mineral kingdom," as they have been poetically termed ; at first, a number of them are thrown upon the market, and they decline in value in consequence. An example of this occurred in the revolution of 1848. In all cases where civil communities are of long A Sermon on Precious Stones. 385 continuance, however, and causes of fear are pro- longed, they gradually rise again in value until they reach exorbitant prices. In the great revolu- tion of 17S9, for instance, diamonds rose to a famine price, and up to the termination of the civil war in America, they were gradually becoming more valuable in that country. The diamond, like most other jewels, is found generally in granitic gneiss, and in torrents of rivers, distributed over the whole world ; but they are mainly to be found in tropical countries. It would seem that where the sun shines with the greatest splendour, where the vegetable and the animal cre- ation put on their most gorgeous colours, there also, in the depths of the earth, the vivid lustre of this gem shines the brightest, and assumes the largest proportions. The mines underground bloom as gorgeously as the flowers above. The diamond, as we all know, is composed of pure carbon crys- tallized, and is the hardest known substance. In- deed, this quality, upon which much of its value depends, has in many instances been the cause of its destruction, the old rude test of its genuine- ness being to place it upon an anvil, and to strike it forcibly v/ith a hammer, with the idea that, if pure, it would rather break the hammer, or bury itself in the anvil, than split. Of course, many valuable diamonds have been destroyed by this ignorant trial in times past. The diamond is by 2 c 386 A Sermon on Preciotis Stones. no means always colourless. It is sometimes yellow, red, pink, brown, green, black, and opalescent ; the admixture of colour depending in some cases upon a metallic oxide. The Indian diamond ap- pears to be the most prized in the market. Newton, from its great power of refracting and dispersing light, when compared with glass, came to the con- clusion that it was combustible ; a scientific forecast, which Lavoisier verified by burning it in oxygen, and obtaining as a result carbonic acid. Although our analysis of this gem is perfect, all eiiforts have failed to construct it ; indeed, chemistry is wholly at fault to produce artificially any of the precious gems, with the exception of the ruby, small speci- mens of which have actually been produced in the laboratory. The diamond is split easily with the grain, but it is upon the tact and judgement with which it is cut and polished that much of its value depends. The English were at one time famous as gem-cutters, but the art is now wholly lost among us, and most of the fine gems are now entrusted to Dutch Jews. The gem is cut upon a wheel smeared with diamond dust — the only material that effectually touches it — and it is polished in the same manner, a steel disk being employed for the pur- pose, smeared with fine powder, and revolving at a great speed by means of steam power. At the present time the most fashionable form is the double cut, which presents a great number of facets, ren- A Sermon on Precious Stones. 387 dering the flash of the gem very brilliant. The table cut, such as we find in old diamonds, is much less sparkling, as it has a very much less number of facets, and a great expansion of table or flat upper surface. The Indian diamond-cutters leave as much of the gem as possible when cutting ; an instance of this was seen in the Great Exhibition of 185 1, where the Koh-i-Noor was exhibited, in which the cutting followed apparently the original outline of the stone. Our readers will remember how much this gem disappointed their expectations, as it looked like a mere lump of glass. Its weight was then 186 carats. In the intervals between this and the last Exhibition it was, after much consultation, given into the hands of M. Coster, of Amsterdam, who recut it with such skill that, although it lost in the process 80 carats, it yet appeared quite as large, and was transferred at once into a blaze of light. When diamonds are found difficult to split, without fear of great loss, they are sometimes sawn with fine wires fitted into a saw bow and anointed with diamond powder and olive oil. Rose-cut dia- monds are now coming much into fashion, as they are very brilliant in appearance at a very small expense of stone. It is really wonderful the deli- cacy with which these gems are cut, considering the smallness of their size : as many as fifteen hundred having been known to weigh only one carat. 2 c 2 388 A Sermon on Precious Stones. The larger diamonds, from their great value, have all some extraordinary history. As a. rule, like the stormy petrel, their appearance in the mar- ket in numbers is an indication of a storm. Their portability makes them the companion of royal fugitives, and more than one brilliant of value has witnessed bloody and tragical scenes. The Koh- i-Noor, for instance, has changed hands in many of the convulsions that occurred in India before our advent. It was seized, at the conquest of Delhi, by Ala-ed-Din, and subsequently came into the possession of the Sultan Baber, the Great Mogul, in 1526; it continued in the possession of this line of princes until Aurungzebe entrusted it to a European to reset it. This he did, but so un- skilfully that it was reduced from 793 carats to 186 carats — the size, in fact, it appeared in our Great Exhibition of 1851. The Emperor refused to pay the workman for the destruction of his jewel, and we think it speaks well for Aurungzebe, as Indian emperors went, that he did not take off his head at once. It afterwards fell into the hands of the great conqueror Nadir Shah, was passed on in his line, and finally it came into our possession at the capture of Lahore, and was, by our troops, presented to her Majesty, with whose family it will remain, we suppose, until some future conqueror seizes it to set in the crown of some empire yet to arise in the new world. The Cumberland dia- A Sermon on Precious Stones. 389 mond, of the value of 10,000/., was presented to the Duke of Cumberland by the City of London after he had rescued the burghers from the Stuart dynasty at Culloden. We fancy the City would have kept their money had they foreseen that it would ultimately pass to the treasury of the King of Hanover. The Orloff diamond, set in the sceptre of the Czar of Russia, weighs 1945 carats, and possesses a most romantic history. It is said to have formed one of the eyes of an idol in a Brahmin temple, and to have been set in the pea- cock throne of Nadir Shah. It was stolen by a Frenchman, and ultimately fell into the possession of the Empress Catherine II. The Regent, or Pitt diamond, was so called from having been pur- chased by the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, of Pitt, the Governor of Fort St. George. Scandal said that the governor stole it. It is certain, how- ever, that it was purloined from the Garde Meuble, in 1792, but was restored in a very mysterious manner. It was afterwards set in the pommel of the sword of the Emperor Napoleon I. The Flo- rentine diamond, now in the possession of the Emperor of Austria, is said to have been one of three lost, at the battle of Granson, by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. It was found by a Swiss soldier, and sold by him for one florin. It after- wards came into the possession of Pope Julius II., who presented it to the Emperor of Austria. The 390 A Sermon on Precious Stones. Sancy diamond's history is still more curious. It was actually taken from the body of the Duke of Burgundy, and found its way, in 1489, to Baron de Sancy, who sent it as a present to the King of Portugal. The servant by whom it was being conveyed was attacked by robbers, when he swallowed the stone, and after his death it was found in his body. James the Second afterwards possessed it, and he sold it to Louis XIV. It dis- appeared in the French Revolution, but turned up again, which the renowned blue diamond, by the bye, never did, and was purchased by Napoleon I., who again sold it to Prince DemidofF. The Nassak diamond, of 78! carats, was taken by the Marquis of Hastings at the conquest of the Deccan. The Hope diamond is of a sapphire blue, and since the great French diamond was lost, it is considered the most unique gem of its kind in existence. In the Russian treasury there is a brilliant red diamond of 10 carats, and at Dresden there is a green diamond of 48J carats, that once belonged to Augustus the Strong. The value of diamonds has considerably increased of late years, and as the wealth of the country goes on augmenting, it is likely to increase still further. Brilliants advance in value as they increase in size in an extraordinary degree. Thus, a brilliant of one carat is worth 18/.; of two carats, 65/.; of three carats, 125/.; of four carats, 220/,; of ten carats, 320/.; A Sermon on Precious Stones. 391 Beyond this weight they become fancy articles, and of course, fancy prices are demanded for them. The most valuable of all jewels, however is the ruby. This precious stone depends upon its colour, as we have said before, for its value. The ruby, sapphire, and oriental topaz are composed of iden- tically the same materials ; the red sapphire is a ruby, the blue ruby a sapphire, the yellow ruby a topaz. They are all termed Corundums, an Indian name. The ruby is the next hardest thing in nature after the diamond. The finest rubies are found in the kingdom of Ava, and in Siam ; they are also found in Ceylon and in many parts of Europe. The King of Burmah takes one of his titles from it, that of "Lord of the Rubies." In Burmah they are a royal monopoly, and none of any value are allowed by law to leave the kingdom. The finding of a fine ruby is made a state event, and a proces- sion of grandees, with soldiers and elephants, is sent out to meet it. The colour varies from pale rose to deep red, but the tint that is most highly valued is that of the " pigeon's blood." Of old, many magical properties were assigned to the ruby. It was considered an amulet against poison, plague, evil thoughts, and wicked spirits, and its possession, as a consequence, kept the wearer in health. When he was in danger, it was supposed to darken, and to become bright again 392 A Sermon on Precious Stones. only on the passing away of peril. One of the largest rubies in Europe is a French crown jewel, once adorning the order of the Golden Fleece. Her Majesty exhibited two stones said to be rubies in the Exhibition of 1862, but Mr. Emanuel asserts that they are nothing more than spinels, a spurious kind of ruby, of little value. The King of Burmah is said to have one in his possession of the size of a pigeon's egg. A true " pigeon's-blood " tinted ruby of one carat is worth from 14/. to 20/. ; of two carats, from 70/, to 80/. ; and of four carats, from 400/. to 450/., which latter value is more than double that of a diamond of the same weight. As we have before said, small rubies have been made by chemists artificially, but never gems of any size. Now as small rubies are plentiful in nature, it is very doubtful whether it will pay to make them even upon a manufacturing scale. The sapphire, although composed of identically the same elements, with the exception of the colour- ing matter, is of far less value than the ruby. The colour often varies much in the same stone, some portion of the gem being very nearly black, whilst the other is of a light blue. The clever lapidary can correct this by cutting away all the black part, ex- cepting a small spot reserved for the cutlet, or small fine flattened point underneath. When looked at through the table, or broad upper surface of the gem, this point of dark blue gives by refraction a A Sermon on Precious Stones. 393 beautiful azure lustre to the jewel. The ancients used to call all blue stones sapphires, just as they called all red ones either rubies or carbuncles. The sapphire is invested by earlier writers with rare virtues, of course. It was said to be such an enemy to poison that if put into a glass with a spider or other venomous reptile, it would kill it ; and a great many other virtues were attributed to it we need scarcely mention. The value of this gem does not, like that of the diamond or the ruby, increase with its size, although in smaller sizes it is even dearer than those brilliants, one of i carat of pure colour being worth 20/. These gems are liable to be imitated so closely as to deceive the best jewellers. Mr. Emanuel tells us, for instance, that "a noble lady in this country formerly possessed one which is, perhaps, the finest known. The lady, however, sold it during her lifetime, and replaced it by an imitation so skilfully made as to deceive even the jeweller who valued it for probate duty, and it was estimated at the sum of 10,000/., and the legacy duty was paid on it by the legatee, who was doubtless chagrined when he discovered the deception." We have no doubt whatever that many other noble ladies have from " impecuniosity " substituted sham for real jewels with the like impunity : such is the faith we put in station, that even glass — seen through the sublime medium which surrounds a Duchess — shines like an emerald of the purest water. Both the 394 A Sermon on Precious Stones. oriental amethyst and the oriental emerald, which are varieties of corundum, are very rare : the green variety, or oriental emerald, indeed, is so curious that Mr. Emanuel, with all his vast experience, says that he has only seen it once in his lifetime. The cat's-eye jewel, we are told, is becoming fashionable, being considered, in India — and what is more strange, even in Europe — lucky. We wonder at nothing in the shape of superstition, and can quite understand that a gem of this kind only lately was purchased by a nobleman for £ i,ooo. The topaz is now little sought after. The colourless ones are termed Nova Mina, or slave diamonds; those of light blue are termed Brazilian sapphires ; those of a greenish hue are termed aquamarine ; and the Brazilian ruby is the artificially obtained pink or rose-coloured topaz. It is often obtained in large masses. In one of the cases in the British Museum there is a mass of white topaz that for many years was used as a door-weight by a marine-store dealer. In London a very fine stone can at the present time be bought for a few shillings. The emerald and the beryl have the same chemical composition, and . differ only in colour. The finest coloured emeralds are found in New Granada, in limestone rock. It is also found in Salzburg, and in Siberia. The Spaniards, it is asserted, came into possession of many hundredweights of emeralds when they conquered Peru : hence their value fell in the A Sermon on Precious Stones. 395 Middle Ages. Orientals, especially the Mahom- medans, we should say, set great store upon the emerald, believing that it imparts courage to the owner, that it is an infallible preservative of chastity, and that the safety of women in childbirth is ensured by it. Like many other gems, the ancients ascribed many medicinal properties to it when ground down. The emerald is but rarely found perfect, and when perfect, it ranks next in value to the ruby. Perfect gems are worth from 20L to 40/. the carat ; but they do not, like the diamond or ruby, advance in price with the size. There are many large emeralds in Europe. There is one in the Austrian treasury weighing 2,000 carats, and the Duke of Devonshire possesses one weighing nearly nine ounces. The value of the beryl or aquamarine is trifling. An encfrmous beryl was found in America, weighing five tons ! They must have everything in "that country bigger than everybody else. It is used in Birmingham for imitation jewellery. The garnet, again, has many varieties, and is scattered over the whole globe ; when cut tablewise and "tallow-topped," as it is termed, or smooth and convex at the top, and flat at the bottom, it is termed a carbuncle. There are a large number of what may be termed valuable, rather than precious, stones, which belong to the quartz system. Among these are amethyst, cairngorm, onyx, sardonyx, cornelian, calcedony, agate, jasper, bloodstone, rock crystal. Rock crystal 39^ ^A Sermon on Preciotis Stones. has been used in the arts from the most remote times. It is found in large crystals sometimes, and is scattered all over the world. There is a specimen in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris measuring three feet in diameter, and weighing 800 pounds. It is used by opticians for the lenses of spectacles, and in India it is hollowed into cups and goblets of amazing thinness and beauty. The Chinese, the Japanese, and the Egyptians, also use it for orna- mental purposes. Like most precious stones, it is very cold, and the Japanese make balls of it to cool the hands ! In old goldsmith's work, crystal is often introduced, and as it was considered that it would turn colour if poison came near it, cups and goblets of it were often used by the great who went in fear of death in this shape. Of course it was sup- posed to possess magical virtues, and we have all read of Dr. Dees' famous crystal globe. Even in the present day a well-known London physician, a believer in spiritualism, pretended to discover secrets by the use of a ball of crystal. The onyx and sar- donyx have long been used for cameos, and the value of the material is vastly enhanced by the art that is sometimes employed upon them. Some of the an- cient cameos are very valuable. The art of engraving upon these stones has latterly vastly improved : a taste has sprung up for fine cameos, and some very creditable engravings have been made. We should not be surprised, now that fashion runs in this A Sermon on Precious Stones. 397 direction, that very fine works of art will once more be seen. The iridescent wondrous-tinted opal, we are told, is nothing but quartz and water. There are several kinds of opals, the chief of which are the precious or " noble " opal used by jewellers, the fire or reddish opal, the common opal, and the Mexican opal. When the different tints in an opal are distributed evenly over its surface, it is known in the trade as " Harle- quin." This is a rude way of designating the exquisite blending of hues which make this jewel so beautiful. The iridescence is owing to minute lines on the surface of the gem, which decompose the light, just in the same manner as they do in mother-o'-pearl. Steel buttons used to be engraved with very minute lines to produce the same effect. The flashes of colour in this precious stone are always most marked in a warm day ; the knowledge that heat enhances the brilliancy of the stone always leads the dealer to hold it in his hand for some time before showing it to his customer. Mr. Emanuel, referring to the fact that the Mexican opal loses its beauty when exposed to water — from the fact, we suppose, that the water fills up the fine lines in it, and prevents the decomposition of the reflected light into its primitive elements — says that Sir Walter Scott having, in "Anne of Gierstein," ascribed this fact to supernatural agency, these stones came to be con- sidered unlucky, and they consequently vi'ent out of 39^ A Sermon on Precious Stones. fashion ! We are willing enough to believe in the folly of fashion, and in the amount of superstition afloat, especially in the upper circles, but we think the fall in the value of opals can scarcely be ascribed to such a cause as this. They are now again in fashion, however, and are likely to continue so ; for in addition to the singular beauty of the gem, they are, we are told, the only precious stones which defy imitation. Fine opals are very valuable ; as much as ;^i,ooo has been given for a large stone for a ring or brooch. The ancients prized them very highly ; and Pliny relates that Nonnius, a Roman senator, was sent into exile by Marcus Antonius, because he would not part with an opal of the size of a filbert, and valued at ;^ 170,000, which the latter coveted. The finest known opal is in the Museum at Vienna, said to be worth ;£■ 30,000. There is also a very fine one among the French Crown Jewels. The opal reminds us somewhat of the pearl, a gem — if we may term a simple excrescence by that name — ^which has always been held in high estima- tion by mankind. The finest pearls come from the pearl fisheries at Ceylon. They are found in the shell of a large species of oyster ; and it is believed, with much show of reason, that th-ey are nothing more than some foreign body which finds its way into the shell, and which the fish covers with a secre- tion similar, but not identical with that with which it lines its shell. A pearl, when sawn through, shows A Sermon on Precious Stones. 399 that this secretion has been deposited in layers, one upon another, round some central body, just in the same manner in which layers of phosphates are deposited in the human kidney round some foreign body, and resulting in the calculus or stone. The Chinese, with their singular ingenuity, have taken advantage of this method of action on the part of the oyster, and have for ages been in the habit of inserting small objects inside its shell, in order to insure their being covered with this pearly secretion. Small idols are thus coated, but the secretion is not the true pearl secretion, but a similar substance to the mother-o'-pearl. Besides the Ceylon fisheries, there are some in the Persian Gulf and in Borneo. The pearl fisheries at one time occupied a large number of men, but now the diving-bell is employed, and their occupation is gone. Independently of the labour of diving to the bottom of the sea, and re- maining there sufficiently long to gather a hundred oysters from the bottom, where the pressure of the water is so great that the divers often come up with blood issuing from their noses and ears, there was great danger from sharks. Indeed, in such fear were the divers from these enemies, that they would not dive unless the shark charmers were present and mumbling their incantations whilst they were at work. The pearl was anciently considered a preser- vative of virtue, although Cleopatra certainly did not dissolve hers with that intent. Although the pearl 400 A Sermon on Precious Stones. will dissolve in a strong acid, it is needless to say that vinegar is far too weak to produce such an effect. It is a pity to be obliged to demolish such a pretty story, but the truth must be told. The oriental pearl is just as much prized now as in ancient times. The charming harmony it has with a delicate skin has always made a necklace of this material so much valued. It used to be one of the boasts of the famous Lady Hester Stanhope, that water could run beneath her instep without wetting the sole of her foot, and that her pearl necklace could not at a little distance be detected upon her neck. Among the famous pearls existing at the present day is one belonging to the Shah of Persia, valued at ;^6o,ooo. Her Majesty was presented with a fine necklace by the East-India Company, and the one possessed by the Empress of the French is famous. In Europe the pearl is not considered to be perfect unless it is of pure white, slightly transparent, and either perfectly round or drop-shaped. In China and India, however, they are preferred of a bright yellow colour. In North America and the West Indies the pearls have a pink colour; and the Panama pearls have a metallic lustre, something like the hue of quicksilver. Black-lead coloured pearls are much prized by some persons. We are told that pearls cannot be imitated with success ; but those who remember the case of pearls in the Great Exhibition of 1862, will remember that A Sermon on Precious Stones. 401 real pearl necklaces were exhibited side by side with imitation pearls, and the best judges were deceived. Those who possess fine pearls should remember that they are liable to be discoloured by contact with acids and gas, and noxious vapours of all kinds. This is the reason that the chandeliers in Her Majesty's Theatre were supplied with wax candles, and that in all the balls of the aristocracy gas is never to be seen, ladies' beauty, as well as their pearls, not being improved by its powerful light. There are numbers of valuable stones and substances which are not so rare as to come under the denomination of precious. Thus, lapis lazuli is found in such masses as to be used in the adornment of furniture. This stone used to be far more valuable than at present, as the finer tints were ground to make the costly colour ultramarine. But chemists have found out the means of producing this colour artificially at a very small cost. Malachite, again, is used for vases, &c., by the Russians. The doors of this material in the Exhibition of 185 1 will be re- membered for their brilliant green colour. Jade, again, seems to be in especial favour in Japan ; some fine samples of this stone are to be seen in the Exhi- bition at South Kensington. Amber used to be fashionable, but it is now wholly gone out, except for mouth-pieces to pipes. It is still used in oriental countries for the adorning of various articles of furniture. Amber' is a resinous gum, and is found in 2 D 402 A Sermon on Precious Stones. large quantities on the shores of the Baltic, swept there principally from the exudations of the pine forests on its borders. Coral is another material, the dark rich variety of which has latterly been in little demand. Formerly we remember that the only colour ever seen was that of the lip, a deep red ; now the run is all upon the delicate pink tint, the colour of the rose- leaf. A large drop of this colour is worth from ^30 to ;^40, and even the smaller pieces are worth from ;^i20tO;^i5o the ounce. There are white, yellow, and black varieties of coral, but they are of little value. Mr. Emanuel gives some very valuable hints touching the means of ascertaining the identity of gems. As a rule, he says, stones, either cut or rough, which can be touched by the file, are not precious stones. Again, he says, it is a very common practice to deceive persons by cementing a genuine stone on the top of a piece of glass ; or a valuable gem, as the sapphire, for instance, with a piece of garnet. These are so artistically formed that it is difficult to detect them. We are told again that passengers by the P. & O. Company's steamers are often taken in by the natives of Colombo, with blue and other coloured stone cut in facets, and imported from Birmingham as doublets. False pearls, as a rule, are always larger than real ones ; the holes, which in real pearls are drilled very small and sharp, in mock pearls are A Sermon on Precious Stones. 403 larger, and have a black edge. Sham pearls are also much lighter than real ones, and much more brittle. There is a trick, too, in the setting of gems which is worth knowing. When jewels are set " open," the interior of the setting is enamelled or painted, to throw a tinge of colour into the gem ; and where the diamond is in question, and it has a yellow colour, the inside of the setting is often of polished silver, to correct this objectionable colour. In the matter of pearls, again, it often happens that they are some- what different in colour, which is easily perceptible when viewed separately. But when strung together they so reflect the light one upon the other, that these differences of tint are lost. The moral is, that when buying a pearl necklace, the purchaser should cut the string, and examine each bead separately. As we cannot imagine any of our readers making such purchases upon their own judgment, this advice seems quite superfluous, as a professed valuer of gems would be pretty certain to take this precaution. 2 D 2 404 OUR LIFEBOATS. |HE Wreck Chart of the United Kingdom, published by the Board of Trade, and studded with black dots along the sea- board indicating the scenes of wrecks, is certainly a very grim-looking piece of work, and well calculated to make us exclaim, "God help our men at sea !" If we cast our eyes upon the eastern coast of England, these dots become so thick as almost to cover the sea. From the Frith of Forth to Orford-ness they lie as thick as pins could be put in a pincushion, and at a glance we see where the graves of our seamen are principally to be found. On an average, fully a third of the wrecks which take place upon our shores occur on the coast which is washed by the German Ocean. The shore is inhospitable enough in all conscience, and the harbours of refuge are but few ; but the greater number of disasters which occur within this limited space are due rather to the negligence of man than to the dangers of the coast. We have only to look at the numbers of unseaworthy colliers at any time to be found in the " Pool " — rickety old craft some of them a hundred years old, with rotten planks Our Lifeboats. 405 worn-out sails, nearly always overladen, and often with untrustworthy anchors, and cables powerless to hold them when overtaken by a gale blowing on to a lee shore. Can it then be wondered at that no gale from the eastward of any moment arises without strewing the adjacent coast with wrecks, and corpses of our gallant seamen ? On the occurrence of every storm we hear of frightful disasters overtaking the colliers which traverse these dangerous seas ; and yet these navigators seem to be as reckless as ever. If we look to the western side of the island, the dots indicative of marine disaster are not so thick, but still they crowd the grand estuaries which form the high- ways of commerce. The Mersey and the Severn seem choked with wrecks — the rocky coasts of Wales, from Bardsey Island to Holyhead are also thickly studded with these ominous black dots. The shores of the English Channel are pretty free, but they thicken round the Lizard, and along the iron-bound coast of Cornwall, and, strangely enough, they are very numerous in the neighbourhood of light- houses. The truth is that home-bound vessels make for these lighthouses, as moths are attracted by a candle, and feel their way up channel from one light to another, and in doing so but too often run upon the rocks upon which these structures are placed as warnings. The aggregate of losses sustained by the country every year is frightful to contemplate. Upwards of 4o6 Our Lifeboats. 2,000 vessels are lost on the average annually on our coasts alone. This number appears enormous ; and the reader will wonder what must be the total amount of wrecks throughout the world, if this little island alone is the scene of so much disaster. But it must be remembered that unless ships frequent a coast there can be no wrecks, and it will therefore be seen that it is in consequence of our overwhelming maritime activity that our shores are so wreck-strewn. When the reader is informed that upon the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland one-third of all the mari- time casualties throughout the world occur, he will perhaps be astonished ; nevertheless, such is the fact. These isles are the common foci of the navies of the habitable globe ; and 1,000,000 ships annually leave ■ and enter our ports. Most of these have to pass shores either rock-bound or fearfully obstructed by outlying sands, the very names of which are sounds of dread to our seamen's ears. With all these traps on the paths of the seafaring community, the preva- lence of wrecks at certain seasons of the year cannot be wondered at ; but it certainly is astonishing that so many collisions, many of which are fatal to both ships, should occur in fine weather, and in broad day- light. We cannot, for instance, imagine two men crossing a desert, and running up against each other against their will ; yet this is what actually occurs on the ocean desert to ships every day in the year, especially in the bright summer weather. With the Our Lifeboats. 407 vast increase in our steam marine, and with the intro- duction of the powerful lights which steamers carry, simulating the brilliancy of .those in lighthouses, we can understand collisions taking place in the night time ; but in fair daylight such a cause cannot be assigned as an excuse for running into the very teeth of destruction. But there are other causes of wrecks for which avarice and greed are directly responsible. We have no longer wreckers along our shores, holding out false lights to tempt mariners upon a fatal coast, but we have a system of marine insurance, which, in the opinion of many persons best calculated to judge of such matters, tends to produce wrecks even more surely and abundantly. If a shipowner is insured to the full value of his ship, in very many cases he is quite careless whether she founders or not. Indeed, in all cases he is directly interested in losing her out- right when she happens to take the ground, rather than in recovering her in a damaged condition ; for this reason — if she becomes a total wreck, the in- surance has to be made good by the underwriters . whereas, if she is only damaged, the owner has to bear one-third of the loss. It is, however, with direct losses that we are more particularly interested in this article, inasmuch as direct losses almost always mean danger to life; Now, as long as a merchant has no direct pecuniary interest in keeping his ship afloat, by reason of his full insurance upon her being secured, 4oS Our Lifeboats. the public have no guarantee that he will take any- special care to secure her safety. The consequence is, we know, insufficient stores, untrustworthy anchors and cables, and very often unseaworthy vessels. The Legislature has lately passed a law to force ship- owners to test cables and anchors in the same manner as those of the Royal Navy are tested, but this law has not yet come into operation; it will, however, render life at sea much more secure. If the holding tackle of the Royal Charter had been able to bear the strain put upon it, the year i860 possibly would not have seen 450 passengers overwhelmed in one night by the sea. But marine insurance companies never compel shipowners to take this precaution ; and their neglect in this item of safety may be- considered as an example of their general carelessness, even where their own pecuniary interests are concerned ; we may guess, therefore, what amount of thought they take for the life of the poor sailor. Whilst, however. Mammon thus operates towards the destruction of human life. Philanthropy is ever on the watch to preserve it. If we take the wreck chart in our hands again, we find that where the black dots, significant of death, cluster the thickest along our shores, there also certain red crescent-shaped mai'ks stand the thickest : these indicate the presence of Lifeboat- stations, or the means of rescuing the shipwrecked mariner. England, as the leading maritime nation, may have been expected tc have led the way in Our Lifeboats. 409 organizing some method of averting the frightful peril to which those who go down to the great sea in ships are subjected every moment of their lives ; and certainly the National Lifeboat Institution, if cal- culated by the amount of lives it has saved, may be looked upon as one of the most humane institutions, not only of this country, but of the world. The life- boat, manned by its hardy crew, is the tool, so to speak, of the Institution, and on the efficacy of these tools its working value depends. As long ago as the year 1790, lifeboats were known. Greathead, as early as that date, built some of his broad-curved form of lifeboats — in shape not unlike a segment of oi^nge- peel. These boats, filled with air-cases at the sides, did in those days good service ; but in the course of time these models were departed from, and in the end the lifeboats became a craft rather significant of dis- aster than of safety, as they had a trick of turning end over end when lifted by a heavy sea, and not being on the self-righting plan, they were apt to drown their crews beneath them. The catastrophe that ■ overtook the Shields lifeboat in 1850, when twenty-two out of twenty-four pilots, by whom she was manned, were drowned, at last drew public atten- tion to their worthlessness, and the late Duke of Northumberland was induced to offer a premium for the construction of a new lifeboat, which should best satisfy the conditions required in such a vessel. These are qualities as a sailing and a rowing boat in 410 Our Lifeboats. all weathers, qualities as a sea-boat, means of freeing herself quickly from water, extra buoyancy, power of self-righting, &c. &c. After many experiments, a boat was at last built, which has served ever since as the model upon which all the lifeboats of the Institu- tion have been built. Fig. I. Figure i gives the general exterior form of the boat, as shown with the extreme sheer of gunwale, length of keel, and rake of stem and stern-posts, the length being thirty-three feet and the breadth eight feet. The dotted line shows the position and the dimensions of the air-chambers, the relieving-tubes, and the internal ballast. The festooned lines repre- sent external life-lines, to which persons in the water may cling. The two central deep festoons are used as stirrups to aid persons to climb into the boat. Fiff. 2. Our Lifeboats. 41 1 In the deck plan, figure 2, B represents the reliev- ing tubes, six inches in diameter and six in number, fitted with self-acting valves to let the water out and prevent its return ; C, the side air-cases ; D, the end air-chambers; E, the ballast, composed of solid blocks of cork ; F, ventilators, to admit of a free cur- rent of air under the water-tight deck and pumps. %-^ (! ;c?'!pfeL-fflfc--JB|'c> Fig- 3- Figure 3, midship section of the side air-cases. B the relieving-tubes of the same depth as the space between the deck and the boat's floor ; the letters C spaces beneath the deck, nine feet in length, placed longitudinally at the midship part of the boat, filled with solid chocks of light cork, forming part of the ballast. G is a ventilator, having a pump fixed in it to relieve the boat of any leakage water while afloat. Her iron keel, extending the whole length of the boat and weighing about nine hundredweight, forms the principal part of the ballast. Thus constructed, the lifeboat possesses in the highest degree all the qualities which it is desirable a lifeboat should possess, namely, great lateral stability, speed against a heavy sea, facility for launching and for taking the shore, immediate self-discharge of any water breaking into her, the all-important advantage of self-righting if 412 Our Lifeboats. upset, and strength and stowage-room for a number of passengers. As a mechanical contrivance, the Society's lifeboat is as near perfection as possible. The air-cases at stem and stern are so capacious, and have so much sheer, that even if upset and turned completely over, the boat rights herself instantly. Indeed, there are two of the Society's boatmen who, when they see that she will inevitably turn over, manage to stow them- selves away under the thwarts. Twice they have done this, turned a complete circle with the boat, and come up in her without being wetted ! It is the absolute faith placed in the safety of these boats which renders volunteers so eager to be called out at any moment to take part in this desperate service for the paltry fee of a couple of pounds per man. Those who watch the lifeboat beating through the breakers rarely see anything of the hardy crew that mans her — green seas break over them, the broken water envelops the gallant boat in a sea of foam. Every other minute she is filled to the thwarts with water ; but the next she is free of her burthen by the action of her dis- charge-valves, and gaily floating like a duck after his dive. They are sometimes stove in upon the rocks, bumped until the bottom timbers are loosened ; and yet, by the aid of the cork packing placed in the floor, they float. In February, 1858, for instance, the lifeboat of Youghal, in being launched, got stove in, a hole being made in her bottom as large as a man's Otir Lifeboats. 413 head ; yet the crew, nothing dismayed, rowed to the wreck she was in search of, took fourteen men off, and brought them safely to land. Sorhetimes, indeed, terrific seas will sweep every man out of them into the water ; but with the aid of their splendid life- belts, and the life-chains around the boat, they invariably manage to scramble into her again. Indeed, the loss of any of the crews of the National Institution lifeboats is almost unknown, unless in cases such as that at Sunderland, when a man was crushed between the boat and the pier ; or in the still more melancholy case of the wreck of the steamer Sta7iley, when two men jumped from the lifeboat, and ultimately perished in the ship she had gone to save. Besides these carefully constructed boats, there are still some of what are termed North-country boats, built on the Greathead model, and the Norfolk and Suffolk boats, constructed for sailing only. The wrecks that take place off these coasts are nearly always upon the outlying sands some distance off. These boats have great beam and length, the largest being twelve feet wide by forty-six feet long. They never have occasion to row, but spread powerful sails, and therefore require great stability, to obtain which they are ballasted with five and three-quarters tons of water, which lies in an open trough in the centre of the boat twenty feet long, four feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. These boats, instead of i^ising with every wave, cut through it, and indeed may be 414 Our Lifeboats. said to sail at times under the water, their crews being protected from being washed out by ridge-ropes running through iron stanchions fixed round the gun- wale. Their crews place unbounded confidence in them, as they are firm as a rock in the water, and • have never been known to turn over, with one excep- tion, — the South wold lifeboat, in 1858 ; but this was entirely through the fault of the crew themselves. In taking her out through a high surf to exercise her crew, on returning, before re-entering the surf, they injudiciously inserted the plugs, and pumped about two-thirds of the water-ballast, when she was over- taken by a sea and thrown stern up ; the ton and a half of water still in her rushed to the bows, and broaching to across the surf she became submerged. It is needless to say that had her full water-ballast been in her this accident could not have happened. There is one disadvantage in these water-ballasted boats — the men sometimes have to sit with their feet in the water : no small drawback when they are on a long service on a bitter winter's night. The seafaring population have now ample means of knowing of the approach of a storm. The National Lifeboat Institution supplies standard barometers to all their lifeboat-stations, with a barometer manual, by which the seafaring population are enabled to read it properly — a thing not easily done without instruction. This manual, besides giving the necessary instructions to read the barometer, also gives some valuable signs of weather. Our Lifeboats. 415 which the old salts perhaps believe in more firmly than those indicated by the " glass." Some of those are worthy of repeating to landsmen. Whether clear or cloudy, a rosy sky at sunset presages fine weather ; a red sky in the morning, bad weather, or much wind, perhaps rain ; a grey sky in the morning, fine weather ; a high dawn, wind ; a low dawn, fair weather. After fine, clear weather, the first signs in the sky of a coming change are usually light streaks, curls? wisps, or mottled patches of white distant clouds, which increase, and are followed by an overcast of murky vapour that passes into cloudiness. This appears more or less oily or watery, as wind or rain will prevail, and is an infallible sign. When seabirds fly out early, and far to seaward, moderate wind and fair weather may be expected ; when they hang about the land, or over it, sometimes flying inland, expect a strong wind with stormy weather. Remarkable clearness of atmosphere near the horizon, distant objects, such as hills, unusually visible or raised (by refraction), and what is called a " good Jicaring day," may be mentioned among signs of wind and rain to be expected. There are certain rhymes which are worth remembering, such as. Fast rise after veiy low Indicates a strong blow. Long foretold, long last ; Short notice, soon past. 4i6 Otir Lifeboats. But it is upon the late Admiral Fitzroy's storm- signals sent down from the Meteorological Office that the lifeboat men principally depend. When the cones are hoisted, indicative of an approaching gale, the volunteers generally assemble near the boat- house in readiness for a start If, however, a wreck should take place without this warning, the cox- swain-superintendent — who has a salary of 8/. per annum, is immediately informed of it, and he takes measures to summon the lifeboat crew, — if by day, a flag is hoisted; if by night, a carronade is fired quickly twice. In the vast majority of cases the lifeboat is launched from her carriage at once by the aid of an eager crowd, who pull at the tackle roved through blocks at the head of the transporting carriage, and fastened to the stern-sheets of the boat, so that she is propelled by the hands hauling inland. But even thus launched, a boat often has the utmost difficulty to beat through the rollers that break upon the coast. In order to overcome this resistance, she is launched with her crew in her, and the moment she takes the water, the men lay hold of it with their oars, and, after a fierce struggle, force her through the surf. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to carry the boat for miles — in one instance seventeen miles — to avoid some headland, or to gain the best offing for her. In this case any coastguardsman or constable has power to seize the requisite number of horses to take the transporting Our Lifeboats. 417 carriage. Sometimes eight or ten horses are required for this service, and the gallant boat starts with her crew all seated, followed by an excited crowd, such as in town we see following the fire-engine or fire- escape. A remarkable instance of the perils which the lifeboat has sometimes to encounter before she even takes to the water, was evidenced in the case of the wreck of the barque Gigmta, of Glasgow, which was driven ashore in February, 1862, on the Carrig Rocks, off Grenore point, county of Wexford. In this case the Carnsorne boat had to be conveyed many miles through dreadfully flooded roads, and when arrived on the brow of a cliff, had to be lowered down a distance of eighty feet with ropes. She had then to be launched through a heavy surf; but ulti- mately she took off the crew from the sinking vessel ; thus the boat had to make a dangerous journey through three elements. She surely should ever afterwards have been called the Flying Fish. The most perilous and trying lifeboat services are, however, performed in the neighbourhood of the many dangerous sands that lie off the coasts, and more especially the dread Goodwin, — that sepulchre of ships. Not only is the danger of beating through the raging breakers that run upon these sands, the most imminent that the gallant lifeboat can have to encounter, but there are other sources of disaster almost as great. The Goodwin 2 E 41 8 Our Lifeboats. is a marine cemetery, if we may so term it, in which the ribs of many a gallant vessel are embedded, whose gaunt and seaweed-hung timbers appear here and there, through the quicksand at low water. These old wrecks when submerged are highly dan- gerous, and the lifeboat crew have not only to avoid the tumbling seas and the wild sea-horses which rage around, but they have to avoid, if they can catch a sight of them, the remnants of these en- gulphed ships. The cockswain of the Caistor lifeboat, describing the rescue of the crew of the schooner Trial, of Pool, on the Barber Sands, in 1862, says: — "On our reaching the sands, we were compelled to cross through the breakers of the sands, in order to board the vessel on the south side, as there were two wrecks standing out of the water close on either side of her, and in so doing had to encounter the full fury of the sea." The danger of the rescue appears, however, always to be at the moment of coming up with the wreck. To warp the boat by means of anchor and cable just within reach of the cluster of human beings hanging on the rigging, and yet not to come within the clutch of the madly lifting and falling sea, lapping up the side of the vessel which would throw the boat one moment high up in the mizen chains, and the next precipitate her to the stranded vessel's keel — requires the tact of the most consummate seamanship. The cockswain of Otir Lifeboats. 419 the Caistor lifeboat goes on to say, " We then hauled the lifeboat up alongside, to get the crew out of her ; but the sea broke so heavily into the lifeboat, sea after sea, which followed in quick succession, washing her crew about in all directions, so that we could not hold her, for the sea drove her quite round under the vessel's bow. We again hauled up along- side, and three of the ship's crew succeeded in jumping into the lifeboat, when we were again drawn by the violence of the sea against the ship, damaging the lifeboat, and breaking her mizenmast The same fearful scene was again enacted, and then the boat was filled with a heavy sea, and could not free herself until, on veering off to discover the cause, it was found that a part of the sail had been sucked into the plug-holes." This is only one picture of hundreds that occur all round our coasts in every gale of wind. When we hear the wind howling wildly in the winter's night, and turn round in our comfortable beds, be sure there are scores of wrecks on our coasts, their masts crowded with drowning seamen, who look across the howling waste of waters, and who would look in vain were it not for the gallant lifeboat coming to them as a thing coming from the grave. All night, when gales are blowing hard, the watchers hang about the pier-head, looking out upon the dark expanse of ocean. Suddenly a rocket climbs the black concave of night, and the next moment a 2 E 2 420 Our Lifeboats. minute-gun is heard booming across the waters. These are from the light-ship, which, moored upon the edge of the dangerous sand by her powerful anchors, holds on night and day, swept from stem to stern by furious seas, but yet keeping her ceaseless watch. Some big ship freighted with emigrants, like the Ftcsilier, which sailed from London on the 4th of December, 1863, and in the night was broad- side on the Girdler Sand, off Ramsgate, with a freight of strong men, and many women and children. She is seen, or rather the tar-barrels she burns are seen, by the Prince lightship, and immediately from her deck streams the ark of light across the heavens. In another half-hour a land-rocket answers the summons — the lifeboat has put off, and across that mad sea twelve good men and true are beating through the storm in their boat, no bigger than a speck of foam upon the dark ocean : for hours she searches the fatal sands, and at last, guided by the burning tar-barrels, she reaches the emigrant-ship. The cockswain says, " The scene at this time was an appalling one : the howling of the winds, mingled with the shrieks of the women, and the rush of the waves against the sides of the ill-fated ship, used as we are to similar sights, made us doubly anxious for the safety of those whom by God's Providence we had come to rescue." In this terrible moment, however, the utmost order prevailed. By the aid of two of the crew, the women were lashed on bowlines and Our Lifeboats. 421 handed into the boat — the children were lowered in blankets, as gently as they would have been on solid land. These were taken to the tug that lay not far off. Before returning home, the tugboat once more made her appearance, and informed the lifeboat of another wreck on the Shingles ; this was the Demerara. In order to reach her the boat had to beat over the sands. It is scarcely possible to conceive a more perilous passage than this. The sands are furrowed into deep ridges, rising from two to three feet high, and over these ridges she had to beat and bump, grinding every moment, and whirling round, quite unmanageable, amid the boiling water which kept her submerged the greater part of the time, the men holding on by the thwarts whilst tons of water passed over their backs ; at last, however, she reached the ship, and took off eighteen poor wretches. These, with the emigrants from the Fusilier, made a sum of 120 souls rescued by this gallant crew ; for which magnificent service each man had the magnificent sum of 21. presented to him ! Whilst our coasts are lined with gallant fellows ready to risk their lives for such a paltry sum— we beg pardon, the money could not have been the motive — we need not fear that they will be wanting in the moment of the nation's peril. We have before said that the average annual number of shipwrecks is 2,000, placing the lives of between 5,000 and 6,000 persons in jeopardy. Of 422 Otir Lifeboats. this number, the lifeboats of the Institution were instrumental in 1865 in saving 444 persons, and shoreboats a further number of 182 persons, or a total of 626. It must be remembered that the Lifeboat never puts out except in cases of ex- treme peril; therefore every voyage is a desperate risk. But the instrument by which all this rescue from imminent death is effected is costly. The expense of a lifeboat, with her equipment, transporting carriage, and boat-house, amounts to £S^'^, irre- spective of any charge for maintaining them in a state of efficiency. But there is no lack of willing givers for a service so merciful. One of the most interesting features among the last receipts of the Institution is the gift of lifeboats for special stations,. by individuals grateful for some deliverance at sea,, or mournful for some irreparable loss. In many cases these free-gift lifeboats are named after the persons so delivered ; in others, after the name of some dear one that has perished. It is a poetical idea, and one calculated to soothe those that mourn the dead, that a lifeboat bearing the name of the departed is ever watching on our shores to save human life. It is as though the soul of the lost one had passed into the gallant craft, in order to repay death by life. It is a fashion to give stained glass windows in our churches to the memoiy of the dead ; but surely the gift of a lifeboat is a far more Our Lifeboats. 423 active deed of benevolence than the mere presentation of a sensual decoration, however splendid. At present there are 163 lifeboats belonging to the National Institution, and many others belonging to corporations and private individuals, &c. Neverthe- less, long stretches of coast are yet unfurnished with the means of saving life, especially in Ireland, where, indeed, the Institution has but twenty-three stations, a number far below the requirements of her ex- tended and rocky coast. Who is ready with volunteer offerings to fill up the gap } 424 THE BIRTH OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. |E are constantly hearing it said that " steam is only in its infancy,'' and no doubt the application of the power of the young giant is very far from being exhausted. But, if we look back upon the centuries during which the infant has been in swaddling-clothes — if we notice the ages during which it has been enjoying its play days, we cannot help feeling that it has enjoyed a very long amount of nursing ; and that it has not been put to work a moment too soon for its character of a servant. We need not go back to the days of Hero of Syracuse, who first noticed its young energies, and actually gave them a little playful occupation. It will be sufficient to revert to the days of our civil wars, at which time it seemed to be making an effort to do some work in the world. The Marquis of Worcester was undoubtedly the first philosopher of modern times who saw the capabilities of the new power. That he actually employed the power of steam to force water to great heights, and that he The Birili of the Steavi-Enginc. 425 planned a " vessel to work against wind and tide, j'ca, both without the help of man or beast," doubtless points to some engine worked by the expansive force of steam ; but this was, indeed, the very- infancy of the invention, and it died stillborn. The Marquis, indeed, in his " Century of Inventions," called this a " semi-omnipotent engine, and do intend that a model thereof be buried with me." Mr. Woodcroft, the principal of the Patent Office at South Kensington, thought indeed that in this paragraph he might probably find the infant prodigy interred in the vault of its illustrious progenitor. He searched, accordingly, the vaults of the church at Raglan, where the Marquis was buried, but the " infant " was not to be found therein. The pro- bability is, that, after all, it was only a creation of this ingenious nobleman's fancy, for we have no evidence that he ever actually constructed an engine that worked by steam. But the new power was not far off. Towards the latter end of the seventeenth century several eminent men were attracted by the force of steam, which seemed, not long after the death of the Marquis, to draw like a magnet many of the inquiring minds of the time. Sir Samuel Moreland was one of these, and the still more illustrious Frenchman Dionysius Papin, another. Both of these philosophers lived whilst the author of the " Century of Inventions " was making his experiments, and doubtless the fame of his exploits 426 The Birth of the Steam-Engine. was noised abroad, and kept alive the flame of the discovery. Papin, indeed, was the first to attempt the application of steam to propel vessels by water. But neither the spirit of the age nor the workmen were yet born who could bind and loosen the limbs of the young giant at their will. He did, indeed, contrive a boat which could be propelled by this means ; but having so far conquered nature, un- happily he found the self-interest and prejudice of mankind against him. Having, in 1707, completed his model, he was bringing it to England, to try the experiment upon the Thames, when it was seized at Miinden, and destroyed by the boatmen, who, doubt- less, thought — like the farm-labourers on the intro- duction of the threshing-machine — that the new engine would take the bread out of their mouths. But another mind had taken up the sacred flame of invention, and who at last was enabled to put it to a practical use, and to inaugurate its first success in the world of labour. This time it was a military engineer, Thomas Savory, who had the dandling of the illustrious infant. After much labour, and many vexatious disappointments, he at last erected a " fire- engine " to pump water out of the Cornish mines. But even this engine was on a totally different principle to the modern steam-engine. It was nothing more nor less than an atmospherical engine, in which a vacuum was made by filling a vessel with steam, and then suddenly condensing it by means Tk2 Birtli, of the Steam-Eiigine. j^i'j of cold water — the suction power thus created drawhig the water by means of pipes from the pits. There are still remaining in Cornwall the engine-houses of several of these pumping-machines. These were at work at the beginning of the last century, but the limit of their power was soon attained, and steam fell into disuse as the mines grew deeper, — or, rather, it was falling, for young steam, like a tennis-ball, this time no sooner touched the ground than it was caught again at the rebound by Robert Newcomen. This inventor was a blacksmith, living at Dartmouth, not far from the residence of Savory, from whom he had received employment. By this means he was doubtless familiar with the working of his pumping- engine, and no doubt noticed its defects. At all events, this provincial blacksmith saw, or rather it was suggested to him by Dr. Hooke, that what was wanted was the means of producing a speedy vacuum. This he, in conjunction with a glazier of the same town, named Galley, at last found out the means of accomplishing. The principle of the new engine (in the words of Mr. Smiles' " Lives of Boulton and Watt," from which the materials of this article are largely drawn), was as follows : — " The steam was generated in a separate boiler, as in Savory's engine, from which it was conveyed into a vertical cylinder, underneath a piston fitting it closely, but movable upwards and downwards through its whole length. The piston was fixed to a rod, which was attached 428 The Birth of tlie SUam-Engitte. by a point or chain to the end of a lever vibrating upon an axis, the other end being attached to a rod working a pump. When the piston in the cylinder was raised, steam was let in to the vacated space through a tube fitted into the top of the boiler, and mounted with a stop-cock. The pump-rod at the farther end of the lever being thus depressed, cold water was applied to the sides of the cylinder, by which the steam within was condensed, a vacuum was produced, and the external air, pressing upon the top of the piston, forced it down into the empty cylinder. The pump-rod was thereby raised ; and the operation of depressing and raising it being repeated, a power was thus produced which kept the pump continuously at work." The principle of this engine was different from Savory's, but it could scarcely be called a steam- engine, inasmuch as the steam was not employed as a source of motion, but as a means of producing a vacuum on one side of the piston, which allowed the weight of the atmosphere to exert its full force on the other. It was, in fact, more than half an atmospherical engine, although it was termed by the inventor a " fire-engine," and was by that name known afterwards. The appearance of this engine, however, was not very different from that of the steam-pumping engines of the present day in its outward form. Its weak point was the loss of heat, caused by the application of cold water to the outside The Birth of the Stcam-E7iginc. 429 of the cylinder after every stroke. Nevertheless, it was a vastly more powerful engine than that invented by Savory ; and in the beginning of the last century the Cornish miners, one after another, made use of it to pump the water from their mines, which were just on the point of being drowned out. But it was a clumsy engine at best, and the improvements made upon it were, singularly enough, the result of pure accident. The system of condensing the steam in the under side of the cylinder by means of cold water thrown upon the outside, would have speedily proved its ruin, had it not been for a lucky mischance. In order to keep the vacuum as perfect as pos- sible, a quantity of water was allowed to lie upon the upper side of the piston. Whilst at work one day the engine was observed to make several strokes in quick succession ; in searching for the cause of this acceleration of its pace, it was found that a hole in the piston allowed a jet of cold water to pass through to the underside of the cylinder, and thereby to produce a rapid vacuum by the condensation of the steam. This plan was at once imitated by art, and the condensation was consequently produced at a much smaller expense of fuel. Another improve- ment was brought about by the wit of a little boy, whose duty it was to turn alternately two cocks, one admitting the steam into the cylinder, the other admitting the cold water to condense it. The boy. 430 The Birth of the Steam-Engine. observing the alternate descent and ascent of the beam over his head, bethought him of attaching two strings to the beam and to the levers which governed the cocks ; the result was the perfect automatic action of the engine in this particular, and doubtless many hours of absence from his post at play on the part of the ingenious little engineer. Although the Newcdmen engine, by successive improvements, had established itself as a valuable power, yet the power was very costly ; as the mines were driven deeper by its pumping power, the strain put upon it became so great that its parts were always getting out of order, and so much steam was required that, in one mine alone, we are told that four boilers were burnt out in as many years. By the middle of the last century these engines were clearly becoming in- adequate to perform the increased work thrown upon them, and the expense of working, moreover, was becoming so great that it was doubtful whether horse-power could not be employed more eco- nomically. At some mines the consumption of fuel was enormous. The two engines at Wheal Rose and Wheal Busy, with cylinders of sixty-six and seventy-two inches in diameter, consumed thirteen tons of coal each per day. If these mines had been situated in a coal-producing neighbourhood, this item would not have signified, but Cornwall was a long way from this mineral ; the roads to the mines were mountainous and horrible ; we may, therefore, guess The Birth of tJie S team-Engine. 431 at the expense of conveying coals to them. It was, upon this question of the loss of heat, caused by the condensing of cold water inside the cylinder, that Newcomen's engine ultimately broke down, and pre- pared the way for the new actor upon the scene, who was destined to remake the engine, and convert it once for all into the great moving power for ages. It so happened that, just at the very time at which the mine-owners of Cornwall were on the point of being drowned out in consequence of the inadequacy of their engines to " fork " the water from the depths of their pits, the mind of an intelligent mathematical instrument maker, then residing within the shadow of the College of Glasgow, appeared to be directed to the new motive power by the merest accident. He was well known to some of the professors, and being of a philosophical turn of mind, appears to have been in some sense connected with the University; at all events, the Professor of the Natural Philosophy class, knowing that he had paid some attention to the subject of steam, entrusted to him a model of a Newcomen engine to repair. The model had, indeed, been sent to London for this purpose, and if it had remained there, in all probability it would have been returned without dropping that fruitful seed into the mind of the workmen employed upon it that it did into the mind of the Glasgow optician and mathematical 432 Tlie Birth of tJie Steam-Engine. instrument maker ; and, possibly, the invention would have been delayed another century. Imagine, gentle reader, the world without the steam-engine in the year 1866! — imagine all the material concerns of life as they stood a hundred years ago, and then picture to yourself the effect of this lucky accident, if we may so term it, of the recall of this little model from its long journey southward to the remote sea- port on the banks of the Clyde. It was a rude affair, with a boiler smaller than that of an ordinarj'- tea-kettle ; but it was quite big enough to put thoughts into the head of Watt that never left him until they had borne abundant fruit to the world. The cylinder was only two inches in diameter and six inches stroke. When Watt had repaired it and set it at work, he found that, although the boiler was apparently large enough, it did not supply steam in sufficient quantities, and, after making a few strokes, it ceased working. He was puzzled greatly; but instead of being discouraged, he was only incited thereby to further inquiry. Professor Robinson says, " Everything to him was the beginning of a new and serious study, and I knew that he would not quit it till he had either discovered its insignificance or had made something of it." After much experimenting, he discovered that the want of steam was occasioned by the waste produced by the cooling of the cylinder by the injection of cold water at every stroke, nearly four-fifths of the whole steam being condensed before The Birth of tlie Steam-Engine. 433 the surplus began to act. Here was the difficulty that had to be conquered. Watt, however, held firmly to his belief that " Nature had a weak side, if it could only be found out : " this weak side he dis- covered, and came to the conclusion " that to make a perfect steam-engine, it was necessary that the cylinder should always be as hot as the steam that entered it, but it was equally necessary that the steam should be condensed when the piston de- scended — nay, that it should be cooled down below 100°, or a considerable amount of vapour would be given off, which would resist the descent of the piston, and diminish the power of the engine."* Thus, two conditions were to be fulfilled, which were totally irreconcilable with each other. According to a celebrated French saying, " Nothing is so easy as the discovery of Yesterday ; nothing so difficult as the discovery of To-morrow." We refer to this admirably-expressive truth, because the solution of the problem seems so easy now that it has been solved ; but it took the great inventor many a weary day and sleepless night cogitating how the difficulty was to be conquered ; many a head-ache, to which poor Watt was so subject, and many a heart-ache, besides. That there is at times a reasoning power going * We have quoted this, and other passages occurring in this paper, from Mr. Smiles' singularly-interesting "Lives of Boulton and Watt," a work which has afforded many of the facts it contains. 2 F 434 The Birth of the Steam-Engine. on within the cerebrum, of which we are wholly unconscious, we have no doubt whatever ; men cudgel their dull brains to no purpose, all the while that the same brain is ripening an idea, as it were, in the dark. So it was with Watt. He could make nothing of the problem presented to him. One Sunday afternoon, however, in the spring of 1765, he was taking a stroll upon the Glasgow Green, when, to quote his own words, " I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind, that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and if a connection were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder .... I had not got further than the Golf-house, when the whole thing was arranged in my mind." We can imagine the exultation of spirit which seized him as he returned from his walk, in which this idea, big with the fate of nations, had sprung up spontaneously, as it appeared, in his mind, but which had long lain there ready for the proper moment to burst forth to consciousness. As far as the idea was concerned, the clumsy steam-wasting Newcomen engine was now transformed into the new creation, to be henceforth the universal drudge, the all-powerful slave, more obedient and more terrible than any we read of in Arabian story. But there was to be a long and weary path trodden The Birth of tJie Steam-Engine. 435 Tjefore the idea of a separate condenser became translated into a pregnant working fact. The mechanical arts were then at a very low ebb in Glasgow, as indeed elsewhere. The splendid machinery for working in iron, now to be found in the shop of every mechanist, was not then in existence; the turning, planing, and boring machines had not been invented, and the first cylinder Watt used for his engine was not bored, but hammered ! No wonder that it "sniffed," or leaked, in every direction, so that the waste of steam was immense. In the midst of his difficulties, he complains that his "old white-iron man is dead;" an event which plunged him into the depths of despair, and affords a measure of the character of the mechanical aid at his disposal. About this time his friend. Dr. Black, introduced him to Dr. Roebuck, the founder of the Carron Iron Company, who very warmly entered into the steam-engine project, and ultimately went into partnership with Watt, who gave him a two-third share in the engine, in exchange for the capital Roebuck lent him to bring it to perfection, and for the aid afforded him by the establishment at Carron. New castings of the cylinder were made at these works, and early in 1768 a new trial was made of the model, but with • no very satisfactory result ; in a month's time, however, after much tinkering, the engine was set to work. But a model .and a working engine of large proportions are two 2 F 2 436 The Birth of the Stcam-Engine. different things, and this poor Watt found, when he attempted to get mechanics to make machinery in large. However, the patent for the engine was taken in 1769, and the engine itself was finished and removed to Kinneil House, the residence of Dr. Roebuck, not far from Glasgow. But even now it would not go with any success, and poor Watt was indeed reduced to the direst despondency. "You cannot conceive," he wrote to Small, "how mortified I am with this disappointment ; it's a horrible thing for a man to have his all hanging by a single string. If I had wherewithal to pay 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 schemes; and I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst." But the honourable spirit of the great inventor, depressed as it was, and still more depressed as it became by the bankruptcy of Roebuck, which occurred about this time, was at length about to triumph over all his difficulties. " The darkest place is under the candlestick," says the old proverb ; and the ruin of his friend happily proved to be the salva- tion of the steam-engine. When Roebuck failed, the merits of the new engine were made known to Mr. Boulton, the princely manufacturer, whose works at Soho were at that time famous throughout Europe. Roebuck's two-third share of the engine was, with the consent of his creditors, made over to Boulton, in The Birth of the Stcam-Engiue. 437 exchange for a debt of ;^ 1,200, which he had a right to claim against the estate; the good men, who wound-up the affairs of the too-daring schemer, holding of little account the new engine, which no doubt they looked upon, in the language of picture dealers, as "highly speculative.'' Indeed, Watt him- self, at this moment, seemed to think but ill of its prospects, for he said himself of the transaction, that it was only paying one bad debt with another. What splendid chances some of us miss for the want of a little foresight; the greatest discovery of the age — the source of untold wealth to all mankind for all time, parted with for a bad debt ! However, the engine from the old outhouse at Kinneil was taken to pieces and removed to Soho, and in 1774 Watt himself left Scotland, heartily sick of its people and its harsh climate, as he himself confessed. Not to go further into details, we may say that, with the trained hands in the manufactory at Soho and with the energy of Boulton, the Kinneil engine, or " old Beelzebub," as Watt named it, was put in thorough working order, and the commencement of the manufacturing of engines only awaited an exten- sion of the patent right, to begin in England. It is very possible that unless Boulton, at the eleventh hour, had come to the rescue, the Steam-engine, like many other famous inventions, would have failed. Without tools, workmen, money, or energy. Watt could not have fought the battle much longer ; 43 8 The Birth of tlie Steam-Engine. as it was, he was obliged to turn from his labours upom it to do a little surveying, to make plans, to construct mathematical and optical instruments, in order to keep the wolf from the door. Now, howevery all was plain sailing ; his moneyed partner removed all the difficulties from his path ; an Act of Parliament was obtained for a new patent to run for twenty- four years — which the great Burke, among others, by the way, opposed — and the whole manufacturing world, especially the miners of Cornwall, were eagerly looking out for the new machine which was to restore their fast-fading fortunes. Before long, several engines were in active work in England, and orders had arrived for powerful engines for Cornwall. The expense of fuel and the waste of steam in the Newcomen engines still at work in that county, had brought the mining interest to the verge of bankruptcy ; and the news of the new invention had created the greatest excitement among the adventurers. It was there- fore of the utmost consequence that no failure should occur in the setting up of the new ma- chinery; and Watt himself went down to super- intend the erection of the Chacewater engines, required to drain one of the most celebrated mines of the country. "At last," says Mr. Smiles, "the Chacewater engine was finished and ready for work. Great curiosity was felt about its performance, and mining men and engineers came from all quarters. The Birth of the Steani-Enginc. 439 to see it start. 'All the world are agape,' said Watt, 'to see what it can do.' It would not have displeased some of the spectators if it had failed. But to their astonishment it succeeded. At starting it made about eleven strokes per minute, and it worked with greater power, went more steadily, and forked more water than any of the ordinary engines, with only about one-third the consumption of coal. ' We have had many spectators,' wrote Watt, ' and several have already become converts. The velocity, violence, magnitude, and horrible noise of the engine,' he adds, ' give universal satisfaction to all beholders — ^believers or not. I have once or twice trimmed the engine to end its stroke gently, and to make less noise ; but Mr. Wilson cannot sleep without it seems quite furious, so I have left it to the engine- man, and, by-the-by, the noise seems to convey great ideas of its powers to the ignorant, who seem to be no more taken with modest merit in an engine than a man.' " The success of this engine, which very soon "forked" the water from the mine, settled the question of Watt versus Newcomen. None of the latter engines were erected after this ; indeed, in a very few years there was not a Newcomen engine at work in the country. Many of the engine-houses, however, yet remain, presenting a very picturesque appearance, and serving as mementos of a past era of human labour. When the great saving of fuel in the new engine 440 Tlie Birth of tJie Steam-Enginc. was demonstrated, Watt and his partner demanded, before erecting any fresh ones, that they should be paid as a royalty one-third of such savings; and this, after a struggle on the part of the miners, was at last agreed to ; but it subsequently became a constant source of dispute, and ultimately it was given up for a fixed payment. When the wants of the pumping districts were supplied, orders for the new motive power poured in from all parts of the country. Poor Watt, who had to make the drawings for the new engines, endeavoured to dis- countenance the acceptance of these orders ; he thought that Cornwall was field enough for the firm. Moreover, he feared that steam would not be able to contend, especially in the North, with wind and water power ; but Boulton very wisely combated these ideas. With a far more compre- hensive vision than his partner, he perceived that the new power was to be lord paramount; that calms and drought and frost would be its great ally, and that the powers of Nature would not be able to fight successfully against it. But to apply the new force to the ordinary requirements of the country it had to be converted into a rotative engine. The Cornish pumping-engines, it will be remembered, were not of this class, an up-and-down motion only being required ; but all this had to be altered. The transmutation of the reciprocating to the rotatory motion Watt had planned — it was. Tlie Birth of the Steam-Eitgine. 441 in fact, the simple application of the crank to one end of the beam. This was such an obvious appli- cation of the common lathe crank, or that of the knife-grinder's wheel, that he did not think of taking out a patent for its application to his engine ; but one of his workmen did, and sold it without his knowledge to one Pickard. Watt was greatly irri- tated at this piracy ; as he observed, " it was but taking a knife to cut butter that had cut cheese." But the patent prevented him from using it, and he had to apply his inventive powers to produce the same action by other means. He did indeed invent five different methods of accomplishing it, but he adopted that known as the sun-and-planet motion, the invention of William Murdock, the head man of the firm, and a subsequent partner. The " sun-and-planet motion " is to be seen in the old engine now in the South Kensington Museum. This venerable remnant of antiquity, known as " old Bess," was the first rotatory engine erected by Watt, at Soho, nearly eighty years ago, on the expansive principle, and was the engine which was the great show of those celebrated works towards the latter end of the last century. In the same museum, at the opposite end of the room, is a still more inte- resting relic, being nothing less than one of the old Newcomen engines, fitted with the separate con- denser and air-pump by Watt: it stands a most interesting monument of the great transition of the 442 The Birth of tJie Steam-Engine. old "fire-engine" of the early part of the last century to the Steam-engine of the present time. It was used for pumping water, and its clumsy wooden beam, with its semi-circular ends hung with chains, presents an extraordinary contrast to the model of the pumping-engine close by, fitted with the elegant parallel motion which Watt was prouder of having invented than anything else. The latter days of Watt's life were more calm than were those of his early manhood. Pecuniary- matters no longer troubled him ; indeed, he was accumulating money fast, adding estate after estate to his lands ; and in 1800, the term of his original partnership with Boulton having expired, he retired from the active duties of Soho, and took up his quarters at Heathfield, a charming residence near Birmingham. Poor Watt, although he made the whole material world subject to the power he had invented, was not, however, the master of his own household. His second wife appears to have kept him most completely under control. His ever-active mind could not rest even in his retirement, and he had a workshop fitted up in his house, where he occupied himself in inventing, almost up to the day of his death. Here, in his working dress, he used to amuse himself with his copying-machine — a beautiful instrument, which copied works of art with mathematical accuracy. But the man whose genius could even in his old age accomplish these Tlie Birth of the Steani-Enginc. 443 things, was not permitted by his wife to come into his own drawing-room in his working dress, or in his leathern apron ! He consequently remained here a greater part of his time, and it remains now in just the same condition in which he left it when, in the autumn of 1 8 19, he parted with this life. •M4 THE FLESH-WORM DISEASE. [HE public have been startled lately by the published accounts of a new and terrible disease in Germany, and es- pecially in Saxony, which brings to mind some of the most horrible plagues of Egypt. The disease in question, termed Trichiniasis, caused by the ravages on the human muscle of a minute worm, termed the " Trichina spiralis," coming so close upon the Cattle Disease, did indeed, to the ignorant, appear to justify some of the frightful prophecies of Dr. Gumming; but to the more intelligent, and especially to the medical mind, it came as an old story. Singularly enough, the worm which is now occupying the attention of German anatomists was discovered as long ago as 1835, by Professor Owen. Both Mr. John Hilton, a demonstrator of anatomy at Guy's Hospital, and Mr. Wormald, the demon- strator at St. Bartholomew's, had two years pre- viously observed small white bodies interspersed among the muscles of subjects under dissection ; and that they were of a gritty character was evident The Flesh- Woi'm Disease. 445 from the manner in which they turned the edges of the knives. One of these specimens of affected muscles was, in the year mentioned, given to Pro- fessor Owen by Mr. Paget, then a student, for in- spection. These speckles the distinguished anatomist discovered, under the microscope, to be the capsule of a very fine worm, which was seen coiled up closely within it. From its hair-like * fineness its discoverer derived the term "trichina," and, from the spiral manner in which it was invariably found coiled up within its envelope, he added the word " spiralis." Hence the name by which it is known. An account of this newly-discovered parasite was published by Professor Owen in the " Transactions of the Zoo- logical Society" in 1835, headed, "Description of a Microscopic Entozoon infesting the muscles of the human body." This paper gave a very minute account of the creature, illustrated with drawings, and established his claim to be the discoverer of one of our latest-found inhabitants, which has made such a sensation in the world. The discovery made much noise at the time throughout Europe, and the Professor's paper drew the attention of the anatomists of Europe to the worm. But one or two cases were recorded of the presence of the parasite in the human body, and * From the Greek word, 6pi?, rpix"£ li^"'- 446 The Flesh- Worm Disease. the matter remained in abeyance for some years, until the German professors again drew attention to it, and completed our knowledge of its method of introduction. Professor Luschka, of Tubingen, carried our knowledge of the worm perhaps up to its highest point anatomically, and in the same year the method of transmission of the worm from one animal to another was made out by a series of experiments instituted by Herbst. He gave the flesh of a hedgehog, which he knew to be in- fested with trichinae, to young dogs, and speedily found that .all their voluntary muscles were full of these worms. But, although this important step was made out, little notice was taken of it. His experiments were repeated in Scotland and Eng- land, but the peculiar manner in which the worm got into the muscle was yet undiscovered. Zenker, in i860, was lucky enough to supply this know- ledge. The body of a servant-girl, who had died with many of the symptoms of typhus fever, came under the inspection of the anatomist. He found her voluntary muscles to be full of trichinae; and, upon inquiring into her case, he found that she had assisted in the making of sausages about three weeks before she was taken ill, and that she had eaten some of the raw meat a few days before her illness commenced. The- butcher who had killed The Flesh- Worm Disease. 447 the pig, and several members of the family, had been affected in the same manner as the girl, but had recovered. The sausages and hams were examined, and were found to be full of worms " encapsuled," as it is termed, or surrounded with an envelope ; but, in the girl, the worms were found among the muscles in a free state. From this evidence the manner in which the parasite obtained entrance to the human body was fully made out. Pork — uncooked pork — was the vehicle by means of which the parasite was enabled to enter the human body. But, says the reader, why should pork only be the means of conveying the entozoa to the human body .-■ The reason is, that the pig is the only animal eaten by man that is partially a carnivorous feeder. It is supposed that the pig obtains them from dead rats, which are often infested with these worms, or other garbage. Birds, although carrion feeders, cannot, for some unknown reason, be infested with the worm. In the horse, the calf, and the young and old dog, says Dr. Thudichum, the young trichina are born, but they cannot pierce the intes- tines, and therefore cannot immigrate into the flesh, but they cause a kind of bloody dysentery. Of "course it is just possible that the worm may be conveyed, like the tape-worm, through the medium of impure water. We are not likely to drink this, but it often happens that fruit and 448 The Flesh- Worm Disease. vegetables are watered from impure tanks, into which these creatures may have got. It is certainly an objection to the modern system of watering with liquid manure, that in this way the tape-worm, and possibly the trichina, may find their way on to the vegetables which we eat, and in this manner we may be receiving noxious in- testinal worms into our system. For instance, some people water their strawberries with liquid manure, little thinking of the small serpent that may be hidden in the fruit. It is now known that, after entering the alimentary canal, the parasite finds its breeding-ground, and brings forth immense numbers of young, which immediately begin to make their way through the coats of the intestines and migrate into the muscles. It is a singular fact that these disagreeable adventurers always select the voluntary muscles, or those which are moved at our will. The heart and kidneys, and those parts of the viscera which act independently of the will, are scarcely ever affected. It is, indeed, a matter of dispute how the worms get distributed so generally over the body ; some anatomists asserting that they make their way directly by boring, as the ship-worm bores through a piece of timber ; but Dr. Thudichum, who was appointed in 1864 to investigate the subject by the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, asserts that they enter the circulation, and are in this manner distributed The Flesh- Worm Disease. 449 equally over every part of the body. To use his words : " Arrived in the capillaries (terminal blood- vessels), they penetrate their two-coated walls, sepa- rating the fibres as a man separates the branches of a hedge, when creeping through it, and are now either at once in muscular tissue, their proper feed- ing ground, or get into inhospitable tissues and cavities, and there either perish or escape from them by a renewed effort at locomotion, enter the circulation a second time, and ultimately perish in the lungs, or arrive in some muscle to obtain a late asylum/' This hypothesis certainly seems the most reason- able, as it is in agreement with the known means by which other entozoa migrate. Arrived at the muscular tissues, it seems again questionable whether the worm attacks the muscle only, or whether it is not deposited in the intervals which occur between the bundles of muscles. Leuckhart says they pene- trate the sarcolemma, and eat the muscular fibre itself. Dr. Thudichum says that he has never seen but once the worm in the muscle, but always out- side of it. It is certainly a strange fact, that, in many cases, persons attacked with trichiniasis have not only perfectly recovered from its effects, but have become as strong as ever. It could scarcely have happened that the muscles of these patients had been fed upon by vast colonies of worms, which would have inevitably destroyed them beyond repair. 2 G 4SO The Flesh- Worm Disease. The probability is that the worm finds its way into all the tissues. Between the third and fourth week after immigration, the trichina has become full- grown, and now it begins to prepare its capsule. It becomes fixed to the spot in which it is, solid matter is deposited around it, and, curled up, it lies immovable in its plastic capsule, and dies unless received again into the alimentary canal of another animal, which in this case of course it never does. The presence of these encapsuled trichinae in the muscles may cause irritation, but that speedily sub- sides ; and it is pretty clear that many persons suffer little harm from them whilst thus curled up, as they have been found in the bodies of subjects that have been dissected, and whose previous history gave no evidence of their existence. On the other hand, the malady, when severe, puts on many of the characteristic symptoms of well- known diseases. The fever caused by the presence of the parent worms in the intestines may be, as indeed it often has been, taken for gastric fever. Then, again, when the young worms are immigrating into the muscles, the most excruciating agony seizes the patient : he cannot move a muscle without the utmost pain, and he lies generally upon his back, with his legs a little apart, covered with perspiration. The face and neck become tumid with a dropsical effusion, which gradually extends to the legs and The Flesh-Worm Disease. 451 abdomen. An attack of acute rheumatic fever appears to have seized the individual, but for the want of the heart symptoms. Again, the disease simulates cholera and typhus, and indeed poisoning in many of its symptoms ; but those who have seen a genuine case of trichiniasis cannot be deceived, as the whole symptoms present are consistent with no other disease. In cases of doubt, a piece of the living muscle has been excised from the biceps muscle of the arm ; and this test is almost certain to be conclusive, as the worm is distributed, in severe cases, in profusion through every voluntary muscle of the entire body. Dr. Thudichum, speaking of a child who died of this disease, says in his report to Mr. Simon, " One preparation from the biceps muscle of a child, four and a half years of age, which died on the seventy- ninth day, contained the astounding number of fifty-eight. Such a preparation was estimated to weigh one-fifth of a grain, and therefore every grain of muscle contained on an average one hundred trichinae. Now, assuming the weight of the muscles of an adult to be only forty pounds, and assuming him to be a victim of trichiniasis, and the parasites equally distributed throughout his body, he would contain upwards of twenty-eight millions of these animals." The agony of this plague of worms, attacking the fine fibres of nerves distributed throughout the 452 The Flesh-Worm Disease. frame, can from this estimate be thoroughly under- stood, and the fever and weakness caused by the destruction of fibre, together with the irritation, is accounted for with equal ease. The progress of the disease is pretty much as follows : — During the first stage, which lasts from a week to ten days, there is great intestinal disturbance, caused by the presence of the parent trichinae in the intestines giving rise in severe cases to alarming diarrhoea, as may be expected. The second stage lasts a fortnight or three weeks — seldom longer; during this time the immigration of the young trichinae, hatched in the intestinal passage, is taking place, hence the agony throughout the body, the dropsy in the face, the hurried breath- ing, and the fever: although the drop.sy becomes general, it in no manner depends upon kidney disease, as that organ is never affected in any way. In the fourth week the immigration has entirely ceased, and the worm is beginning to be incapsulated. From this time the patient begins to recover, the appetite improves, the pains are mitigated, and unless complications arise, as in other severe fevers, the patient gradually passes into a state of health. Death may, however, take place at any stage of the disease. At the great outbreak of this disease, which took place at Calbe, in Germany, it was observed to happen on the fifth, eighth, fourteenth. The Flesh-Worm Disease. 453 twenty-first, and forty-second days of the illness. Death generally is brought about by exhaustion: the exhaustive diarrhcea which sometimes occurs, together with the inability to take food, and the terrible agony, easily explains this termination. The difficulty connected with the treatment of this disease is consequent upon the impossibility of knowing what is really the matter in its early stages, when treatment is alone useful. In regular outbreaks of the disease, the physician is led to suspect the evil in the beginning, and then it can be cut short by destroying and expelling the parent worms before they have had time to colonize the intestines with their young. But at the commencement of an out- break, or in isolated cases, the symptoms are too like those of gastric fever to lead to a suspicion of the real nature of the affection. Prevention is far better than cure, and, happily, this can be easily accomplished. As pork is the only means by which the parasite can enter the human frame, we have only to take care that we eat it thoroughly cooked. The Englishman has a very strong prejudice in favour of doing his leg of pork well, however much he may like beef and mutton underdone. The Germans are apt to suffer desperate outbreaks of this disease, because they are fond of smoked sausages, in which no heat is applied to the meat. The severity of the infection depends, indeed, upon 454 The Flesh-Worm Disease. the amount of cooking to which the trichinous meat has been subjected, and the order in which it is afifected is as follows : — raw meat, smoked sausages, cervelat sausages, raw smoked ham, raw smoked sausage, fried sausage, fried meat-balls, brawn, pickled pork, blood sausage, boiled pork. As few people are likely to eat raw pork, there seems little danger to be apprehended from the most dangerous item in the list, but it is well to know that boiled pork is in all cases the most harmless. The power of the worm to resist heat and cold is very remarkable. They have been frozen to five degrees below centigrade, and have been thawed to life again. Ordinary vermifuges are powerless against them — their vitality is as great as that of the wheel-worm, which seems almost indestructible. Let our friends, then, take care never to touch the smallest portion of underdone pork, and beware of German sausages, polonies, and things of the same kind, as they would beware of an assassin. Before the discovery of the new disease, trichiniasis, several epidemics occurred in Germany, which very much puzzled the physicians. In two or three cases it was supposed that the persons suffering had been poisoned in some mys- terious manner, and judicial inquiries were instituted without any result. More generally, however, the outbreaks were ascribed to rheumatic fever or typhus fever. It was observed at the time of their occurrence The Flesh- Worm Disease. 45 5 that the outbreaks were confined to particular families, regiments, or villages. The symptoms, then obscure, are now recognized as those of trichiniasis ; indeed, there seems to be little doubt that they were outbreaks of this dis- order. They all occurred in the spring of the year, the time of pig-sticking in Germany, and the very characteristic swelling of the face, in the absence of any kidney disease, was observed. The mortality arising from this disease is in direct ratio of the severity of the attack, and this depends upon the number of worms which may chance to be introduced into the body. One pig is sufficient to cause an epidemic far and wide ; indeed, many of those which have ravaged Germany within these last three or four years have been traced to one trichinous pig. At the outbreak at Plauen one person died out of thirty attacked. At Calbe, where the epidemic was more severe, seven persons died out of thirty- eight infected ; at Hettstadt, where one trichinous pig infected 158 persons, twenty-eight died. From these facts the formidable nature of the infection may be gathered. If sudden epidemics can be traced to the action of an obscure worm, may we not hope that many of our disorders, now obscure in their origin, and con- sequently unmanageable and incurable, will in time come to light, and be amenable to treatment ? Pos- 4S6 TJie Flesh- Worm Disease. sibly some more subtle instrument even than the microscope will be discovered, and give us the power of scrutinizing diseased conditions, and finding out the agents so stealthily at work in bringing the human machine to misery and premature death. Cox &' IVyman, Printers, Great Queen Street, London, IV. C. WORKS PUBLISHED BY ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY, W. POPiriiAK AND SCIENTIFIC "WORKS. Astronomy, Geology, Palseon- tology. Zoology, &c. Science and Practice of Farm Cultiva- tion , 4 Half-hours with the Microscope .... 7 Mounting Microscopic Objects 7 Professor Ansted's Applications of Geology to Arts and Manufactures 8 Old Bones, a Manual of Palseontologj 8 British Beetles, by W. H. 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Published Annually ^ price 1«, The Royal Guide to London Charities. Showing, in Alphabetical Order, the Name, Date of Foundation, Ad- dress, Object, Annual Income, Number of People benefited, Mode of Appll>:ation to and Chief Officers of every Insutacion in liondon. By Herbert Fry. S6 Koya/ 32mo. cloth, price Is, Hardwicke's Shilling Handy-Book of London. An Easy and Comprehensive Guide to Everything worth Seeing and Hearing. Contents : — Bazaars. — Ball-rooms. — Cathedrals. — Dining-rooms. — Exhibitions. — Mansions of Nobility. — Markets. — Money-order Offices. — Monuments and Statues. ^Museums. — Music-lialls and Concert- rooms. — Out-door Amusements. — Omnibuses. — Palaces. ^ Parks. — Passport Offices. — Picture Galleries' Regulations. — Popular Entertain- ments. — Police-courts. — Prisons. — Railway Stations. — Stramboats. — Theatres. — Telegraph Offices, &c. Demy 8ko., idd pages, price 21s. The Cattle Plague. 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