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Of all the general rules relating to national concerns which can be drawn from the history of human industry-and they are manythe least subject to error is, that the nation which excels in working iron is the most advanced in true civilization. The observation and experience necessary to distinguish its ores from stones of smaller value, and the labour of extracting it, must have retarded its general use much longer than that of gold, silver and copper. It is, however, mentioned in the Pentateuch as employed for the construction of sharp-edged instruments; but that the difficulty of working it was not yet generally overcome, appears from the value set upon it by Achilles, who proposed a ball of iron as a prize at the games instituted in honour of Patroclus. What is to be thought of the admiration bestowed by Herodotus upon a vase of this metal, most curiously inlaid, and presented by Alyattes, king of Lydia, to the Delphic oracle, cannot now be determined, unless the vase itself were forthcoming. But these are mere casual productions, and cannot be compared with the purposes to which iron is applied in modern times. The Greeks might have honoured the departed hero just as well with any other reward to the victors; the Delphic oracle, like modern oracles, might have been satisfied with a vase of gold; the Israelites, to be sure, might have been a little puzzled, without knives or swords, to cut their way into the land of milk and honey:-But were this word, iron, suddenly expunged from the catalogue of modern materials, the total fabric of European civilization would be effaced along with it. There is not a want of the present age, absolute or fictitious; not a gratification, physical or intellectual; not a link in the whole chain of social improvement, to which iron, in some shape or other, directly or indirectly, does not minister, Thus it is that Britain, the greatest iron-mistress in the known world, stands, and long has stood, at the head of civilization.

Although we have been seriously told that a very large proportion of the knives and scissars used in England were of French manufacture; although we know the common-place story of a magnificent steel-hilted sword, sold to the late and too-well known duke of Orleans for an English sword, and afterwards proved by a Parisian maker to be a production of his workshop; yet we do not think that M. Dupin will contest the superiority of England, in every species of hardware, even as far back as the period which he has assigned as the æra of her unskilfulness. The case is so notorious that we do not think it needs to be insisted upon. However, should he not be of our opinion, and should he bring forward facts to prove that we are mistaken, wẹ are ready to retract.

Although all the metals are skilfully worked by English arti

ficers

ficers-yet it is most remarkable that those in which they excel are the most refractory; those which, when dug out of the earth, have the smallest worth, but to which thought and labour give the highest importance; those on which the hand of man, directed by his genius, accumulates the greatest factitious value; that is to say, a value which is nearly null in the savage state, but which goes on increasing in the exact ratio of intellectual civilization. The French, on the contrary, have turned their attention to the metals which have the greatest value in themselves, and to which, when wrought, the workmanship adds the smallest merit. Thus a favourite manufacture with them long has been jewellery, and the fabrication of the precious metals in all their shapes. These are the most luxurious, and the least useful, of the metallurgic arts; they are the least intellectual also, as gold and silver are more easily purified and melted than iron. Necessitous nations have, indeed, fabricated jewellery, but not until more urgent wants had been satisfied, and previous exertions had brought home the wealth which entitles men to indulgence. Some nations too, whose demand for domestic consumption was small, yet fabricated them for the gratification of others. Thus anciently did Tyre and Sidon. Thus Venice and the Netherlands have at different times been celebrated for their gold and silver works; but only when the immediate necessities of those republics had been satisfied; only when other objects, more useful, had been produced both for the home and the foreign market; and the woollen cloths of Bruges were some centuries earlier than the plate and jewellery of the same city. On such conditions luxurious industry is a legitimate, a necessary consequence of the labour which is employed to overcome early difficulties, and the very obstacles which, in the first instance, seem to forbid all indulgence. But what constitutes the particularity of France is, that while she was tributary to England and Flanders for covering, she was chiselling silver, or twisting gold into filagrams; and was gratifying her vanity herself, while she was paying wiser nations for her comforts.

This is enough upon the metallurgic arts. In a wide view of the subject, we may say the English had the superiority in working iron; the French in working gold. In silver let us grant them to be equal; copper, lead, and pewter must be thrown into our scale. Now, until M. Dupin can prove that the consumption of jewellery is more profitable than that of hardware, we cannot admit the alleged superiority of his country; and when he does prove it, we can oppose him by means of the other metals.

An establishment which the French esteem no less than the Hôtel Royal des Gobelins, is the porcelain manufactory at

Sèvres.

Sèvres. We have long been contented with commoner, but more useful earthenware. While their gilding and painting have been admired in palaces, our plain white plates and dishes have had the greater honour of bringing cleanliness and comfort into cottages under every degree of latitude. All the names of which they boast in their royal ovens could not compose one so great, so beneficent, as that of Wedgewood.

A substance which has very much contributed to the luxury, the comfort and the knowledge of the moderns, is glass; the influence of which upon social life is now most extensive. The art of making this substance was known in very ancient times, though perhaps not quite so remotely as many writers assert. It is certain that the Romans possessed it in the reign of Tiberius. The remains of Herculaneum show it applied to many uses; but the ancients were far from being acquainted either with its most agreeable or its most useful purposes. In the present condition of the world glass is a substance which embraces the widest range of application, from the extremes of luxurious to those of necessary and of scientific industry. It may be questioned whether iron, the most useful of all the metals, that which the most completely belongs to our civilization, properly so called, has a larger domain; for if, on the one hand, it is found in every art that is useful, in every domestic, in every great employment, its presence is much more circumscribed on the side of luxury. A fair criterion, then, of the social condition of nations, and of their relative prosperity, may be found in the uses to which they apply this substance. Savages delight in wearing beads of glass as an ornament in dress; more refined luxury fashions it into beautiful furniture; intellectual civilization directs it to the firmament.

According to Bede, artificers in glass came into England in the year 674; according to others in 726. But glass windows were a rarity and a mark of great magnificence until 1180, at which time they were introduced from France, she herself having received the boon from Italy. Venice was, for a long time, the sole proprietor of this art; and the village of Murano furnished Europe with the most beautiful mirrors. In 1557, glass was manufactured at Crutched Friars and in the Savoy-house. 1635 it was much improved, and coal was used instead of wood to fuse it. But the greatest progress was not made till 1673, when the duke of Buckingham encouraged it, and engaged some Venetian artists to settle at Lambeth.

Hitherto mirrors, which may be reckoned as the most luxurious production of the glass-house, were made by blowing nearly in the same manner as those of inferior quality are still manufactured; but an improvement, which gave a decided superiority over all

preceding

preceding processes, was invented by the French about the year 1688.

The manufacture of glass had long been practised by that nation. The Venetian modes of fabrication were introduced during the reign of Henry II. about the same time as in England; and Henry IV. gave them fresh vigour by repeated encouragement; Richelieu and Colbert promoted them by every means in their power; but, about the year 1688, Abraham Thevert conceived and executed the project of casting glass, like metal, into plates of almost any dimensions. The experiment was made in Paris in the presence of skilful witnesses, when he absolutely melted sufficient matter, in one furnace, to cover a surface eighty inches long and fifty broad, and of a suitable thickness. When his success was acknowledged, he received the royal sanction, and a manufactory was established at St. Gobin, in Picardy, where plates of no less dimensions than sixty inches by forty were allowed to be made, as smaller sizes would have interfered with the rights of other establishments. From that period the art of casting mirrors has flourished in France; and may be considered as a branch of industry in which that country stands the most prominent.

This example remained unfollowed by England for almost a century; for it was not till 1773 that a company was incorporated there for the same purpose. If mirrors were an object of necessity, or even of comfort, it is probable, not only that so great a lapse of time would not have intervened, but even that England would have been the earliest to succeed. But she had other wants, more imperious than this; and, while the inventive powers of France were turned in the direction of luxury, she was meditating upon a more noble application of the same material.

The use of flint glass in optics and astronomy, in geometry and navigation, appeared to the English a much more worthy object than the decoration of palaces, or the fabrication of mirrors for self-admiration. Fifteen years before the establishment in Lancashire, 1773, an English artist, who, like many other English artists, was a man of genius and learning, resolved the great problem despaired of by Newton, of refracting the solar rays without decomposing them. The advantage which optics, with every art and science depending on distinct vision, derived from the discovery of Dollond, is incalculable; and, before the epocha of our acknowledged superiority, brought back a better return to England than did the plate-glass manufacture to France. The direct amount of the general consumption, at home and abroad, might perhaps have been greater in French looking-glasses than in British achromatic telescopes. But what an influence had not the

latter

latter upon our commercial, upon our nautical, upon our intellectual condition; upon the science which guides our merchants and our heroes through the ocean, and which, as it were, brings down the heavenly bodies into the astronomer's observatory? Surely, even supposing the cash received at the counting-house of the cast plate-glass manufactory of St. Gobin to have far exceeded that produced by the sale of English telescopes, M. Dupin would not found, upon such a fact, any part of the claim which he advances in favour of the past superiority of France. Admitting that the images of the French princes and courtiers of the ages of Lewis XIV. and XV. were more gracefully reflected by a well-polished, well-foiled cast mirror, than those of English tories in the striated specula, blown and whirled into shape according to the Venetian process, we see little disgrace to England in that. But what will M. Dupin think-if he thinks fairlywhen we remind him that, during the latter portion of our alleged period of inferiority, every one of his countrymen, who looked at our fleets, our shores, our armies, during the war which was concluded by the peace of 1763, and long afterwards, who surveyed the heavens or the earth-nay, who went to the opera-had his eye fixed in a spy-glass on which was engraved the then uncounterfeited name of Dollond.*

We cannot help remarking here the characteristic fact that, while magnificent mirrors were fabricated for luxury, the glasshouses of France, which furnished nothing to science, contributed less to comfort than those of England. The drinking-glasses which were served upon the tables of their rich, fifty years ago, would not, even then, have been admitted into an English hovel; and were worthy companions of the knives which figured on the same board.

Having found in this manufacture but little to support the assertion of M. Dupin, we shall turn to another trade connected with science; and inquire into the condition of chronometry during the period to which he alludes.

Various and many are the ages and persons that claim the merit of having constructed the first machine which measured time by means of gravitating bodies as the moving and regulating

*M. Dupin seems to have been much irritated by some strictures published in a contemporary journal, upon the Comparative skill and industry of England and France,' (Edin. Rev. No. LXIV.) and among a variety of errors points out the mispelling of Mr. Dollond's name: L'auteur ne sait pas même exactement le nom du plus célèbre opticien de l'Angleterre, qu'il appelle toujours Dolland.' It would be rather extraordinary if neither the writer of that article nor the editor of the Edinburgh Review should have known how to spell a name so celebrated, and which daily stands before their eyes in so many shapes. But it never occurred to M. Dupin that this might be a fanlt of printing.

powers.

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