of copper and brass. "Put on the house!" | the path by the water's edge. A man is says Mr. Ashbee, in the calm voice always coming down the river with a small covered used here, and nodding at the same time to barge, carrying powder from one house to the head corning-man. A rumbling sound is another. We remark that boating must be heard the wheels begin to turn-the black one of the safest positions, not only as unconsieves bestir themselves, moving from side to ducive to explosion, but even in case of its side; the wheels turn faster-the sieves occurring elsewhere. Mr. Ashbee coincides shake and shuffle faster. We trust there is in this opinion, although, he adds, that someno mistake. They all get faster still. We time ago, a man coming down the river in a do not wish them to put themselves to any boat-just as that one is now doing-had his inconvenience on our account. The full speed right arm blown off. We see that, in truth, is laid on! The wheels whirl and buzz-iron no position is safe One may be "blown off" teeth play into brass teeth-copper winks at anywhere, at any moment. Thus pleasantly iron-the black sieves shake their infernal conversing as we walk, we arrive at the sides into fury-the whole machine seems bent "Glazing House." upon its own destruction-the destruction of us all! Now-one small spark-and in an instant the whole of this house, with all in it, would be instantly swept away! Nobody seems to think of this. And see!-how the gunpowder rushes from side to side of the sieves, and pours down from one stage to the other. We feel sure that all this must be much faster than usual. We do not wish it. Why should pride prevent our requesting that this horror should cease? We hear, also, an extraordinary noise behind us. Turning hastily round, we see the previously immoveable black frame-work for the dead whirling round and round in the air with frightful rapidity, while two men with wooden shovels are shovelling up showers of gunpowder, as if to smother and suffocate its madness. Nothing but shame-nothing but shame and an anguish of self-command, prevents our instantly darting out of the house-across the platform -and headlong into the river!

The process of glazing consists in mixing black-lead with gunpowder in large grains, and glazing or giving it a fine glossy texture. For this purpose four barrels containing the grains are ranged on an axle. They are made to revolve during four hours, to render them smooth; black-lead is then added, and they revolve four hours more. There is iron in this machinery; but it works upon brass or copper wheels, so that friction generates heat, but not fire. The process continues from eight to twenty-four hours, according to the fineness of polish required; and the revolution of the barrels sometimes causes the heat of the gunpowder within to rise to one hundred and twenty degrees-even to charring the wood of the interior of the barrels by the heat and friction. We enquire what degree of heat they may be in at the present moment? It is rather high, we learn; and the headglazier politely informs us that we may put our hand and arm into the barrels and feel What a house-what a workshop! It is the heat. He opens it at the top for the quiet again. We have not sprung into the purpose. We take his word for it. However, river. But had we been alone here, under as he inserts one hand and arm by way of such circumstances for the first time, we example, we feel in some sort called upon, should have had no subsequent respect for for the honour of "Household Words," to our own instincts and promptitude of action do the same. It is extremely hot, and a most if we had done anything else. As it was, the agreeable sensation. The faces of the men thing is a sensation for life. We find that the here, being all black from the powder, and whirling frame-work also contains sieves- shining with the addition of the black lead, that the invisible moving power is by a water- have the appearance of grim masks of demons wheel under the flooring, which acts by a in a pantomime, or rather of real demons in crank. But we are very much obliged already a mine. Their eyes look out upon us with a -we have had enough of "corning." strange intelligence. They know the figure So do we. This, added to

We take our departure over the platform they present. -have our over-shoes taken off-and finding their subdued voice, and whispering, and that there is something more to see, we rally mute gesticulation, and noiseless moving and and recover our breath, and are again on creeping about, renders the scene quite

unique; and a little of it goes a great the size of the sieve. The machine is put in way.

motion; spins round; and in doing so, each Our time being now short-our hours, in fact, of the round loose pieces of lapis lazuli being "numbered,”— "-we move quickly on to describe a whirling circle in the sieve, and the next house, some hundred yards distant. thus reduce the rough powder to grains, by It is the "Stoving-house." We approach the rubbing it through the sieves. The madoor. Mr. Ashbee is so good as to say there chinery in action does not inspire us with any is no need for us to enter, as the process may such dismay and apprehension as the first be seen from the door-way. We are per-corning demon. Perhaps our nerves have by mitted to stand upon the little platform out- this time got more seasoned; but it is quite side, in our boots, dispensing with the over- bad enough in the present case for a mere shoes. This house is heated by pipes. The stranger; and we are heartily, thoroughly, powder is spread upon numerous wooden undisguisedly, and jovially glad to get out of trays, and slid into shelves on stands, or racks. the place. The heat is raised to one hundred and twentyfive degrees. We salute the head stove-man, and depart. But turning round to give a “longing, lingering look behind," we see a large mop protruded from the door-way. Its round head seems to inspect the place where we stood in our boots on the platform. It evidently discovers a few grains of gravel or grit, and descends upon them immediately, to expurgate the evil communication which may corrupt the good manners of the house. A great watering-pot is next advanced, and then a stern head-not unlike an old medallion we have seen of Diogenes-looks round the doorpost after us.

The furnace, with its tall chimney, by means of which the stove-pipes of the house we have just visited, are heated, is at a considerable distance, the pipes being carried under-ground to the house.

We next go to look at the "Packing-house," where the powder is placed in barrels, bags, tin cases, paper cases, canisters, &c. On entering this place, a man runs swiftly before each of us, laying down a mat for each foot to step upon as we advance, thus leaving rows of mats in our wake, over which we are required to pass on returning. We considered it a mark of great attention-a kind of Oriental compliment.

The last of our visits is to a "Charge House." There are several of these, where the powder is kept in store. We approach it by a path through a plantation It lies deep among the trees-a most lonely, dismal sarcophagus. It is roofed with water-that is, the roof is composed of water-tanks, which are filled by the rain; and in dry weather they are filled by means of a pump arranged for that purpose. The platform at the entrance is of water-that is to say, it is a broad wooden trough two inches deep, full of water, through which we are required to walk. We do so, and with far more satisfaction than some things we have done here to-day. We enter the house alone; the others waiting outside. All silent and dusky as an Egyptian tomb. The tubs of powder, dimly seen in the uncertain light, are ranged along the walls, like mummies-all giving the impression of a secret iife within. But a secret life, how different! "Ah! there's the rub." We retire with a mental obeisance, and a respectful air-the influence remaining with us, so that we bow slightly on rejoining our friends outside, who bow in return, looking from us to the open door-way of the "house!"

With thoughtful brows, and not in any very high state of hilarity, after the duties of the day-not to speak of being wet through to the skin, for the second time-we move through the fir groves on our way back. We notice a strange appearance in many trees, some of which are curiously distorted, others with their heads cut off; and, in some places, there are large and upright gaps in a plantation. Mr. Ashbee, after deliberating inwardly a little while, informs us that a very dreadful

There is another "Corning House " besides the horrible one we have previously described. This is upon the old principle, and consists of a machine very much like a roundabout at a fair; only, that in place of the wooden horses and cars, there are sieves, arranged so as to cover the whole circle. In each of these sieves, gunpowder in the rough is placed, and upon this is laid loosely a round piece of accident happened here last year. stone-lapis lazuli-about one-fourth part of there an explosion?" we inquire. He says

"Was

there was.

"And a serious one?""Yes.", down the river in a boat was mutilated. "Any lives lost?"-"Yes."" Two or Some men who were missing, were never three?""More than that."-"Five or six?" found-blown all to nothing. The place He says more than that. He gradually drops where some of the "houses" had stood, did into the narrative, with a subdued tone of not retain so much as a piece of timber, or a voice. There was an explosion last year. brick. All had been swept away, leaving Six different houses blew up. It began with nothing but the torn-up ground, a little a Separating House," "-a place for sizing, rubbish, and a black hash of bits of stick, to or sorting, the different grains through sieves. show the place where they had been erected. Then the explosion went to a Granulating We turn our eyes once more towards the House," one hundred yards off. How it was immense gaps in the fir groves, gaps which carried such distances, except by a general here and there amount to wide intervals, in combustion of the air, he cannot imagine. which all the trees are reduced to about half Thence, it went to a "Press House," where their height, having been cut away near the the powder lies in hard cakes. Thence, it middle. Some trees, near at hand, we observe went, in two ways,-on one side to a "Com- to have been flayed of their bark all down position Mixing House," and, on the other, to one side; others have strips of bark hanging a "Glazing House;" and thence to another dry and black. Several trees are strangely "Granulating House." Each of these distorted, and the entire trunk of one large buildings was fully one hundred yards from another: each was intercepted by plantations of firs and forest trees as a protection; and the whole took place within forty seconds. There was no tracing how it had occurred.

This, then, accounts for the different gapssome of them extending fifty or sixty yardsin the plantations and groves? Mr. Ashbee nods a grave assent. He adds, that one large tree was torn up by the roots, and its trunk was found deposited at such a distance, that they never could really ascertain where it came from. It was just found lying there. An iron water-wheel, of thirty feet in circumference, belonging to one of the mills, was blown to a distance of fifty yards through the air, cutting through the heads of all the trees in its way, and finally lodging between the upper boughs of a large tree, where it stuck fast, like a boy's kite. The poor fellows who were killed -(our informant here drops his voice to a whisper, and speaks in short detached fragments; there is nobody near us, but he feels as a man should in speaking of such things) -the poor fellows who were killed were horribly mutilated-more than mutilated, some of them—their different members, distributed hither and thither, could not be buried with their proper owners, to any certainty. One man escaped out of a house, before it blew up, in time to run at least forty yards. He was seen running, when suddenly he fell. But when he was picked up, he was found to be quite dead. The concussion of the air had killed him. One man coming

fir has been literally twisted like a corkscrew, from top to bottom, requiring an amount of force scarcely to be estimated by any known means of mechanical power. Amidst all this quietness, how dreadful a visitation! It is visible on all sides, and fills the scene with a solemn melancholy weight.

We

The

But we will linger here no longer. take a parting glance around, at the plantations of firs, some of them prematurely old, and shaking their heads, while the air wafts by, as though conscious of their defeated youth, and all its once-bright hopes. dead leaves lie thick beneath, in various sombre colours of decay, and through the thin bare woods we see the grey light fading into the advancing evening. Here, where the voice of man is never heard, we pause, to listen to the sound of rustling boughs, and the sullen rush and murmur of water-wheels and mill-streams; and, over all, the song of a thrush, even while uttering blithe notes, gives a touching sadness to this isolated scene of human labours-labours, the end of which, is a destruction of numbers of our species, which may, or may not, be necessary to the progress of civilisation, and the liberty of mankind.

[Household Words.

The storms of adversity are wholesome; though, like snowstorms, their drift is not always seen.

It is a heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

"Spirits at the same time are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other conductor than water; an experiment which we have some time since performed, to the amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for dinner by the electrical shock; and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrical bottle; What wonderful children there are in this when the health of all the famous electricians world to be sure! Look at that American in England, Holland, France, and Germany boy, with his kite on his shoulder, walking in are to be drunk in electrified bumpers, under a field near Philadelphia. He is going to have the discharge of guns from the electrical bata fly, and it is famous weather for the sport, tery."

We now turn to a group of capital little | stones, no leaning from the perpendicular fellows, who did something more than fly their frightens Steeple Jack. He is as bold as his kite. These were English skippers, promoted namesake, Jack the Giant Killer, and does as somehow to the command of vessels before wonderful things. At Dunfermline, not long they had arrived at years of discretion; and, ago, when the top of the spire was in so crazy chancing to meet at the port of Alexandria, in a state that the people in the street gave it a Egypt, they took it into their heads-those wide berth as they passed, he swung himself naughty boys-that they would drink a bowl up without hesitation, and set everything to of punch on the top of Pompey's Pillar. This rights. At the moment we write, his cord is pillar had often served them for a signal at seen stretched from the tall, slim, and elegant sea. It was composed of red granite, beauti- spire of the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, fully polished, and, standing one hundred and which is to receive through his agency a fourteen feet high, overtopped the town. But lightning-conductor; and Jack only waits the how to get up? They sent for a kite, to be subsidence of a gale of wind, to glide up that sure; and the men, women, and children of Alexandria, wondering what they were going to do with it, followed the toy in crowds. The kite was flown over the pillar, and with such nicety, that when it fell on the other side, the string lodged upon the beautiful Corinthian capital. By this means they were able to draw over the pillar a two-inch rope, by which one of the youngsters "swarmed” to the top. The rope was now in a very little time converted into a sort of rude shroud, and the rest of the party followed, and actually drank their punch on a spot which, seen from the surface of the earth, did not appear to be capable of holding more than one man.

filmy rope like a spider. He is altogether a strange boy, Steeple Jack. Nobody knows where he roosts upon the earth, if he roosts anywhere at all. The last time there was occasion for his services, this advertisement appeared in the Scotsman: " Steeple Jack is wanted at such a place immediately," and immediately Steeple Jack became visible.

In 1827 the child's toy was put to a very remarkable use by Master George Pocock. This clever little fellow observed that his kite sometimes gave him a very strong pull, and it occurred to him that, if made large enough, it might be able to pull something else. In fact, he at length yoked a pair of large kites to a carriage, and travelled in it from Bristol to London, distancing, in grand style, every other conveyance on the road. A twelve-foot kite, it appears, in a moderate breeze, has a oneman power of draught, and when the wind is brisker, a force equal to two hundred pounds. The force in a rather high wind, is as the squares of the lengths; and two kites of fifteen and twelve feet respectively, fastened one above the other, will draw a carriage and four or five passengers at the rate of twenty miles an hour. But George's invention went be

By means of this exploit it was ascertained that a statue had once stood upon the column; and a statue of colossal dimensions it must have been, to be properly seen at such a height. But for the rest-if we except the carving of sundry initials upon the top-the result was only the knocking down of one of the volutes of the capital-for boys are always doing mischief—and this was carried to England by one of the skippers, in order to execute the commission of a lady, who, with the true iconoclasm of her country, had asked him to be so kind as to bring her a piece of Pom-yond the simple idea. He had an extra line, pey's Pillar.

which enabled him to vary the angle of the Little fellows, especially of the class of surface of his kites with the horizon, so as to bricklayers, are no great readers, otherwise make his ærial horses go fast or slow as he we might conceive that the feat of the skipper- chose, and side lines to vary the direction of boys had conveyed some inspiration to Steeple the force, till it came almost to right angles Jack. Who is Steeple Jack? asks some inno- with the direction of the wind. His kites cent reader at the Antipodes. He is a little were made of varnished linen, and might be spare creature, who flies his kite over steeples folded up into small compass. The same prinwhen there is anything to do to them, and, ciple was successfully applied by a nautical lodging a cord on the apex, contrives by its lad of the name of Dansey to the purpose of means to reach the top without the trouble of saving vessels in a gale of wind on "the dread scaffolding. No fragility, no displacement of lee-shore." His kite was of light canvas.