336 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



erroneous judgment, however, if we supposed that this was 

 the only result of the ingenuity which they displayed. The 

 passion for automatic exhibitions which characterised the 

 eighteenth century gave rise to the most ingenious mechani- 

 cal devices, and introduced among the higher orders of 

 artists habits of nice and accurate execution in the formation 

 of the most delicate pieces of machinery. The same combi- 

 nation of the mechanical powers which made the spider 

 crawl, or which waved the tiny rod of the magician, con- 

 tributed in future years to purposes of higher import. 

 Those wheels and pinions, which almost eluded our senses 

 by their minuteness, reappeared in the stupendous 

 mechanism of our spinning-machines and our steam- 

 engines. The elements of the tumbling puppet were 

 revived in the chronometer, which now conducts our navy 

 through the ocean; and the shapeless wheel which 

 directed the hand of the drawing automaton has served in 

 the present age to guide the movements of the tambouring 

 engine. Those mechanical wonders which in one century 

 enriched only the conjurer who used them, contributed in 

 another to augment the wealth of the nation ; and those 

 automatic toys which once amused the vulgar, are now 

 employed in extending the power and promoting the 

 civilization of our species. In whatever way, indeed, the 

 power of genius may invent or combine, and to whatever 

 low or even ludicrous purposes that invention or combina- 

 tion may be originally applied, society receives a gift 

 which it can never lose ; and though the value of the 

 seed may not be at once recognized, and though it may lie 

 long unproductive in the ungenial till of human knowledge, 

 it will some time or other evolve its germ, and yield to 

 mankind its natural and abundant harvest. 



Did the limits of so popular a volume as this ought to 

 be permit it, I should have proceeded to give a general 

 description of some of these extraordinary pieces of 



