﻿120 PICTORIAL MISCELLANY. 



A Gold Watch. 



I HAVE now in my hand a gold watch, which combines embellish- 

 ment and utility in happy proportion, and is usually considered a 

 very valuable appendage to a gentleman. Its hands, face, chain and 

 case, are of chased and burnished gold. Its gold seals sparkle into 

 the ruby, the topaz, the sapphire, the emerald. I open it, and find 

 that the works, without which this elegantly dressed case would be a 

 mere shell these hands motionless, and these figures without mean- 

 ing are made of brass. I investigate further, and ask what is the 

 spring, by which all these works are put in motion, made of? I am 

 told that it is made of steel I ask, what is steel? The reply is, 

 that it is iron which has undergone a chemical process. So, then, I 

 find that the main-spring, without which the watch would be motion- 

 less, and its hands, figures, and embellishments but toys, is not of 

 gold that would not do but of iron. Iron is, therefore, the only 

 precious metal; and this gold watch is an apt emblem of society. Its 

 hands and figures, which tell the hours, resemble the master spirits of 

 the age, to whose movement every eye is occasionally directed. Its 

 useless but sparkling seals, sapphires, rubies, topazes, and embellish- 

 ments, the aristocracy. Its works of brass, the middle classes, by 

 the increasing intelligence and power of which, the master spirits of 

 the age are moved ; and its iron main-spring, shut up in a box, but 

 never thought of except when it is disordered, broken, or wants wind- 

 ing up, symbolizes the laboring classes, which are ignorantly or su- 

 perciliously called the lower classes, which, like the main-spring, are 

 wound up by the payment of wages ; which classes are shut up in 

 obscurity ; and though constantly at work, and absolutely necessary 

 to the movements of society, as the main-spring is to the gold watch, 

 are never thought of, except when they require their wages, or are 

 in some want or disorder of some kind or other. Edward Everett. 



Thistle-Down. 



SITTING, a short time since, by my window, as the long shadows 

 across the landscape were losing themselves in the dim approaching 



