THOMAS ASSHETON SMITH. 175 



dence, a speech, a budget, or a despatch. In another 

 cell, a young woman, with a protuberant cushion on her 

 lap, covered by an intricate pattern, marked by pins with 

 heads of various colours, is as indefatigably labouring for 

 the welfare of her country by twirling, twisting, and 

 twiddling innumerable bobbins of fine thread into Honiton 

 lace. In other cells, workpeople are converting broad- 

 cloth into clothes, leather into shoes, horse-hair into wigs, 

 medicine into pills, lead into bullets, brass and tin into 

 cannon, iron into rifles, alkali and grease into soap. 

 Within what is called a " scrap-mill," by the power of 

 steam, controlled by a single man, broken bolts, bars, 

 nuts, nails, screw-pins, &c., are made to revolve, until by 

 rumbling, tumbling, rubbing, scrubbing, bruising, beating, 

 hustling, and jostling each other, all are turned out clean 

 and bright, fit to be welded together for any purpose that 

 may be required. 



At Eton, by a similar process, about 600 boys of 

 all sizes and shapes — red-haired, white-haired, black- 

 haired ; long-legged, short-legged, bandy-legged ; splay- 

 footed, pigeon-toed; proud, humble, noisy, silent, good- 

 humoured, spiteful, brave, timid, pale-faced, sallow-faced, 

 freckled and rosy-cheeked, weak and strong, clever and 

 stupid, pliable and pigheaded — yet all controlled by that 

 unwritten, immutable, imperishable code of honour which, 

 like a halo, has always illuminated their play-ground and 



