A 'PRACTICAL* BEGINNING. 17 



to think that I should never have calculated on this ! 

 I had seeii the commander of a noble steamer with 

 one parenthetical point of his forefinger (caught in 

 an instant by the helmsman) veer round a ship of a 

 thousand tons burthen ; I had seen the practical as- 

 tronomer, with an infinitesimal touch of the directing 

 screw of the telescope, bend his searching gaze millions 

 of miles away from its first position ; I had seen the 

 mill-owner, with half a nod to his foreman, stop in an 

 instant the hurly-burly of a thousand wheels while he 

 explained to me, in comparative quiet, some little mat- 

 ter of new invention in the carding of the rough wool, 

 or the rounding and hardening of the finished Twist. 

 I had seen enough of the empire of Mind over Matter 

 in many forms and shapes, by sea and land, to make 

 me the devoutest of believers in modern miracle. 

 Under the quiet seductive brightness of the midnight 

 lamp, I had revelled in the mysteries of Number and 

 of Form ; and in the working realities of daylight I 

 had seen and stood witness to the application of those 

 apparent mysteries to the most beautifully simple pro- 

 cesses in the production of ordinary and universal 

 articles of human want. It had furnished me no new 

 or difficult gratification to level and calculate to an 

 inch, the amount of Fall to be obtained upon a field, 



c 



