318 INDUSTRIAL MUSEUMS IN THEIR 



tient of change ; nor, on the other hand, must we overlook the influence 

 ot novelty and curiosity in exciting inventive ingenuity. The great 

 improvers of the arts are either their devoted followers or total. 

 strangers to them ; the indifferent general public prove, when they 

 offer advice, only ignorant intermeddlers. The Huntingdon brewer, 

 called Oliver Cromwell, could teach a military trick or two to Prince 

 Rupert and his cavaiiers. The Newcastle collier, George Stephenson, 

 was so wonderful at engineering, that they would not make him a civil 

 engineer. The gardener, John Paxton, because he knew nothing of 

 architecture, became Sir John as the architect of the Crystal Palace. I 

 am not certain, indeed, that the industrial arts have not been as much 

 advanced by strangers as by acquaintances. 



At all events, one of the chief, and I confess unexpected, obstacles I 

 encountered in seeking to fill the industrial museum with examples of 

 art, is the too humble estimate which men form of their own callings. I 

 cannot persuade a shoemaker that shoes are of interest to any but shoe- 

 makers and the barefooted public, although he look? with eager curiosity 

 at my collection of hats in all their stages. I tried in vain to induce a 

 very intelligent glassmaker to send me certain specimens of glass, till I 

 showed him a full series of illustrations of brush-making. His eyes 

 brightened with interest, and he admired the ingenious and unsuspected 

 devices which an art strange to him revealed. Well, said I, be sure the 

 brush-maker will be as much interested in your glass as you are in his 

 brushes, so send me what I ask. I cannot, accordingly, help inferring 

 that a stranger's curiosity will often make up for his defective experience, 

 and that the industrial museum would secure his services for all the arts 

 it represented. 



But whether such services be rendered by experts or by novices, 

 this at least is most certain, that not one of the great industrial arts can 

 stand still. In proportion as they are flourishing, every day witnesses 

 old processes altered and new ones introduced. 



When the duty upon common salt was removed, and our practical 

 chemists began to make soda from it, they threw into the air all the 

 muriatic acid evolved from the salt. Their neighbours complained of 

 the acid fumes, and, at immense expense, the chemists built gigantic 

 chimneys to send the vapours nearer the stars. By and by the price of 

 sulphur, with which they cannot dispense, rose, and they changed the 

 construction of their furnaces so as to burn iron pyrites in them. Then 

 the price of soda fell, and they blew up or dispensed with their tall 

 chimneys, u*ing instead great condensers, and converting all the ob- 

 noxious vapours into chloride of lime, or bleaching powder. Then the 

 value of bleaching-powder altered, and they took to producing the chlo- 

 rine which it contains in a new way ; afterwards the oxide of manganese, 

 which is needed for that manufacture, grew scarce, and a most ingenious 

 method of recovering it and using it again was devised, and is in practice. 

 Lastly, not satisfied with the quality of the soda they made, they had 



