RELATION TO COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. 319 



mounted their huge furnaces on axles, and make them revolve like barrel- 

 churns roasting on spits, so as thoroughly to intermingle all the ingre- 

 dients which, by their mutual action, produce the alkali. 



This is no solitary case. Some years ago they were trying in a 

 London court of law, at the instance of the excise'the question : " What 

 is paper V This is one of those subtle legal problems which — like that 

 other, "What is metal?" argued between a road mender, a glass blower, 

 and an iron founder, each of whom calls the material with which he deals 

 metal — will multiply on our hands in virtue of the very progression of 

 the arts which I am considering. Yet waiving the question, " What is 

 paper?" the theory of paper-making is simpler than that of almost any 

 other of the industrial arts, but how is it with its practice? For years I 

 have at short intervals availed myself of the privilege of visiting the 

 admirable paper-mills in our neighbourhood. At, every visit I find some 

 great change ; since I saw several of them a few months ago, important 

 alterations have been made, and are still making. When our venerable 

 townsman, Mr. Alexander Cowan began paper-making, it was all made 

 by hand, by a process so slow, that they can do now in hours what took 

 weeks, sometimes months, before. Year after year everything has been 

 altered. On the chemical side — new bleaching agents, new correctors of 

 the evils of over bleaching, new sizes and ways of making sizes, new 

 colouring matters, new modes of glazing. On the mechanical side — 

 new machines for rag-cutting, washing, boiling, paper-weaving, sizing, 

 drying, cutting, folding, stamping. One half the arrangements within 

 my own remembrance are totally new, and above the horizon, newer and 

 newest devices arise on every side. 



If it is so with a comparatively simple art, how must it be with the 

 more complex ones. The hot blast is but one accompaniment and index 

 of the improved manufacture of iron. The Sydenham Palace is but one 

 mark of the improvements in glass-making. Coal gas is but one step in 

 the improved use of fuel. The whole machinery of sugar-making is as 

 novel as it is economical. Bread can be baked on an hour's notice by iron 

 hands as cleanly as expeditious. Steam-engines, which almost seem intel- 

 ligent, card, dye, and weave, whatever textile raw material you give them 

 and by and by cut it and sew it, if required. 



Had we only, accordingly, the old industrial arts, thus for ever 

 renewing themselves, the necessity tor keeping pace with them would be 

 argument enough for an industrial museum, where their progress could 

 be watched and studied by all. But besides those elder sons and servants 

 of mercantile enterprise — who, like the eagle, seem to grow younger as 

 they grow older — think of the infant arts which have been born in our 

 own day, and are younger than most of us. Each of them, a Hercules 

 in his cradle, has already strangled serpents, and has more than twelve 

 labours before him. Railway-making, electro-metallurgy, electro-tele- 

 graphy, and photography, may here represent those Titanic babes, who, 

 already with mature faces, are bidding all men look to the new time-ball 



