IRON AND STEEL. 
79 
earth’s foundations/’ so fine a film as that which man has spun 
in the hair-springs that mark the tread of time ? or wove from 
such coarse materials so delicate a tissue, as those iron orna- 
ments which hang around the neck of beauty? “ Iron is taken 
out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.” The 
promethean power which made man a metallurgist, advanced 
h im as an intellectual creature, and every step we take in sub- 
duing nature, according to God’s command, elevates the whole 
human race another degree above the Earthiness of this 
existence. 
