To those interested in the mechanical sciences, and their application to
manufactures and the arts, England offers larger scope of observation
than any other country in the world. Throughout the vast establishments
of our cotton, woollen, linen, silk, and hardware manufactures, there
is even less to create astonishment in the multitude and variety of
the products, than in the exquisite perfection of the machinery
employed--machinery, such in kind, that it seems almost to usurp the
functions of human intelligence. No one can conceive its completeness,
who has not witnessed the workings of the power-loom, or seen the
mechanism by which the brute power of steam is made to effect the most
minute and delicate processes of tambouring. Nor can any one adequately
comprehend the mighty agency of the steam-engine, who has not viewed the
machinery of some of our mining districts, where it is employed on a
scale of magnitude and power unequalled elsewhere. In Cornwall,[5]
especially, steam-engines may be seen working with a thousand horse
power, and capable (according to a usual mode of estimating their
perfection as machinery) of raising nearly 50,000,000 pounds of water
through the space of a foot, by the combustion of a single bushel of
coals. No Englishman, especially if destined to public life, can fitly
be ignorant of these great works and operations of art which are going
on around him; and if time can be afforded in general education for
Paris, Rome, and Florence, time is also fairly due to Glasgow,
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Sheffield.--_Q. Rev._
[5] It is a remarkable proof of the amount of improvement effected
in some of the Cornish steam engines, that the result obtained
from a given quantity of coal, estimated in the manner alluded
to above, is nearly three times as great now as it was twenty
years ago. Nor will the spectator find more cause for
astonishment in the magnitude of these engines, than in the
order, or even beauty, of every minute part pertaining to them.
The furniture of a drawing-room is not more scrupulously
arranged, or preserved in a state of higher polish, than are
those huge representatives of human power.
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