seen. Enormous blocks of coal, great masses
of stone, and timber, and marble, and mineral
and vegetable substances.

Consider the materials employed at the
great Teacup Works of Kiang-tiht-Chin (or
Tight-Chin) the "bedaubing powder, ready
mixed," and the "bedaubing material;"—pith
of stick, to make rice-paper; medicine-roots,
hemp-seed, vegetable paints, varnishes, dyes,
raw silk, oils, white and yellow arsenic,
saffron, camphor, green tea dyes, &c.
Consider the greatness of the English results,
and the extraordinary littleness of the
Chinese. Go from the silk-weaving and
cotton-spinning of us outer barbarians, to the
laboriously-carved ivory balls of the flowery
Empire, ball within ball and circle within
circle, which have made no advance and been
of no earthly use for thousands of years.
Well may the three Chinese divinities of the
Past, the Present, and the Future be
represented with the same heavy face. Well may
the dull, immoveable, respectable triad sit so
amicably, side by side, in a glory of yellow
jaundice, with a strong family likeness among
them! As the Past was, so the Present is,
and so the Future shall be, saith the Emperor.
And all the Mandarins prostrate themselves,
and cry Amen.

The railway engines, and agricultural
engines, and machines; the locomotives, in
all their variety; the farm-engines, such as
the compound plough, the harrow, the clod-
crusher, the revolving sub-soiler, (some of
them looking not a little alarming, like
instruments of torture for the Titans), the
draining-plough, the centrifugal pump, the
sowing-machine, the reaping, the thrashing,
and the winnowing machines, the chaff-
cutter, the barley-hummeller, the straw-
shaker, the combined thrashing, shaking, and
blowing machine; the "machine to sow and
hoe an acre of turnips in five minutes,"—how,
can we possibly describe these, so as to be
understood? Then, there are sawing-machines
of great power; machines for planing; others
by which a large hurdle can be cut from the
solid timber, and put together in nine minutes,
and a fifty-six gallon beer-barrel made in
five minutes. As for the machinery of our
manufactures, with all their complex powers,
their wonderful strength, velocity, and
minutely precise manipulations, one's head
whizzes with the recollection of them. But
among all these wonders, nothing exceeds,
and but few approach, the printing machinery
of the " Illustrated London News," which is
the same as that used by the " Times."

After contemplating this extraordinary
piece of mechanism, and its ordinary practical
results, take a walk across, and along, "hither
and thither," to the Little Exhibition, and
look at the means of printing which is there
exhibited.

"The operation is very quick," says the
Chinese Catalogue, " and from two thousand
to three thousand may be taken off in a day
by a single workman." This rude
expedient has never been improved from the hour
of its first construction. It is an illustration
of the true doctrine of Finality; the gospel
according to which would have taught us
(under heavy pains and penalties) to print
for ever, as CAXTON prints upon the Royal
Academy walls, in Mr. Maclise's wonderful
picture, and to keep the stupendous
machinery which produces our daily newspapers
with the regularity of the sun, through all
eternity, in the limbo of things waiting to be
born.

There are some stupendous anchors lying
in the outer part of the Great Exhibition.
Their enormous size and weight naturally
suggest the present advanced state of naval
architecture in England and America; we
may turn from sailing-ships to the models
of our steam-navy, and of the magnificent
steamboats on the lakes and rivers of the
United States.

Compare these with the models of junks
and boats in the Chinese Exhibition.
Compare these with the Junk itself, lying in the
Thames hard by the Temple-stairs. As a
bamboo palanquin is, beside a Railway-train,
so is an English or American ship, beside this
ridiculous abortion. Aboard of which, the
sailors decline to enter until "a considerable
amount of tin-foil, silvered paper, and joss
stick," has been purchased for their worship.
Where they make offerings of tea, sweet-
cake, and pork, to the compass, on the voyage,
to induce it to be true and faithful. Where
the best that seamanship can do for the ship
is to paint two immense eyes on her bows,
in order that she may see her way, (do the
Chinese do this to their blind?) and to hang
out bits of red rag in stormy weather to mollify
the wrath of the ocean. Where the crew live
in china closets, wearing crape petticoats and
wooden clogs. Where the cabin is fitted up
with every sort of small scented object that is
utterly irreconcileable with water or motion.
Where nobody thinks of going aloft, or
could possibly carry out his wild intention if
he did. Where the crew ought to be armed
with sticks of cinnamon, and the captain with
a lanthorn at the end of a pole. Where the
whole is under the protection of an ornithological
phenomenon on the stern, who crows
with all his might and main, "I was the
representation of a cock a thousand years
ago, and the man who says I could possibly
be made more like one, shall immediately be
sawn in half, according to law!"

Return to the Great Exhibition. In the
department (Class 7) of Civil Engineering,
architecture, and building contrivances, we
find the revolving, dioptric, and catadioptric
apparatus of lighthouses; models of railways,
of iron bridges, of self-supporting suspension-
bridges, of submarine steam-propellers, of the
great tubular bridge, and of the proposed
"grand ship canal through the Isthmus of
Suez."