it would pay, for the margin of profit on
ordinary goods in clay is a wide one, and it
would lessen our insular self-love by showing
us that other nations excel us in taste, and are
our rivals in working out the modern necessity
of the union of utility with beauty.

PLAYING WITH LIGHTNING.

How many years it is since we first made
the acquaintance of the Royal Polytechnic
Institution, we should hardly care to say;
how many years had passed without our
having visited it until this present month
of May, we almost forget. So many years
that, as we made our way to it the other
day, we had strong doubts whether our
recollections of it would turn out correct,
or whether it had undergone the surprising
change that seems to come over everything
that one has not happened to see since
boyhood.

We recollect always having had our
doubts, in our extreme youth, about the
Polytechnic. There was an indefinable
feeling as if it were not a real, out-and-out,
holiday place: as if our education were in
some way going on whenever we were
there. Instruction, we felt, lurked behind
amusement, and it was impossible to forecast,
from the programme of the entertainments,
exactly at what point the baleful
genius of mental improvement might be
expected to claim its victim. There were
diverting objects to look at, doubtless, but
even machinery in motion— a charming
object always to any boy of a well-regulated
mind—can be turned to an evil educational
account. A flavour of chemicals also
pervaded the building, and suggested
unpleasant instructive references to hydrogen,
oxygen, and other gases, satisfactory enough
when combined in experiments concluding
pleasantly with a bang or a flash of fire,
but evil to hear about in an hour's lecture.

There were suggestive whirring straps
and wheels in the entrance hall in those
days, inspiring delusive hopes as to the
quantity of moving machinery above. The
first view of the hall itself was very pleasing.
A large raised basin, or tank, filled
the centre of the floor, and on its limpid
waters floated absolutely maddening models
of ships, steamers, life-boats, and other
vessels which we felt we would have given
worlds to possess. Lighthouses, piers, and
docks, rose at intervals around this
delightful harbour, and two or three small
cork sailors, illustrative of the superior
merits of somebody's life-belts, floated,
smiling and blue-jacketed, on its serene
surface. A railway ran along the side of
the tank, and its terminus at the far end
was flanked by a deep green pool, into
which the diving-bell, mysterious engine,
was let down, full of adventurous spirits,
who invariably returned to the upper air
flushed and sheepish. From this pool, too,
would emerge the diver, clad in that
tremendous costume, specially invented, as
we then supposed, expressly for our
discomfiture, and after mysteriously rapping
his helmet with a couple of halfpence just
fished up from the bottom, would sink
back into the water, a goggle-eyed
monster. Twice in our very early youth we
recollect arousing the echoes of the
neighbourhood with our shrieks at this alarming
spectacle; once it was even found necessary
to bear us with ignominy into Regent-
street. It was long before we could feel
at all comfortable in that tremendous
presence.

Much more to our taste was the glass-
blowing stall, whereon were exhibited ships,
long-tailed birds, and other desirable
objects. At these art-treasures we were
never tired of gazing. The glass cases
around the walls, on the other hand, we
usually thought it well to avoid, as
containing not unfrequent educational pitfalls,
too readily lending themselves to cross-
questioning. The very lectures themselves,
as we remembered them, were doubtful.
The darkened room for dissolving views,
magic lanterns, and similar entertainments,
was undoubtedly pleasant, and favourable
to secret scrimmages with our friends, by
reason of the difficulty of ultimate
detection; but even here useful knowledge
was always lying in wait for us.

On the present occasion we are in search
of useful knowledge, and have only time
for a hasty glance at the general contents
of the building; but it presently strikes us
very forcibly that if the boys of this day
are at all like the boys of our day, they
must find it just a little dull at the
Polytechnic.

The long basin, we find, has disappeared,
ships, lighthouses, sailors, and all, except
at the diver's end, and there is still the
cool, green pool. The diving-bell still
hangs in its old place; a man leans against
a pillar hard by, polishing the diver's
helmet. Can he be the diver himself?
He looks low-spirited, as a man might be
expected to look who has much to do with
such a costume. Our friend the glass-
blower has moved from the gallery where