he (or was it his grandfather?) used to
turn out the birds with feathery tails, and
has a front place on the floor. We liked
him better where he was; it was a quieter
place, a good place to retire to when it was
considered advisable to avoid temporarily
the observation of our elders. The wheel
of life—it was called something else when
we knew it first, years back, and before it
was brought out as a great novelty a few
months ago—still spins round in the
gallery; there is a sample vase of wax fruit
that seems like an old familiar friend.
One side of the gallery is ornamented with
sectional views of geological strata,
surmounted in each case by an appropriate
landscape. The boys have a bad time of it
in this gallery; as we pass by, fragments
of geological information, more or less
(generally more) inaccurate, are borne
upon the air; blue lias, London clay, and
old red sandstone are on active service.

The glass cases along the other gallery
are filled with a most heterogeneous
mixture of goods. Why Miss Blank should
have presented the Institution with her
false teeth, not to say gums, it is difficult
to make out; and although a wood bracket,
"carved, by permission, by a footman in
service during his leisure moments when
the family are dining out" (he seems to
have had no leisure moments but under
these circumstances), is highly creditable
to its author, it can scarcely be considered
either remarkable or diverting. Turning
from objects such as these, there is on view
a collection of busts of a very appalling
nature: one, in a wig, presumably that of
the late Lord Brougham, being unspeakably
tremendous; but candour compels the
admission that outside the lecture-rooms, at all
events, there is not much more amusement
than in the old days, perhaps even not quite
so much. The bazaar element is decidedly
stronger than of yore, and it may be
delicately hinted that the ladies who preside
at the stalls are somewhat pertinacious in
their efforts to do business. And it cannot
with truth be said that the objects for sale
possess any particular attraction, being,
indeed, for the most part, of a rather
uninteresting and unsatisfactory sort.

But our business is not with patent
cement, or novel processes in photography,
or feeble little "specimens." We have a
more important matter on hand.

Our classical reminiscences have left us
with the conviction that, when Vulcan
forged the bolts of Jove, the scene must
have been, as the graphic reporter has it,
"one of terrific grandeur." We pictured
to ourselves the lame god and his Cyclopean
assistants, hammering and forging
the celestial weapons in some flaming
cavern of Etna or Vesuvius, amid an eternal
din like that of a chain-cable factory
crossed with a rolling-mill. Lurid smoke
rolls heavily upward through the fiery air;
the molten lava rushes forth on its work
of destruction; while the lightnings, that
now and again play round the top of the
groaning mountain, proclaim to a trembling
world the tremendous nature of the
operations going on below.

Although we had inspected electrical
machines, and had looked as scientific as
possible at the sparks we had seen elicited
from them, the grand and heroic idea of
lightning-making had never left us.
Consequently, when we were told that lightning
was made and exhibited at certain stated
hours, in the unromantic district of Regent-
street, we received the statement with some
incredulity; and it was to test its truth
that, after many years, we came to revisit
the Polytechnic. Let us endeavour to give
some account of what we learn from the
lucid and interesting lecture, which
explained to us the extraordinary
performances of the great Induction Coil.

It was discovered by Faraday, many
years ago, that a coil of wire, wound
loosely round a magnet, became actively
electric at the moment when the magnet
was either placed within its folds or
withdrawn from them, and also that a galvanic
current, in passing round a conducting
circuit, produces an "induced" current in
another conductor that surrounds the first.
A galvanic current is usually generated by
what is called a galvanic battery, consisting
of two dissimilar metals or other
substances, technically named elements, not
touching each other, but immersed in some
acid fluid. Chemical action is excited, and
electricity, in the form known as galvanism,
is set free. If the elements are connected
together, outside the acid, by a piece of
wire, or any other conductor, the electricity
will proceed from one element, called the
positive pole of the battery, and will pass
along the wire to the other or negative pole,
thus making what is called a circuit. If the
wire be interrupted, the electricity, if
present in sufficient quantity, will leap across
the gap in the form of a visible spark. If
the gap be filled by any substance capable
of being chemically decomposed by
electricity, the decomposition will take place.
In all this we have only the galvanic