they very much prefer to dance than to
fight; together with other popular delusions
––still linger in the minds of some of our
bold peasantry and milder cockneys; but it
is to be hoped, after many years of peace and
better sense, that we may now claim for
the majority of even an under-educated
British public, a more correct knowledge of the
personnel and manners of our Continental
neighbours, than our Continental neighbours
manifestly have of us. The very foible of
Lord Pudding himself––that of being a
travelling Englishman––would defend him from
such blunders as the literary Frankenstein
who gave life to the monster, has fallen into.
Travelling Englishmen are common abroad,
who speak foreign languages, and understand
foreign customs, extremely well. There are
many of our travellers whom we should be
very glad to improve: and thanks to railways,
and to our possession of some––though not
very much––of the wealth which the foreign
dramatic and fictionist artists so liberally
attribute to us, we are rapidly polishing off
the rust of national prejudice, and ignorance
of our brethren abroad. Should an English
author or actor be guilty of such laughable
mistakes about foreigners as those we have
pointed out, woe unutterable would alight on
his ignorant head.

Every sort of attraction which brings people
of different nations, and even of different
counties, together––whether it be a German
wool fair, a music meeting, or a Swiss shooting-
match––smooths away the acerbities of caste,
and strengthens the sympathies of individuals.
Let us, therefore, hope that the myriads of
exotics which will be attracted next year to
the Great Industrial Conservatory in Hyde
Park, will receive new vigour and fresh
intelligence from their temporary transplantation;
that they will learn that Englishmen and
English women are not quite the monstrosities
they at present appear to believe them.
Foreigners will then have the advantage of
seeing us at home, and in a mass; and will
thenceforth cease to judge us by those follies
which they observe in a few idle tourists
from these islands. They will see us as we
are, reciprocating what we believe to be the
general desire here, in reference to them.

THE STEAM PLOUGH.

WHEN the first experiments were being
made with the Hay-making Machine, now
commonly used in some parts of the country,
it happened that Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, and
Peacock, the author of "Crotchet Castle,"
"Headlong Hall," and other works of
pungent erudition, were walking through a field
where this strange-looking machine was in
operation. Instead of the pleasant sight of
the rustic men and women with their
forks and rakes––a scene so full of indelible
associations, from childhood upwards––they
saw this quaint monster rolling round the
field over the long swathes of hay, its
rotatory forks, or rather fingers on wheels,
flinging up the hay on all sides as it went
spinning onwards. Meditating on the effect,
if successful, this would, some day, have
on the vast numbers of poor people in
England, to say nothing of the summer
invasions of Irish––whose sole dependence
for the year is the money they make in the
English hay-season––Shelley and the others
walked onwards, and left the field. Presently
they met a clownish fellow, who was looking
intently at the whirling and whisking
performance of the round-about machine in the
hay-field. Shelley, having no objection to
find, in the then adjusted state of society
with regard to the labouring classes, that
this machine was a failure, said to the clown,
in a sort of half contemptuous tone––"Now,
tell me,––does that thing answer at all?"
The fellow looked Shelley full in the face––
"It answers a deuced deal too well," said
he; "I wish it was working in the inside of
him that made it!"

In this very unsophisticated reply, how
vast a question is comprised! But into it
we cannot now enter; our present business is
how to plough by steam; and the smoke
from the "nostrils" of a variety of elegant
ploughs, of various horse-and-man powers, is
already inviting our attention. Truly, it
requires one to take one's breath before
commencing the examination!

Old Hesiod, in the second book of his
"Works and Days," after giving particular
directions for the selection of the wood, as to
its natural qualities and form, and also its
suitability to an artificial curve, gravely
shakes his venerable head, and says––

"To make a plough, great is the expense and care."

Virgil, following his great progenitor, enters
with still more minute precision into the
details of the selection of the wood and its
manufacture into a plough, adding, that he
can "recite to you many precepts of the
ancients––unless you decline them."

Well, then, to be frank with antiquity, and
all its great poets and philosophers, the
present age fairly announces by its practices, that
it does decline, not only the precepts but the
example of the ancients, especially in agricultural
matters.

The last and not the least important inno-
vation on agricultural labour has yet to be
consummated; and it would seem from two
large plates, with explanatory remarks, which
have been recently published by Lord
Willoughby de Eresby, that a monster
innovation is not very distant;––no less than
"Ploughing by Steam." All great inventions
are the result of gradual improvement on a
first idea; and an examination of these plates
naturally induces us to take a cursory view
of what has previously been attempted, and
done, in this way.

Not wishing to go back to the "dawning