which regulate its application. Some of the
noblest works of mechanical genius are here
before us—not mere models, but in all the
grandeur of their perfect action. Under one
roof may be seen the whole process of a
cotton-factory; and a few yards off the great
steam-hammer, which forges an anchor, or
cracks an egg-shell, with an equal regulation
of its power. Here is the hydraulic machine
which lifted the mighty tubes of the Britannia
Bridge to their high level; and here the
Jacquard loom, which can weave such
embroidery in an hour as would demand a
life-long labour from the nicest sempstress of
the Ind. Here is the steamboat engine, which
has brought the produce of the most distant
lands to grace this first of May; and here the
locomotive, which, the proud equal of the
steamboat, has given new ideas of time and
space to the civilised world. Here, finally,
is the paper-machine, and here the
printing-machine—the instruments by which
all knowledge is diffused and perpetuated
—without the prototypes of which, Bacon
might have speculated in vain, and Watt have
never invented. In the age which has
produced the steam-boat, the railroad, and
the printing-machine—the three powers which
are more and more lessening the inequalities
of condition, of locality, of laws, amongst the
great family of mankind—the assemblage of
the Industry of all Nations, and the people of all
nations, in the island whose ships bear the
products of the earth to and from every port
—whose arts, imitative at first, are now models
of every form of labour— whose language and
literature are spreading over vast regions,
compared with which her area is but a speck on
the globe,—such an assemblage appears to
us a holy tribute to the Parent of Industry, and
of all good. For the mighty Spirit of the universe
is one and the same in His manifestations—
whether He hold the stars in their eternal
courses, or work, through the mind of man, to
enrich our May Palace with the produce of arts,
which even outworn mythologies, not grossly
erring, derived from Heaven; but which a purer
religion may teach us to believe are amongst
the instruments—in due companionship with
pure science, with literature, with " divine
philosophy "—by which God is accomplishing
the destinies of the human race.

"And what," say some, " is to be a benefit
to the visitors of the Exhibition, who are
neither artisans nor merchants—who are
neither buyers nor sellers,—some of whom
think, as Southey proclaimed, ' that the nation
which builds on manufactures sleeps upon
gunpowder,'—who believe that the age of
Maypoles might come again, with piping
shepherds, and ' knitters in the sun.' " We
answer—the enlargement of your minds, and
of all minds—that practical education which
may teach men to comprehend rightly the
past and the present. These are the
manifestations of the spirit of an age which
is not an age of exclusiveness. These are the
works of the heroes of this age. This is their
May-day celebration. Look upon it reverently.
Do homage to the promoters of it, in all love
and loyalty. Here is our "LADY OF THE MAY."
But in this goodly work there is hope beyond
performance—hope of " Peace on earth,
good-will towards men."

"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May."

THE LAST OF THE SEA-KINGS.

THE first of the Sea-kings may have been
good men of business in their own day, but it
is a great many years ago since it was
respectable to be a thief—except in poems
and romances. The last Sea-kings of the
Caucasian race were hunted down, in a
tradesman-like manner, by the increasing
pack of commerce; and wound up, very
generally, the concluding canto of their
lives under the gallows, at Execution Dock.
The " Asia," in her ten or eleven day passages
between New York and Liverpool, has never
yet been cannonaded by a ship-load of
gentlemen of Fortune. For, in the class
Raptores of the human race—the men of
prey—the genus Pirate is much more
confined than it has been aforetime in its
geographical distribution. It has ceased to be
an European family. We have at our elbow
certain volumes, printed in " the days when
we went pirating, a long time ago," containing
lives of pirates, compiled carefully from living
testimony; and contemporary records at a
time when those exceedingly free gentlemen
abounded. Captain Charles Johnson, the
biographer of these men, puts upon his
title-page a motto, from Horace, about having
blended the useful with the sweet. Sweet
company he introduces to us, in good sooth!
As for the usefulness, we recognise that,
even in the present day. Many will cross the
seas, to visit us, this year; it will do more than
amuse us to consider what obstructions might
have stayed their progress in the good old
times of George the First or Second. How
many of our guests would have been stripped,
how many murdered, how many would have
eaten their own ears with salt and pepper, we
will not stop to imagine. Confining our attention
to our own countrymen, who are not meaner
and more cruel probably than Greeks, we
shall go back a little farther than a century,
and sketch the race of British Conrads as
they then existed.

At the close of the Continental war, after
the peace of Utrecht, privateering—  which is
legal piracy—lost its excuse, and piracy was
undertaken for its own sake, and in defiance
of the gallows. The mutinous sailor, thirsting
for exemption from restraint, would find
associates and plot. Thus Captain Green, of
Bristol, in April, 1726, shipped William Fly,