sacks of wheat are hauled up from the canal
below—the muddy, rippling canal, on which
we peep down from the landing stage in the
top story. Up comes the wheat through that
door—wheat from the far interior of Russia,
from the plains of Hungary, from the slopes
of Italy, from the valleys of France—to be
destroyed as wheat. It has grown for a long
time, and travelled very far, to be put an end
to here. The garners of the mill are on this
story, and we see huge assemblages of fat
sacks.

Next below are the mill-stones, pair after
pair, each fed by its hopper. The funnels
of these hoppers are made spies and
informers. As soon as the heap of grain
on which the funnel rests, and which it
feeds, sinks too low, the funnel presses upon
a strap which rings a bell, and proclaims that
somebody is negligent. The mill-stones are
a valuable property, difficult to obtain, but
very durable. They come from a particular
part of France; although, very lately, the
proper kind of stone has been found also in
Belgium. They will stand the wear and tear
of forty years, with proper dressing and care.
The dressing of the mill-stones is a curious
sight. A highly skilled workman is needed
for this business. He kneels, with one knee
upon the stone, tapping with his sharp chipper
in a way which looks like mere trifling to the
eyes of the ignorant. But his tiny grooves
come out clear at last; and the slopes and
risings of the one stone, co-operating with
those of its fellow, act like a series of scissors.
There are sixteen pairs of stones at work here,
one pair of which is from Belgium.

All the upper rooms in the mill look
picturesque, with posts, supports, and cross-
pieces. We are struck, however, with little
doors here and there in these square
beams; little buttons, grooves, and other
mysteries; and it turns out that these are
all spouts, through which the meal and
flour are carried up and down, and round,
and all manner of ways. Anything can fall
down of itself; but every thing here, from
dust to dough, has to be carried up by main
force. The dust is easily managed. A tall
chimney exhausts the air, and the dust is
carried out, to powder the birds of the air.
It is carried out so regularly and completely,
that the men in the mill work in a clear
atmosphere, and the machinery does not get
choked. If wheat or flour must be carried
aloft, it is by what is called in breweries a
Jacob's ladder—a system of little cups or
jars, revolving, like the chambers of a water-
wheel, and catching up their cargo,
conveying, and finally spilling it, in their
incessant revolution. Down one spout comes
wheat to be purified for grinding. So bad
are the threshing floors of the world, that
much dirt comes in with wheat, and even
such an amount of stones as would astonish
a novice. The wheat, therefore, is made to
fall smartly upon an inclined plane of wire,
through which the pure grain falls in one
direction, and small dirt in another, while the
stones hop, skip, and jump into a trough at
the lower end. Down another spout comes
the meal from the Russian wheat ; down
another from the Hungarian ; and so on.
The spouts end in boxes ; which, when a valve
is opened, spill their contents upon a strip of
felt, that is perpetually moving on towards
a drum. It passes round this drum, spilling its
little heaps of flour, and returning empty
below, to turn round another drum at the
other end of the row, and to come back under
the boxes, to receive another burden, and
carry it away.

This mixing process is pretty; but there is
another process, which is prettier, and quite as
new; being a recent invention of Mr. Lucy. A
very long and wide sheet of cloth is stretched
horizontally, about three feet from the ground,
and boarded round, so as to make it keep its
contents to itself. At each end, the cloth
slopes down into a pit. Flour of various
kinds dribbles down upon the sheet from
spouts above, making little heaps, which are
to be swept into one receptacle. A wooden
scraper, lodged upon wheels, which run in
grooves along the sides of the sheet, is
perpetually running backwards and forwards,
from one end of the expanse to the other,
knocking down the little heaps of flour, carrying
them all before it, and driving the mass
into the pit at either end. This scraper is
worked, like everything else in the mill, by
the steam-engine. The engine itself shows us
more of Mr. Lucy's ingenuity. He has
contrived some apparatus, by which he dispenses
with the fly-wheel of his engine, and yet
obtains a perfect regulation of the power. This
is a low-pressure engine, of forty-horse power,
in connexion with a high-pressure one of
twenty-five, which spares its steam to its
neighbour.  In connexion with the bake-
house, there are two smaller engines. It is a
new and strange idea,—that of overcoming the
tenacity of dough by steam-power, instead of
by the battery of the cook's limbs. We shall see
presently how this is done. The large upper
room, where the mixing of the flour goes on,
is called the Pestry,—nobody knows why.
We have no ideas in connexion with the word;
but we put it down because it is rather pretty
than otherwise.

We are now to see the bread-making; we
wish we could say the baking too; but that
work is done in the small hours of the night,
when it would be in no way convenient or
agreeable, to ourselves or others, that we
should make an expedition to any bake-house,
however eminent and curious.

We come down through a remarkably
picturesque room, joined at right angles, so that
the light falls well upon an intricacy of spouts
on the one hand, and on regiments of sacks on
the other. One more step-ladder conducts us
to the yard, where there is a pit, with one
side very fiery. The mouths of the furnaces