carbon in the converting furnace ;—of tilting the bars so converted into a harder substance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of the Sheaf and the Don; of casting the steel thus converted and tilted into ingots of higher purity; and, finally, of milling, by which the most perfect development of the material is acquired under enormous rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble, when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the workmen swing before the tilts in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the more quiet rolling department. The bar that has been tilted into the most perfect compactness has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity. A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is instantly elongated and widened into flatness;-rapidly through a second pair,—and a third, -and a fourth, and a fifth.-The bar is becoming a sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes,

until it would seem that the workinen can scarcely manage the fragile substance. It has spread out, like a morsel of gold under the beater's hammer, into an enormous leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch in thickness; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labours of so many workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined ?—what the final application of a material employing so much capital in every step, from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of British industry? The whole is prepared for one Steel-pen Manufactory at Birmingham.

The perfection that may reasonably be demanded in a steel pen has yet to be reached. But the improvement in the manufacture is most decided. Twenty years ago, to one who might choose, regardless of expense, between the quill pen and the steel, the best Birmingham and London production was an abomination. But we can trace the gradual acquiescence of most men in the writing implement of the multitude. Few of us, in an age when the small economies are carefully observed, and even paraded, desire to use quill pens at ten or twelve shillings a hundred, as Treasury Clerks once luxuriated in their use-an hour's work, and then a new one. To mend a pen is troublesome to the old and even the middle-aged man who once acquired the art; the young, for the most part, have not learnt it. The most pains-taking and penurious

author would never dream of imitating the wondrous man who translated Pliny with one gray goose quill." Steel pens are so cheap, that if one scratches or splutters, it may be thrown away, and another may be tried. But when a really good one is found, we cling to it, as worldly men cling to their friends; we use it till it breaks down, or grows rusty. We can do no more; we handle it as Isaak Walton handled the frog upon his hook, as if we loved him." We could almost fancy some analogy between the gradual and decided improvement of the steel pen-one of the new instruments of education-and the effects of education itself upon the mass of the people. An instructed nation. ought to present the same gradually perfecting combination of strength with elasticity. The favourites of fortune are like the quill, ready made for social purposes, with a little scraping and polishing. The bulk of the community have to be formed out of ruder and tougher materials--to be converted, welded, and tempered into pliancy. The manners of the great British family have decidedly improved under culture-" emollit mores:" may the sturdy self-respect of the race never be impaired.

SUBURBAN MILESTONES.

JEDEDIAH JONES (he was called Jedediah in consequence of the admiration his father cherished for the character of Jedediah Buxton, the great calculator) was a schoolmaster at Barnet. His delight in his occupation was hereditary; for the elder Jones had properly impressed his son with a sense of the high responsibilities and privileges of his calling, and had shown him how superior a schoolmaster was to any of the other mighty functionaries of the land-to a judge, or a minister of state, or even to a bishop. Jedediah grew, in time, to be somewhat of an important personage, especially as his love of learning branched out into sundry matters of abstruse inquiry, by his knowledge of which he not only puzzled his wondering pupils, but occasionally perplexed the most sagacious of his neighbours. He was not a philosopher in the ordinary sense of the word, for he did not busy himself with any of the sciences as they exist in the present day; but he contrived to know something about the theories of these matters as they were received two or three centuries ago, and was always reflecting and experimenting upon proposi tions that all mankind have agreed to reject as absurd or impracticable. He was acquainted with

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the past existence of many vulgar errors; but he by no means acknowledged the propriety of that sweeping condemnation of certain opinions which was contained in the title of Sir Thomas Brown's folio. He had considerable faith that he should some day meet the Wandering Jew on the great Holyhead Road: he turned up his nose at the belief that a griffin had not existed, for why should people have them painted on carriages if their ancestors had never seen such things? he was almost certain that he had himself heard a mandrake shriek when he pulled it up-(on purpose to hear it): and he was quite sure that there were only three Queen Anne's farthings coined, and that he had got one of them. As the old alchymists obtained some knowledge of chemistry in their search after gold, so our schoolmaster obtained a smattering of history and philosophy in his search after those crotchety points of learning which history and philosophy have determined to throw overboard; and thus, upon the whole, he managed to pass with the world as a very wise man, and his school flourished.

There were some matters, however, with all his learning, which puzzled Jedediah Jones exceedingly. One of these dark and important questions was a source of perpetual irritation to him. He took long walks on half-holidays, and generally his face, on these occasions, turned towards London; for he had a secret conviction that his ultimate vocation was to be in that mighty metropolis, and