art. And this, at least, is sure: though
merit may, by some rare mischance, be overlooked, demerit has no
opportunity whatever to gain distinction. Sleight of hand cannot long
pass muster for skill of hand. Unswerving integrity, unimpeachable
sincerity, is the lesson constantly taught by the lives of these
renowned mechanics. "The great secret," says one, "is to have the
courage to be honest,--a spirit to purchase the best material, and the
means and disposition to do justice to it in the manufacture." Another,
remonstrated with for his high charges, which were declared to be six
times more than the price his employers had before been paying for the
same articles, could safely say, "That may be, but mine are more than
six times better." A master of his profession is master of his
employers. Maudslay's works, we are told, came to be regarded as a
first-class school for mechanical engineers, the Oxford and Cambridge of
mechanics; nor can Oxford and Cambridge men be any prouder of their
connection with their colleges than distinguished engineers of their
connection with this famous school of Maudslay. With such an _esprit de
corps_ what excellence have we not a right to expect?

We cannot forbear pointing out the Aids to Humility collected in this
book from various quarters, and presented to the consideration of the
nineteenth century. Our boasted age of invention turns out, after
all, to have been only gathering up what antiquity has let
fall,--rediscovering and putting to practical account what the past
discovered, but could not, or, with miscalled dignity, would not, turn
to the uses of common life. Steam-carriages, hydraulic engines,
diving-bells, which we have regarded with so much complacency as our
peculiar property, worked their wonders in the teeming brain of an old
monk who lived six hundred years ago. Printing, stereotypes,
lithography, gunpowder, Colt's revolvers and Armstrong guns, Congreve
rockets, coal-gas and chloroform, daguerreotypes, reaping-machines, and
the electric telegraph are nothing new under the sun. Hundreds of years
ago the idea was born, but the world was too young to know its character
or prize its service, and so the poor little bantling was left to shiver
itself to death while the world stumbled on as aforetime. How many eras
of birth there may have been we do not know, but it was reserved for our
later age to receive the young stranger with open arms, and nourish his
infant limbs to manly