ular even in the minutest details. Thus
one of the points on which he insisted--apparently a trivial matter,
but in reality of considerable importance in mechanical
construction--was the avoidance of sharp interior angles in ironwork,
whether wrought or cast; for he found that in such interior angles
cracks were apt to originate; and when the article was a tool, the
sharp angle was less pleasant to the hand as well as to the eye. In
the application of his favourite round or hollow corner system--as, for
instance, in the case of the points of junction of the arms of a wheel
with its centre and rim--he used to illustrate its superiority by
holding up his hand and pointing out the nice rounded hollow at the
junction of the fingers, or by referring to the junction of the
branches to the stem of a tree. Hence he made a point of having all
the angles of his machine framework nicely rounded off on their
exterior, and carefully hollowed in their interior angles. In forging
such articles he would so shape his metal before bending that the
result should be the right hollow or rounded corner when bent; the
anticipated external angle falling into its proper place when the bar
so shaped was brought to its ultimate form. In all such matters of
detail he was greatly assisted by his early dexterity as a blacksmith;
and he used to say that to be a good smith you must be able to SEE in
the bar of iron the object proposed to be got out of it by the hammer
or the tool, just as the sculptor is supposed to see in the block of
stone the statue which he proposes to bring forth from it by his mind
and his chisel.

Mr. Maudslay did not allow himself to forget his skill in the use of
the hammer, and to the last he took pleasure in handling it, sometimes
in the way of business, and often through sheer love of his art. Mr
Nasmyth says, "It was one of my duties, while acting as assistant in
his beautiful little workshop, to keep up a stock of handy bars of lead
which he had placed on a shelf under his work-bench, which was of thick
slate for the more ready making of his usual illustrative sketches of
machinery in chalk. His love of iron-forging led him to take delight
in forging the models of work to be ultimately done in iron; and cold
lead being of about the same malleability as red-hot iron, furnished a
convenient material for illustrating the method to be adopted with the
large work. I well remember the smile of satisfaction that lit up