of the Turkish army at
Constantinople. I believe it was the first iron house built in this
country; and it was constructed at the works at Millwall, London, in
1839." [8]

Since then iron structures of all kinds have been erected: iron
lighthouses, iron-and-crystal palaces, iron churches, and iron bridges.
Iron roads have long been worked by iron locomotives; and before many
years have passed a telegraph of iron wire will probably be found
circling the globe. We now use iron roofs, iron bedsteads, iron ropes,
and iron pavement; and even the famous "wooden walls of England" are
rapidly becoming reconstructed of iron. In short, we are in the midst
of what Mr. Worsaae has characterized as the Age of Iron.

At the celebration of the opening of the North Wales Railway at Bangor,
almost within sight of his iron bridge across the Straits of Menai,
Robert Stephenson said, "We are daily producing from the bowels of the
earth a raw material, in its crude state apparently of no worth, but
which, when converted into a locomotive engine, flies over bridges of
the same material, with a speed exceeding that of the bird, advancing
wealth and comfort throughout the country. Such are the powers of that
all-civilizing instrument, Iron."

Iron indeed plays a highly important part in modern civilization. Out
of it are formed alike the sword and the ploughshare, the cannon and
the printing-press; and while civilization continues partial and
half-developed, as it still is, our liberties and our industry must
necessarily in a great measure depend for their protection upon the
excellence of our weapons of war as well as on the superiority of our
instruments of peace. Hence the skill and ingenuity displayed in the
invention of rifled guns and artillery, and iron-sided ships and
batteries, the fabrication of which would be impossible but for the
extraordinary development of the iron-manufacture, and the marvellous
power and precision of our tool-making machines, as described in
preceding chapters.

"Our strength, wealth, and commerce," said Mr. Cobden in the course of
a recent debate in the House of Commons, "grow out of the skilled
labour of the men working in metals. They are at the foundation of our
manufacturing greatness; and in case you were attacked, they would at
once be available, with their hard hands and skilled brains, to
manufacture your muskets and your cannon, your shot and your shell.
What has given us our Armstrongs,