swift and powerful, yet docile force of
steam, which has now laid upon it the heaviest share of the burden of
toil, and indeed become the universal drudge. Coal, water, and a
little oil, are all that the steam-engine, with its bowels of iron and
heart of fire, needs to enable it to go on working night and day,
without rest or sleep. Yoked to machinery of almost infinite variety,
the results of vast ingenuity and labour, the Steam-engine pumps water,
drives spindles, thrashes corn, prints books, hammers iron, ploughs
land, saws timber, drives piles, impels ships, works railways,
excavates docks; and, in a word, asserts an almost unbounded supremacy
over the materials which enter into the daily use of mankind, for
clothing, for labour, for defence, for household purposes, for
locomotion, for food, or for instruction.

[1] Long after, when married and settled at Manchester, the fiddle,
which had been carefully preserved, was taken down from the shelf for
the amusement of the children; but though they were well enough pleased
with it, the instrument was never brought from its place without
creating alarm in the mind of their mother lest anybody should hear it.
At length a dancing-master, who was giving lessons in the
neighbourhood, borrowed the fiddle, and, to the great relief of the
family, it was never returned. Many years later Mr. Fairbairn was
present at the starting of a cotton mill at Wesserling in Alsace
belonging to Messrs. Gros, Deval, and Co., for which his Manchester
firm had provided the mill-work and water-wheel (the first erected in
France on the suspension principle, when the event was followed by an
entertainment). During dinner Mr. Fairbairn had been explaining to M.
Gros, who spoke a little English, the nature of home-brewed beer, which
he much admired, having tasted it when in England. The dinner was
followed by music, in the performance of which the host himself took
part; and on Mr. Fairbairn's admiring his execution on the violin, M.
Gros asked him if he played. "A little," was the almost unconscious
reply. "Then you must have the goodness to play some," and the
instrument was in a moment placed in his hands, amidst urgent requests
from all sides that he should play. There was no alternative; so he
proceeded to perform one of his best tunes--"The Keel Row." The
company listened with amazement, until the performer's career was
suddenly cut short by the host exclaiming at the top of his vo