specially a rural one, would
afford materials for a highly poetical history. I do not speak
unadvisedly, having the honour to be free of the forge, and therefore
fully competent to give an opinion as to what might be made out of the
forge by some dexterous hand. Certainly, the strangest and most
entertaining life ever written is that of a blacksmith of the olden
north, a certain Volundr, or Velint, who lived in woods and thickets,
made keen swords--so keen, indeed, that if placed in a running stream
they would fairly divide an object, however slight, which was borne
against them by the water, and who eventually married a king's daughter,
by whom he had a son, who was as bold a knight as his father was a
cunning blacksmith. I never see a forge at night, when seated on the
back of my horse, at the bottom of a dark lane, but I somehow or other
associate it with the exploits of this extraordinary fellow, with many
other extraordinary things, amongst which, as I have hinted before, are
particular passages of my own life, one or two of which I shall perhaps
relate to the reader.

I never associate Vulcan and his Cyclops with the idea of a forge. These
gentry would be the very last people in the world to flit across my mind
whilst gazing at the forge from the bottom of the dark lane. The truth
is, they are highly unpoetical fellows, as well they may be, connected as
they are with the Grecian mythology. At the very mention of their names
the forge burns dull and dim, as if snowballs had been suddenly flung
into it; the only remedy is to ply the bellows, an operation which I now
hasten to perform.

I am in the dingle making a horse-shoe. Having no other horses on whose
hoofs I could exercise my art, I made my first essay on those of my own
horse, if that could be called horse which horse was none, being only a
pony. Perhaps, if I had sought all England, I should scarcely have found
an animal more in need of the kind offices of the smith. On three of his
feet there were no shoes at all, and on the fourth only a remnant of one,
on which account his hoofs were sadly broken and lacerated by his late
journeys over the hard and flinty roads. 'You belonged to a tinker
before,' said I, addressing the animal, 'but now you belong to a smith.
It is said that the household of the shoemaker invariably go worse shod
than that of any other craft. That may be the case of those who make
shoes of leather, but it shan't be said of the