. They are placed--one
as low as the workman's feet, another rather above his head--six or
seven feet apart. Round the wheels there stretches an endless narrow
band of blue steel, just as a ribbon might. This band of steel is
very thin, and almost half an inch in width. Its edge towards the
workman is serrated with sharp deep teeth. The wheels revolve by
steam rapidly, and carry with them the saw, so that, instead of the
old up and down motion, the teeth are continually running one way.
The band of steel is so extremely flexible that it sustains the
state of perpetual curve. There are stories in ancient chronicles of
the wonderful swords of famous warriors made of such good steel that
the blade could be bent till the point touched the hilt, and even
till the blade was tied in a knot. These stories do not seem like
fables before this endless saw, which does not bend once or twice,
but is incessantly curved, and incessantly in the act of curving. A
more beautiful machine cannot be imagined. Its chief use is to cut
out the designs for cornices, and similar ornamental work in thin
wood; but it is sufficiently strong to cut through a two-inch plank
like paper. Every possible support that can be afforded by runners
is given to the saw; still, with every aid, it is astonishing to see
metal, which we have been taught to believe rigid, flexible as
indiarubber. Adjoining are frame saws, working up and down by
steam, and cutting half a dozen or more boards at the same time. It
was in this department that the Queen's carriage was built at a
great expenditure of skill and money--a carriage which is considered
one of the masterpieces of this particular craft.

There rises up in the mind, after the contemplation of this vast
workshop, with its endless examples of human ingenuity, a conviction
that safety in railway travelling is not only possible, but
probable, and even now on the way to us. No one can behold the
degree of excellence to which the art of manufacturing material has
been brought, no one can inspect the processes by which the wheel,
for instance, is finally welded into one compact mass, without a
firm belief that, where so much has been done, in a little time
still more will be done. That safer plans, that better designs, that
closer compacted forms will arise seems as certain and assured a
fact as that those forms now in use arose out of the rude beginnings
of the past; for this great factory, both in its machine-tools