: various individuals have
assured me that they can never pass by one, even in the midst of a
crowded town, without experiencing sensations which they can scarcely
define, but which are highly pleasurable. I have a decided _penchant_
for forges, especially rural ones, placed in some quaint quiet spot--a
dingle, for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four
roads, which is still more so; for how many a superstition--and
superstition is the soul of poetry--is connected with these cross roads!
I love to light upon such a one, especially after nightfall, as
everything about a forge tells to most advantage at night; the hammer
sounds more solemnly in the stillness; the glowing particles scattered by
the strokes sparkle with more effect in the darkness, whilst the sooty
visage of the sastramescro, half in shadow, and half illumined by the red
and partial blaze of the forge, looks more mysterious and strange. On
such occasions I draw in my horse's rein, and, seated in the saddle,
endeavour to associate with the picture before me--in itself a picture of
romance--whatever of the wild and wonderful I have read of in books, or
have seen with my own eyes in connection with forges.

I believe the life of any blacksmith, especially 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 dextrous 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 wor