Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/627

 ; it would pay, for the margin of profit on ordinary goods in clay is a wide one, and it would lessen our insular self-love by showing us that other nations excel us in taste, and are our rivals in working out the modern necessity of the union of utility with beauty.

many years it is since we first made the acquaintance of the Royal Polyteclinic Institution, we should hardly care to say; how many years had passed without our having visited it until this present month of May, we almost forget. So many years that, as we made our way to it the other day, we had strong doubts whether our recollections of it would turn out correct, or whether it had undergone the surprising change that seems to come over everything that one has not happened to see since boyhood.

We recollect always having had our doubts, in our extreme youth, about the Polytechnic. There was an indefinable feeling as if it were not a real, out-and-out, holiday place: as if our education were in some way going on whenever we were there. Instruction, we felt, lurked behind amusement, and it was impossible to forecast, from the programme of the entertainments, exactly at what point the baleful genius of mental improvement might be expected to claim its victim. There were diverting objects to look at, doubtless, but even machinery in motion—a charming object always to any boy of a well-regulated mind—can be turned to an evil educational account. A flavour of chemicals also pervaded the building, and suggested unpleasant instructive references to hydrogen, oxygen, and other gases, satisfactory enough when combined in experiments concluding pleasantly with a bang or a flash of fire, but evil to hear about in an hour's lecture.

There were suggestive whirring straps and wheels in the entrance hall in those days, inspiring delusive hopes as to the quantity of moving machinery above. The first view of the hall itself was very pleasing. A large raised basin, or tank, filled the centre of the floor, and on its limpid waters floated absolutely maddening models of ships, steamers, life-boats, and other vessels which we felt we would have given worlds to possess. Lighthouses, piers, and docks, rose at intervals around this delightful harbour, and two or three small cork sailors, illustrative of the superior merits of somebody's life-belts, floated, smiling and blue-jacketed, on its serene surface. A railway ran along the sides of the tank, and its terminus at the far end was flanked by a deep green pool, into which the diving-bell, mysterious engine, was let down, full of adventurous spirits, who invariably returned to the upper air flushed and sheepish. From this pool, too, would emerge the diver, clad in that tremendous costume, specially invented, as we then supposed, expressly for our discomfiture, and after mysteriously rapping his helmet with a couple of halfpence just fished up from the bottom, would sink back into the water, a goggle-eyed monster. Twice in our very early youth we recollect arousing the echoes of the neighbourhood with our shrieks at this alarming spectacle; once it was even found necessary to bear us with ignominy into Regent-street. It was long before we could feel at all comfortable in that tremendous presence.

Much more to our taste was the glass-blowing stall, whereon were exhibited ships, long-tailed birds, and other desirable objects. At these art-treasures we were never tired of gazing. The glass cases around the walls, on the other hand, we usually thought it well to avoid, as containing not unfrequent educational pitfalls, too readily lending themselves to cross-questioning. The very lectures themselves, as we remembered them, were doubtful. The darkened room for dissolving views, magic lanterns, and similar entertainments, was undoubtedly pleasant, and favourable to secret scrimmages with our friends, by reason of the difficulty of ultimate detection; but even here useful knowledge was always lying in wait for us. On the present occasion we are in search of useful knowledge, and have only time for a hasty glance at the general contents of the building; but it presently strikes us very forcibly that if the boys of this day are at all like the boys of our day, they must find it just a little dull at the Polytechnic.

The long basin, we find, has disappeared, ships, lighthouses, sailors, and all, except at the diver's end, and there is still the cool, green pool. The diving-bell still hangs in its old place; a man leans against a pillar hard by, polishing the diver's helmet. Can he be the diver himself? He looks low-spirited, as a man might be expected to look who has much to do with such a costume. Our friend the glass-blower has moved from the gallery where