Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/264

257 Charles Hawkesley’s new play has been a tremendous success for Mr. Aventayle, and, strangely enough, for the author himself. For the admirable but eccentric manager got hold of an idea that an author and a manager might be regarded as partners in the production of a piece, just as author and bookseller stand in the production of a volume. And “after expenses,” and other deductions of a most just and righteous character, Aventayle actually shared with Hawkesley the profits of Reckoning without the Host. The proceeding is most ridiculous, but Aventayle says that he is satisfied, and that the author is devoting himself to the composition of another play, of the very best character, and to which he can afford to give ample time and elaborate workmanship. This is an age of experiments and new-fangled notions, but this headlong advance towards the recognition of the value of brain-work is surely to be deprecated. A present of a fifty-pound note, on a three hundredth night, with speeches and reporters, would have been an act of generosity as well as a capital advertisement, and quite enough. But Aventayle is an odd man, and if he were not growing so rich, one might speak of his eccentricities with more severity.

So ends our story of man’s wickedness and woman’s weakness, of false love that brought ruin, of true love that lived through the storm. If there be a moral in the tale—and in what story of trial, suffering, and sorrow is there not a moral?—assuredly it shall not be preached here. It shall be left to the apprehension of those of whom the author, after ten months of unbroken intercourse, takes for the present his Farewell.

Museums are getting so extensive that it is becoming a most wearisome task to attempt to master their contents in the limited time sight-seers are generally able to devote to a stroll through them. All the world knows it is one of the most headachey things in the world to spend a couple of hours among the miles of galleries in the British Museum; and the South Kensington Museum is becoming almost as confusing a place of amusement. We may have half-hours with the different departments, however, without coming away with that sense of mental prostration which invariably attends any attempt to “do” the museum in one afternoon. There is one room in it, but not of it, which always throws open its doors free of charge—the Museum of the Commissioners of Patents, in which a whole Noah’s Ark of machines and models meets the eye of the visitor. This exhibition is totally distinct from the South Kensington Museum, and only occupies a room temporarily until a building is erected by the Commissioners with the 90,000l. and upwards they have in hand for that purpose.

In taking our survey of the riches of invention which meet the eye on every hand, let us first glance at its curiosities. In a glass case at the top of the room are several worm-eaten wooden pieces of machinery, which do not look unlike portions of Dutch clockwork, on a large scale. On the foundation of these crumbling fragments the great staple of English manufacture has been built—these are the original spinning and carding machines of the barber Arkwright. When he used to leave his basin and his lather to plot and plan wheels and cogs, his wife used to scold him for not attending to his business,—if that old dame could have seen in a dream the mighty results these ugly-looking engines were destined to give rise to in the course of a century—could see the millions of slaves enthralled to grow cotton for its delicate fingers to spin—could see the fleets of ships they called into existence to supply it with food—could see the great port of Liverpool they had created, the great city of palaces, Manchester, which they had built, the enormous fortunes which they had earned, and the comfort they had conferred on millions,—she would have dreamed a dream, which surpasses anything related in the Arabian Nights, and with the addition that the dream was destined to come true. Let us make our bow, therefore, to those worm-eaten old engines, and be grateful that their inventor had a mind superior to taking his customers by the nose. By way of contrast to the rude models of Arkwright we see close at hand a spinning machine of the present day. The clumsy beams have given place to light iron work, finished with the delicacy of a clock movement; Arkwright himself would scarcely recognise the transmutations his own germ has passed through in the course of a century. Not far off we see another of those great mother thoughts which have moved the world during the present century—there is the original model of the first locomotive that ever ran. Mr. Trevethic, in 1802, conceived the plan of substituting steam for horse-power on the Cornish tramways; and here is the original idea of a power which has since revolutionised society. The original locomotive had but two large wheels and a small guiding wheel, like a perambulator, and was called by the country people the Puffing Billy!

The machinery was confined to a cylinder, a piston-rod with a cross-tree head, which communicated the motion by two shafts to cranks on the wheels; this was the original germ which developed into the existing complicated locomotive, a model of which is placed opposite to it. Trevethic’s engine worked at the moderate pace of three and a half miles an hour, and carried coals only. George Stephenson improved upon this, and produced his engine, which carried passengers for the first time in 1829 on the Stockton and Darlington line, and continued working until the year 1850. This locomotive would have been an interesting addition to the machines in this room, but it is, perhaps, better where it is, mounted on a pedestal at the entrance to the Darlington station, where it takes its stand as the premier locomotive of the world. As it cannot be removed, an excellent photograph does duty for it, and clearly shows that its machinery was only an amplification of Trevethic’s idea, the piston-rods, cross-pieces, &c., working perpendicularly over the boiler. But a