said he to Lucy, "that the air pump is of some use in common life, and I hope you are convinced now, that the air pump is almost as useful as the water pump."

Lucy acknowledged this; and said that Harry might well triumph for the air pump.

66

Think," said Harry, " of its being applied to such different things as making sugar, and making ice; and not only employed for boiling quickly, but for freezing quickly. I do not think that Otto Guerick, or Mr. Boyle himself, could have foreseen all the uses that were to be made of their own inventions. I wish they could see all we have been shown this morning." "So do I," said Lucy; "I wish they could."

"All goes back to that one great principle of the vacuum," said Harry.

The gentleman who had shown them this establishment, and who had, with the greatest patience and politeness, explained every part of the business, was glad to perceive that he had given pleasure to the young

people, and that they had attended to, and understood what they had seen and heard. He begged that they would rest themselves before they went away, and showed them into a room, where they found refreshments were prepared. He gave a cup of chocolate to Lucy, and another to Harry.

"You must," said he, "taste some of the sugar, which has been refined by the process you have just seen."

. It was in a black Wedgwood-ware basin, which showed its whiteness.

"But, father," cried Harry, eagerly, 66 can you tell me who invented the method of applying the air pump so beautifully to this use?"

"I can tell you," said his father; “it was the invention of Edward Howard, brother to the Duke of Norfolk; he was an honour to his family; and I hope," addressing himself to the master of the sugar house," that he has been amply rewarded for his ingenuity by the gentlemen of your profession."

"The fruits have been ample," said the

master, "but he did not himself reap them; they are enjoyed by his family. He only just lived to perfect his invention."

The master of the sugar house then entered into a statement of the prodigious quantity of sugar saved by adopting the new process. Eight pounds of sugar, he said, were saved in each hundred weight, and he helped Harry to make a calculation of what that amounted to every year upon the total quantity of sugar refined in Great Britain.

Our party, having finished their chocolate, thanked their host for his attention, and took their leave of him.

As you go down the hill from Clifton to Bristol, you may see in the city below a number of very high, black-looking buildings, in the shape of huge cones, from which still darker coloured smoke, in thick black billows, is continually issuing. These conical-shaped buildings are glass-houses. Lucy remem

bered her father's having showed her, and told her of what glass is made. She recollected the taste of the alkali, of the ashes of weeds, and the touch and sight of the sand. She recollected also the

story of the accident, by which it is said the making of glass was first discovered; and, above all, she remembered the pleasure that Harry and she had had in seeing the thermometer man blowing tubes, and bulbs of glass, with his blowpipe. She wished very much to see some more glass-blowing. Her father took her and her brother one day to a glass-blower's. Her first feeling on entering the glass-house was alarm on seeing a number of men, with ladles full of red-hot liquid fire, as it appeared, running past her, and every minute crossing each other, with these burning masses, with which they seemed in imminent danger of scalding one another to death. But when she observed their dexterity, and their fearlessness, and saw how much they were at ease as to the danger, she by degrees was

reassured, and able to be amused. She saw, in the first place, furnaces from which were taken earthen pots filled with red-hot liquid glass. She was puzzled at first by the workmen calling the contents of these pots metal; but that was only their name for what was in reality, as Harry said, glass. She was much amused by seeing the operations of the glass-blower. First the blowing of a glass bottle, and of a wine glass. One circumstance in the finishing of the wine glass struck her particularly. When he cut its rim round with a pair of shears, the glass, being as yet soft, yielded under the pressure of the shears, so that the wine glass was no longer quite circular, nor was the rim even. The workman then heated the wine glass again, and dextrously twirling it round, it was brought back to the circular shape, and its rim was even.

Harry's father asked him why this happened.

He said he thought, that it was turned into a circular shape by the pressure of