gas. The subsequent preparation, or rather perfecting of the gas, demands but a small amount of manual labour: it is in fact performed by the steam-engine, which pumps up the water from the well, transfers from vessel to vessel the tar and the ammoniacal liquor abstracted from the gas, and sets in rotation the arms or fans in the purifying vessels.

There is perhaps no part of the gas mechanism which requires better workmanship and more careful attention than the pipes which convey the invisible agent from the works to the places where it is consumed. However perfect may be the mode in which the gas is manufactured, however plentiful the supply, yet if the pipes are either too small or too large, if they are laid either too horizontal or too much inclined, if any of the innumerable joints are imperfectly fitted, the most serious inconvenience results. The mains vary from three inches to eighteen inches in diameter, independent of the small lateral pipes which proceed from the mains into the houses. The largest mains are placed nearest to the gas-works; the next in size are appropriated to the leading streets and thoroughfares; while the smaller are for the less important lanes and streets. Where the streets are wide, and the number of lights required large, it is usual to lay mains on both sides of the street; and the diameters of these mains are made to depend not only on the magnitude and importance of the street, but on its elevation, its distance from the works, and other circumstances. There is a circumstance attended to in laying down the mains which is perhaps not generally known. They are laid with a gradual inclination, amounting perhaps to an inch in ten or twelve yards, instead of being horizontal; and when this slope is continued for one or two hundred yards, the mains begin to ascend in a similar degree. The line of mains thus ascends and descends alternately throughout its whole length. The reason for this arrangement is, that a small deposition of fluid takes place in the mains; and this fluid, by flowing down the inclined pipes, accumulates at the lower points, where two descending lines meet here a reservoir is formed, into which the liquid flows, and by the occasional use of a small pump from above the inconvenience is removed.

How few persons would guess the length of these underground arteries! How few would suppose that the mains, proceeding from the Westminster works alone, and ramifying through the streets at the west end of the town, would, if laid in a straight line, reach from London to Bristol; or, if combined with the service-pipes' which

pass from the mains to the houses, extend from London to Exeter ! Yet such is the case. Rapid as has been the erection of new houses, the extension of the gas manufacture has proceeded with immeasurably greater rapidity. In the year 1814 there was only one gasometer at the Westminster station of the Chartered Company, then the only company in London; and this gasometer held only fourteen thousand cubic feet. By the year 1822, according to a Report on the various gas-works, presented by Sir William Congreve to the Secretary of State, the Westminster works had reached the following position :-"The whole number of retorts which were fixed was 300; the greatest number working at any time 221; the least number 87. Fifteen gasometers, varying in dimensions, the contents computed at 20,626 cubic feet each, amounting to 309,385 cubic feet altogether, but never quite filled. The extent of mains belonging to this station is about 57 miles; the produce of gas, from 10,000 to 11,000 cubic feet from a chaldron of coals. The weekly consumption of coals is reckoned at forty-two bushels for each retort, amounting to about 602 chaldrons : and taking the average number of retorts worked at this station at 153, would give an annual consumption of coals of upwards of 9282 chaldrons, producing 111,384,000 cubic feet of gas. The average number of lights during the year 1822 was 10,660 private, 2248 street lamps, and 3894 theatre lamps." In the interval which has elapsed since this Report was made, great extension has taken place in all the operations of the gas manufacture. The Westminster station now contains about six hundred retorts; the twenty gasometers have an aggregate capacity of nearly 800,000 cubic feet; the length of mainpipes exceeds a hundred and twenty miles, and of service-pipe fifty miles. The quantity of gas which leaves the works on a mid-winter's day is a million and a quarter cubic feet. As to the area of ground over which this quantity is spread, it may be best seen by taking a map of London, and tracing out a boundary, of which the northern part shall be Oxford-street, the eastern Temple-bar, the western Grosvenorplace, and the southern the Thames: the maze of squares, markets, streets, and lanes included within this boundary points out the scene of operations.

Whether or not we accept the motto used by Mr. Matthews in his work on Gas-Lighting,

"This is an art which doth excel nature,"

there is abundant room for admiration and congratulation in the history and application of this light-giving agent; and the following statement, from the Penny Cyclopædia,' shows how extensively the advantages are now appreciated:"Every large town in Great Britain has long had gas; the smaller towns have followed, and there is now scarcely a place in the kingdom without it. The continental nations. have slowly followed our example; Paris for some years, and more recently the towns of Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Caen, Boulogne, Amiens, and several others, have adopted it. It is in use in many parts of Germany and Belgium, and St. Petersburg has a small establishment, which is rapidly increasing under the superintendence of a gentleman from one of the London works. The larger towns in the United States also burn gas; and even in the remote colony of New South Wales, the town of Sydney has introduced this valuable invention, which we have no doubt will be found there, as it has been in London, as useful in preventing nocturnal outrage as an army of watchmen."

432

XIX. A DAY AT A COACH-FACTORY.

ACCORDING to the information of Stow, the business of coach-making arose more suddenly in England than has commonly been the case in the annals of our manufactures. "In the yeere 1564," says he, "Guylliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queene's coachmanne, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. And after a while, divers great ladies, with as great jealousie of the queene's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid in them up and downe the countries, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then by little and little they grew usual among the nobilitie, and others of sort, and within twentie yeeres became a great trade of coach-making." The fashion gained a permanent footing, notwithstanding the opposition of watermen and chairmen, and the vituperation of Taylor the 'waterpoet,' who reviled the new-fashioned coach as a "great hypocrite, for it hath a cover for knavery, and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness. Besides, like a perpetual cheater, it wears two bootes and no spurs, sometimes having two pair of legs to one boot, and oftentimes (against nature) it makes faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in that miserable manner, and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideway, as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kinde of carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered."

We shall attempt to convey some idea of the mode of constructing these "great hypocrites;" but that our account must be nothing more than a cursory glance will be evident when it is considered that the construction of a coach requires the aid of coach-body makers, carriagemakers, coach-smiths, coach-platers, coach-beaders, coach-carvers, coach-trimmers, coach-lace makers, coach-lamp makers, harness-makers, coach-wheelwrights, coach-painters, herald-painters, and various others whose occupations form more or less distinct branches of trade. The more prominent only of these can be here noticed,