Imposing Mechanical Effects
Mechanical force, when exerted even as a motive-power, can be employed by man on many a grand scale. The movements of massive pieces of machinery, even though moving aimlessly, still more when working for a purpose, always awaken in us the idea of power; and often also create emotions of awe and sublimity akin to those which are begotten by the spectacle of great natural phenomena. The sweep of a railway train across the country, and the dash of a war-steamer against the waves with which it measures its strength, never become paltry pageants, even though we are ignorant of the errands on which these swift coursers are bound. Still more striking are those actions of machinery which involve not only swift irresistible motion, but also transformation of the materials on which the moving force is exerted. Take, for example, a cotton-mill, which some never tire of representing as dreary and prosaic. In the basement story revolves an immense steam-engine, unresting and unhasting as a star, in its stately, orderly movements. It stretches its strong iron arms in every direction throughout the building; and into whatever chamber you enter, as you climb stair after stair, you find its million hands in motion, and its fingers, which are as skilful as they are nimble, busy at work. They pick cotton and cleanse it, card it, rove it, twist it, spin it, dye it, and weave it. They will work any pattern you select, and in as many colours as you choose; and do all with such celerity, dexterity, unexhausted energy, and skill, that you begin to see what was prefigured in the legend of Michael Scott, and his “sabbathless” demons (as Charles Lamb would have called them), to whom the most hateful of all things was rest, and ropemaking, though it were of sand, more welcome than idleness. For our own part, we gaze with untiring wonder and admiration on the steam Agathodæmons of a cotton-mill, the embodiments, all of them, of a few very simple statical and dynamical laws; and yet able, with the speed of race-horses, to transform a raw material, originally as cheap as thistle-down, into endless useful and beautiful fabrics. Michael Scott, had he lived to see them, would have dismissed his demons and broken his wand.—Prof. George Wilson.15