begins to crumble

Altogether, it was a famous show; | ple, or palace and the only drawback to its barbaric away, the custom is not to restore it, splendor was the group of uncouth but to build another in its stead. The creatures in bottle-shaped helmets that damp, slimy pavement of the weedguard the outer gate, whose brown, grown courtyard is heaped with the ape-like forms, clad in faded scarlet remains of shattered cornices and fallen jackets trimmed with tawdry gold lace, pillars; and stones, dust, and rubbish were irresistibly suggestive of an organ- have choked up not a few of the small, grinder's monkey. gloomy cells that form a kind of cloister That night both banks of the Me- around the four sides of the quadranNam (Mother of Waters), which forms gle, which, once tenanted by yellowthe main thoroughfare of this amphibi- robed Buddhist monks with shaven ous capital, were profusely illuminated, crowns, are now shared by toads and the very ships having every line of serpents, with gangs of native thieves. their hulls and rigging traced against Through one of the countless clefts the darkness in living fire. Conspicu- in these mouldering walls struggles a ous amid the swarm of crowns, arches, stray gleam of sunshine, glimmering towers, stars, etc., that hovered phan- faintly upon the gilded fragments of tom-like in the dark air, figured a mon- the sacred images of Buddha, one of ster letter-box formed by countless tiny which has a somewhat curious history. jets of fire-symbolizing the postal Between two blocks of stone in the service recently established by the king niche where it used to stand may still through the interior of Siam around be seen a narrow opening, not unlike which a ring of shining letters wished the slit of a letter-box, into which once "Prosperity to the King and the Postal fell the offerings dropped through the and Telegraph Union." A girdle of mouth of the idol by the rich, and substars encircled the vast tower of the sequently taken out from behind by Wat-Cheng (Elephant Temple) on the the poor, in the belief that the holy right bank; and the tall, spear-pointed image itself sent them the money. But pagoda that sentinelled the royal mau- in process of time, when the temple soleum stood out in one great spire of began to decay and to be deserted by quivering flame against the vast gulf of its richer worshippers, the contribublackness, like the red-hot pinnacles of tions gradually ceased; and then the Dante's infernal city glaring through poorer folk, finding that their idol had the sunless gloom of the nether world. suspended the payment of his periodical dividends, avenged his remissness by breaking him in pieces on the spot.

66

A month later came the second and more characteristic of the two great This abode of desolation, however, national pageants —the “ Visitation of has still some inhabitants of its own, of the Temples" by the king and his a very appropriate kind. As you pick court and, early on the appointed your way amid the heaps of ruin, grimmorning, in order to make sure of hav-looking warriors start up before you ing a full view of the day's proceed with brandished weapons, and hideous ings, we established ourselves, by the monsters threaten you with greedy advice of a veteran English resident, in fangs and uplifted paws. But no the courtyard of the most celebrated sound issues from the gaping jaws temple of all the far-famed Wat- the ponderous clubs never fall, the Cheng. menacing claws never strike; all are of cold, hard stone, like the spell-bound guardians of some enchanted palace, awaiting the destined champion whose coming shall arouse them from the torpor of ages.

This eldest and most stately of the great temples of Bangkok is now fast falling to decay, the whole lower part of it being little better than an absolute ruin; for in Siam, as in Burma, no one ever dreams of repairing anything; and when any building-house, tem

When you stand at the foot of the great pagoda itself, you seem to be

looking up at a mountain of living greasy market women with hair rainbows, flashing and quivering inces- cropped as short as the bristles of a santly like falling water; and it re- scrubbing-brush; bare-limbed peasants quires some time to grasp all the details from the rice-swamps, whose dark skin of this singular structure, seemingly so was covered as with a blue gauze veil magnificent, but really so mean and by the elaborate tattooing which their poor. Around the central tower stand superstition believed to be a sure charm ranged like a life-guard four massive against all weapons; and children in pagodas of the bell-shaped pattern, so the native full-dress of a string of universal both in Burma and Siam, beads round the neck and a brass ring each ascended by a steep, narrow stair, on each wrist-eddied around us like a and all four inlaid with colored porce-sea. lain, while above them a mighty pinnacle springs up into the sky like an embodied prayer, to a height of more than two hundred feet.

Thanks to the kindness of the Siamese Cabinet ministers, room had been made for our party, which included the British consul and the American am

stone platform occupied by themselves, close to the spot where the king was to land; and from this point of vantage we beheld not a few spectacles which, however common in this strange region, would be abundantly startling anywhere else.

At the first glance the blaze of many-bassador, General H———, on a raised colored splendor that lights up this tower from base to summit might lead one to suppose it thickly set with precious stones, or at least inlaid with the costliest porcelain. But the admiring spectator is grievously disillusionized when he comes nearer to it, and sees that this show of glittering magnificence is produced merely by countless fragments of common earthenware plates dabbed into a thick coating of stucco, like almonds in hard-bake!

Between the sentinel towers, the pyramidal sides of the structure slope upward in one great mass of sculptured archways, painted crockets, carved cornices, and scale-shaped tiles of green and gold, rising terrace above terrace, without order and without end. Ever and anon start up weirdly through this wilderness of gorgeous hues a long line of goblin forms in many-colored robes and pointed caps, whose uplifted arms seem to support the projecting cornice overhead intended to represent angels, though their black, misshapen visages and huge tusks make them look more like devils.

Just in front of us halted a native boat, one of the crew of which, while rowing, had held between his toes the "buri” or native cigar that he had just been smoking, formed of a huge reed stuffed with tobacco. In an open space a little to the rear of the seething crowd around us, a group of supple, slender-limbed native children, with nothing on but a wreath of flowers around their solitary head-tuft of bristly black hair-the cutting of which is to a Siamese boy what the putting on of his first tail-coat is to an English one were playing a kind of Orientalized lawn tennis with a ball of palm-pith, which they struck to and fro, not with their hands, but with their feet, using the sole and the instep with equal ease.

A little farther on, a small Siamese cottage of plank and shingle was coming In the courtyard of this strange gravely up the river by itself, steered place we posted ourselves on the ap- with a huge, clumsy oar by its propripointed day, to await the coming of the etor, who stood on the wooden stair in king and his suite. We had no lack of front of the door with his children company, for the whole enclosure, so around him. One of these a little voiceless and deserted at other times, mite barely old enough to walk alone was now full to overflowing. White- suddenly tumbled overboard, but, apfrocked slaves; helmeted soldiers; parently not a whit discomposed, coolly doll-faced Chinamen in huge straw swam after his locomotive home, and hats; blue-coated guardsmen; stunted, scrambled up again to the side of his

philosophic father, who seemed as little | Spain who was burned to death bedisturbed by this incident as the hero cause the proper officer was not at of it himself.

hand to put him out. Following the king came the boats of the various princes and nobles, similarly decorated, the crews being as gay as a flowershow in their dresses of bright yellow, green, blue, or crimson, to which the dazzling sunshine did full justice. But one and all kept at a respectful distance from the king's barge, it being ordained by law that the crew of any boat daring to run against that which carries the person of Siamese royalty, shall all be beheaded on the spot; and though this humane statute has lately fallen into disuse, the native boatmen had evidently a wholesome fear of seeing it suddenly revived for their especial benefit.

But all at once a buzz of excitement through the crowd, and a general turning of heads up the river toward the palace, warned us that the Procession of Barges the great show of the day was just coming in sight. And a gallant sight it was. The king's state barge, which headed the procession, was one blaze of bright paint and gilding throughout its entire length, which | was very considerable, for it was rowed by a hundred men, all as gorgeous as tropical butterflies in their uniform of scarlet and blue, which are the royal colors of Siam. Bow and stern alike were one mass of gilding, and twisted into fantastic curves, which glittering in the cloudless sun, might well have On landing from his barge, the king been mistaken for the coils of a mon- was borne into the courtyard of the strous snake; and over the stern hung, ancient temple upon a kind of litter; by way of ornament, the tail of a yâk, but the same distinction was not exthe famous grunting ox of Tibet. Near tended to all his numerous brothers, the bow stood a richly dressed person-three or four of whom - strapping lads age, who seemed to act as boatswain, of fifteen or sixteen were carried like and regulated the movements of the oarsmen by thumping against the planks upon which he stood the end of a long bamboo which he held in his right hand; and just behind him was planted a small cannon, as if to shoot him in case he neglected his duty. After every stroke, all the hundred rowers shot their broad-bladed oars into the air at once, with a sudden jerk, the effect of which all the oars being profusely gilded was like that of a flash of lightning.

babies in the arms of their native attendants, with their bare brown limbs dangling down in a queer, helpless fashion that recalled to me how I had once seen the august governor of an African colony dragged out of the surf on to the beach, with his feet higher than his head, by the black hands of three or four stalwart negroes.

As the Lord of the White Elephant went past, the native spectators, to a man, went down on their hands and knees and bowed their faces to the

Just amidships, beneath a small, very dust; and at the same instant I open-sided pavilion loaded with bar-myself performed an equally low prosbaric ornaments, sat the young king tration without intending it. One of himself, with the pagoda-shaped crown the Siamese ministers a corpulent of Siam upon his head. This crown is old fellow with a broad, heavy, goodonly worn once in three years, which is humored face had just offered me a just as well for the unfortunate wearer, light open-work iron chair recently imits weight being fully thirty-six pounds ported from Paris, which shut up like English; and were it to fall off, there a penknife the moment I sat down is no saying what might be the conse- upon it, and sent me rolling in the quence, only one official in the whole dust, to the immeasurable delight of realm being empowered to touch the the bystanders. The only thing to be crown, which even the king himself done was to get up again and join in must not do. In fact, the dilemma is the laugh; but hardly had I done so, the same as that of the luckless king of when down went the old minister him

self in turn in precisely the same fash- | sentient beings, and themselves, which ion and lay sprawling on his back in first taught them the rudiments of methe dirt, his great bulk and weight chanics. There is a fable which, like making it no easy matter for him to most, has a philosophic basis, that men rise again. first learned the art of swimming by How much of this absurd scene the watching the instinctive actions of a king had witnessed, I cannot tell; but young frog. A popular writer pubI afterwards learned that he had sin-lished some years ago a collection of gled out my wife and myself as new instances in which human inventions. faces in the ministerial circle- for he were anticipated by the blind instinct was already familiar with those of the of beasts or herbs, and has shown, for consul and the general and had example, that the aquatic plant known asked one of his courtiers who we as Utricularia applied the principle of were. The latter auswered there the crab-pot ages before ever an archaic being naturally no Siamese equivalent fisherman caught crabs by that means. for "newspaper correspondents "that And there is no doubt that in many we were people who made marks on cases the slow, half-intelligent perceppaper a not inapt definition of a tion of the methods adopted in nature good many authors of the present day. for achieving mechanical results was one chief source of instruction for the earliest engineers.

From Chambers' Journal. THE BIRTH OF THE MECHANICAL POWERS.

THE tendency of modern research is to establish the proposition that human society is an organism which has grown to a complex form out of simple beginnings. It is difficult for the

trained intellect of to-day to form a mental picture of the untrained intelligence of the earliest men, and the language in which we express that primary mental condition does not convey exact notions to the mind. It is harder to imagine than to describe a mind with no logical thought, and no knowledge of natural facts, still harder to conceive with what slowness any progress ever took place. Yet, as we travel back upon the historic past into the region of pre-history, we at length encounter men around whom and in whom there played physical forces of which they had no comprehension. Logical inference supports written tradition in saying that the remotest men had to start in life with no stock in trade but a group of faculties which as yet were wholly undeveloped.

These earliest men found themselves environed by the facts of life; and it was the observation, not only of natural events, but of the ways of other

The axiom that example is better than precept is one which has exerted an immense influence upon social evolution, and that influence made itself felt in two ways. Some particular man would happen to do a certain thing, probably by accident, and others who noticed it would be at once filled with the desire to imitate it. In certain French watering-places, three or four years ago, there arose a fashion amongst. the women of wearing gloves of different colors - for instance, a black glove on the right hand and a white glove on the left. This practice owed its birth to the fact that at a certain concert early in the year a leader of fashion appeared in the room wearing odd gloves in this way. She had put them on unconsciously, and was horrified when she discovered her blunder; but the other women present at once imagined that this was the new mode, and it was instantly adopted. In ways just as accidental, individuals who had acquired a reputation for special wisdom or aptitude would in early societies become at once objects of minute imitation.

All mechanical labor must in the nature of things start from the foundation afforded by the human hand. But men would live in the world a very short time before beginning to see that many

mechanical

enterprises required a greater hand-power than that of a single man. The inference suggested by a study of the human remains of the glacial drift is that, from the very first, men turned themselves into a sort of compound machine by pulling together. Two facts conspired to impart to this act a peculiar development. The innate distaste of men to use their own hands on the one side, and the need for disposing of prisoners taken in war on the other, would, in an age of physical struggle, when one race could hope to exist only by effacing another, lead conquering tribes to utilize the accumulated energy of living captive men. In this sense it may be said that the first machine ever invented was a slavegang, and the first engineer its task

master.

thought to be later in point of time, there is no class more frequent than that of mortars and pestles. Sandstone blocks, or querns, bearing hollows which have about them the aspect of having been formed by the pounding of corn upon them, have been often found, and the whole inference is supported by other considerations that during the age of Stone the waterwheel as an agent for grinding corn was not yet invented. The utilization of human energy involved in the grinding of corn by hand was in fact replaced by that of quadrupeds long before horse and bullock power gave way to water-power. Cattle-mills, for instance, were in use amongst the Romans at an early date. It is difficult to suppose that the first inventors of the water-wheel used it for any purpose But besides the energy obtained from other than grinding, and the inference men, early engineers were not slow to is that mills driven by this power were utilize the power stored up in other of relatively late origin. There is reaanimals. There is evidence that even son to believe that the Egyptians had in the paleolithic age the art of domes-water-wheels in use in very early times; ticating animals' was already in vogue; and one is known to have been erected and one of the earliest scratched bones extant-the remote precursor of all pictorial art represents a man in the act of guiding a rude lopped pole, drawn by a horse, as a sort of primitive plough. The fact that in the Danish kitchen-middens,' "" or rubbish-heaps, all the marrow bones are found to be split and gnawed, is regarded as proof of the existence at that time of a breed of domestic dogs. The ass, also, as far | back as Semitic traditions go, was a beast of burden in western Asia. When it is remembered that the ass is regarded as capable of five times the work that can be done by a man, and that the horse is ten times as powerful as a man, it will at once be perceived that the adoption of these animals as prime movers would add immensely to Although the property of rubbed amthe mechanical capabilities of early en-ber was perceived by Thales as early gineers. as the seventh century before Christ, yet it need scarcely be said that heat and electricity, as practical prime movers, are developments of the past two hundred years.

The precise relative date at which water-power first came into use cannot be asserted. Amongst the remains of the Stone Age, from the earliest to those which, from their superior finish and more perfect adaptation, are

on the Tiber in the century before Christ. The first water-mill known in history is that described in connection with the Mithridatic wars. The tidewheel is of quite recent origin, none being recorded earlier than those used by the Venetians in 1078 a.d.

Windmills, also, were not known in Europe before the twelfth century, but are believed to have been in use in the East before this time. A sawmill is recorded to have been in use in Augsburg in 1332. The fact that of all modern African races not one has ever hit upon either water-power or wind-power seems to prove that they involve a knowledge of advanced kinematics not attained by any races out of the track of the early civilizations.

Let us now examine one by one, in the order of their birth, the mechanical