admission was fixed at One Shilling. It would be a problem not without some interest to the metaphysician to determine the causes which have led to the adoption of this particular sum as the almost universal equivalent for modern amusement of every kind. Why should a poor, half-starved, half-stupefied, barking seal command exactly the same price, for instance, as the incalculable treasures of the World’s Fancy Fair? On what mercantile principles does an enterprise, whose cost is reckoned by hundreds of thousands, rely for its success upon the identical sum as that which is calculated to pay for the weekly hire of a small back room? Why, in short, should neither the quality nor the cost of the entertainment offered affect in the slightest degree the price demanded or the readiness with which it is paid! It is not so in other matters. If I wish to buy my wife a gown, I am painfully sensible of the difference in cost between cotton and silk. If, after a hard day’s work, I indulge myself in the brief Elysium of nicotine, I at once realise the pecuniary distinction between the aristocratic regalia and the “shag” or “bird’s-eye” of humble life. But if for once in a way we sally forth together for a day or a night of “popular” amusement, I find that quality is no longer an element for consideration. From comic songs to science; from Leotard to light literature; from Cornhill to Cremorne; from the high art of South Kensington or Trafalgar Square to the high rope of the Crystal Palace or Highbury Barn, the price is still the same, and when once we have made up our mind to expend each our shilling, the world. seems all before us where to choose.
I am probably by no means the first to whom some such reflection has occurred, on looking through the first three or four advertisement columns of the “Times.” Others, too, have probably ere now arrived at the conclusion that, of many shillings so spent, some at least have met with a decidedly good return. Of one of the best of these I purpose now to give some brief account.
I confess to a weakness for some slight blending of instruction with amusement. I like to think that I have carried away something for my money; and though many will doubtless discern in this evidence of a sordid and mercantile spirit, still others will, I trust, admit in the nature of the object sought some excuse for any undue eagerness in its acquisition. Deeply, then, was I grieved when the untoward accident of 1857 brought to an untimely close that favoured haunt of my boyish days—the Polytechnic; and great was my rejoicing when, on my return from a long absence abroad, I found my old friend risen like a phœnix from its ashes in far higher feather than before. Here, at least, was a safe investment for a shilling.
And, indeed, hardly had I passed up the well-known steps into the gallery of the Great Hall, ere I found myself repaid. In the course of what is poetically termed “a somewhat chequered career,” it has been my lot to travel at one time or another over a considerable portion of the habitable globe. With the outer surface of no small portion of what our geography books jocosely term five quarters of the world, I am tolerably familiar; but—too like, I fear, to most other travellers—it was to the surface alone that my knowledge had been hitherto confined. A glance at these walls and my heart expands at a bound. Here is the dear old Norwegian Ffjord, with its deep dark forests and broad still mountain ranges stretching away on either hand, just as I remember it years ago. But with it is something I do not remember at all. Here is the solid earth open right down under my feet, and stratum after stratum revealed through lingula flags, and Ffestiniog slates, and “Cambrian” and “metamorphic,” and gneiss, right down to the primeval granite.
Here, again, is my own native land,—the very spot in “famous London town,” on which I now sit to write these lines, and down under my feet I can see in this wonderful picture the London clay and the Woolwich beds, and under them the gault, and the greensands, and the mammalian beds, and the Purbeck and carboniferous strata, and through them all the dark shiny streaks of trap and veined granite. Then Vesuvius and the tremulous Solfatara, with their red veins of glowing lava and their huge black pillars of basalt; and then again we are out in the wild Atlantic, and the rocky peaks of the Azores, that loomed mistily upon our horizon as we rolled homeward before the wild westerly gale only a few short weeks ago, dive downward mile after mile through the clear green sea, over which we have so often sped, down to the old granite again, and the flat bed of the Atlantic telegraph cable plateau.
So on from point to point of well-remembered journeyings, and at each we learn something of the mysteries over which we have passed without a thought, and our wanderings assume an interest altogether new.
Then, as I turn from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, I find my wife, who has for some moments been tugging at my sleeve, rapt in reverent admiration of a great crown of dark-coloured sugar-candy, standing proudly under its glass case. Is it the form of the crown that moves her loyal heart, or is it the sweetness of the seeming candy that gently agitates her sympathetic palate? A moment’s inspection shows that it is neither of these, and I hurry her away with all convenient speed. That crown is made, not of sugar-candy, but of aniline, and it is from those dark crystals, extracted by cunning hands from the coal-scuttle of common domestic life, that the soft beauties of mauve and the brilliant glories of magenta are drawn forth for the distraction of mankind. No wonder if ladies’ dress has become an expensive item in the yearly account. Here is a little matter of colouring only; a little crystal crown, barely half a foot high, but worth a matter of some 200l. or so, and representing just 250 tons of coal. My dear, I think we had better move on.
Here is something much more to the purpose. This round, tub-looking affair must have some domestic bearing, despite its hard name. A “Hydro-Extractor.” The title is not entirely explanatory; but while I am puzzling between the rival claims of Latin and Greek, up steps one