The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouths of several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat.  Out of one of these a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to a perfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylinders of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out to three or four times its original size.  A sooty workman grasps the opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite side.  In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an enormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motion like a serpent of fire.  At last, when pressed to the proper thinness and length, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrived for the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon.

We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces, handling the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom.  The rolling mill, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had very extensive contracts for furnishing iron to the nailmakers and wire manufacturers.

“Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?” said I.

“They will stop for nothing,” replied the man.  “The new tariff is a good tariff, if people would but think so.  It costs the iron-masters fifteen dollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars a ton.  If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less they will still make money.”

So revolves the cycle of opinion.  Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian who questioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked upon as a sort of curiosity.  Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talk free trade.  What will they talk twenty years hence?

Letter XL.

Boston.—­Lawrence.—­Portland.

Portland, July 31, 1847.

I left Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways.  I never come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck with the civility and respectable appearance of the hackney-coachmen, the porters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion.  You feel, generally, in your intercourse with these persons that you are dealing with men who have a character to maintain.

There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, which pleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city.  In New York we are careful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practice which does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from the Hollanders, who learned it I know not where—­could it have been from the Chinese?  The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright with paint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas.  In their moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily gather, the practice may be founded in better reasons than it is with us.