By means of this exploit it was ascertained that a statue had once stood upon the column—­and a statue of colossal dimensions it must have been to be properly seen at such a height.  But for the rest—­if we except the carving of sundry initials on the top—­the result was only the knocking down of one of the volutes of the capital, for boys are always doing mischief; and this was carried to England by one of the skippers, in order to execute the commission of a lady, who, with the true iconoclasm of her country, had asked him to be so kind as to bring her a piece of Pompey’s Pillar.

Little fellows, especially of the class of bricklayers, are no great readers, otherwise we might suspect that the feat of the skipper-boys had conveyed some inspiration to Steeple Jack.  Who is Steeple Jack? asks some innocent reader at the Antipodes.  He is a little spare creature who flies his kite over steeples when there is anything to do to them, and lodging a cord on the apex, contrives by its means to reach the top without the trouble of scaffolding.  No fragility, no displacement of stones, no leaning from the perpendicular, frightens Steeple Jack.  He is as bold as his namesake Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and does as wonderful things.  At Dunfermline, not long ago, when the top of the spire was in so crazy a state that the people in the street gave it a wide berth as they passed, he swung himself up without hesitation, and set everything to rights.  At the moment we write his cord is seen stretched from the tall, slim, and elegant spire of the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, which is to receive through his agency a lightning-conductor; and Jack only waits the subsidence of a gale of wind to glide up that filmy rope like a spider.  He is altogether a strange boy, Steeple Jack.  Nobody knows where he roosts upon the earth, if he roosts anywhere at all.  The last time there was occasion for his services, this advertisement appeared in the Scotsman:  ’Steeple Jack is wanted at such a place immediately’—­and immediately Steeple Jack became visible.

In 1827 the child’s toy was put to a very remarkable use by one Master George Pocock.  This clever little fellow observed that his kite sometimes gave him a very strong pull, and it occurred to him that if made large enough it might be able to pull something else.  In fact, he at length yoked a pair of large kites to a carriage, and travelled in it from Bristol to London, distancing in grand style every other conveyance on the road.  A twelve-foot kite, it appears, in a moderate breeze, has a one-man power of draught, and when the wind is brisker, a force equal to 200 lbs.  The force in a rather high wind is as the squares of the lengths; and two kites of fifteen and twelve feet respectively, fastened one above the other, will draw a carriage and four or five passengers at the rate of twenty miles an hour.  But George’s invention went beyond the simple idea.  He had an extra line which enabled him to vary the angle of