of James Watt, by which the force detected was rendered uniform, instead of fitful and spasmodic, as it had been before.  And yet, important as was the discovery of the one, and ingenious as is the invention of the other, both are of slight account in the presence of the great fact of nature observed by the English nobleman and humoured by the Scottish artisan.  The genie whom the one captured and the other tamed, is the great magic worker, apart from whose subtle strength their ingenuity had been wasted, and had come to naught.

But here I must restrain my rovings, and recall my purpose to descant on other points.  And indeed the uses of water are so numerous and varied that the subject might well engross a lecture by itself; and I must needs therefore cut the matter short.  It is only Hodge-Podge, moreover, I have undertaken to dish up before you, and I must keep my word.  For, fain as I am to dilate on the many economic virtues of water, I must not forget that the pot contains other ingredients, and that the dish I am serving out of it would yield but poor fare, if it did not.

2.  I come therefore to the next ingredient in the soup I am providing; for, as the housewife said, “there’s mutton intilt,” and it is the most important ingredient in the mess.  But the animal which produces it, like the kindred animals that produce the like, serves other purposes as well, and these no less essential to the exigency of the race; and it is of them I propose to speak.  It is beside my design to enter on the domain of the sheep-breeder, and attempt an account of the different kinds reared by the farmer; enough to say that, numerous as these are, they are all fed and tended for the benefit of the human family, and that they minister to the supply of the same human wants.

The child, as it frolics on the lawn, stops his gambols and steps gently aside to coax, to caress his woolly-fleeced companion; and the mother talks softly to her child of the innocent darlings, and asks if they are not lovely creatures, and beautiful to look at, as they timidly wander from spot to spot, and nibble the delicate pasture.  So it is to the lively fancy of childhood, and so it is to the mother whose affections are naturally melted into softness in the presence of simplicity; but when economic considerations arise, and the question is one of service and value, all such sentimental and aesthetic emotions pass out of court, and only calculations of base utilitarianism fill the eye from horizon to horizon.  No doubt the creatures are lovely and beautiful to behold on the meadows and hill-sides of the landscape, which they enliven and adorn; but man must live as well as admire, and unless by sacrifice of the sheep he must not only go without hodge-podge to his dinner, but dispense with much else equally necessary to his life and welfare.  The cook requires the sacrifice, that he may purvey for the tables of both gentle and semple; the tallow-dealer