such an ending to the struggle; but though he lived to see the great day
he breathed his last a few hours before the news reached the British
shore.

There is not in Great Britain, as Mr. Bright observed, a poor man's home
that has not in it a bigger and a better loaf through Richard Cobden's
labors. His great measure relieved the poor, and relieved the rich. It
was a good without alloy, as free trade will, doubtless, be to all
nations when their irrepressible Cobdens and their hungry workmen force
them to adopt it.

The time is not distant when we, too, shall be obliged, as a people, to
meet this question of Free Trade and Protection. In view of that
inevitable discussion I advise young voters to study Cobden and Bright,
as well as men of the opposite school, and make up their minds on the
great question of the future.

HENRY BESSEMER.

Nervous persons who ride in sleeping-cars are much indebted to Henry
Bessemer, to whose inventive genius they owe the beautiful steel rails
over which the cars glide so steadily. It was he who so simplified and
cheapened the process of making steel that it can be used for rails.

Nine people in ten, I suppose, do not know the chemical difference
between iron and steel. Iron is iron; but steel is iron mixed with
carbon. But, then, what is carbon? There is no substance in nature of
which you can pick up a piece and say, This is carbon. And hence it is
difficult to explain its nature and properties. Carbon is the principal
ingredient in coal, charcoal, and diamond. Carbon is not diamond, but a
diamond is carbon crystallized. Carbon is not charcoal, but in some
kinds of charcoal it is almost the whole mass. As crystallized carbon or
diamond is the hardest of all known substances, so also the blending of
carbon with iron hardens it into steel.

The old way of converting iron into steel was slow, laborious, and
expensive. In India for ages the process has been as follows: pieces of
forged iron are put into a crucible along with a certain quantity of
wood. A fire being lighted underneath, three or four men are incessantly
employed in blowing it with bellows. Through the action of the heat the
wood becomes charcoal, the iron is melted and absorbs carbon from the
charcoal. In this way small pieces of steel were made, but made at a
cost which confined the use of the article to small objects, such as
watch-springs and cutlery. The plan pursued in Europe and America, until
about twen