r two. Water is the first topic it is laid upon me to talk
about, and I begin with it all the more readily because it suggests a
sense of freshness, and thoughts which may float our enterprise
prosperously into port.

I. Water, as already hinted, is an element of vast account in the
economy of nature, and is a recreation to the heart and a delight to the
eye of both man and beast. To have a plentiful supply of it is one of
the greatest blessings of God to the creature, and to be able to bestow
it wisely and employ it usefully is one of the most serviceable of human
arts. It is too valuable a servant to suffer to go idle, and many are
the offices it might do us, if, as it travels from the mountains to the
sea-board, we caught it in its course, harnessed it to our chariot, and
guided it to our aim. We should turn it to account every inch of its
progress, and compel it, as it can, to minister to our requirements by
its irresistible energy. Its merely mechanical power is immense, and
this is due in great part to its incompressibility; for it is in virtue
of this quality alone we can, by means of it, achieve feats not
otherwise feasible. How else could we have raised to its sublime height
that stupendous bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and which is the
wonder of the beholder, as it is the boast of the designer? It stands
where it does by the help of some mechanism indeed, but the true giant
that lifted it on his shoulders and bore it to its airy elevation was
the incompressible force of water, a fluid which is, strangely, the
simple product of the combination of two elastic transparent gases,
oxygen and hydrogen, neither of which apart has the thew and sinew of
its offspring. Nay, it is this single element, which, acted on by heat
or acting through machinery, fetches and carries for us over the wide
globe, and is fast weaving into one living web the far-scattered
interests of the world.

Water was in primitive times utilised into a motive power by the help of
a mechanism of rude design, which yet is hardly out of date, and might
recently be seen in its original, still more in modified form, in
certain back-quarters of civilisation. A stream, guided by a sluice, was
made to play upon four vertical paddle-blades, attached to a shaft which
they caused to revolve, and which moved a millstone, resting upon
another through which it passed. It was a primitive mill, which
superseded the still more primitive hand-mill, or quer