kerosene; buggies of a tenuity so marvelous in Old-World eyes that
their half-inch tires were likened to the miller of Ferrette's legs,
so thin that Talleyrand pronounced his standing an act of the most
desperate bravery; soap enough to answer Coleridge's cry for a
detergent for the lower Rhine; and one bridge model, forerunner of the
superb iron erections that have since leaped over rivers and ravines
in hundreds.

Meagre enough was the display of our craftsmen by the side of that
made by their brethren of the other side. It could have been scarce
visible to Britannia, looking down from a pinnacle of calico ready for
a year's export over and above her home consumption, long enough, if
unrolled, to put a girdle thirty times round the globe, though not all
of it warranted to stand the washing-test that would be imposed by the
briny part of the circuit.

And yet there were visible in the American department germs
of original inventions and adaptations, the development and
fructification of which in the near future were foreseen by acute
observers. Our metallic life-boats were then unknown to other
countries, those of England being all of wood. The screw-propeller
was quite a new thing, though the Princeton had carried it, or been
carried by it, into the Mediterranean ten years before. Engines
designed for its propulsion attracted special attention. The
side-wheel reigned supreme among British war-steamers, although some
of the altered liners which cut such an imposing figure till the
Sebastopol forts in '55 checked, and iron-clads in '62 finished,
their career, were under way. A model of one of them, The Queen, was
exhibited as the highest exemplification of "the progress of art
as applied to shipbuilding during the last eighteen centuries"--a