tempering of bronze has an effect precisely opposite to that which the
process has upon steel.

Nevertheless, the old Age of Bronze had its vicissitudes. Those men knew
nothing that we consider knowledge now. It was a time when some of the
most splendid temples, palaces and pyramids were constructed, and these
now lie ruined yet indestructible in the nooks and corners of a desert
world. Perhaps the hard rock was chiselled with tools of tempered
copper. The fact is of little importance now since the object of the art
is almost unknown, and the scattered capitals and columns of Baalbeck
are like monuments without inscriptions; the commemorating memorials of
a memory unknown. The Age of Bronze and all other ages that have
preceded ours lacked the great essentials that insure perpetuity. The
Age of Steel, that came last, that is ours now; a degenerate time by all
ancient standards; has for its crowning triumph a single machine which
is alone enough to satisfy the union of two names that are to us what
Caster and Pollux were to the bronze-armed Roman legions of the heroic
time--the modern power printing-press.

It may be well to ask and answer the question that at the first view may
seem to the reader almost absurd. What is steel? The answer must, in the
majority of instances, be given in accordance with the common
conception; which is that it is not iron, yet very like it. The old
classification of the metal, even familiarly known, needs now to be
supplemented, since it does not describe the modern cast and malleable
compounds of iron, carbon and metalloids used for structural purposes,
and constituting at least three-fourths of the metal now made under the
name of steel. The old term, steel, meant the cast, but malleable,
product of iron, containing as much carbon as would cause the metal to
harden when heated to redness and quenched in water. It must also be