I shall not describe to you the various instruments of torture which I saw; ‘tant pis pour l’humanité, qu’il en faut tant.’ A prettier thing was a barometer, in the figure of a lady, who at the approach of bad weather holds up her umbrella, in a hard rain opens it, and in settled fine weather uses it as a walking-stick. To use a lady as a continually changing prophet of weather. ‘Quelle insolence!’
December 8th.
Sir A——, who has a place in the Bank, showed that building to me this morning. The edifice is fine, and formerly served as a place of meeting for both houses of the Irish Parliament, whose restoration is now so ardently desired. The thing most worth seeing is the printing of bank-notes. The whole machinery is moved by a magnificent steam-engine, while a smaller one fills the boiler with water and the furnace with coals, so that human assistance is scarcely wanted. In the first room the printing ink is prepared; in the next the bank-notes receive their various marks and ornaments. This process is very rapidly performed. Only one man is employed at each press; and while he places the blank papers, one after another, under the stamp, the number of printed notes marks itself in the inside of a closed box. In the next room they are numbered. This is done on a small chest; and the machinery numbers them, as if by invisible hands, from one to a thousand. The man employed there has nothing to do but to blacken the numbers as they come out with printer’s ink, and to lay the notes in their proper order. All the rest is accomplished by the machine.
Every note which returns to the Bank after circulation is immediately torn, and kept seven years, at the expiration of which time it is burnt. This last operation leaves a residuum of indigo, copper, and the materials of the paper, which looks like metal, and glitters with all the colours of the rainbow. Of course many hundred notes go to make up an ounce of this substance, of which I carried away a beautiful piece.
We afterwards ascended the roof of this great building, a sort of world in miniature, whence, like the ‘Diable Boiteux,’ we could see into the surrounding houses; but at length so confused ourselves, that we thought we should need Ariadne’s clue to enable us to find our way down again. I arrived too late, in consequence, at dinner at Sir E—— L——’s; a thing which is not taken so ill in England as with us.
Dec. 9th.
Lord Howth invited me to a stag-hunt, whence I am just returned, equally tired and pleased. My lessons in Cashel were now of great use to me, for Lord Howth is one of the best and most determined riders in Great Britain. He had given me a very good horse, in spite of which I fell twice: this also happened once to Lord Howth himself, and I followed him so well that I think I brought no discredit on our cavalry. At length more than two-thirds of our fifty red-coats were missing. I was particularly struck with an officer who had lost an arm, and nevertheless was one of the first: his admirable horse had not refused or missed a single leap.
This sort of hunt is a very agreeable diversion now and then; but how a man can devote himself to so utterly unintellectual an amusement three times a week, for six months of every year, and always pursue it with the same passion, does, I own, remain unintelligible to me. What, besides, makes stag-hunting much less interesting in England than on the continent, is, that the stags are tame, and are trained to the sport like race-horses. They are brought to the place of rendezvous in a kind of box, and there turned out. When they have run a certain distance, the hunt begins, and before it ends the hounds are called off, and the stag is put into the box again and kept for another hunt. Is not this horribly prosaic, and scarcely compensated by the ‘agrément’ of being in continual risk of breaking one’s neck over a wide ditch, or one’s head against a high wall?
December 10th.
For some weeks past I have been a frequent visitor at the Gymnastic Academy. These exercises are become very fashionable in Great Britain and Ireland. Certainly they are of inestimable value in the training of youth; they are a highly improved Turnen,[152] but without politics. When one considers what facilities are now at hand for the physical as well as moral education of man; how those whom nature has misshapen are placed within cases of iron till they are transformed into Apollos; how noses and ears are created; and how academies are daily advertised in the newspapers, in which the most profound erudition is engaged to be communicated in three years,[153]—one really longs to be a child again, that one might come in for a share of all these advantages. It appears as if the law of gravitation operated in the moral as well as in the physical world, and that ‘the march of intellect’ went on in an increasing ratio like the rapidity of a falling cannon-ball. A few more political revolutions in Europe, the perfecting of steam-power for soul and body, and God knows what we may get to, even without the discovery of the art of steering air-balloons. But to return to the Gymnasium, the utility of which, at least, is undoubted. It strengthens the frame to such a degree, and imparts such agility to the limbs, that a man really doubles or trebles his existence by it. It is literally the fact, that I saw a young man, the arch of whose breast, after an uninterrupted practice of three months, had increased seven inches; the muscles of his arms and thighs had at the same time enlarged to three times their volume, and were as hard as iron. But even much older people,—men of sixty,—though they cannot expect to effect such changes, may strengthen themselves very considerably by moderate exercise in the gymnasium. I constantly found men of this age, who played their part very well among the young ones who had but recently begun. Some perseverance is however necessary; for the older a man is, the more painful and fatiguing is the beginning. Many feel themselves for months as if they had been on the rack, or were set fast with universal rheumatism. A Frenchman was at the head of the establishment, although his predecessor had sacrificed himself, two years before, to the glory of his art: his name was Beaujeu. He was endeavouring to show two ladies, (for there are also feminine gymnastics,) how easy exercise No. 7. was. The pole broke, and so did, in consequence of his fall, his spine. He died in a few hours; and, with an elevation and enthusiasm worthy of a greater cause, exclaimed with his last breath, “Voilà le coup de grâce pour la gymnastique en Irlande.” His prediction, however, was not fulfilled, for both gentlemen and ladies are more gymnastically-minded than ever.