'My father might well say we should have light enough," thought Harry.

"I wonder the horses are not frightened by the fires," thought Lucy; she had been for some time breathing short, in dread every instant that the horses would start off the raised road, and overturn the carriage, or plunge and throw the man, or set off full gallop. When none of these things came to pass, and when she saw the postilion soinconceivably at his ease as to lean over, and pat his horses, and then to take off his hat, and tighten the band, and try it again and again on his head, till it fitted, Lucy began to breathe more freely, and she observed how plainly they could. see the man and horses, and the black shadow of the carriage upon the road.

Then exerting herself to find something to say, to show she was not afraid, she looked for the burning tower, but it was concealed by a turn in the road, or it was confounded with other distant flames.

"It is like the country of the fire-worshippers in the Arabian tales," said she; "and there they are," pointing to a group of figures. She saw by one of the fires, nearest the road, figures with pale faces, like spectres, the light shining strongly on them. She could see the man's bare arms, and his shovel, as he shovelled up the burning mass. "And the boy standing by and the woman with

the child in her arms, quite like a picture I have seen somewhere.”

"But never anywhere," said Harry, "did you see such a real sight as this-all those lone fires for miles round, burning how, or for what, I cannot imagine."

"It is like the infernal regions! is not it, Harry?" said Lucy.

66

"I never saw them," said Harry, nor anything like this! it is very wonderful. What can the fires be for? signal fires?" No, thought Harry, there are too many, and on flat ground.

"Signal fires are always on hills, are not they, father? I see these fires near us are from little heaps or hillocks of earth:" but whether they were artificial or natural, made by men's hands, or thrown up by subterranean fires, Harry could not divine. He wished to find out, he desired not to be told, and yet he almost despaired of discovering.

Father, I have read in some book of travels, of fires that burst out of the ground, of themselves. And I have heard of some lake of pitch, or some -what do you call it?"

Bitumen, do you mean?"

"The very thing I wanted; father, are these fires of that sort, from bitumen, or do they burst out of the ground of themselves?"

"Not exactly either," said his father, "but those are both good guesses.

"The fiery tower again, brother!" cried Lucy. They came near enough to it now, to see its dark form, and even to hear the roaring of the fire. The body of flame undiminished, undiminishing, kept spouting up from the top of the black tower, blown to and fro by the wind, nobody near or heeding it. When the road brought them to the other side of the tower, they saw an open red arch underneath, which seemed to be filled with a sloping bed of fire.

Harry had often seen a lime-kiln burning in the night. "It is a lime-kiln, I do believe, only of a different shape from what I have seen."

"No," said his father, "but that is a sensible

guess.'

Then it is a foundery! I have it now.

I remember the picture in the Cyclopædia. It is a foundery for smelting iron or brass. Now I begin to understand it all."

"And there are others of the same sort," said Lucy, "coming in view. And what is that black shadowy form moving up and down regularly, and continually, like the outline of a steamengine ?"

"Like the great beam. It is a steam-engine," cried Harry. "I see others. There they are, going on all night long, working, working, working, always doing their duty, by themselves, and of themselves; how very-"

"Sublime," said Lucy.

His father told Harry, that he was quite right in supposing that these were founderies. As to the fires, he said, most of them were low ridges of coal, which were burning into coke, for the use of the forges. The process was very simple. After the coals were set on fire, a man was employed to cover them with coal-dust through which the smoke could escape, till they were sufficiently burned. Coke, he told them, gave out a more steady and intense heat after the gas and smoke were driven off. Some of the fires, he added, might perhaps proceed from the refuse small coal, which were known occasionally to ignite spontaneously, and were suffered to burn, as there was no danger of their doing any mischief in this waste land.

When this explanation was given, Lucy's interest a little diminished, with the mystery; but Harry's increased when he considered the wonderful reality.

"I should like to see this country by daylight," said Harry; "and to learn what those numbers of steam-engines are doing.”

"That must be for to-morrow," said his father.

21

FOUNDERY,

none.

WHEN they visited the fiery moor by daylight, they saw only a black dreary waste, with halfburning, half-smothering heaps of dross, coal, and cinders. Clouds of smoke of all colours, white, yellow, and black, from the chimneys of founderies and forges and heaps of coke, darkening the air; the prospect they could not see, for there was It was a dead flat, the atmosphere laden with the smell of coal and sınoke. The grass, the hedges, the trees, all blackened. The hands and faces of every man, woman, and child they met, begrimed with soot! The very sheep blackened! not a lamb even with a lock of white wool, or a clean face. Lucy said, that it was the most frightful country she had ever beheld. Harry acknowledged, that there was nothing beautiful here to be seen; but it was wonderful, it was a sort of sublime. He could not help feeling a great respect for the place, where steam-engines seemed to abound, and, in truth, to have the world almost to themselves. These laboured continually, in vast and various works, blowing the huge bellows of the furnaces of smelting-houses, forges, and