All this had passed away for ever, and here amidst the countless thousands I stood alone, as much uncared for as the lamp-post beside me. How often I thought, in those early days in London, "Shall I ever be known here? Shall I ever have the pleasure of seeing a smile of recognition light up the face of any person in these ceaseless streams of unsympathetic strangers?" The thought made me very sad, and at times sigh for the old home; but it has been truly said that "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and so I found the advantage of my sanguine temperament. "Why," I asked myself, "instead of pining after the old associations of my native village, should I not strive to make a name for myself even in this mighty London? It is not impossible, for many others have done it, and I at least will make the effort." Such reflections as these enabled me to settle down again, and resume my old home occupations.

I knew full well that I laboured under the great disadvantage of not having been brought up to any regular trade or profession, but, on the other hand, I felt a consciousness that Nature had endowed me with an inventive turn of mind, and perhaps more than the usual amount of persistent perseverance, which I thought I might be able to use to advantage.

In the course of my ramblings I had met with an Italian, who had shown me several boxes full of plaster casts of the most beautiful medallions; real gems of art at one penny a-piece. I selected a number of them with the intention of casting them in metal, an occupation in which I took a deep interest at that time. But the moulding and casting of more intricate objects had even a much greater charm, and I began to try my hand on the reproduction in metal of natural objects, both vegetable and animal. For this purpose the article to be cast was immersed in a semi-fluid composition, of which plaster-of-Paris formed the base. The mould was gradually dried and then made red-hot, and the object was thus destroyed. An opening into the mould on one side allowed the ashes to be removed, and gave entrance for the metal of which the object was to be formed. In this way a rosebud or other flower, with its stalk and leaves, could be produced; but, alas! the whole of those thin, delicate leaves were destroyed in attempting to break away the mould. Some of the fragments were exquisitely beautiful, but no entire cast could be obtained.

All sorts of schemes were tried, and tried in vain, until, when on the eve of abandoning the whole affair as impossible, I hit upon the happy idea of using unburned blue-lias limestone ground to a fine powder. This, and the dust of Flanders brick, with a small quantity of plaster-of-Paris, formed the mould; the destruction of the succulent vegetable, by making the mould red-hot, had also the effect of burning the limestone portion of the composition, while the brickdust served to destroy much of the cohesive strength of the plaster-of-Paris, the hardness of which had proved so great an obstacle in extricating the casting. When the mould had cooled down, all that was required to get out the casting was to apply cold water to it, when the burnt lime slaked, became hot, and fell away from the cast. A sharp jet of water from a tap on the main service sufficed to wash out all the small particles from the deep recesses, and liberate the casting perfect and unbroken. I prepared for this purpose an alloy of antimony, iron, bismuth, and tin, and in all cases made the mould with a very tall gate or runner, keeping it red-hot for half an hour after the metal was poured into it. In this way the static pressure of the metal which remained fluid forced the air slowly but surely through the pores of the mould, and occupied every minute cavity; so that the fine pile on the back of a leaf and the tiny prickles on the stem of a rose were all produced as sharp as needle-points.

The love of improvement, however, knows no bounds or finality. Beautiful as these representations of nature were, there was one great drawback which I still desired to surmount. They were only white metal, and were sometimes looked upon as merely "lead castings."*² I therefore attempted to cast them in brass or yellow metal, but this I found was impossible. I then conceived the idea of coating them with a deposit of copper from an acid solution of that metal. Many were the trials and failures in these attempts, but after a time I made more suitable solutions, and found out how to cleanse the surfaces of the delicate objects without injuring them; and finally I succeeded in getting a beautiful thin coating of copper on every part of the surface. The castings were simply laid on the bottom of a shallow zinc tray, and a saturated solution of sulphate and of nitrate of copper, in certain proportions, was poured into the bath, which resulted in producing a thin coating of bright metallic copper over the entire surface of the castings, so