The artist who thus covers the globe, called a paster, is also a colourer. This is, of necessity, a work which cannot be carried on with any division of labour. It is not so with the colouring of an atlas. A map passes under many hands in the colouring. A series of children, each using one colour, produce in combination a map coloured in all its parts, with the rapidity and precision of a machine. But a globe must be coloured by one hand. It is curious to observe the colourer working without a pattern. By long experience the artist knows how the various boundaries are to be defined, with pink continents, and blue islands, and the green oceans, connecting the most distant regions. To a contemplative mind, how many thoughts must go along with the mark, as he covers Europe with indications of popular cities, and has little to do with Africa and Australia but to mark the coast lines;—as year after year he has to make some variation in the features of the great American continent, which indicates the march of the human family over once trackless deserts, whilst the memorable places of the ancient world undergo few changes but those of name. And then, as he is finishing a globe for the cabin of some ‘great ammirall,’ may he not think that, in some frozen nook of the Arctic Sea, the friendly Esquimaux may come to gaze upon his work, and seeing how pretty a spot England is upon the ball, wonder what illimitable riches nature spontaneously produces in that favoured region, some of which is periodically scattered by her ships through those dreary climes in the search for some unknown road amidst everlasting icebergs, while he would gladly find a short track to the sunny south. And then, perhaps, higher thoughts may come into his mind; and as this toy of a world grows under his fingers, and as he twists it around upon its material axis, he may think of the great artificer of the universe, having the feeling, if not knowing, the words of the poet:— ‘In ambient air this ponderous ball HE hung.’ Contemplative, or not, the colourer steadily pursues his uniform labour, and the sphere is at length fully coloured. The globe has now to be varnished with a preparation technically known as ‘white hard,’ to which some softening matter is added to prevent the varnish cracking. This is a secret which globe-makers preserve. Four coats of varnish complete the work.