two lusty comrades on the outside were hammering with surprising strength and quickness. The noise which reverberated within this boiler, in addition to that which was resounding without, formed altogether a dose which it is astonishing the tympanum of the human ear can receive uninjured; at all events we could not help thinking that, if there should happen to exist on earth any man ungallant enough to complain of the occasional admonition of a female tongue, if he will only go by rail to Crewe and sit in that boiler for half an hour, he will most surely never again complain of the chirping of that “cricket on his hearth”--the whispering curtain-lectures of his _dulce domum_. The adjoining shop contains a brass and also an iron foundry, in which were at work seven brass-moulders and five iron-moulders. In the corner of this room we stood for a few moments looking over the head and shoulders of a fine little boy who was practically exemplifying the properties of the most wonderful of the mineral productions of nature--the loadstone. Among the mass brought into this workshop to be recast are occasionally a quantity of brass shavings and other sweepings, among which there is a small proportion of iron filings, &c. The little boy’s occupation consisted in constantly stirring up the mass or mess before him with a magnet, which, as often as it came out bristling with resplendent particles of iron of various sizes, he swept clean, and then continued his work until the investigator came out of the heap as clear of iron as it went in.