But in precision of manufacture the present age is without a rival in the history of the world. People believe no longer in the old methods of scraping and filing, and hand-work directly exercised on metal is rapidly falling into desuetude. It is possible, of course, with a file and scraper and days of labour to get two flat surfaces of metal so perfect that when put together one will lift the other like a sucker on a stone, but it is waste labour. A small machine will do it as well in a few minutes. No longer is a watch built up as one would build a house, fitting part to part. By expensive machines thousands of watch parts are stamped and cut out to pattern, and then a watch is made by taking one of each indiscriminately and just putting them into their places. Comparatively unskilled workmen can do this. Where the skill is wanted is to design and make the machinery and watch the cutters, measuring them with microscopic gauges from time to time, and at once remedying them if an edge is found to be a ten-thousandth part of an inch out of place. So that the labour of man is becoming more and more a labour of design and of supervision. Machines are the slaves that do the work, for in a good machine we have an eye and an arm that never tires, and only needs to be kept in working order. But machines are not artistic, and thus art is lost while precision is gained. At present a desperate attempt is being made to supply by means of machinery the craving of the human mind for art. But it is destined to failure. Art of this kind is generally produced by the same brain that designs machines, and therefore presents an appearance of rigid accuracy and uniformity, which, while essential to an engine, is out of place in an artistic product. The great manufacturers of our Midlands do not seem to understand that there is no object in making a towel-horse as geometrically accurate as a turning lathe. It will apparently be years before they learn to put art and precision each in the place where it is wanted—precision in the works of the watch, art in the face and the case of it; machine work in the inside of a watch, hand work on the outside. When the public taste is educated so as to see the odious character of the jumble of Gothic, Egyptian, and meaningless ornament on such an article as the case of an American organ, one step will have been made towards the revival of artistic taste. But to propose as a means of reviving art that we should discontinue the use of machinery or abandon our modern cutters of precision to go back to a hack-saw and file is ridiculous, and could only be suggested by men quite destitute of scientific ideas. Art and precision each has its place: there is room for both; let neither intrude on the domain of the other. INDEX. Acceleration, 73, 77 Almagest, 53 Anchor escapement, 120 Ancient science, 50 Aristotle’s ideas, 23, 52 Attwood’s machine, 83 Babylon, temple of, 24 Balance wheel, 159