for the general purposes of the Exhibition, to adopt thirty broad divisions; of which Classes, four were of Raw Materials; six of Machinery; nineteen of Manufactures; and one of the Fine Arts. And these thirty Classes may be considered as having been confirmed by their practical application to the collection, and to the work of the juries in dealing with it; except that, in some instances, it was found necessary to subdivide a Class into others. Thus, Class X., which was originally described as Philosophical Instruments, was found to consist of materials so heterogeneous, that there were separated from it three Classes, of Musical, of Horological, and of Surgical Instruments. And to Class V., Machines, was added an Accessory Class, V a, Carriages. And, on the other hand, Classes XII. and XV., Woollen and Worsted, it was found could be advantageously thrown into

one.

Within these Classes, again, were other subdivisions, which are marked in the Catalogue by letters of the alphabet. Thus, the Third Class consists of substances used for food; and of these the vegetable division contains Sub-classes, A, B, C, D, E, F, G: the first being cereals, and the like; the second, fruits; the third, drinks, and so on. And in like manner, the Sixth Class, manufacturing machines and tools, had Sub-classes, A, B, C, D, E, F: as A, all spun and woven fabrics; B, manufactures of metals; C, manufactures of minerals and mining machinery, and the like.

And, again, each of these Sub-classes was separated into Heads, by numbers. Thus, the Sub-class cereals and the like, are 1, the common cereals; 2, the less common; 3, millet; 4, pulse and cattle-food; 5, grasses and roots; 6, flours (ground grain); 7, oil seeds; 8, hops. And the Sub-class A, of manufacturing machines and tools, included the Heads, 1, machinery for spinning and weaving cotton, wool, flax, hemp, silk,-for working caoutchouc, gutta percha, hair; 2, papermaking; 3, printing. And to shew how much practical experience governed these sub-divisions, I may mention that great aid in this task was found in the Trades' Directories of Birmingham and Manchester, and other great manufacturing towns.

I have followed this classification into the ultimate ramification of the Catalogue, at the risk of being, I fear, tedious for a moment; partly because I wish to make a reflection upon it; and partly, also, that you may see what a vast work is performed if this classification be really coherent and sound. For, first, turn your attention to the one Head which I have mentioned: this single Head includes no less than this, all machinery for the complete formation, from the raw material, of all fabrics of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, silk, caoutchouc, gutta percha, and hair. This is Head 1 of Subclass A. Under this Head, or under the first Particular Head, cotton, are very many Articles in the Great Exhibition. Besides this Particular Head, and the other Particular Heads, wool, flax, caoutchouc, &c., included in the General Head 1, there are two other Heads in this Sub-class, each of like extent. Along with this Sub-class A, are also Sub-classes B, C, D, E, F, each of an extent not much inferior to A; and thus, this Class VI. contains a great mass of Heads, each including a vast number of Articles. Yet in the Catalogue, this Class VI. is one of the smallest extent of all the thirty. And though this may arise in part from some of the others being followed out into greater comparative detail than this Class VI., yet still enough will remain in this mode of putting the matter to shew to you how vast and varied is the mass of objects which has thus been classified, and how great the achievement is if this mass have really been reduced into permanent order; if this chaos, not of elements only, but of raw materials mixed with complicated machines, with manufactured goods and sculptured forms, have really been put in a shape in which it will permanently retain traces of the ordering hand.

What the value and advantage would be of a permanent and generally accepted classification of all the materials, instruments, and productions of human art and industry, you will none of you require that I should explain at length. One consequence would be that the manufacturer, the man of science, the artisan, the merchant, would have a settled common language, in which they could speak of the objects about which they are concerned. It is needless to point out VOL. LII. NO. CIII.-JANUARY 1852.

B

how much this would facilitate and promote their working together; how fatal to co-operation is diversity and ambiguity in the language used. One of our old verse writers, expanding according to the suggestions of his fancy, the account of the failure of men in the case of the tower of Babel, has made this cause of failure very prominent. He supposes that, the language of the workmen being confounded, when one of them asked for a spade, his companion brought him a bucket; or when he called for mortar, handed him a plumbline; and that, by the constant recurrence of these incongruous proceedings, the work necessarily came to a stand. Now the conditions necessary, in order that workmen may work together, really go much farther than the use of a common language, in the general sense of the phrase. It is not only necessary that they should call a brick a brick, and a wire a wire, and a nail a nail, and a tube a tube, and a wheel a wheel; but it is desirable, also, that wires, and nails, and tubes, and wheels, should each be classified and named, so that all bricks should be of one size, so that a wire number 3, or a tube section 1, or a six-inch wheel, should have a fixed and definite signification; and that wires, and tubes, and wheels, should be constructed so as to correspond to such significations; and even, except for special purposes, no others than such. It may easily be conceived, for instance, how immensely the construction, adjustment, and repair of wheelwork would be facilitated, if wheels of a certain kind were all made with teeth of the same kind, so that any one could work in any other. And something of this sort,-something which secures some of these and the like advantages, has been done with reference to cast-iron toothed wheels. And an eminent engineer, whose works stood in the Sixth Class of the collection to which I have just referred, has proposed a system by which a like uniformity should be secured in the dimensions and fitting of machinery; and especially with regard to screws; fixing thus their exact diameter and pitch, as it is called a process which would have the like effect of making the construction, application, and repair of all work into which screws enter vastly more easy and expeditious than it now is. Now these are the great and beneficial effects which

follow from a good and generally accepted sub-classification of one of the lowest members of that classification which the Catalogue exhibits to us. Mr Whitworth would classify screws, and wheels, and axles, as the millwrights have classified toothed wheels. But screws, or wheels, or axles, are merely one kind of tool, one element of machinery; and tools and machinery are only one class out of thirty of the great collection of which we are speaking. If, then, so great benefits arise from a common understanding as to the species of one of the lowest members of our classification, may we not expect corresponding advantages from a fixation of the names and distinctions of the higher members ?-of the names of tools and machines, for instance; and from a perception of their relations to each other, which a good classification brings into view; and then, again, from a clear perception of the relation of class to class and of their lines of demarkation? And may we not expect that on such grounds, the very language of Art and Industry, and the mode of regarding the relations of their products, shall bear for ever the impress of the Great Exhibition of 1851 ?

There is one other remark which I should wish to make, suggested by the classification of the objects of the Exhibition; or, rather, a remark which it is possible to express, only because we have such a classification before us. It is an important character of a right classification, that it makes general propositions possible; a maxim which we may safely regard as well grounded, since it has been delivered independently by two persons, no less different from one another than Cuvier and Jeremy Bentham. Now, in accordance with this maxim, I would remark, that there are general reflections appropriate to several of the divisions into which the Exhibition is by its classification distributed. For example, let us compare the First Class, Mining and Mineral Products, with the Second Class, Chemical Processes and Products. In looking at these two classes, we may see some remarkable contrasts between them. The first class of arts, those which are employed in obtaining and working the metals, are among the most ancient; the second, the arts of manufacturing chemical products on a large scale, are among

the most modern which exist. In the former class, as I have said, Art existed before Science; men could shape, and melt, and purify, and combine the metals for their practical purposes, before they knew anything of the chemistry of metals; before they knew that to purify them was to expel oxygen or sulphur; that combination may be definite or indefinite. Tubal-Cain, in the first ages of the world, was "the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron;" but it was very long before there came an instructor to teach what was the philosophical import of the artificer's practice. In this case, as I have already said, Art preceded Science; if even now Science has overtaken Art; if even now Science can tell us why the Swedish steel is still unmatched, or to what peculiar composition the Toledo blade owes its fine temper, which allows it to coil itself up in its sheath when its rigid thrust is not needed. Here Art has preceded Science, and Science has barely overtaken Art. But in the second class, Science has not only overtaken Art, but is the whole foundation, the entire creator of the art. Here Art is the daughter of Science. The great chemical manufactories which have sprung up at Liverpool, at Newcastle, at Glasgow, owe their existence entirely to a profound and scientific knowledge of chemistry. These arts never could have existed if there had not been a science of chemistry; and that, an exact and philosophical science. These manufactories now are on a scale at least equal to the largest establishments which exist among the successors of Tubal-Cain. They occupy spaces not smaller than that great building in which the productions of all the arts of all the world were gathered, and where we so often wandered till our feet were weary. They employ, some of them, five or six large steam-engines; they shoot up the obelisks which convey away their smoke and fumes to the height of the highest steeples in the world; they occupy a population equal to that of a town, whose streets gather round the walls of the mighty workshop.* Yet these processes are all derived from the chemical theories of the last and the present century; from the investigations carried on in the laboratories of Scheele and Kirwan, Berth

*Illustrated Catalogue," p. 184.