an unfailing omen. That sight makes me
sure that pleasant amusement might be found
in blowing a multitude of soap-bubbles at a
time, instead of sending them forth to seek
their fortune in solitude. Some fine summer's
afternoon, we will endeavour to make the
experiment.

The final chamber, in which syrup is
separated into sugar and treacle, is on the ground-
floor, and in a warm climate. You enter a
door through a glazed partition; on the left
is an apartment which looks like a tan-yard
under cover. But the vats are pools of sweetness
in different states of solidity. Some are
but lately filled from the pipes which run
around the enclosure; others are being
emptied of their contents. We may walk
amidst them, but had need proceed carefully;
they are more than six feet deep, and a false
step might be followed by hopeless suffocation.
On account of the heat, as well as by reason
of the sticky gummy nature of the sugar, the
men who are emptying them have no other
clothing than a very short pair of trowsers.
After a day's work at the bottom of the vat
in a full suit of clothes, a man would certainly
be unable to get into them again next morning,
even if he could get out of them at night.
A little imagination and a shade of twilight
would convert these sugar labourers into
gladiators stained with the gore of their
adversaries. Only one man at a time works in
a vat. He descends by a ladder fixed against
the side, and stands on a plank resting upon
the glutinous mass, which he seems to fear to
touch with anything besides his wooden
shovel. With this he raises lumps, or clods,
of a brownish substance, which, if you look
closely, proves to be beet-root treacle swarming
with grains of crystallized sugar. He
may get the clod upon his shovel, but he
would have a difficulty in getting it off without
assistance; so people on the edge of the
vat help him with their hands, and pull, and
scrape, and push the huge bon-bon which he
offers them into a copper receptacle that
might pass with the ignorant for a two
handled coal-scuttle. Some of these sugar
scuttles are emptied into wicker baskets lined
with cloth, to dry and drain for the refineries,
with which we have nothing to do at present;
but samples from other vats are at once converted
into cassonade, or the article known in
England under the various titles of brown,
coarse, or powder sugar. The French call it
also sucre brut to distinguish it from white
loaf sugar, the preparation of which is a
distinct affair.

Before I tell you how the concluding piece
of legerdemain is managed, I should like you
to pause for just one instant and guess. How
would you contrive, in the course of from
three to seven minutes, to separate this scuttle
full of half-melted lollipop into two portions,
one consisting of clean dry powder sugar, the
other of treacle? I guess that you will not
be able to guess; for, if the true idea were to
strike you, it would seem at first so
impracticable, that you would immediately dismiss
it. The separation is effected by the same
agent which prevents the planets from rushing
into the sun, and the moon from tumbling
down upon the earth. Sugar is made to settle
in one direction, and treacle is compelled to
disappear in another, by the application of
centrifugal force.

Opposite, and contiguous to the crystallising
apartment is a room which I shall venture
to call the chamber of whirligigs. We have
had some curious bubble-blowing, we are now
to have a game of the most furious top-
spinning that I ever saw. At a slight elevation
above the floor are some circular iron boxes,
about two and a half feet in diameter, which
are somehow connected with the steam-engine
by leather straps. On the floor stand a
number of smaller iron vessels, resembling
sieves, which in truth they are, only the part
which sifts the articles introduced, and which
is made of brass wire-cloth, is the circular
side, not the bottom of the sieve. Into the
sieve a man shoots his scuttle-full of lollipop;
the spinning-man puts it into the box, or
turbinet, gives a few touches, and it begins to
spin, at first slowly, then quicker and quicker,
till at last it revolves at the rate of a thousand
revolutions in. a minute. It would make a
man look about him to take a few turns in
such a merry-go-round as that! As the
motion increases, you can perceive the treacle
and sugar fly to the sides of the sieve, none
remaining at the bottom, but forming a
smooth and regular wall around the inside of
the sieve. All you can now distinctly see is
that this wall is gradually becoming lighter
in colour; and at last, one of the spinning
men approaches with a long-spouted tin pot
containing about a quart of water in his hand.
He raises this aloft, and dexterously and
steadily pours it, so that the stream falls on
an iron disk, or small circular plate, exactly
in the centre of the sieve. Of course the
water splashes in fine drops against the wall
of sugar, and washes out any remaining
portion of treacle which has as yet resisted
the centrifugal force. The sugar at once
becomes a shade or two lighter, a few more
hundred revolutions are given to dry it, and
to whisk away the water, as a housemaid
drains her mop, and the turbinet is made to
stop. A dozen pounds or more of sugar are
added to the heap. Another scuttle-full from
the vat is put into the sieve, and the whirligig
recommences its office.

The molasses or treacle are caught by the
sides of the iron box, and run down a hole in
the centre into a common receptacle. They
are worked over again twice or three times,
to extract the crystallisable particles to the
utmost, and alcohol is sometimes distilled
from what remains. But beet-root treacle
is not like the molasses from the cane; it has
so disagreeable a flavour as to be quite uneatable.
If I had a boy who was too much