The Corliss Engine. — A Thing of Grace and Power. — The Growth of Two Thousand Years. — From Hero to Watt. — Its Duty as a School-master. — The Interdependence of the Ages. — The School in Epitome.

Let us enter the Ideal School building and take a bird’s-eye view of the visible processes of the new education.

The first object that attracts attention is the engine. It is a “Corliss,” fifty-two horse-power, and makes that peculiar kind of noise which conveys to the mind of the observer an impression of restrained power. When the student, upon entering the school, is shown this beautiful machine he is told that it, like all other inventions, is a growth—the growth of at least two thousand years; that the power of steam was known to the ancients—the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; that Hero, a philosopher of Alexandria, invented a crude steam-engine before the beginning of the Christian era, and that the engine before us, which throbs and trembles under the pressure of its battery of steel boilers in doing duty as a school-master, is the latest development of Hero’s conception. The educational idea underlying this fact is the interdependence of the ages; each generation is a link between the past and the future. “To show,” as Philarète Chasles says, “that man can only act efficiently by association with others, it has been ordained that each inventor shall only interpret the first word of the problem he sets himself to solve, and that every great idea shall be the résumé of the past at the same time that it is the germ of the future.”

The first word of the solution of the steam-power problem came from Hero down the ages, through Decans, Papin, Savory, Newcomen, Breighton, and Smeaton, to Watt. To Watt is awarded the honor of the invention of the modern steam-engine; but the first conception of his engine was derived from an atmospheric machine through the accident of it having been placed in his hands for repairs. Smeaton was the inventor of that atmospheric engine, and his mind was one of the links in the chain of intelligences extending back to Egypt, through whose united agency the steam-engine became a real thing of power in the cunning hands of James Watt, of whom the late Dr. Draper said, “He conferred on his native country more solid benefits than all the treaties she ever made and all the battles she ever won.” This law governing great achievements is full of encouragement to the student of mechanics, for while the thought of compassing any great discovery or invention may well appall even the boldest, the most humble may hope through studious industry to contribute something to the sum of human knowledge.

The engine-room of our school is neater than that of the ordinary machine-shop, but the furnace roars like any other, its open mouth shows a bank of glowing coals, and the “stoker,” with grimy hands, wipes the sweat from his sooty brow. The whole school is here seen in epitome: the “stoker” typifies the student toiling at the forge, and in the polished engine, exhibiting both grace and power in its automatic action, we see the student’s graduating project, a machine, the joint creation of brain, eye, and hand.