The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-19 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Mr Timbs's Two New Volumes.

A History of jVonderful Inventions. By JoLn
Tiwbs. George Routledge and Sons.

THE TIMBS LIBRARY must by this time be very I
voluminous. But, we doubt much whether, among
the numerous works of this greatest of all living
Compilers, there is any that can be said to surpass
the present one, either in interest or in value. In
its survey, as its title page tells us, it ranges from
the Mariner's Compass to the Electric Telegral h.
It relates the history of each marvellous achievement
of Science, under a separate and distinctive heading
of its own. Printing (pp. 54-75) is descanted upon
in a section or chapter so comprehensive of its kind
that, beginning with an account of the Scrii,torium
of the Monasteries, it ends with the delineation of
the process of Stereotyping. The Steam Engine,
whether stationary or locomotive, is, in its turn
comic elites% upo» with admirable lucidity. Ilero's
machine—Garay's—De Caus's Brancas's Lord
Worcester's -- Morland, Pepin, and Savory's
.Islewcomen's—and lastly Watts's, being each in turn
celebrated. Every fresh step is minutely recorded in
the development of this wonderfully complex con-
trivance—such incidents as the adaptation of the
hand gear by Humphrey Potter being, as a matter
of course, especially signalised. Steam Navigation
has a chapter of its own, as is but right. And the
like may be remarked, too, in regard to the Rail-
way and the Locomotive, a chapter of which old
George Stephenson is, as a matter of necessity, the
hero. Iron ships of war, guns, and armour,
bring the reader well up in all particulars
of importance in regard to Armstrong and Whit-
worth, in respect to Captain Coles's Cupola or
'turret Ship, and the guns of Krupp and Palliser,
as well as in relation to the Fusil Napoleon, the
Prussian Needle Gun, and the French Chassepot,
the small-arms breech-loader, Snider's cartridge,
and self-acting Torpedoes. All about the Electric
Telegraph, we are here told, from beginning to end—
Wheatstone, Cooke, Morse, Hughes, Bonelli, Ladd,
Casein, Bakewell, Bain, Wollaston, Highton, &c.,
each has his full share of credit allotted to him !
After this comes a record of Ocean Telegraphy, the
arch glory of which is (as yet) the laying along the
bed of the Atlantic, of the cable uniting England, or
rather Ireland, with America. Earlier in this en-
thralling volume we have a chapter on the Ther-
mometer, and another on the Barometer—a chapter
on the Telescope, and another on the Microscope—
one devoted to the consideration of Clocks and
Watches—one devoted to Gas-Lighting, another to
Artesian Wells—one to Gunpowder and Gun
Cotton, another to Lifeboats and Lighthouses—
besides all .whieh a comprehensive section of the book
is exclusively devoted to the development of the
Cotton Manufacture. Mr. Timbs is as frequently
as possible anecdotal. Ile is • always more
or less instructive—he is never dull—he is, as a rule,
and almost as a matter of course with him, full of
entertainment. The letterpress—not a word of
which ought to be skipped, for not one word of it
is superfluous—has been happily interspersed with a
variety of admirably good woodcut embellishments.
As a whole, the book is singularly typical of the
age we live in, and it is therefore one that well de-
serves, what it will no doubt at once command, an
immense circulation.

Curiosities of London. By John Timbs, F.S.A.

New Edition. Longman and Co.

The only possible accusation we can bring against
this Old Friend with a New Face is that there is so
much too much of him I The accusation, however,
almost amounts to a panegyric. It is like saying,
in other words, what (familiar though the phrase is)
is nothing less than au egregious paradox—that
there is, here, in point of fact, too much of a good
thing. If only the work had been divided into two
volumes, we should probably have refrained alto-
gether from throwing out the foregoing remark.
For, massed together, as it is, in a bulky tome of
880 closely printed pages—the book is in its pre-
sent form anything but a haudy book. It is un-
wieldy to the last degree--a book to be consulted
only when propped no on a reading desk or read-
ing easle. lint then it is worth consulting, even
though one is put to some contrivance to that end
beforehand. For the work is the ripenedfrnit of many
years laborious, systematic research, and c)mprises
within it, besides, as many as sixty years' personal
recollections. The Research and the Recollections
being those of a man of letters as painstaking, as
observant, and as conscientious as John Timbs,
F.S.A. " Curiosities of London," observe, is the
title of the book. This is therefore no mere dry topo-
graphical record or description of the great metro-
polis. It is rather than that tke accumulation of
all that is most interesting in regard to the richest,
the largest, the most populous, and, may we not
add, bluntly and just as emphatically the ugliest
city in the whole world. "The man that is tired of
Loudon is tired of existence," said one of the
greatest Londoners who ever lived— old Samuel
Johnson. And the words have been taken by Mr.
Timbs as the motto for his title-page. Here, in re-
gard to this vast capital, we have had collected
together for us, all the particulars that could well be
wished for in respect to all the rare and remarkable
objects of interest in the metropolis. The whole of
the contents, moreover, may be consulted in one
snise without difficulty, for inasmuch as they will
be found to have been arranged alphabetically.
The Adelphi, for example, is the first loca,ity
visited, and the Zoological Society's Gardens is the
last. The clue is therefore very simple through all
this gigantic and tortuous labyrinth. And it eau
be grasped at any point in the midst of all its
involutions. Twelve years have passed by since,
in 1855, the book made its first appearance. It
was even then a volume of some 800 pages, but the
size was small-octavo. Now it is a book of nearer
900 pages, and those library-sized and very closely,
though also it should be said very clearly,
printed. Only that it has manifestly been all
along a hobby with its author, it never could have
been accomplished as it has been—so comprehen-
sively, that is, and yet so minutely, in all the con-
stituent portions of it. It is a very Microcosm of
Curiosities, and looks as if it related to a mammoth
city, like that of which Mr. Podsnap was never tired
of talking so boastfully to the Intelligent Foreigner
as London, Londres, London !