There is not a more interesting scene in all the Iliad than the description of Vulcan at work. But if such a distance of time is too remote, there is the forge of Kawah, the blacksmith of Ispahan, he whose apron was for centuries the banner of the Persian empire. The forge of Aurelius also, where he made the sword by which he was while emperor slain.
A scene might open in the barber's shop of Alexandria, in which the boy Ctesibius used to play, and where the first scintillations of his genius broke out; while his subsequent speculations, his private essays and public experiments, some of which were probably exhibited before the reigning Ptolemies, might be brought into view-his pupil, Heron, and other philosophers and literati might also be included in the plot. Of the connection of barbers with important events there is no end-there was the tatling artist of Midas, the spruce hair-dresser of Julian the emperor, the inquisitive one that saved Caesar's life by listening to the conversation of assassins-the history of the silver shaving vessel with which the benevolent father of Marc Anthony relieved the pecuniary distresses of a friend there was the wicked Oliver Dain; and the ancestor of Tunstall, the famous Bishop of Durham, was barber to William the Conqueror: hence the bishop's coat of arms contained three combs.
Who would not go to see a representation of the impostures of the heathen priesthood? Men who in the darkest times applied some of the finest principles of science to the purposes of delusion!
With what emotions should we enter their secret recesses in the temples !-places where their chemical processes were matured, their automaton figures and other mechanical apparatus conceived and fabricated, and where experiments were made before the miracles were consummated in public. But it is impossible to enumerate a tithe of the subjects and incidents for the drama that might be derived from the history of the arts: they are more numerous than the mechanical professions-more diversified than articles of traffic or implements of trades. The plots, too, might be rendered as complicated, and their denouement as agreeable or disagreeable as could be desired and what is better than all, in such plays the moral, intellectual and inventive faculties of an audience would be excited and improved-science would pervade every piece, and her professors would be the principal performers.
New-York, December, 1841.