BLACKSMITHING. We regard the blacksmith as the prince of mechanics He is at once an artist and a mechanist. He who can mold a statue, having in his mind the image, while the clay is yet but a rude mass, and knows how to remove the excrescent parts, and mold the mass into the requisite forms, has the same talent which the blacksmith requires, who withdraws from the forge the flaming bar of metal and is required to mold it with his hammer into the desired shape. This shape must exist in his mind as the statue does in the mind of the sculptor, and though the fact of repeated heavy blows seems a rude way of working out his artistical thought, it is only so because his metal is less malleable than the plastic clay. We contend that whoever can be a first-rate blacksmith could be also an artist in clay and marble. But the blacksmith, in order to reduce the firm metal to the form required, must have muscle, strength, executiveness, resolution, thoroughness, power, and, if we may say it, the elements of fineness joined with the elements of coarseness; the elements of taste with the elements of strength. A first-rate blacksmith requires to be a first-rate man; (less)