Kiralfy, with his conceptions and designs, is to our generation what
Albert Smith was to the age of Dickens and Edmund Yates.

It takes some experience of life to realise how right this is; to
realise that, after all our fine philosophies and cocksure sciences,
there is no better answer to the riddle of things than a good game of
cricket or an exciting spin on one's 'bike.' The real inner significance
of Earl's Court--Mr. Kiralfy will no doubt be prepared to hear--is the
failure of science as an answer to life. We give up the riddle, and
enjoy ourselves with our wiser children. Simple pleasures, no doubt, for
the profound! But what is simple, and what is profound?

The simple joy we get from 'fooling among boats' on a summer day, the
thrill of a well-hit ball, the rapture of a skilful dive, are no more
easy to explain than the more complicated pleasures of literature, or
art, or religion. And why is it--to come closer to our theme--that the
round or the whirling have such attraction for us? What is the secret of
the fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything,
be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic
power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder,
however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the
merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of
the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their
lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels,
colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters:
there may--who knows?--have been a certain pleasure in being broken on
the wheel, and, at all events, that hideous punishment is another
curious example of the fascination of the circle. It would take a whole
volume to illustrate the prevalence of the circle in external nature, in
history, and, even more significant, in language. We all know, or think