Christmas Holidays at the Polytechnic: the Electric Machine - drawn by H. G. Hine, 1858. You must see the children, too, at the Polytechnic - as our Artist has seen them - if you would fully understand how happy the little ones can be...we know not any spectacle on which we gaze more willingly - and we gaze with mingled feelings of admiration and amusement - than on Paterfamilias and Materfamilias surrounded by the said "familias" at the theatres or the Polytechnic! Oh the laughter and the fun! - real, hearty, unsophisticated fun! - and the happy faces, and the radiant eyes! Oh the happy hours and the pleasant dreams!...We like the Polytechnic hugely. We liked then, and we like now, its entertaining melange of wonderful inventions, and more wonderful dissolving views; of diving-bells and electric eels; of lectures and songs; of the utile cum dulce! Only, good Mr. Longbottom, at Christmas time, give us as much of the dulce as you can, and as little of the utile. We know how agreeably you sugar the pill; but, just now, we don't want the pill at all'. From the Christmas supplement to the "Illustrated London News", 1858. AiWire