Pantechnicon

It is plain, that such writers do not rise to the very idea of a University. They consider it a sort of bazaar, or pantechnicon, in which wares of all kinds are heaped together for sale in stalls independent of each other; and that, to save the purchasers the trouble of running about from shop to shop; or an hotel or lodging house, where all professions and classes are at liberty to congregate, varying, however, according to the season, each of them strange to each, and about its own work or pleasure; […]

To-day will the mighty cobweb-dome receive its last survey, previous to the contractors for the building handing it over to the painters and decorators. When these have accomplished their task, then will the walls and counters begin to receive their varied and valuable stores of natural and artificial productions. Waggon-loads upon waggon-loads must, we know, be exhausted, and pantechnica emptied, before the vast area, so delicately covered, shall cry “Enough, enough;” […]

We have a few economic museums, it is true; but they lack the notoriety which results from national support; and, if not carefully watched by their philanthropic promoters, these otherwise excellent places are apt to degenerate into mere advertising pantechnica.

Noticeably few of their buildings appear in the great eighteenth-century architectural pantechnica: Francis Smith’s prime came perhaps a little late for Vitruvius Britannicus, and in any case his houses were not of a kind to supply ammunition for Campbell’s palladianizing campaigns; by the time of Wolfe and Gandon they were very old-fashioned.

The Hyams extended their operations to London in 1845, when Lawrence Hyam became manager of the family’s pantechnica in Gracechurch Street, leaving his Bury St Edmunds shop in the management of one Joel Gale.

For we do not employ battleships as convoys, nor even as pantechnica conveying landing parties.

The pantechnicon was running away. It had perceived the wrath to come and was fleeing. Its guardians had evidently left it imperfectly scotched or braked, and it had got loose. […] [T]he onrush of the pantechnicon constituted a clear crisis. Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was more dangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabiting the depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by the sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon.

Not a day passes but some great pantechnica drive up to the door or drive down past my other window on the delivery road and drop off either £100,000 worth of Buddha or an early printed book, or a piece of furniture from a West African village.

In the Christian life we have a handicap. If we are encircled by the greatness of the past, we are also encircled by the handicap of our own sin. No man would seek to climb Mount Everest with a pantechnicon of lumber weighing him down. If we would travel far, we must travel light.

On the 3rd of September 1939 I made my will, and since then I have discovered how happy is the state of having made a will. No pantechnica will now follow my hearse, I have taken leave of all the junk in time, perhaps only just in time.