ly stationed at the loom in which it was wrought, the one to throw the shuttle from right to left, and the other to throw it back from left to right. It was not till the year 1769 that an attempt was made upon any considerable scale to spin cotton thread by machinery; for, whatever may have been done before this time by individuals of mechanical ingenuity in inventing contrivances for that purpose, it is certain that the invaluable improvement in question was really introduced into the manufacture by Arkwright when he took out his patent and built his first mill.

The revolution, therefore, we may almost say, in the whole aspect and character of the manufacturing and commercial interests of England which has hence arisen, is the work of only the last sixty years. About the beginning of the last century, the quantity of cotton wool annually imported into Great Britain did not amount to 1,200,000 lbs. ; and by the year 1720 it had not increased to much beyond 2,000,000 lbs. There are no returns from 1720 to 1771; but the importation had probably gone on increasing during that interval, although at a slow rate. Nor did it make a very rapid progress even for several years after spinning by machinery was introduced, having from 1771 to 1775 averaged only 4,764,589 lbs., and for the next five years only 6,706,013 lbs. In 1784, the year immediately preceding the final repeal of Arkwright's patent, it amounted to 11,482,083 lbs. That event gave a great impulse to the manufacture, the average importation for the next five years having grown to 25,443,270 lbs. annually. In 1799 it had risen to 43,379,278 lbs., and in 1800, to 56,010,732 lbs. In 1817 it was 124,912,968 lbs., and in 1825 it actually amounted to the immense quantity of 228,005,291 lbs. The average importation of cotton wool into Great Britain may now be stated as considerably exceeding 200 millions of pounds per annum, or as amount

ing to fully a hundred times what it was a century ago, and to more than fifty times what it was when Arkwright began to spin.

The whole of this raw material, with the exception of about ten millions of pounds which are used in an unmanufactured state, and from ten to twenty millions which are annually exported, is spun into thread, and mostly wrought into cloth. The Reverend Dr. Cartwright invented his power-loom in 1784; but it is only since the commencement of the present century that weaving by machinery has become general. Steam was first applied as the moving power for the spinning machinery in 1785; in which year Messrs. Boulton and Watt erected one of their rotative engines for a factory belonging to the Messrs. Robinson at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire. In the present day the cotton is carded, spun, and woven into cloth in the same manufactory; these different operations being performed by machinery, the several parts of which are all set in motion by a single steam-engine.

In 1787 the number of spinning factories in the county of Lancaster amounted only to 42, of comparatively inconsiderable magnitude; in August, 1825, there were, according to Mr. Baines, no fewer than 104 such factories in Manchester alone, which were worked by 110 steam-engines, of the aggregate power of 3598 horses. The number of steamlooms now at work in the kingdom is calculated at 45,000, of which about 8000 are in Scotland, and above 20,000 in Manchester. In 1824, it has been stated that the number of spindles constantly in motion was about six millions, and the power by which they were moved equal to that of 10,572 horses. In another statement, however, drawn up by Mr. Kennedy, it is calculated that in 1817 (when the importation of cotton wool was not nearly so great as in 1824) the number of spindles was 6,645,833, and the moving power equal to that of 20,768 horses.

Some idea may be formed of the growth of this manufacture since the year 1769, by contrasting the astonishing number of threads which it would thus appear are spun every day now, with the 50,000 which were all that were produced then.

66

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The produce of all this machinery is, as may be supposed, immense. "In the present improved state of this (the weaving) process," says the writer of the article already referred to in the "Encyclopædia Britannica, one person, generally a girl, attends to two looms, the weekly produce of which is from seven to nine pieces of cloth, of seven eighths wide and twenty-eight yards long." single factory in Manchester," says Mr. Guest, writing in 1828," and that not of first-rate magnitude, receives the raw cotton, and turns out a web of cloth, varying in width from three quarters of a yard to a yard and a quarter, of forty miles in length, every week." In 1750, it has been calculated that the whole amount of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain did not exceed the annual value of $1,000,000; it is now considered, on good grounds, to amount to fully one hundred and eighty millions of dollars per annum. Sir Richard Arkwright states in his Case, published in 1781, that the capital then invested in buildings and machinery by those engaged in this trade, amounted to $1,000,000; it is calculated to amount now, in Lancashire alone, which possesses about four fifths of the trade, to $40,000,000. In the year ending on the 1st of May, 1818, 105 millions of yards of cotton cloth of all sorts were manufactured in Glasgow and the neighbourhood, of which the value was about $26,000,000. this about one half was exported. The value of the cotton cloths, twist, and yarn, exported from Great Britain for some years past, has been, on an average, about $90,000,000, leaving, of course, about $100,000,000 worth for home consumption. The export trade in cotton is now fully three times that

Of

in woollens, the manufacture of which used to be the great staple of the kingdom.

The extraordinary perfection to which every part of the cotton manufacture has now been carried, is another result for which we are entirely indebted to the introduction of machinery. Especially since the invention of the mule, a compound of the jenny and the water-frame, about the year 1790, the muslins manufactured in England have been every year attaining a greater fineness of fabric, and are now rapidly approaching to a rivalry, even in this respect, with the most exquisite productions of the East. As an illustration of the state of advancement to which the spinning process has been brought, it may be mentioned that "Mr. John Pollard, of Manchester, spun, in 1792, on the mule, no fewer than 278 hanks of yarn, forming a thread of 233,520 yards, or upward of 132 miles in length, from a single pound of raw cotton." The diminution in the price of the manufactured article which has been produced by the successive improvements in the cotton machinery is equally extraordinary. Yarn of what is called No. 100, which even in 1786, after its price had been greatly reduced by the cancelling of Arkwright's patent, sold for thirty-eight shillings, has fallen in price every year since that time, and is now to be had for three or four shillings. The raw material is now indeed brought from India, and manufactured into cloths in England, which, after being re-exported to that country, are actually sold there cheaper than the produce of the native looms. There can hardly be a more striking proof than this of the triumph of machinery.

Finally, it has been calculated that while the number of persons employed in the cotton manufacture in Great Britain in 1767, did not probably amount to 30,000, the number of those now engaged in its different departments can hardly be less than a million. Yet, "in some branches of the

business," it has been stated, "the spinning in particular, such is the economy of labour introduced by the use of machinery, that one man and four children will spin as much yarn as was spun by six hundred women and girls fifty years ago.'

CHAPTER XI.

Pursuit of Knowledge by Travellers.-Lithgow; Walking Stewart; Athenian Stuart; Ledyard; Belzoni.

Books, immense as their value really is, are overrated when it is supposed that they may be made to teach us everything. Many of the items which constitute the mass of human knowledge have not yet found their way into books, but remain still loose and ungathered among the habits and daily transactions of society, or of some particular portion of it, from intercourse with which they are much more easily and perfectly learned than they could be from books, were they actually to be there recorded. But much of what meets us in our direct intercourse with the world, and supplies us with the richest sources of reflection and speculation, does not admit of being transferred to books at all. Indeed, what should any one of us know of that country or portion of society with which we happen to be most familiar, if all our knowledge of it consisted merely either of what has been, or of what could be, set down about it in books? What mere description, even the most minute and faithful, ever placed before any man an exact representation even of a scene in the world of inanimate nature? The copy, it is true, simply by virtue of its being