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ginally fixed upon. On this disappointment he sailed for Madeira, and from thence, in October, 1823, he set out for the mouth of the river Benin, on the west coast of Africa, with the intention of making his way to the interior from that point. He entered upon his journey accompanied by an English merchant, who was to conduct him as far as the town of Benin, and to introduce him there to the king of the country; but, by the time he had arrived at this place, a malady wich had attacked him almost as soon as he had set his foot on shore, had reached such a height that he was unable to proceed any farther; and begged his companion to have him taken back to Gato. He arrived there on the 2d of December, in a dreadfully exhausted state, and being immediately attacked with delirium, expired on the following day. His remains were interred under a plane-tree on the shore, while the English vessels on the station honoured his memory by discharges of their cannon during the ceremonial. An inscription in English was afterward placed over his grave, recording his melancholy fate, and expressing a hope that every European who might visit the spot would, if necessary, cause the ground to be cleared and the fence repaired around the resting-place of the intrepid and enterprising traveller.

VOL. II.-U

CHAPTER XII.

Invention of the Power-Loom-Dr. Cartwright; W. Edwards. -Economy of Time-R. Walker.

MACHINERY, in addition to being used in spinning, is now, as we noticed in a former chapter, extensively applied to the weaving of cotton; and we now propose to give a short account of the Reverend Dr. CARTWRIGHT, to whose ingenuity this great manufacture is indebted for the introduction of its

crowning improvement. We have been supplied with the materials of the following sketch from a quarter which enables us to supply some original and authentic information.

Edmund Cartwright was born in the year 1743, and was the fourth son of William Cartwright, Esq., of Marnham, in Nottinghamshire. One of his elder brothers was the late Major John Cartwright, so well known for his steady devotion through a long life to what he believed to be the cause of truth and patriotism, and for many public and private virtues, which commanded the respect even of those who differed most widely from him in politics. Being intended for the church, Edmund, at the usual age, was entered of University College, Oxford, from whence he was subsequently elected a Fellow of Magdalen College. He early distinguished himself by his literary attainments, an evidence of which he gave to the world while yet a young man, by the publication of a small volume of Poems, which was very favourably received. About the year 1774, also, he became a contributor to the Monthly Review, for which he continued to write during the following ten years.

For the first forty years of his life he had never given any attention to the subject of mechanics; although, as was recollected long afterward, his genius for invention in that department had once displayed itself while at his father's house during one of his college vacations, in some improvements which he made on an agricultural machine which happened to attract his notice. But this exercise of his ingenuity, being out of the line of his pursuits at that time, led to no other attempts of the kind, nor to any farther application of his thoughts to such matters.

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The circumstances which many years after this led him to the invention of his weaving machine, or power-loom, as it is commonly called, cannot be better described than they have been by himself in the following statement, first printed in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Happening," he says, "to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright's spinning-machinery. One of the company observed, that, as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands would never be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. This brought on a conversation upon the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and in defence of their opinion they adduced arguments which I was certainly imcompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at the time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that there had been lately exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess. Now you will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult to

construct a machine that shall weave than one that shall make all the variety of moves that are required in that complicated game. Some time afterward, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could be only three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there could be little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such materials as sailcloth is usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts to mechanism, either in theory or practice, nor had seen a loom at work, nor knew anything of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was laid perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundred weight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time. Conceiving, in my simplicity, that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th of April, 1785. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent, August the 1st of that year,"

Dr. Cartwright's children still remember often seeing their father, about this time, walking to and fro, apparently in deep meditation, and occasionally throwing his arms from side to side; on which they used to be told that he was thinking of weaving and throwing the shuttle. From the moment, indeed, when his attention was first turned to the invention of the power-loom, mechanical contrivance became the grand occupying subject of his thoughts. With that sanguineness of disposition which seems to be almost a necessary part of the character of an inventor, he looked upon difficulties, when he met with them in any of his attempts, as only affording his genius an occasion for a more distinguished triumph; nor did he allow even repeated failures for a moment to dishearten him. Some time after he had brought his first loom to perfection, a manufacturer, who had called upon him to see it at work, after expressing his admiration of the ingenuity displayed in it, remarked that, wonderful as was Mr. Cartwright's mechanical skill, there was one thing that would effectually baffle him, the weaving, namely, of patterns in checks, or, in other words, the combining in the same web of 2 pattern or fancy figure, with the crossing colours which constitute the check. Mr. Cartwright made no reply to this observation at the time; but some weeks after, on receiving a second visit from the same person, he had the pleasure of showing him a piece of muslin of the description mentioned, beautifully executed by machinery. The man is said to have been so much astonished, that he roundly declared his conviction that some agency more than human must have been called in to assist on the occasion.

After this, Dr. Cartwright exercised his ingenuity in a variety of other contrivances; and introduced valuable improvements in the combing of wool by machinery, in rope-making, and in several other de

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