obtained by the inventors, when it is stated that in one instance alone the lessees of Chacewater Mine, in Cornwall, paid £800 a-year as a rent-charge for each of the three large engines which they kept at work.

HE progress of a nation shows itself as much in the improvement of dress as it does in any other of the arts which tend to civilize life. If we turn to the England of two thousand years ago, we find the inhabitants clothed in skins,

and the chiefs wearing only a coarse kind of cloth but little better than common sacking. Even the mailed knight, who makes such a figure in the age of chivalry, when divested of his shining armour, often wore only a leathern doublet, unless on state occasions, when the ermined tunic and embroidered vest, on which his arms were emblazoned, were put on, more to swell the heraldic pomp than for either warmth or comfort.

For ages after our grandmothers sat down to the spinningwheel, and spun the yarn which was afterwards sent to the weaver and woven into those strong homely dresses which were bequeathed from mother to daughter through generations. There were not in those primitive ages drapers' shops in every town and village, as there are now-only the chapman, or pedlar, who came round at certain periods with his packhorse, sometimes supplying the little shopkeeper, but oftener calling from house to house, as the hawkers of Scotch and Irish linens do in the present day. As for Cotton, it was unknown in England until the last two centuries; for such goods as bore the name were made out of wool or flax the "spinning-jenny" was never dreamed of-only the old "weaver's beam and shuttle," with very little improvement, the same as that mentioned in the Book of Job. What these ancient clothes were, may be seen by examining such as have been brought from the Theban tombs, or are swathed around the Egyptian mummies.

But our present is an inquiry into the rise and progress of the greatest English manufacture which machinery and steam have been brought to assist and impel, and after having briefly investigated it, our task will be to draw attention to inventions of the highest value connected with it, such as those ingenious and multiplex machines called "the spinning-jenny" and "the power-loom.”

But few of the creations of inventive genius have tended more to enhance the prosperity, and increase the influence of a great people, than these instruments of multiplied labour. Intended, originally, simply to assist one of the useful arts, and that, according to the usual estimation of the world, not the most honourable among them, these machines have wrought a total change in the modes of trade and the extent of the manufactures of Britain; and it is not too much to assert, that that extent of empire which this country now possesses

never could have been obtained, nor could the wealth necessary for its welfare and protection ever have been acquired, without their aid. Viewed in this light, the several inventions which have contributed to realize that immense amount of business which helps to feed and clothe many millions of human beings, become of importance in more than a mere mechanical point of view.

It is a remarkable fact that, while in the higher departments of machinery, where the principles of science properly so called have been requisite, as in the steam-engine and the electric telegraph, the moderns have created new fields for enterprise and new means for enjoyment, they have barely equalled and perhaps never surpassed the ancients in the construction of those articles which are formed by the exertions of the handicraft artizan. At all times clothing, to some extent at least, was necessary in the states where civilization existed to any, however small a degree, and we find in the antique monuments of Thebes plain representations of the implements by which the inhabitants wove the cloth that protected them from the changes or the inclemency of the weather.

Even at the present day, the Hindoo, seated on the ground, with his legs in a hole, and the weft of his muslin tied to the branches of a couple of trees, throws his shuttle with a skill that, in the end, produces the most beautiful muslin or calico; but yet such is the superiority obtained by the use of machinery, that the cotton grown on his native plains can be brought ten thousand miles, cleansed, spun, woven, dried, packed, and carried back again, and then sold in the province where its woolly fibre first silvered the bud, at a less price than that of the cloth produced by the Indian artizan.

It is unnecessary to remark that cloth made by weaving is formed by interlacing the threads with each other crosswise, but it is not so generally known that there are regular terms for all the different kinds of weaving. Thus plain weaving is

merely the process of making each single thread interlace with that next to it, by means of a shuttle sent horizontally between the threads which are placed upright before the weaver. In weaving what are called twilled stuffs, the shuttle is made to pass over one and under two, or over two and under three or four, just as it is desired to produce that diagonal line which we perceive in galloons, bombazines, and all fabrics of similar manufacture. When stripes are to be produced, the colours are arranged in the warp, which is the name given to the long threads, while the weft, as the cross threads are called, is made to pass in the usual manner; but when checks are required, the colours have to be arranged both in the warp and weft; and in the weaving of all kinds of patterns they are produced by making the weft to pass under and over at particular spots, wherever it is wished that the spots or flowers should be seen. When that beautiful species of fabric is desired which we often see in silks, showing various beautiful hues as the light falls upon it, and which is termed "shot silk," the warp is of one colour and the weft of another.

In all probability the weft was in the first place formed by throwing a ball of thread through the shed, as that open space is called which is formed by the weaver treading down first one treddle and then the other, to raise or depress the alternate warp threads. And this ball, unwinding as it passed along, formed the weft; but afterwards a more convenient means was adopted in the common shuttle, which is a piece of wood something in the shape of a boat, hollowed out in the middle where the thread or cotton is placed, and so protected from the rubbing to which it would be otherwise subject. In the commonest modes of weaving the shuttle is passed from side to side with both hands; but about a hundred years ago what is termed the fly-shuttle was invented by an ingenious person of the name of Kay, who resided at Bury. By this invention the shuttle, with the aid of a string, can be