without observation, since it has the most important influence on his condition. The cultivation of the soil, and causing it to produce things useful to him, instead of producing by chance things either useless or of little worth, was a great step in his progress. Another improvement in his condition was effected by the domestication of animals, with the training and subjecting of labouring cattle to his yoke and service—the ox, the ass, the horse, the camel, and other beasts of burthen. The ox and the ass appear to have been trained to labour at a very early period. In Arabia, in the time of Job, we find them so employed. It does not seem that the horse was in general use quite so soon; though, in Egypt, horses are spoken of in the time of the patriarch Jacob. Afterwards came the use of wheel carriages, and the formation of roads. Not less important than these were the art of navigation, and the construction of canals. Amongst the inventions which have mainly contributed to the perfection of navigation, we cannot overlook the telescope, the mariner's compass, chronometers, and the method of computing the longitude. We are indebted to these for America, and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, with almost all the safety and certainty with which vessels are navigated. Amongst the arts, those of metallurgy and glassmaking must hold a conspicuous place.

The spinning of yarn, and weaving of cloth, arts the commencement of which is lost in the darkness of the earliest ages, have been perfected in recent times. There is perhaps no one of the industrial arts in which the benefits of the application of modern science, and mechanical skill, are more strikingly displayed than in that of the manufacture of cloth. The spinning of yarn in ancient times was performed by females with the distaff, as it still is in some parts of Eastern Europe. In a Narrative of a Voyage down the Danube, lately published, the author observed females on the banks of that river occupied in spinning with this most ancient instrument, the distaff. In England, however, before the modern improvements had been introduced, this primitive instrument had long since given place to the more efficient one, the one-thread spinning-wheel; which enabled the spinner, with the same labour, to perform double the quantity

of work. The latter was the only instrument in use in this country previous to the reign of George III. In the year 1738, indeed, a spinning machine had been invented by Wyatt, for which he obtained a patent; but through want of funds the manufacture did not succeed, and after having been carried on a few years, was finally abandoned. It was not till about thirty years after this period, that Hargreaves and Arkwright, following closely one upon another, brought forward their respective machines; the former called the water-frame, and the latter the spinning-jenny. These machines, afterwards combined and perfected by Crompton, have now reached that summit of perfection which it seems impossible to surpass. In the distaff and spinning-wheel, the thread was spun singly by hand. But in Crompton's machine, called the mule, a multitude of threads are spun at one and the same time. There have been some machines constructed on this principle, which spin the almost incredible number of 2200 threads, and with no other attendance than one spinner, assisted by a child; while the thread is spun with such evenness, and may be made of such delicacy of fineness, that it would scarcely be possible to spin it by hand.

In the process of bleaching the cloth, the improvement is of the most important kind. In the old method, the cloth was whitened by frequent washings in a weak acid, and by exposure in the fields to the action of the light and air, which occupied a period averaging from six to eight months. The beautiful discovery of chlorine by Scheele, in 1770, with its peculiar property of destroying colour, and whitening substances submitted. to its action, was quickly applied by our countrymen to the bleaching of cloth; and now, by means of the chloride of lime, the bleaching is effected in a less number of hours than that of months it formerly occupied; and without passing out of the walls of the factory. If this discovery had not been made, the single process of bleaching all the cotton and linen cloth now manufactured in Great Britain, would have required for the exposure of the cloth a considerable portion of the whole soil of our country.

In printing cloth, again, the invention of printing by cylindri

cal rollers, in place of the old method of printing-blocks, enables the workman to print one hundred times faster than before. There is perhaps no department of the arts in which the union of chemical and mechanical science is more beautifully displayed in practice, than in the processes of bleaching and printing cloth.

And, lastly, we have the invention of the power-loom. The united effect of these improvements is, that one person, by the aid of these machines, can now do as much work as two hundred could have done fifty years ago. Besides these striking instances of improvement in the manufacture of cotton cloth, there are in the woollen manufacture,-the employment of the fulling-mill for thickening the cloth, instead of treading it in water with the feet; the machinery for combing wool, by which one man and five or six children can do as much as thirty men could effect in the old way; besides a multitude of ingenious machines and inventions too numerous to mention, by means of which the various processes previous to weaving have been so abridged as to enable one person to execute nearly as much work as required the exertions of fifty persons about a century ago.

Amongst the achievements of science in the service of man, we can scarcely rank too highly the employment of the inanimate agents of wind, water, and steam, as moving mechanical powers. Water-mills and wind-mills were either unknown to the ancients or but little used. But they have contributed in a very high degree to the opulence of modern nations. In ancient times, the whole process of grinding corn was for a long time performed by manual labour; which consequently formed a very important and laborious part of household duty. Afterwards corn-mills were driven by cattle. Water seems to have been applied for this purpose in Asia about the time of Mithridates, or earlier. Water-mills were known in Rome in the time of Augustus, but were not common. They had become so in the reign of Justinian. The invention of wind-mills is later than that of watermills, and its origin is not well known; but wind-mills seem likewise to have been an eastern invention, and to have been brought into Europe about the time of the Crusades. Yet neither wind-mills nor water-mills were in use in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century. At first these

mills were applied solely for grinding corn; but they are now also employed for many other purposes. In the grinding of corn, the expenditure of human labour saved by these mills is, perhaps, twenty-fold, and the whole labour thus dispensed with, is applicable to the production and fabrication of articles of use and convenience.

The discovery of steam as a moving power is well known to be modern, and has been hardly a century in use; while the improved steam engine, whose regularity and steadiness of motion equals the water-wheel, and which has consequently been applied to work all sorts of the most intricate and delicate machinery, may be dated only since about the year 1800. Yet notwithstanding that steam as a moving power is so recent an invention, it is already in use in our own country to an equal or perhaps greater extent than even wind and water, while it obviates the inconveniences which attend the use of both these elements, from the want of motion in the atmosphere, or from interruption of the course of streams by frosts or continued droughts. The power of the steam engines in this country has been estimated as equal to the force of 6,400,000 effective labourers; an effective labourer being equal to rather more than two average labourers; or on the whole, to the work of above 12,000,000 of labourers. This immense power, daily increasing by the construction of additional engines, and applied to more multiplied uses, has already had, and must continue to have, an effect on industry, the magnitude of which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate.

Gunpowder may also be noticed as an artificial power which man has acquired through his discoveries. As a weapon of offence or defence, it surpasses every other previously known, whether in its employment in warfare, or as affording security. from the attacks of ferocious animals. In the chase it is of incomparably greater efficacy in procuring game of all sorts, than the imperfect weapons in use in early times. In the industrial arts, it is employed chiefly for splitting hard rocks, a process which could scarcely be effected by any other means, or only through an immense expenditure of labour, though aided by the best of tools. Amongst other inventions which have had an important in

fluence on the condition of man may be ranked, the use of coined money, bills of exchange, and paper currency. And last― though perhaps greatest of all the arts by which knowledge is communicated and transmitted, and the methods by which quantities are expressed and computed-the invention of letters, the arts of writing, paper-making, printing, engraving, and the science of mathematics. It would be absolutely impossible to estimate the magnitude of the consequences which have resulted from these.

There is not one of these acquisitions of knowledge the absence of which would not have exposed mankind, in the present day, to discomfort and disadvantage. But, if we could not now dispense with one of them, how much worse would have been our condition, if none had been made! In such case, we should have remained in a state of want and ignorance, lower than any in which the human species has ever yet been found.

The advantages which knowledge confers on mankind, in heightening the efficiency of labour, and fertilizing the sources of wealth, have a peculiar advantage about them, in which they possess a striking superiority over wealth itself. Knowledge of this kind, when once it has been disclosed to the world, cannot be monopolized by one or by a few individuals or nations to the exclusion of the rest of mankind; but is sure to diffuse itself. It is different as regards wealth. Whatever may be the absolute amount of property in the world, or in the possession of any community, or whatever be the amount of the products which industry from time to time creates; in their distribution amongst the members of such community, the more that one or a few possess or acquire, the less there is left for the rest. A few may monopolize to themselves the larger portion, and, while surrounded with every thing that can pamper their appetites or heighten their splendour, the rest of the people may pining in want. Though the excessive portion of the few may not be the cause of the poverty of the rest, because the wealth they possess or acquire is the acquisition of their own industry, capital, or land, and would not exist but for them; yet the abundance of these few is of small advantage to the others, and if a portion be gratuitously communicated from the one to the other,

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