garment, made of woollen, and bore no relation to the kind of cotton' that has since made Manchester famous in all corners of the world. By the time of the eighth Henry, Manchester must have made tolerable progress towards completeness as a town; for Leland, who travelled through 'Mancestre' as he calls it, gave it the character of being "the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of Lancashire. It has one parish church, but that collegiate, and almost throughout double-aisled with very hard squared stone. There are several stone bridges in the town; but the best, of three arches, is over the Irwell, dividing Manchester from Salford, which is a large suburb to Manchester. On this bridge is a pretty little chapel. The next is the bridge over Hirke (Irk), on which the very fair-builded college stands. On this river are divers fair mills that serve the town. In the town are two market-places."These divers fair mills' were doubtless flour mills; for two or three centuries had to elapse ere the modern acceptation of a Manchester mill obtained footing. Many of the enactments and council-orders of the sixteenth century bear evidence to the existence of considerable manufactures in Manchester, and to the existence also of strange notions concerning the power of the legislature to controul commercial dealings. An act passed in 1552 directs that "All the cottons called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottons, full wrought to the sale, shall be in length twenty-two yards, and contain in breadth three quarters of a yard in the water, and shall weigh thirty pounds in the piece at the least. Also, that all other cloths called Manchester Rugs, otherwise named Manchester Frizes, fully wrought for sale, shall contain in length thirtysix yards, and in breadth three quarters of a yard coming out of the water, and shall not be stretched on the tenter or otherwise above a nail of a yard in breadth, and being so fully wrought and well dried shall weigh every piece forty-eight pound at the least." This is only one among many examples of the opinion prevalent in high quarters in those times, that the legislature both had and ought to have the power to adjust matters which our own age tells us must be left to adjust themselves. Manchester was named, by an enactment of 1565, one of the towns where the deputies of the Aulneger, or cloth examiner, were to reside. Meanwhile the town added to its institutions in various ways. About the beginning of the century, Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Oxford, founded a free grammar-school in Manchester, which he endowed with certain lands, and the lease of some corn-mills. These mills were afterwards made over in full property to the school by their owner, Hugh Bexwith; and the establishment has maintained its revenues and privileges, under the proviso that "no scholar or male infant, of whatever country or shire, be refused admission." The privilege of "sanctuary," to which we can hardly attach rational ideas in these days, was found, in 1540, to be prejudicial to the "wealth, credit, great occupy ings, and good order" of Manchester; and it was accordingly transferred to Chester, on the plea that the latter had "less trade and merchandize, but had a strong gaol." In the reign of Edward VI., Manchester College was broken up, and the residences given mainly to the Earl of Derby; but Queen Elizabeth afterwards restored the college and its privileges. Another century brings us to the turbulent times of the Commonwealth; when Manchester, having been taken and garrisoned by the Parliamentarians, was attacked by the Royalists under the Earl of Derby; but the attack was a petty and paltry one, and wholly unsuccessful; and Manchester remained in the hands of the republican party until the Restoration. The same century witnessed the founding of the college which has rendered the name of Humphrey Cheetham so well known in and about Manchester. Cheetham founded a college or hospital, and also a library, in 1651. The purpose of the hospital was to maintain and educate forty poor boys to the age of fourteen, when they were to be bound apprentice, or otherwise provided for; and other arrangements were made for establishing a library of books, providing funds, and securing an efficient management of the institution. 9.66 Throughout the seventeenth century, Manchester seems to have advanced steadily as a manufacturing town; but yet it had little or nothing to do with that vegetable fibre, cotton, which has since wrought such commercial revolutions. Besides coarse woollen fabrics, it was noted for the making of fustians, mixed stuffs, and small wares. "An original branch of the trade of Manchester," says Dr. Aikin, in his Description of Manchester and its Neighbourhood,' was leather laces for women's boddice, shoe-ties and points for other uses, which were tagged like laces, and sold under the general denomination of Congleton Points. These were slips of leather dyed various colours. Upon the introduction of Dutch looms, woven laces were substituted for these, and tagged in like manner. Inkle, tapes, and filleting, which had before been made in frames or single looms, were now likewise wrought in these new engines; and coarse felts were made for country wear, but none of finer quality." Dr. Aikin, as a means of presenting a picture of the Manchester manufacturer as he existed up to the end of the last century, divides the history of the town's trade into four periods; during the first of which, the manufacturer worked hard merely for a livelihood, without having accumulated any capital; during the second, he had begun to acquire a fortune, but worked as hard and lived in as plain a manner as before; during the third period, his means and his trade increased, and he sent out travellers for orders to every market-town in the kingdom; while the fourth and last period was marked by the extension of agencies and travellers, not only throughout England, but almost throughout Europe. Dr. Aikin names the latter part of the seventeenth century as the dividing line between the first and second periods: between that state of things in which the manufacturers worked hard, and Mr. Baines, who quotes this passage from the 'Daily Gazetteer,' in his 'History of Lancashire,' deems it an exaggeration of the real truth; but takes it as sufficient evidence that Manchester, rather more than a century ago, had certainly risen to a very notable po had no capital, and that in which they worked hard, | ing (No. 1) is from a view of Manchester in 1730. but had a little capital. Under the second state of affairs, "Apprentices were now and then taken from families which could pay a moderate fee. By an indenture, dated 1695, the fee paid appears to have been £60; the young man serving seven years. But all apprentices were obliged to undergo a vast deal of la-sition among the manufacturing towns of the north; borious work, such as turning warping-mills, carrying goods on their shoulders through the streets, and the like. An eminent manufacturer of that age used to be in his warehouse before six in the morning, accompanied by his children and apprentices. At seven they all came in to breakfast, which consisted of one large dish of water-pottage, made of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled thick, and poured into a dish. At the side was a pan or basin of milk; and the master and apprentices, each with a wooden spoon in his hand, without loss of time dipped into the same dish, and thence into the milk-pan; and as soon as it was finished, they all returned to their work." A primitive breakfast this, truly; and partaken in a manner strikingly at variance with the usages of later times! The eighteenth century brings us to a busy train of events in connection with Manchester. The social habits, the continuance of the woollen manufacture, and the rise of the much more wonderful cotton manufacture, all press upon our attention. It was in George the First's reign that the first step was taken to open improved communications with Liverpool, by rendering the rivers Irwell and Mersey fitted for the conveyance of merchandize; by deepening, by the adjustment of locks and weirs, and by cutting off some of the windings by means of short canals. Hardly anything has tended more decidedly to secure commercial importance to Manchester, than the system of intercommunication of which the Mersey and Irwell navigation was the first stage. It was the commencement of the general canal system; and remained for a long period the only example of the kind in the northern counties. and this, too, without such aid as a town may per- "God bless the King-I mean our faith's defender! God bless us all!-that's quite another thing." Manchester first boasted of its newspaper in 1737; in which year the Manchester Magazine' was issued at three-halfpence. About the same period a newspaper paragraph, contained in the Daily Gazetteer,' spoke out loudly of the increasing wealth and importance of the town. "The happy improvements of the linen manufacture in Manchester," it is stated, "and those lately established here, of paper, threads, tapes, and many more minute articles, have lessened our importations from Holland and Germany considerably of late years. The manufacture of cotton, mixed and plain, is arrived at so great perfection within these twenty years, that we not only make enough for our consumption, but supply our colonies, and many of the nations of Europe. The benefits arising from this branch are such as to enable the manufacturers of Manchester alone to lay out about £30,000 a-year, for many years past, in additional buildings. It is computed that 2,000 new houses have been built in that industrious town within these twenty years." The engrav-chester manufacturers; but though the little country Dr. Aikin's "third period" in the history of Manchester trade commenced about 1730. In the reign of George I., shortly before this, "Many country gentlemen used to send their sons apprentices to the Man gentry did not then live in the luxuriant manner they have done since, the young men found it so different from home that they could not brook this treatment, and either got away before their time, or, if they stayed till the expiration of their indentures, they then, for the most part, entered into the army or went to sea. The little attention paid to rendering the evenings of apprentices agreeable at home, where they were considered rather as servants than pupils, drove many of them to taverns, where they acquired habits of drinking that frequently proved injurious in after life." From about 1730 till the rise of the Arkwright epoch, the mode of conducting business at Manchester was on a larger scale, and the domestic arrangements improved accordingly. "The chapman," says Aikin, "used to keep gangs of pack-horses, and accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, which they opened and sold to shopkeepers, lodging what was unsold in small stores at the inns. The pack-horses brought back sheep's wool, which was bought on the journey, and sold to the makers of worsted yarn at Manchester, or to the clothiers of Rochdale, Saddleworth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. On the improvement of turnpike-roads, waggons were set up, and pack-horses discontinued. And the chapmen only rode out for orders, carrying with them patterns in their bags...... In this period strangers flocked in from various quarters, which introduced a great proportion of young men of some fortune into the town, with a consequent increase of luxury and gaiety. The fees of apprentices becoming an object of profit, a different manner of treating them began to prevail. Somewhat before 1760, a considerable manufacturer allotted a back parlour with a fire for the use of his apprentices, and gave them tea twice a-day. His fees in consequence rose higher than had before been known -from £250 to £300; and he had three or four tizes at a time." appren The town strove, too, to have its genteel company, and its assemblies, and its visiting parlours, as wealth and influence flowed in. King Street, now embedded in a mass of commercial streets, was the fashionable street in George the First's reign. Here the front parlour of the newly-built houses was decked out as the company room, while the back parlour served as the general room for the family. Lady Bland, of Hulme Hall, near Manchester, appears to have been the ruling star of the town at that time. She set the fashion, and subscribed to improvements, and tried to give an air of gentility to the wives of the manufacturers. She established an assembly room, where balls were held once a week; "the ladies had their maids to come with lanthorns and pattens, to conduct them home." Dr. Aikin's account of the struggle between the old order of things and the new, the homely and the genteel, is in many parts highly amusing. One of the four private carriages of Manchester, in the reign of George I., belonged to an old lady, who "could not bring herself to conform to the new fashioned beverages of tea and coffee; whenever, therefore, she made her afternoon's visit, her friends presented her with a tankard of ale and a pipe of tobacco." A London citizen's daughter became the wife of a Manchester manufacturer; and in compliment to her, tea and coffee were introduced by some of her neighbours. "The usual afternoon's entertainment at gentlemen's houses at that time was wet and dry sweetmeats, different sorts of cakes and gingerbread, apples, or other fruits of the season, and a variety of homemade wines. The manufacture of these wines was a great point with all good housewives both in the country and the town. They made an essential part of all feasts, and were brought forth when the London or Bristol dealers came down to settle their accounts and give orders. A young manufacturer, about this time, having a valuable customer to sup with him, sent to the tavern for a pint of foreign wine, which next morning furnished a subject for the sarcastic remarks of all his neighbours." When fashion demanded additional dainties and accomplishments, seminaries were founded to teach the young idea' how to meet the demand. "In order to perfect young ladies in what was then thought a necessary part of their education, a pastry-school was set up in Manchester, which was frequented, not only by the daughters of the townspeople, but those of the neighbouring gentlemen. At this time there was a girl's boarding-school; and also a dancing-master, who, on particular occasions, used to make the boys and girls parade two by two through some of the streets." THE COTTON EPOCH. The commencement of the reign of George III. may be named as the period when Manchester entered on the extraordinary career by which it has since been marked. It was in 1758, two years before that monarch came to the throne, that the indefatigable and eccentric Duke of Bridgewater commenced his labours. Possessing a large area of landed estate, and seeing Manchester rise more and more rapidly in importance, he joined his own capital with Brindley's genius, and the two together wrought wonders, at a period when joint-stock companies were looked upon in rather a different light from modern times. He formed a canal from his own collieries at Worsley to Salford, the western suburb of Manchester; he made another canal from Worsley to Hollingferry, on the Irwell; he then carried into execution the canal from Stretford to Runcorn, so as to give a new water communication from Manchester to Liverpool, irrespective of the Mersey and Irwell navigation. Land carriage of goods from one town to the other was charged, in those times, forty shillings per ton; the old navigation was twelve shillings; but the Duke's canal brought down the charge to six shillings; and we may well see how such improvements were likely to benefit Manchester commerce. At a somewhat later period, the Manchester, Bolton, and Bury Canal gave an artery of communica tion between Manchester and her northern neighbours, rendered necessary by the peculiar nature of the trade of the district after the rise of the cotton manufacture. Another artery, the Manchester, Ashton, and Oldham Canal; and yet another, the Manchester and Rochdale Canal; together with roads almost out of numbermade Manchester the centre of a most efficient system of intercommunication, by the end of the last century. Great, indeed, was the necessity for all the aid that roads and canals (no one dreamed of railways in those days) could afford. Cotton had forced its way into and around Manchester; and it asked for room and more room to develop itself. It wanted mills and factories, water-wheels and steam-engines, roads and canals; and at every step Manchester showed how her energies were bent to the supply of these. Slow was the progress made in these matters till Arkwright's time. Although cotton is known to have been imported from Smyrna and the Levant, and to have been wrought at Manchester into fustian and imitative velvets, two centuries ago; yet everything concurs to show that the amount of the manufacture must have been insignificant for many generations after that period. Even down to the time of Arkwright, nearly all the cotton goods had linen for the 'warp,' or long thread; the 'weft,' or cross thread being alone made of cotton. It was estimated that in 1760 the entire cotton manufacture of Manchester and of any and every other part of England did not collectively exceed £200,000 per annum; and it is, therefore, plain that the growth in the preceding century must have been very slow. The homely hand-cards combed out the cotton wool, the one-thread wheel spun it into yarn, and the plain hand-loom wove this yarn into cloth. | But the carding, and the spinning, and the weaving were all done under the humble roof of the workman, and he had often difficulty in adjusting the quantity of yarn spun to the quantity which he required for his weaving; and he had many a weary walk to buy materials and to sell his produce. Hence the mighty improvements which so rapidly sprang up in Lancashire. Hence the fly-shuttle' of John Kay, who, in 1738, gave to the weavers an improved and a more expeditious mode of throwing their shuttle, and who, like too many other improvers, was pelted for his pains, and died a poor man. Hence the 'drop-box' of his son, Robert Kay, by which a weaver may use several coloured threads at one time in his shuttles. And hence, in like manner, the numberless inventions applicable to the spinning and weaving of cotton; all sprang from a perception that if England could produce cotton goods more rapidly, she could find a market for them. How Wyatt and Paul took out their patent for roller-spinning in 1738, and tried their fortunes at Birmingham and Northampton, but failed to make it commercially successful; how Thomas Highs, the reed-maker, also tried spinning by rollers before the time of Arkwright; and how a controversy has been raised as to the extent to which Arkwright borrowed from these inventors-are matters fully dis cussed in the various histories of the cotton manufacture. As to Arkwright himself, almost every part of his life seems to have been fruitful in something that would advance that manufacture. At Leigh, in 1761, he is supposed to have received some insight into previous attempts to apply machinery to cotton-spinning, and to have thence resolved to renounce the shaving of beards for something more notable. In 1767, his connexion with Kay, the clock-maker of Warrington, introduced him further into the intricacies of machinery. In 1769 his first patent for the spinning-machine was taken out; in which, whatever Wyatt and Highs may have done, it is quite clear that Arkwright brought the principle of spinning by rollers to a most important stage of efficiency. Hargreaves, also, taught the spinners how by the use of his spinning-jenny' they might spin many threads at a time instead of one. This was in 1767; and the poor but ingenious inventor, beaten and robbed by those workmen who dreaded new improvements, was driven for refuge to Nottingham; and ten years afterwards, the same Blackburn weavers carried their machine-destroying mania to such a height as to drive away Mr. Peel, the founder of the eminent family of that name, who took refuge in Staffordshire. Blackburn rued for many a day the loss of manufactures which resulted from these excesses. Poor Hargreaves! bitter disappointment was his lot during the rest of his life, and the Nottingham workhouse was his last refuge. Arkwright might have been crushed as well as his predecessors in the cause of improvement; but he had capital, forethought, and shrewd worldly sagacity, to aid him, and he lived to surmount all opposition, and to see himself one of the wealthiest manufacturers in the world. Arkwright's machine for making one kind of yarn, and Hargreaves' for making another-these were the two inventions which, improved from time to time, and in various ways, enabled the cotton spinners to supply yarn quite as fast as all the weavers could work it up into woven fabrics. Nay, the hand-loom was utterly incapable of meeting the new order of things; and men's wits were set to work, to see whe ther mechanical agency could be brought to bear upon improved constructions of loom. In the preparatory processes, too, of 'carding' and 'roving' the cotton, to fit it for the operation of spinning, the new inventions were as numerous as they were beautiful; and the historians of the manufacture find it no easy matter to marshal into due form the successive stages of improvement in this extraordinary system. The social features of Manchester could not long remain uninfluenced by such a chain of active causes. The FACTORY system, which has become now so interwoven with the state of society in the north as to be inseparable from it, was one of the most notable fruits. It is easy to see how naturally the factory system arose out of the rise of machinery. The hand-cards, and the spinning-wheel, and the hand-loom were all small enough to be deposited in the dwelling of the workmen ; but the carding-engine, | had been before. The little seed pod of the cotton-plant the spinning-jenny, and (in later times) the power- has done all this: and is not this poetry-rough and loom, required larger space for their efficient working. stern, perhaps, in some of its features, but still poetry ? "The use of machinery was accompanied by a greater division of labour than existed in the primitive state of the manufacture; the material went through many more processes; and of course the loss of time and the risk of waste would have been much increased, if its removal from house to house at every stage of the manufacture had been necessary. It became obvious that there were several important advantages in carrying on the numerous operations of an extensive manufacture in the same building. Where water power was required, it was economy to build one mill, and put up one water-wheel, rather than several. This arrangement also enabled the master spinners to superintend every stage of the manufacture; it gave him a greater security against the wasteful or fraudulent consumption of the material: it saved time in the transference of the work from hand to hand; and it prevented the extreme inconvenience which would have resulted from the failure of one class of workmen to perform their part, when several other classes of workmen were dependent upon them." (Baines.) "Where Derwent guides his dusky flood While slowly circumvolves the lab'ring wheel below." But there is more poetry in cotton than Darwin has succeeded in giving to his Nymph Gossipia. Cotton has brought distant regions of the world into communication: it has widened the circle of human enterprize and knowledge: it has rubbed off some of the rust of national prejudices: it has created some towns, and increased ten-fold the population of others: it has given us the first-born of railways, with others in its train: it has impelled George Stephenson to teach the incredulous that a locomotive speed of twelve miles an hour (what if he had said sixty, and left his son Robert to realize the prophecy?) was not a mere dream to be laughed at: it has created Lowell in America and Mulhausen in Alsace, and has assimilated foreign countries to the English standard more than ever they Carlyle sketches these wonders in his own quaint but forcible way: "Richard Arkwright, it would seem, was not a beautiful man; no romance hero, with haughty eyes, Apollo lip, and gesture like the herald Mercury; a plain, almost gross, pot-bellied Lancashire man, with an air of painful reflexion, yet also of copious free digestion; a man stationed by the community to shave certain dusty beards in the northern parts of England, at a halfpenny each. To such end, we say, by forethought, accident, and arrangement, had Richard Arkwright been, by the community of England and his own consent, set apart. Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dusty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his! Spindles, shuttles, wheels and contrivances, plying ideally within the same; rather hopeless looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty. His townsfolk rose in mob around him, for threatening to shorten labour, to shorten wages; so that he had to fly, with broken wash-pots, scattered household, and seek refuge elsewhere. Nay, his wife, too, as I learn, rebelled; burnt his wooden model of his spinningwheel, resolute that he should stick to his razors rather; for which, however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice to understand, packed her out of doors. Oh, reader, what an historical phenomenon is that bag-checked, pot-bellied, much-enduring, much-inventing barber! French revolutions were a-brewing; to resist the same in any measure, Imperial Kaisers were impotent without the cotton and cloth of Old England; and it was this man that had to give England the power of cotton!" The nineteenth century has been one continued age of improvement in the varied arrangements of the cotton manufacture in Manchester and its vicinity. The invention of the Mule' spinning-machine by Crompton, in which the principles of both the former machines are combined; the application of steam power to move these mules; the improvements in the 'throstle,' and other component parts of the spinning machinery; the delicate mechanism of the carding' and 'roving' engines; the exquisite machine of Dyer, for making the cards for such engines; the trials and difficulties of Dr. Cartwright, in his attempt to apply machine-power to weaving; the wonderful solution of that problem in Sharp and Roberts' power-looms;' the remarkable machines of Horrocks, and others for dressing and perfecting the woven cotton-all press upon the attention with a rapidity and a vastness almost overwhelming. Then, again, how wonderful have been those exertions which had for their object the imparting of colour and pattern to the woven goods! How great is the chemical triumph here exhibited! The bleachfield gradually gave way to the vat of bleaching liquid: the dye-works taught how cotton might be made to imbibe colours almost as brilliant as those which dis |