ich
receive their motion from one large water-wheel, are governed by one
regulator, and it employs about 300 persons to attend and supply it
with work." In Bees Cyclopaedia (art. 'Silk Manufacture') there is a
full description of the Piedmont throwing machine introduced to England
by John Lombe, with a good plate of it.

[7] Sir Thomas Lombe died in 1738. He had two daughters. The first,
Hannah, was married to Sir Robert Clifton, of Clifton, co. Notts; the
second, Mary Turner, was married to James, 7th Earl of Lauderdale. In
his will, he "recommends his wife, at the conclusion of the Darby
concern," to distribute among his "principal servants or managers five
or six hundred pounds."

CHAPTER V.

WILLIAM MURDOCK: HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS.

"Justice exacts, that those by whom we are most benefited Should be
most admired."--Dr. Johnson.

"The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some useful arts, by
which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or
desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions... In
reality, the origin as well as the progress and improvement of civil
society is founded on mechanical and chemical inventions."--Sir Humphry
Davy.

At the middle of last century, Scotland was a very poor country. It
consisted mostly of mountain and moorland; and the little arable land
it contained was badly cultivated. Agriculture was almost a lost art.
"Except in a few instances," says a writer in the 'Farmers' Magazine'
of 1803, "Scotland was little better than a barren waste." Cattle
could with difficulty be kept alive; and the people in some parts of
the country were often on the brink of starvation. The people were
hopeless, miserable, and without spirit, like the Irish in their very
worst times. After the wreck of the Darien expedition, there seemed to
be neither skill, enterprise, nor money left in the country. What
resources it contained were altogether undeveloped. There was little
communication between one place and another, and such roads as existed
were for the greater part of the year simply impassable.

There were various opinions as to the causes of this frightful state of
things. Some thought it was the Union between England and Scotland;
and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, "The Patriot," as he was called, urged
its Repeal. In one of his publications, he endeavoured to show that
about one-sixth of the population of Scotland was in a state of
begg