tained power to establish water works, and to purchase up the
plant of an existing company.

The guardians of the workhouses of Manchester have a most difficult task to
perform, especially in times of commercial depression, as thousands are
thrown upon their hands at once. Among the most troublesome customers are
the Irish, who flock to Manchester through Liverpool in search of work, and
form a population herding together, very ignorant, very poor, and very
uncleanly.

MANCHESTER MANUFACTURES.

It is quite impossible to give the same sort of sketch of the manufactures of
this city as we gave of Birmingham, because they are on so much larger and
more complicated a scale. One may understand how a gun-barrel or a steel-pen
is made at one inspection; but in a visit to a textile mill, a sight of
whizzing machinery, under the charge of some hundred men, women, boys, and
girls, only produces an indefinable feeling of confusion to a person who has
not previously made himself acquainted with the elements of the subject. To
attempt to explain how a piece of calico is made without the aid of woodcuts,
would be very unsatisfactory. Premising, then, that the cotton in various
forms is the staple manufacture of Manchester, and that silk, mixed fabrics
of cotton and silk, cotton and wool, etc., are also made extensively, we
advise the traveller to prepare himself by reading the work of Dr. Ure or the
articles on Textiles in the Penny Cyclopaedia.

A visit to the workshops of the celebrated machinists Messrs. Sharpe,
Roberts, & Co. would probably afford a view of some parts of the most
improved textile machinery in a state of rest, as well as a very excellent
idea of the rapid progress of mechanical arts. Improvements in manufacturing
machines are so constant and rapid, that it is almost a proverb--"that before
a foreigner can get the most improved machinery which he has purchased in
England home and at work, something better will be invented."

A Manchester manufacturer, on the approach of a busy season, will sometimes
stop his factories to put in new machines, at a cost of twenty thousand
pounds.

Of equal interest with Messrs. Sharpe, Roberts, & Co., are the works of
Messrs. Whitworth, the manufacturers of exquisite tools, more powerful than
any elephant, more delicately-fitted than any watch for executing the
metalwork of steam-engines, of philosophical instruments, and everything
requiring either great power or mat