once the source of her
prosperity and poverty--her millionnaire mill-owners and her
impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the
same wonderful extent--never the results of mechanical invention so
astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding genii over the
wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the
volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine.
Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has
facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in
every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical
analysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that
Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.
Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in
this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is
member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life
Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds,
is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above
the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western
London, and advertises her _soirees_ in the _Morning Post_. The
pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and
country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great
feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the
white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering
locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this,
the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the
factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce
takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs
and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.

[Illustration]

Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are
oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things,
and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.
This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and
Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts
where it began. That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton
night-caps, with a blue tassel on every one of them, can be made in
twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem's factory, is a very
gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental