not live long. He was crushed
under the weight of his terrible past; and his deathbed was full of
horror and remorse.[1]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This legend is still told by the peasants of Brittany, who point
out the site of Montreaux.

LOWELL MECHANICS' FAIR.

There are very few places in the world that bear the mark of progress
so strongly as this town, destined, beyond all doubt, to be the
Manchester of the United States, and to enter--indeed it is now
entering--into active rivalry with the Old Country in her staple
manufactures, cottons and woollens. In the year 1821, few visited the
small, quiet village, of about 200 inhabitants, situated in a
mountain-nook at a bend of the Merrimac, at a point where that stream
fell in a natural cascade, tumbling and gushing over its rocky,
shallow bed, quite unconscious of the part it was to play in the
world's affairs. This village was twenty-five miles north-west of
Boston, not on a high-road leading anywhere; but, nevertheless, it
began to move on, as usual, by the erection of a saw-mill, as at that
point it was found convenient to arrest the downward progress of the
timber, and convert it into plank. And so it went on, and on, step by
step, till it became the splendid town it is, so large as to have two
railway depots: one in the suburbs, and the principal one in the
centre of the town--for the Yankees think the closer their railways
are to the town the better.

Lowell now covers five square miles, with handsome, straight streets;
the principal one, Merrimac Street, being a mile and a half in length,
and about sixty feet wide, with footways twelve feet wide, and rows of
trees between them and the road. The appearance of this street reminds
the spectator of the best in France. The loom-power of a manufacturing
place, I understand, is estimated by the number of spindles, and this
works 350,000; the mills employ 14,000 males, and 10,000 females; the
number of inhabitants reckoned stationary, 12,000. It has lately been
raised to the dignity of a city by a charter of incorporation, which,
in the state of Massachusetts, can be claimed by any town when the
number of its inhabitants amounts to 10,000: thus it appoints its
officers, and manages its own affairs, as a body corporate and
municipal.

The most striking feature of the social system here, is the condition
of the mill-workers, of which, as it is so different from ours, I
shall give you some particulars. The corpora