elped to lay the head of the
mighty low; but there is strong vitality left within her--powerful
talents and great resources; she is even now rising from the lethargy
that had crept over her. Would our space permit, how fain would we trace
the workings yet going on in her midst: the progress of the shearer's
wool from the wool-sack to the rich brocaded cashmere; through its
"combing" with irons heated over charcoal furnaces, that poison the
atmosphere around, and shorten the lives of the operatives engaged in it,
forsooth, because the foreman of the manufactory has a perquisite of
selling charcoal,--thence to the huge factory with giant engines, and
labyrinths of spinning-wheels; away, again, to the spider-looking
winding-frame, that children and old women may turn to help to fill the
shuttles of the abler workers at the loom; thence to the dyers, and then
to the loom itself, where manhood, youth, and woman's feebler strength
alike find exercise and room for labour. How many histories have been
woven into the fabric--what tears or smiles have cast their light or
shade upon the tints,--what notes of harmony or love, or wailings of
sorrow and sickness have echoed the shuttle's throw,--how many tales of
stern heart griefs, pining wants, wasting penury, or disease, are wrapped
in the luxurious folds that minister to the comfort and enjoyment of the
unconscious wearer.

But we dare not tarry amid these scenes, richly fraught as they may be
with subject for graphic sketching; we may not pause to visit the great
gatherings in factory chambers, or linger amongst the home labours of the
industrious artisan; can barely hint at traits of heroism, lives of
gentle loving duty going on amid the rattling noise of looms that trench
upon the narrow limits of the sick bed; deeds of good Samaritanism that
grace the weary weaver's home, or dwell upon the Christian lessons they
have power to teach. If the anatomy of a manufacturing city does revolt
the senses and sensibilities in the pictures of suffering and poverty it
seldom fails to abound with, there is yet much beauty in the deep,
earnest, truthful poetry to be read in the page it lays open. Mary
Barton is no fiction; scarce a district in a manufacturing province that
could not furnish a heroine like her; nor need we, perhaps, look to the
other side of the Atlantic, to find the prototype of "Uncle Tom."

There is little doubt that woollen manufactures of some kind existed in
this n