ing patents for them. Any one who has been in a cotton factory, and observed the marvelous precision with which the delicately-elaborated machinery performs its various functions, can understand what kind of application, energy, talent, and genius were needed to bring it to its present perfection. It was not the inspiration of a moment, but the application of years that triumphed over the roughness of mechanical motion. Even after he had succeeded in forming his partnership with Messrs. Need and Strutt, his success was far from being secured. For a long time the speculation was unprofitable and disheartening. tells us himself that it did not begin to pay till it had been persevered in for five years, and had swallowed up a capital of more than twelve thousand pounds.

He

The first spinning machine on Arkwright's plan was erected at Nottingham, and was worked by horse-power. This being found insufficient, water was resorted to; and in 1771, a factory on a far larger scale than the first was built on the River Derwent, at Cromford, near Wirksworth, in Derbyshire; from this circumstance the machine received its name of the water-frame and the thread-water-twist. Now commenced Arkwright's persecutions. While there was nothing to be snatched from him, people were glad enough to give him the hand of fellowship; but so soon as the halfpenny barber raised himself above the commonest chin, every one was ready to aim a blow at him. The easiest way of doing this was to assail the originality of his contrivances, and to assert they were all more or less plagiarized from others. The Lancashire cotton manufacturers were, of course, anxious to overthrow Arkwright, and to dispose of a powerful rival. They refused to buy his materials, although confessedly the best in the market, and by a series of petty but vexatious oppositions, did every thing in their power to make Arkwright and his associates unpopular with the trade, with the public, and with the working community. In 1779 this spitefulness bore fruits. The mob rose in arms against machinery, and prowled about the manufacturing districts, destroying all they could find. A large mill built by Arkwright at Birkacre, near Chorley, was destroyed by a mob, in the presence of a powerful body of police and military, without any of the civil authorities requiring their interference to prevent the outrage. The inmates defended the mill as long as they were able, and on the first day drove the rioters back, with the loss of

two men killed and eight wounded. It was not till the latter returned with greatly increased numbers that they accomplished Mantheir purpose. Nor was this the only blow he suffered. ufacturers who used his machines, and paid for the privilege with a very ill grace, refused to do so any longer, on the old pretext that the inventions were not his. To put a stop to this, Arkwright, in 1781, brought actions against the pirates. They defended themselves on the plea that the specification of the inventions was obscure and unintelligible, and consequently that the patent was void. No attempt was made to show that the inventions were not original. Their plea was valid in law, and, much to the disgust of all right-minded people, Arkwright lost the day. At first he thought of making an appeal to Parliament; but, after preparing a case, which he submitted to the public, he abandoned this intention, but in 1785 brought another action against the infringers of his patent, and succeeded in getting a verdict. The cotton-spinners, who had been profiting by Arkwright's genius without giving him any thing in return, were greatly incensed. They formed powerful combinations against what they were pleased to call Arkwright's monopoly, and finally commenced proceedings against the patentee to try the validity of his patent.

They asserted that the patent was a great inconvenience to the public; that when the patent was granted the invention was not a new one; that the invention was not Arkwright's, and that the specification was imperfect. The trial lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until half past twelve at night, and many witnesses were examined—among others, Kay, who said all he could to injure his former employer. Principally on the evidence of this man, the jury returned a verdict annihilating the patent, which Arkwright tried in vain to set aside. Thus, after years and years of steady application and thought, he found himself thrown on the mercy of his enemies, destitute of every kind of legal protection, and surrounded by men who were all too ready to thrust their hands into his pockets and his reputation, and leave him to perish, ruined and broken-hearted. But his enemies were doomed to grievous disappointment. Arkwright was made of stuff which did not shrink with the spiteful sprinklings of cold water. Goaded by injustice, he turned round on his enemies, and astonished them by an opposition which soon carried every thing before it. In a short time his partnership

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with Need and Strutt came to an end, and the mill at Cromford passed into his own hands. He connected himself with other manufactories, and soon obtained such a control of the trade that prices were fixed by him, and controlled all the other cotton-spin“The most marked traits in the character of Arkwright," says Mr. Baines, were his wonderful ardor, energy, and perseverance. He commonly labored in his multifarious concerns from five in the morning till nine at night; and when considerably more than fifty years of age, feeling that the defects of his education placed him under great difficulty and inconvenience in conducting his correspondence and in the general management of his business, he encroached upon his sleep in order to gain an hour each day to learn English grammar, and another hour to improve his writing and orthography. He was a severe economist of time, and, that he might not waste a moment, he generally traveled with four horses, and at a very rapid speed. His concerns in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Scotland were so extensive and numerous as to show at once his astonishing power of transacting business, and his all-grasping spirit. In many of these he had partners, but he generally managed in such a way that, whoever lost, he himself was a gainer. So unbounded was his confidence in the success of his machinery, and in the national wealth to be produced by it, that he would make light of discussions on taxation, and say that he would pay the national debt. His speculative schemes were vast and daring; he contemplated entering into the most extensive mercantile transactions, and buying up all the cotton in the world, in order to make an enormous profit by the monopoly."

A man of such strength of character requires but little protection. When once he has found the path to fortune, he is sure to pursue it to the temple of the goddess. He was able to face all opposition, and to reap a rich reward for his ingenuity, in spite of the illiberality of the laws which refused him protection. In 1786 he was appointed high sheriff of Derbyshire, and for delivering an address to the king, suggested by the escape of that individual from assassination, received the trumpery honor of knighthood, and became Sir Richard Arkwright. He did not long enjoy the distinction which had thus fallen on him by chance. For many years he had suffered from that terrible malady, asthma. The sedentary life which this demands, aggravated by incessant application

to business, brought on a complication of disorders, of which he died on the 3d of August, 1792, in the sixtieth year of his age. The fortune he left behind is said to have amounted to the sum of half a million sterling. Whatever may have been the objections raised to his inventions during his lifetime, it is now universally conceded that Arkwright succeeded in establishing the cotton manufactures in England, and in benefiting millions of human beings by giving them the means of honest employment. He also secured to his country its most important branch of commerce by giving it machinery whereby it could excel other countries in production, excellence, and cheapness. "No man," justly observes Mr. M'Culloch, "ever better deserved his good fortune, or has a stronger claim on the respect and gratitude of posterity. His inventions have opened a new and boundless field of employment; and while they have conferred infinitely more benefit on his native country than she could have derived from the absolute dominion of Mexico and Peru, they have been universally productive of wealth and enjoyments."

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

It is seldom that the life of a poet affords so unalloyed a pleasure as that furnished by the subject of this sketch. The pleasure is in the total absence of vice which it presents, and not in the career of the individual, for that was brief and unhappy. A more chaste and admirable man never lived.

Henry Kirke White was the son of a butcher, and was born at Nottingham, England, on the 21st of March, 1785. From his earliest days he displayed the susceptibilities of a poetic temperament, and was passionately fond of reading. "I could fancy,” said his eldest sister, "I see him in his little chair, with a large book upon his knee, and my mother calling 'Henry, my love, come to dinner,' which was repeated so often without being regarded that she was obliged to change the tone of her voice before she could rouse him." At the age of six he was placed under the care of the Rev. John Blanchard, who kept the best school in Nottingham, where he learned writing, arithmetic, and French, and he continued there for several years. He was, even in those early days, a remarkable child. It is said that, when about seven,