explain it better than a set memoir could have done. A correct likeness of Mrs. Ware forms the frontispiece of the volume. The community are largely indebted to the family and friends of Mrs. Ware, that they have permitted these memorials to be made public. Messrs. Crosby, Nichols & Co., in Boston, are the publishers.-Daily Advertiser.

porting to be a biography of him has been prepared, | The letters contain almost all the facts of the life, and except the diffused compilation-biography it does not deserve to be called-of Lockhart, issued shortly after Scott's death. The want of discrimination in the selection of his materials, and the carelessness with which they were jumbled together, are such conspicuous defects in Lockhart's work, that it hardly deserves to be called anything more than Memoires pour servir, for a biography it certainly is not in We have already twice referred to this volume in any proper acceptation of the phrase. And yet, the literary fame of Lockhart, and his connection to the advance of its publication, and have quoted at some great romancer, have deterred every one from at-length from its instructive pages. It has since been tempting a task which he ought to have executed published, and is now offered for sale by its publisher. We have no hesitation in commending it to our better than any one else had the ability to execute it. Scott is not a very good subject for a biography. able regard. No one could desire, for sister, daughter readers as a volume every way worthy of their favorHe was one of the best story-tellers that ever lived, and he had the good fortune to know the bent of his or friend, a more instructive, pleasing, or touching genius, and the tact to turn it to account. Beyond domestic life than this unpretending volume, prelesson of the quiet, unobtrusive, simple virtues of story-telling, there is not much in his life worth re-pared by one at once so appreciative of the virtues of cording, certainly very little that is picturesque or his subject, and so well qualified to do them justice. eventful. The consciousness of this fact may have It is issued in excellent style, and makes quite an atalso conspired with the circumstances we have mentioned to keep this field of literary labor comparatively unoccupied up to the present time.

Mr. McLeod, who has detected this vacancy on our library shelves, and undertaken to fill it, is a young man, scarce thirty, who enjoys something of a reputation as a poet, and has recently received some attention from the press as the author of a little travelling romance, entitled "Hugh Pynnshurst, his Wanderings and Ways of Thinking."

He has a fervent admiration of Scott, and seems even to love his failings as well as his genius and numerous virtues. He is Scott's champion-indeed, it will be hard ever to find a biographer for Scott who is not-and takes good care to give due prominence to the best plea that can be made in defence of those few incidents in Scott's career which the critic's eye inclines to scan with disapprobation.

From what we have read of Mr. McLeod's book, we incline to think that henceforth, whatever public curiosity about Scott may be felt beyond his works, will satisfy itself rather from this compendious work than from the indigesta moles of Lockhart.--Eve. |

Post.

Mrs. Mary L. Ware. A volume containing a memoir of this much beloved and respected lady, the wife of the late Rev. Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., has been prepared by her relative, the Rev. Edward B. Hall, Providence. It contains a sketch of her life, with large extracts from her familiar correspondence. Mr. Hall says in his introduction:

"The life of an unpretending Christian woman is never lost. Written or unwritten, it is and ever will be an active power among the elements that form and advance society. Yet the written life will speak to the largest number, will be wholly new to many, and to all may carry a healthy impulse. There are none who are not strengthened and blessed by the knowledge of a meek, firm, consistent character, formed by religious influences, and devoted to the highest ends. And where this character has belonged to a daughter, wife and mother, who has been seen only in the retired domestic sphere, there may be the more reason that it be transferred to the printed page, and an enduring form, because of the very modesty which adorned it, and which would never proclaim itself."

The many friends of Mrs. Ware, here and elsewhere, will receive with reverence and delight these memorials of her beautiful life. The volume must do good wherever it is read, and hundreds of readers, who have never known Mrs. Ware, will be strengthened in duty and cheered in trial by this history of her life, and these letters so beautifully illustrating the life of a true Christian woman. Mr. Hall has done his work well, giving to the memoir, as he says, as much as possible, the character of an autobiography.

tractive volume.-Atlas.

Lays of Ancient Rome. By Thomas Babbington Macaulay. With illustrations, original and from the antique, engraved by Devereux & Gihon. Philadel phia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1853.

Putnam's" Homes of American Authors," Stringer and Townsend's "Illustrious Personages of the Nine teenth Century," and the above edition of Macaulay's "Classic Poems," are the three most attractive books we have yet seen this season. They address the highest range of taste and culture, and, as an offering of friendship, they imply a high compliment to the taste and culture of the receiver. Of the two first we have recently had our say; the last is a finer specimen of the publishing art than either of the others-equal, indeed, to anything we have ever seen of its kind from the English press.

This volume embraces all the poems ever published by Macaulay--we incur no great risk in saying all he will ever publish. His health and plans of life aro such as to confine him very closely for the remainder of his days, which, we fear, will not be many, to that kind of work, which will, in his judgment, best secure his fame, and that, he knows, will not be in the making of verses, gifted as he is in that, as in almost every other literary accomplishment. ume, therefore, we presume we have all the poetry that Macaulay will ever leave for the public. Though entitled "The Lays of Ancient Rome," it is proper to mention that the collection embraces his earlier pieces, "Ivrey," "The Armada," &c., which origi nally appeared, we believe, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine.

In this vol

The classical illustrations of the volume are exceedingly curious and rare, having been selected or designed mainly by Macaulay himself, and executed by artists of the highest order of merit.-Eve. Post.

A work of much beauty, and of profound interest to the religious world, is the "American Missionary Memorial," published by the Messrs. Harpers It contains historical sketches of American Missions, with biographies of all those self-sacrificing servants of the cause whose heroism does higher honor to the nation than the noblest displays of patriotism. The memoirs are contributed by a number of the leading divines of the American pulpit; the principal care of Rev. H. W. Pierson, the editor, being confined to the arrangement of the matter, and the addition of a fine series of portraits, engravings, autographs, &c., which untiring industry alone could have brought together. The book presents itself opportunely to those who desire an appropriate gift book for a Christian friend.-N. Y. Times.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 455.-5 FEBRUARY, 1853.

From Chambers' Repository.

THE COTTON METROPOLIS.

years ago, the great cotton regions of Englandits guiding spirits and its working hands-were very generally looked upon with mingled pity and THE writer of the following pages was, in the indignation. Mr. Southey described the factory winter of 1849-50, deputed by the proprietors of system as "a wen-a fungous excrescence on the the Morning Chronicle to proceed to Manchester, body politic;" and the day has been sighed for with the view of personally studying the social when the ploughshare would pass over the foundaand industrial condition of the working population tions of Manchester. But out of all this slough of the metropolis of cotton manufacture. The of prejudice and error, the cotton metropolis has result was an extended series of long and elabo- of late been steadily rising. No amount of folly rate letters, going into the very minutiae of the or misrepresentation could ultimately prevent subject, and presenting what the writer is not that; and the whole kingdom has seen that disafraid to characterize as one of the most minute trict which it contemned as a region of grinding and faithful pictures ever painted of the working capitalists, without a thought save of cotton and and the home-life of the hands" of the Man- of stunted serfs, toiling perforce at an unwholechester cotton-mills; for it was all, so to speak, some trade-one vast slave-gang; the nation, we drawn from nature and on the spot. Upon mat- repeat, has seen that region suddenly dart into ters of fact, the writer never spoke from hearsay. magnificent political energy and power; found a He was put into communication with gentlemen new economic and social system; and by the of official and of mercantile standing in Manches- peculiar clear-headedness of the views, and the ter, who procured for him every facility for the still more peculiar working energy of its people, prosecution of his inquiry. Thus he was enabled triumphantly direct the policy of the land. Such to see every phase of the life of the people-to a people are formed neither of serfs nor tyrants. converse with them by the "drawing-frames The secret of the success of this late grand and the "roving-frames;" to visit them at their movement of the city and the district of the tall homes; to meet them in their public places of chimneys, is to a great degree to be found in the resort; and to ascertain, by personal converse, the intense practical sagacity and practical energy of manner of the life of the manufacturing operative, its inhabitants. England is the most practical of and the social and industrial influences which nations, and Lancashire is the most practical part form and direct it. These letters, however, are of of England. It is on the banks of the Irwell and anything but easy or convenient access, and, fur- the Mersey, indeed, that we find the very essence thermore, they necessarily contain, along with the of the old Anglo-Saxon spirit of the countrymatter essentially and permanently true, much in- often expressed, by the way, in Anglo-Saxon words, formation respecting the cotton manufacture which everywhere else long extinct and forgotten. And was only temporarily correct. It has been thought, the essence of this spirit was ever to do rather therefore, that the pith and substance of the for- than to say-the special characteristic of Manmer class of information might be profitably con- chester. While other towns are speaking, Mandensed, and compacted into the view of Manchester chester is working. A local scheme, for example, and Manchester operative-life which follows. The got up in Manchester, would be proposed, considwriter has in some degree sought to call up as ered, subscribed for, undertaken, and executed, vivid a picture as he might of the peculiar and before another similar scheme in a southern city visible characteristics of the cotton city. With had furnished half its quota of preliminary talk. its commerce, its institutions, and its municipal Life, indeed, in the cotton districts, appears at and mercantile arrangements, he had nothing to first a perfect turmoil of action; but on nearer indo. His object was to convey a correct and locally-spection all the feeling of confusion wears off, and colored idea of the social system which has grown you contemplate with equal awe and admiration up under the influences of the greatest branch of the working of the vast manufacturing and disour national industry, and to sketch with some tributing machine, supplying half the world with minuteness the peculiarly shrewd and hard-headed its productions, with a thousand eyes peering for temperaments of the manufacturing men of Lan-new markets, and a thousand hands ready to pour cashire, who have lately afforded so many proofs in the staple material; consulting every popular of their ability and their will to play a most taste and every physical climate; manufacturing important part in the direction of our national for Siberia and Africa; clothing in its textures the polity.

Chinese in his tea-garden, and the Indian squaw in the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere you observe practical sagacity, and the invincible tendency to action. No procrastination there, no delay. A man resolves, and his hand is at the work ere the thought has ceased to vibrate in his brain.

There have been few things better abused than the cotton manufacturing system. For many years, it has been made the scape-goat for all kinds of imputed iniquities and alleged oppressions. "Factory-slaves" became a common cant term in cer- Much of the popular distaste for the manufactain agitating circles, and "cotton lords" were turing system and the manufacturing districts, looked upon by every eau-de-Cologne sentiment- possibly arose from the ugliness and smokiness of alist throughout the land as Molochs and modern the towns; and in this respect, no doubt, ManGiant Despairs. Silly novels aided what scurri- chester and its compeers might be greatly imlous and unfair pamphlets had begun; and, a few proved. Some architectural symmetry lavished

16

upon the mills, and some smoke-consuming appa- | their heads, abundantly speckled with flakes of ratus to clear the atmosphere, would cheer the cotton-wool. The girls almost invariably move aspect of matters immensely. As it is, the transi- about in groups, and very often with their arms tion from the rural to the cotton districts is, it round each other's necks and waists. The workmust be confessed, not pleasant. First, the rail-ing-dress, with its characteristic locks of cotton, way traveller perceives a dull, leaden canopy however, disappears upon the Sunday; and the encroaching upon the bright blue sky, and the"factory-lass" who flung a shawl over her head number of stations shows the increasing density and shoulders on the last six days of the week, of the population. Rural factories, each with its appears on the first as gay as a smart bonnet and clustered group of cottages, begin to appear. The ribbons can make her. roads are substantially paved with stone; canals, Both in its industrial and architectural features, studded with barges, abound; and the rivers run Manchester may be roughly divided into three turbid and thick, charged with the foulness of great regions. The central of these, lying round many factories they have helped to set in motion. the civic heart-the Exchange-whence the pulsaThen the tall chimneys begin to rise around you; tion of every steam-engine, at least morally, prothe country loses its fresh rurality of look; the ceeds, is the grand district of warehouses and grass seems brown and scorched, and the trees counting-rooms. There the fabrics spun, woven, grimy and stunted; while path and road are black printed, and dyed at the mills, are stored for with coal-dust. Further on, you shoot through inspection and purchase; there the actual business town after town-the outlying satellites of the of buying and selling is carried on; there are great cotton metropolis-all of them identical in banks, offices, and agencies innumerable. The far features; all of them little Manchesters; all of outskirts of the city, again, form a species of unithem dotted with vast brown piles of building, versally stretching west or fashionable end, if, distinguished by the dull uniformity of their end- indeed, the word belt be not more applicable. less rows of windows, their towering shafts, with Thither fly all who can afford to live out of the pennons of smoke, and the white gushes of waste smoke. There you will find open, handsome steam continually blowing off. Some dozen miles squares, and showy ranges of crescents, and rows, characterized by such features, and you are whirled and miles of pleasant villas peeping out from their along the roofs of a vast net-work of mean, una- shrubberied grounds. Between these two regions dorned streets; everywhere broken up by the eter--between the dull stacks of warehouses and the nally recurring black masses of the mills; the snug and airy dwellings of the suburbs-lies the expanse of populated brick intersected by numer-great mass of smoky, dingy, sweltering, and toilour canals, and its hollows spanned by railway ing Manchester. It is from that mid-region that viaducts; until, in a few minutes, you find your- the tall chimneys chiefly spring; and it is beneath self discharged from the train, in the very centre these-stretching in a net-work of inglorious lookof the city of Manchester. ing, but by no means universally miserable streets, In the general aspect of the town, a very im- from mill to mill, and factory to factory-we find portant part is played by the sombre, silent the homes of the spinners and the weavers, whose streets, which principally consist of warehouses-calicoes are spread abroad over three parts of the many of them of stately and symmetric aspect, garment-wearing globe. with long, pillared façades and ornamented front- The different regions of working Manchester ages. Here the passengers are comparatively few, present, however, very different degrees of archiand consist almost entirely of hurrying men of tectural and sanitary progress. The old parts of business; while the prevailing vehicles are the the town are the worst; the new portions laid out low vans or trucks, on which bales of goods are for the working classes are the best; and suburbs conveyed from the factories to the marts, where are being projected in a style which will leave they are exposed for sale, and packed for distant all behind that has been yet done. The oldest markets. Other thoroughfares are more metropo- and the worst working district of Manchester is litan in their aspect, presenting the usual appear- the region known as Ancoats. Ilere, however, ance of the crowded highways of a large and busy town, and studded with public buildings, several of them of great size and architectural beauty. But wherever you may take your station in Manchester, you are not far from heaps of mean, twostoried houses, extending in ramifications of monotonous and uninteresting streets, and every now and then interrupted by the vast sweep of brick-wall, the half-dozen tiers of square windows, and the towering shafts of the genius loci-the cotton-mill.

you will find the truest specimens of the indigenous Lancashire population, and hear the truest version of the old Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. Ancoats, we have heard a Manchester man say, is to Manchester what Manchester is to England. The type of the true Lancashire spinner and weaver lingers in its dark alleys and undrained courts in greater purity than in any of the more recent, more improved, and more healthy districts. Ancoats, in fact, is Manchester pur sang-Manchester ere sanitary improvement and popular In Manchester streets, there is a total absence education had raised and purified its general social of loungers. Busy as London is, the cotton capi-condition. Many of its streets, particularly the tal is still busier. The upper class of the popula- great thoroughfare called the Oldham Road, are tion go buzzing from warehouse to warehouse, and magnificent in their vast proportions; but the thoubank to bank, and office to office. At certain sands of by-lanes and squalid courts, the stackedhours, swarms of mechanics, in their distinguish-up piles of undrained and unventilated dwellings, ing fustian, seem to burst from concealed recepta- swarm with the coarsest and most dangerous oles; and, mingled with them, appear the factory portions of the population. Here the old and operatives, the true working-people of Manchester; inferior mills abound; here the gin-palaces are the men, in general, under-sized and sallow-look- the most magnificent, and the pawn-shops the ing; and the girls and women also somewhat most flourishing; here, too, the curse of Lancastunted and pale, but smart and active, with shire-the "low Irish" congregate by thousands; dingy dresses, and dark shawls wreathed round and here principally abound the cellar dwellings,

and the pestilential lodging-houses, where thieves | windows are screened by muslin blinds; and poor and vagrants of all kinds find shares of beds in withered plants, dead and dying, ranged almost underground recesses for a penny and twopence a universally along the sill, give evidence of the night. Proceeding round the belt of the work-characteristic love of the Manchester people for ing district we find, bordering upon Ancoats, the vegetation, and of their very general taste for township of Chorlton. Here there is a decided botany. improvement. The houses of the operatives in all As we pass, we glance down at the unwholesome the quarters are two-storied; but in Chorlton cellar dwellings. Their number is now happily the principles of ventilation, and the regards of diminishing, and with it typhus, and low and putrid domestic convenience, have been to some degree fever, are decreasing also. The furniture of the provided for. The streets are far cleaner, the cellar houses is seldom or ever so good as that of dwellings are not so closely packed together, and even the most inferior tenements above, and there they are somewhat larger than those in Ancoats. is always a total lack of little ornamental or fancy Here, too," cellar houses" are less frequent; the articles. Two rooms, one over the other, is the basement story being put to the more legitimate ordinary quantum of accommodation in the Anuse of storing coal, than of lodging, in its damp coats district. The cases are exceptional in which recesses, human beings. But of all the toiling a back-scullery is added to the ground-floor apartportions of the city, the district of Hulme-the ment. In Hulme, however, we have a different last built-is the most gratifying. Here the state of things. Many of the houses there have houses outstrip those of Chorlton, as the latter four rooms and a cellar; and the provisions of the do those of Ancoats. And here only in Manches- Building Act, against tenements being raised back ter-in dwellings of the class-has the great im- to back, have been strictly observed. With supeprovement been effected of making the street-door rior houses, as we have already remarked, come open into a passage, and not into the family room. superior fittings. We begin to find what we may An almost invariable and very significant feature call the parlor element: a room is reserved for about the houses of the Manchester spinners is, holiday and festive occasions, the family meanthat the better the dwelling, the better will the while making a living-place of the kitchen. The furniture be found. The people in Hulme do not arrangement is not without its inconveniences, as earn more than those in Ancoats, and they pay it practically abridges the available space, but it rather a higher rent; but their home comforts are also inculcates habits of self-respect, and a degree far greater. The matting in the inferior districts of laudable ambition to get up the room of state becomes carpeting or drugget in the superior; and in the handsomest manner possible. Saturday is it frequently happens that the plain deal of the the great cleaning-out day in Manchester. The one is the mahogany of the other. The cause is mills then "knock off" about two or half after obvious. People well lodged take a natural pride two o'clock; and if you visit the operative quarin being well provided with household necessities. tiers after that time, you will be astonished at the They wish the furniture to correspond with the vigor with which the work of purification is being rooms, and a general spirit of care and neatness is carried on-at the swarms of little "piecers" and the certain result. Let me sketch, in a few brief "slubbers" staggering from the nearest public words, the average style of a couple of the dwell-pumps or spouts with pails of water—and, inside, ings in question-the small and ill-built Ancoats at the numbers of men who, with rolled-up shirthouse, and the airier and better-planned Hulme sleeves, are aiding their wives and children in the tenement. Fancy first a wide-lying labyrinth of work. It is no doubt the tendency of gregarious small dingy streets, and narrow, unsunned courts, employments, especially those in which children terminating in cul de sacs, with a sloppy gutter in early earn high wages, to break up the domestic the centre. Every score or so of yards you catch feeling and the domestic circle; and such, to a sight of a dingy third-class mill, with its cinder- great extent, is the case in the cotton districts. paved courtyard and its steaming engine-shed; or Still, however, the home feeling of the Saxon race of a shabby-looking chapel, its infinitesimal Gothic seems strong, and in a great measure indestructiornaments grimed with the ever-pouring smoke. ble. Every pleasant evening, after mill-hours, the Proceeding along such streets, you perceive almost workmen's streets present a scene of no little quiet all the doors wide open, and clusters of children enjoyment. The people seem on the best terms playing on the thresholds. The interiors thus with each other, and laugh and gossip from door stand revealed; a series of little rooms, about ten to door and window to window. The women, in feet by eight, generally floored with brick or stone; particular, are fond of sitting in groups on the a substantial deal-table in the centre, and chairs thresholds, knitting and sewing; and, as might be and stools to correspond. Sometimes you perceive expected, there is no inconsiderable amount of a little mahogany table; and a feature of Man- sweethearting going forward. chester operative dwellings, is a curiously small sofa of common material; sometimes there is a vast cupboard with a shining assortment of plates and jugs; sometimes these are ranged on shelves around, with humble cooking-gear beneath. Two features you seldom miss; a huge, glaringly painted tea-tray, emblazoned with all the colors of the rainbow and a tolerably good-looking clock. Perhaps from the regularity of mill-hours, clocks are indispensable pieces of furniture in the working world of Manchester, and a clock is very frequently the first article of household stuff which a young married couple procure. Besides these general features, the usual litter of small domestic matters abound. Flour barrels are common. The

The rents paid by Manchester operatives for such dwellings as have been described, vary from 38. to 4s. 6d., and in some cases to 5s. a week. This is for a house. For a cellar, the tenant pays from 1s. to 2s. and 2s. 6d., according to size. In times of trade stagnation, the better houses are less occupied, and people who have little relish for such abodes, find themselves forced to fall back upon the cellars. In an average state of trade prosperity, however, it is calculated that one cellar in every six in the Chorlton district, which is neither the best nor the worst, is empty. The people, as a general rule, dislike them, and to some extent the cellar tenants hold a species of Pariah position in operative estimation.

It is time, however, to pass from the sleepinghome of the spinners and the piecers to their working-home-the factory-to the great rooms or sheds, as they are called, where the allotted ten hours, sometimes lengthened out by ingenious technical contrivances to ten and a half and eleven hours per day, are spent. The manufactories of cotton-thread may be divided into three great classes, according to the fineness or tenuity of the threads which they educe from the raw cotton. The establishments spinning very delicate threads are technically called "fine spinning-mills," or mills producing high numbers" Then there are medium mills, and " coarse spinning-mills, manufacturing a rough, strong thread of various degrees of thickness. Of these, the fine spinningmills generally give the best wages. The work there is more delicate, the machinery moves more slowly, and the temperature is kept higher than in the coarse or even the medium spinning-mills. The processes performed in all, however, are, in the main, identical, and we will shortly and plainly expound them.

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We have been passing through long rooms, low in the roof, but one blaze of light from the continuous tiers of windows; and as the operatives can open or shut these at their pleasure, they may have the temperature to their own tastes. In the spinning-room, this is not the case; the thread requires a high and moist temperature to make the fibres adhere properly; and the finer the thread, the higher must the range of the thermometer be. Eighty degrees is a common marking in high-number mills. The coarse-spinning establishments do not require such heat by from six to ten degrees. Here, again, we leave the women's department, and reënter the men's. There are two sorts of "mules," or spinning-machines in use in Manchester-the ordinary instrument employed for fine work, requiring one spinner, two piecers, and a scavenger and the self-acting mule, dispensing with the spinner, or at all events with the greater part of his services, but requiring the piecers and the scavenger, as in the ordinary mule. In the case of the latter, the spinner regu

lates the backward and forward motion of the The cotton is first unpacked, and mingled to-frame, which advances and retreats ten or twelve gether according to certain technical qualities feet, drawing out and twisting the threads in the inscribed upon the bales. It has then to be cleaned process. The piecers follow the frame in its alterand it first passes through the blowing-machines. nate movements, catching up the broken threads, The labor requisite here is quite unskilled, and the and skilfully reuniting them. The scavenger, a men and boys employed earn wages ranging from little boy or girl, crawls beneath the machinery 6s. 6d. to 8s. 6d. per week, for tossing armfuls of when it is at rest, and cleans the mechanism from cotton into the machinery, and gathering the superfluous oil, dust, and dirt. It will be perpartially cleansed material as it is ejected from the ceived, that from the piecer and often the spinner revolving cylinders. The atmosphere of the blow- having continually to follow the frame in its ing-room is usually the worst in the factory. Dust advancing and retreating movements, this is the and fluff are blown about in clouds, and the people department of cotton manufacture requiring most frequently work with handkerchiefs stretched across physical exertion. This exertion is simply walktheir mouths. The next stage is carding. Mening, and the average distance traversed used to be and boys are also the operators here. The mechan- a fierce subject of dispute in factory debates. The ism reduces the cotton to the state which we opponents of the system found no difficulty in esticommonly call wadding, and the work consists in mating the children's daily journeys at twenty supplying the material, taking the accumulating miles and more; other calculators made the diswadding off the drums on which it is wound, and tance from seven to eleven niles; and, from our removing the coarser locks rejected by the ma- own observations, we should be inclined to reckon chinery. The work requires attention and delicate it as nearer the former number than the latterhandling, and the men's wages attain to from 13s. certainly not an amount of exertion likely to injure to 148. in the medium mills, and rise to from 14s. a well-fed and healthy boy. As for the spinner, to 15s. in the high number factories. We now his place is one of the prizes of the mill. His enter upon the primary spinning operations-the wages, although their tendency is now downwards, gradual reduction of the cotton to smaller and may average about £2 per week; and in very fine smaller strings. These are conducted almost ex- spinning-mills, may range 5s. or 10s. above that clusively by women, called tenters "-the old sum. His piecers earn, on the average, about 11s. Saxon phrase who watch or "tent" the threads per week, and the tiny scavenger clears his halfas they are evolved, and, by a rapid and dexterous crown. The wives of the spinners never work in evolution of their fingers, unite any fibre which the mills, and this is a strong incentive, over and breaks, almost as soon as the accident takes place. above the wages, to induce the men to struggle for The wages given depend upon the increasing deli- the post. Besides, the spinner is quite a patron cacy of the thread, as it advances from the coarser in his way; he employs his own piecers and to the finer "frames;" every such stage requiring scavenger, and of course selects them from his a more watchful eye and a more delicate hand. own family. The thread, being now complete, is Some of the women attending the finest drawing sent to the power-loom; and here, again, we find of these frames can earn as much as 11s. per week. the ladies the presiding superintendents. In genAbout 28. difference is often made between the eral, each has charge of two looms, and the duty pay of a girl and a woman; while at the lower consists in taking care that nothing goes wrong, frames they may he rewarded with from 78. to 8s. rather than in any continued active exertion. The -sixpence more or less. The pittance, indeed, is wages range from 78. to 9s. not great, but it equals what is frequently the It will be seen, from the above sketch, that the weekly pay of a Dorsetshire laborer, for the sup- amount of physical labor-that the actual expendiport of a wife and children; while it can be ture of physical energy and strength demanded in attained in the factories not by one member of the a cotton mill, is really very trifling. The engine household alone, but by every one of the requisite is the real worker. It furnishes the thews and age and discretion. Up to this period of the sinews for the toil. From the operative is demanufacture, the temperature has not been oppres-manded only different degrees of attention and sive, and the oily smell has not been disagreeable. manual adroitness to guide its complicated evolu