mand, and cloths begun to make their appearance, the warp of which was composed of linen, the weft being only cotton. The absence of all means to spin the cotton of a sufficiently tenacious twist to serve for the warp, the difficulty of separating the wool from the seed, a work then performed by the hand, combined with the slow and costly process of its manufacture, confined the use of the fabric to the most opulent, and, therefore, limited classes of society. This state of things continued until the beginning of the year 1760, when a demand sprung up simultaneously in the old and the new world for English cotton cloths. The females of the district spun the weft; but with all the aids of patient industry and intense application, few of the manufacturers of that period could, with all their exertion, keep themselves constantly employed.

It was at this juncture that, in an obscure street in the town of Preston, in Lancashire, Richard Arkwright, the thirteenth son of miserably indigent parents, was daily occupied in the humble but useful employment of a barber. No light is thrown on his early history. At 30 years of age, he is found to be an enterprising itinerant, employed in traversing the country buying human hair, which he subsequently dyed by a process which an accident had made him acquainted with, an incident which probably formed. the germ of that passion for the acquisition of patent rights for inventions of public utility which subsequently ennobled the man and enriched the country. His first effort in mechanics was neither novel nor practical, being directed to the attainment of the long sought for and anxiously desired property of perpetual motion. The necessity of having some wheels made of a peculiar character in the pursuit of his delusive object, brought Arkwright into communication with an ingenious mechanic who followed watchmaking. It was at this moment that the inability of spinners to supply sufficient weft reached

his ears. With the intuition of genius, his keen, clear, practical mind perceived the want, and comprehended the profit, and he instantly flung himself into this new pursuit with all the energy of a sanguine, ardent, and determined nature. Within two years his model for spinning cotton by an entirely new principle was complete. Full of joy and confident anticipation of a golden and sunny future, he found that prejudice was more stubborn than iron, and that no mental blindness was comparable to that which wilfully closed out the external light. Alarmed at an innovation which threatened to interfere seriously with the demand for their labour, the hostility of the spinners of Lancashire assumed that form which rendered it requisite, for his personal safety, that Arkwright should seek another arena for the employment of his active and enterprising talent. He found in Nottingham patrons and friends, and the year 1769 witnessed the first spinning mills constructed upon the new and completely successful principle in full and busy operation. The effect of his invention will be best comprehended from the fact, that both the warp and the weft were made by one process; the material leaving the machine of any required consistency, from the stout thread to a filament as slender as gossamer. By a fortunate coincidence, it was at this moment that Hargreaves perfected in his reflective and creative mind a machine, whose singularly expressive name, the "spinning jenny," almost conveys the purpose of its invention. By this discovery mere manual labour was still further displaced-the new machinery spinning weftyarn requisite for the shoot of the warps spun upon the water-frame of Arkwright. "The power-loom of Dr. Cartwright appeared; followed by Crompton's "mule," by which one man could, with the aid of two or three children, manage 4000 spindles, each giving out a separate thread! Improvement followed improvement with a rapidity that allowed the public

mind no interval of repose from the continuous excitement of that wonder which is said to be the creation of surprise mingled with ignorance.

There was now only one element which should set free the patient drudges of the new industry, the wind, the water, and the beasts of burden, drudges which supplied the complicated and delicate machinery with uncertain and inharmonious power, and that element was supplied by a man whose infinite quickness of apprehension, prodigious memory, and wonderful power of application marked him out as a special instrument in the hands of a superintending Providence, to open out a new era in the history of European civilization. The sentence inscribed by a grateful country upon the tomb of James Watt, in the Pantheon devoted to its mighty dead, Westminster Abbey, records of him that "He directed the force of his original genius, early exercised in philosophic research, to the improvement of the steam engine, enlarged the resources of his country, increased the power of man, and rose to an eminent place among the illustrious followers of science and the real benefactors of the world." It was reserved to his fine genius, which with patient and exploring spirit was neither unduly heated into enthusiasm by success, nor hastily chilled into despair by failure, to perfect a series of inventions by which the action of steam is so regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures." A power which was to the delicate and complex structures, formed by the Promethean mind of Arkwright and his contemporaries, what the spirit of life is to the body, giving power, vitality, and continuous existence. From that moment England took its place among the foremost nations of the earth in manufacturing industry. The marvellous change in the means of employment, comfort, and enjoyment of the people, may be tested by the fact that during the first years of the last cen

tury, the average consumption of cotton-wool was little more than 1,000,000 pounds weight per annum, employing 28,000 persons. At the close of that century, and immediately after the bringing into operation of the splendid inventions I have so hurriedly described, the consumption had increased to 62,000,000 of pounds, and the workers in every department of the trade to upwards of 125,000. The last 50 years have developed still further this momentous branch of our national industry, and we have now reached the enormous annual consumption of 760,000,000 pounds of cotton wool, employing a million and a quarter of our people, while three millions and a half more receive their means of support from a branch of our national industry representing a yearly value of upwards of £35,000,000, and all this we may point to, with the exultation of honest pride, as being created by the unaided genius, severe sacrifices, and self-devotion of our country's self-risen, self-taught, and self-elevated men! The expiring moments will not allow me to follow further the remainder of Arkwright's eventful and honourable career. Almost in rags when he commenced experiments destined to effect so marvellous a change in a manufacture the importance of which I have only faintly shadowed out, afflicted with asthma, and depressed by poverty, he still clung to one object, uninfluenced by difficulty, and unseduced by pleasure. Step by step the poor and unregarded barber raised himself to distinction and title, amassing the great sum of £500,000, and vindicating, in his instructive career, the moral I am anxious to enforce, namely, that he who wishes to become eminent must inure himself to the practice of rigid self-denialthat sedulous labour forms one of the chief conditions of success, and that reciprocated benefits constitute the golden links which make up in their inseparable union the great chain of society.

PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION;

OR,

HUMAN EDUCATION HISTORICALLY VIEWED:

By J. D. MORELL, ESQ., M.A.

[This lecture, which our readers will find most suggestive and comprehensive, forms the sequel to the one on "Philosophy and Education," which appeared in the June Number of the "Popular Lecturer." It was delivered at the Manchester Mechanics' Institution, as the inaugural lecture of the session of 1855-6.]

SYNOPSIS.

Brief sketches of the natural stages of mental development. History shews these stages on a large scale. 1. The Oriental world.-2. The Greek world.-3. The Roman world.-4. The early Christian world.-5. The Middle Ages.-6. The Reformation.-7. Development of Modern Education.-Bacon-Locke Bousseau-The Illuminati-Pestalozzi-Summary of the general principles of Education, and their influence on the Future.

In our last lecture we viewed the subject of Education from the stand-point of Psychology; and traced the order in which the mental faculties expand in the natural history of their development. In the present lecture we shall regard Education from the Historical point of view; history being itself the record of the entire education of humanity under the direction of a supreme and overruling