national benefactors; though at present it is far less known to the world at large. It was long indeed before Cartwright's merits were appreciated, and they failed to obtain for him the wealth and distinction which the creation of the factory system secured to Arkwright, The utility of the power-loom is now acknowledged, and its sphere appears to be rapidly enlarging. But it is still limited even in the cotton, and much more in the silk and woollen manufactures; and it is not unreasonable to expect that, as prejudices give way, and fresh refinements render the machine susceptible of more general, not to say universal, application, the art of weaving by mechanism, as formerly of spinning, may give an impulse to our trade, of which we now see the beginning, but cannot conjecture the end.

Edmund Cartwright was the fourth son of William Cartwright, Esq., of Marnham in Nottinghamshire, a gentleman whose family had been long established in the county, and had suffered considerably in its fortune by adherence to the cause of Charles I. in the civil war. He was born April 24, 1743; and at the school of Wakefield, and at University College, Oxford, received the education usually bestowed upon young men destined for the clerical profession. At an early age he manifested a taste for poetic composition; but though he had printed some short pieces anonymously, his name was not given to the public, until the appearance, in 1770, of 'Armenia and Elvira,' a legendary poem, which became so popular that it passed through seven editions in little more than a year. He also published, about the same period, the Prince of Peace,' and Sonnets to Eminent Men.' In 1774 he became a contributor to the Monthly Review, in which he continued to write for ten years.

We have not ascertained the date of his taking orders, of his election to a fellowship at Magdalen College, or of his vacating that fellowship by marriage. The degree of D.D. he took in 1806. For some years after his marriage he resided, first on his living at Brampton in Derbyshire, and afterwards at Goadby-Marwood in Leicestershire; where the hours which were not devoted to the duties of his calling were chiefly employed in literary pursuits.

Hitherto Mr. Cartwright's private life had been that of a retired country clergyman, varied only by his correspondence with literary friends. From his family connexions, and the esteem in which he was held by some who had power to advance him, his prospects in the church were favourable; and he had good reason to believe, that if he had confined himself to the line of life in which he had been educated, and in which he was then advancing, he would have attained a more

ample provision in his profession, than it was his lot to acquire by the exercise of his mechanical talent. The existence of such a talent in his own mind had been wholly unknown even to himself, until he was upwards of forty years of age, when the circumstance which has been above narrated called it into action, and caused a change in the whole tenor of his life. In his first attempts he had to contend with the difficulties which usually beset genius without experience. As I had never before turned my thoughts to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had even seen a loom at work, or knew anything of its construction, you will readily believe that my first loom was a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was placed perpendicularly; the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundred weight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time." This, as we have seen, was in 1785: he also applied his talents to effecting the substitution of machinery for manual labour in combing wool, and took out his first patent on this subject in April 1790.

The following anecdotes we quote from the Pursuit of Knowledge,' vol. ii.; we believe them to rest upon the best authority. "Dr. Cartwright's children still remember often seeing their father about this time walking to and fro apparently in deep meditation, and occasionally throwing his arms from side to side; on which they used to be told that he was thinking of weaving and throwing the shuttle. From the moment indeed when his attention was first turned to the invention of the power-loom, mechanical contrivance became the grand occupying subject of his thoughts. With that sanguineness of disposition which seems to be almost a necessary part of the character of an inventor, he looked on difficulties, when he met with them in any of his attempts, as only affording his genius occasion for a more distinguished triumph : nor did he allow even repeated failures for a moment to dishearten him. Some time after he had brought his first loom to perfection, a manufacturer, who had called upon him to see it at work, after expressing his admiration of the ingenuity displayed in it, remarked, that wonderful as was Mr. Cartwright's mechanical skill, there was one thing that would effectually baffle him, namely the weaving of patterns in checks, or in other words, the combining in the same web, of a pattern, or fancy figure, with the crossing colours which constitute the check. Mr. Cartwright made no reply to this observation at the time; but some weeks after, on receiving a second visit from the

same person, he had the pleasure of showing him a piece of muslin of the description mentioned, beautifully executed by machinery. The man is said to have been so much astonished, that he roundly declared his conviction that some agency more than human must have been called in on the occasion."

The prejudices and opposition which Dr. Cartwright's invention encountered from the manufacturers, stood greatly in the way of any general adoption of his loom during the period of his patent rights. Other causes, however, were concerned in this. A mill, containing five hundred of his looms, was burnt down almost immediately after its erection. He engaged in a concern for manufacturing with powerlooms at Doncaster; but this proved unsuccessful. And it is not improbable, though we have not found it expressly stated, that the machine itself was not at this time able to compete, in respect of economy and beauty of workmanship, with hand labour: for during the period of his exclusive rights, two or three other persons took out patents for power-looms, without being able to make them answer. But about the year 1801, in which his patent expired, he had the pleasure of finding that his invention was coming into use to a very considerable extent; and the mortification of seeing others reap the fruit of his unrequited ingenuity. The increased demand during the war for English cotton goods, with the necessity for working up at home the cotton yarn which had hitherto been exported to the Continent, had given an impulse to the manufacture favourable to the introduction of machinery; and at the same time the power-loom was rendered much more economical by a very ingenious method, invented by Mr. Radcliffe of Stockport, about 1804, of dressing or sizing the warp, before it was placed in the loom. A cotton manufacturer of Stockport, named Horrocks, took out a patent for another power-loom in 1803. He failed; but his loom, with various modifications, is that which has now come into general use.

The following estimate, taken from Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture,' of the number of power-looms in Britain at various periods, though literal exactness in such a matter is unattainable, affords probably a tolerably correct measure of the rapid multiplication of these engines.

At the present time, we are told by the same authority, the machinemakers of Lancashire are making power-looms with the greatest rapidity, and they cannot be made sufficiently fast to meet the demands of the manufacturers. This quick increase, notwithstanding the considerable expense of outfit, which by employing hand-weavers the manufacturer avoids entirely, may safely be taken as a test of the advantages and national importance of the power-loom. The following estimate is given of its productiveness as compared with hand-loom labour. A very good hand-weaver, twenty-five or thirty years of age, will weave two pieces of cloth per week, of a certain description, each twenty-four yards long. In 1833, a steam-loom weaver, from fifteen to twenty years of age, assisted by a girl about twelve years of age, attending to four looms, can weave eighteen similar pieces in a week; some can weave twenty pieces. It appears from the fuller statement given by Mr. Baines, that the comparative productiveness of steam-looms has rapidly increased up to the last-mentioned period, and therefore it may be conjectured not yet to have reached its maximum ; and it is also stated, that in those descriptions of plain goods for which they have hitherto been chiefly used," cloth made by these looms, when seen by those manufacturers who employ handweavers, at once excites admiration, and a consciousness that their own weavers cannot equal it." The set-off against these advantages is the interest on capital employed, and the expense of supplying power. It is not asserted by the more intelligent, either among masters or workmen, that the power-loom has been more than a secondary and minor cause of the lamentable depression and misery now existing among the hand-weavers; a depression which it is to be feared will never be removed but by the gradual relinquishment of that laborious and ill-paid trade.

The hardships of Dr. Cartwright's case, his merits, and the extent to which the country was then profiting by his discoveries, had become, by 1807, so manifest to those who were best acquainted with the cotton trade, that a considerable number of the most respectable and influential gentlemen of Manchester presented a memorial to government, praying that some remuneration for his useful inventions might be taken into consideration. He petitioned the legislature himself to the same effect; and in 1809 obtained from parliament a grant of £10,000 for "the good service he had rendered the public by his invention of weaving." The compensation thus awarded, though falling far short of the sums he had expended in perfecting his inventions, as well as in defending his patent-rights, contributed essentially