until consumed, is not diminished to our view by this notion, but on the contrary augmented.

Nor were other natural secrets unknown to the Thaumaturgists. Phosphorus contributed in no slight degree to these operations. The liquid preparation of this, Salverte affirms to have been the mixture which Nessus gave to Dejanira, as a lovephiltre for Hercules. The description given by Salverte, at p. 214, is most remarkably like the well-known effects of the drug. Naphtha, according to Procopius, is called the "oil of Medea.' Salverte considers that this was the material with which she saturated the robe she gave Creusa. We pass the next notices of the "Greek Fire," and proceed to the subject of "Explosions apparently Supernatural," in which we read the following judicious remarks on that remarkable event, the interruption of the rebuilding of the temple by Julian. It is gratifying to hear a scholar, whose knowledge of physics renders him a more than ordinary witness to truth, giving forth the following bold testimony in its behalf:

:

"The Editor has no hesitation in saying, that if these explosions and earthquakes were not a real miracle, as he firmly believes they were, there are no data whatever for asserting that they were produced by human art, as our author would imply; and, consequently, although they may ever remain otherwise unexplained, yet they certainly cannot be regarded as the result of the springing of a mine. In favour of their being a real miracle, the prohibition of our Saviour, with regard to the restoration of the temple, required to be fulfilled, and it has been accomplished up to the present time: hence we see a purpose which the miracle was intended to fulfil; and in the event, the operation of a power adequate to the effect."

Salverte evidently considers gunpowder as early known to the world, p. 232, vol. ii. The editor gives a list of explosive substances as destructive as gunpowder, and justly leans to the conclusion that they were in many instances known to the ancient world.

The last chapter that we have to consider is the "Aid afforded to Magic by physical Science." Here Salverte claims for the antients the "air-gun," " steam," "the magnet," "the compass,' and the full influence of a large portion of experimental philosophy. Strong assumptions these in their behalf, and with them we conclude our review of this remarkable book. Many will think that Salverte has scarce justified his magnificent sketch of the power of the Thaumaturgist, by the actual means he shows him to possess. We shall make no comparison between his assignment of powers, and proof of their possession. But one thing he has made fully apparent, and in this Brewster has joined him;

and it is this, that those persons principally selected the convenient points of the night season, of distance from the parties on whose credulity they operated, of excited temperament, of powerful potions, by which the senses were nearly lost, of fumigations, perfumes, odours, smoke, under which action existing matters are not clearly discernible; doubtless they availed themselves of the aid of ventriloquism, and of a deep intuition into the properties of physical substances, and of meteorological and other phenomena. Well, then, is the miraculous lost to the earth in this detail of what may be accomplished by ordinary agents? Assuredly not. There is no reason why the known sequence of causes should not, for special reasons under all dispensations, be occasionally suspended. We had intended to have contrasted, at the close of the article, the false miracles and true; but we think it as injudicious as unnecessary to show that real miracles are not dependent on any of the above clearly-proved instances of deception. He that could turn in open day to the disciples of John, and say, "Go ye, and tell John the things that ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them," needeth not any one to distinguish these His deeds from the lying vanities of the heathen. The moral force that could invent a Gospel, had never before his day appeared, nor has it since. His miraculous witness from the Father that he was the Son of God, was apparent from the fact that He wrought in open day before assembled thousands, at every period in which it was demanded of Him. To contrast Him with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Zoroaster, Epimenides, or Pythagoras, would be the height of absurdity. They have lost their hold over men, while his faith gathers into it the Greek and the Roman, the Magian and the Persian, the Indian and Chinese, the intellectual sense of the earth; and his system is shown to be applicable to all the earth, while the republic of Plato, and the fire-encircled kingdom of the Magian Zoroaster, demonstrate alike their narrowness and infirmity. He has done more than that beautiful piece of speculative philosophy, the Phædo, ever attained to; he has not only proved the soul to be immortal, but that it has a happy immortality. His cognizance of futurity was not from dim speculation, but from living intuition into the life to come. The ethics of Aristotle are beautiful for their day, but they do not mate with the gospel of Jesus, for their unsanctioned force fell faint on that philosopher's heart; but the spirit is emboldened to the love and the practice of the Gospel by the ennobling future both to body and soul assured within it by the recorded life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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ART. XI.-A Practical Treatise on Weaving by Hand and Power-Looms. Intended as a Text-Book for Manufacturers and Power-Loom Engineers. By George White. Niven, Glasgow; Whittaker, London.

THE cotton manufacture in England has been attended with extraordinary effects on society. It is one of the most surprising and gigantic manufactures that ever engrossed the attention of any nation, whether we view it in reference to the number of people employed in it, the extent and quality of its machinery, the ingenuity and industry of its artisans, the number and size of its workshops, houses, buildings, and factories, the spirit and enterprise of its merchants and manufacturers, the extent of its exports and imports, or the amazingly enhanced value of the land in the more immediate neighbourhoods of its activity.

It has crept on, however, from very small beginnings almost imperceptibly, and began to make its appearance early in the seventeenth century. In the custom-house returns, which are, however, not exactly correct, the cotton-wool imported for the year 1741 is given at 1,645,031 lbs. But it was of little consequence, and may indeed be said to have been incapable of existing without legislative protection till the year 1768, which is a remarkable year in the history of the means for the production of this manufacture. Up to this period no one had any idea of the power of machinery as a means for manufacturing. Practically speaking, it had no existence before this period, and almost at once its power, as applied to the cotton manufacture, excited universal astonishment. In short, it had no equal. Compared with it, the productive power of hand labour, which at that time supplied inadequately the wants of society, stood at the arithmetical ratio of one to three hundred. A contest and rivalry, however, between the cotton goods of England and India raged for many years, and caused such a sensation about 1770 and 80 and upwards, that a great crisis was supposed to have arrived, which produced a work in 1787, warning the nation emphatically to beware of the fatal consequences which would result from the cotton goods of India being thrown into the market at reduced prices, and in greater quantities than formerly.

Two great elements, however, were necessary for manufacturing effectively by the new means, iron, for example, which is undoubtedly the best material for making the machines, and coal for working the iron. Those countries, therefore, which were

provided with these necessaries were, of course, in a condition to make greater progress, and outstrip the efforts of every other, whatever might be its advantages for manufacturing merely by hand labour. England and India were precisely in these relative circumstances. The latter had indeed been the great seat of the cotton manufacture, from so early a period of society that we have now no history of its rise, or record of its introduction. It grew the raw material, had abundance of labour at a cheap rate, great natural facilities for manufacturing by hand, and moreover had attained a degree of perfection in the management and production of the goods, unequalled, and supposed to be unapproachable, by any other nation; and yet this very nation, with these singular advantages, has been obliged to yield the supremacy in her own department to England; a country eight or ten thousand miles distant, which India furnished with the raw material, and yet this very country of ours remarkable chiefly for the abundance of her coal and iron, is enabled to manufacture the material in a superior manner, and, after giving eight times more to her artisans for their labour in managing it than the Indians can make it with the utmost exertion of their skill, carry it back to India, and, wonderful to tell, sell it there at a lower rate than the Indians can make it for themselves!

This was the first great triumph of machinery, and it was the triumph of properly directed intelligence over mere animal power. England's power is thus based on her mechanical means, her coal and her iron, and her ability to use them.

The first great idea then, in conjunction with these advantages that brought her resources into action and affected the results, was draught as applied to cotton spinning by fluted rollers. This great idea is the germ of England's greatness as a manufacturing nation. It changed the relative condition of the two nations, secured her the pre-eminence by the developement of her own resources, and established the influence of a new agency beneficial to all. The struggle was no longer the exhausting one of mere animal labour, which is incapable of much production. It was the invention of a new means to quicken and increase production by relieving toil; and the cotton manufacture was the first to present us with the complete triumph of this new

means.

Machinery was not only, practically speaking, first originated in this department, but it was also first systematized in a series of machines, acting conjointly on the raw material, so as to bring it by successive action into a manufactured state; and leave to the hand only the tending and guidance of the machinery, and the material on which it acts.

VOL. VIII.-NO. II.

2 G

Mr. Arkwright, who afterwards received the title of knight, has the great merit of practically originating this great consummation of machinery. He patented the idea of draught by fluted rollers, as applied to spinning, in 1768; and this idea was found by him to be so comprehensive, that it guided him as a principle or an accessory throughout all his system of machinery.

Cotton-spinning, as well as the spinning of all fibrous substances, consists of two processes; namely, the management of the fibres in straight and continuous lines, parallel to each other, and then forming a thread of them by twisting them so as to lock them together. The first process is called the preparation; the second, the finishing or spinning, properly so called. These two processes were performed, at the time that Arkwright took up the subject, the one by the hand-cards, the other by the single-thread wheel. But as the cotton comes into the hands of the manufacturer in bags or bales, into which it has been squeezed usually in a damp state, and afterwards subjected to the action of a press, to diminish the size for the convenience of shipping, the cotton is necessarily matted by the process, and often more or less sandy, and mixed up with portions of the pod from imperfect cleansing. The first object, therefore, is to clean and disengage it from these and all extraneous matter, and tear it as preparatory for carding, which was done by switching it; that is, the cotton was laid on a netted frame, and a woman, with a switch in each hand, struck it alternately with each, so that it rebounded with this action from the netting, and under the process the foreign matter was disengaged, and fell through the netting. The cotton was thus prepared for being carded with the common hand-cards: two cards were used by one person, and the teeth of each set made to act in opposition to the other at an obtuse angle, with the cotton between them. Each carding, or the portion taken from the cards at a time, was of course only the length of the breadth of the hand-card. These cardings, or portions of carding, were afterwards put together in lengths individually, to form a continuous fleece. The fleece or sliver thus made, was then taken to be spun or finished on the old singlethread wheel, and further attenuated by being drawn out and extended with the left hand in the act of being twisted, while the wheel was turned by the right.

Mr. Arkwright's object in performing this process by machinery was, to combine a series of spindles in a frame with the fluted rollers to draw the sliver or rove, so as to deliver it to the spindles as it was wanted by the rotation of the rollers, and drive both the spindles and rollers from a common centre of motion.