regulatious, to read the precise book it may please
you to place in his hands.

Let us to the mill.

The great engine, the power of which, moves
all the machinery that is in the vast building,
that gives life to the " devil," and speed to the
shuttle; that lifts bales of cotton in ascending
rooms—that is, in short, the nervous centre of
Old Fox's establishment— this most useful and
noisy monster is in a cool and pleasant chamber,
and is protected by handsome panels of stained
woods. The weaving shed, with its bright north
light, is as airy as a birdcage. The flying bands,
the rattle of two hundred looms, the wild
varieties of motion shown in the distance by the
working looms, the little tramways along which
boys push waggons of cloth on their way to
the measuring department, make up a scene of
activity over which the eye anxiously ranges
in search of an image that will realise to the
outer world the marvellous order, that looks
like chaos, of a great modern weavers' shed. A
hundred spring rattles would not realise the
noise. Twelve hours in this rattle and bustle!
Twelve hours in a paddle-box would be
retirement in comparison.

I observe that every weaver's attention is
concentrated upon his looms; that he can hardly
lift his eye from them; that he has barely time
to say a word. Swiftly fly the shuttles;
delicately as a lady stops her silk skein wheel doth
the iron loom halt when a frail thread is broken.
He must watch the shuttle, and see that the
cloth is coming straight and sound. And all
this rapid movement is under his searching eye
from sunrise to sundown. If I watch it for
five minutes my head swims. I turn to my
host, and ask him whether the weaver who bears
this anxious, exhausting watchfulness all day
through, can be reasonably expected to deny
himself his pipe in the evening. When the secretary
of the Mechanics' Institute, close at hand, tells
me that a solemn professor exhibited an air-pump
and Leyden jars, a night or two since, to a select
audience of seven adults and two children, and
deduces from this thin attendance a conclusion
highly unfavourable to the operatives of the
district, I am inclined to drag him into this
weavers' shed, to tie him to a couple of looms
for twelve hours, and then to carry him, bound
hand and foot, to his own lecture-hall, where
some solemn personage should be ready to
administer to him a two hours' very dry discourse.

Yet, the originator of this mill had a fine
Lancashire master's mind. With a strong
love of the ingenious, he pursued every new
idea in machinery, every household invention,
with avidity. The lever corkscrew gave
a zest to his wine. His dog-cart had peculiar
shafts and peculiar wheels. An ingenious
contrivance filled the troughs of his horses at
will. By a cunning arrangement of a shaft,
which dipped from the granary (of which he
kept the key) and told the quantity of corn that
passed through it, he could check the consumption
of oats or beans. With refuse coke from
the mill, he made dry and spacious walks about
his mansion; and it was not enough for him that
the mill machine drove the looms and carding
and spinning-frames— it might carry bales of
cottons from the ground to the airy eminence
of the mill's third storey— it might drive
the devil, and do other mill work but he
must trouble it to step across to a little
farm-yard and make itself generally useful there.
I found it at work cutting chaff and turnips,
and pumping the mill manure all the way up the
hill that divides the farm-yard from Fox's
mansion. This is not the place where power or
refuse is thrown away. If there were the power
of a bluebottle wasting, Old Fox would put his
wits to work, to turn it to account. Little
bridges span the farm-yard and dip into separate
enclosures. Each bridge is for a distinct and
exclusive breed of fowls. From these lofty and
elegant eminences, pure Spanish, or prize Cochins,
look proudly down upon the plebeian barndoor.
The cows are in stalls, neat as parlours; Old
Fox will not be satisfied until they are milked
by the aid of cranks and bands. Three milk-
maid power must be got out of the engine yet,
before he has done with it. The man habituated
to the direction of the labour of twelve hundred
people, pressed by these people day by day to
give higher value for their labour, accustomed
to journey twice a week to Manchester to meet
all the hard heads of Lancashire, and to make
advantageous cotton bargains in the midst of
rivals, of necessity becomes sharp. He
calculates steam power to a nicety. He is great on
economic boilers. He is ever on the look-out
for improvements in machinery that may give
him a temporary advantage over his neighbours.
I have seen one of these acute gentlemen
standing upon a very pretty iron bridge thrown
across a lake in his park, to connect the mainland
with an umbrageous little island. The acute
gentleman in question glanced knowingly at me,
and slapped the light railing of the bridge.

"Here," said he, "is the wreck of an old
engine."

This clever economy of material, and this
power of watching over little profits that would
slip through the tyro's fingers, impress all
observant visitors to the mills of Lancashire.
Waste is unknown: the foul cotton, rejected by
the carder, is thankfully accepted by the paper-
maker. That which the printers call " fat" is
unknown to the weaver and the spinner. The
pound of flesh is weighed to a scruple; the
steam measures the work done, as exactly as
steam throws the shuttle. The conditions are
hard on both sides; but hardest, it is obvious,
for the operatives.

I contrast the little weavers' cottages opposite
old Fox's mill (and they are snug enough)
with old Fox's noble mansion that commands
the country for twenty miles round. I cannot
help taking a seat in one of these cottages. I
want to feel myself in the position of one of
Old Fox's hands.

I remember him when he was a young man,
and his father had a bit of an establishment not
worth talking about. I was in that little