operations in chasing and embossing; the watchmaker calls in its power and precision to fashion the nicest parts of his machinery; and the philosophical instrument-maker forms by its aid a screw, or divides a scale in proportions, which the microscope alone can decipher. In printing, we see its triumphs in the steam-press and the composing machine; and also in the kindred apparatus for stamping, embossing, and colouring of paper, cloth, and other ornamental fabrics. The paper-mill, in which rags are cleaned, converted into pulp, reduced to paper, and that paper sized, smoothed, and cut into perfect sheets, is indeed a curiosity; and yet it is only one of a thousand such inventions. Is it in spinning ?-then, that we have the numberless improvements and complications of Arkwright's invention as applied to cotton, silk, linen, or wool-these machines not only cleaning and carding the material, but drawing it out in delicacy fine as the slenderest gossamer. Allied to these are the thread, cord, and cable-making machinery scattered over our island; as well as the curious inventions for braiding and plaiting straw, working network, lace, braid, caoutchouc fabric, and the like. As in spinning, so in weaving we have a vast number of machines, which, though in every-day operation around us, must ever be regarded with curious interest. The Jacquard, damask, and carpet looms, either worked by steam or by manual labour, are, in reality, greater marvels than the automata with which our forefathers puzzled themselves, and would be so esteemed, did not frequency and familiarity banish our wonder. To these we may add such recent inventions as the machine for the fabrication of card-web. This ingenious piece of mechanism unwinds the wire from the reel, bends it, cuts it, pierces the holes, inserts the tooth, drives it home, and lastly, gives it, when inserted, the requisite angle, with the same, or rather with greater precision and accuracy than the most skilled set of human fingers could; and with such astonishing expedition, that one machine performs a task which would require the labour of at least ten men. An engine of five hundred horsepower would drive, it is calculated, one hundred such machines.

Though wind, falling water, and animal power may be, and are in many instances applied to the movement of such machinery as we have above alluded to, yet there can be little doubt that, without the aid of the steam-engine, many of them would have never been thought of, or at all events never brought to their present perfection. It is to this, the most powerful and most uniform of all known motive forces, that the modern world owes its astonishing advances in the arts of civilised life; to this that we still look for further and still greater advances. It is in our mines and beside our furnaces; in our factories and workshops; in our mills, bakehouses, and breweries: it is on our roads and our rivers; and on the great ocean itself, bringing, as it were, the most distant and inaccessible places into close communion and

reciprocation of produce. Exerting the strength of one man, or the power of one thousand horses, with equal indifference, the steam-engine, in all its variety of form, is the most powerful auxiliary which man ever called to his aid. In all its forms, whether atmospheric, double-condensing, high-pressure or lowpressure, rotary or otherwise, it is a curiosity of art, as is most of the apparatus with which it is connected. Perhaps the most wonderful forms in which its power now manifests itself, are the railway locomotive, shooting along at the rate of sixty or eighty miles an hour, and in the giant iron steamer of 322 feet long and 51 broad-a floating mass of between three and four thousand tons weight. Such are the dimensions of the recentlyconstructed steam-ship-the "Great Britain”—which is undoubtedly the greatest novelty in naval architecture the world ever witnessed. She is one-third larger than a first-rate manof-war, carries six masts, is entirely built and rigged with iron, is fitted up with saloons, dining-room, boudoir, and other apartments, as elegantly as the most aristocratic hotel; and has, moreover, comfortable beds and berths for not fewer than three hundred and sixty passengers.

Had our limits permitted, we would have gladly particularised several of the curious machines to which we have merely alluded; for whether in the making of a pin, or the forging of an anchor-in the spinning of a cotton thread, or in the twisting of a cable-in the framing of a button, or in the weaving of the most costly fabric-in the fashioning of a cartwheel, or the construction of a locomotive, the most ingenious machinery is now in requisition. Time, however, will blunt the edge of our curiosity. Locomotive engines, atmospheric railways, electric telegraphs, "Great Britain" steam-ships, and other present wonders, will become as familiar as spinningwheels were to our grandmothers, or as steam-engines are to ourselves.

MANUFACTURES.

The weaving of damasks and other figured fabrics, whether in silk, worsted, or linen, is undoubtedly one of the most ingenious departments of art, though familiarity with the process has long ago abated our wonder. There are still, however, some rare achievements in tapestry, weaving, and the like, which will ever be regarded as curiosities. Thus the weaving of certain garments without seam, even to the working of the button-holes and the stitching, is no mean feat, requiring not only considerable dexterity and skill, but a greater amount of patient labour than the generality of people would be inclined to devote. Portrait-weaving, but recently attempted in Britain, is also a curious and delicate process. The first attempt, we believe, was a portrait of the Duchess of Kent, by a Mr Kettle of Spitalfields. "The portrait," we borrow a contemporary account, is copied

from the well-known print of her royal highness, by Cochran, and its details have been followed with astonishing minuteness. The effect of the hat and plume is admirable; the ermine and folds of the mantilla which envelope the figure, are shadowed with a softness true to nature; while the minor points of the picture are worked out with extreme care and fidelity. In short, this product of the loom presents a fac-simile, even to the lettering and the autograph, of the original engraving. It is about fourteen inches by ten, exclusive of the lettering, &c. It was woven with the Jacquard machine, on an extensive scale, and took nearly 4000 cards. The pattern drawing, card-cutting machinery, and material for weaving, have cost upwards of £100." It is but right to mention, that French manufacturers have preceded us in portrait weaving-one of the earliest attempts being a portrait of Jacquard, by Didier, Petit, and Co. This portrait, which is woven in imitation of a fine line-engraving, has not less than 1000 threads in the square inch; 24,000 bands of card were used in the manufacture, each band large enough to receive 1050 holes.

It has been long known that glass can be drawn into threads of extreme fineness, but it is not many years ago since it has been successfully woven with silk; a fact especially curious, as its brittle nature would appear to render such a method of manufacturing it impossible. The fact, however," says the Times of 1840, is indisputable, the new material being substituted for gold and silver thread, than either of which it is more durable, possessing, besides, the advantage of never tarnishing. What is technically called the warp, that is, the long way of any loommanufactured article, is composed of silk, which forms the body and ground on which the pattern in glass appears as the weft or cross-work. The requisite flexibility of glass thread for manufacturing purposes is to be ascribed to its extreme fineness, as not less than fifty or sixty of the original threads (produced by steam-power) are required to form one thread for the loom. The process is slow, as not more than a yard can be manufactured in twelve hours. The work, however, is extremely beautiful, and comparatively cheap, inasmuch as no similar stuff, where bullion is really introduced, can be purchased at anything like the price at which this is sold; added to this, it is, as far as the glass is concerned, imperishable."

Besides glass, many other materials-at one time regarded the most refractory and unlikely-have been adopted in the manufacture of textile fabrics, as well as in the fabrication of articles of economy and ornament. Thus, caoutchouc dissolved in naphtha, and spread between two layers of cloth, constitutes the waterproof fabric of Macintosh; cut into threads and ribbons, it is woven into elastic ligatures and bandages; peculiarly prepared, it is employed in the formation of life-boats, as well as in the flooring of apartments; it is used in the manufacture of boots

and shoes; and compounded with starch, it constitutes the new substance gutta percha, which is already applied to some dozen ingenious purposes. The same may be said of papier maché, of which many articles of domestic use and ornament are now fabricated, and which is daily being adopted by the carver and cabinetmaker as a substitute for their most difficult panelling and fretwork. Leather also has recently been pressed into the same service; and so tough and endurable is this material, when properly prepared and moulded, that it is likely to be very extensively adopted as a substitute for carvings in wood, castings, compositions, metal, or even papier maché itself. There seems, in fact, to be no limit to the economic application of every substance which comes within the reach of man. We have now before us a fair specimen of writing-paper made from the straw of the oat and barley.

Several years ago there was patented, by an American gentleman, a mode of making cloth by a pneumatic process, without spinning, weaving, or any analogous machinery. The mode is as follows:-Into an air-tight chamber is put a quantity of flocculent particles of wool, which, by a kind of winnowingwheel, are kept floating equally; on one side of the chamber is a network, or gauze of metal, communicating with another chamber, from which the air can be abstracted by an exhausting syringe or air-pump; and on the communications between the chambers being opened, the air rushes with great force to supply the partial vacuum in the exhausted chamber, carrying the flocculent particles against the netting, and so interlacing the fibres that a cloth of beautiful fabric and close texture is instantaneously made. The only objection to cloth of this kind was its rawness, or liability to shrink after being wetted; and for this reason, we believe, it has never come into anything like use for clothing.

As an appropriate sequel to this, we notice another American machine, which has been recently constructed for facilitating the process of sewing and stitching. Its capabilities are thus described by a correspondent of the Worcester Spy, United States newspaper:- "The machine is very compact, not occupying a space of more than about six inches each way. It runs with so much ease, that I should suppose one person might easily operate twenty or thirty of them; and the work is done in a most thorough and perfect manner. Both sides of a seam look alike, appearing to be beautifully stitched, and the seam is closer and more uniform than when sewed by hand. It will sew straight or curved seams with equal facility, and so rapidly, that it takes but two minutes to sew the whole length of the outside seam of a pair of men's pantaloons. It sets four hundred stitches a minute with perfect ease, and the proprietor thinks there is no difficulty in setting seven hundred in a minute. The thread is less worn by this process than by hand-sewing, and consequently retains more of its strength. The simplicity of the construction of this

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machine, and the accuracy, rapidity, and perfection of its operation, will place it in the same rank with the card-machine, the straw-braider, the pin-machine, and the coach lace-loom-machines which never fail to command the admiration of every intelligent beholder.”

We have here endeavoured, according to our limits, to notice some of the more surprising accomplishments of human ingenuity and industry in the mechanical arts. Many of the inventions alluded to might well be regarded as the results of ingenious trifling, were it not that every exercise of mechanical skill and clever manipulation, though not of itself applicable to any practical purpose, is yet furthering the progress of art, by training the hand to perfection, and leading the mind to new, and, it may be, more useful conceptions. The first efforts in electricity were toys and trifles; now we owe to it the beautiful and economical applications of the electrotype, and the wonderful achievements of the electric telegraph. The miniature models and complexities of the young mechanic, though useless in themselves, furnish the certain preliminary training to the perfection of our delicate philosophical apparatus, and of those accurate, and, as it were, self-acting machines, which are now to be found in every economical department, from the fashioning of a block and pulley to the drawing of a thread as fine as gossamer, or the weaving of a tissue adorned with the rarest and most intricate designs of the draughtsman. Let us beware, therefore, of discouraging any effort of ingenuity; but rather let us prompt to trial and experiment, under the conviction that the mechanical arts are yet destined to an advancement which will render our present curiosities but things of ordinary note, and produce results tending to the diminution of human labour, and the production of human comforts and luxuries, of which at present we are unable to form the shadow of a conception.