Honour with yearly festals: through their streets 540
The pomp, with tuneful sounds, and order just,
Denoting labour's happy progress, moves,
Procession slow and solemn: first the rout;
Then servient youth, and magisterial eld;
Each after each, according to his rank,
His sway, and office in the commonweal;
And to the board of smiling plenty's stores
Assemble, where delicious cates and fruits
Of every clime are piled; and with free hand,
Unsparing, each his appetite regales.
Toil only tastes the feast, by nerveless ease
Unrelished. Various mirth and song resound;
And oft they interpose improving talk,
Divulging each to other knowledge rare,
Sparks, from experience that sometimes rise;
Till night weighs down the sense, or morning's dawn
Rouses to labour, man to labour born.
Then the sleek brightening lock, from hand to hand, Renews its circling course: this feels the card; That in the comb admires its growing length; This, blanched, emerges from the oily wave; And that, the amber tint, or ruby, drinks.
For it suffices not, in flowery vales,
Only to tend the flock and shear soft wool:
Gums must be stored of Guinea's arid coast;
Mexican woods, and India's brightening salts;
Fruits, herbage, sulphurs, minerals, to stain
The fleece prepared, which oil-imbibing earth
Of Woburn blanches, and keen alum-waves
Intenerate. With curious eye observe,
In what variety the tribe of salts,
Gums, ores, and liquors, eye-delighting hues
Produce, abstersive or restringent; how
Steel casts the sable; how pale pewter, fused
In fluid spirit'ous, the scarlet dye;
And how each tint is made, or mix'd, or changed,
By mediums colourless: why is the fume
Of sulphur kind to white and azure hues,
Pernicious else: why no materials yield
Singly their colours, those except that shine
With topaz, sapphire, and cornelian rays:
And why, though Nature's face is clothed in green,
No green is found to beautify the fleece,
But what repeated toil by mixture gives.
To find effects, while causes lie concealed,
Reason uncertain tries: howe'er, kind chance
Oft with equivalent discovery pays
Its wandering efforts: thus the German sage,
Diligent Drebet, o'er alchemic fire,
Seeking the secret source of gold, received
Of altered cochineal the crimson store.
Tyrian Melcartus thus (the first who brought
Tin's useful ore from Albion's distant isle,
And, for unwearied toils and arts, the name
Of Hercules acquired), when o'er the mouth
Of his attendant sheep-dog he beheld
The wounded murex strike a purple stain,
The purple stain on fleecy woofs he spread,
Which lured the eye, adorning many a nymph,
And drew the pomp of trade to rising Tyre.
Our valleys yield not, or but sparing yield,
The dyer's gay materials. Only weld,
Or root of madder, here, or purple woad,
By which our naked ancestors obscured
Their hardy limbs, inwrought with mystic forms,
Like Egypt's obelisks. The powerful sun
Hot India's zone with gaudy pencil paints,
And drops delicious tints o'er hill and dale,
Which trade to us conveys. Nor tints alone;
Trade to the good physician gives his balms;
Gives cheerful cordials to th' afflicted heart:
Gives, to the wealthy, delicacies high;
Gives, to the curious, works of nature rare;
And when the priest displays, in just discourse,
Him, the all-wise Creator, and declares
His presence, power, and goodness, unconfined.
"Tis Trade, attentive voyager, who fills
His lips with argument. To censure Trade,
Or hold her busy people in contempt,
Let none presume. The dignity, and grace,
And weal of human life, their fountains owe
To seeming imperfections, to vain wants,
Or real exigencies; passions swift
Forerunning reason; strong contrarious bents,
The steps of men dispersing wide abroad
O'er realms and seas. There, in the solemn scene,
Infinite wonders glare before their eyes,
Humiliating the mind enlarged; for they
The clearest sense of Deity receive
Who view the widest prospect of his works,
Ranging the globe with trade through various ciimes:
Who see the signatures of boundless love,
Nor less the judgment of Almighty Power,
That warns the wicked, and the wretch who 'scapes
From human justice: who astonished view
Etna's loud thunders and tempestuous fires;
The dust of Carthage; desert shores of Nile;
Or Tyre's abandoned summit, crowned of old
With stately towers; whose merchants, from their
isles,
And radiant thrones, assembled in her marts; 640
Whither Arabia, whither Kedar, brought
Their shaggy goats, their flocks and bleating lambs;
Where rich Damascus piled his fleeces white,
Prepared, and thirsty for the double tint,
And flowering shuttle. While th' admiring world
Crowded her streets; ah! then the hand of pride
Sowed imperceptible his poisonous weed,
Which crept destructive up her lofty domes,
As ivy creeps around the graceful trunk
Of some tall oak. Her lofty domes no more,
Not even the ruins of her pomp, remain;
Not even the dust they sank in; by the breath
Of the Omnipotent offended hurled
Down to the bottom of the stormy deep:
Only the solitary rock remains,
Her ancient site; a monument to those,
Who toil and wealth exchange for sloth and pride.
Introduction. Recommendation of labour. The several methods of spinning. Description of the loom, and of weaving. Variety of looms. The fulling-mill described, and the progress of the manufacture. Dyeing of cloth, and the excellence of the French in that art. Frequent negligence of our artificers. The ill consequences of idleness. County workhouses proposed; with a description of one. Good effects of industry exemplified in the prospect of Burstal and Leeds; and the cloth-market there described. Preference of the labours of the loom to other manufactures, illustrated by some comparisons. History of the art of weaving: its removal from the Netherlands, and settlement in several parts in England. Censure of those who would reject the persecuted and the stranger. Our trade and prosperity owing to them. Of the manufacture of tapestry, taught us by the Saracens. Tapestries of Blenheim described. Different arts procuring wealth to different countries. Numerous inhabitants, and their industry, the surest source of it. Hence a wish, that our country were open to all men. View of the roads and rivers through which our manufactures are conveye L Our navigations not far from the seat of our manufactures: other countries less happy. The difficult work of Egypt in joining the Nile
to the Red Sea; and of France attempting, by canals, a communication between the ocean and the Mediterranean. Such junctions may more easily be performed in England, and the Trent and Severn united to the Thames. Description of the Thames, and port of London.
PROCEED, Arcadian Muse; resume the pipe
Of Hermes, long disused, though sweet the tone,
And to the songs of Nature's choristers
Harmonious. Audience pure be thy delight,
Though few: for every note which virtue wounds,
However pleasing to the vulgar herd,
To the purged ear is discord. Yet too oft
Has false dissembling vice to amorous airs
The reed applied, and heedless youth allured:
Too oft, with bolder sound, inflamed the rage
Of horrid war. Let now the fleecy looms
Direct our rural numbers, as of old,
When plains and sheepfolds were the Muse's haunts.
So thou, the friend of every virtuous deed
And aim, though feeble, shalt these rural lays
Approve, O Heathcote, whose benevolence
Visits our valleys; where the pasture spreads,
And where the bramble: and would justly act
True charity, by teaching idle want
And vice the inclination to do good,
Good to themselves, and in themselves to all,
Through grateful toil. Even Nature lives by toil:
Beast, bird, air, fire, the heavens, and rolling worlds,
All live by action: nothing lies at rest,
But death and ruin: man is born to care,
Fashioned, improved by labour. This of old,
Wise states observing, gave that happy law,
Which doomed the rich and needy, every rank,
To mutual occupation; and oft called
Their chieftains from the spade, or furrowing plough, Or bleating sheepfold. Hence utility
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