A.D. 1760-1783.

INLAND NAVIGATION.

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under ground, were finished in 1762, and were described as "the greatest artificial curiosity in the world." The subterranean canals in the coalworks at Worsley were as remarkable as the canal itself and its branches. The open works, all of one level, extended thirty-eight miles; the tunnels were originally about a mile and a half in length, although they now extend forty-two miles, of which two-thirds have gone out of use. The immediate effect of the duke of Bridgewater's first great undertaking was sufficiently demonstrative of the public value of canals. The price of coals in Manchester was reduced one half after its completion. The duke and his brother-in-law, the first marquis of Stafford, were the chief promoters of the Grand Trunk Navigation, generally known as the Staffordshire Canal; and Brindley was the engineer. This work brought the iron and pottery districts into easy communication with the Mersey and the Trent; and, with concurrent undertakings which Brindley designed or superintended, connected the Thames, the Humber, the Severn, and the Mersey, and united London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Hull, by water communication, passing through a district unsurpassed in natural resources and productive industry. Aikin, the local historian of Manchester, says, "Nothing but highly flourishing manufactures can repay the vast expense of these designs." Manchester, within a quarter of a century, had become the centre of that manufacture which, from very small beginnings, had grown into proportions then deemed gigantic, however dwarf-like they may appear in comparison with its present development. It is asserted in a pamphlet published in 1788, that "not above twenty years before that time, the whole cotton trade of Great Britain did not return 200,000l. to the country for the raw materials, combined with the labour of the people." About 1760, an improvement in the process of weaving had stimulated the mechanical attempts for increasing the quantity of yarn to be woven. In spite of several ingenious inventions, the demand for fine yarn still went on unsupplied until, in 1767, James Hargreaves completed his "Spinningjenny," which was soon found in every weaver's cottage in Lancashire. But the time was fast approaching when the spinning of cotton would cease to be a domestic manufacture. Richard Arkwright, a barber at Bolton, who had a mechanical genius, became acquainted with John Kay, a clock-maker at Warrington, and the two set their ingenuity to work upon schemes for superseding the spinning-wheel. Arkwright went to Preston, and having expended his last shilling in completing, however imperfectly, a machine of a new construction, it was exhibited, in 1768, in that town. In a lucky hour for Arkwright, murmurs and threats reached his ear. He hastily packed up his apparatus in the dread of mob-law; went to Nottingham; obtained two moneyed partners, of whom Jedediah Strutt was one; and took out his first patent in 1769. The principle of this machine was "to enable rollers to do the work of human fingers, with much greater precision, and incomparably cheaper." The machines of the small factory at Nottingham, which Arkwright was enabled to establish with his partners, were worked by horse-power. In 1771, in the beautiful valley of the Derwent, at Cromford, was erected the first water spinning-mill. The great merit of Arkwright, however disputable his claim as an inventor, was as an organizer of the labour required in a cotton factory. It was five

years before any profit was realised at Cromford. All the difficulties that interpose between the completion of an invention and its commercial value had to be overcome. In October, 1779, a mill which Arkwright had erected in the neighbourhood of Chorley was burned by a mob; who in a similar manner destroyed the cotton-spinning machines at Manchester, Wigan, Blackburn, Bolton, and Preston. But the combinations of rivals, and the violence of mobs, had no power to turn the courageous Arkwright from pursuing the career which had opened to his sanguine view, and this skilful appropriator of other men's ideas died worth half a million sterling.

The second great and permanent principle of the machinery for cottonspinning was added by a man of a very different character. Samuel Crompton was shy, sensitive, studious, a mathematician, a musician, an inventive artisan. He was spinning with Hargreaves' jenny, in an old mansion called Hall-in-the-Wood, four or five years after Arkwright had produced harder and finer yarn by his water-frame than the jenny could produce, whatever amount it had added to the quantity spun. Crompton saw what was wanting. With a few common tools, and a clasp-knife, he worked for five years before he perfected what was originally called the Hall-in-the-Wood wheel. When the riots broke out by which Arkwright's mill at Chorley was destroyed, this machine was concealed by the young weaver. No yarn comparable for fineness and firmness had ever been produced as that which Crompton carried to the Bolton market, obtaining a proportional price. Manufacturers gathered round, some to buy, others to endeavour to penetrate the secret. Crompton says, “a few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine altogether, or giving it up to the public. To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying it, I gave it to the public." Manufacturers had persuaded him to give up his secret, upon the condition, recited in a formal document, of subscribing sums to be affixed to the name of each "as a reward for his improvement in spinning." The whole sum they subscribed was 671. 6s. 6d. In five years Crompton's "mule" was the machine chiefly employed for fine spinning, not only round Bolton, but in the manufacturing districts of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The common piracies of Arkwright's water-frame, its more extensive use when the patent expired in 1784, and the general appropriation of Crompton's mule, very soon changed the neighbourhood of which Manchester was the centre, from a country of small farmers into a country of small manufacturers. Children of very tender age, collected from the London workhouses, and other abodes of the friendless, were transported to Manchester and the neighbourhood as apprentices.

Edmund Cartwright, a clergyman, bred at University College, Oxforda poet and a critic-was at Matlock in 1784, when, in a mixed company in which were some persons from Manchester, the talk was about cottonhow the want of hands to weave would operate against the spinning-mills. Cartwright knew nothing of machines or manufactures; he had never even seen a weaver at work; but he said that if it came to a want of hands, Arkwright must invent a weaving-mill. The Manchester men maintained

A. D. 1760-1783.

IRONWORKS AND EARTHENWARE.

647

that such a notion was impracticable. Cartwright went home, and laboured assiduously to produce a loom that would weave cloth without hands to throw the shuttle. He completed his machine, and took out a patent. Cartwright's power-loom, improved by the inventor by incessant exercises of ingenuity, came very slowly into use. A mill, the first erected for its employment on a large scale, was wilfully set on fire, and five hundred of the power-looms were destroyed. The patent expired, having been to the inventor a constant source of loss and anxiety. The powerloom was first brought into profitable use in Glasgow, in 1801. In 1807, upon a memorial of the principal cotton-spinners, Parliament granted Dr. Cartwright 10,000l. for "the good service he had rendered the public by his invention of weaving." This reward did not repay Cartwright's expenses in working out his scheme. There were only 2300 power-looms at work in Great Britain in 1813. In 1833 there were 100,000. The Returns of the Factory Inspectors for 1856 show the employment of 369,205 power-looms, of which 298,847 were for weaving cotton.

Dr. John Roebuck, the man who succeeded in proving, by the commercial results of his processes, that iron could be smelted by pit-coal, everywhere in abundance, instead of by charcoal from woods that were disappearing through the advance of agriculture, was a physician at Birmingham. He was a scientific chemist, as far as the science of chemistry was understood in the middle of the eighteenth century; and he was connected with a chemical manufactory, to which he devoted himself with the ardour of an experimentalist., Having abandoned his practice as a physician, and settled in Scotland, he turned his thoughts to smelting and manufacturing iron. At Carron, in the parish of Tarbert, in Stirlingshire, there were the great requisites for this manufacture. There was abundant coal, and ample command of water-power. Some iron-stone and lime were to be found within a mile; some was to be procured from places ten miles distant. Workmen were brought from Birmingham and Sheffield; and on the banks of a river, renowned in Scottish history, was the famous foundry established in 1759, which sent cheap grates into the homes of England, and cast the guns for Wellington's battery-train.

The year 1763 is considered memorable for the production of a new kind of earthenware, remarkable for fineness and durability. Dr. Campbell, in 1774, makes this statement: "In the space of about sixty years, as I have been well informed, the produce of this ware hath risen from 5000%. to 100,000l. per annum. These are entered by the thousand pieces for exportation, which is annually about forty thousand." In 1857 there were a hundred million pieces of British earthenware and porcelain exported to every European country (with the exception of France), and to America, the United States being by far the largest importers. The artisan of Burslem, in Staffordshire, who brought about this change, was Josiah Wedgwood, whose ware combined the imitation of the most beautiful forms of ancient art with unequalled cheapness. England, by the discovery of a contemporary of Wedgwood, Mr. Cooksworthy, of Plymouth, was found to possess, in the Cornish clay, a material equal to that of the Sèvres and Dresden manufactories. His patent was transferred to the Staffordshire Potteries in 1777, and from that time we went steadily

forward to the attainment of our present excellence in the production of porcelain, upon a scale commensurate with the general spread of the comforts and refinements of society.

In that same year of 1763, a small model of Newcomen's engine, which required repair, was put into the charge of James Watt, MathematicalInstrument Maker to the University of Glasgow. The imperfections of that invention, known as "the atmospheric engine," were evident to the ingenious quadrant-maker, and he long laboured unsuccessfully to discover how its defects could be remedied. The radical defect was, that three times as much heat as was necessary for the action of the machine was lost. The experimental philosopher was still working in the dark, when he discovered that water converted into steam would heat about six times its own weight of water at 47° or 48° to 212°. He mentioned this fact to Dr. Black, who then explained to him his doctrine of latent heat, with which Watt had been previously unacquainted. The great preparatory labour of thought was now to produce its results. In a solitary walk, Watt solved the great problem upon which he had been so long intent. The invention was complete in his mind, but to have a model constructed was a work of great difficulty. He had no capital to employ in engaging better workmen than the blacksmiths and tinmen of Glasgow. He strug gled against these difficulties till he found a zealous and powerful ally in Dr. Roebuck. It was agreed that a patent should be taken out; and Watt repaired to London to accomplish this business. On his way thither, he had an interview at Birmingham, with Matthew Boulton, who desired to join in the speculation. Their partnership was unfortunately deferred till 1773, for Roebuck would not admit Boulton to a share of the patent, except upon terms to which the prosperous and ingenious proprietor of the works at Soho could not agree. Watt, meanwhile, had to maintain himself by the superintendence of several canals then in course of construction. At length Roebuck, who was engaged in many losing undertakings, agreed to sell his property in the patent to Boulton. It was ten years before the partners derived any profit from the discovery. They had to struggle, in the first instance, against the common prejudice which attaches to every new invention. They had to contend, in actions at law, against unscrupulous pirates. But Parliament, in 1775, had granted an extension of the patent, and the reward to the inventor and his admirable associate would come in time. But before that period, this crowning triumph of an enterprising age was blowing the iron furnaces of Dudley, and hammering steel at Sheffield. It was forging anchors and impelling block. machinery at Portsmouth. It had superseded Newcomen's machines in draining the Cornish tin and copper-mines. It had multiplied cottonmills in the towns of Lancashire and Scotland. The rotatory steamengine of Watt was first applied to the textile manufactures of Lancashire in 1787, when one was erected at Warrington. It had been applied in Nottinghamshire in 1785. In 1856, according to the Report of the Factory Commissioners, the steam-engines employed in 5000 factories represented 161,000 horse-power, giving motion to the astounding number of 33,000,000 spindles.

A. D. 1760-1783.

STATE OF THE FINE ARTS.

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CHAPTER L.

THE intimate connection between the Fine Arts and those exercises of ndustry which have too exclusively been designated as the Useful Arts, has been distinctly recognised in our immediate times. This connection was perceived a century ago, when a society, now more flourishing than ever, founded by a drawing-master, proposed "to promote the arts, manufactures, and commerce of this kingdom, by giving honorary or pecuniary rewards as may be best adapted to the case, for the communication to the Society, and through the Society to the public, of all such useful inventions, discoveries, and improvements, as tend to that purpose."

We have seen that in the reign of George II. English Art was in a very low state. When his successor ascended the throne, it must have been evident to all but the most prejudiced, that an English school of painting was in process of formation. Reynolds was already the acknowledged leader in portraiture; Wilson was strenuously asserting English superiority in landscape painting; and Gainsborough was becoming known as a painter both of landscape and portrait. But what served most to give consistency to the labours of the artists, and to stimulate their efforts by bringing them distinctly before the public eye, was the foundation of the Royal Academy, with its great annual exhibition of works of art. The establishment of an academy of art had long been a cherished purpose with English artists. As early as 1711 a private academy for the study of art was instituted, and was succeeded by others of the same character, amongst which was the famous "Academy in St. Martin's Lane," to which many of the best artists of this period were indebted for no small portion of their skill in drawing. But these academies were rather schools for drawing, than institutions such as we are accustomed to associate with the title of academies of art. Several efforts had been made, however, to establish societies of this more ambitious order. Meanwhile the public interest in art was steadily gaining strength; and on the 21st of April, 1760, was opened in the room belonging to the Society of Arts, the first public exhibition in London of the works of living artists. The works exhibited were few in number, and the greater part of little worth; but the names of Reynolds and Wilson were among the painters; Roubiliac and Wilton among the sculptors; Woollett and Strange among the engravers, who contributed examples of their skill; and the public crowded in such numbers to the novel spectacle, that it was resolved to repeat the experiment next year on a larger scale. The "great room," Spring Gardens, was accordingly hired, and there, in May, 1761, was held the exhibition which was really the progenitor of that which is still held every returning May. The famous Nonsense Club originated a burlesque of this exhibition, to consist of "Original Paintings, Busts, Carved Figures, &c., by the Society of Sign-painters." The Society was, of course, a myth, although sign-painting, at that time, was by no means a contemptible branch of art, and commissions for signs were given to painters of established reputation.