444 THE APPLIED SCIENCES, 



applied science has effected, in delivering man from the thraldom 

 of brute toil, and leaving him more free to cultivate the intellectual 

 part of his nature. The share which the steam-engine has had in 

 producing this effect is pointedly exhibited in the well-chosen illus- 

 tration of M. Dupin. One of the most wonderful monuments of 

 antiquity, as well for the mass of its materials, as for the height to 

 which they are raised, is, doubtless, the great pyramid of Egypt. 

 Let us compare the labour, which history tells us was bestowed 

 upon this colossal structure, with the calculated steam-power of 

 England. Herodotus informs us that Cheops ordered all the 

 temples of Egypt to be closed, and forbade the sacrifices, in order 

 that the people might devote themselves exclusively to the heavy 

 task which he imposed upon them. Some were employed in work- 

 ing the quarries of the mountains of Arabia ; others in transporting 

 the elevated blocks of granite to the banks of the Nile, and in lad- 

 ing the boats to pass the stream ; others, lastly, received them there, 

 and bore them to their intended site. A hundred thousand men, 

 says the historian, were employed for twenty years, in the works of 

 quarrying and building alone. The steam-power of England, said 

 M. Dupin twenty years ago, would have effected the task, the 

 double task of lifting the stone from its bed in the quarry, and rais- 

 ing it to its place in the structure in eighteen hours ! In fact, the 

 steam-engines constructed in the establishment of Watt and Boulton 

 alone, in the year 1819, were equivalent to the work of 100,000 

 horses, or 700,000 men ; and the sum of money annually saved, by 

 their substitution for animal labour, amounted to more than three 

 millions sterling. The total number of engines, existing in Great 

 Britain at the same period, exceeded 10,000 : their work was equi- 

 valent to that of 500,000 horses ; and the yearly saving thence 

 arising was from twelve to sixteen millions sterling. 



But, notwithstanding this transfer to which I have alluded, the 

 effect of the employment of machinery in the arts has not been, on 

 the whole, to set aside human labour. The severer kinds of toil 

 are, indeed, now transferred from the labourer to the engine ; but> 

 from the best calculations of the effects of machinery, it appears 

 that an increased demand for labour, although of a different 

 kind, has, in general, been the result. This remarkable consequence 

 is clearly exhibited in the history of the cotton manufacture. Be- 

 fore the inventions of Watt and Arkwright, the total number of 

 labourers employed in connexion with this manufacture in Great 



