No. 199.] 319 



cleaning the raw material of its seeds. It can spin a thread to go 

 round the globe, while the stock for it, in the ancient mode, was only 

 carding by hand. 



Cloth can be bleached now in the tim6 formerly taken to spread it 

 out. All the metals as seen to-day in your splendid Fair can be cut 

 out and bored, rolled and planed, with nearly as much ease and speed 

 as wood. And leather can be made in a day, if need be, which once 

 required months. The inventions for weaving carpets, for sizing, 

 folding and carding, and even for knitting and sowing, by machinery, 

 are all advances, which, though sometimes small, separately, contri- 

 bute much, as a whole, to swell the improvements of the age. 



Manufacturing, too, is a powerful peace-maker. It has improved 

 fire-arms and cannon, both easier to make and "keep the peace." 

 It has added new and more powerful kinds of gunpowder ; new shells 

 and combustibles ; new modes of crossing streams ; new means of 

 preserving provisions, and new inventions to sustain the broken limb 

 and move about the wounded body. It has thus mitigated some of 

 the horrors of war, as well as multiplied the blessings of peace. Be- 

 side this, some new articles, or new uses of them, like India rubber 

 and gutta percha, have, by mechanical ingenuity, been applied, so as 

 to extend much the comforts and health of society at large ; and 

 whole nations have so felt the renovating power of some modern im- 

 provements in manufactures as to bear burthens, and spare surplus 

 hands for the victories of peace as well as war, which, but for Ark- 

 wright, for Watts, for Nielson and Fuhon, might have been as im- 

 practicable as some of the achievements in the tales of the Arabian 

 Nights. 



Finally, commerce has crowned the whole by her rapid advances. 

 In some quarters of the globe she has almost distanced agriculture 

 and manufactures in their triumphal progress. The form of the vessel 

 has been varied, and fitted better for its intended burthen ; the water 

 casks and tanks made and stowed more usefully ; the iron chain sub- 

 stituted for the feeble vegetable cable ; the pumps made more efficient, 

 and the means of navigation, by superior quadrants and nautical al- 

 manacs, become more accurate and safe to cargo and life. Thus 



