that; could a Grecian lady awake from her sleep of two thousand years, her astonishment would be un- 
bounded to see a simple country girl clothed with a gown of printed cotton, a muslin kerchief, and a coloured 
shawl. In the seventeenth century, France began to manufacture into stuffs the raw cotton imported from 
India, as Italy had done a hundred years before. A cruel act of tyranny drove the best French workmen, 
who were Protestants, into England, and we thus learned the manufacture. The same act of despotism 
caused the settlement of silk manufacturers in Spitalfields. We did not make any considerable progress in 
the art, nor did we use cotton exclusively in making up the goods. The warp or longitudinal threads of the 
cloth were of flax, the weft only was of cotton, for we could not twist it hard enough, by hand, to serve both 
purposes. This weft was spun entirely by hand, with a distaff and spindle — as it is still done by the natives 
of India. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, our manufacture continued to increase ; so that, about 
1 760, though there were fifty thousand spindles at work in Lancashire alone, the weavers found the greatest 
difficulty in procuring a sufficient supply of thread. Neither weaving nor spinning were then carried on in 
large factories. They were domestic occupations : the women of a family worked at the distaff or hand 
wheel ; and there were two operations necessary in this department. Roving, or coarse spinning, reduced 
the carded cotton to the thickness of a quill, and the spinner afterwards drew out and twisted the roving 
into weft fine enough for the weaver : English cotton goods were therefore very dear, and had but little 
variety. The cloth made of flax and cotton was called fustian ; and we still receive the calicos and printed 
cottons from India. But an amazing change was about to take place. Richard Arkwright, of Preston, in- 
vented in 1769, the principal part of the machinery for spinning cotton, and thus gave bread to about two 
millions of people instead of fifty thousand ; and, assisted by subsequent inventions, raised the importation 
of cotton avooI from India from less than tAVO millions of pounds per annum, to two hundred millions ; set 
in motion six millions of spindles, instead of fifty thousand, and increased the annual produce of the manu- 
facture from two hundred thousand to thirty six millions pounds sterling. 
The consumption of cotton has increased in proportion to the progress of the arts and civilization. 
It appears to have been originally known only as a produce of India, the country which at the present day 
is supposed by many incapable of producing any but the inferior kinds. As this is an opinion which ap- 
pears to me to have been hastily formed from the results of experiments in a few situations, instead of after 
an investigation into the nature and variety of the soils and climates of the different provinces of this ex- 
tensive country, it Avill not be, perhaps, irrelevant to enter into a few details on the subject. That cotton 
was originally introduced from India into Egypt, seems probable from Herodotus not mentioning it among 
the products of the latter country, which he would hardly have failed doing had it been common or cultivated, 
as its novel and singular appearance must have struck a traveller from Europe, particularly as in his account 
of the Indians, he mentions that they possess a kind of plant, which, instead of fruit, produces wool of a 
finer and better quality than that of sheep : of this the natives make their clothes. In another place, he 
mentions that the Egyptians, as well as the priesthood, are so regardful of neatness, that they wear only 
linen clothing, and that always newly washed. And again, “ their habit is made of linen ; over this they 
throw a kind of shawl made of Avhite wool, but in these vests of wool they are forbidden by their religion to 
be buried, or to enter any sacred edifice.” By some authors, it has been suggested that we ought in some 
places to read cotton instead of linen ; but this seems to be taking for granted, that the former was as com- 
mon in Egypt in ancient times as it is at present ; and it appears to me, that in other places we ought to 
read linen instead of cotton, as in the account of the Egyptian mode of embalming the body is said to be 
wrapped up in bandages of cotton. That this was not the case is proved by all the mummies which haA’e 
been opened and the cloth carefully examined under the microscope, having been found to be swathed only 
in linen cloth ; which it is not likely \A r ould have been the case, if cotton had been as common an article of 
clothing in those, as it is in the present day, particularly as some used for this purpose appears to have been 
previously worn, as it is required in some places. It is not improbable, however, that cotton fabrics were 
imported into Egypt from India even at the earliest historical periods, with cinnamon, cassia, frankincense. 
Pliny, writing about 500 years subsequent to the time of Herodotus, mentions, that the upper part of Egypt 
verging toAvards Arabia, produces a small shrub, which some call gossypion, others xylon, and from the latter 
the cloth made from it, ocylina, bearing a fruit like a nut, from the interior of which a kind of wool is pro- 
duced, from which cloths are manufactured inferior to none for whiteness and softness, and therefore much 
prized by the Egyptian priesthood. Dr. Harris, in his natural history of the Bible quotes several authors 
to show that cotton was known to the Hebrews, adding that the name buty, by which it is distinguished, is 
not found among the JeAvs till the time of their royalty, when by commerce they obtained articles of dress 
from other nations. The author of the Ruins of Palmyra has shown that the East Indian trade by that city 
into Syria was as ancient as the days of Solomon ; and Heeren concludes, that cotton fabrics formed an 
article of the ancient commerce with India, as Clesias mentions that the Indians possess an insect, which 
affords a red colour more brilliant than cinnabar, which they employ in dying their stuffs. 
