148 
and the scale of their different degrees of irritability, from 
the lowest to the highest, would perhaps be the scale of 
physical pleasure and pain. Though observation and prac¬ 
tice have marked a few degrees of this scale, science has 
not yet fixed them all with precision. Music comes 
nearest to it by the rules of harmony and melody, and a mu¬ 
sician endowed with genius, can by the combination of 
sounds, movement, time, and a stronger or weaker collision 
of the air, occasioned by instruments or voices, awaken or 
soften the feelings upon which he has intended to work. 
The pleasure which the eye derives from colours has 
also its source in irritation and affinity, and the talent of 
the dyer is to prepare and set those which captivate most the 
sight and enhance the fanciful value of manufactured tex¬ 
tures. That art has been very much improved in the old 
countries, and very much neglected in America, except 
among the natives, who possess valuable secrets to enliven 
by brilliant and durable colours, extracted from plants, their 
heeds and trinkets, their weapons, their clothes and their 
baskets, or to give to their features when they go to war a 
more dreadful appearance. 
The citizens of the United States have hitherto paid very 
little attention to colours, and the art of the dyer is here yet 
in its infancy. 
The various specimens of cloth which have obtained the 
premiums of the society for the promotion of useful arts, of¬ 
fer nothing but dark shades, the reflection of which is dull 
and gloomy. We must not however be too severe and re¬ 
quire perfection from beginners. It is but lately that the 
people have found that they were no more colonies, subject 
to the mercantile and manufacturing monopoly of other na¬ 
tions. Patriotism has but within a few years induced them 
to unite the manufacturing system to the agricultural. The 
most astonishing success has crowned their efforts ; their 
cloths, particularly since the introduction of Spanish sheep, 
have become equal in quality to the best imported cloth, 
