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WEAVING.

The vestments of the early inhabitants of the world discovered neither art nor industry. They made use of such as nature presented and needed the least preparation. Some nations covered themselves with the bark of trees, others with leaves, or bulrushes, rudely interwoven. The skins of animals were also universally used as garments, worn without preparation, and in the same state as they came from the bodies of the animals.*

In process of time recourse was had to the wool of animals,+ and this led to the further discovery of the art of uniting the separate parts into one continued thread, by means of the spindle; and this would consequently lead to the next step, the invention of weaving, which, according to Democritus, who flourished 400 years before Christ, arose from the art of the spider, who guides and manages the threads by the weight of her own body.

That the invention of weaving was long prior to the time of Democritus, appears from the sacred writings + This is evident also, from the answer which Abraham gave to the king of Sodom:-" Í will not," said he, "take from a thread of the woof, even to a shoe latchet, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."

"Inventress of the woof, fair Lina flings

The flying shuttle through the dancing strings,
Inlays the broider'd weft with flowery dyes,
Quick beat the reeds, the pedals fall and rise;
Slow from the beam the lengths of warp unwind,
And dance and nod the massy weights behind."

Chronology informs us, linen was first made in England 1253. "Now began the luxurious to wear linen, but the generality woollen shirts." Table linen very scarce in England, in 1386. A company of linen weavers, however, came over from the Netherlands in that year, after which it became more abundant.

WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE.

To the bigotry of Spain, may be attributed the chief cause of our manufacturing greatness. The persecuted artizans came hither in flocks, and set up their looms under Edward the Sixth. The reign of Mary impeded their settlement, her government acting under the influence of Philip the Second of Spain, her husband, and the oppressor of the artizans. Elizabeth encouraged their return. But it was to the gibbets and wheels of the duke of Alva, that England is the most indebted. Scared by his inhumanity (his object being to make the authority of Philip as absolute in Flanders as in Spain, and to introduce the inquisition), the Flemish manufacturers fled hither in shoals, and were received with hospitality. They repaid this polite kindness, by peopling the decayed streets of Canterbury, Norwich, Sandwich, Colchester, Maidstone, Spitalfields, and many other towns, with many active and industrious weavers, dyers, cloth-workers, linen-makers, silk-throwers, &c. They also taught the making of bays (baize), and other stuffs.

It is worthy of remark, also, that from a herd of sheep, transported from the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, to Castile, in

* Lucretius, lib. vi. verse 1011.

+ Genesis xxxi. 19, and xxxviii. 12, 14.

+ Ibid xiv. 23.

1464, descended the sheep which produces the fine wool of Spain, so much in repute.

The celebrated bishop Blaise invented the art of wool-combing, and thereby greatly improved the cloth manufacture. At Bradford, in Yorkshire, the wool-combers, &c. celebrate his nativity, by processions with music, dancing, and festivity.

WEAVING STOCKINGS.

The stocking loom was first invented, about the year 1590, by the Rev. William Lee, of St. John's College, Cambridge, and ofSussex. This gentleman being desirous of bringing the machine into general use, and unable to procure any remuneration from the government of his own country, he went over to Rouen, in Normandy, where some spirited individuals undertook to introduce him to the French minister, who gladly afforded him protection and patronage. He had previously applied to queen Elizabeth; and it must appear not a little extraordinary, that this monarch should have refused him her support, when it is recollected what patronage she afforded to Daniel Houghsetter, and to many other foreigners, whom she had invited from different places on the continent of Europe, to instruct her subjects in useful arts, and in the establishment of new manufactures.

He died, however, in France, before his loom was made there; and the art was not long since in no part of the world but England. Oliver, the Protector, made an act, that it should be felony to transport the engine. This information, I took, says Aubrey, from a weaver in Pearpool Lane, in 1656. Elizabeth, in the third year of her reign, received a present of a pair of black silk knit stockings, and from that time never wore cloth hose.

DAMASK WEAVING.

The name which this art bears, shows the place of its origin, or at least the place where it has been practised in the greatest perfection, viz. the city of Damascus, in Syria; though M. Felibien attributes the perfection of the art to his countryman Cursinet, who wrought under the reign of king Henry IV.

Damaskeening is partly Mosaic work, partly engraving, and partly carving; as Mosaic work, it consists of pieces inlaid; as engraving, the metal is indented or cut in creux; and as carving, gold and silver are wrought therein in relievo.

PARCHMENT.

This article of so much utility, was invented by Attalus, founder of the monarchy of Pergamus; he died 198 years before Christ.

PAPER.

Paper made of cotton was in use in 1100; that of linen rags in 1319; the manufacture of it introduced into England, at Dartford, in Kent, in 1588; scarce any but brown paper made in England, till 1690.

MAPS AND SEA CHARTS,

Were first brought into England by Bartholomew Columbus, to illustrate his brother's theory, respecting a western continent, in 1489.

ROMFORD STOVES.

So denominated from Count Romford, a German count. If Socrates had the praise of having brought philosophy down from Heaven to dwell among men, the count has the merit of having led science from the laboratory into the kitchen, for not satisfied with introducing her to the parlour and the drawing room, he presented her to the nymphs of the ladle, genii of the pot!

With how happy a mixture of science and sensibility hath one of our greatest didactic poets described her new abode.

"Lo! where the chimney's sooty tribe ascends,
The fair Trochaid from the corner bends,

Her coal-black eyes upturn'd incessant mark

The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark ;
Mark with swift ken where flashing in between,

Her much-lov'd smoke-jack glimmers thro' the scene;
Mark how his various parts together tend,

Point to one purpose, in one object end;

The spiral groves in smooth meanders flow,
Drags the long chain, the polish'd axies glow,

While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below,
The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,
Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns."

CHIMNIES AND CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
"Some wooden tubes, a brush, a rope,
Are all you need employ;

Pray order, maids, the scandiscope, *
And not the climbing-boy."

The oldest certain account of chimnies occurs in the year 1347; when at Venice a great number were thrown down by an earthquake. De Gataris, says, in his History of Padua, that Francesco de Carraro, Lord of Padua, came to Rome in 1368, and finding no chimnies in the inn where he lodged, because at that time fire used to be kindled in a hole, in the middle of the floor, with an aperture in the roof, for the escape of the smoke), he caused two chimnies, like those which had been long used at Padua, to be constructed and arched by masons and carpenters, whom he had brought with him. Over these chimnies, the first ever seen in Rome, he affixed his arms to record the event.

It is uncertain at what period chimnies were first introduced into England; some have gone so far as to say, that they were known and used here as far back as 1300; but they do not substantiate what they write.

Holinshead, who wrote in the reign of queen Elizabeth, informs us, there were few chimnies, even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued at the roof, or door, or window. As the general class of houses at that period did not exceed one story high, where the chimney did tower above the house, it was not a very difficult matter to cleanse it: very few chimnies however did, as they terminated with the roof or gable, consequently they were easily kept clean.

A long broom, or brush, was first used for the purpose, such as we see in churches, and other public buildings, and as the chimnies were built quite straight, it answered the purpose exceedingly well.

The instrument, or apparatus for cleansing chimnies.

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Of course the party mounted the roof and swept downwards. On the accession of James I. to the English crown, the Scotch fashion of building houses, three and four stories high, was first introduced; and it was about this period that climbing boys were first employed for the cleansing of chimnies; a practice, let us trust, which will ere long be superceded. Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better to give him two-pence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester *

The following anecdote will, perhaps, not prove unacceptable. In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since, under a ducal canopy, (that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a connoiseur), encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets interwoven, folded between a pair of sheets, whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius, was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chimney sweeper! The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chimnies, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber; and tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw exhibited; so, creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow and slept like a Howard!

May Day, is what is called Chimney Sweeper's Day; 'twas on this day, that their late excellent friend Mrs. Montague,† entertained them at her house in Portman Square; she gave them roast beef and plumb pudding, and a shilling each, and they danced after their dinner. Let us now see, what a very ingenious writer says of their May-day gambols.

Will any body have the goodness to abolish the May-day Chimney Sweepers? They are a blot upon the season; a smear; a smutting of one's face; a piece of soot in one's soup; a cinder in one's gravy; a rotten core to one's apple.

They are like a tea-kettle on a sofa. They are a story, alas! too true: shadowy, without setting off the face of things, children, yet not happy; merry-making, yet nobody is the blither. They are ont of their element at all times, and never more so than on their only holiday. Their dancing is that of lame legs; their music is a clat tering of stumps; their finery like a harlequin's leavings thrown in the dust-hole. They come like a contradiction to the season, as if because nothing clean, wholesome, or vernal. could be got up, the day should be spited with the squalidest and sickliest of our in-door associations. They do not say, we come to make you happy; but, to show to the unhappiest man, on this very uncomfortable day, that there are youths and little boys who beat his unhappy lot.

They understand their perverse business well, and dress up some of their party like girls, because of all masqueraders, their dirty dinginess is least suitable to the sex. They contradict even the spirit of masquerade itself, and, like the miser in the novel, wear

* A sixpence!

A young Montague was once kidnapped, and sold to a sweep, but afterwards recovered.-Ed.

real chimney sweeping clothes, with a little tinsel to make the reality more palpable. It is doubtful even whether they keep their own pence, whether the pittance, which charity itself is ashamed to give them on such a day, (angry with the bad joke, and with for getting them at other times), is not surrendered at the close of their hopping exposure, to the sturdier keepers who attend them. Nothing is certainly their own, but the dirt of which they cannot get rid, and a disease, or liability to a disease, peculiar to the trade and disgraceful to human nature. Our jest has become serious; but so it must, if we think well of it. Will nobody undertake to admonish these sorry-makers off the ground, or substitute real merry-makers instead?-New Monthly Mag.

PRUSSIAN BLUE.

This colour was accidently discovered about the beginning of last century, by a chemist of Berlin, who, having successively thrown upon the ground, several liquors from his laboratory, was much surprised to see it suddenly stained with a beautiful blue colour.

Recollecting what liquors he had thrown out, and observing the same effects from a similar mixture, he afterwards prepared it for the use of the painters. From the place (Berlin) where it was dis covered, being the capital of Prussia, it received the name of Prussian Blue.

LAMP BLACK.

Lamp Black, or Lamb Black, as it is usually called, is the soot of oil; it is made by burning a number of lamps in a confined place, from whence no part of the fumes can escape, and the soot formed against the top and sides of the room is swept together and collected. In England it is manufactured at the turpentine houses, from the dregs of the resinous matters prepared there, which are set on fire under a chimney, or other place made for the purpose, lined with sheep-skins,* &c. to receive the soot.

GALVANISM.

The discovery of the effects of electricity on animals, states the Eloge de Galvani, took place, at the time, from something like accident. The wife of Galvani, at that time Professor of Anatomy in the University of Bologna, being in a declining state of health, employed as a restorative, according to the custom of the country, a soup made of frogs. A number of these animals, ready skinned for the purpose of cooking, were lying with that comfortable negligence common both to French and Italians, (which allows them, without repugnance, to do every thing in every place that is at the moment most convenient), in the professor's laboratory, near an electric machine; being probably the intention of the lady to cook them there. While the machine was in action, an attendant happened to touch with the point of the scalpel, the crural nerve of one of the frogs, that was not far from the prime conductor, when the limbs were thrown into strong convulsions. This experiment was performed in the absence of the professor, but it was noticed by the lady, who was much struck by the appearance, and communicated it to her hus

* Probably lamb-skins, from whence it may have been called lambblack.

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