systems in the country. Take, for example, the operations of a wholesale establishment in London; to whom are consigned enormous bales of Manchester goods. From this wholesale house (probably in some narrow street in the vicinity of Cheapside) the goods are despatched to large dealers, who supply smaller dealers, who descend lower and lower in the ranks of society; until at last the calico or the printed muslin is sold by a village draper, who, perhaps, sells tea and coffee and stationery, and a miscellaneous list of other things.

The inland transit of goods from Manchester gives rise to a vast canal and railway traffic. Ten years ago it was calculated that the inland transit by canal alone from Manchester to towns southward of it, and leaving unnoticed the traffic to the north, east, and west, amounted to 700,000 tons annually. A mighty commercial machinery is this. The great firms of Pickford, Crowley, Chaplin and Horne, Shipton, &c., con- | duct the carrying business on a scale little imagined by persons who have not had opportunities of observing it. They (especially Pickford's) have establishments not only at Manchester and at London, but at most of the towns through which canals pass. The horses and carts and wagons of the carrier may be seen in many a busy street of Manchester, conveying goods to the canal stations; and the carrier is responsible for the safety of these goods until they are deposited in the warehouse of the consignee at London. The bales are securely stowed away in the canal-boat: each boat has a captain' or leader; and he is responsible for the goods till placed in the hands of the carriers' servants at the depôt, where they are unshipped, sorted, carted, and conveyed to the houses of the London merchant or dealer.

nected with the main track; and on these branch or carriers' lines, at hours when London is fast asleep, the trucks of goods, received from the north by goods' trains during the night, are wheeled into the warehouse, and speedily for delivery by the road-wagons belonging to the firm. The warehouse presents twice the area of Westminster-hall; and beneath it is vaulted stabling for the accommodation of two hundred horses.

The reader is not asked to believe that the canal and

railway traffic above alluded to relates to Manchester cottons only: he is only requested to bear in mind, that the transmission of those goods to London and other parts of England, employ a notable portion of that energy and commercial activity exhibited in the carrier system. And the counting-house machinery (if such an expression may be used) involved in this transit trade at Manchester, is also very complete and extensive. The warehouses, the branch Bank of England (Cut, No. 4), and other banks, the Exchange, and the various commercial offices, in and near Mosleystreet, are the scene of never-ending activity. Mr. Kohl seems to have been as much struck as M. Foucher, with the untiring business-habits of the merchants and clerks of the Manchester warehouses. He says, "This class is, I believe, in no town so industrious as in Manchester; nowhere, at least, do I remember to have seen so many wealthy people exclusively and passionately devoted to business. There are people here possessing annual incomes of many thousands who work like horses all the year round, stinting themselves in sleep and meal-times, and grudging every moment given to amusement or society. Those who wonder. at this fact should recollect that what passes for pleasure with the idle and dissipated, would be intolerably wearying to these men of business,' who are as much in their element in the life they lead, as fish in water, and would be like fish out of water if they were removed to the lighter atmosphere of pleasure. Business is their habit, their delight, their very existence; and a place without business would be to them empty and joyless in the extreme. The hopes and fears, the gains and losses, the failures and successes, attending their occupations, afford them an excitement as absorb

But the railway-goods traffic is even more interesting to study than that by canal. Go to the Camden Town station of the giant railway company, and what do we see? We see vast warehouses, on which are written the names of those very carriers who have for many years been the magnates of the canal system. They are wise in time. They did what could fairly be done to check the advance of the new order of things; but that failing, they took the sound-sense method: asing, and, after a time, as necessary, as the warrior feels they could not bend the system to them, they bent to the system, and became at once 'carriers by railway.' At the station of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway (now absorbed into the London and NorthWestern), in Store-street, the bales of cotton and other goods are deposited in the wagon-trucks, and thence conveyed by railway to Camden Town; where, at the stations of the various carriers, the goods are transferred from the railway-trucks to the road-wagon, and conveyed to the wholesale warehouses in London. Pickford's warehouse, at the Camden Town station, is a vast structure. It is said to contain no less than three millions of bricks: so substantial is the arching necessary to support the platform of the warehouse over vaults beneath. The floor of the warehouse is intersected with lines of railway in every direction, con

in his battles, or the gamester over his faro-table." Mr. Lowe, too, speaking of the manufacturers as a class, says, "They allow little relaxation to the duties of business. An annual visit of a fortnight to a watering-place, generally the nearest, is all the relief they permit to a year's toil. And this attention to business is not for a few hours only in the day: it commences early in the morning, and is protracted to a late hour in the evening. It is a common thing to see the leading merchants of the town-some of them possessed of wealth to the amount of a quarter of a million sterlingposting from their country villas to their countinghouses between eight and nine o'clock in the morning; and many of them do not return (except when not at the club, or to a hasty dinner) till nine or ten o'clock in the evening.

In their present finished state the railways conveying | strength of 880 men, gives a rapid motion to 50,000 to and radiating from Manchester may be stated as spindles for spinning fine cotton thread; each spindle follows : -The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, now a forms a separate thread; and the whole number work section of the London and North-Western Railway. It together in an immense building, erected on purpose, was opened on the 15th September, 1839. The Man- and so adapted to receive the machines, that no room chester and Leeds Railway,—a marvellous structure from is lost. Seven hundred and fifty people are sufficient whatever point it may be viewed. The Manchester and to attend all the operations of such a cotton-mill; and Birmingham Railway.-This section of the London and by the assistance of the steam-engine, they will be North-Western line was opened throughout on the 10th enabled to spin as much thread as 200,000 could do of August, 1842. Manchester, Sheffield, and Lin- without machinery; or, one person can do as much as colnshire Railway, opened May 24th, 1838. The South 266. The engine itself only requires two men to Junction and Altrincham Railway, opened as far as attend it, and supply it with fuel. Each spindle in a Bowden, in Cheshire, is the only "pleasure line" which mill will produce between two and a half and three Manchester can boast. Its present length is eight miles. hanks (of 840 yards each) per day; which is upwards of a mile and a quarter of thread in twelve hours; so that the 50,000 spindles will produce 62,500 miles of thread every day of twelve hours,-which is more than a sufficient length to go two and a half times round the globe."

STEAM POWER AND MACHINE POWER.

The employment of steam power at Manchester is truly marvellous. The Manchester Statistical Society made an inquiry, a few years ago, as to the amount of this power in operation in 1839. It is estimated by 'horse-power,' a term not well understood by the uninitiated, but representative of a definite amount of working force. The number of horses-power,' then, was as follows, in Manchester and Salford, distinguishing the manufacturing operations to which the power was applied :

All the moving force obtained by wind, water, horses, and men, are excluded from the above account, which relates to steam power only. The small wares,' spoken of above, include tapes, and an innumerable variety of minor woven goods, principally in cotton and flax. One house in Manchester makes tape enough in a year to engirdle the earth at its greatest circumference.

Mr. Farey, in his Treatise on the Steam-Engine,' places in a striking light the amount of power which this mighty agent brings to bear on the operations of a cotton-mill:-" An extensive cotton-mill is a striking instance of the application of the greatest powers to perform a prodigious quantity of light and easy work. A steam-engine of 100 horse-power, which has the

It is impossible to look at the amount of steampower in Manchester, given in the above table, without perceiving that there must be vast manufacturing arrangements carried on there, independent of those relating to cotton. The textile fabrics (cotton, silk, wool, and linen) of course comprise the majority; and Mr. Love, in hisHandbook of Manchester,' has given a curious list of the textile articles made in that town; copied from the sign-boards of the manufacturers themselves. These comprise not only the best known articles,-such as calicoes, cambrics, fustians, muslins, &c.,-but about a hundred others, many of which are scarcely known by their technical names, except to the manufacturers and dealers themselves.

The coal-field which exists beneath the surface of a large portion of Lancashire, is one of the circumstances that have induced the settlement of a large body of manufacturers in Manchester and other towns, irrespective of those engaged immediately in the cotton manufacture. It was estimated, a good many years ago, that nearly thirty thousand tons of coals were burned weekly, in the immediate vicinity of Manchester: so numerous are establishments requiring steam-power, or other services which coal fuel can alone render. The iron-foundries and the machine-making establishments, are the chief among those not immediately connected with cotton. The names of Sharp and Roberts, of Fairbairn, of Nasmyth, of Whitworth, are connected with some of the finest machinery ever yet produced. A very large proportion of the machines used in the cotton manufacture of the district, are made at Manchester; such as the scutching, the blowing, the carding, the roving, the spinning, the dressing, the weaving, and the printing machines. Locomotives, too, are now made in large numbers at Manchester.

This, then, is Manchester-the town which Leland found to be "the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of Lancashire." It may not, at the present day, be the "best builded" town in the county; for Liverpool takes the lead of it: it may be