the dwelling of the workmen ; but the carding-engine, the spinning-jenny, and (in later times) the powerloom, required larger space for their efficient working. "The use of machinery was accompanied by a greater division of labour than existed in the primitive state of the manufacture; the material went through many more processes; and of course the loss of time and the risk of waste would have been much increased, if its removal from house to house at every stage of the manufacture had been necessary. It became obvious that there were several important advantages in carrying on the numerous operations of an extensive manufacture in the same building. Where water power was required, it was economy to build one mill, and put up one water-wheel, rather than several. This arrangement also enabled the master spinners to superintend every stage of the manufacture; it gave him a greater security against the wasteful or fraudulent consumption of the material: it saved time in the transference of the work from hand to hand and it prevented the extreme inconvenience which would have resulted from the failure of one class of workmen to perform their part, when several other classes of workmen were dependent upon them." (Baines.) Arkwright's mill at Cromford, worked by the waters of the Derwent, was the first that exhibited anything like a complete development of the factory system. The operations conducted within it inspired Darwin with the idea of poetizing the career of the Nymph Gossipia: thus personifying the botanical name of the cotton plant: "Where Derwent guides his dusky flood While slowly circumvolves the lab'ring wheel below." But there is more poetry in cotton than Darwin has succeeded in giving to his Nymph Gossipia. Cotton has brought distant regions of the world into communication: it has widened the circle of human enterprize and knowledge: it has rubbed off some of the rust of national prejudices: it has created some towns, and increased ten-fold the population of others: it has given us the first-born of railways, with others in its train: it has impelled George Stephenson to teach the incredulous that a locomotive speed of twelve miles an hour (what if he had said sixty, and left his son Robert to realize the prophecy?) was not a mere dream to be laughed at: it has created Lowell in America and Mulhausen in Alsace, and has assimilated foreign countries to the English standard more than ever they had been before. The little seed-pod of the cotton-plant has done all this: and is not this poetry-rough and stern, perhaps, in some of its features, but still poetry? Carlyle sketches these wonders in his own quaint but forcible way: "Richard Arkwright, it would seem, was not a beautiful man; no romance hero, with haughty eyes, Apollo lip, and gesture like the herald Mercury; a plain, almost gross, pot-bellied Lancashire man, with an air of painful reflexion, yet also of copious free digestion; a man stationed by the community to shave certain dusty beards in the northern parts of England, at a halfpenny each. To such end, we say, by forethought, accident, and arrangement, had Richard Arkwright been, by the community of England and his own consent, set apart. Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dusty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his! Spindles, shuttles, wheels and contrivances, plying ideally within the same; rather hopeless looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty. townsfolk rose in mob around him, for threatening to shorten labour, to shorten wages; so that he had to fly, with broken wash-pots, scattered household, and seek refuge elsewhere. Nay, his wife, too, as I learn, rebelled; burnt his wooden model of his spinningwheel, resolute that he should stick to his razors rather; for which, however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice to understand, packed her out of doors. Oh, reader, what an historical phenomenon is that bag-cheeked, pot-bellied, much-enduring, much-inventing barber! French revolutions were a-brewing; to resist the same in any measure, Imperial Kaisers were impotent without the cotton and cloth of Old England; and it was this man that had to give England the power of cotton!" His The nineteenth century has been one continued age of improvement in the varied arrangements of the cotton manufacture in Manchester and its vicinity. The invention of the 'Mule' spinning-machine by Crompton, in which the principles of both the former machines are combined; the application of steam power to move these mules; the improvements in the 'throstle,' and other component parts of the spinning machinery; the delicate mechanism of the carding' and 'roving' engines; the exquisite machine of Dyer, for making the cards for such engines; the trials and difficulties of Dr. Cartwright, in his attempt to apply machine-power to weaving; the wonderful solution of that problem in Sharp and Roberts' 'power-looms;' the remarkable machines of Horrocks, and others for dressing and perfecting the woven cotton-all press upon the attention with a rapidity and a vastness almost overwhelming. Then, again, how wonderful have been those exertions which had for their object the imparting of colour and pattern to the woven goods! How great is the chemical triumph here exhibited! The bleachfield gradually gave way to the vat of bleaching liquid: the dye-works taught how cotton might be made to imbibe colours almost as brilliant as those which dis 1 tinguish woollen and silk goods; the printing-block | the town by continuous lines of houses, was a long showed that a graceful pattern might be impressed on cotton in varied tints: the cylinder has shown that machine-printing is as applicable to calicos as to books: the 'bandana handkerchief' is, of itself alone, a triumph of practical chemistry; and on all sides do we find science and art working hand in hand in the advancement of this wonderful manufacture. THE STREETS AND RIVERS. Could Manchester itself stand still in the midst of such a turmoil of industry? Could it do other than modify its social features, to adapt them to the requirements of commerce? Let its population return answer. When Arkwright began his career, Manchester and Salford contained a population of about 40,000 persons; they now contain eight or nine times that number! Let us glance round, and see what are the houses, and the buildings, and the amusements of this large mass of persons. If we circumscribe the square bounded on the four sides by Market-street, Brown-street, King-street, and Dean's Gate, we may consider that to be the centre of Manchester the busy spot long before railways, and broad streets, and gas-lights, and flagged pavements were thought of. Mr. Love, in his 'Handbook of Manchester,' says: "There are many old inhabitants living (1840) who recollect the town when very circumscribed in its limits. They remember a time, for instance, when Ardwick Green, now connected with country walk-when the site of the present substantial warehouses in New Market-buildings was a pool of water-when the present handsome sheet of water in front of the Infirmary was a stagnant pond-when Oxford-road and Lower Mosley-street, and all the districts beyond, were yet fields and gardens-when Highstreet and Cannon-street, and the upper end of Marketstreet, and St. Anne's-square, were private dwellings. They can recollect the first factory erected in the town -the one in Miller's-lane-and the crowds of people that flocked to see the high chimney belonging to it when it was in progress of erection; they remember Strangeways, when a public-house, its bowling-green, and the pile called Strangeways' Hall, were the only encroachments on green fields and pastures stretching even to Hunt's Bank; they tell of the time when a coach to Liverpool started at six o'clock in the morning, and reached its destination at the same hour in the evening." Manchester does not possess a direct high-street from east to west, or from north to south. The artery which most nearly claims that title, is the irregularly-curved route through London-road, Piccadilly, and Marketstreet, ending at the Blackfriars' Bridge, which crosses over the Irwell into Salford. It is quite plain, in walking along this route, that we are in a comparatively modern region. All along the London-road, with the Ancoats' district on the one hand, and the Chorlton district on the other, we see nothing old and venerable: where there are not plain, modern, brick Mosley-street, too, is the centre of the best modern buildings of Manchester. The Exchange, the Theatre, the Court-House, the Athenæum, the Royal Institution, the Assembly-Rooms, the two Club-Housesall are situated in its immediate vicinity. houses, there are gigantic factories; where there are | find, that in most of the large houses of Mosley-street, not factories, there is the station of the railway to many different firms occupy one house-sometimes as London; but there is nothing to direct the thoughts many firms as there are floors or stories. back to past ages: all tells of the steam-engine. Advancing north-west, we come to Piccadilly, by far the most wholesome and healthy-looking spot in the town, with its fine Infirmary, and the fresh sheet of water extending in front of it. Then we reach Market-street, which, both from its name and from the representations which have been preserved of its ancient appearance, was probably the busy street of Manchester in past times, as it is indeed at present. (Cut, No. 3.) Manchester, in the midst of her wonderfully rapid progress in manufactures, has been very unfortunately placed in respect to the means of carrying out local improvements in the town, for want of recognized public funds. Market-street was, till a comparatively recent period, little better than a narrow dirty lane; but, about twenty years ago, the profits of the Manchester gasworks became applicable to the improvements of the town: these, and municipal powers since granted, have done much in modernizing and improving Man chester. Mr. Love gives the "commercial history" of a piece of ground situated near the junction of Piccadilly and Market-street, to show how the value of land has increased in the heart of Manchester in half a century. In 1790, a piece of ground, covering 2,400 square yards, was purchased from Sir Oswald Mosley, lord of the manor, for a sum of about £400. Twenty years afterwards it was sold for £5,000; a few years after this it was again sold for £11,000; the last purchaser divided it into two portions, of which he sold one for £8,000; and the other, soon afterwards, for £17,500; making £25,500 in all, or about sixty-fold in the original price! It is as a site for warehouses that ground has become so valuable in that spot. Bending our steps southward, between Piccadilly and Market-street, we find ourselves in Mosley-street, the centre of the cotton warehouses. Here we see buildings of great height; every floor of which, even 'down to the cellars or under-ground range, is occupied as counting-houses, or offices, or warehouses for the great manufactures. Here the name of Peel' meets the eye at one spot, and Cobden' at another, and 'Grant' (the 'Brothers Cheeryble,' as it is said, of Dickens) at a third. The yarn-spinners, the powerloom weavers, the bleachers, the dyers, the calicoprinters-all the great manufacturers within a wide circle around Manchester, have warehouses or offices in the cotton metropolis; and Mosley-street is thickly stocked with them. So wonderfully perfect is now the system on which Manchester trade is conducted, that the manufacturer need not (if he be prudent) have a large stock on hand. The Liverpool merchant or factor must of necessity have his warehouses often piled to the roof with bales of goods, intended either for import or export; but at Manchester a small countinghouse and a small warehouse will suffice for the transaction of an immense amount of business. Hence we Westward, we find Dean's Gate, the artery from the Collegiate Church towards the Chester-road; and this has all the evidence of being one of the old streets of Manchester. Taking Blackfriars Bridge as an apex, and drawing an irregular curved line towards the southeast, by way of Market-street and London-road, and another towards the south-west, by the course of the Irwell, we shall include a district in which is first seen the warehouses and handsome buildings, then the poverty-stricken dwellings of many of the operatives and of the Irish immigrants, and then a very world of factories along the course of the Medlock, and in the townships of Hulme and Chorlton. There are some towns in which the nearer we get to the centre, the less pleasant they become; but in Manchester, the three rivers wind about the town in such a curious way, that the factories and poor dwellings near them form a sort of belt, mostly distant some considerable space from the centre of the town. Where once the forest tree uprear'd its head, ROGERSON. The rivers and the main street will again enable us to mark out a district, which we may call the northeast; bounded on one side by the main line leading through the town, on another by the Irwell and the Irk, and extending north-eastward till the busy town melts away into green open country. Within this is the fine old Collegiate Church, one of the few memorials to connect Manchester with past ages. Within this boundary, too, is the extensive junction-station at Victoria Bridge, where the Manchester and Liverpool and the Manchester and Leeds Railways meet; and the Collegiate School, and the Commercial Exchange, and a few chapels and churches; but it must be confessed that the eye of a rambler through that district does not meet with much that is picturesque or socially attractive. In Ancoats, and Oldham-road, and St. George's-road, and in the streets that separate these roads from the centre of the town, many thousands of poor people live, too frequently in dirt and wretchedness; and many factories throw up their volumes of smoke into the air, giving a murky colour to everything, and exciting regret in the minds of scientific men that so little has yet been practically done by manufacturers to adopt smoke-consuming arrangements. It is in such districts as these that the vast mass of the population are best seen, as they pour out of the factories at meal times. The numbers and the bustle are quite bewildering. A pleasant writer in Blackwood, come to a sort of neutral ground, where brick buildings and green fields hold a parley. South-westwards, between the Eccles-road and the Chester-road, is another district, having parts of the Medlock and the Irwell flowing through it, and presenting factories and small streets where open country existed not very many years ago. In the approaches to all the townships adjoining Manchester and Salford, such as Harpurhey, Cheetham, Pendleton, Pendlebury, Broughton, Chorlton, Hulme, Ardwick, Stretford, &c., different phases of the same process are observable: industry and smoke are creeping onward, and the villas of the wealthier manufacturers are driven further and further away from the centre of the town. in 1839, gave the following picture of Manchester at one o'clock:-" The rush of the clans from the mountains of the cataracts from the Alps into the valleys beneath of three thousand pent up school boys, all detained for bad conduct, and then let out at once, only just in time to reach home before dark-of soldiers in a revolt of Irish peasants in a row-or of the Paris students in an emeute-might be compared to the scenes which may be daily witnessed in the city portion of Manchester when the clock strikes one. No other comparison could be instituted which could express this mighty movement as the moment of DINNER draws near." But he does not confine his remarks to the operatives: he falls mercilessly upon the whole population, and lashes them for choosing Such, then, is the general aspect of the streets of such an hour. "Now I am willing to confess that I Manchester. Of squares and terraces it is almost was ignorant, wholly ignorant, till I beheld the scene, wholly bereft. Some of the streets are of ample width; that Manchester dines at ONE!!! Rich, poor, such, for instance, as Oldham-road, shooting out ignorant, learned, destructive, conservative, dissenter, towards the north-east; the London and Stockportchurchman-the mass, yes, the mass, all dine at ONE!! road; Oxford-road, leading from Mosley-street through This would be a deplorable state of things for any the heart of Chorlton-on-Medlock towards Didsbury ; people; but for Manchester warehousemen, with their and a few others; but it must certainly be owned that clerks, porters, servants, friends, visitors, all to rush | Manchester is deficient in good streets; and those at ONE o'clock to dinner, leaving the bank, the manu- which she has strike out at such odd angles, that a factory, the office-all-all to take care of themselves rambler sometimes longs for the direct and great -is that which no man in his senses would be justified thoroughfares of most of our large towns. Good old in believing, unless ocular demonstration prevented Chester, with its two venerable main streets running him from doubting the accuracy of the fact. In a vast right through the city, the one east and west, and the many houses of business, not even one solitary clerk | other north and south, and meeting in the centre at is to be found at the counting house from one to two | the "Cross"-one can pick out one's latitude and and not in one out of fifty is the principal to be longitude in such a town. seen from one to three! Thus, the very heart of the day-the very best portion for mercantile operations when the light is best, when the head is clearest, and when, in almost all countries professing to be civilized, men devote their time to their most important avocations, is consumed at Manchester by the DINNER!" -Stripped of some of the dash and sparkle which are conventional in magazine sketches, this picture has a foundation of truth that has long been noted as remarkable in Manchester economy. Changes are coming on fast. The late arrival of the London post was one of the chief causes of the early dinner-hour. The main commercial work of the day had to be done after three in the afternoon. A third district of streets may be marked off by crossing to the westward of the Irwell, into Salford. Here the river bends in so tortuous a fashion as to form a sort of peninsula of which the isthmus would be formed by a line drawn from Regent-bridge to Salford-crescent. In this peninsula are packed some 60,000 or 70,000 human beings, as close as they can be wedged. The New Bailey, the Manchester and Bolton Railway-station, the Cloth Hall, the Union House, and a few other public buildings, mark this spot; but for the most part it is filled up with factories and streets of manufacturing population. These streets are gradually extending further and further towards the neighbouring townships of Pendleton on the west, and Broughton on the north-west; until at length we Alas for the poor Irwell! Gas-drainings, the refuse of factories, dye-stained water-all are poured into it, and render it really prejudicial both to animal and vegetable existence. The barges which pass up and down it, toò, are dirty and clumsy; and well may we agree that "the eye accustomed to the dashing steamers and trim-built wherries of the Thames, can receive but little pleasure from contemplating the navigation of the Irwell." And the Medlock is quite as bad as its neighbour. Yet nature has done enough to make these pretty rivers, if man had not spoiled the scene by his dirty work. The Irwell, as it winds behind Salford towards Pendleton, bends gracefully around one of the new parks, and presents abundant features for the pencil of the artist. Is it too much to hope that, when the sewerage of towns is more complete, this contamination of rivers may be avoided? Is there not yet time for the corporation of Manchester, which has wrought so much good in the town within the last few years, to throw a protecting thought over the waters of the Irwell, and the Irk, and the Medlock. THE BUILDINGS AND INSTITUTIONS. From the streets and rivers of Manchester, we will direct a glance towards such of its buildings as call most for notice. First and before all, of course, comes the Collegiate Church. Every cathedral town, whether it be of the old school or of the new school in other matters, is proud of its cathedral; and where no cathedral exists, the oldest church in the town is generally looked upon with a sort of affection. It speaks of a time when the town was held in importance by the great and the wealthy and the pious of past ages; and it serves as a sort of link to connect different stages of society into one chain. 6 But the Collegiate Church of Manchester wants no extrinsic aid to recommend it to our notice. It is really a noble building. Founded upwards of four centuries ago, it may well be termed the Old Church.' The De la Warrs, the Stanleys, the Wests, the Radcliffes, and the Byroms, were concerned in defraying the cost of its erection; and the names and arms of these families are to be met with in various parts of the church. The building is in the perpendicular style of pointed architecture, and consists of a nave and two aisles, with transepts, porches, and a richly ornate square tower over the western entrance. Indeed, the decorations generally may be considered as of a beautiful description. The interior, too, with its stainedglass windows, its monumental effigies, its private chapels or oratories, its tabernacle work and tracery in the choir, and its panelled and carved roof, would match with many of our cathedrals. (Cut, No. 2.) In the Salford High-street, leading from the Collegiate Church towards Pendleton, is now in course of construction a Roman Catholic church of unusual magnificence: it is built of stone, in the decorated style; and both in its size and in its general character, it must be ranked among the first class of modern churches. Roman Catholics are very numerous in Manchester, and they have many chapels, but none of such magnitude as this. for founding a blue-coat hospital and library, he directed that the College buildings should be purchased, and appropriated to the object in view. The buildings of this school, situated near the Collegiate Church, have been altered a little from time to time; but they still exhibit the picturesque irregularity and the marked features of the architecture of the period to which they belong. The blue-coat boys are kept in the school till the age of fourteen. The Cheetham Library, consisting of about 25,000 volumes, is a very unusual possession for such a town as Manchester, and one that redounds to the credit of the old manufacturer who founded it: it is open to all, under proper regulations for the due custody of the books. But its regulations offer little opportunity for its use to a busy population. Not far from the Blue-coat School is the Free Grammar-School; interesting rather for its antiquity than for any features of the building in which the school is held. For the most part, the charitable and educational buildings of Manchester are open to the remark, that the external features are not so much deserving of attention as the humane purposes to which they are devoted. There are some, however, that coll for notice as architectural structures. Among these is the pile that meets the eye on passing along Piccadilly-the Royal Infirmary and Dispensary. This structure is about ninety years old; but the stone front is of recent date. It is in the Italian-Ionic style, with a tetrastyle portico in the centre of the chief front. This building serves as an Infirmary and a Dispensary; and attached to it, so as almost to form one building with it, is a Lunatic Hospital, but having a hexastyle instead of a tetrastyle portico. The House of Recovery; the Salford Dispensary; the Chorlton Dispensary; the Ardwick Dispensary; and the other institutions for the relief of suffering and misery, appeal to us for the good done within, and not for the beauty shown without. The Deaf and Dumb School, in the Stretford road, is a finer building; and if it be taken in conjunction with the Blind Asylum, as one building, they form a really imposing structure. Two committees, the one seeking to relieve those who are deprived of sight, and the other those who are deprived of speech and hear The places of worship in Manchester are, taken as a whole, more numerous than externally attractive. Trinity Chapel, at Salford, the next in age to the Cathedral, is about two centuries old. St. Luke's, at Cheetham, a Gothic structure, is one of the finest of the modern churches. There are, however, three newly-built churches in the south-east suburbs of the town, worthy of attention. They are situated at Platt, at Birch, and at Longsight; and all exhibit favourable features of the pointed architecture. Indeed the mo-ing, sought how they might best apply the funds mudern church-builders of Manchester have adhered more generally to the pointed style than in most towns. Of the structures at Manchester, connected in various ways with education and mental advancement, the venerable Cheetham School is, in many respects, the most interesting. We have before explained that the present Collegiate Church was originally a part of the College, founded in the reign of Henry VI. The College buildings, after being wrested from the Warden and Fellows by the unscrupulous commissioners of Henry VIII., were possessed by the Earls of Derby for some generations; after this, they were occupied as barracks during the civil wars, but reverted to the Derby family at the Restoration. When the good Humphrey Cheetham left a munificent sum of money About nificently placed at their disposal by their townspeople, by working according to one common plan. £20,000 were applied to the construction of a building, of which one wing should form the Blind Asylum— another the Deaf and Dumb Asylum; and a chapel connect them in the middle. The whole structure is in the Tudor style, and is most certainly an ornament to the town. The Infant Schools, the National Schools, the Ly. ceums, the Mechanics' Institutions, are among the aumbler classes of establishments for aiding the moral and mental advancement of the people; but the Atheæum, the Royal Institution, and the Natural History Museum, are institutions of somewhat higher pretensions. The Manchester Athenæum was established as |