genius, industry, and perseverance: he was, indeed, one of the honorables of the land. In the Encyclopædia Britannica, it is truly remarked: "No man ever better deserved his good fortune, or has a stronger claim on the respect and gratitude of posterity. His inventions have opened a new and boundless field of employment; and while they have conferred infinitely more real benefit on his native country than she could have derived from the absolute dominion of Mexico and Peru, they have been universally productive of wealth and enjoyments."

The most marked traits of Arkwright were his wonderful ardor, energy, and perseverance. He commonly labored in his multifarious concerns from five o'clock in the morning till nine at night; and that, too, when considerably more than fifty years of age. Feeling that his defects of education placed him under great difficulty and inconvenience in conducting his correspondence, and in the general management of his business, he encroached upon his sleep, in order to gain an hour each day to learn English grammar, and another hour to improve his writing and orthog raphy. He was impatient of whatever interfered with his favorite pursuits; and the fact is too strikingly characteristic not to be mentioned, that he separated from his wife not many years after their marriage, because she, convinced that he would starve his family by scheming when he should be shaving, broke some of his experimental models of machinery. He was a severe economist of time; and, that he might not waste a moment, generally travelled with four horses at full speed. His concerns in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Scotland were so extensive and numerous, as to show at once his astonishing power of transacting business. Indeed, his schemes were vast and daring, as his talents were great and his industry indefatigable.

Thus it was from a poor barber he raised himself to what he eventually became-not merely to rank and great affluence, but to be the founder of a new branch of national industry, destined, in a wonderfully short space of time, to assume the very first place among the manufactures of his country. So great has been its increase, that it has been calculated that, while the number of persons in his native country, previous to his inventions, who were employed in the cotton manufacture, did not probably amount to thirty thousand, the number now engaged in its different departments can hardly be less than a million. Yet, in some branches of the business, it has been stated, the spinning in particular, such is the economy of labor introduced by the use of machinery, that one man and four children will spin as much yarn as was spun by six hundred women and girls, seventy years ago!

M. GUINAND.

ABOUT eighty years have elapsed, since this interesting man was employed in assisting his father, as a joiner, in a remote village among the mountains of Neufchatel, in Switzerland. His parent must have been in very indifferent circumstances, as his son was thus engaged when only ten years of age. His early education was much neglected; indeed, he never acquired more than an imperfect knowledge of the first rudiments of learning, always reading with difficulty, and writing very imperfectly. He must, even at this early period, have been a lad of considerable talent, and of a disposition that urged him to the exertion requisite for raising his condition in society. We find him, when between thirteen and fourteen years old, having quitted the employ. ment of a joiner for that of a cabinetmaker, chiefly engaged in making cases for clocks.

At this period he became acquainted with a buckle maker, who lived in the neighborhood, and of whom he learned the art of casting, and working in various metals, which enabled him about the age of twenty, after once witnessing the process, to attempt the construction of a watch case; having succeeded, he adopted the occupation of a watch-case maker, which was then very lucrative.

Having constructed clock cases for M. Jaquet Droz, the well known constructor of several automaton figures, which fifty years ago made the tour of Europe, he had an opportunity of seeing, at the house of that celebrated mechanist, a very fine English reflecting telescope, which appeared to him extremely curious and interesting. These instruments were very rare at that time in Switzerland, especially among the mountains. M. Guinand was then in his twentieth or twenty-third year, and it cannot be doubted that this circumstance, in itself unimportant, first turned his mind towards that subject, to which, encouraged by success, he afterwards more particularly devoted himself.

Be that as it may, having expressed a wish to be allowed to take to pieces this telescope, that he might examine it in detail, M. Jaquet Droz, who had noticed his dexterity, kindly gave him permission, and with equal good-nature relieved him from his apprehension of being unable to put it together again, by taking that task upon himself, if it should prove too difficult for him. Thus encouraged, he took the instrument to pieces, accurately measured the curves of the reflectors and glasses, and afterwards readily

put it together; then availing himself of the few notions of metallurgy which he had acquired from his friend the buckle maker, as well as the experience he had acquired in casting ornaments for clock cases, he attempted the construction of a similar tele. scope, and the experiment succeeded so well, that on a compara. tive trial of his own instrument with that which had been its model in presence of a great number of persons, it was impossible to determine which of them the preference was due.

M. Jaquet Droz, surprised at his success, asked our young friend what treatise on optics he had followed as his guide, and was astonished when he informed him that he was unacquainted with any. He then placed one in his hands; and it was not until this period that M. Guinand studied, or rather deciphered the principles of that science.

About the same time occurred another fortunate circumstance, in itself as trivial as the former. Having been always weak sighted, he found, when he began to make watch cases, that the spectacles which had hitherto answered his purpose, were no longer of service, and being directed to a person whose glasses were said to have given great satisfaction, he obtained a pair, which really suited him no better than the others, but by looking on while they were making, he learned the art of forming and polishing the lenses. He, therefore, undertook to make spectacles, not only for himself, but for various other persons, who pronounced them excellent. This new acquirement he found very useful in his favorite pursuit ; and he amused himself in manu. facturing great numbers of telescopes of an inferior quality, for which he made the tubes himself, generally of pasteboard. He also studied the small number of works he was able to procure, which treated on subjects connected with optics.

Meanwhile the ingenious and important discovery of achromatic glasses was beginning to spread; and having reached that country, it could not fail of being very interesting to M. Guinand, who listened with avidity to all he heard on this subject. M. Jaquet Droz, having procured one of these new glasses, permitted M. Guinand, as in the instance of the reflecting telescope, to take it to pieces, and to separate the lenses. It will be readily conceived that the purpose of the latter was to attempt the construction of a similar instrument, but in this he was impeded by the difficulty of procuring glasses of different refractive power. It was not until some years after, that an acquaintance of his, M. Recordon, having proceeded to England, where he obtained a patent for his self-winding watches, which were then in great request, brought him from that country some flint glass; and though the specimen

was much striated, he found means to manufacture from it some tolerably good achromatic glasses.

Having obtained supplies of this material on various occasions, and having seen other glasses besides those of M. Jaquet Droz, he easily ascertained that flint glass which is not extremely defective, is rarely to be met with. Thus convinced of the impossibility of procuring it of that quality which he ardently wished to obtain for the construction of his telescopes, and having by his various la bors become sufficiently skilled in the art of fusion, he melted in his blast furnace the fragments of this flint glass; no satisfactory result was obtained, but he discovered from some particles of lead which reappeared during the process, that this metal was a constituent in the composition of flint glass. At the time of his first experiment he had attained his thirty fifth or sixth year. The ardent desire to obtain some of this glass then induced him to collect from the different works he was able to procure, such notions of chemistry as might be useful to him in his attempts at vitrification; and during six or seven years he employed a part of his evenings in different experiments, melting at each time in his blast furnace three or four pounds of glass; he took care, in every ex. periment, to note down the substance and proportions of his com. binations, the time of their fusion, and as nearly as possible the degree of heat to which he had subjected them; then, by an attentive examination of the results of his experiments, he endeavored to discover the causes which had rendered his products defective, in order that he might remedy them in a subsequent trial. While occupied in these researches he derived a strong incentive to perseverance, from the prizes which he understood to have been offered for this desideratum by different academies, and especially by the Royal Society of London, a copy of whose proposals was procured for him. At a later period he also learned in a more positive manner, from statements given in a work which fell into his hands, of the almost total impossibility which existed of procuring flint glass exempt from striæ; all this impressed him with the importance of the discovery at which he was aiming, and stimulated him in the pursuit. These experiments, however, were made, as he observed, on too small a scale, and proved fruitless.

At the age of forty and upwards, having relinquished the trade of watch-case maker for that of maker of bells for repeaters, at that time very lucrative, (since he could make as many as twenty. four in a day, for which he was paid five francs each,) he resolved to prosecute his experiments on a more extended scale. Having purchased a retired place on the banks of the Doubs, near the Brenets, where the establishment is at present situated, he constructed

with his own hands a furnace capable of melting at one time two hundred weight of glass, and settled there with his family on a very economical plan, in order to dedicate all his earnings and leisure to new and expensive experiments; yet he was compelled to employ an interval between each one of his experiments in earning at his regular employment sufficient means for subsistence, and for providing the apparatus and materials needful for renewing them.

In this pursuit he was still exposed to numerous accidents and difficulties, which would have deterred most persons from continuing the research. His furnace, which he had constructed with his own hands, out of such materials as he could procure, and which was capable of melting at once two hundred pounds of glass, proved defective. He was then obliged to procure materials for the purpose from abroad, and having once more completed its erection, and consumed much fuel in heating it, had the mortification to find that it still required alteration. Then his crucibles, which he was equally obliged to form with materials ill-qualified for the object, cracked during the process, and the contents were lost among the ashes. All this time the pursuit had laid hold so completely of his mind, that he was deprived of his natural rest while considering upon the causes of his various failures, and endeavoring to reason out the means for their prevention.

Having at length succeeded in obtaining a block of glass weigh. ing about two hundred pounds, and having sawn it into two vertical sections, he polished one of the faces, in order, as far as possible, to examine the circumstances produced by the fusion.

To account for the numerous and various defects exhibited by this specimen, Guinand formed a theory which he made the groundwork of his future operations. A more intimate knowledge of these defects, and a conviction thus attained of the great difficulties opposed to their removal, instead of damping his ardor in the pursuit, served to infuse new energy into his mind. Nor was he mistaken in his estimate of the obstacles to be surmounted; "so that," as he himself declared, "the sacrifices and exertions which he had previously made, were trifling when compared with those which he afterwards underwent for the purpose of removing these various defects, and of rendering his glass homogeneous."

The steps through which he pursued this arduous undertaking, and the methods by which its success was accomplished, it is not possible to detail. All that is publicly known upon the subject is, that he succeeded in discovering a mode of proceeding which gave the almost certainty of producing in the fusion of a pot containing from two to four hundred pounds of glass, one half at least of its substance entirely of the same nature, and therefore fitted for the