that of a gentleman," who took home his work
in top boots and ruffled shirts, carrying canes or
riding in coaches. Many weavers used to walk
about with five-pound Bank of England notes
spread out under their hatbands, thus curiously
prefiguring one of the most remarkable
characteristics of the Californian diggers; they would
smoke none but long "churchwarden" pipes,
kept themselves as a race apart, and suffered no
one else to intrude into their particular rooms
in their public-houses. In seventeen hundred
and ninety-seven the four-guinea piece of
cambric fell to twenty-nine shillings for the weaver;
continuing the downward course up to eighteen
hundred and twenty-seven, when it brought only
six-and-sixpence. This was the natural
consequence of a great discovery made popular. A
subscription was set on foot for Crompton during
a year of great distress, and he got between four
and five hundred pounds, which was the first
real reward yet obtained for his invention.
Afterwards Parliament was "spoken to," and the
spinner came up to London to see to the
advancement of his own fortunes. He was in the
lobby with Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Blackburn,
when Mr. Perceval, the then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, came up. "You will be glad to
hear," he said, "that we mean to propose
twenty thousand pounds for Crompton; do you
think "that will be satisfactory?" Crompton
walked away, not wishing to hear the reply, and
in two minutes a great shout was raised
Perceval had been shot. Of course the motion for
the grant was withdrawn for that night; and
when made it was made by a less friendly patron:
only five thousand pounds were asked for instead
of twenty. The sum which Crompton proved
that he had contributed to the revenue by the
number of his mules then at work, was about
three hundred thousand a year; the per-centage
of five thousand pounds out of this increase was
an unheard-of meanness. And even this did not
come free of charges. One of the charges was
a fee for forty-seven pounds seventeen shillings
and fourpence, "being fees to both Houses, for
inserting one clause in the appropriation act;"
and a parliamentary friend, who had pushed his
claims, took care to make a demand for a loan
of one out of the five thousand pounds; which
request, however, it is satisfactory to know, was
refused.

Things never went thoroughly well after this.
The sons disagreed, and turned out but
indifferent helps and supports to him; some bleaching
works that he took, failed; his machinery
was copied, his patterns pirated; the world,
that busy, pushing, commercial world of Bolton,
trod too hard on his heels, and even threatened
to drive its Juggernaut over his body; and, as
years passed on, the grey, grave, quiet old man,
grown more thoughtful and more pensive, grew
also poorer and more obscure, and wore a deeper
air of ill-usage and wrong. From poverty to
poverty he sank lower and lower; and his last
days, under the mismanagement of his thriftless
and not over estimable daughter, were threatened
with worse than stint, when a number of
his friends banded together, and raised a
subscription among themselves, with which they
purchased an annuity of sixty-three pounds, and
so rescued him from at least any frightful
catastrophe. A last attempt to obtain a
further grant from government failed, partly
because (so it was stated) "his primitive enemy,"
Sir Robert Peel, had undermined him; and
partly because the House had one of its odd fits
of ingratitude and want of appreciation
concerning him, which nothing could overcome.
Poor Crompton felt only too keenly the wrongs
which his own want of business capacity and
common sense had helped to draw upon him, and
died, as he had lived, with all the bitterness
belonging to a sense of failure and disappointment.
But his invention has revolutionised
the cotton trade, and the cotton trade is one of
the great powers of the present; so that in this
way the old Lancashire spinner has made
himself an undying influence in the future, and has
set his mark and seal upon a trade which may
be taken as the symbol of western civilisation
and British supremacy. No mean epitaph that
for an obscure Lancashire man, to whom
eighteenpence a night was good pay for his
violin-playing, and whose mother thrashed him soundly
if he failed in his daily tale of work!

VATICAN ORNITHOLOGY.

M. TOUSSENEL is a passionate sportsman.
But as he shoots, he studies his game, drawing
from it what he calls passional analogies. Every
beast and every bird is the emblem of some
manifestation of human passion. Man is, therefore,
not so widely separated from the brutes as
he may fancy himself to be. But even
vegetables, whom we are accustomed to consider if
not as altogether harmless, at least as guiltless
and irresponsible, are the objects of M. Toussenel's
admiration or hatred, according as they
represent human virtues or vices.

For instance, his office of Analogist, which he
holds to be on a par with that of prophet or
lawgiver — in fact, to be a combination of the
two, renders him the most inimical of all the
natural enemies of the mangel-wurzel family.
If you ask him why he entertains such a violent
rancour against an innocent root, "Innocent!
the Beetroot?" he exclaims; "an impure
plant, which prefers to feed on the filthiest diet?
I know the odious race too well to tolerate
them; they are their fathers' own children, the
offspring of protectionists and monopolists. You
are curious to learn the reason of my mortal
antipathy for this plant? Listen, then, with
all your ears.

"Know that Passional Analogy, which is the
science of sciences, sometimes reveals to those
who consult it secrets of which the profane are
ignorant. The Analogist has not to bestow a
second glance upon the juice of the beetroot
(a reddish and sweetish juice, false in colour and
pharisaical in flavour) in order to discover the
principle of all the evil passions which secretly
ferment in the bosom of the plant— notably, an