accordingly, we find the claret tint. The silk
is somewhat dull, from being hard twisted; it
is to be made more lustrous by stretching,
and we accompany it to the stretching machine.
There it is suspended on a barrel and moveable
pin; by a man's weight applied to a
wheel, the pin is drawn down, the hank
stretches, and comes out two or more inches
longer than it went in, and looking
perceptibly brighter. A hank of bad silk snaps
under this strain; a twist that will stand it is
improved by it.

Looking into a little apartment, as we return
through the yard, we find a man engaged in
work which the daintiest lady might long to
take out of his hands. He is making pattern-
cards and books. He arranges the shades of
all sorts of charming colours, named after a
hundred pretty flowers, fruits, and other
natural productions,—his lemons, lavenders,
corn flowers, jonquils, cherries, fawns, pearls,
and so forth; takes a pinch of each floss,
knots it in the middle, spreads it at the ends,
pastes down these ends, and, when he has a
row complete, covers the pasted part with
slips of paper, so numbered as that each
number stands opposite its own shade of
colour. A pattern-book is as good as a rainbow
for the pocket. This looks like woman's
work; but there are no women here. The
men will not allow it. Women cannot be
kept out of the ribbon-weaving; but in the
dye-house they must not set foot, though the
work, or the chief part of it, is far from
laborious, and requires a good eye and tact,
more than qualities less feminine. We found
many apprentices in the works, receiving
nearly half the amount of wages of their
qualified elders. The men earn from ten
shillings to thirty shillings a-week, according
to their qualifications. Nearly half of the
whole number earn about fifteen shillings a-
week at the present time.

And, now, we are impatient to follow these
pretty silk bundles to the factory, and see the
weaving. It is strange to see, on our way
to so thoroughly modern an establishment,
such tokens of antiquity, or reminders of
antiquity, as we have to pass. We pass under
St. Michael's Church, and look up, amazed, to
the beauty and loftiness of its tower and
spire;—the spire tapering off at a height of
three hundred and twenty feet. The crumbling
nature of the stone gives a richness and
beauty to the edifice, which we would hardly
part with for such clear outlines as those of
the restored Trinity Church, close at hand.
And then, at an angle of the market-place,
there is Tom, peeping past the corner,—looking
out of his window, through his spectacles,
with a stealthy air, which, however ridiculous,
makes one thrill, as with a whiff of the breeze
which stirred the Lady Godiva's hair, on that
memorable day, so long ago. It is strange,
after this, to see the factory chimney, straight,
tall, and handsome, in its way, with its inlaying
of coloured bricks, towering before us,
to about the height of a hundred and thirty
feet. No place has proved itself more
unwilling than Coventry to admit such innovations.
No place has made a more desperate
resistance to the introduction of steam power.
No place has more perseveringly struggled
for protection, with groans, menaces, and
supplications. Up to a late period, the Coventry
weavers believed themselves safe from the
inroads of steam power. A Macclesfield
manufacturer said, only twenty years ago, before
a Committee of the House of Commons, that
he despaired of ever applying power-looms to
silk. This was because so much time was
employed in handling and trimming the silk,
that the steam power must be largely wasted.
So thought the weavers, in the days when
the silk was given out in hanks or bobbins, and
woven at home, or, when the work was done
by handloom weavers in the factory—called
the loom-shop. The day was at hand,
however, when that should be done of which the
Macclesfield gentleman despaired. A small
factory was set up in Coventry by way of
experiment, in the use of steam power, in 1831.
It was burned down during a quarrel about
wages,—nobody knows how or by whom.
The weavers declared it was not their doing;
but their enmity to steam power was strong
enough to restrain the employers from the
use of it. It was not till everybody saw that
Coventry was losing its manufacture,—parting
with it to places which made ribbons by
steam,—that the manufacturers felt
themselves able to do what must be done, if they
were to save their trade. The state of things
now is very significant. About seventy houses
in Coventry make ribbons and trimmings,
(fringes and the like). Of these, four make
fringes and trimmings, and no ribbons; and
six or eight make both. Say that fifty-eight
houses make ribbons alone. It is believed
that three-fourths of the ribbons are made by
no more than twenty houses out of these fifty-
eight. There are now thirty steam power-
loom factories in Coventry, producing about
seven thousand pieces of ribbons in the week,
and employing about three thousand persons.
It seems not to be ascertained how large a
proportion of the population are employed in
the ribbon manufacture: but the increase is
great since the year 1838, when the number
was about eight thousand, without reckoning
the outlying places, which would add about
three thousand to the number. The total
population of the city was found, last March,
to amount to nearly thirty-seven thousand.
So, if we reckon the numbers employed in
connexion with the throwing-mills and dye-
houses, we shall see what an ascendancy the
ribbon manufacture has in Coventry.

At the factory we are entering, the
preparatory processes are going forward at the top
and the bottom of the building. In the yard
is the boiler fire, which sets the engine to
work; and, from the same yard, we enter
workshops, where the machinery is made and