was elected to number thirty-two. He was
so little thought of, when nominated in 1693,
that the following epigram was current in
Paris:

"Fret not, good people, at the thought
   Bruyère has got the vacant chair,
   Forty to make we need a naught,
   And naught's the value of Bruyère."

Number thirty-six was the chair voted to
Laharpe the grammarian; a man whose
honesty has been accused, rightly or wrongly.
Upon his election, among other epigrams, ran
one not very complimentary to his associates—

"Laharpe—all other degradations past—
   Lights on the Academic chair at last!"

His chair belongs now to Lamartine.

Conrart, the founder of the Academy,
occupied chair number thirty-eight.

The last in number of the Forty Arm-Chairs
has been occupied in succession by
the illustrous Cuvier, and the clever,
timeserving Dupin.

THE CRUSADE OF THE NEEDLE.

SINCE the year eighteen hundred there
have been not less than four hundred
parliamentary committees formed for the express
purpose of taking Irish affairs into consideration
tion: vast grants of money have been made
to relieve the sufferings or stimulate the
industry of the Irish, and a variety of fiscal
immunities have been conceded to the tax-
paying portion of the community. Yet all
this has been done in vain. Not one of these
many agencies has shed a single ray of Hope
over the darkened scene.

In one corner of that land, however, there
is a hopeful glimmering of light; a ray that
although small and apparently stationary is,
in reality, expanding on many sides. That
light flows from a cheerful, noble, swelling
band of workers, toilers at the hearth. The
band numbers upwards of two hundred
and fifty thousand labourers, never flagging,
never wearying, but always progressing.
The task they labour at is a crusade, more
fruitful, more blessed, more lasting than
those of bye-gone ages, for it is the Crusade
—and, reader, smile if you will as I tell you
—the " Crusade of the Needle." Spreading
to the westward and the south westward
of Belfast, this army of crusaders has
gone on establishing itself in villages, and
towns, and hamlets; entrenching itself so
quietly, yet so strongly, in the very hearts of
whole communities; throwing out advanced
guards here, and picquets of sharpshooters
there, and then drawing on the main body so
stealthily, that even the very parish priest
knew nothing about the matter until the
army were at the chapel doors, and had
obtained possession of the keys.

The sewed or embroidered muslin trade,
the heart of which beats at Glasgow and in
other towns in Scotland and the north of
England, has of late years so grown and
extended, that to obtain a sufficiency of female
labour to meet the wants of the public, it has
been found expedient to send the plain goods
required to be embroidered, across the
Channel to the north of Ireland; whence,
by means of agents in Belfast, who employ
sub-agents in the villages and towns of Ulster
and Connaught, the work is distributed into
the most remote hamlets. For some years
this new branch of home industry has been
moving onwards, south and west, slowly but
steadily, like the ripples on the water, until
there are at the present moment upwards of
a quarter of a million of persons so employed
in that country. One house in Glasgow alone
gives work to twenty thousand Irish females,
and it is not at all too much to estimate the
yearly sums of money thus annually circulated
through many of the poorest districts of
Ireland at between one and two millions
sterling. At first, there was a positive
disinclination amongst the cottagers to apply
themselves to this kind of work, even though
it was brought to their very doors, and their
labour paid for weekly. They were obstinate,
and showed no desire to give up old timeworn
habits of idle wretchedness. But, by
degrees, as one or two attempted the task and
found how easy it was, and how little it
interfered with their few domestic duties; how
even the young girls could work at it; and
how wonderfully the few shillings at the end
of the week added to their scanty comforts
and soon gave them a feeling approaching to
independence: then others followed the
example, worked, prospered, and found their
homes and themselves changed as by some
magic spell. Soon the cry was " more, more;"
and there is no longer any difficulty in obtaining
recruits to the ranks of these Needle
Crusaders.

Having thus glanced at the work in the
camp, it may be well to complete the picture
by an inspection of the operations at head
quarters. For this purpose I must tell the
reader that, crossing the Irish Channel from
Belfast, I landed one fine morning on the
banks of the Clyde, and, during my sojourn
in the town of Glasgow, inspected a sewed
muslin establishment which is the largest of
the kind in the United Kingdom, and
probably in the world.

I must confess to perfect ignorance upon
the subject of ladies' worked collars and
sleeves, and babies' embroidered caps. I am
not quite sure that, before visiting Glasgow,
I had not a faint indistinct impression,
amounting almost to a belief, that the mysterious
embroidered articles in the linendrapers'
shop windows were worked by the young
women behind the counters. Certainly, I
had not the slightest conception of the magnitude
and value of the trade in these small
articles of luxury; of the gigantic piles of