apartments and papers, seeing that nothing
among them had been found which could
cast the faintest shadow upon his reputation.

We had all been yelling at the wrong man.
Kugelblitz was after all the author of the
tragedy.

THE POWER-LOOM.

IN no department of human invention have
such extraordinary vicissitudes been undergone,
as in that which has had the most
prodigious effect on the material prosperity of
Great Britain. It is a fact familiar to all, that
the ingenious mechanic who struck open the
path of discovery in connection with the
cotton manufacture, died in the workhouse at
Nottingham; while the energetic and
enterprising man who followed him died in
possession of millions. These cases have attracted
the world to gaze upon them; but there are
others which lie in the more level places
between, partaking as little of the shadow
through which Hargrave, as of the shadow
and sunshine through which Arkwright
moved, yet suggestive of highly curious
reflection, and appealing very strongly to the
sympathies. For the difficulties which obstruct
the way to knowledge are not incident to
poverty alone, nor is it only those who force
themselves upward through sordid impediments
who demand attention and praise.
I am about to sketch the career of a man
of whom it would be less appropriate to say
that he rose hardily by the help of knowledge,
than that he descended willingly to testify
his love of it; in whom the desire dwelt for
its own sake, and not for any thought of
ambition, or hope of gain, connected with it;
who turned aside from a thousand temptations
that might have repressed it, abandoned
for it luxuries of taste in which his mind
had long expatiated, and embraced an
occupation the very opposite to that in which
already he had lived forty quiet, leisurely,
scholarly years. Nor in this regard is the
poor barber's son of Preston, or even the
illiterate carpenter of Blackburn, a more
noteworthy subject of contemplation than
the grave, gentle, middle-aged preacher and
poet, whoso suddenly found himself embarked
in schemes that were to enrich millions and
impoverish only himself, yet amid all the
unquiet and misery that never cease to assail
original invention remained exactly the same
unsoured lover of books and verses as when
his life knew no higher happiness or graver
care.

Edmund Cartwright, elder brother of the
well-known Major, came of a good Nottingham
family which had suffered in its fortunes by
siding with Charles the First. He was bred
for the Church (in which he subsequently
received the dignity of a Doctorate) not
altogether by his own desire. He had wished
to enter the navy; but an elder and a
younger brother having been permitted to
mount the blue coat, he was fain to resign
himself to the black one, and at fourteen (he
was born in 1743) he was duly sent up to
Oxford, where, after taking his degree at
University College, he got a fellowship at
Magdalen. Langhorne, once thought a poet,
and still deserving to be called an agreeable
writer, was his college tutor in his
undergraduate days; and a very early temptation
to try his hand at verse was probably part of
Langhorne's tuition. For his muse displayed
no irregular or daring tendencies, either now
or at any later time, but rather a docile and
obedient than an original inspiration; and
for the graceful turn thus given to a
cultivated taste (since only thus we may characterise
Cartwright's poetry), it will be no wrong
to the memory of the good old translator of
Plutarch if we hold him to some extent
responsible. Before his pupil was nineteen
his verses were before the world; though it
was not till he was seven-and-twenty that he
became talked about as the writer of a
ballad-tale of the Edwin and Emma school,
which not only passed through several
editions at the time, but has since found its
way into the collections. It has many really
pleasing stanzas, and contains two lines
which were great favorites with Walter
Scott, who, in his youth, had often heard
them instanced and repeated by Dugald
Stewart "with much pathos" as a very
beautiful picture of Resignation.

And while his eye to heaven be raised,
Its silent waters stole away.

The young poet meanwhile had married
and received a presentation to the perpetual
curacy of Brampton in Derbyshire, which,
seven years later, he exchanged for a better
living in Leicestershire. It soon became
manifest, however, that he was not naturally
formed for rising in the Church; for he held
opinions, and took no pains to conceal them,
which had ceased to be fashionable. He
wrote a poem by way of indignant protest
against impending hostilities with America,
and took eager part in seconding the claims
of Mr. William Jones, when that great
scholar aspired to represent the University
of Oxford, forgetting that he had disqualified
himself by writing an Ode to Liberty. But
happily for Cartwright he never sought or
set his heart on the promotion he had such
small chance of receiving, nor seemed in any
respect dissatisfied with the life that lay before
him. When only the little Derbyshire living
was his, we find him absorbed in cares for his
poor parishioners, and studying medicine to
enable him to relieve any sudden ailments
that afflicted them. When he changes it for
the living in Leicestershire, he does not
change his kindly contented nature; but,
as he had learnt medicine for his poor
parishioners' sake, he now studies farming
for the sake of his not very rich little glebe,
and becomes, after a brief space, like the good