know, off my rent of half-a-crown. It's looms-the wife's, the husband's, and the rather a large room."

"Is that your wife at the other loom?" "That's my wife. She's making a commoner sort of work, for bonnets and that."

Again his loom clashes and jars, and he leans forward over his toil. In the window by him, is a singing-bird in a little cage, which trolls its song, and seems to think the loom an instrument of music. The window, tightly closed, commands a maze of chimneypots, and tiles, and gables. Among them, the ineffectual sun, faintly contending with the rain and mist, is going down. A yellow ray of light crossing the weaver's eager eyes and hollow white face, makes a shape something like a pike-head on the floor.

young man's, as they go again-make a chorus.

"This man's work, now, Mr. Broadellehe can't hear us apart here, in this noise ?—" "Oh, no !"

-"requires but little skill?"

"Very little skill. He is doing now, exactly what his grandfather did. Nothing would induce him to use a simple improvement (the 'fly shuttle') to prevent that contraction of the chest of which he complains. Nothing would turn him aside from his old ways. It is the old custom to work at home, in a crowded room, instead of in a factory. I couldn't change it, if I were to try."

แ

"Good Heaven, is the house falling! Is there an earthquake in Spitalfields! Has a volcano burst out in the heart of London ! What is this appalling rush and tremble? It is only the railroad.

The room is unwholesome, close, and dirty. Through one part of it the staircase comes up in a bulk, and roughly partitions off a corner. In that corner are the bedstead and the fireplace, a table, a chair or two, a kettle, The arches of the railroad span the house; a tub of water, a little crockery. The looms the wires of the electric telegraph stretch claim all the superior space and have it. over the confined scene of his daily life; the Like grim enchanters who provide the family engines fly past him on their errands, and with their scant food, they must be propi- outstrip the birds; and what can the man tiated with the best accommodation. They of prejudice and usage hope for, but to be bestride the room, and pitilessly squeeze overthrown and flung into oblivion! Look the children--this heavy, watery-headed | to it, gentlemen of precedent and custom baby carried in the arms of its staggering little brother, for example-into corners. The children sleep at night between the legs of the monsters, who deafen their first cries with their whirr and rattle, and who roar the same tune to them when they die. Come to the mother's loom.

standing, daintily opposed to progress, in the bag-wigs and embroidered coats of another generation, you may learn from the weaver in his shirt and trowsers!

There, we leave him in the dark, about to kindle at the poor fire the lamp that hangs upon his loom, to help him on his laboring

"Have you any other children besides way into the night. The sun has gone down, these ?"

"I have had eight. I have six alive." "Did we see any of them, just now, at the-"

the reflection has vanished from the floor. There is nothing in the gloom but his eager eyes, made hungrier by the sight of our small present; the dark shapes of his fellow

"Ragged School? O yes! You saw four workers mingling with their stopped looms; of mine at the Ragged School!"

She looks up, quite bright about it-has a mother's pride in it-is not ashamed of the name: she, working for her bread, not begging it not in the least.

She has stopped her loom for the moment. So has her husband. So has the young man.

"Weaver's children are born in the weaver's room," says the husband, with a nod at the bedstead. "Nursed there, brought up there-sick or well-and die there."

To which, the clash and jar of all three

the mute bird in its little cage, duskily expressed against the window; and the watery-headed baby crooning in a corner God knows where.

We are again in the streets.

"The fluctuations in the silk-trade, and consequently, in the condition of the Spitalfields weaver," says our friend," are sudden and unforeseen; for they depend upon a variety of uncontrollable causes. Let us take, for example, the past four or five years."

"But does that period afford a fair aver

They were. In 1846 the price of raw silk was very low. The manufacturers bought all they could, and worked up all they bought. Not a hand was idle, not a loom at rest. Enormous stocks soon accumulated, silk became dearer; but in May, 1847, there came a sudden stop."

"Was it not, then, that the last loud cry of distress arose from Spitalfields, and that public meetings were held for finding means of 'redress?"

Spitalfields, however, has its bright side. As yet machinery has not been taught to turn artist, or to guide the shuttle through the intricate niceties of the Jacquard loom, so as to execute designs. Figured and brocaded silks must still be done by hands, and those hands must be skillful.

"Our silks," Mr. Broadelle tells us, "have never been inferior, in quality, to those of our foreign rivals; but, we have always been beaten in taste. In the stolid assiduous pains-taking motion of the hand and treadle, the English weaver is unsurpassed; but, he has seldom exercised his fancy. Until lately, therefore, few designs originated in this country. We silk-manufacturers, like the Dramatic Authors' Society, have been content to take our novelties from the French." "You say, 'until lately.' Has the En

spect?"

"It was. The stagnation was prolonged by a dispute, in which the silk manufacturers and wholesale dealers were involved with the large retail houses. It got the name of the short measure question.' The retailers wanted us to give them thirtyseven inches to every yard. The autumn trade was completely crippled by this discussion; which did not end till the breaking out of the French Revolution, in Februa-glish manufacturer improved in that rery, 1848. West-end and wholesale buyers rushed over to Paris and Lyons, in regi✔ments, and with unlimited capital. They bought for almost any price they chose to to offer. This cut two ways; although wholesale and retail houses brought home great parcels of manufactured articles, we also bought raw silk, in France, from fifteen to twenty per cent. below the lowest price I ever knew it. What do you think, sir, of the finest French organzine for a guinea a pound?"

"Decidedly. Schools of Design have done something: the encouragement given by masters to those who make available patterns, has done something too; but, the great improver of the English silk trade was the last French revolution." "How?"

"That political disaster brought the manufacturers of France to a dead-lock. During the whole of 1849, the English markets were stocked with the most splendid fashions that

We answered by an exclamation of vague ever came into it. As we could not sell a surprise.

yard of our manufacture, we had plenty of "Such a price as this enabled us to set leisure to examine the different foreign goods some of our looms at work for stock, and, minutely. So rich a variety had never fallen during 1849, the French goods being ex- under our observation, and never before had hausted, ours came into play. Indeed, du- such a flood of light been thrown on the ring that year the British manufacturer was manufactures of our greatest rivals. We in a position to defy competition." profited by it. More important improve"The French had not recovered them- ments have been effected in the fabric of selves ?" fancy silk goods since 1848, than were "Not only that—but we had bought near-made, down to that time, since the days of ly all their raw silk, and they were actually obliged to buy it back from us at advances of from twenty to fifty per cent.! From that time prices advanced here, and work kept on increasing, so that, during most of last year, Spitalfields was busy."

Jacquard.”

"This shows the value of national intercourse, Mr. Broadelle. Will the Great Exhibition do much service in this way?" "I have no doubt it will. But, we are

The price of "organzine" during the month of March was:-French, 32s.; Piedmont, 26s.; China,

"Yes; and what with that and the ad- 22s.

now at the door of a figure-weaver; and you | although she is doing very ordinary work. will compare this visit with our last."

Industry, contentment, sense, and self-respect, are the hopeful characteristics of every thing animate and inanimate in this little house. If the veritable summer light were shining, and the veritable summer air were rustling, in it, which the young artist has tried to get into the sketches of green

We knock at the door of a cheerful little house, extremely clean. We are introduced into a little parlor, where a young artist sits at work with crayons and water-colors. He is a student of the School of Design. He is at work on a new pattern for a table cover. He has learnt to paint in oil. He has paint-glades from Epping Forest that hang near ed the portraits of his sisters-and of some one who I suspect is not a sister, but who may be

A nearer one

Yet and a dearer one,

and they decorate the room. He has painted groups of flowers. He shows us one that was in last year's Exhibition of the Royal Academy. He shows us another that he means to finish in good time to send to the next Exhibition. He does these things over and above his regular work. He don't mind work-gets up early. There are cheap casts prettily arranged about the room, and it has a little collection of cheap books of a good sort in it. The intrinsic worth of every simple article of furniture or embellishment is enhanced a hundred fold (as it always may be) by neatness and order. Is father at home? Yes, and will be glad to see the visitors. Pray walk up!

father's loom, and can be seen by father while he is at work, it could not be more cheering to our hearts, oppressed with what we have left.

I meant to have had a talk with our good friend Mr. Broadelle, respecting a cruel persistence in one inflexible principle which gave the New Poor Law a particular severity in its application to Spitalfields, a few years back, but which I hope may have been amended. Work in the stone-yard was the test of all able-bodied applicants for relief. Now the weaver's hands are soft and delicate, and must be so for his work. No matter. The weaver wanting relief, must work in the stone-yard with the rest. So, the Union blistered his hands before it relieved him, and incapacitated him from doing his work when he could get it.

But, let us leave Spitalfields with an agreeable impression, and be thankful that we can.

From "Chambers' Edinburgh Journal."

SYMPATHETIC SNAIL COMPASS.

The young artist shows us the way to the top of the house, apologizing cheerfully for the ladder-staircase by which we mount at last. In a bright clean room, as pure as soap and water, scrubbing, and fresh air, can make it, we find a sister whose portrait is down stairs-we are able to claim her in- HERETOFORE there has been a limit to the stantly for the original, to the general satis- security and rapidity of mental intercourse faction. We find also, father, who is work- both between individuals and nations. The ing at his Jacquard loom, making a pretty most tender epistles, the most important pattern of cravat, in blue upon a black dispatches, must needs be subject to the ground. He is as cordial, sensible, intelli- dangers and caprices of the winds and gent a man as any one would wish to know. waves; nor can the electric telegraph bear He has a reason for every thing he says, and our messages beyond the confines of our every thing he does. He is learned in sani-island home, for hitherto, at least, its attary matters among other necessary knowledge, and says the first thing you have to do, is, to make your place wholesome, or you can't expect to work heartily. Wholesome it is, as his own pleasant face, and the pleas-tries, and which have hitherto been baffled ant faces of his children well brought up. He has made various improvements in his own loom; he has made an improvement in his daughter's, who works near him, which prevents her having to contract her chest,

tempts to find a pathway in the mighty deep have proved an utter failure. The longings thus expressed for an instantaneous communication of thought with distant coun

and disappointed, are now, however, on the eve of being realized by a discovery which will enable us, in a moment of time, to span the great globe itself by our inmost thought, and to whisper it in silence to the listening

ear of our friend at Calcutta or New Zealand. | great distance from each other? This is the next point to be ascertained. Well, it would appear from the statements of our two philosophers, that when these tender crea

'By a snail! Incredible! Impossible !"tures are torn asunder by the relentless Incredible, if you will, but not impossible; for it is to the snail that this mission of thought-bearing is assigned; and the vast community of snailhood will doubtless fulfill their office with a becoming sense of its importance."

Let us now attempt to unravel this mys- invisible, and that it passes through space tery.

sulphate of copper which is riveted to the | lous sympathetic compass, who desirous to