of mankind. Nor is the end yet. The thirst for discovery seems only to have begun.

Indeed, such is the celerity of our progress, that some heads grow giddy. They begin to see double: old men have visions, and young maidens dream dreams. Materialism pervades the air, and the new spiritual world is a mere mesmeric phantasmagoria of this earthy ball, which we inhabit. Spirits, now-a-days, push about tables, rap at the door, tumble over the chairs, learn the alphabet, and spell their names with emphasis. Lusty spirits are they, with vigorous muscles, hard knuckles, and rollicking humors! They will talk, too, and as great nonsense as any alive. If these are the only kind of souls to be met with, in their seven heavens, one would hardly like to go there. Really, these mesmeric spirits seem very much of the ardent kind, and I suspect have more alcohol of the imagination than real immortality about them.

Another remarkable person whom I saw at my uncle's house was Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cottongin. He was a large man of rather full habit, slightly round-shouldered, and doubling himself forward as he sat. His face was large and slightly oval; his nose long and hooked; his eye deep-set, black, and keen; his look penetrating and prolonged. His hair was black, though sprinkled with gray, for he was now some five and forty years old; his skin was smooth, sallow, and pallid. Altogether, his appearance was striking, the expression of his face having a deep

thoughtfulness about the brow, tempered by a pleasant smile at the corners of the mouth.

In conversation he was slow, but his thoughts were clear and weighty. His knowledge seemed at once exact and diversified: he spoke more of science than literature; he was not discursive, but logically pursued trains of thought, shedding light at every sentence. Few men have lived to more purpose than he. Before his time, cotton was separated from the seed by hand, and hence its price was thirty to fifty cents a pound. He produced a machine, by which a series of hooked, iron teeth, playing through openings in a receiver, performed the labor of five hundred men in a day! An immense facility in the production of cotton has been the result, with a corresponding fall in its price and extension of its use, throughout Christendom.

In 1790,* cotton was hardly known in this country;

*Cotton appears to have been used in India for making cloths as early as 440 B. C., and probably long before that time, yet here the art remained isolated for ages. The Arabians at length brought India cotton to Adula, on the Red Sea, whence it was introduced into Europe. The cotton manufacture was brought there by the Moors of Spain in the ninth century. Raw cotton was first introduced into England from the Levant, chiefly for candlewicks. The cotton manufacture was brought hither by the refugees from the Low Countries in the time of Queen Elizabeth. For a long time, the fabrics produced were coarse; the finet cotton goods-muslins, calicoes, chintzes, being largely supplied from India. In 1730, Mr. Wyatt first began to spin cotton by machinery. In 1742, the first cotton-spinning mill was built at Manchester, the motivepower being mules and horses. The entire value of the cotton manu. facture of England in 1760 was a million of dollars: now it is probably two hundred millions of dollars.

In 1790, Mr. Slater put up at Pawtucket, R. I., the first cotton-mill in

in 1800, the whole product of the United States was eighty-five thousand bales; in 1855, it is three millions and a half of bales. Nearly half the nations of the earth, seventy-five years ago, went naked or in rags, or in bark or skins; but they are now clothed in cotton. Then a shirt cost a week's work; now a man earns two shirts in a day. Now, during every twelve hours of daylight, the spindles of the world produce threads of cotton sufficient to belt our globe twenty times round at the equator! And Eli Whitney was the Chief Magician who brought this about.

At the time I speak of, his Gun-factory, two miles north of New Haven, was the great curiosity of the neighborhood. Indeed, people traveled fifty miles to see it. I think it employed about a hundred men. It was symmetrically built in a wild romantic spot, near the foot of East Rock, and had a cheerful, tasteful appearance-like a small tidy village. We visited it of course, and my admiration was excited to the utmost. What a bound did my ideas make in mechanics, from the operations of the penknife, to this miracle of machinery! It was, at the time, wholly

America. In 1802, the first cotton factory was erected in New Hampshire. In 1804, the first power-loom was introduced at Waltham; in 1822, the first cotton factory was built at Lowell. The cotton manufactures of the United States now amount to sixty-five millions of dollars a year!

In 1789, about one million pounds of cotton were produced in the United States; in 1792, Whitney perfected his gin for cleaning cotton; in 1810, the United States produced eighty-five millions pounds of cotton; in 1820, one hundred and sixty millions; in 1830, three hundred and fifty millions; in 1855, probably fourteen hundred millions. The United States are now the chief cotton producers for the world.

engaged in manufacturing muskets for the government. Mr. Whitney was present, and showed us over the place, explaining the various processes. Every part of the weapons was made by machinery, and so systematized that any lock or stock would fit any barrel. All this, which may scem no wonder now, was remarkable at the time, there being no similar establishment in the country. Among other things, we here saw the original model of the Cottongin,* upon which Mr. Whitney's patent was founded.

* Eli Whitney was born at Westborough, Mass., in 1765, of parents in the middle ranks of life. He showed an early propensity to mechanies, first making a very good fiddle, and then mending fiddles for the neighborhood. He once got his father's watch, and slily took it to pieces, but contrived to put it together again, so as not to be detected. At the age of thirteen he made a table-knife to match the set, one of which had been broken. During the Revolutionary war he took to nailmaking, nails being very scarce, and made a profitable business of it. He then made long pins for ladies' bonnets, walking-canes, &c. At the age of nineteen he began to think of college, and surmounting various obstacles, entered Yale in 1789, having been fitted in part by Dr. Goodrich, of Durham. In college he displayed great vividness of imagination in his compositions, with striking mechanical talent-mending, on a certain occasion, some philosophical apparatus, greatly to the satisfaction and surprise of the Faculty.

In 1792 he went to Georgia, as teacher in the family of Mr. B.... On his arrival, he found that the place was supplied; happily he fell under the kind care and patronage of Mrs. Greene, widow of Gen. G. Hearing the planters lament that there was no way of separating cotton from the seed but by hand, and that it took a slave a whole day to clean a pound, he set privately to work, and after a time produced his gin, which was to make such a revolution in the world. In this process, he was obliged to make his own wire. On disclosing his discovery, the planters saw at once the vast field of enterprise open to them. Whitney took immediate steps to secure a patent, and made arrangements to manufacture gins, but a series of misfortunes and discouragements defeated him. The history of his career at this period is a melancholy story of efforts baffled, hopes disappointed, and engagements violated, disclosing the most shameful wrongs and outrages on the part of individ

LETTER XXIII.

Durham-History of Connecticut--Distinguished Families of Durham— The Chaunceys, Wadsworths, Lymans, Goodriches, Austins, &c.- Woodbury-How Romance becomes History-Rev. Noah Benedict Judge Smith.

MY DEAR C******

Having spent about a week at New Haven, we proceeded to Durham, an old-fashioned, sleepy town of a thousand inhabitants. Its history lies chiefly in the remarkable men it has produced-the Chaun

vals, and even of courts and legislatures. He instituted sixty suits in Georgia for violations of his rights, and was not able to get a single decision until thirteen years from the commencement! Thus, in fact, the great benefactor of the cotton interest of the South, only derived years of misery and vexation from his invention.

In 1798, through the influence of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, he obtained a contract for the manufacture of arms for the United States, and then established his factory at Whitneyville. He was eight years in producing ten thousand pieces. At length, however, his measures being completed, his establishment was one of the most perfect in the world, and the arms he provided were probably the best then made in any country.

In 1822, he applied for a renewal of his patent for the cotton-gin. It was estimated that the value of one hundred millions of dollars had then been added to the lands of the South by this invention, while he had reaped only sorrow and embarrassment; yet he failed, most of the southern members of Congress opposing his request!

In 1817, he married a daughter of the celebrated Pierpont Edwards, Judge of the District Court for the State of Connecticut. In 1822, he was attacked with disease, which terminated his career in 1825. His character, like his life, was remarkable: though a refined scholar, he was a skillful mechanic-no man in his shop being able to handle tools more dexterously than himself: though possessing a fine imagination, and a keen inventive faculty, he had a perseverance in pursuing his plans to completion, that nothing could arrest. He was at once energetic and systematic; dignified, yet courteous; large in his views, yet