astonished, that he roundly declared his conviction that some agency more than human must have been called in to assist on the occasion. The weaving factory which was erected at Doncaster, by some of Cartwright's friends, with his license, was unsuccessful; and another establishment containing five hundred looms, built at Manchester, was destroyed in 1790 by an exasperated mob. The invention had surmounted all opposition at the time of his death, and is stated then to have increased in use so rapidly as to perform the labor of two hundred thousand men ! Cartwright's next invention was to comb wool by machinery, which excited if possible a still greater ferment among the working classes than even the power-looms. The whole body of wool combers petitioned parliament to suppress the obnoxious machines, but without effect. These machines began to be used by some manufacturers, who at the same time attempted to evade Cartwright's claim as their inventor. After a trial which occupied twenty-six hours, he established his right, and gained a verdict of one thousand pounds against the pirates. For several other inventions in agriculture and manufactures he took out patents, and for others premiums were bestowed upon him by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and the Board of Agriculture. Even the steam engine engaged his attention; and an account of some improvements which he proposed in its mechanism may be found in Reese's Cyclopedia. Indeed, so long as forty years ago, while residing at Eltham in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell his son that, if he lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land-carriages impelled by steam. It is also certain that at that early period he had constructed a model of a steam engine attached to a barge, which he explained about the year 1793, in the presence of his family, to Robert Fulton, then a student of painting under West. Even so late as the year 1822, Dr. Cartwright, notwithstanding his very advanced age, and although his attention was much occupied by other philosophical speculations, was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a plan of propelling land-carriages by steam. His death, however, at Hastings, in October, 1823, prevented the completion of this, as well as of many other designs in the prosecution of which he had been employed. His enthusiasm for mechanical invention continued unabated to the last; and indeed his general energy both of mind and body was very little impaired up to within a short period of his death. In a letter to his brother, Major Cartwright, dated 24th April, 1819, he says, "I this day entered into my 77th year in as good health and spirits, thank God, as I have done on any one birthday for the last half century. I am moving about my farm from eight o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, without suffering the least fatigue. I sent in my claim to the Board of Agriculture for their premium for a cure of the mildew on wheat, but have not yet heard that it was admitted. I don't know whether I ever mentioned to you a machine for dibbling or planting wheat, which I have brought to great perfection. I have also a very material improvement on the stocks respecting ploughs and wheel-carriages; but of this I shall say nothing till I have brought it to the proof, which I hope to do very shortly; when you shall be immediately informed of the result, whether favorable or not." The following verses, also, which he sent to a friend not long before his death, will show at once the undiminished ardor and activity of his mind, and the generous and philanthropic motives by which his enthusiasm was sustained and directed: "Since even Newton owns that all he wrought In search of truth, through darkness into day? He tried, on venturous wing, the loftiest flight, An eagle soaring to the fount of light! I cling to earth, to earth-born arts confined, A worm of science of the humblest kind. Our powers, though wide apart as earth and heaven, Though mine the arena of inglorious fame, In spite of failing vigor and of age, Nor quit the combat till I quit the stage: Let well-earned victory justify repose!" The disposition of this excellent man, indeed, naturally carried him throughout his life to promote, by every means in his power, the benefit of his fellow creatures; and the following incident is perhaps worthy of being recorded, as illustrating how this tendency used to display itself in other parts of his conduct, as well as in his zeal for mechanical improvements. While he held the living of Goadly Maxwood, in Leicestershire, he applied himself so as siduously to the study of medicine that he acquired extensive knowledge and eminent skill in that science, and was in the habit of prescribing to his poorer parishioners with great success. Actuated by such feelings as those we have described, Dr. Cartwright was as free as any man who ever lived from jealousy or illiberality towards other inventors. In fact, it may be safely asserted, that had he not carried his frankness and want of suspicion, as well as his indifference to pecuniary gains, beyond the limits of worldly prudence, his ingenious contrivances would in all probability have been productive of much greater benefit to himself than they ever actually were. So careless was he in regard to retaining in his own possession the valuable ideas with which his mind was continually teeming, that he has been frequently known to have given the most important assistance by his suggestions to other persons engaged like himself in mechanical pursuits, and afterwards to have forgotten the circumstance as entirely as if it had never happened. Nay, so completely did what he was engaged about at the moment occupy his mind, that he sometimes forgot his own inventions, and other productions, of an older date, even when his attention was particularly called to them. One day, one of his daughters having chanced to repeat in his presence some lines from a poem entitled the "Prince of Peace," which appeared in his volume already mentioned, he exclaimed, to her surprise and amusement, "Those are beautiful lines, child; where did you meet with them?" On another occasion, being shown the model of a machine, he examined it with great attention, and at last observed, that the inventor must have been a man of great ingenuity, and that he himself should feel very proud if he had been the author of the contrivance; nor could he be immediately convinced of what was proved to be the case, namely, that it was a machine of his own. Dr. Cartwright was defrauded of the pecuniary profits which he might reasonably have expected from his great invention of the power-loom, by various accidents, and especially by the burning of a manufactory, containing five hundred of his machines, almost immediately after it was built. It may also be added, that after he had demonstrated the practicability of weaving by machinery, other inventors applied themselves to the devising of contrivances for that purpose slightly different from his-a comparatively easy task, even where the new invention was not merely a disguised infringement of his patent, while in those cases in which it was in reality nothing more than such an infringement, it was yet so protected, that it could hardly be reached and put down as such. On these and other accounts, and in no small degree owing to Dr. Cartwright's carelessness about his own interests, the power-loom only began, in point of fact, to be extensively introduced about the year 1801, the very year in which his patent expired. So generally, however, was it felt among those best entitled to express an opinion on the subject, that to him really belonged the merit of the invention, that in the year 1808, several merchants and manufac turers of Manchester and its neighborhood, to none of whom he was personally known, held a meeting to consider the propriety of presenting to the Lords of the Treasury a memorial of his eminent services, and of the losses he had sustained through the piracies and other unfortunate circumstances to which we have alluded. In consequence of this and other applications in his favor, the sum of ten thousand pounds was soon after granted him by parliament. An amount, although munificent as a present, yet barely adequate even to repay the sums the doctor had expended in his experiments; and his family, after all, reaped no pecuniary benefit from his ingenious and persevering labors. This national recog nition of his claims may be taken as a sufficient answer to some attempts that have been occasionally made to rob Dr. Cartwright of the credit of having been the author of one of the most valuable presents ever made to the manufacturing industry of his country. As a man of education and literary habits, the inventor of the power-loom, notwithstanding his deviation from his original track of thought and study when he began to give his attention to mechanics, may yet be said to have come even to that new line of pursuit with certain acquired advantages. He brought with him at least a mind awakened to some knowledge of its own powers by the general cultivation it had received, and not undisciplined by its accustomed exercises to habits of speculation and inquiry JOHN WHITEHURST. THIS individual, whose philosophical and mechanical researches have met with such universal attention, was born in Congleton, in Cheshire, April 10, 1713: he was the son of a clock and watch maker of the same name in that town. Of the early part of his life little is known. He who dies at a very advanced age leaves few behind him to communicate anecdotes of his youth. On his leaving school, where the education he received was certainly very defective, he was bred up by his father to his own trade; in which, as in other mechanical and scientific pursuits, he soon gave intimations of future eminence. At about the age of twenty-one, his eagerness after new ideas carried him to Dublin, having heard of an ingenious piece of mechanism in that city, consisting of a clock with certain curious appendages, which he was extremely desirous of seeing, and no less |