While there are human wants, there will be no end to discoveries and improvements. Till all are supplied with soap, or something better than soap, there will be more and more palm oil, and a further cheapening of alkalies. The soap-manufacturers must not comfort themselves with the hope that they can stop the supplies, but with the certainty that the more soap there is, the more users of soap there will be; and that their business will extend and prosper in proportion as there are more clean faces among cottage children, and more wholesome raiment among the lower classes of our towns. Since it is vain to think of persuading the poor native of Fernando Po to refrain from gathering his dates when he has once learned that there are thousands of British who demand them, the only thing to be done is to speed the new commerce, and welcome the reciprocation of benefits. Thus is it also with improvements in art. The race cannot submit to permanent privation for the sake of the temporary profits of individuals; and so it has been found by such short-sighted individuals, as often as they have attempted to check the progress of art. No bridge was ever yet delayed in the building for the sake of the neighbouring ferryman; and no one will say that it ought to have been so delayed. When it comes to be a question whether drivers and drovers, carriers and pedlars, shopkeepers, farmers, and market-people shall be inconvenienced or excluded, or one man be compelled to carry his labour elsewhere, few will hesitate on the decision; and the case would be no less clear if a machine were invented to-morrow for turning out handsome stone houses at the rate of six in a day. There would be great suffering among bricklayers and builders for a time: but it would not be the less right that society should be furnished with abundance of airy dwellings at a cheap rate; and the new wants which would arise out of such an invention, and the funds set free by it, would soon provide bricklayers and builders, and their children after them, with other employment in administering to other wants. From huts of boughs to hovels of clay was an advance which called more labour into action, though the weavers of twigs might not like to be obliged to turn their skill to the making of fences instead of huts. From hovels of clay to cottages of brick was a further step still, as, in addition to the brick-makers, there must be carpenters and glaziers. From cottages of brick to houses of stone was a yet greater advance, as there must be masons, sawyers, painters, upholsterers, ironmongers, cabinetmakers, and all their train of workmen. So far, the advance has been made by means of an accumulation of capital, and a division of labour, each dwelling requiring an ampler finishing than the last, and a wider variety as well as a larger amount of labour. If, by a stupendous invention, ready-made mansions should succeed, to be had at half the cost, the other half of the present cost would