Instances without end might be adduced to prove the inevitable progress of art and extension of wealth; and they might not be useless, since there is still a strong prevailing prejudice against the beneficent process by which the happiness of the greatest number is incessantly promoted, and a remarkable blindness as to the tendency and issues of the ordination by which an economy of labour is made at the same time the inevitable result of circumstances, and the necessary condition of increased happiness. But though the time already spent upon a subject not new may be no more than its importance demands, my remaining space may be better employed in a sketch of the spread of one ingredient of human comfort than in the mere mention of a variety of similar cases. The instance I have chosen is one where the advance has been wholly owing to improvement in the use of a material which seems to have always abounded. There is no record of a time when there were not goats and sheep enough to supply clothing to the keepers of the herds, or when their fleeces were not used for this purpose in some parts of the world. While the barbarians of the north dressed themselves in skins, the inhabitants of temperate regions seem to have enjoyed the united lightness and warmth of fabrics of wool. The patriarchs of Asia gathered their flocks about their tents in the earliest days of which history tells; and it was the recorded task of their slaves to wash the fleeces, and of their wives to appoint the spinning of the wool to the maidens of their train. The Arabian damsels carried with them their primitive looms wherever they journeyed; and set up their forked sticks in the sand when they stopped for the night, and fixed the warp and wrought the woof before the sun went down. The most ancient of Egyptian mummies has its woven bandages. In the most remote traffic of the Tartar tribes fleeces were a medium of exchange; and the distaff is found among the imagery of even the earliest Scandinavian poetry. When the Romans, skilled in the choice of fabrics and of dyes, came over to this island, they taught its barbarian dames to leave off rubbing wolf-skins with stones to make them smooth, and dipping them in water to make them soft, and put into their hands the distaff, which was to be found in every home of the Roman dependencies, and instructed them in the use of a more convenient loom than that of the Arabian wanderers. For several hundred years it seems that this remained a purely domestic manufacture; but, as the arts of life improved, it became worth while for the housewives to relax in their spinning and weaving, and exchange the products of their own or their husbands’ labour for the cloth of the manufacturers. There was better cloth in Flanders, however, by the beginning of the thirteenth century; and it was found profitable to weave less, and grow more wool for exportation. The British dames might still carry their spindles when they went