There was probably no more striking example ever given of the union of factory labour with a taste for knowledge and an ardour for mental improvement, than was presented by the young women working in the cotton-manufactories of Lowell, in the United States. They wrote and published for their own amusement, a magazine, called 'The Lowell Offering,' in which the writers exhibited remarkable attainments, and no common facility of composition. The author of the present volume made a selection from 'The Lowell Offering,' which he introduced to English notice by a preface, one passage of which may be extracted as an illustration of the argument before us:-- "In dwelling upon the thoughts of others, in fixing their own thoughts upon some definite object, these factory girls have lifted themselves up into a higher region than is attained by those, whatever be their rank, whose minds are not filled with images of what is natural and beautiful and true. They have raised themselves out of the sphere of the partial and the temporary, into the broad expanse of the universal and the eternal. During their twelve hours of daily labour, when there were easy but automatic services to perform, waiting upon a machine--with that slight degree of skill which no machine can ever attain--for the repair of the accidents of its unvarying progress, they may, without a neglect of their duty, have been elevating their minds in the scale of being by cheerful lookings-out upon nature; by pleasant recollections of books; by imaginary converse with the just and wise who have lived before them; by consoling reflections upon the infinite goodness and wisdom which regulates this world, so unintelligible without such a dependence. These habits have given them cheerfulness and freedom amidst their uninterrupted toils. We see no repinings against their twelve hours' labour, for it has had its solace. Even during the low wages of 1842, which they mention with sorrow but without complaint, the same cultivation goes on; 'The Lowell Offering' is still produced. To us of England these things ought to be encouraging. To the immense body of our factory operatives the example of what the girls of Lowell have done should be especially valuable. It should teach them that their strength, as well as their happiness, lies in the cultivation of their minds. To the employers of operatives, and to all of wealth and influence amongst us, this example ought to manifest that a strict and diligent performance of daily duties, in work prolonged even more than in our own factories, is no impediment to the exercise of those faculties, and the gratification of those tastes, which, whatever was once thought, can no longer be held to be limited by station. There is a contest going on amongst us, as it is going on all over the world, between