such as enabled him to assimilate all that was good in the ideas of other men, and to give them unity and new vitality. The result was machinery that gave exquisite evenness and attenuation to the "rovings," and a patent having been granted 15th July 1769, Arkwright is properly regarded as the founder of the modern modes of manufacture. Arkwright possessed, in addition, a thoroughly feminine capacity for good management and perseverance, with that most excellent adjunct, the art of obtaining ascendancy over capitalists. Among the immediate results were the disuse of linen warp, the new frames enabling cotton warp to be made strong enough; and the concentration of all the early processes, spinning included, in special buildings, with employment of horse or water-power. The weaving, however, long remained with the cottagers, and survives to a slight extent even to the present day. The Lancashire cotton manufacture, strictly so called, is thus very little more than a century old. No further back than in 1774, fabrics made wholly of cotton were declared by statute to have been "lately introduced," and a "lawful and laudable manufacture." [16] That the spinning-jenny was so named after a wife or daughter of one of the inventors is fable. The original wheel was the "jenny," a term corresponding with others well known in Lancashire,--the "peggy" and the "dolly,"--and the new contrivance became the "_spinning_-jenny." [Illustration: THE DINNER HOUR] The following year, 1775, saw the perfecting of Crompton's celebrated "mule," which produced, at less expense, a much finer and softer yarn than Arkwright's machine. It was specially suitable for muslins; and from this date most assuredly should be reckoned the elevation of the manufacture to its highest platform. Like the jenny, it was used at first in private houses, but a nobler application was close at hand--a new revolution--the superseding of hand, and horse, and water power, all at one moment, by steam. Had the former remained the only artificial sources of help--even supposing rivers and brooks not subject to negation by drought, the cotton manufacture must needs have been confined within narrow limits, and the greatest conceivable supply of the raw material would not have altered the case. Steam, which, like Lord Chatham, "tramples upon impossibilities," at once gave absolute freedom; and manufacturing, in the space of thirty years, eclipsed its history during 3000. The "mule" was now transferred to the mill, and the factory system became complete. Power-looms were first employed in Manchester in 1806. Stockport followed, and by degrees they became general, improvements going on up till as late as 1830, when the crowning triumph of cotton machinery was patented as the "self-acting mule." The pride of Lancashire, it must be remembered, consists, after all, not in the delicacy and the beauty of its cottons, for in these respects India has not yet been