mighty low; but there is strong vitality left within her—powerful talents and great resources; she is even now rising from the lethargy that had crept over her. Would our space permit, how fain would we trace the workings yet going on in her midst: the progress of the shearer’s wool from the wool-sack to the rich brocaded cashmere; through its “combing” with irons heated over charcoal furnaces, that poison the atmosphere around, and shorten the lives of the operatives engaged in it, forsooth, because the foreman of the manufactory has a perquisite of selling charcoal,—thence to the huge factory with giant engines, and labyrinths of spinning-wheels; away, again, to the spider-looking winding-frame, that children and old women may turn to help to fill the shuttles of the abler workers at the loom; thence to the dyers, and then to the loom itself, where manhood, youth, and woman’s feebler strength alike find exercise and room for labour. How many histories have been woven into the fabric—what tears or smiles have cast their light or shade upon the tints,—what notes of harmony or love, or wailings of sorrow and sickness have echoed the shuttle’s throw,—how many tales of stern heart griefs, pining wants, wasting penury, or disease, are wrapped in the luxurious folds that minister to the comfort and enjoyment of the unconscious wearer. But we dare not tarry amid these scenes, richly fraught as they may be with subject for graphic sketching; we may not pause to visit the great gatherings in factory chambers, or linger amongst the home labours of the industrious artisan; can barely hint at traits of heroism, lives of gentle loving duty going on amid the rattling noise of looms that trench upon the narrow limits of the sick bed; deeds of good Samaritanism that grace the weary weaver’s home, or dwell upon the Christian lessons they have power to teach. If the anatomy of a manufacturing city does revolt the senses and sensibilities in the pictures of suffering and poverty it seldom fails to abound with, there is yet much beauty in the deep, earnest, truthful poetry to be read in the page it lays open. Mary Barton is no fiction; scarce a district in a manufacturing province that could not furnish a heroine like her; nor need we, perhaps, look to the other side of the Atlantic, to find the prototype of “Uncle Tom.”