It was not a mechanical age, or rather, applied mechanics was as a young child, and babbled sillily. The only thing I regret, in writing this book, is the time I have wasted in looking over Patent Specifications, to find something worthy to illustrate the mechanical genius of the time. The most useful invention I have found, is the paper-making machine. This was originally the conception of a Frenchman, Louis Robert, who sold his invention to Didot, the great printer, who, bringing it to England, got Fourdrinier to join with him in perfecting it. It did not, Minerva-like, spring ready armed from its parent’s brain; but was the subject of several patents; but the one which approaches nearest to, and is identical in all essential points with, the present paper-making machine, is his “Specification, enrolled pursuant to Act of Parliament of the 47th of George the Third, of the Invention of Henry Fourdrinier and Sealy Fourdrinier, of Sherborne Lane, London, and John Gamble, of Saint Neots, in the County of Huntingdon, Paper Manufacturers; for making Paper by means of Machines, for which several Letters Patent have been obtained at different periods. Term extended to 15 years from 14th August, 1807.” This extension had been obtained by means of an Act of Parliament passed the previous session, and the machine was capable of making the endless web of paper now in vogue. The primitive state of our manufactures at this date may be, perhaps, best understood by a typical illustration or two, taken by Pyne, a most conscientious draughtsman, who drew all his studies from nature. The first, on the next page, is an Iron Foundry, casting shot. Coals were very dear, and that was owing to two things. First, that only the Sunderland district coals were used in London, because they only could, in any quantity, be shipped to London; the vast Staffordshire, and other inland basins, being out of the question, owing to lack of carriage, except where a canal was handy; and the other reason for their high price was that there being no steam vessels, a contrary wind would keep the coal-ships out of port, and, consequently, denude the market. [Illustration: AN IRON FOUNDRY—1802.] The inland coals were cheap enough in their own localities—_vide_ the _Morning Post_, August 6, 1800: “At Oldham, in Lancashire, the best coals are only 6s. 9d. equal to a London chaldron.[71] At Barnsley, in Yorkshire, the best coals are sold at the pit’s mouth for only 1½d. per cwt. Surely, permission ought to be granted for coals to be brought to London, if they can be conveyed by water. This might be done, as the canals from Lancashire are now cut so as a barge with twenty-five tons of coals would arrive in London in fourteen days. They cost at the pit only 8s. 4d. per ton.”