Of the three epochs of human condition indicated by the materials of which economical implements and weapons have been made--stone, bronze, and iron--it is uncertain whether the distaff was ever developed under the first. The probabilities are that it was not. In the remote periods in which it is mentioned, some of those who possessed it had advanced far into the second, and some had entered on the third. The great mass of the occupants of this hemisphere at the time of the Conquest were toiling in the cycle of stone; while the Mexicans and Peruvians, the most advanced of the red nations, had discovered and applied the properties of copper and some of its alloys: had entered on the second, but had not progressed far into it. Had they possessed bronze weapons equal to those of the heroic ages, they might yet have preserved, in a measure, their independence and nationality. Clothing is second only to food, and the clothing of nations in any degree civilized is of woven thread. The all but paramount importance of the manufacture of thread materials--including that made of flax, silk, cotton, worsted, and other fibrous materials--affords matter for great surprise. Compare the products of the distaff and spindle of old with that of our mills, and how difficult to realize the change which modern mechanism has wrought! The yearly amount, the lineal extent, of thread now made--who can measure it? It would reach from our planet to the planets in the farthest regions of space, and almost suffice for a net-work to include the whole system. Turn from the wood-cut illustrations here given of ancient and not yet obsolete processes, to modern manufactures, and it would seem that while in the space of time which it took Grecian Helens, Syrian Naahmahs, or Mexican Penelopes, to prepare an annual supply of clews for their families, the myriads of spindles now twirling, by steam and water, produce enough to use the Asteroids as balls on which to wind it and as bobbins from which to reel it. Even a century ago, a single mill, driven by water, is said to have spun or reeled 73,726 yards of silk--_i.e._, between forty and fifty miles--at each revolution of the motive axle. Patent Office, Washington, September, 1851. ORIGINAL POEMS BY BARRY CORNWALL AND W. C. BENNETT.[8] TO THE AUTHOR OF EOTHEN.