Dr. Cartwright, for that was the clergyman's name, confidently as he foretold that machine-weaving would be devised before long, little dreamt at that moment that he was himself to bring about the fulfilment of his own prediction. A quiet, country clergyman, of literary tastes, a scholar, and poetaster, he had spent his life hitherto in the discharge of his ministerial duties, writing articles and verses, and had never given the slightest attention to mechanics, theoretical or practical. He had never so much as seen a loom at work, and had not the remotest notion of the principle or mode of its construction. But the chance conversation at the Matlock dinner table suddenly roused his interest in the subject. He walked home meditating on what sort of a process weaving must be; brooded over the subject for days and weeks,--was often observed by his family striding up and down the room in a fit of abstraction, throwing his arms from side to side like a weaver jerking the shuttles,--and at last succeeded in evolving, as the Germans would say, from "the depths of his moral consciousness," the idea of a power-loom. With the help of a smith and a carpenter, he set about the construction of a number of experimental machines, and at length, after five or six months' application, turned out a rude, clumsy piece of work, which was the basis of his invention. "The warp," he says, "was laid perpendicularly, the reed fell with the force of at least half a hundredweight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine. Availing myself of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention."