POETRY.-Sleep not Death, 2. The Last French Romance, 20. Come, 47. Earl Can-
ning, 47. An Hour of Prayer, 48. Lucerne, 48.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Lap of Luxury, 10. Sanscrit Inscriptions, 10.

10. Suppressed Russian Journals, 10. Discounting One's Marble, 14.

23. English Shipbuilding for the Rebels, 23. A Currency Carol, 41.

eters, 46. Verb to go, 46.

Cremona Violins,

The Monogram,

Holiday Hexam-

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From The Spectator.
KING COTTON.

to whom the process was explained were delighted; nevertheless, they refused with THERE is—or was until recently-a tall, many thanks the chevalier's offer to work handsome man confined in a lunatic asylum his invention. It was found that flax-cotton at Camberwell. He used to sit mournfully could not be profitably spun without making for days and weeks in a corner of his lone various alterations in the existing machinery, room, little given to talk, and less to physi-and to this the Lancashire mill-owners obcal exercise. Now and then, however, he jected, saying, why should we trouble ourbroke out in a sudden blaze of excitement, selves about the new raw material as long repeating incoherent sentences, in which as we have got cotton in abundance? With only the word "flax-cotton" was distinctly something of a prophetic vein, M. Claussen audible. The unhappy man's name was remonstrated, arguing that the supply was Chevalier Claussen. By birth a Dane, and not all to be depended upon, and that, bea man of high scientific education, he gave sides, it would be better, and cheaper in the himself up early to the study of practical long run, to make European hands feed Euchemistry, particularly those branches con- ropean mills, by the aid of perfected steamnected with the manufacture of textile fab- agencies, than to leave the task to the rude rics. After years of labor, and many experi- manual labor of unwilling bondsmen. It ments, he came to the conclusion that the was the voice of the preacher in the desert: fibre of flax, if rightly manipulated, is supe- Lancashire listened not; and when the Hyde rior to cotton for all purposes in which the Park show was over, Chevalier Claussen latter is employed, and therefore ought to and his invention were no more thought of supersede it, as well on this account as being than the man who discovered the compass. an indigenous plant, for the supply of which Sorely troubled in mind, and with abject povEurope might remain independent of serf or erty staring him in the face, Claussen then slave. Claussen's experiments were well re- pursued his pilgrimage, crossing the Atlanceived in his own country, and his king gave tic to America. What happened to him in him the title of Chevalier; but, unfortu- the great Western Republic is not accurately nately, little other substantial encourage- known; but it is presumed that some 'cute ment. The inventor then went to France, natives laid hold of the young man from the married a young French lady, was presented old country, squeezing his brains and then at court, and received the order of the Le- throwing him overboard. It was rumored gion of Honor; but again got little else but that Chevalier Claussen had got a "partpromises of future reward for the years of ner;" and not long after somebody, partner labor devoted to the one great object he had or otherwise, brought him back to this counin hand. Somewhat weary of his work, and try, shutting him up in a lunatic asylum at sorely pressed by poverty, Chevalier Claus- Camberwell. Here the history of flax-cotsen next came to this country, arriving just ton ends: the inventor in a madhouse; Lanin time for the International Exhibition of cashire without food for her mills and her 1851. He displayed in the Hyde Park Pal- people. ace some beautiful articles made of flax-cotton, and set all the world in raptures about the new invention, the more so as he freely explained the secret of the process for converting flax-straw into a material equal in all and superior in some respects to the cotton fabric. The manipulation was simple enough, according to Claussen's showing. The flax, cut into small pieces by machinery, was left for a short while to the combined action of alkaline solvents and of carbonated alkalies and acids, which converted the fibre into a material very similar to cotton, and fit even, to some extent, to be spun with cotton machinery. The English manufacturers

The case of flax versus cotton has not since had a fair trial. It is strange, indeed, to perceive in this matter to what an extent the industry of whole nations is liable to follow in the wake of mechanical inventions. It was not until the seventeenth century that cotton goods were made in England, while flax was cultivated to a far greater extent, and woven into textile fabrics, though with very simple mechanical appliances. Then it happened, about the year 1685, that a colony of Huguenot families, flying in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in the North of Ireland, and gave the first impulse to the cultivation and manufac

as strikingly similar to the doings of Irish and Belgian peasants engaged in the flax manufacture as if copied on the spot. We have no more curious illustration of the in many respects one-sided and singularly accidental progress of modern civilization.

There is something truly marvellous in the contemplation of the thousand wonderful contrivances for manufacturing cotton shown in the" iron tabernacle " of the present International Exhibition, and the reflection that the whole is but the product of some seventy or eighty years. Before Arkwright's time the cotton manufacture was carried on-as the flax manufacture is still to a great extent-in the cottages of agricultural laborers, who, working partly in the fields and partly at their simple hand-looms, brought both calicoes and cabbages to the nearest market, to dispose of them to itinerant dealers. The stride from those old rural hand-looms to the modern machinery exhibited in the western annexe of Captain Fowke's warehouse is far more gigantic than anything else in the history of modern inventions, not excepting rail

ture of flax. Among the refugees was a pictorial representations on the walls of gentleman of the name of Louis Cromonelin, Egyptian tombs and temples, some of them a native of St. Quentin, whose family had been engaged for generations in the linen trade. This M. Cromonelin took a patent for various contrivances in the spinning and weaving of flax, and setting earnestly to work in the new manufacture, crops of the plant soon sprang up in all directions, and thousands of acres of land, mere wastes previously, were covered with the graceful little annual, on tall and slender stalk, with delicate blue flowers, which in the time of Abraham already produced the "fine linen" on the spindles and looms of Babylonia. The flax manufactories, no less than the manufacturers, following the impulse thus given, throve remarkably well in Ireland; and it is interesting to note that at the present day a descendant of M. Louis Cromonelin is at the head of one of the largest linen establishments in the province of Ulster. Towards the end of the latter century the use of the fibre of flax was near taking the lead in the manufacture of textile materials, when all at once a series of mechanical inventorsHargreaves, Compton, Arkwright, and others -appeared upon the stage, devoting them-way travelling and electric interchange of selves entirely to the improvement of cotton words. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there is machinery. Their efforts produced a social anything more expressive of human ingenuity and commercial revolution as great as the-that which Carlyle calls the beaver-faculty introduction of the locomotive on the road. of man-in the world, than some of the cotThe quantity of cotton brought to this coun- ton-spinning automatons at the exhibition. try in 1764 amounted only to about four An immense row of spindles are seen flying millions of pounds; but in 1780 it came to round in furious whirl, twisting slender be seven millions; in 1790, thirty millions; threads in all directions, bending upwards in 1800, about fifty millions; and increas- and downwards, obedient to an invisible ing every decennium by from forty to one power, and performing evolutions unaphundred millions, reached in 1860 the total proachable in exactness and regularity by of 1,250,000,000 pounds. Every step in this the hand of man. Other parts of the marising scale of consumption was marked, and chinery take the cotton fibre, spread it evenly was produced in the first instance by im- over long lattices, pass it between rollers, proved machinery. It seemed as if the en- lead it along under a complication of wraptire energy of the mechanical genius of the pers, combs, brushes, and knives, and disage had been thrown into one direction of charge it in the end in greatly altered form, making contrivances for spinning and weav- ready for furthur manipulation. There is ing cotton, and that all rival branches of in- incessant life, movement, and action, and no dustry had become totally neglected. So it propelling agency visible, save an occasional happened that the methods for preparing whiff of steam, which now and then pops out flax adopted in this country, and, indeed, from beneath the world of wheels. Perhaps over the whole of Europe at the present a little girl, with flakes of cotton in her hair, time, still resemble those used by the an- and more flakes in her apron, is looking on cient flax-growers of Egypt four thousand leisurely from the distance, pulling out here years ago, and yet followed by the natives and there an errant thread; but apparently of Hindostan. This is proved by numerous not otherwise interested in the doings of the

huge automaton. Contemplating the thing for awhile, nigh stunned by the tumult of wheels and levers, the thought creeps over the mind that all earthly intelligence has been concentrated here for the sole purpose of shaping the fibres of the gossypium plant into a textile fabric. To perform the task, ten millions of steam-propelled spindles are incessantly whizzing in this country, and hundreds of thousands of free men must be dependent on the labor of the slave. It is a contemplation almost hideous, to think of a legion of such automatons as are seen in the western exhibition annexe, all whirling and whizzing, but with no food to put down their throat, and nothing to grasp between their iron teeth. King Cotton, with famine in his trail, looks lurid in the extreme.

crying in its distress, grew originally in the Antilles, where Columbus found it on his arrival, and settled a supply of it as a tribute on the natives. The districts of San François of Bailly, and other old settlements of Guadaloupe and the neighboring islands, furnished for a long time the whole of Europe with the best kind of cotton. In 1808, the export of the material from the Antilles amounted to near a million and a half of pounds; but the culture was as suddenly interrupted by the wars of the first empire, as recently again in the internecine struggle of America. Flying from the scene of strife, some French emigrants carried a small quantity of cotton seed from Guadaloupe to South Carolina, and thus established the element of commercial importance in the The terrors vanish somewhat on a further American Republic. This was the origin of stroll through the exhibition. There are the famous sea-island cotton. For many hundreds upon hundreds of stalls, from all years past, the French Government has tried parts of the world, whose owners offer to hard to revive the culture of the plant in the feed King Cotton, be he ever so hungry. Antilles, but without any appreciable sucAustralia, South America, the Cape, Natal, cess. The millions spent to encourage the Egypt, Algiers, Ceylon, China, Japan, the industry have had no other effect hitherto whole of India, and a host of other countries, but to destroy it more and more, by introdown to classic Attica, have sent samples of ducing the artificial element. The same has their gossypium to show what they can do been the case in other countries, wherever towards keeping the ten millions of British governments or commercial associations spindles in movement. The sight is a very have attempted to carry the matter with a fair one; but, alas, far from being entirely high hand. King Cotton evidently disdains consolatory. The catalogue of countries restraint, and will rule only by the grace of which can produce cotton, but have not yet God and his own supreme will. Whether it proved it, is like the list of works which would not be wise to temper the sway by young authors and poets set down in their constitutional means, such as the appointpocket-books, as intending to write as soon ment of Prince Flax to the chief ministry, is as called upon, and which consequently they a question which the owners of the ten milnever do write. This awful question of cot-lions of spindles will have to decide before ton, it seems, is ruled everywhere more by accident than by the will of governments and nations. The ten millions of British spindles grew into existence because, as it chanced, a few working men of Lancashire took to inventing power-looms instead of flax-steeping machines; and King Cotton himself built up his throne on the banks of the Mississippi, because a couple of halfstarved Frenchmen were wrecked there one day with a few seeds of gossypium in their pockets. The finest "long-stapled" cotton, the only kind for which Lancashire is really

long. It seems hard and almost unnatural that hundreds of thousands of Europeans should be dependent for their very existence on the fibres of a plant which will only grow in hot and unhealthy climes, and the control of which, wherever produced, must be insecure in the last degree. Accident made King Cotton sovereign; but nature points in another direction, to an organism of the same constituencies, which flourishes with our race from the torrid zone to the north pole. We have it on high authority that man does not live on bread alone: why on cotton?