the conflict, and felt the scorn of the maiden more keenly than any reproof which had ever fallen upon his impudence before. He was not in a humour to solicit James Hargreaves to remain ; so they parted.

James had reached home two or three hours before young Robert Peel observed the light in his window. On the lad approaching the window, the weaver was standing motionless. Suddenly he dropped upon his knees, and rolled on the stone floor at full length. He lay with his face towards the floor, and made lines and circles with the end of a burned stick. He rose, and went to the fire to burn his stick. He took hold of his bristly hair with one hand, and rubbed his forehead and nose with the other and the blackened stick. Then he sat upon a chair, and placed his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees, and gazed intently on the floor. Then he sprang to his feet, and replied to some feeble question of his wife (who had not risen since the day she gave birth to a little stranger) by a loud assurance that he had it; and, taking her in his sturdy arms, in the blankets, the baby in her arms, he lifted her out, and held her over the black drawings on the floor. These he explained, and she joined a small, hopeful, happy laugh with his high-toned assurance, that she should never again toil at the spinning-wheel-that he would never again "play," and have his loom standing for want of weft.

She

"Our fortune is made when that is made, he said, speaking of his drawings on the floor."-PAGE 19.

asked some questions, which he answered, after seating her in the arm-chair, by laying her spinning-wheel on its back, the horizontal spindle standing vertically, while he made the wheel revolve, and drew a roving of cotton from the spindle into an attenuated thread. "Our fortune is made when that is made," he said, speaking of his drawings on the floor.

"What will you call it?" asked his wife.

"Call it? What an we call it after thysen, Jenny! They called thee 'Spinning Jenny' afore I had thee, because thou beat every lass in Stanehill Moor at the wheel. What if we call it 'Spinning Jenny?""

It was all a mystery to Robert Peel. He went home with his bilberry leaves, and went to bed, wondering if Hargreaves were out of his mind, or if he, too, were inventing something, or about to make experiments in some new process of working.

The principle of spinning by rollers, usually called Arkwright's invention, was not introduced until about four years after the invention of the jenny. Whether it was original to Arkwright, cannot now be told; but Mr. Baines of Leeds, and other diligent inquirers, have established the fact that an ingenious man, named Wyatt, erected a machine at Birmingham, and afterwards at Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire, twenty years before Arkwright evolved his idea, which was in principle the same—namely, that a pair of rollers

with slow motion drew in a roving of cotton, and a second pair, with an accelerated motion, drew the roving from the other. All the varieties of cotton-spinning machinery have sprung from those two-the rollers of Wyatt (or Arkwright) and the jenny of Hargreaves. A farmer, named Samuel Crompton, living at Hall-i'-th'-wood, near Bolton, was the first to combine them in one machine; this was called the "mule."

Returning to the Peel family, we see Robert, the son, following the printing of calicoes with enthusiasm. He obtains lessons at Bamber Bridge. We see his father engaged in constructing a machine for carding cotton into rovings, preparatory to spinning. Instead of two flat cards set full of small wiry teeth, the one card to work over the other, this machine of Robert Peel the elder is a cylinder covered with such wiry teeth. It revolves, and a flat card with a vertical motion works upon it. The carding by cylinders obtains to this day; and there is no reason to doubt that it was invented at Peel Fold. It was, however, first erected for use at Brookside, a mile distant, for the convenience of water power. You look down upon the place called Brookside from Stanehill Moor, your face turned to the south-west. There, also, Mr. Peel and his sons erected the first of Hargreaves' spinning-jennies, which was set in motion by water power, they being previously moved by hand.