Fa. Then you can form an idea of it: but you have only seen the most common sorts. There was a chain made at Woodstock, in Oxford shire, and sent to France, which weighed only two ounces, and cost 170l. Calculate how many times that had increased its value.
Hen. Amazing! it was worth 163,600 times the value of the iron it was made of!
Fa. That is what manufacture can do: here man is a kind of creator and, like the great Creator, he may please himself with his work, and say it is good. In the last-mentioned manufacture, too, that of steel, the English have the honour of excelling all the world.
Hen. What are the chief manufactures of England?
Fa. We have at present a greater variety than I can pretend to enumerate, but our staple manufacture is woollen cloth. England abounds in fine pastures and extensive downs, which feed great numbers of sheep: hence our wool has always been a valuable article of trade; but we did not always know how to work it. We used to sell it to the Flemish or Lombards, who wrought it into cloth; till, in the year 1326, Edward the Third invited some Flemish weavers over to teach us the art; but there was not much made in England till the reign of Henry the Seventh. Manchester and Birmingham are towns which have arisen to great consequence from small beginnings, almost within the memory of old men now living; the first for cotton and muslin goods, the second for cutlery and hardware, in which we at this moment excel all Europe. Of late years, too, carpets, beautiful as fine tapestry, have been fabricated in this country. Our clocks and watches are greatly esteemed. The earthenware plates and dishes, which we all use in common, and the elegant set for the tea-table, ornamented with musical instruments, which we admired in our visit yesterday, belong to a very extensive manufactory, the seat of which is at Burslem, in Staffordshire. The principal potteries there belong to one person, an excellent chymist, and a man of great taste; he, in conjunction with another man of taste, who is since dead, has made our clay more valuable than the finest porcelain of China. He has moulded it into all the forms of grace and beauty that are to be met with in the precious remains of the Greek and Etruscan artists. In the more common articles he has pencilled it with the most elegant designs, shaped it into shells and leaves, twisted it into wickerwork, and trailed the ductile foliage round the light basket. He has filled our cabinets and chimney-pieces with urns, lamps, and vases, on which are lightly traced, with the purest simplicity, the fine forms and floating draperies of Herculaneum. In short, he has given to our houses a classic air, and has made every saloon and every dining-room schools of taste. I should add that there is a great demand abroad for this elegant manufacture. The emperess of Russia has some magnificent services of it; and the other day one was sent to the king of Spain, intended as a present from him to the archbishop of Toledo, which cost a thousand pounds. Some morning you shall go through the rooms in the London warehouse.
Hen. I should like very much to see manufactures, now you have told me some curious things about them.
Fa. You will do well! There is much more entertainment to a cultivated mind in seeing a pin made, than in many a fashionable diversion which young people half ruin themselves to attend. In the meantime I will give you some account of one of the most elegant of them, which is paper.
Hen. Pray do, my dear father.
Fa. It shall be left for another evening, however, for it is now late. Good-night.
