her!" Her chamber was perfumed with aromatics, so many in number, that Damiani is quite ashamed to mention them, and no one would believe him if he did. But, what was most monstrous, this wicked creature would not eat with her fingers, but absolutely had her food cut into pieces, rather small, by her attendants, and then," she conveyed them to her mouth with certain golden two-pronged forks."

The ladies of that day do not seem to have confined their extravagance to the use of rain-water and forks; in another respect, they provoked the displeasure of their ecclesiastical superiors; and, in the hope that the indignant remonstrance of good Bishop Pilkington, one of the polemics of the time, may not be lost upon the fair of our own day, we quote one of his reproofs. It is directed against "five-fingered rufflers, with their sables about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm mittens." "These tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for Winter, another for Summer; one furred through, another but faced; one for the work-day, another for the holyday; one of this color, another of that; one of cloth, another of silk or damask. Change of apparel, one afore dinner, another after; one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey; and, to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions and strange. Yea, a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than he should spend in a year: he which ought to go in a russet coat spends as much on apparel, for him and his wife, as his father would have kept a good house with."

VII. PAGE 189.

MANUFACTURE OF AMERICAN IRON.

THE following remarks of Nicholas Biddle, Esq., on the manufacture of American iron, will be read with interest.

I need not say that the two substances, which have most contributed to the comfort and civilization of the world, are coal and iron. The naturalists have asserted, that the chief ingredient of the richest precious stones is carbon; and that, after all, a diamond and a coal are the same thing. The comparison disparages the coal, since certainly, for every purpose of human comfort or enjoyment, the coal outweighs all the gems that ever glistened at all the coronations of all the sovereigns of the earth. As to iron, is it not far more valuable than all the miscalled precious metals? The best friend of man; his companion in every stage of his civilization, from the rough ploughshare to the complicated steamship. These elements of wealth, the coal and the iron ores, were scattered profusely over this country, but some inexplicable mystery kept them asunder. The coal, in its fiercest intensity, could make no impression upon these impenetrable masses, and the adjoining hills which contained them frowned on each other, as upon neighbors who could never be united. At length, by one of those happy inspirations which confound all reasonings, the whole obstacle was removed, in a way so simple, that every body wonders it was never dreamed of till now. When these ores and coal were put together in a furnace, the fire was kept up by a stream of cold air. To this process the ores refused to yield. At last, a projector tried what impression he could make by a stream of hot air, and the ores instantly gave up their treasures, like the traveller in the fable, who only wrapped himself the closer at the cold wind, but could not resist the sunshine. And this, after all, is the great

mystery, the substitution of what is called the hot blast for the cold blast.

Let us see the changes which this simple discovery is destined to make. As long as the iron ores and the coal of the anthracite region were incapable of fusion, the ores were entirely useless, and the coal nearly unavailable for manufactures, while, as the disappearance of the timber made charcoal very expensive, the iron of Eastern Pennsylvania was comparatively small in quantity and high in price, and the defective communications with the interior made its transportation very costly. The result was, that, with all the materials of supplying iron in our own hands, the country has been obliged to pay enormous sums to Europeans for this necessary. In two years, alone, 1836-7, the importations of iron and steel amounted to upwards of twentyfour millions of dollars. The importations for the last five years have been about forty-nine millions of dollars. It is especially mortifying to see, that, even in Pennsylvania, there has been introduced, within the last seven years, exclusive of hardware and cutlery, nearly eighty thousand tons of iron; and that, of these, there were about forty-nine thousand tons of rail-road iron, costing probably three millions and a half of dollars. Nay, at this very day, in visiting your mines, we see, at the furthest depths of these subterranean passages, the very coal and iron brought to the mouth of the mines on tracks of British iron, manufactured in Britain, and sent to us from a distance of three thousand miles. This dependence is deplorable. It ought to cease for ever; and let us hope, that, with the new power this day acquired, we shall rescue ourselves, hereafter, from such a costly humiliation. We owe it to ourselves, not thus to throw away the bounties of Providence, which, in these very materials, have blessed us with profusion wholly unknown elsewhere.

The United States contain, according to the best estimates, not less than eighty thousand square miles of coal, which is about sixteen times as much as the coal

measures of all Europe. A single one of these gigantic masses runs about nine hundred miles from Pennsylvania to Alabama, and must itself embrace fifty thousand square miles, equal to the whole surface of England proper. Confining ourselves to Pennsylvania alone, out of fifty-four counties of the State, no less than thirty have coal and iron in them. Out of the forty-four thousand square miles, which form the area of Pennsylvania, there are ten thousand miles of coal and iron, while all Great Britain and Ireland have only two thousand; so that Pennsylvania has five times as much coal and iron as the country to which we annually pay eight or ten millions of dollars for iron.

Again, the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania are six or eight times as large as those of South Wales. Of these great masses, it may be said, confidently, that the coal and the iron are at least as rich in quality, and as abundant in quantity, as those of Great Britain, with this most material distinction in their favor, that they lie above the water level, and are easily accessible, while many of the mines of England are a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below the surface.

ers.

With these resources, you have abundant employment, if you could only supply the present wants of the country, for which we are now dependent upon foreignBut the sphere of demand is every day widening, for the consumption of iron. The time has come, when nothing but iron roads will satisfy the impatience of travellers, and the competition of trade. The time is approaching, when iron ships will supplant these heavy, short-lived, and inflammable, structures of wood. We shall not long be content to cover our houses with strips of wood, under the name of shingles, prepared for the first spark, if we can have low-priced iron; in which event, too, the present pavements of our towns would be superseded by footways of iron.

The only difficulty which is suggested is the high price of labor in this country. Allow me to say, that I consider this a misapprehension. The high rate of

wages is always put forward as the obstacle to any effort to make for ourselves what we import; but I do not believe that it ever made any serious obstacle in practice. I believe, on the contrary, that in any comparison between the price of labor in England and the United States, if we consider, not the nominal price paid to the laborer, but the amount of work actually done for a given sum of money, and if we regard the English poor rates, which are only a disguised addition to the rate of wages, we shall arrive at the conclusion, that labor is yet very little, if at all, higher in the United States than in England. I know that one of the most respectable and intelligent farmers among us, an Englishman, who, after farming in his own country, finished his career a farmer in my neighborhood, declared, that, although he seemed to pay a higher rate of wages, yet, on the whole, the labor of his farm was done twenty per cent. cheaper in Philadelphia county, than it had been done in England. Since my arrival here, I have had occasion to compare the rates of wages given in our collieries with those of England, and, although they are nominally somewhat higher, the difference would not materially affect large operations.

Having, then, the material and the labor, it remains to ask, if you have the industry to follow out this new career. Need I ask that question, in such an active community as this? Nay, you would not belong to this American nation, if you had a particle of sloth in you. Our manners, and habits, and customs, have been often described, but I venture to say, that no description will approach the truth, unless it begins and ends with the declaration, that the Americans are the hardest working people on the face of the earth. Other nations labor in order to live; the Americans seem to live only to labor. To exist, and not to toil, is incomprehensible. They cheerfully acquiesce in the doom of Providence, and, instead of repining at being condemned to labor, they would deem the heaviest curse to be repose. Every man seems born with some steam-engine