country, as it appeared in his day: "This country seems to have been designed by Providence for the very purposes to which it is now allotted, for carrying on a manufacture, which can no where be so easily supplied with the conveniences necessary for it. Nor is the industry of the people wanting to second these advantages. Tho' we met few people without doors, yet within we saw the houses full of lusty fellows, some at the dye vat, some at the loom, others dressing the cloths; the women and children carding, or spinning; all employed from the youngest to the oldest, scarce anything above four years old, but its hands were sufficient for its own support. Not a beggar to be seen, not an idle person, except here and there in an alms house, built for those that are antient and past working. The people in general live long, they enjoy a good air, and under such circumstances hard labour is naturally attended with the blessing of health, if not riches. The sides of the hills were dotted with houses, hardly a house standing out of a speaking distance from another, and the land being divided into small enclosures, every three or four pieces of land had a house belonging to them."

The subjoined passage is highly descriptive of the state of Crompton in the early part of the last century : -- "In the course of our road among the houses, we found at every one of them a little rill or gutter of running water; if the house was above the road, it came from it, and crossed the way to run to another; if the house was below us, it crossed as from some some other distant house above it; and at every considerable house was a manufactory, which not being able to be carried on without water, these little streams were so parted and guided by gutters or pipes, that not one of the houses wanted its necessary appendage of a rivulet. Again, as the dyeing houses, scouring shops, and places where they use this water, emit it ting'd with the drugs of the dyeing vat, and with the

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