In a

other, and trembled every limb. At length a kind of groaning or snoring began to be heard which grew louder and louder, with intervals of a strange sort of hissing. "That's it!" whispered Joseph, drawing back towards the door -the maids were ready to sink; and even the farmer himself was a little disconcerted. The noise seemed to come from the rafters near the thatch. while, a glimpse of moon-light shining through a hole at the place, plainly discovered the shadow of something stirring; and on looking intently, something like feathers were perceived. The farmer now began to suspect what the case was; and ordering up a short ladder, bid Joseph climb to the spot, and thrust his hand into the hole. This he did rather unwillingly, and soon drew it back, crying loudly that it was bit. However, gathering courage, he put it. in again, and pulled out a large white

owl, another at the same time being heard to fly away. The cause of the alarm was now made clear enough; and poor Joseph, after being heartily jeered by the maids, though they had been as much frightened as he, sneaked into bed, and the. house soon became quiet.

ON MANUFACTURES.

Father-Henry.

Hen. My dear father, you observed the other day that we had a great many manufactures in England. Pray what is a Manufacture?

Fa. A Manufacture is something made by the hand of man. It is derived from two Latin words, manus, the hand, and facere, to make. Manufactures are therefore opposed to productions, which latter are what the bounty of nature

spontaneously affords us; as fruits, corn, marble.

Hen. But there is a great deal of trouble with corn; you have often made me take notice how much pains it costs the farmer to plough his ground, and put the seed in the earth, and keep it clear from weeds.

Fa. Very true; but the farmer does not make the corn; he only prepares for it a proper soil and situation, and removes every hindrance arising from the hardness of the ground, or the neighbourhood of other plants, which might obstruct the secret and wonderful process of vegetation; but with the vegetation itself he has nothing to do. It is not his hand that draws out the slender fibres of the root, pushes up the green stalk, and by degrees the spiky swells the grain, and embrowns it with that rich tinge of tawny russet, which informs the husbandman it is time

ear;

to put in his sickle: all this operation is performed without his care or even knowledge.

Hen. Now then I understand; corn is a production, and bread is a Manufacture.

Fa. Bread is certainly, in strictness of speech, a Manufacture; but we do not in general apply the term to any thing in which the original material is so little changed. If we wanted to speak of bread philosophically, we should say, it is a preparation of corn, Hen. Is sugar a Manufacture?

Fa. No, for the same reason. Beside which, I do not recollect the term being applied to any article of food; I suppose from an idea that food is of too perishable a nature, and generally obtained by a process too simple to deserve the name. We say, therefore, sugarworks, oil-mills, chocolate-works; we do not say a beer-manufactory, but a

brewery; but this is only a nicety of language, for properly all those are manufactories, if there is much of art and curiosity in the process.

Hen. Do we say a manufactory of pictures?

Fa. No; but for a different reason. A picture, especially if it belong to any of the higher kinds of painting, is an effort of genius. A picture cannot be produced by any given combinations of canvass and colour. It is the hand, indeed, that executes, but the head that works. Sir Joshua Reynolds could not have gone, when he was engaged to paint a picture, and hired workmen, the one to draw the eyes, another the nose, a third the mouth: the whole must be the painter's own, that particular painter's, and no other; and no one who has not his ideas can do his work. His work is therefore nobler, of a higher species.