ike the sound of a
hail storm on a large sky-light, or the fall of an immense sheet of
water.

There are five oblong factories and two circular ones. The five are six
stories high, with ten or twelve windows on each story, so that in the
five there are, at least, as many regular windows as days in the year.
The circular buildings have forty or fifty more.

In this establishment, and at Melford, Messrs. Strutt employ, at present,
about 1,300 hands of both sexes and different ages, and spin about 18
tons, or 40,000 lbs. of cotton per week. The average fineness may be
taken at 20 hanks to the pound, and hence, as each hank is 840 yards, or
nearly half a mile, every pound is nearly ten miles, and the whole, about
400,000 miles are produced in about sixty-six working hours. In round
numbers, this is 6,000 miles per hour, or 100 miles a minute. What an
astonishing effect of the combination of mechanism! What an inconceivable
miracle, if it might not be witnessed by their favour at any time!

Nor should it be forgotten, that every fibre passes through no less than
ten sets of machinery, hence, the united spindles and threads travel
through 1,000 miles a minute. The noise of their united frictions and
collisions, and the united hum of thousands of little spindles, each
revolving 4,000 times a minute, may, therefore, be accounted for, but can
never be conceived, unless heard in the midst of them.

It would be tedious to dwell on the well-known process of cotton
spinning; but as this manufactory produces the cleanest and most perfect
yarn made in England, of its numbers from 6 to 100, it may be worth while
to state, that this perfection appears to arise, from the systematic
perfection of all the machines, and from the astonishing cleanness of
every part of this great factory. The wheels are as bright as the grate
of a good housewife's drawing-room; every action is complete in its way,
and though cotton is a dusty article, yet I no where saw either dirt or
dust. At the same time, order prevails throughout, for as the main shaft
gives no respite to the carding, roving, and spinning machines, so every
attendant diligently and silently watches the lines of bobbins which are
performing their miraculous evolutions, while the other apparatus are
correcting and regulating the stages and steps of the production.

The whole is turned by eight or nine water wheels, of about twenty-four
feet diameter, and twenty feet in length. The fall