by means of sets of perforated cardboards. This was the
crowning achievement of the inventions relating to textile fabrics,
which had rendered the latter half of the eighteenth century so
noteworthy in an industrial sense. It brought artistic designs in
articles of common use within the reach of even poor people, and has
been the means of unconsciously improving the public taste, in matters
of applied art, more rapidly than could have been accomplished by an
army of trained artists. The riots in which the mob nearly drowned
Jacquard at Lyons for attempting to set up some of his looms were very
nearly a counterpart of those which had occurred in England in
connection with the introduction of spinning, weaving and knitting
machinery.

In Paris, during the first year of the nineteenth century, Robert
Fulton, an American, and friend of the United States representative in
France, was making trials on the Seine with his first steam-boat--a
little vessel imitated by him later on in the first successful
steamers which plied on the river Hudson, carrying passengers from New
York. At the same time, William Symongton launched the _Charlotte
Dundas_, the steam tug-boat which, on the Scottish canals, did the
first actually useful work in the conveyance of goods by steam power
on the water. These small experiments have initiated a movement in
maritime transport which is fully comparable to that brought about on
land by the invention of the railway locomotive.

Again, in 1801, Sir Humphry Davy gave his first lecture at the Royal
Institution in London, where he had just been installed as a
professor, and began that long series of investigations into the
chemistry of common things which, taken up by his successor Faraday,
gave to the United Kingdom the first start in some of those industries
depending upon a knowledge of organic chemistry and the use of certain
essential oils.

Public attention at the beginning of the nineteenth century, however,
was directed anywhere but towards these small commencements of mighty
forces which were to revolutionise the industrial world, and through
it also the social and political. If in those days Cornwall was ever
referred to, it was not by any means in connection with Trevithick and
his steam-engine which would run on rails, but by way of reference to
the relations of the Prince of Wales to the Duchy, and the proportion
of its revenues which belonged to him from birth.

Glancing over the pages