universal characteristic, comprising at once the mind of the first and the last, of the highest and the lowest, without compact or premeditation, it is industry.

To be anxious concerning the means of subsistence—to labour in the hope of rendering life more agreeable-is the endless destiny of men. If they are placed in penury, their thoughts and efforts are directed to secure their hourly food; if in abundance, their labour is employed in procuring enjoyments. The former are urged on by the relentless law of self-preservation, and industry is their inevitable lot; the latter are less compelled to be laborious, and when they do occupy themselves, it is not to provide against absolute want. To the one, exertion is indispensable-to the other, it is superfluous, except for their pleasures.

The whole industry of the world, then, may be comprised in two general modifications—the industry of necessity, and the industry of luxury. The former is that to which the inhabitants of a poor soil, lying under no fertilising sun, are compelled, in order to procure the first necessaries of life. The latter is that to which the natives of more fortunate regions are invited, by the hope of increasing the indulgences of which bounteous nature has spontaneously granted an ample provision.

Necessary industry is the attribute of proud nations, and accompanies the series of qualities which, in the preceding chapters, were found to result from natural difficulties. Luxurious industry is the companion of vanity, and of all the modifications of character which are derived from casilyattained prosperity and splendour.

Under the denomination of industry must be understood, a very large share of human occupations. It comprises every operation which can increase the value of any existing object, and make it more useful to man. It is not, however, a creative power, but it is perpetually busied in metamorphosing bodies into new shapes, and in producing new combinations of form and matter. In relation to all the uses of men, indeed, industry may be said to create, as, with regard to the purposes of poetry, imagination may be allowed the same power. Agriculture seems to create, when it makes a

barren waste productive; commerce seems to give birth to the productions which it carries over distant seas, when it gives them being among the resources of men. It is from industry that, in every stage of social improvement, all that men have dug from the bosom of the earth-all that they have applied to their use upon its surface, derives its worth. It is labour which converts the contents of the quarry into human habitations-which makes the mine more precious, and compels all nature to pay her unexpected tribute to our happiness.

The characteristics by which the two modifications of industry may be distinguished are as follow:-1st, Luxurious industry bestows less toil to make its productions valuable, and selects the richest materials, which it embellishes with the smallest addition of labour. 2ndly, As luxury is a selfish mode of social improvement, so is its industry confined to individual gratification. 3rdly. Luxurious industry is more busied upon such things as are pleasing to vanity, than upon those which are essentially useful. The industry of necessity, on the contrary, 1st, employs the humblest materials, and gives them value by the skill and labour which it bestows upon them. It can stamp greater worth upon iron than upon gold, and can convert the poorest of metals into the most valuable. 2ndly, It is as enlarged as civilisation itself, and considers the benefit of society much more than the pleasure of individuals. 3rdly. Its productions are essentially useful, and please the most upon reflection. The one is frivolous and narrow-minded-the other is solid and expanded. The former promotes the enjoyments of the wealthy-the latter provides for the comfort of every class, and still more for the poor than for the rich.

PART II.

On the Development and Progress of the different Modifications of Industry among Nations.

THE first occupation which would engross the attention of men on a large scale, and communicate a bias to their minds, is agriculture. The first inhabited districts were so luxuriant, that little labour was necessary to make them productive; they were so warm, also, that little clothing was required, and spontaneous vegetation supplied almost every want; but as less hospitable regions were peopled, nature was no longer sufficiently productive, and art soon supplied her deficiencies. In every early nation, agriculture was held in the highest veneration, and its most anxious promoters were princes and rulers. Noah practised it after the waters of the flood had subsided, and though it languished for a time after the dispersion of the human race, it sprung up anew in the plains of Shinar. In Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt, in Japan and China, in Phoenicia and Scythia, in the four great monarchies of the East, in the early provinces of Greece and Italy, it was the most important occupation, and the men who were supposed to have taught it were almost deified by their respective nations.

In these countries, too, the climate was not sufficiently warm to permit the total absence of clothing, nor were the necessary coverings immediately provided by nature. It was only by converting some of the raw materials into new forms that they were rendered useful, and manufacturing industry soon followed agriculture.

The agricultural industry of all the early world was of course luxurious; more than enough was afforded spontaneously for the population, whose food consisted in whatever was most pleasing to the palate. Neither was taste the only sense that was gratified; the most delicious perfumes regaled the smell-the most exquisite vegetation courted the eye, and a cheering atmosphere gave a happy alternation of refreshment and warmth to the whole frame. Thus it was that the continent of Asia was endowed by nature,

and thus did the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, consume the period of their existence.

The state of agriculture may always be appreciated by the instruments which men have been compelled to invent for its assistance. All the machines and tools employed by the early ancients to this end were miserably defective, and little could be done by them to promote fertility. The same deficiency is found in modern times among the rude natives of warm and productive countries, and America confirms the conclusions drawn from early Asia.

Among the principal implements of this art is the plough, which denotes a deeper combination of thought than any employed to cut the soil by direct labour. At what epocha this machine was first used, and by what people, cannot now be ascertained. It may be conjectured, however, to have been known in some shape or other soon after the dispersion; beyond a doubt it was in use among the Egyptians, who attributed the invention to Osiris, and the book of Genesis informs us that the soil was ploughed there in the time of Joseph. The Phoenicians, one of the most industrious nations of antiquity, are said to have received the invention from Dagon, whose origin was celestial; and the Chinese are indebted for it to Chin-nong, the successor of Fo-hi. Even the Arabians made use of a similar instrument -and in all these nations the moving power was oxen; in all, too, the construction of the plough was extremely simple. According to Hesiod, no iron was employed in that which was known in Greece, and Strabo mentions districts in which it was entirely made of wood.

The methods employed by these nations to extract the grain from its ear, and to separate it from the chaff, were as simple and defective as the means of reaping it, and of converting it into palatable food. The art of making bread seems to have been long unknown, even to nations among whom many traces of fermented liquors are to be found, for the cakes of antiquity differed from the bread of the moderns much more than the wine or the beer of the Egyptians do from the liquors which now bear the same names.

The first clothing of men had been supplied by the

simplest of vegetable and of animal substances, employed without preparation, before the arts of spinning and of weaving were discovered-arts which all nations attributed to women. The Chinese acknowledge the wife of their emperor Yao as their inventress; the Egyptians, Isis, the wife of him whom they deified as the teacher of agriculture; the Greeks, Minerva; and the Lydians, Arachne, whose superiority to the Grecian goddess was fatal to her. At all events, since the more hardy labour of agriculture is the undoubted property of the more robust sex, it is just to leave to the fairer and the weaker the honor of the more sedentary task of that which stands the next in the order of utility.

The fibres of plants, and the hair or the wool of animals were no sooner knit into a convenient texture, than the means of making them more pleasing to the eye were devised. Different tints were introduced; and, when nature did not afford a sufficient variety, artificial colouring made up the deficiency. Phrygian embroidery, and Babylonian dyes were renowned. Even Moses speaks of blue, purple, and scarlet stuffs of the richest hues; and the colours of the Tyrian shell were admired throughout the known world.

The first construction of human dwellings belongs to the simplest of arts: but none, so humble in its commencement, has received such embellishments, such magnificence from luxury, so much solidity, so much convenience from civilisation.

Few of these arts could have been carried on without some knowledge of metallurgy, however simple this science may have been in its origin. The first metals which men could make subservient to their wants, were those which nature offers in their purest and most evident state-gold, silver, copper. But the most useful of all this class of substances-iron, is too seldom found undisguised by the mixture of other bodies; its separation from them is too difficult; it is too little fusible by itself, and too little ductile when impure, to be of advantage to ignorant men. The Egyptians, as early as the reign of Osiris, made arms of gold and copper to oppose the wild beasts, and afterwards