In addition to the rich mines, and the vegetable productions, the English are celebrated for their superior manufactures, which fame they are enabled to enjoy by means of the most ingenious machinery, rail roads, and canals, by which they can easily and rapidly send their goods, and travel from one part of the country to another.  Cottons, woollens, linens, silks, iron, jewellery, leather, glass, earthenware, paper, and hats, are manufactured in great quantities.

I dare say you would be much amused by a visit to Manchester, in Lancashire, where the art of spinning cotton is carried to a high perfection.  There are more than a hundred and forty cotton factories in that city, where men, women, and children, are continually at work, minding the machines, which are about twenty thousand in number.  When you first go into one of these factories, you hear a terrible noise of whirling and whizzing, and see an immense number of wheels flying round and round.

Halifax and Leeds, in Yorkshire, are the chief places for woollen cloth, the manufacture of which employs the greater part of the inhabitants.  A weekly market is held in Halifax for the sale of woollens, in a spacious building called the Piece Hall; but in Leeds, the markets are held two days in the week, in the two Cloth Halls.

Staffordshire is famous for earthenware; the reason of this is, that there is such an enormous quantity of yellow clay suitable for that manufacture, found there.  Indeed, there are several towns and villages formed into a district called “The Potteries;” and in consequence of the innumerable furnaces, which are always blazing, the place looks at night as if was on fire.  Gloves, lace, and stockings, are mostly made in Nottingham, where there are several thousand machines for the manufacture of these things.

From Kidderminster, in Worcester, we have very fine carpets; from Gloucester, we have cheese and pins; Northampton is celebrated for leather; Shrewsbury, for flannel.  The great mines are in Cumberland, Cornwall, Northumberland, Durham, and Derbyshire.  However, if I were to tell you of all the places in England, that are famed for different manufactures, I am afraid I should both exceed our space, and wear out your patience, which I should be sorry to do.  So I will now tell you something about London.

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London, which you know is the capital of our own dear native land, is the greatest commercial city in the world; it has been reckoned that the value of the property shipped and unshipped on the river Thames, every year, is more than one hundred million pounds.  An enormous quantity of property is laid in the London Docks, at Wapping; indeed, the warehouse for tobacco alone covers a space of nearly five acres, while the vaults underneath the ground are more than eighteen acres in extent.