establishment, and almost all involve machinery of the most delicate and ingenious construction. No machine, however, has as yet been invented capable of superseding the use of the teazle, by which the loose fibres of the wool are raised to the surface, so as to form, when duly cut and sheared, the pile, or nap. The teazles, which are largely grown in Yorkshire and in Somersetshire, are fastened into a cylinder; and at least 3,000 are consumed in the "teazling" of a piece of cloth forty yards in length.

The front of Messrs. Marshall's flax-mill is designed after the propylæon of an Egyptian temple. There are, in fact, two mills: one built after the usual style of factories, the other, instead of rising to a height of five or six storeys, spread over a space of two acres, and forming one enormous apartment, 400 feet long by 216 broad. The height is twenty feet. The brick roof, of groined arches, rests upon fifty cast-iron pillars. There are sixty-six of these arches or domes, each of which is lighted by a circular lantern, fourteen feet in diameter. In this manner much of the steam, which in the older factories collects in the higher storeys, is got rid of; and the light provided is far better. The roof between the lanterns is covered with coal-tar and lime, so as to be impermeable to moisture; and on this surface eight inches of soil are laid, sown with grass. An equable temperature is thus secured for the great hall. In this about 1,000 hands are daily at work, and the spindles alone are valued at £100,000. The view in every direction is of course wonderful; and the thorough ventilation, the order, cleanliness, and silence (broken only by the click of machinery) are most striking. Huckaback towels, coverings for mattresses, all kinds of linen fabrics, and a great quantity of sewing-thread, are made here; and more than seventy million yards of linen yarn are spun daily.

The care taken by the greater manufacturers of Leeds for the well-doing of their people is everywhere sufficiently evident. A church has been built opposite the Messrs. Marshall's factory, for the special accommodation of the "hands" employed in the district. There are schools for many hundred children, and an excellent library close by. The great "Wellington Foundry" of the Messrs. Fairbairn, in which machinery is made for spinning flax, hemp, tow, and silk, and where engineering tools of all kinds are constructed, is another of the great "manufacturing sights" of Leeds; and hardly less important is the "Airedale Foundry" of the Messrs. Kitson, in which locomotive and stationary engines are made. But it is impossible to describe or even to enumerate all the vast establishments which add their daily contribution to the smoke-cloud of Leeds.

The names of the principal founders of the modern trade of Leeds have already been mentioned. But there are others to whom the town is so greatly indebted for its present prosperity and position, that the slightest sketch would be incomplete without some record of their services. Edward Baines first settled in Leeds in 1795, when he was received as an apprentice into the office of the Leeds Mercury, one of the oldest provincial newspapers, first established in 1718. In a very few years both office and newspaper became his own by a purchase in which Mr. Baines was assisted by numerous friends, and which proved to be the first step in his public career. The politics of the paper were decidedly Liberal from the time it passed into the hands of Mr. Baines. Its size and its circulation rapidly increased; and whilst a single copy of the year 1801 contained 21,376 words, one of 1848 had 180,000. Mr. Baines died this latter year, by which time

his paper had attained a very high rank. It now occupies a place in the first class of provincial journals-being on the same level as the Manchester Examiner and the Birmingham Daily Post. The Leeds Mercury has an enormous influence throughout the West Riding of Yorkshire.

This influence was turned to the best account by the proprietor, who was foremost in the promotion of all good works in Leeds. He was among the first establishers of the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, the Philosophical and Literary Society, and the Temperance

Society. He represented Leeds in Parliament from 1833, when T. B. Macaulay resigned his seat on his appointment to a place in the Indian Council,* to a very short time before his death: and the services of few public men have been more generally recognised. Mr. Baines was the founder of a family which has become identified, in all its interests, with Leeds. Many of its members have been and are distinguished, like the "apprentice" of the Leeds Mercury, as politicians, as journalists, and as social reformers. The eldest son of Edward Baines represented Leeds in three successive Parliaments, and on his retirement, in 1859, his place until 1874 was filled by a brother-a second Edward Baines -whose name is not less honoured in Leeds than that of his distinguished father.

"The first members for Leeds were Macaulay and John Marshall. The borough was unrepresented in Parliament before the first Reform Bill.

Views from the Castle Hill of Dover-The "Saxon Shore"-The Cinque Ports, their Duties and Privileges-SandwichEbbsfleet-Richborough-The Goodwins-Dover-Hythe-Courts of the Cinque Ports-Rye-Winchelsea-HastingsPevensey-Seals of the Cinque Ports.

HERE is no view from the cliffs of England which, for those who can read it rightly, should be more impressive than that to be obtained from the Castle Hill of Dover. It is not the mere beauty of the scene which is thus exciting: although the great fortress itself, with the town clustered at its feet, the broken downs of green turf and the white headlands that stretch away on either side, the sparkling sea, and the heights and harbours faintly seen along the opposite coast, form a picture nor is it the grandeur of the rocky sufficiently attractive: nor shore; for although the chalk has its perilous steeps and ledges, the height and dignity of this part of the English coast are as nothing compared to the towering cliffs of Yorkshire or to the granite of the Land's End. But the "silver streak," beyond which the towers of Calais are visible, is perhaps more full of recollections than any other portion of the "four seas" of Britain.

.

Recognising, as we do from the cliffs of Dover, and all along this line of coast, the narrowness of the strait which here divides England from the Continent, we see at once that it could hardly fail to have been the witness of great and critical events; and that this part of the shore, not unprovided with harbours, and in full view from the opposite land, must at all times have drawn towards it invaders and plunderers from the Continent, and must have presented itself as the natural point of landing. Accordingly, it called for defence and protection as soon as the races inhabiting Britain had reached such a stage of knowledge and civilisation as to enable them to construct anything like a real stronghold or fastness. There is a vast intrenchment in one part

1

ORIGIN OF THE CINQUE PORTS.

Ebbsfleet

Canterbury

N. Foreland

33

Ramsgate
Pegwell
Bay

Goodwin.
Sands

Sandwich
Deal

The

Richborough

Walmer

Downs

Sth. Foreland

Stour

Dover

Folkestone

Hythe

hford

of the works at Dover, which has been regarded as British, and, consequently, as marking the position of a primitive fort, which the Romans afterwards extended into a stronghold, guarding the town and port of Dubræ below it. However, this may be, the cliff-castles and earthworks along the coast show that it had not been neglected by the earlier inhabitants. It was more effectually cared for in Roman times; and the remains of the great Roman fortresses at Dover (Dubra), Hythe (Portus Lemanis), Pevensey (Anderida), and Sandwich (Rutupia) show with what attention the coast was protected at these different stations, and how massive and well-laid was the building which to this day has in great measure resisted the wearing of both time and weather. These were four out of nine fortresses which, in the later Roman time, were placed under the especial control of a great officer, known as the "Count of the Saxon Shore" -a name which did not imply that any Saxon or Teutonic colonies had as yet been established along the coast, but that the fortresses were designed to protect this side of Britain against the piratical attacks of northern searovers, who seem already to have been comprehended under the general name of Saxons. The fortresses were raised close to or commanding the chief harbours and landingplaces along the coast: harbours which-although all except Dover have changed and altered in the course of centuries -long continued to rank among the principal harbours of England. It may, indeed, be said that they were quite the principal; for the Roman fortresses of the Saxon shore mark the position of the famous Cinque Ports, the fleet of which was the germ of the British Navy. The Cinque Ports are first directly so called soon after the Norman Conquest, when John de Fiennes appears as the first Warden; but it is probable that they existed as a peculiar community throughout the whole of the Saxon period, and that the Lord Warden is the natural, if not the direct, representative of the Roman "Comes."

The five later Cinque Ports-the Cinque Ports of English history properly so called— are Dover, Hythe, Romney, Hastings, and Sandwich. Each of these had its minor ports or "limbs," which probably purchased a share in the franchises enjoyed by the community by a fine to the head port: glad, in its turn, to have sharers in the burden of providing ships. For the Cinque Ports were obliged to furnish fifty-seven ships "whenever the king should need them;" and in war-time the king supplied a certain number of soldiers for each ship. Their great privileges were bound up with this burden of providing ships.

They had the entire control of their own towns, all the freemen of which were called, and in a certain way ranked as, "barons"-a word which has here retained its primitive Teutonic sense, since it is applied, by way of special distinction, to those alone who were the "men"-the freemen.* These could only be tried by their peers, before the Lord Warden, or before the king in person. They were discharged from all military duties in the field, and could not be removed beyond their own jurisdiction but for the assistance of each other. A Court, called the "Court of Brotherhood," was held twice a year: first at Shipway Cross, near Hythe, and then at Romney, as the central port. Seven "barons" attended from each head port; and the affairs of the whole body were regulated on these occasions. The barons of the Cinque Ports were represented in Parliament from a very early period. At every coronation they bore the canopy over the king and queen. Eleven barons were attached to each canopy, which was carried on silver staves, having small bells of silver attached to them. One of the canopies was usually offered, after the coronation, at the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. The bearers dined in Westminster Hall, at the right hand of the king.

Of these famous Cinque Ports, whose prowess was once so redoubtable, and whose ships were the first to be summoned when danger threatened the English coast, one aloneDover-remains in active service. Romney, Hythe, and Sandwich are no longer ports at all, and Hastings is in little better case. The shallow harbours, owing to the action of the tide, have gradually been silted up; and of the "limbs," or lesser ports, while some-like Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Rye, and Shoreham-retain a considerable amount of their former importance, or have even increased it, others, such as Winchelsea and Pevensey, read even a more striking lesson of change than the main harbours on which they depended. The sea has so completely retired that these are now inland places. This, too, may almost be said to be the case with Sandwich: which, as representing the most ancient and most frequented series of harbours connected with the Cinque Ports, may first be visited.

The expression "series of harbours" is the only one which can fairly be applied to the various ports and landing-places, among which were Ebbsfleet and Richborough, which have been successively in use along the coast between Deal and Ramsgate.

This coast has been greatly changed within the historical era; and much of it, like that of Flanders opposite, has passed from the condition of broad, shallow bay to that of flat green "polders "-a Flemish term, which is in use at Sandwich-barely raised above the muddy sands that are yearly increasing. But the former shore outline is distinctly visible; and it is easy to picture it as it must have been in the later Roman period. The chalk cliffs of Ramsgate end at a point somewhat north of the village of Pegwell, and do not reappear until we have passed the town of Deal. It is the tract of

* "Baro," "bar," is identical with the Saxon "wer," a man, which has cognates in all the Teutonic (and in all the Aryan) languages. The "barones" of a town thus represent the Saxon "burhwaru " - burghers. The word is used in charters for the freemen ("honorati ". 66 possessores") of other great towns, as York, Chester, Warwick, and especially London. "Londonienses," writes Matthew Paris, "quos propter civitatis dignitatem et civium antiquitatem, barones consuevimus appellare." But only the Cinque Ports were summoned to Parliament as barons. They are to send "duos idoneos et peritos barones e quolibet portu." There is no record of the beginning of the privileges of the Cinque Ports. The charter of Edward I., long preserved at Romney, only

confirms them.