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PROSPECTUS

OF THE

EMPORIUM

OF

ARTS AND SCIENCES.

(NEW SERIES.)

THE Emporium hitherto published, having been relinquished by its Editor and Publisher, I have undertaken to continue it under the same title; and the public will of course expect that I should give some account of the plan on which it is meant hereafter to be conducted.

I do not see, at present, any material objection to the plan originally proposed by Dr. Coxe: for what more useful work could the public desire, than one which should contain a judicious selection of practical papers on manufactures and the arts, from the more scarce and voluminous among the foreign publications, and a repository for original papers of the same description, furnished by men of research in our country?

I had prepared a volume of papers on manufacturing processes, which the publishers of the present work were to have published separately, had not the new series of the Emporium been undertaken. The matter I had

meant for that work, I shall now employ upon this; and I will make, if I can, the Emporium a repository of papers on manufactures, that shall be worth preserving. They will consist of a series of essays drawn up and arranged by myself, but with the assistance of every thing A

I can find to the purpose in foreign publications. I have long been anxious to compose and to compile a work of this description, that shall remain a classic book on the subject, and I will endeavour to do it now.

In treating of the various subjects, it will be fair to give notice, that I will not condescend to make this a work of mere amusement, for the purpose of sale-one that shall suffice merely, under the show of science, to enable the reader to trifle away an hour, and to skim the surface of a great many subjects for the purpose of superficial and conversation knowledge. Many pages of this work to a general reader will be very dull; but it will be my fault if they are not useful to those who read for improve

ment.

I do not propose in the manufacturing papers I shall present, whether of my own or of others, greatly to instruct a manufacturer-a man who knows his business; or, by a sudden miracle, to form a skilful manufacturer by the perusal of a few theoretical pages. I know too well, from my own experience, that this cannot be done; and, I can easily conceive, with what contempt a practical man must read a great portion of the papers that pretend to give knowledge of real processes, among the French and English publications of this description. What innumerable instructions on the art of dying, for instance! yet I can venture to say, that hardly one paper in fifty contains either the processes of practice, or any kind of applicable information. Still the collectors of these facts are of great use in society: if they fail, it is because they are not themselves manufacturers; and because all manufacturers are secret-mongers, who live by their processes, and who do not choose to expose them to all the world. But many hints of importance are thus thrown out to those whose previous knowledge enables them to convert such hints to useful purposes: many

lights are thus thrown on the rationale of manufacturing processes, which will enable a practical man better to understand the nature and effect of the processes he has been accustomed to use, and to correct and vary them without depending upon chance whether he be wrong or right.

Moreover, there is hardly a manufacture that is not capable, in some way or other, of improving and throwing light upon some other manufacture, in appearance widely different. The art of the watchmaker has very greatly con tributed to the perfection of the cotton machines. Scheeie's discovery of the oxy-muriatic acid, has added one fourth to the capital of all the bleachers and callico-printers of Great Britain; the theory of Lavoisier gave rise to D'Argand's lamp; the experiments on the distillation of pit coal for coal tar, promise fair to furnish a better, a brighter, a safer, a cheaper light, than any other known combustible; the barometer has greatly improved the steam engine, and the water blast of the British iron works; the application of steam has, in England, changed the face of the dye house, the distillery, and the soap manufactory; it has improved the cooking apparatus of the kitchen, it has warmed the public buildings, it has been converted into a medicinal application of great importance,-while the steam engine itself has given incalculable force and facility to the manufactures of the kingdom, nearly without exception.

In almost all this knowledge, and in this application of it, as in a thousand similar instances that might be added to this short list, our own country is yet behindhand, and has yet to learn.

Moreover, papers that would be considered as of no great moment in that manufacturing country, will be of use in this. In the infancy of our manufacturing establishments, the conductors of them have to feel their path,

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