LOWELL FACTORIES.

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to be hoped that a system productive of such favourableresults will not hereafter he broken in upon by the rudenecessities of competition.

I was informed by a commercial gentleman that one ofthe main elements in the success of the factory system, bothat Lowell and at Lawrence, arose from the provident wisdomof the corporations buying the land in the neighbourhood ofthe sites upon which they were to build their works, andafterwards selling it at high rates for building upon. Thusnew towns speedily arose to accommodate the populationdrawn together by the erection of the numerous mills, andimparted a high value to ground that was otherwise com-paratively worthless.

The peninsula of Nahant forms a favourite retreat forthe Bostonians during the heats of summer. The hotel atNahant is still more splendid than the Revere at Boston.One night while I was there, Professor Agassiz gave aninteresting lecture on the geology of the peninsula to ahighly fashionable company in the large dining-room of thehotel. Spending the Sunday at this delightful spot, Iattended the only church in the neighbourhood. To suit aclass of hearers so miscellaneous as those who frequent thehotel or have villas in the vicinity, ministers of the variousProtestant denominations officiate alternately. A committeeof laymen make the necessary arrangements for obtainingpreachers from the Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presby-terian, or Unitarian bodies. A preacher of the last-men-tioned denomination it fell to my lot to hear. No doctrinalpeculiarities could be detected in his sermon, which was prac-tical, and delivered with great earnestness.

It is very difficult to draw lines of distinction betweenclasses of society in New England. At the hotel I hadsome conversation with a person who had all the appearanceand manners of a gentleman, but who was no other than aworking mechanic. He had driven down his wife and familyfrom a village thirteen miles inland to have a day’s recreationat Nahant. This way of spending a little spare moneyraises the moral and social condition of those who labourwith their hands, and maintains a sense of self-respect. The