Some useful arts must be nearly coeval with the human race; for food, clothing, and habitation, even in their original simplicity, require some display of ingenuity. Many arts are ol such antiquity as to place the inventors beyond the reach of tradition; while several have gradually crept into existence without an inventor. The busy mind, however, accustomed to date the progress of science from some particular era, cannot rest till it finds or conjectures a beginning to every art. In all countries where the people are illiterate, the progress of arts is extremely slow. It is vouched by an old French poem, that the virtues of the loadstone were known in France before the year 1180. The mariner's compass was exhibited at Venice, A. D. 1260, by Paulus Venetus, as his own invention. John Goya, of Amalphi, was the first, who, many years afterwards, used it in navigation, and also passed for being the inventor. Though it was used in China for navigation long before it was known to the western nations, yet to this day it is not so perfect as in Europe. Instead of suspending it in order to make it act freely, it is placed upon a bed of sand, by which every motion of the ship disturbs its operation.

Hand-mills, termed querns, were early used for the grinding of corn; and when corn came to be raised in greater quantities, horse-mills succeeded. Water-mills for grinding corn are described by Vitruvius. Windmills were known in Greece and Arabia, so early as the seventh century; and yet no mention is made of them in Italy till the fourteenth. That they were not known in England in the reign of Henry VIII. appears from a household book of an earl of Northumberland, contemporary with that king, stating an allowance for three mill horses, "two to draw in the mill, and one to carry stuff to the mill." Water-mills for corn must in England have been of a late date.

The ancients had mirror glasses, and employed glass to imitate crystal vases and goblets; yet they never thought of using it in windows. In the thirteenth century, the Venetians were the only people who had the art of making crystal glass for mirrors. A clock that strikes the hours was unknown in Europe till the end of the twelfth century. And hence the custom of employing men to proclaim the hours during night; which to this day continues in Germany, Flanders, and England. Galileo was the first who conceived an idea that a pendulum might be useful for measuring time; and Huygens was the first who put the idea in execution, by making a pendulum clock. Hook, in 1660, invented a spiral spring for a watch, though a watch was far from being a new invention. Paper was made no earlier than the fourteenth century; and the invention of printing was a century later. Silk manufactures were long established in Greece, before silk-worms were introduced there. The manufacturers were provided with raw silk from Persia; but that commerce being frequently interrupted by war, two monks, in the reign of Justinian, brought eggs of the silk-worm from Hindoostan, and taught their countrymen the method of managing them.

The art of reading made a very slow progress. To encourage that art in England, the capital punishment for murder was remitted, if the criminal could but read, which in law language is termed benefit of clergy. One would imagine that the art must have made a very rapid progress when so greatly favoured: but there is a signal proof of the contrary, for so small an edition of the Bible as six hundred copies, translated into English in the reign of Henry VIII. was not wholly sold off in three years. The people of England must have been profoundly ignorant in Queen Elizabeth's time, when a forged clause, added to the twentieth article of the English creed, passed unnoticed till about sixty years ago.

The discoveries of the Portuguese on the west coast of Africa, afford a remarkable instance of the slow progress of the arts. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, they were totally ignorant of that coast beyond Cape Non, in 28 degrees, north latitude. In 1410, the celebrated Prince Henry of Portugal fitted out a fleet for discoveries, which proceeded along the coast to Cape Bajadore, in 26 degrees, but had not courage to double it: and seventy-six years elapsed before this was done by Bartholomew Diaz, in 1486!