Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/251

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ARI
223
ARK

in the way, he was to he publicly readmitted into the fellowship of the church at Constantinople. The ceremony was to take place on a Saturday, services being then held both on Saturdays and Sundays. On Saturday, Alexander, the bishop of Constantinople, being a vehement opponent of Arius, refused to admit him. The party of Arius, however, were bent on their object, and going to the bishop informed him that they would compel him by an imperial decree to receive Arius back into the church. The bishop was in great distress on this account, and prayed that either he or Arius should not see the next day. Arius died on the Saturday evening. Rumour subsequently related that he had died while marching in triumphal procession from the palace to the church. Arius wrote a book called "Thaleia" in defence of his opinions; fragments of it are extant in the works of Athanasius. He also wrote songs for sailors, travellers, and millers, hoping in this way to make religion win its way into the hearts of the ignorant. None of them remain, but some of his letters have been preserved. In one of these we have the following statement of his belief. He says that "the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten in any way, nor derived from any previously existing substance, but that he came into existence by purpose and will before the times and the ages, complete God, only begotten, unalterable, and did not exist before he was begotten or created, or defined or founded, for he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say the Son has a beginning, but that the Father has no beginning." The words "complete God" must be taken in a modified sense, as Arius himself says elsewhere: "Christ is not true God, but he was himself made God by participation; nor does the Son know the Father accurately, nor does the Word see the Father nor understand him." The statement likewise that the Son is unalterable, must be taken with modifications. Arius explains it himself. He says that Christ was by nature changeable, but that through the regular practice of virtue he had become morally unchangeable, and that God had chosen him for his peculiar work, because he had foreknown that his life would be sinless. It may be worth while to remark that Arius, in propounding his views, believed he was defending the old doctrines of the church against new and dangerous heresies.—J. D.

ARIVEY, Pierre de l' a French author, was a canon in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, in which city he was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He published some comedies, and several translations of Italian works.

ARJASP, a king of ancient Tartary, who reigned about 500 b.c. In order to oppose the doctrines of Zoroaster, he made war with Gushtasp, king of Persia, and after various successes and reverses, was slain by Asfandiyar, son of Gushtasp, who was to succeed his father in the Persian throne in the event of his being victorious.

ARJE, Jacob-Judas, a Spanish rabbi of the seventeenth century, author of several works of profound learning and great research, the chief of which is the "Tabnith Hecal," or Description of the Temple of Solomon. (Middleburg, 1642.)

ARJONA, Manuel de, a poet of Spain, born at Osuna in 1761; died in 1820.

ARKWRIGHT, Sir Richard, one of the most distinguished members of that band of inventors and men of practical talent, by whom the manufacturing system of the British empire has been brought to its present state of excellence and superiority, was born at Preston, in Lancashire, on the 23rd of December, 1732. Being the thirteenth child of very poor parents, he grew up in the midst of toil and want; and it was in this always painful but often salutary school, that he acquired that patient industry and that indomitable firmness which enabled him to improve and apply to practical purposes, inventions of which the germs may perhaps have been discovered by others, but of which the useful application was entirely his own. He was brought up as a barber, hairdresser, and wigmaker; and is said to have made some money by an invention for dyeing human hair, which was then much sought after to be manufactured into wigs. In Arkwright's days, Preston, the place of his birth, was not a manufacturing town, and there may, therefore, be some truth in the assertion, that his attention was first turned to cotton machinery by the fact of his having married, in the year 1761, a wife who was a native of the manufacturing town of Leigh, and in which spinning, by means of the wheel and spindle, was carried on in almost every cottage. It was not, however, until seven or eight years after his marriage, that he succeeded in bringing his labours, as an inventor of spinning machinery, to any successful result. His application to that subject must have been close and absorbing, for it is said that it took him away from his ordinary occupation so often and so long, that his wife, fearing that it would bring him and her with their children to the workhouse, broke his models, in the hope of bringing him back to the more profitable occupation of the lather-brush and curling-tongs. In spite of this domestic opposition, he persevered until he had brought his own inventions, or the abortive inventions of others, to such a state of perfection, as to secure millions to his own family, hundreds of millions to his country, and an addition to the daily comforts of the greater part of the human race.

The instrument which Arkwright laboured so long, and in the end so successfully, to produce, was a machine or frame for spinning several threads at one time, and by one application of force, in the place of the single thread produced on the ordinary spinning wheel. The method by which he ultimately succeeded in doing this, is thus described in Baines' history of the "Cotton Trade," in a passage which renders the operation and the invention as clear as they can be made by a verbal description:—"In every mode of spinning, the ends to be accomplished are, to draw out the loose fibres of the cotton wool in a regular and continuous line, and, after reducing the fleecy roll to the requisite tenuity, to twist it into a thread. Previous to the operation of spinning, the cotton must have undergone the process of carding, the effect of which is to comb out, straighten, and lay parallel to each other its entangled fibres. The carding or sliver (as it is called) of cotton, requires to be drawn out to great fineness, before it is thin enough to be twisted into a thread. The way in which this is done, is by means of two or more pairs of small rollers placed horizontally—the upper and lower roller of each pair revolving in contact. The carding or sliver of cotton being put between the first pair of rollers, is, by their revolution, drawn through and compressed; whilst passing through the rollers, it is caught by another pair of rollers placed immediately in front, which revolve with three, four, or five times the velocity of the first pair, and which therefore draw out the sliver to three, four, or five times its former length and degree of fineness; after passing through the second pair of rollers, the reduced sliver is attached to a spindle and fly, the rapid revolutions of which twist it into a thread, and at the same time wind it up on a bobbin. That the rollers may take hold of the cotton, the lower roller is fluted longitudinally, and the upper is covered with leather. Such is the beautiful and admirable contrivance, by which a machine is made to do what was formerly, in all ages and countries, effected by the fingers of the spinner. It is obvious that, by lengthening or multiplying the rollers, and increasing the number of spindles, all of which may be turned by the same power, many threads may be spun at once, and the process may be carried on with much greater quickness and steadiness than by hand-spinning. There is also the important advantage—the thread produced will be of more regular thickness, and more evenly twisted."

Such was the principle of Arkwright's machine. His patent was taken out on the 15th July, 1769—the day from which the greatness of the cotton manufacture may be dated. An immense advantage of this invention is, that the spinning frame of Arkwright, and similar machines which have grown out of it, admit of being worked by the power of steam and of falling water. The power of horses is said to have been first used in working these machines, in the small mill which Arkwright constructed at Nottingham; but in the year 1771, Arkwright, who had been joined by two eminent capitalists—Mr. Strutt of Derby, and Mr. Need of Nottingham—built a mill at Cromford, near Matlock, in Derbyshire, the machinery of which was turned by the river Derwent. In this beautiful spot, Arkwright built the first cotton mill in England. He subsequently formed other establishments of a similar kind in other parts of England and in Scotland; accumulating in a short time a prodigious fortune, and giving a wonderful impulse to the industry and productive power of this and other countries. The results of Arkwright's discovery were, however, multiplied a hundredfold by James Watt's not less wonderful improvement of the steam engine, which created a motive power of inexhaustible strength, and capable of being produced wherever fuel could be procured in sufficient abundance. It is the latter invention which has given so rapid and wonderful a development to the cotton manufacture of Lancashire and Lanarkshire, and which has made Manches-