which is much employed, the largest engravings are reduced to the size most convenient for the workman, without injuring the prints in the slightest degree; and hence a snuff-box manufacturer, like a Dunfermline weaver, can work to order by exhibiting on wood his employer’s coat of arms, or in short, any object he may fancy within the range of the pictorial art.  Some of the painters display considerable talent, and as often as they choose to put forth their strength, produce box-lids, which are really worthy of being preserved as pictures.  At first, nearly the whole subjects chosen as ornaments, were taken from Burns’s poems; and there can be no doubt, that the “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” “Tam O’Shanter,” “Willie brewed a peck o’ maut,” &c. &c., have penetrated in this form into every quarter of the habitable globe.  Now, however, the artists of Cumnock take a wider range; the studios of Wilkie, and other artists, have been laid under contribution; landscapes are as often met with as figures; and there is scarcely a celebrated scene in the country that is not pictured forth more or less perfectly on the lid of a Cumnock snuff-box.  A few years ago, the art in question was much affected by the long-continued depression of the weaving business; so much so, that many left it for some other employment.  And some of those who emigrated, having made a good deal of money, instead of being cooped up in a workshop, are now thriving proprietors in Upper Canada.  But after a brief interval the trade rallied; and though prices are low, it is now more flourishing than ever.  In Cumnock the number of hands has increased considerably, and in Mauchline there is one workshop so extensive that it may almost be compared to a cotton mill or factory.  In other quarters the trade is extending, such as Helensburgh near Greenock, Catrine, Maxwelltown, Dumfries, &c.  The principal markets for the snuff-boxes are London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.  At one time large lots of boxes were exported to South America, and probably are so at present.  Cumnock, in a word, in regard to its staple manufacture, is in that palmy state so well described by a modern writer:—­“the condition most favourable to population is that of a laborious, frugal people ministering to the demands of opulent neighbours; because this situation, while it leaves them every advantage of luxury, exempts them from the evils which accompany its admission into a country.  Of the different kinds of luxury, those are the most innocent which afford employment to the greatest number of artists and manufacturers; or those in which the price of the work bears the greatest proportion to that of the raw material.”  Some very wretched imitations of Cumnock boxes have been produced in different parts of England; but they can deceive no one who ever saw a genuine box.  The hinge, as well as the finishing, is clumsy in the extreme.