THE TRUNK-MAKER.

The persons, employed in this trade make trunks, chests, portmanteaus, cases for holding plate and knives, and buckets ; and sometimes the trade of a common box-maker is carried on in conjunction with the trunk-maker, by the same person.

This is one of those trades arising from the subdivision of labour, in consequence of a high degree of civilization : for there can be no doubt that this trade was originally a part of the occupation of a carpenter. How long a trunk-maker has been a separate trafe we have not been able to ascertain but we find that the trunk makers in France, as early as the year 1596, formed a separate company and had particular laws for their government. Amongst these, it was ordered that a master trunk-maker should have but one apprentice at a time, and he was also forbidden, by the same laws, from beginning his work before five o'clock in the moruing or from continuing it after eight o'clock at night that the neighbourhood might not be annoyed by the noise so inseparable from this trade.

Trunks, of which there are various shapes and sizes, are generally made of wood, and covered with leather, or the skins of horses or seals dressed with the hair on ; and they are generally lined with paper. To some trunks, as that upon which the man is at work, represented in the plate, there are a number of thin iron cramps put on for the sake of strength. Those which are well finished are ornamented with several rows of brass-headed nails, such as that which stands in the left hand corner of tbe plate : that at the opposite corner, which is represented as open, is divided by several partitions, and lined with baize or cloth ; it is intended for holding a service of plate, which ia usually sent to the banker's for safety, when the family to whom it belongs retire to their country residence. Trunks standing may be intended for holding linen at home, or carrying clothes on a journey. Travelling trunks are fastened either before or behind the carriage with leathern straps and buckles, or by means of chains. A patent was taken out some years since, for a method of fastening trunks and portmanteaus to travelling carriages, so as to defy the art of robbers, who, in and near the metropolis, are ever on the watch to cut off trunks from coaches, as they come in or go out of town.

Portmanteaus are all of leather, and are adapted for the carriage, or may be placed behind the rider on his horse. These will contain a large quantity of linen clothes, and are very convenient for families.

The buckets are formed also of strong and stout leather, soaked and boiled. They are very useful for coneying water, in extinguishing houses that have taken fire. Most large houses in the country have fifty or sixty of these, as well as a fire engine, in case of accidents ; but it generally happens, through the inattention of servants, that if a fire breaks out, neither engine nor buckets are fit for use.

Trunk-makers often use, in very neat work, shagreen, which is a kind of grained leather, prepared from the skin of a fish, by exposing it to the weather, being first covered with bruised mustard seed, and afterwards tanned. The best shagreen comes from Constantinople, and is extremely hard ; but being soaked in water, it becomes soft and pliable, and adapted to the use of the case-makers. It takes any colour, as red, green, black, &c. and is frequently counterfeited by morocco formed like shagreen ; but morocco in wearing is apt to come off in scales, which is not the case with shagreen.

Journeymen, in this business, will earn a guinea or thirty shillings a week.