ANCIENT CELEBRITY OF SILK. 187 
much better the royal tissue would become you than the grandes 
dames!” 
A mere glance at the silkworm convinces you that it is no more a 
native of Europe than any other sweet thing. All that is soft and 
exquisite springs from the Kast. Our West, that hardy soldier, black- 
smith, and miner, is good only to dig. It is good mother Asia, dis- 
dained by her rude son, who has bestowed upon him the treasures 
which seem to concentrate the essence of the globe. With the Arab 
horse and the nightingale, she has given him coffee, and sugar, and silk, 
—the revivifiers of existence and the true ornament of love. 
When silk first arrived at Rome, the empresses felt that previously 
they had been no better than plebeians. They compared it, as far as 
its soft lustre was concerned, to the pearls of the Orient, paying for it, 
without haggling, the price of pearls and gold. 
China esteemed it of such high value, that, to preserve the monopoly, 
she inflicted the penalty of death on any persons who dared to export 
the silkworm. It was only at the utmost peril, and by concealing it in 
a hollow cane, that men succeeded in carrying it to Byzantium, whence 
it passed to the West. 
In the Middle Age, the age of indigence and barren disputes, when 
wool was the luxury of the rich, and the poor wore serge in winter, 
no attention was paid to silk, and its manufacture was exclusively con- 
fined to Italy. 
It is the gold of the silkworms of Verona which, in Giorgione, at the 
mighty outcome of the Venetian art, and in the strong Titian, the master 
of masters, enriches with a ruddy radiance their beautiful blondes and 
brunettes, the sovereign beauties of the world. 
On the other hand, in an age of decadence, when Spain and Flanders 
had waned, the melancholy artist who preferred to paint the beauty 
which years had marked,—the fading flower,—the fruit too early 
pierced and unnaturally ripened,—Van Dyck, clothed with white silk, 
like a consoling beam of moonlight, his languishing and drooping 
signoras. Under the soft folds of their satins they still trouble hearts 
with vain dreams and regrets. 
The woman who possessed the secret of preserving her charms to 
