44 INVENTION OF PARCHMENT. 



FREDERICK. 



Then comes vellum, I suppose, aunt. 



MRS. F. 



It only being a finer kind of parchment, prepared from the 

 skins of very young calves, I need not allude to it separately, 

 except to tell you that MSS. exist of purple vellum. f Paper 

 now is the only material which we have not enumerated. Its 

 earliest fabrication was, as you all know, of papyrus. 



ESTHER. 



From which comes our word paper. 



MRS. F. 



Papyrus paper we have already fully discussed. Silk 

 paper has been made from the earliest times, by the Chinese, 

 who, about the year A. D. 649, introduced the manufactory to 

 Samarcand; and, when this city was conquered by the Sara- 

 cens, an Arabian learned the art, and, employing cotton instead 

 of silk, made his paper at Mecca A. D. 7064 From that 

 city the manufacture spread over all the Saracen dominions, 

 and was particularly carried on in Spain, where, in the twelfth 

 century, the town of Sativa, (now San Philippo) in Valencia, 

 was celebrated for its paper, the manufacturers having sub- 

 stituted flax, which grew in abundance, to cotton, which was 

 scarce and dear. Alphonso of Castile established a manu- 

 factory in the Christian states of Spain, whence it passed in 

 the 14th century into Italy; and linen paper, such as we now 

 employ, became of general us-e.:}: I have now given you a 

 tolerably connected account of paper and its substitutes. 

 "With the history of printing you probably are already ac- 

 quainted, and I therefore leave the subject, only observing, 

 'that the most remarkable point in the history of this art, 



* There is a manuscript of the Gospels of the sixth or seventh 

 century at Brescia, which is one of the most ancient in purple vel- 

 lum. Valery, vol. i. p. 249. 



f The Arabian MSS. are generally on silk paper. 



$ Sismondi, Lit. du Mid. de PEurope, vol. i. p. 72. 



