IMPORTANCE OF SILK. 53 



beauty, and without which courts would lose half 

 their splendour; we must consider it what it 

 actually is, as the staple article of cultivation in 

 many large provinces in the south of Europe, 

 amongst the inhabitants of which the prospect of 

 a deficient crop causes as great alarm as a scanty 

 harvest of grain with us; and, after giving employ- 

 ment to tens of thousands in its first production 

 and transportation, as furnishing subsistence to 

 hundreds of thousands more in its final manufac- 

 ture, and thus becoming one of the most important 

 wheels that give circulation to national wealth." 



