SILKEN CLOTHING. 163 



to be worn at court for a year, so low did silk fall in every- 

 body's estimation, that whosoever continued to wear it, was 

 set down at once as a low-born cit." In short, les habits de soie 

 were entirely abandoned to surgeons and physicians. 



Be it also remembered, that though "silken sheen" has 

 been always considered by us of Europe an article more or less 

 of luxury, in Asia it has been for ages one of absolute use. 

 While at Kome, silk was valued at its weight in gold, and the 

 Emperor Aurelian* refused his Empress a silken robe because 

 it was too dear, the lean unwashed artificer of China was in 

 some provinces clothed in his silken garment. To the latter 

 country, under the name of Serica, has been attributed the 

 discovery of weaving Silk-worm threads, whence the Latin 

 holo-sericum or silken garment, of which the first is said to 

 have been worn by the Emperor Heliogabalus.f In the days 

 of Solomon, we are told, a woman named Pamphila of the 

 Island of Cos, was skilled in the art of making cloth from this 

 country of Serica or China. Du Halde says, that the most 

 ancient of the Chinese writers ascribe the invention to one of 

 the women of the Emperor Hoang Fi, named Silung, and so 

 important was the discovery held, that all the women in the 

 Emperor's Palace were employed in rearing the worms and 

 weaving their productions. Nor, indeed, could the Chinese 

 have valued silk too highly, either as an article of home use, or 



* Emperor. Aurelian, died A. D., 275. 



f Emperor Heliogabalus, died, A. D., 222. 



