722 W 0 
270 years after Christ, a pound of silk, according to Vopis- 
cus, was equal to a pound of gold. A people so pre-emi¬ 
nent in wealth, and in all the refinements of art, would 
naturally be solicitous to attain the highest degree of excel¬ 
lence in the manufacture of those fabrics which were calcu¬ 
lated to gratify their passion for adorning their persons, and 
it was equally as necessary to consult their ease as their 
vanity. The summer-heat of Italy was so great, that the 
affluent could scarcely have supported a woollen dress, had 
it not been made of the lightest and thinnest cloth. We 
find also, that during the Augustan age, and for a consider¬ 
able time afterwards, it was the fashion to wear cloths which, 
as at present, were furnished with a raised nap or pile. Such 
cloths were called pexce, in contradistinction to tritse or 
thread-bare. Thus Horace: 
«-Si forte subucula pexse 
Trita subest tunicae —— rides.” 
“ You laugh if you espy a thread-bare vest 
Under a well dressed tunic.” 
And also Martial: 
“ Pexatus pulchre, rides mea, Zoile trita.” 
When in the decline of the Roman empire, their colonies 
were overrun by savage barbarians, all their public establish¬ 
ments and manufactures were destroyed, but the art of pro¬ 
ducing from the fleece a warm and substantial clothing was 
never entirely lost, even during the darkest days of ignorance. 
It began to revive, and became the separate occupation of 
one class of the community about the middle of the tenth 
century in the Low Countries, where it remained the glory 
of the people, and the source of their opulence, through 
more than tour hundred years. The wool which it consumed 
for the first few years was the produce of their own pastures, 
which had but lately been reclaimed from the forest; but as 
the manufacture extended itself, the demands became larger, 
and were supplied from a greater distance.- The wealth 
which it distributed was soon visible, and people crowded 
into the country, engaged in its commerce, and pushed 
their speculations with increasing vigour through a hundred 
and fifty years, when an inundation of the sea threatened to 
involve the art, the artist, and the country, in one general 
destruction. The dispersion of the people who fled from 
the calamity which appeared to overwhelm their hopes, in¬ 
stead of destroying the infant manufacture, gave it additional 
vigour, and was the means of establishing a connection be¬ 
tween the Netherlands and foreign countries, which proved 
of the highest importance to commerce. It contributed to 
a much more speedy recovery of the arts connected with the 
woollen manufacture, from the ruin which seemed to threaten 
them, and gave a striking instance of their partiality for the 
seats where they have once flourished, under the patronage 
of a government liberal enough to encourage, and sufficiently 
powerful to protect them, even in situations attended with 
natural disadvantages. The influence of these manufactures 
upon the fleeces of the Low Countries must have been very 
considerable ; for before the year 960 we have no reason to 
suppose that their quality was superior to that which we find 
in the neighbouring districts; yet it was not very long ere 
Flanders and Brabant became famous for the manufacture of 
fine cloths, even at a period when they imported but little 
foreign wool. Perhaps the fabrics might not be equal to those 
which we now produce from the fleeces of Spain, or even 
from the improved ones of our own sheep, but they were 
preferable to those of England and the nations of the con¬ 
tinent, Italy and Spain excepted. It was about the year 1200' 
that the merchants began to import the wools of other coun¬ 
tries, to extend their connections much more widely, and to 
grow by this means still more rich and powerful. The ma¬ 
nufactures required a larger quantity of the raw material than 
usual, and the population of the country had reached that 
extent which does not admit of a great number of sheep being 
kept. The operation of these two causes was evidently suffi¬ 
cient to induce the manufacturer to go farther from home, 
and to seek the most convenient methods of supplying his 
O L. 
looms. It might have been expected that he would have 
turned his attention to France and to Germany;but indepen¬ 
dent of the hostile dispositions of some of the neighbouring 
sovereigns, the raw material was too bulky to be conveyed at 
an easy expense through the bad roads of a half cultivated 
country ; and the ships of Spain and of Britain, who found 
an interest in supplying the wants of the Netherlands, un¬ 
laded their cargoes almost at his very door, and solicited in 
payment but little else than the goods which he had ma¬ 
nufactured. 
Spain was the first country on the western side of Europe, 
where the Tarentine breed of fine-woolled sheep were culti¬ 
vated with success by the Romans. 
This breed, intermixed with the native flocks, gave rise to 
the present fine-woolled sheep of Spain; and it does not ap¬ 
pear that this valuable race was ever greatly neglected in that 
country. That it abounded in sheep in what is called the 
middle age cannot be doubted. At the period when the 
Saracens extended themselves in Spain, about the eighth 
century, to use the quaint’words of Roderic, archbishop 
of Toledo, “it was fruitful in corn, pleasant in fruits, deli¬ 
cious in fishes, savoury in milk, clamorous in hunting, and 
gluttonous in herds and flocks,”—gulosa armentis et gre- 
gibus. He wrote in A.D. 1243. In England at that time 
sheep were so scarce, that a fleece was estimated at two- 
thirds the value of the ewe which produced it, together with 
the lamb. 
Into Spain the invaders either carried the arts of luxury, 
or, what is more probable, improved them by their superior 
industry. The revenue of one of their sovereigns in the tenth 
century amounted to six millions sterling; a sum, says Gib¬ 
bon, which at that time probably surpassed the united reve¬ 
nues of the Christian monarchs. When, several centuries 
afterwards, the Saracens were gradually expelled by their 
Christian neighbours, Spain saw nothing but the change of 
religion to compensate the loss of population, of agricultural 
and mechanical science, of industry and wealth. On the 
recovery of Seville from the Moors in 1248, not less than 
16,000 looms are said to have been found in that city. Of 
these, the greater number was probably employed in the 
fabric of woollen cloths. According to Ustarix, “ Theory 
and Practice of Commerce,” the manufactures of Segovia 
flourished most, both in point of number and quality, and 
were in high esteem, being the best and finest that were 
known in ancient times. 
We are told by Dillon, in his “History of Peter the Cruel,” 
that the woollen cloths of Barcelona were in high esteem in 
Seville in the reign of that prince, and in the preceding cen¬ 
tury. So far back as 1243, the woollen cloth of Lerida is 
spoken of in terms of great estimation. A few years after, 
Baurlas, Valis, Gerena, Perpignan, and Tortosa, were re¬ 
markable as manufacturing towns, and for the fineness of 
their cloths, fustians, and serges. So great was their expor¬ 
tation, that in 1353 there were 935 bales of cloth taken on 
board a ship from Barcelona to Alexandria by a Genoese pri¬ 
vateer ; and 1000 bales of cloth were taken on board three 
Catalonian ships in 1412, by Antonio Dorco, in the port of 
Callus. 
According to Lucius Marineus Siculus, who wrote in the 
time of the emperor Charles V., Spain was then full of herds 
and flocks, and not only supplied its own people most abun¬ 
dantly, but also foreign nations, with the very softest wool. 
Damianus a Goes, who was page to Emanuel, king of 
Portugal, in 1516, says, that there are annually exported 
from Spain to Bruges 40,000 sacks of wool, each selling at 
the lowest for twenty gold ducats. 
The superfine wools of Spain seem to have been first intro¬ 
duced among the Italian states. Thus Damianus a Goes in 
1541, after having specified the 40,000 sacks to Bruges, as 
before-mentioned, adds, “ and also to Italy, and other cities 
of the Netherlands, are annually sent about 20,000 sacks, of 
which those used in Italy, being of the choicest wool, are 
sold at from forty to fifty gold ducats each.” 
Next in order of time to the Italians, the manufacture of 
superfine wool seems to have been adopted by the French 
who, 
