Part 5

Speaking of Colchis, it was there that the best materials for painting were formerly procured. Besides, if you will ascend in spirit to the days of old, you will perceive every year on the roads leading from Georgia to the principal cities of India, as well as to Dimbeck, an immense drove of two thousand camels, loaded with madder. Thence the _red_[3] flowers were derived, of which Strabo speaks, which the nations dwelling on the borders of the Indus and the Ganges loved to spread upon their cloths. It is a particular worthy of remark that the Egyptians who constantly clothed the statues of their goddess Isis with _linen_ and _cotton_ drapery, never employed _wool_ for that purpose, a substance which they hated so much that they did not permit the use of it, even in interments, as the 44th chapter of Ezekiel informs us. This aversion extended even to shepherds, for you may read in Genesis that every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians. (46.)

The purple of Tyre was known at an epoch exceedingly remote, and the dyers of Phœnicia surpassed in skill those of all the other nations of the east. This people came a thousand years ago as far as Great Britain to procure an enormous quantity of tin, a metal which has the property, or rather certain salts of it have, of augmenting the intensity of the principal red colors contained in many vegetable and animal substances. Upon this subject, we would advise you to run over, in the third book of Strabo, the interesting recital which he gives of the pursuit of a Phœnician vessel by a Roman bark, which wished to seize the tin with which it was freighted. It was in the neighborhood of the coast of Cornwall: the Phœnician, seeing the prow of the Roman near his stern, threw three-fourths of his cargo overboard, and steered right upon a sand-bank, where the enemy, as you may well suppose, did not think of following him. The Tyrians, astonished at the great opulence which their city attained, attributed to the gods the magic art of dyeing in purple. All writers, and especially Ctesias, physician to a king of Persia, who lived four hundred years before the Christian era, and Ælian, a contemporary of Alexander Severus, frequently allude to an insect, to which the Phœnicians were indebted for the superior manner in which they could produce an admirable scarlet. It was evidently the cochineal: and this little animal must have been at that time less rare than at present in Syria, India, and Persia, since the humblest classes frequently wore stuffs dyed with purple. It is not surprising that they knew not how to extract from the cochineal the most brilliant of all the known reds, the carmine, before which the vermillion grows pale, and which chemistry can procure for us, in our days, in great abundance; and you know that this little insect lives upon the _cactus_ which grow in Brazil, in Mexico, at Jamaica, and at Saint Domingo.

The fashion of wearing silk was unknown at Rome, before the beginning of the empire. The rage for dressing in it was already so great in the time of Tiberius, that the emperor prohibited the use of it by a positive law. The Greeks also had a taste for it; and the cloak of _Amphion_ was certainly of silk, for the historian Philostratus (Ion, Book I.) tells us that its color changed according to the different ways in which the light was reflected from it. Pliny gives us to understand that the gold stuffs of the ancients were not made as those of our time, of a thread of gold or silver, wrapped around a woof of silk, but that they were woven of gold deprived of all alloy: knowing this, he speaks of the manner in which the wife of Claudius dressed herself to attend a _Naumachia_ or sea fight, in the following terms—“Nos vidimus Agrippinam—indutam palludamento auro textile, _sine alia materia_.” It is about fifty years since they extracted, by assaying, more than four pounds weight of pure gold from some old dresses which the fathers of the Clementine College, at Rome, discovered in an urn of basalt, buried in their vineyard. Tarquin, the Elder, was he, among the Roman Sovereigns who most usually wore dresses of gold.

From the time of Homer the Greeks wore _black_ dresses for mourning. This bard shews us Thetis wearing, after the death of Patroclus, the blackest of her dresses. (Iliad, 24.) For many years the same usage prevailed among the Romans, but it was partly changed under the emperors, so that when Plutarch wrote, the women in mourning could wear nothing but white. Besides, we have a proof of it at the obsequies of Septimius Severus: “The image of this emperor,” Herodian tells us, “formed of wax, was surrounded on one side by a row of women in _white_, and on the other by the body of all the senators, clothed in _black_. At the death of the Empress Plotina,” adds the historian, “her husband Trajan covered himself with very black habits for the space of nine days.” The _toga_ necessarily received as many shades of color as the other garments: but as to the form of this kind of robe it is impossible to decide. When Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, asserts that the toga presented the appearance of a semicircle (’ημικυκλος) he did not at all intend to describe its shape, but only the form which it assumed when worn upon the body. Strabo asserts that the military cloak with which the warriors clothed themselves had an oval form; and that among the Athenians it was often worn by the young people even in time of peace. The _tunic_, which was the principal part of the under clothing, was not generally used among the nations of antiquity, except the Greeks and Romans; all the Cynic philosophers disdained to make use of it. We know that Augustus put on as many as four tunics in winter. The name of this great emperor reminds us that it was in his reign, or thereabouts, that the Romans began to use table-cloths. Montfaucon believes that the greater part of them were of cloth striped with gold and purple. In France the ancient table-cloths were intended for collecting, after the meal, the smallest crumbs that were left, that nothing might be lost; and D’Arcy informs you that among our neighbors, the English, table linen was very seldom used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

As there exist in our days many nations, especially in the torrid zone, who do not wear _hats_, (a name by which we must understand every covering for the head, as its etymology plainly indicates,) so it formerly happened that the nations did not always think of making use of them. Thus one of the most civilized, the Egyptians, went bare-headed, according to the authority of Hesiod. Amongst the Orientals, and especially amongst the Persians, the turban was in great vogue; that of the sovereign was composed of a whole bale of muslin. It was from this last mentioned people that the Jews derived the turban. The hats of the Greeks must have had very large brims, to judge from the root of the word (πετασος) which designated them. The Romans granted to their freedmen the right of covering themselves with a kind of cap, which has been since adopted as the emblem of liberty. It is to a Swiss, residing in Paris, about the beginning of the fifteenth century, that we owe the first invention of felt hats. They were generally known at the close of the reign of Charles VII.: this monarch himself wore one at his triumphal entry into Rouen, in 1449. We read in Daniel that the worthy townsmen of that ancient city stood still as if petrified, so much were they astonished at seeing his majesty’s hat; the historian adds that its lining was of red silk, and that it was surmounted by a superb bunch of feathers. Before the period of which we speak, it is probable that the French covered their heads in the same way as the English, that is to say, with woven caps or rather with cloth and silk hoods.

The stockings of the ancients were made of little pieces of cloth sewed together. We cannot say with certainty in what country the stocking-frame was invented. France, England and Spain respectively claim this useful discovery. A short time before the unfortunate tournament, in which Henry II. lost his life, he put on the first pair of silk stockings ever worn. Five years afterward, we see in England, William Ryder presenting a pair, as a very precious article, to William, Earl of Pembroke. Ryder had learnt the method of making them from an Italian merchant.

Many persons probably know not that _wooden shoes_ date from a very remote period; for the Jews wore them long before the age of Augustus. Perhaps they were not made exactly like the wooden shoes so common among the poorer classes in France; but it is not less true that this kind of covering for the feet was generally adopted among nearly all the people of Judæa: sometimes, however, we observe leather shoes among them; and the Jewish soldiers covered their feet with copper, or with iron. The shoes of the Egyptians were of _papyrus_; the Chinese and the Indians manufactured theirs of silk, of rushes, of the bark of trees, of iron, of brass, of gold or of silver, according as their fortune permitted, or their fancy dictated. At Rome, as in Greece, leather was the material which covered the feet of every one. The Roman women wore _white_ shoes: the common people wore _black_: and the magistrates set off their feet with _red_ shoes on solemn occasions. A thousand years ago the most powerful sovereigns of Europe had wooden soles to their shoes. Under William Rufus, son of the great Duke of Normandy, who conquered at Hastings, in 1066, a fashion was introduced into England of giving to the shoes an excessive length; the point which terminated them was stuffed with tow, and curved up on high like a ram’s horn. In the fourteenth century they thought of connecting these points with the knee, by means of a gold chain. Great must have been the surprise of the worthy Anglo-Saxons, on beholding this strange species of vegetation sprouting up suddenly amongst them! Some called to remembrance the history of the serpent’s teeth, which Cadmus sowed, whence a swarm of soldiers issued; others conceived that it was the costume of magicians; and little children sometimes, when going to bed, asked their mothers if there was no danger that their heads might be metamorphosed in the night into those of a horrible deer? Before leaving this paragraph upon shoes, we would call to recollection the antiquity of the art of the leather-dresser: open for that purpose the Iliad, and you will find in the Seventeenth Book, tanners preparing skins to make leather of them. This class of manufacturers composed, three hundred years ago, a very important body, since we possess the account of a furious quarrel which broke out, under Queen Elizabeth, between them and the shoe-makers. We are pleased to record here the perfection with which they manufacture leather at this date in the New World. In South Carolina, as well as in the state of Virginia, the Indian women are so skilful in this branch of industry that a single person can dress as many as ten deer-skins a day.[4] Of all the transformations which are wrought in the arts, that of the animal substance into leather is, without doubt, one of the most curious. The process, by means of which they set about accomplishing it in old times, was the result of a calculation still more ingenious than that of changing two opaque bodies into a transparent body to make glass, for instance; or else two transparent bodies into an opaque body for making soap. Besides, you know that chemistry actually teaches us that leather is a real salt, a _tannate of gelatine_. This assertion was not uttered with confidence until M. Pelouze had extracted from tan in late years the tannic acid in a state of remarkable purity. Besides this, you may now explain a phenomena which is repeated at a great distance upon the ocean, at the time of some lamentable shipwreck. The journal which records for you the history of one of these sad events often tells you that in the last moment of famine, the unhappy survivors took to eating their shoes, and that life is sometimes prolonged by these means! Certainly, for the gelatine possesses nutritious properties, even when its peculiarities are stained with a thousand impurities, as is leather.

The subject upon which we have endeavored to present some observations, is so capable of being extended that a large volume in octavo would scarcely suffice to contain all the historical knowledge relating to it. But such a dissertation, carried out to the extent or with the exactness which it admits of, would only constitute at last a kind of catalogue or bare enumeration of the thousand modifications which human vestures have undergone down to our times. The memory of the reader would be unable to retain so prodigious a number of minute particulars, and the curiosity of his mind, fatigued by so many useless details, would be extinguished before finishing the third part. These changes have often, it is true, nothing for their object but the accessory and secondary parts of dress, as the following passage, which we meet with in the _voyages_ of M. de Chateaubriand, seems to point out.

“One thing has at the same time struck me and charmed me; I have met in the dress of the Auvergne peasant the attire of the Breton peasant. Whence comes this? It is because there was formerly for this kingdom, and for all Europe, a _groundwork_ of a common attire.” (Vol. 2., p. 296.)

In another particular also, men have always been constant, that they have never ceased to seek for the material to compose their clothing from the animals which the Creator has placed in their respective climates. It will probably be the same till the end of the world. It is thus that the nations under the temperate zone have recourse for covering to wool, because, being a bad conductor of caloric, it prevents the escape of it from their bodies. In the frozen zone the Russians, the Esquimaux, and the Greenlanders, clothe themselves in furs, a material which is a still worse conductor of caloric; while the natives of countries under the influence of the torrid zone, make their dresses of hair or horse-hair, whose conducting properties are in an inverse ratio to those of furs. It is worth remarking that the animals which in temperate regions are covered with wool or ordinary hair, are provided, when they inhabit countries really cold, with an under-fleece of very fine wool: it is the case with goats, sheep, dogs, horses, and Thibet cows.

If by a game of metempsychosis, you were enabled to return to existence two hundred years hence, what unheard of changes would you not see in the dress of individuals. Transport in anticipation your shade to a point commanding one of the public promenades of the capital; suppose yourself, for instance, on the top of the Vendôme Column, on a fine summer’s evening; you would, perhaps, perceive the _dandies_ of the time strutting in frocks, whose leg of mutton sleeves are as voluminous as those of our sylphides at this day. Their hats, instead of being of beaver or of fur, have a similar shape to that which our ladies adopted in 1839. For the young folks a notched veil would be the prescribed mode; the men, of a certain age, would embellish their hats with a superb scarlet plume. As to the women, who will now dare to affirm that they will not then cover their heads with perukes _à la_ Louis XIV. topped off with three-cocked hats, and that from their chin there will not descend a band _à la procureur du roi_? Extend your Pythagorean glance farther into the ages, and you will, perhaps, discover another part of mankind adding to their dress an enormous pair of wings! We may doubt that the gnomes, the sciences, will never render the attempt to make use of them more effectual than that of the son of Dædalus in old times; but in return, posterity may fly by another process, in case the æronauts can discover the secret of steering themselves in mid-air. Should this expectation be realised, we may then hear one of your future grand-nieces (who will be the belles of the noble Faubourg) say to her domestic on rising from her breakfast, “Ganymede! my balloon, with its boat; I wish to go dine to-day with my cousin, at Florence.”

[2] It is generally believed that the word _calico_ is derived from Calicut, a city on the coast of Malabar in Hindostan, whence the first patterns of this stuff came to Europe.

[3] Dyers now know how to produce a very durable red by dipping their stuffs in a solution of acetate of alum, before subjecting them to the action of the madder. It would be desirable that they should begin to derive some advantage, on a large scale, of a new substance, lately discovered by Mr. Robiquet, which possesses the property of producing a red amaranth or pansy, very agreeable. Chemists call this substance _orsine_.

[4] This will be news to the people “in South Carolina, as well as in the state of Virginia.” _Translator._

Philadelphia, May, 1841.

* * * * *

TO LORD BYRON.

FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE.

BY R. M. WALSH.

Thou, whose true name the world doth yet not know, Mysterious spirit, mortal, angel, fiend, Whate’er thou art, oh! Byron, still I love Thy concerts’ savage harmony, ev’n as I love the noise of thunder and of winds Commingling in the storm with torrents’ voice! Night is thy dwelling, horror thy domain; The eagle, king of deserts, thus doth scorn The lowly plain; he seeks, like thee, steep rocks By winter whitened, by the lightning riven; Shores strewn with fragments of the fatal wreck, Or fields all blackened with the gore of carnage: And whilst the bird that plaintive sings its griefs ’Mid flow’rets, builds its nest on bank of streams, Of Athos he the summits fearful scales, Suspends his eyre o’er the abyss, and there, Surrounded by still palpitating limbs, By rocks with bloody banquets ever foul, Soothed by the screaming anguish of his prey, And rocked by tempests, slumbers in his joy.

Thou, Byron, like this brigand of the air, In cries of woe dost sweetest music find. Thy scene is evil, and thy victim man. Like Satan, thou hast measured the abyss, And plunging down, far, far from day and God, Hast bid to hope farewell for evermore! Like him, now reigning in the realms of gloom, Thy dauntless genius swells funereal strains; It triumphs; and thy voice in hellish tone Sings hymns of glory to the god of evil. But why against thy destiny contend? ’Gainst fate what may rebellious reason do? It hath but (like the eye) a bounded scope. Beyond it nor thy eye nor reason strain; There all escapes us; all is dark, unknown. Within this circle God hath marked thy place. How? why? who knows?—From His Almighty hands The world and human beings he hath dropped, As in our fields he spread around the dust, Or sowed the atmosphere with might or light. He knows; enough; the universe is his, And we can only claim the present day. Our crime is to be man and wish to know: To serve and know not is our being’s law. Byron, this truth is hard, and long I strove Against it; but why turn away from truth? With God, thy title is to be his work; To feel, t’adore thy slavery divine; In th’universal order to unite, Weak atom as thou art, to his designs Thy own free will; by his intelligence To have been conceived, and by thy life alone To glorify him—such, such is thy lot! Ah! rather kiss the yoke that thou wouldst break; Descend from thy usurped rank of god; All, in its place, is well, is good, is great; In His regard, who made immensity, The worm is worth a world; they cost the same!

This law, thou say’st, revolts thy sense of right; It strikes thee merely as a strange caprice; A snare where reason trips at every step— Let us confess and judge it not, great bard! Like thine, my mind with darkness is replete, And not for me it is to explain the world: Let Him who made, explain the universe. The more I sound the abyss, the more, alas! I lose myself amid its viewless depths. Grief, here below, to grief is ever linked, Day follows day, and pain succeeds to pain. In nature bounded, infinite in wish, Man is a fallen god rememb’ring Heaven: Whether that, disinherited of all His pristine glory, he doth still preserve The mem’ry of his former destinies, Or that the vastness of his wishes gives A distant presage of his future greatness— Imperfect at his birth, or fallen since— The great, the awful mystery is man. Within the senses’ prison chained on earth, A slave, he feels a heart for freedom born, And wretched, to felicity aspires. He strives to sound the world; his eye is weak;— He yearns to love; whate’er he loves is frail. All mortals unto Eden’s exile bear A sad resemblance—when his outraged God Had banished him from that celestial realm, Scanning the fatal limits with a look, He sat him, weeping, near the barred gates, He heard within the blest abode afar, The sigh harmonious of eternal love, Sweet strains of happiness, the choral song Of angels sounding God’s triumphant praise; And tearing then his soul from heav’n, his eye Fell back affrighted on his dismal lot. Woe, woe to him who from his exile here Hath heard the concerts of an envied world! When Nature once ideal nectar tastes, She loathes the cup Reality presents. Into the possible, in dreams she leaps; (The real is cramped; the possible, immense;) The soul with all her wishes there doth take Her sojourn, where forever she may drink From crystal springs of knowledge and of love, And where, in streams of beauty and of light, Man, ever thirsty, slakes his thirst. And thus, with Syren visions charming sleep On waking, scarce she knows herself again.

Such was thy fate, and such my destiny! I too the poisoned cup did drain; like thine My eyes were opened, seeing not; in vain I sought the enigma of the universe; I questioned nature for its cause; I asked Each creature why created; down the abyss, The bottomless abyss, I plunged my look; From the atom to the sun, I all explored; Anticipated time, its stream did mount; Now passing over seas to hear the words That drop from wisdom’s oracles; but found The world to pride is ever a sealed book! Now, to divine the world inanimate. To nature’s bosom flying with my soul, I thought to find a meaning in her voice.