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452 art of weaving by delicate instruments, a dense population, a patient, skilful, artistic people, a sense of the beautiful, and a wealthy and luxurious class to purchase such costly fabrics.

We trace it back to the most remote ages. In the introduction to the "History of Hindostan," or rather of the Mohammedan Dynasties, by Mohammed Cassim, it is stated that in the year 3870 B.C. an Indian king sent various silk stuffs as a present to the King of Persia. The art of making silk was known in China more than two thousand six hundred years before the Christian era, at the time when we find them first possessed of civilization. The Phœnicians dealt in silks in the most remote past; they imported them from India and sold them along the shores of the Mediterranean. It is probable that the Egyptians understood and practised the art of manufacturing silk. It was woven in the island of Cos in the time of Aristotle. The "Babylonish garment" referred to in Joshua (chap. vii., 21), and for secreting which Achan lost his life, was probably a garment of silk; it was rated above silver and gold in value.

It is not a violent presumption to suppose that an art known to the Hindoos 3870 B.C., and to the Chinese and Phœnicians at the very beginning of their history—an art so curious, so extraordinary—may have dated back to Atlantean times.

Civil Government.—Mr. Baldwin shows ("Prehistoric Nations," p. 114) that the Cushites, the successors of the Atlanteans, whose very ancient empire extended from Spain to Syria, were the first to establish independent municipal republics, with the right of the people to govern themselves; and that this system was perpetuated in the great Phœnician communities; in "the fierce democracies" of ancient Greece; in the "village republics" of the African Berbers and the Hindoos; in the "free cities" of the Middle Ages in Europe; and in the independent governments of the Basques, which continued down to our own day. The Cushite state was an