Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/136

 In the useful arts, the Chinese are by no means deficient; and in what contributes to the necessaries, comforts, and even elegances of life, shew themselves to be as great adepts as their neighbours. The manufacture of silk has been long established among them; and thousands of years ago, when the inhabitants of England were going about with naked bodies, the very plebeians of China were clothed in silks; while the nobility there vied with each other in the exhibition of gold and embroidery, not much inferior to what they now display. In the fabled days of the Yellow Emperor, at the commencement of the Chinese monarchy, "the empress taught her subjects to rear the silkworm, and unwind the coocoonscocoons [sic], in order to make dresses; so that the people were exempted from cold and chilblains." When Confucius arose, the Chinese had long been in the habit of cultivating the silkworm, and the general rule then was, for "every family that possessed five acres of ground, to plant the circumference with mulberry trees, in order that all above a certain age might be clothed in silk." Down to the present age, the Chinese are still celebrated for the abundance, variety, and beauty of their silk fabrics, equalling in the richness of their colours, and the beauty of their embroidery, anything that can be manufactured in France or England, while the crapes of China still surpass the products of this western world. But they are not only skilled in making, they are also attached to the wearing, of gay apparel; the Chinese are confessedly a well-clothed nation, and, except where poverty prevents, the people are seen attired in silks and crapes, as commonly as we appear in cloth and leather. Their fashions differ indeed from ours, but the dress of a Chinese gentleman