Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/441

 city with himself. For there can be scarcely a doubt, but that Leo, who wrote the MS., was the same who was the author of the Chronicon. The author of the Chronicon, at the commencement of his history, calls himself "Frater Leo, cognomine Marsicanus ". He was made Bishop of Ostia A. D. 1101, so that we may suppose him to have been twenty or thirty years of age, when the MS. was made. Of his aptitude for such an employment we cannot doubt, when we consider his future labors as Librarian and author of the Chronicle. But if these facts be evident, it is equally manifest, that these two accomplished Benedictines could not have expressed their veneration towards their founder in any way better suited to their ideas and belief than by exhibiting in the manner described that relic, WHICH WAS SOLEMNLY DISPLAYED ONCE A YEAR WITH BURNING CANDLES AND ATTENDING ACOLYTHES TO THE ADMIRING AND ADORING CROWD OF DEVOTEES.

On inquiry it is found that this relic exists no longer at Monte Casino, although the original copy of the Chronicon of Leo Ostiensis is still preserved in the Library. It appears that the relic has long been lost, since there is no mention either of it, or of the casket which contained it in the "Descrizione Istorica del Monastero di Monte Casino, Napoli, 1775."

A large glove of this substance is in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. An English traveller states that he has lately seen at Parma a table-cloth, made of Amiantus from Corsica, for the use of the ex-Empress Maria Louisa, who resided there after the fall of Napoleon.

In modern times cloth of asbestos is scarcely made. Indeed it is not probable that this material will ever be obtained in much abundance, or that it will cease to be a rarity except in the places of its production. It is never seen in Great Britain, or on the continent, save in the cabinets of the curious.