such a distance as Calcutta ; and, if he be a rich man, the mokym will send as far as Delhi to meet him, and invite him to become his guest during his sojourn in the valley. Perhaps, again, when the merchant, half-dead with fatigue and cold, stands at length on the snowy summit of the Pir Panjal, or either of the other mountain-passes, he is suddenly amazed by finding there the servant of a broker, who has kindled a fire ready for his reception, hands him a hot cup of tea, and a kubab, a delicious kalioun, and a note containing a still more fresh and pressing invitation from his master. Such well-timed civility is irresistible; his heart and his boots thaw together, and he at once accepts the hospitality of the mokym, who, it may be, is awaiting the traveler with a friendly hug, at the bottom of the pass, two or three day's journey from the city, to which he obsequiously conducts him. He finds himself at home at the house of his new friend, and himself and his servants studiously provided with all he can require. His host, of course, takes care to repay himself in the end. He has an understanding with the shawl manufacturers who frequent his house, so that the guest is at the mercy of both parties; and, should he quarrel with the broker, and hope to make a purchase without his intervention, he would find it impossible. No shawl-vender can by any possibility be induced to display his stores until the ap

eagerly sought after by the rajahs and sultans of the east, but finding its way to Europe very rarely indeed. To make a pair of large and handsome Cashmere shawls requires the labor of twelve or fourteen men for half-a-year. The late Bunjeet Singh, the chief of Lahore, gave five thousand rupees for a pair of these woolen shawls, the patterns of which represented his victories. The animals from which the material is obtained are covered by nature with two kinds of coat or clothing; the one fine, curly, generally gray, and imparting to the skin a down more or less thick, as if to guard it against cold and damp; the other coarse, lank, and giving a general color to the animal; and, as it is only the inner and finer coating which is used for the fine shawls, the quantity produced is limited, and therefore high-priced. The down called poshm is collected from flocks of goats on the plains of Thibet, and brought to the confines of Cashmere on the backs of sheep. It is then cleaned, and one fourth of it (being all that is fitted for the shawls) is carried on men's backs the remainder of the distance to Cashmere. When arrived at Cashmere, it passes into the hands of the merchants, who sell it in small quantities to the weavers at the rate of about two rupees per pound. The thread is dyed a great variety of colors, then stiffened with rice-water. Various articles are woven with these colored threads, the process being slow and tedious on ac-proach of evening, being well aware of count of the rude construction of the looms. Shawls, coverlets, handkerchiefs, turban-pieces, gloves, socks, and other garments are woven of this poshm. The shawls are washed after being woven, to remove the rice stiffening; and a fine pale-yellow color is imparted by means of sulphur-flames."

The trade in shawls at Cashmere is rather a curious one. M. Vigne, in his Travels in Cashmere, thus describes it:

"The mokym or broker, who transacts business between the shawl manufacturer and the merchant, is a person of great importance in the city; and the manner in which his transactions are carried on is singular. He has correspondents in most of the larger cities of Hindoostan, whose business it is to collect and forward every species of information connected with his trade. By their means he seldom fails to hear of any sandaghur, or merchant, who is about to start for Cashmere, even from

the superior brilliancy imparted to their tints by the slanting rays of the setting sun; and when the young sandaghur has purchased initiation by experience, he will observe that the shawl is never exhibited by one person only; that the broker, perhaps apparently inattentive, is usually sitting by, and that, under pretense of bringing the different beauties of the shawl under his more especial notice, a constant and free masonic fire of sneezes and pinches, having reference to the price to be asked, and graduated from one hundred to a five rupee power, is secretly kept up between the venders by means of their hands extended under the shawl. When the merchant has completed his purchase, the mokym, who was before so eager to obtain him as a guest, pays him the compliment of seeing him safe to the outside of the city, where he takes leave of him at Chartuval, the very last place. within it.”

The following article from a cotempo-goat was introduced into that country rary journal contains the pleasant informa- more than thirty years ago, and the Cashtion that the Cashmere goat has been in- mere shawls imitated with considerable troduced into America: skill. Judges of the article pretend to say, however, that the real India shawl can be detected, by its having a less evenly woven web, as also from its brighter colors. It is likewise said that the border of the genuine Cashmere shawl is invariably woven in small pieces, which are afterwards sewed together, as the whole border is subsequently sewn on to the center. But other authorities deny that the skill of India is insufficient to broche a shawl; in other words to weave the border and center in one piece, or run the pattern of the former over the latter.

"It is not, as yet, generally known, that the Thibet goat, from whose wool the famous Cashmere shawls are made, has been introduced successfully into the United States. This enterprising undertaking was achieved, a few years since, after many difficulties, by Dr. J. B. Davis, of Columbia, South-Carolina, at that time employed by the Ottoman Porte in experimenting on the growth of cotton in the Sultan's dominions. Dr. Davis succeeded, at vast expense, in securing eleven of the pure breed, which, on his way home, he exhibited in London and Paris. Since that period, the goat has been introduced from South-Carolina into Tennessee, where it is said to thrive. The value of a flock may be estimated from the fact that no real Thibet goat has ever been sold for less than a thousand dollars. This enormous price, moreover, is not a speculative one, for no fleeced animal has wool of such fineness, softness, and durability. The wool of all the Thibet goats in Tennessee, for example, has been engaged at New-York this year at eight dollars and a-half per pound, the purchasers designing to send it to Paisley (in Scotland) in order to be manufactured into shawls."

The prices paid for the real Cashmere shawls, or those woven in India, have sometimes been almost fabulous. A fullsized shawl, such as is called in America a long shawl, ordinarily commands in Paris or London from five hundred to five thousand dollars, according to the quality. Scarfs and square shawls, being smaller, sell for less. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that all those shawls are manufactured in India in the shape in which they are sold here. Generally, indeed, the centers and borders come out separately, and are put together afterwards in sizes, and often patterns, to suit customers. Moreover a large portion of the shawls sold as real India ones are actually made in France; for the Thibet

Notwithstanding the successful imitation of these shawls, fashion and luxury still prefer the apparently ruder original. Just as laces, woven by hand, bring a price more than five times as great as the same pattern woven by machinery, so a Cashmere shawl, known to have come from India will fetch vastly more than the cleverest imitation. Probably however, this is not all. Persons familiar with both the article and the imitation, assert that the former is softer than the latter, and that this softness arises partly from the way the thread is spun, and partly because the Thibet goat, when exported from its native hills, sensibly deteriorates. There is also a shawl, known popularly as the French Cashmere, which is an imitation of the imitation; but this has none, or very little, of the wool even of the imported Thibet goat. The animal from which this valuable fleece is taken is a hardy creature, at least in its original locality; and their fine curled wool lies. close to the skin, just as the under hair of the common goat lies under the upper hair. Eight ounces for a full-sized goat is a large yield, but the yearlings, from which the best wool is taken, give less. About five pounds are required to make a shawl of the largest size and finer quality; but three or four pounds are sufficient for an inferior one.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON.*

any beneath the sun. We perpetually abuse, indeed, our system of government in the mere details of administration, but when we turn to philosophize upon its general merits, we are greater national egotists than the Chinese.

SINCE the date of our last notice of this | constitution, as it stands, is superior to work, Sir Archibald Alison has steadily pursued a task from which several cotemporary writers appear to have shrunk with a just and intuitive diffidence. To write a history of one's own age is at all times difficult; for in matters of fact historic materials are rarely accessible, and, in matters of opinion, a writer is almost invariably compelled to deal with events imperfectly developed. To extend the scope of such a history to the whole of Europe, is an undertaking yet more arduous. To enter upon such a labor when one is incurably afflicted with the itch of political prophecy, is a rashness almost inconceivable. The requisites of such a history are, therefore, great labor, deep learn ing, keen perception, profound thought, and unbiased opinion. Perhaps the only living authors who could even have approached to these necessary conditions are, Mr. Hallam, Mr. Carlyle, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis. There are no more ardent worshipers of the political history of their own age, and few reasoners are at once calmer and more acute.

We hold, therefore, that-apart from true and lasting historic reputation-there is no task more utterly hopeless than the attempt to gain popularity by a depreciation and abuse of the British Constitution. It offends our amour propre in the most delicate quarter. We have all the gravity of the Turks, and all the self-opinion of the Yankees. The notion, consequently, of imitating M. de Lamartine, when he wrote his History of the Girondists, is merely preposterous. We are perfectly satisfied with our form of government; and we are not liable to be shaken by impulsive sentiments. When a thoughtless people, like the French, who had long lived under the tyrannical and corrupt government of Louis Philippe, read an exciting record of a great struggle for public freedom, the moral of the story inevitably penetrated to their inmost heart. But when a thoughtful people, like our selves, who were living under liberty and order, read the dreary annals of potwallopers and the currency, the effect was naturally somewhat different.

"When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,

And fettered thousands bore the yoke of

We suspect that Sir A. Alison's design was dictated by the belief that political history might create the excitement in this country that it creates in France. His work was, at least, a novelty in English literature. But we believe that it was so, not because others in past generations had not imagined such a form of history, but because they had rejected it as impracticable. Sir Archibald, however, in any such belief as that which we have venHer voice their only ransom from afar." tured to impute to him, was greatly mistaken. The truth is, that we are, in the But Sir Archibald Alison must be an exjust sense of the term, a good old Conser-traordinary magician if he can kindle the vative people. No amount of historic writing will ever drive us from our dogged and invincible belief, that our own

* History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon, in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., D.C.L. Vols. V. and VI. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1856-57,

war,

Redemption rose up in the Attic muse,

same enthusiasm for rotten boroughs!

Besides these defects of idea, and of execution, the scope of the present work is gravely obnoxious to criticism. A "History of Europe" is a failure on the very face of its title. It can not be, what history ought to be, a picture. It admits neither of foreground nor of background

in delineation. There is no distinctive knowledge, not simply of those relations, point of view, and there is no defined van- but even of British history itself, our preishing point. If all the world were civil-sumption is as just as it is obvious, that ized, and if, consequently, our relations the extension of his subject does not exwith other continents were continuous, tend his scope of accurate information. and not exceptional, these deficiencies would be supplied by the connection of Europe with extra-European states. The idea of such a history, indeed, suggests an anachronism; for it would have been too gigantic to have been written on this side of the Deluge. The all-pervading defect in treatment is, that this is a history not of one state and one nation in its relations with the rest of Europe, but of some thirty states and thirty nations equally. It is for this reason that it is preeminently defective as a work of art. And it is for this reason that, in order to satisfy the essential conditions of a History of Europe, it is preeminently tedious. Who cares for the domestic institutions of Turkey, for the Portuguese parliamentary history, or for twenty other details concerning other states, which (whenever they happen to be accurate) are a mere réchauffé of what every man, in the very countries to which they relate, has long ago forgotten?

A History of Europe, therefore, is, on two leading grounds, an absolute and inevitable failure. It is overpoweringly tedious, and it is therefore essentially defective. The utmost labor of which one mind -or at least such a mind as Sir A. Alison's-is susceptible, is to make it tedious without making it complete. He writes too much about foreign countries for our islanders, and too little for those countries themselves. In nine cases out of ten, we may perhaps say in ninety-nine out of a hundred, the language in which it is written will not be comprehended where it might be interesting: it is quite certain not to be worth translating; and it will probably prove inaccurate in an equal proportion.

We may anticipate Sir A. Alison's reply. He will say that he writes in order that his readers should be better acquainted with the history of other countries, than a history professing to supply the direct relations alone of those countries with Great Britain could well afford. To this we answer, that those relations of foreign countries with Great Britain, are fully as wide a scope of inquiry as any single mind can master; and that when we find Sir A. Alison gravely deficient in his

One of the leading instances of the oblique reasoning of the author on the political philosophy of this country, is, that he has no notion of what the Conservative. principle amongst us really is. He seeks it simply in external institutions, and those institutions mere points of detail. His "Conservatism" is of all kinds the most non-Conservative: it is comprehended simply in the act of standing still. He can not distinguish between institutions, permanent in their nature, because they apply to certain phases of society which are permanent, and institutions variable, because they apply to phases of society which are variable. He confounds every thing which exists at a given time, as equal and essentially an element of Conservatism.

It is thus that the discussions of Sir Archibald Alison, instead of rising with philosophy, sink into political jargon. His politics are nothing but the politics of the most empty-headed politicians: they are the mere adoption of the cries of party. Now, when party cries are put forth by patronage secretaries of the Treasury, and whippers-in of the House of Commons, they are put forth by them in the character of what the moral philosophy of Paley would entitle us to describe as justifiable, or, at least, palliable untruths. The whipper-in rarely stops to believe in his professions: he regards their necessity as the one exceptional vice of constitutional government. But, least of all, does he expect that they will be gravely reproduced, investigated, supported, worshiped, and adored, by a writer professing himself a historian, and spending his life in historic writing.

We believe what continues to render each successive volume of Sir A. Alison at once false in philosophy and false in fact, is less the incapacity of the author for reasoning and research, than a supreme cacoethes scribendi. He has not the patience to arrive at conclusions. In his fifth and sixth volumes there is the same desire to instruct and the same impatience of self-instruction. He impersonates the didactic principle. To feel that his pen is going, evidently gives him infinitely greater satisfaction than to feel that his mind