the air-drawn entail, and the twenty thousand
a-year! Shares, real shares, are what they
hunger and thirst for. While othodox
speculators sell their shares through their brokers,
and at the market price, the bold dealers—
no longer Spectres, but Stags, will sell their
letters of allotment for fourpence, or anything,
premium (so that it be current coin) per
share. They personate directors; they get
up impromptu provisional committees in the
tap-room of the Black Lion; their references
are bishops, Queen's counsel, fellows of the
Royal Society; their substance sham shares
in sham companies. For awhile they are
attired in purple and fine linen; they consume
rich viands and choice wines in expensive
taverns; they drive high chariots, and prance
on blood horses. For six weeks they live at
the rate of ten thousand a-year: they ride
the whirlwind of Fortune! But after a storm
comes rain; and after a mania, a panic! Then
comes a run on the banking-houses; consternation
darkens Capel Court; ruin is rampant
on 'Change. And, as I speak, the old Ghosts
come creeping back to the old benches, and
begin listlessly to wait for the man so punctual
in his unpunctuality. The hats are more
crammed with papers, the rusty pocket-books
more plethoric, the pockets more loaded, the
button-holding talks are resumed as earnestly
and as lengthily as ever; yet the flesh and
blood of Staghood has departed, and the
figures crouching on 'Change, and growling
about Capel Court, are no longer men, but
City Spectres.

RAINBOW MAKING.

IT is a great idea—too large to be arrived
at but by degrees—that the fleeces of sheep can
clothe nations of men. The fleece of a sheep,
when pulled and spread out, looks much
larger than while covering the mutton; but
still it is with a sort of despair that we think
of the quantity required, and of the dressing
and preparation necessary, for clothing fifteen
million of men in one country, and double the
number in another (to say nothing of the
women), and of the number of countries, each
containing its millions, which are incessantly
demanding the fleeces of sheep to clothe their
inhabitants. We remember the hill-sides of
our own mountainous districts; and the wide
grassy plains of Saxony; and the boundless
table lands of Thibet, and the valleys of
Cashmere, all speckled over with flocks: we
think of the Australian sheep-walks, where
there are flocks of such unmanageable size,
that the whole sheep is boiled down for
tallow: we think of Prince Esterhazy's
reply to the question of an English nobleman,
when shown vast flocks, and asked how
his sheep in Hungary would compare in
number with these,—that his shepherds
outnumbered the Englishman's sheep; we think
of these things, and by degrees begin to
understand how wool enough may be produced
to furnish the broadcloths and flannels of the
world. But the most strong and agile imagination
is confounded when the material of silk
is considered in the same way. Compare a
caterpillar with a sheep; compare the cocoon
of a silkworm (the achievement of its life)
with the annual fleece of a sheep; and the
supply of silk for the looms of Europe, Asia,
and America, seems a mere miracle. The
marvel is the greater, not the less, when one
is in a silk-growing region, attending to the
facts and appearances, than when trying to
conceive of them at home. In Lombardy, we
travel, from day to day, during the whole
month of May, between rows of mulberry
trees, where the peasants are busy providing
food for the worms; a man in the tree stripping
off the leaves, and two women below
with sacks, to carry home the foliage. We
see what tons of leaves per mile must be thus
gathered daily for weeks together; we go
into houses in every village to inspect the
worms; we mount to the flat roofs of the
dwellings, and find in each countless multitudes
of the worms; we pass on, from country
to country, till we mount to the hamlets,
perched on the rocky shelves of the Lebanon;
and we find everywhere the insect secreting
its gum, or spinning it forth as silk; we
remember that the same process is going
forward in the heart of our Indian Peninsula,
and throughout China: we look at the broad
belt round the globe where the little worm is
forming its cocoons; and still we find it
impossible to imagine how enough silk is produced
to supply the wants of the world, from the
brocade of the Asiatic potentate to the
wedding ribbon of the English dairy-maid.
Nowhere is the speculation more difficult than in
a dye-house at Coventry.

Probably there was as much wonder
excited by the same thought, when King Henry
VIII. wore the first pair of silk stockings
brought to England from Spain; and when
Francis I. looked after the mulberry trees in
France, and fixed some silk weavers at
Lyons; and when our Queen Mary passed a
law forbidding servant-maids to wear ribbon
on bonnets; and when monarch after
monarch passed acts to teach how silk should be
boiled, and whence it should be brought, and
who should, and who should not, wear it
when wrought; but the perplexity and
amazement of king, lords, and commons
could hardly, at any time, have exceeded that
of the humblest visitor of to-day in any dye-
house at Coventry. We know something of
the fact of this astonishment; for we have
been noting the wonders that are to be found
on the premises of Messrs. Leavesley and
Hands at Coventry.

On entering, we see, ranged along the
counters, half round the room, bundles of
glossy silk, of the most brilliant colours.
Blues, rose-colours, greens, lilacs, make a
rainbow of the place. It is only two days
since this silk was brought in in a very