on Saturday night, for another Sunday's
wear, and so on, until she has wasted money
that would have bought her a good wardrobe.
Thus, from China round the world
to Oregon, and from the queen down
to the pauper, is the shawl the symbol of
woman's taste and condition. Whence come
all these shawls? For it is clear that the
supply which arrives from Asia over bleak
continents and wide oceans, can be only for
the rich and great. Some of the shawls from
Bokhara sell, in the market on the Russian
frontier, for two thousand four hundred
pounds each. Whence come the hundred
thousand shawls that the women of Great
Britain purchase every year?

Some of the richest that our ladies wear
are from Lyons; and the French taste is
so highly esteemed that our principal
manufacturers go to Lyons once or twice a year,
for specimens and patterns. Some of our
greatest ladies of all, even the Queen and
certain duchesses and countesses, offer to
our chief manufacturers a sight of their
treasures from India, their Cashmeres, and
other shawls, from a patriotic desire for the
improvement of our English patterns. From
these, the manufacturers of Norwich and
Paisley devise such beautiful things that,
but for the unaccountable and unrivalled
superiority of the Orientals in the production
of this particular article, we should be
all satisfaction and admiration. The common
cotton shawls, continually lessening in number,
worn by women of the working classes, are
made at Manchester, and wherever the
cotton manufacture is instituted. In order
to study the production of British shawls
in perfection, one should visit the Norwich or
Paisley manufactories.

If any article of dress could be immutable,
it would be the shawl; designed for eternity
in the unchanging East; copied from
patterns which are the heirloom of a caste, and
woven by fatalists, to be worn by adorers
of the ancient garment, who resent the idea
of the smallest change. Yet has the day
arrived which exhibits the manufacture of
three distinct kinds of shawls in Paisley.
There is the genuine woven shawl, with its
Asiatic patterns; and there is that which is
called a shawl for convenience, but which has
nothing Asiatic about it: the tartan—which
name is given not only to the checks of divers
colours which signify so much to the Scottish
eye, but to any kind of mixed or mottled
colours and fabric—woven in squares or
lengths to cover the shoulders. The third
kind is quite modern; the showy, slight and
elegant printed shawl, derived from Lyons,
and now daily rising in favour. The woven
kind is the oldest in Paisley. The tartan
kind was introduced from Stirlingshire—
without injury to Stirlingshire—which makes
as many as ever, but to the great benefit of
Paisley. The printed kind has been made
about six years; and it is by far the greatest
and most expanding manufacture. The most
devoted worshippers of the genuine shawl can
hardly wonder at this, considering the love of
change that is inherent in ladies who dress
well, and the difference of cost. A genuine
shawl lasts a quarter of a lifetime.
Ordinary purchasers give from one pound to ten
pounds for one, and can give more if they
desire a very superior shawl: a process
which it is not convenient to repeat every
two or three years. The handsomest printed
shawls, meantime, can be had for two pounds,
and they will last two years; by the end of
which time, probably, the wearer has a mind
for something new. The time required for
the production answers pretty accurately to
these circumstances. It takes a week to
weave a shawl of the genuine sort; in the
same time ten or twelve of the tartan or plaid,
and twenty or thirty of the printed can be
produced.

The processes employed for these three
kinds of shawls are wholly different; and we
will therefore look at them separately, though
we saw them, in fact, under the same roof.
As for the tartan shawls, there is no need to
enlarge upon them, as their production is
much like that of any other kind of variegated
cloth. We need mention only one fact in
regard to them, which is, however, very noticeable;
the recent invention of a machine by
which vast time and labour are saved. As
we all know, the fringes of cloth shawls are
twisted some threads being twisted together
in one direction, and then two of these twists
being twisted in the opposite direction. Till
a month ago this work was done by girls, in
not the pleasantest way, either to themselves
or the purchaser, by their wetting their hands
from their own mouths, and twisting the
threads between their palms. The machine
does, in a second of time, the work of fourteen
pairs of hands: that is, as two girls attend it,
there is a saving of twelve pairs of hands and
some portion of time, and the work is done
with thorough certainty and perfection:
whereas, under the old method, for one girl
who could do the work well, there might be
several who did it indifferently or ill. The
machine, invented by Mr. Hutchison, must be
seen to be understood: for there is no giving
an idea, by description, of the nicety with
which the brass tongues rise to lift up the
threads and to twist them; then throw them
together, and rub them against the leather-
covered shafts; which, instead of human palms,
twist them in the opposite direction. In seeing
this machine the old amazement recurs
at the size, complication, and dignity of an
instrument contrived for so simple a
purpose. The dignity, however, resides not in
the magnitude of the office, but in the saving
of time and human labour.

Of the other two kinds of shawls, which
shall we look at first? Let it be the true
and venerable woven shawl.

The wool is Australian or German—chiefly