“To her, beset by Trojan beauties, came, In borrowed form, the laughter-loving dame; She seemed an ancient maid, well skill’d to cull The snowy fleece, and wind the twisted wool.” The labours of Penelope, Helena herself, and innumerable passages in the works of the poet, all tend to confirm the fact. That _linen_ had also an early existence is proved at a very anterior period of the Jewish history. They had even fine linen previous to the construction of the utensils used in sacred worship; as, in Exodus, an ephod of linen is expressly mentioned; likewise in the xxvth chapter, 4th verse of that book, fine linen is expressly enumerated among those presents that the people were expected to offer freely to the Lord Jehovah. Whence we are justified in inferring they had most probably learned in Egypt to carry its structure to great perfection. We have linen mentioned likewise, in Homer, upon the breach of the truce between the Grecians and Trojans with their auxiliary forces. On Menelaus having been wounded by an arrow from the bow of Pandarus, where the poet sweetly sings-- “But thee, Atrides, in that dangerous hour, The gods forgot not, nor thy guardian power, Pallas assists, (and weakened in its force), Diverts the weapons from its destined course; So, from her babe, when slumber seals his eye, The watchful mother wafts the envenom’d fly. Just where his belt, with golden buckles join’d, Where LINEN folds the double corslet lin’d. She turn’d the shaft, which, hissing from above, Passed the broad belt, and through the corslet drove; The folds it pierc’d, the plaited LINEN tore And raz’d the skin, and drew the purple gore.” From what appears in the subsequent, as well as the former, part of this article, we submit, that the general manufacture of cloth, both woollen and linen, has been established; and if this is made out, the prior existence of the other subsidiary arts of spinning, weaving, &c. cannot be denied. There are hieroglyphical symbols in the British Museum, which denote the various operations of the manufacture of cloths; and upon a monument upwards of three thousand six hundred years old. Numerous arts have been discovered by mere accident. We are told, the very valuable operation of _feldt_making was discovered by a British sovereign, whose feet being always cold in the winter, he had wool put into his shoes; the moisture there contracted, the natural heat of the body, with the action to which this wool was exposed, between the foot and the shoe, caused the fleecy substance to consolidate; whence the origin of that very necessary article, the _Hat_. STOCKING MANUFACTURE.