As we have said, the Cashmere shawl became the rage. The farce of pretended equality in France was acted out, and the curtain dropped on it in preparation for quite a different tableau; people no longer risked their lives by dressing elegantly, and it was not now expected that the _soubrette_, the _blanchisseuse_, or the _poissonnière_ should dress precisely the same as the lady of a general officer. There was wealth, too, in the land, and the enormous sums demanded for these shawls were readily forthcoming. Sums equivalent to two or three hundred pounds of our money were commonly paid even for soiled worn articles, which had done duty as turbans to Mogul soldiers, or girded a Bayadere's waist, or been the sacerdotal garment of an idolatrous priest--and had very frequently been thus used by more than one generation. It is true, the durability of the fabric and the lasting properties of the dyes, permitted the cleansing of these shawls with scarcely perceptible injury or deterioration, but still it was only the intrinsic merit of the thing, which could have overcome the natural repugnance which the known or suspected history of a Cashmere must in many instances have occasioned. The Levant traders had now large commissions, and the result was that _new_ shawls were soon more easily procurable, but still bearing an enormous price. This is readily accounted for, and a brief description of the manufacture of Indian shawls will show how it is that they never can be cheap:--The wool of the Thibet goat is the finest in the world, and for the best shawls only the finest even of this wool is used. The animals are shorn once a year, and a full-grown goat only produces about eight ounces of wool of this first quality. There is every reason to suppose that the climate has very much to do with the perfection of the animal, for attempts to naturalize it elsewhere have all more or less failed. The loom on which a Cashmere shawl is woven is of the rudest and most primitive description, the warp being supported by two sticks, and the woof entirely worked in by the human hand. This slow laborious process permits a neatness and exactness of finish beyond the power of any machinery to rival; and when we take into account a life-long practice in the art, and--remembering the Hindoo "castes," which usually limit a family to the exercise of a single craft--in most instances the family secrets and traditions which have been preserved, we cease to wonder at the perfection of the work. These Asiatic weavers, temperate in their habits and readily contented, receive a wage of from three-halfpence to twopence a day; but if their wants more nearly approximated to those of an European laborer, what would an Indian Cashmere be worth, when we are informed that from thirty to forty men have sometimes been employed from eighteen months to two years in the manufacture of a single shawl! There is something very kindling to the