wardrobes, bear trace; crape, the celebrated Norwich crape, now almost a forgotten fabric, was of later invention; but its fame is chronicled in Ministerial mandates during Walpole’s administration, 1721, when court mourning was ordered to consist of nothing but that pre-eminent material. Long since, the paramatta cloth has superseded both bombazine and Norwich crape; nor must we be unmindful that this superfine invention owes its origin to the skill and ingenuity of a manufacturer of the same city. Shawls of every variety have held a prominent place among the manufactures; indeed, may be considered as nominally the staple produce of the Norwich looms, though in reality such is not the fact, an infinite variety of materials, bearing as many new and fashionable titles, being in truth the result of the labour of its artisans, silk—satins, brocades, alpaccas, barèges, and many more; and of late years the shoe manufactory has so vastly increased, that it may fairly take a place henceforth among the constituents of the “fame” of the capital of Norfolk. It may not be out of place here also to give some little sketch of the rise and progress of that most important of all inventions and arts, printing, in these particular parts,—more especially as William Caxton, the first English printer, was one of the agents, and a principal one, in opening the commerce between this country and Flanders in 1464, when that port was appointed a staple for English goods as well as Calais, a measure fraught with immense advantages to the manufacturing districts of the country, and of course pre-eminently to this city. When he, the mercer’s apprentice, first stamped the “merchants’ mark” upon his master’s bales, he little thought that by this same process of stamping, carried forward by the ingenuity of many men into a new art, the whole aspect of the world’s history would be changed. The origin of these distinctive “marks,” still to be seen engraved on brasses, painted in church windows, and here and there carved on the doors and panels of old houses, is about as obscure as most of the other customs of those ages. They were undoubtedly used to distinguish the property of one merchant from another; and if their owners gave money towards the building or restoration of churches, their marks were placed in the windows, in honour of their liberality. Similar marks are to this day used by some of the merchants of Oporto and Lisbon, stamped upon their pipes of wine. Their forms seemed to depend on fancy, but a certain geometrical precision pervaded all; sometimes they were composed of a circle with a cross, or a shield with crosses laid over each other, of angles of every possible direction grouped into a figure, now and then the figure of a bird or animal added, but each differing essentially from every other, that it may retain its distinctive characteristics. Printing, however, though introduced into this country by Caxton, was for some centuries