A shuttle and loom to weave, pins to knit, scissors to cut, or needles and thread to sew, are requisite for every other dress; the haïk dispenses with them all. It is a web, but not wove (in the modern sense of the word); it is a covering, but neither cut nor stitched. When Eve had to bethink herself of a durable substitute for innocence, this is what she must have hit upon. The name it bears is such as Adam might have given, had he required it in Paradise, “_that which is wove_,” i.e. _web_. It is only a web, yet is it coat, great-coat, trousers, petticoat, under and over garment, enough for all and everything in one. Being but the simplest of primitive inventions, it outvies in beauty, and overmatches in convenience the succeeding centuries of contrivance and art: it completes the circle, the last step being not to return to, but merely to perceive the beauty of the first conception, and yield a barren and æsthetic applause to the perfection of the primitive design. It is the only costume to which the language of the Bible is adapted, or by which its metaphors are intelligible. When I had seen it, I understood “rending the garments;” “Justice as a garment;” “girding with power;” “robing with light,” “_clothing with a cloud_.” Adam’s names were given, not only as a description but with perfect knowledge of objects, which seem removed from the ken of man, until long labour and accumulated experience had found the order and the purpose of nature. What can be more exact as a logical definition, or more striking as a poetic image than the “day,” (םוי)--an “agitator;” the earth, (ץרא from צד) a “runner.” The heart derives its name from its action, בבל; the lever, דבכ, from its weight. The objection will doubtless be urged, that the Easterns do not change their fashions, or lose their habits, and if the haïk ever was in Palestine, it would still be there. I answer, two successive races have been driven forth from the Holy Land. The first three thousand years ago, the second nearly two thousand. Both of these, at present, wear it in Morocco. The Jews, when expatriated, adopted elsewhere the costume of the country wherein they settled, their own being proscribed; and those at present found in the Holy Land have returned thither with foreign usages, the very language being the Castilian. Thus, all that belonged to the Philistine and the Hebrew, has been swept away, and the original features of that most interesting of all countries have been, by Chaldean or Egyptian, Persian or Parthian, Greek or Roman, Pagan or Christian, utterly effaced.