The value of these works cannot be estimated by this exhibit of profits, but by the low rates of insurance, and the safety secured to property from conflagration.

GAS WORKS.

The pipes to convey gas traverse the streets to the length of thirty miles. These works were commenced in 1850, and cost for construction $229,143 99.

The whole amount expended to the present time is......

Total amount of receipts in same time..

Balance.......

From which deduct gas consumed by city lamps

Balance against the works

Receipts last fiscal year

Add value of gas used by the city at cost..

Total.....

$617,236 81

412,843 76

$204,393 05

176,612 60

$27,780 45

$81,625 57

25,459 45

$107,085 02

Unproductive-City-hall, jail, engine-houses, public squares and lots, poor-house, hospital, and powder-magazine...

Total......

$858,000 00

229,000 00

$1,087,000 00

We have been comparing the statistics of Richmond, with those of several other cities, as we find them in recent numbers of "Hunts Merchants' Magazine."

In Philadelphia, in 1850, the population amounted to 408,762, the value of manufactures $60,494,575, or equal to $148 to each inhabitant.

In New York, in 1850, the population amounted to 515,547, the value of manufactures $104,219,308, or equal to $204 09 to each inhabitant.

In Boston, in 1855, the population amounted to 162,629, the value of manufactures $51,935,028, or equal to $319 40 to each inhabitant.

In Buffalo, N. Y., in 1855, the population amounted to 74,214, the value of manufactures $10,169,329, or equal to $137 03 to each inhabitant.

In Chicago, in 1857, the population amounted to 130,000, the value of manufactures $15,515,063, or equal to $119 34 to each inhabitant.

In Richmond, in 1858, the population amounted to 45,000, the value of manufactures $19,488,896, or equal to $433 08 to each inhabitant.

We have given the latest dates in the above exhibit which we have at hand. It is seen that the product of our manufacturing establishments gives to our population an average of nearly three times as much as the average of Philadelphia, more than twice as much as New York, onethird more than Boston, more than three times as much as Buffalo, and nearly four times as much as Chicago. Taking the figures as they stand above, the comparison must be gratifying to every citizen of Richmond, as well as to every Virginian. In making the comparison, it will be more favorable still to Richmond, when we remember that all the statements above are for periods of prosperity, except in the single case of Chicago, for the last four months of the year, and that in our case it is for the present year, in which we are just emerging from the effects of a terrible financial revulsion.

The number of hands employed in producing the above amounts are in

Here is shown another great difference in favor of Richmond. By a comparison of the list of our manufactures with any of the above cities, the difference in the average to each hand will be seen chiefly to be in our milling business, in which 375 hands turn out over four-and-a-half million dollars; and this illustrates another great advantage we enjoy in our great water power, and still another in being at the outlet of an interior which produces the only wheat, the flour from which has always been shipped to extreme southern latitudes without spoiling.

The advantages of Richmond over the cities named above, as a manufacturing locality, is without question. She has them in her immense water power, in her immediate vicinity to an almost illimitable field of the best coal, and in her great convenience to the very best iron ore, leaf tobacco, wheat, cotton, and almost every other kind of raw material.

Of the commerce of Richmond, and its comparison with other commercial places, we shall have something to show in a subsequent article. The following will exhibit the population and amount of real and personal property in some of our principal cities :

Here, again, Richmond compares most favorably with these principal

cities of the Union.

Art. IV.-TEXTILE FABRICS OF THE ANCIENTS.

THE clothing of the human race is an interesting subject of inquiry, and if "fine linen" now holds but a secondary place in some respects, it once held a proud place among textile fabrics.

The Greeks and Romans are but moderns when compared with the Egyptians and Assyrians. The fashions of Pharaoh's court, and the luxury of Sardanapalus, bore little analogy to the stately extravagance of George IV. or of Louis Quatorze. But unless, as Byron suggested, some future age should actually disentomb George IV. and his courtiers, posterity probably will be puzzled as to Brussels lace with the same doubts which perplex writers on ancient linen. When Lucius Lucullus invited his friends to supper in the Hall of Apollo, had he a shirt to his back? When lovely Thais inveigled the philosopher, had she a cambric handkerchief? The learned say that Alexander Severus was the first emperor of Rome who wore a shirt, at least in our sense of the word, for everybody had an indusium. And here we are fairly plunged in the ambiguities of language, and we shall not easily emerge from them. The Roman subuenta, the under tunic, was made of linum. Was it linen or calico? Curtis uses linum of cotton and cotton cloth. In Yorkshire they call flax "line;" we moderns have restricted the word "linen" to the fabric made from flax. We may remark in general that the more deeply we dive into antiquity, the more completely isolated we find mankind, in their arts and their luxuries, in their religion and their government. Clothing was one of the prime necessities of life, and different races of men have clothed themselves with various materials; the Chinese kept silkworms, and from time immemorial have worn silk; the natives of Hindostan cultivated the cotton tree, and consequently have worn calico; the Syrian, the Iberian, the Gaul, made garments of the skins of beasts; nay, the ancient Spaniard, and all that maritime population which dwelt on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, used leather for the sails of their ships. When Lucian, who was a Syrian, describes Timon in his poverty, he dresses the misanthrope in a dipthera, or leathern garment. Linen would have been unsuited to the poverty of Timon. Thus, even to modern times, while mankind live apart, nations are distinguished by their clothing. The native fabric of Otaheite was the tappa, made from the bark of trees, but Queen Pomare, although, like Penelope, skilled in the indigenous manufacture, preferred for herself an English cotton gown. At Manilla they make muslin from the fibers of the pine-apple; in New Zealand flax is in use, but the New Zealander does not employ the loomhe plaits the fibers into a square mantle for the chief.

So it is everywhere; the domestic production is cheap, the imported goods costly, and therefore valued. Thus linen, which so slowly made its way among the rugged Romans, was in more than one country the habiliment of females, of the luxurious, nay of the gods, and their attendants. In the days of old Homer the wife of Ulysses superintended the spinning, but it was wool which her maids spun. Doubtless she had linen among her stores, but it was linen imported from Egypt, with which a trade already existed. Whether Penelope had not even some calico may be doubted; for, if cotton was not yet cultivated in Egypt, it was brought from the East in caravans. The wares of China have been found

in the Pyramids, and a portion of those of India might have been there also. It is not at all unlikely that the rigging of the Grecian fleet which went to Troy was supplied from Egypt; for, at a period long subsequent to that expedition, we find Egyptian sailcloth made from flax enumerated among the commodities for sale in the Tyrian marts. (Fzekiel xxvii., 7.) The manufacture of ropes from the same material is a frequently recurring subject of those truly immortal designs which illlustrate Egyptian arts.

Here we are, then, on the early traces of the East Indian trade. It was carried on partly by ships from the Malabar coast, and partly by caravans arriving at the Euxine Sea, or passing down through Syria to Tyre, or even to Egypt. In the age of Homer we find a Mediterranean trade in iron flourishing in full vigor. When Telemachus inquires of Mentor whether he was bound, the goddess, in disguise, informs the prince that she was conveying iron to Brundusium, where she would take up a return cargo of copper. Doubtless the other goal of this voyage was on the coast of Pontus. The Chalybes, or Chaldæns, were famous for their iron-whether they got it from the higher Asia, or forged it themselves. At all events this track was one of those by which Asiatic goods found their way into Europe for centuries. In the age of Pliny, iron came from the Seres in company with wearing apparel and skins. But the earliest certain indication of the arrival of cotton in Europe is given by Herodotus. He relates the gift by Amesis, King of Egypt, to the Lacedemonians, of a linen corslet ornamented with gold and cotton, B. C. 556. The embroidery on this corslet, whether executed with the needle or the loom, was a triumph of Egyptian art. Devices of all kinds, more especially of a religious character, were produced by the Egyptian craftsmen, who wrought, according to Julius Pollux, with a warp of linen and a woof of cotton, or with colored threads, or gold. According to Pliny, whose information as to their operations was most accurate, they were familiar with the use of mordants. "In Egypt," he says, " they produce colored delineations with marvelous skill, not by applying the colors to the fabric, but drugs which take up the color. After the drug is applied there is no visible result; but the cloth, once plunged in the seething bath, is raised again partially colored. And marvelous it is, when there is but one color in the vessel, how a succession of hues is given to the robe, produced by the quality of the drug which calls them out; nor can they be subsequently effaced by washing."

It was probably against this delineation of patterns ingrain that the prohibition of the Mosaic law in Leviticus xix., 19, and Deuteronomy xxii., 11, were directed. The Israelites were to be withheld from luxury; that is the point of many of their institutions; their strength consisted in their simplicity. But, moreover, they were to be preserved from the symbolism of Egypt. The embroidered representations of Egyptian gods were as hateful to Moses as the more permanent images in wood or stone.

Here, then, we have arrived at the great flax-growing country. From Egypt the Greeks derived the manufacture of linen. But was all the linen which the Egyptians sold made from flax? More than one author has gone the length of asserting that the linen garments of the Egyptian priesthood, no less than the mummy wrappers, were all cotton. notion counts among its partisans the well-known names of Forster, of Tremellius, and of Dr. Solander. Rouelle, in the "Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1750," says that "all the mummy cloths

This

without resinous matter, which he had examined, were entirely of cotton; that the rags with which the embalmed birds are furnished forth, to give them a more elegant figure, were, equally with the others, cotton?" "Was the Egyptian flax cotton after all?" he asks, "or was cotton consecrated by religion for the purposes of embalming?" The inquiries carried on at the British Museum led to the same conclusions as those arrived at by the Frenchman. But the more recent microscopical investigations of Bauer and Thomson have overturned all these speculations. The fibers

of linen thread are said by these more recent inquirers to present a cylindrical form, transparent and articulated, or jointed like a cane; while cotton offers the appearance of a flat ribbon, with a hem or border at each edge. It has, indeed, been suggested that the ripeness of the cotton might affect the condition of the fiber, or that the ancient mode of treating the plant might give to the Egyptian flax an appearance not presented by European specimens. Yet, although Philostratus expressly affirms that calico was exported from India to Egypt for sacred purposes, the balance of opinion has inclined to the belief that all the cere-cloths at least were of flax.

As our inquiry leads us from the shores of Greece to the banks of the Nile, the language in which the subject of discussion is expressed is radically changed. In Egypt we are in contract with a Shemitic dialect. The Teutonic word "linen" disappears. The Greek, in purchasing a foreign commodity, had learnt the word bussos, and he had given it to the Romans as "byssus." But in the Shemitic dialects we meet with half-a-dozen words which may all mean linen or cotton, and whose signification has been abundantly disputed. No doubt these words had originally different significations; but eventually they were all confounded together. The account of the corslet presented by Amesis, if there were no other evidence, would prove that the Egyptians had cotton under the Pharaohs. The very phrase for cotton, which we find in the mouths of the Greeks and Romans, viz., "linen of the tree" or "woollen of the trees," we find in the book of Joshua ii., 6. But "byssus" seems to have been selected as the name of the material specially destined for sacred rites. It certainly is the term which Herodotus employs in speaking of the mummy wrappers. But had the father of history another word in use, intelligible at least to Greek ears? On the other hand, if bussos meant linen, why did he choose the foreign word? Byssus evidently had a special adaptation to his subject. That the Jewish byssus had a more yellow tint than the plant cultivated in Elis may be inferred from a passage in Pausanias; but the etymology of the word leads us to surmise that the name implied peculiar brilliancy and whiteness. Theocritus, who enjoyed the favors of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and may be supposed to know the appropriate name for the material used in Egyptian rites, represents one of his female characters as attending a procession to the grave of Artemis in a tunic of byssus.

But if we are in doubt as to the native names for the various sorts of Egyptian linens, the mummy wrappers leave no uncertainty as to the excellence of the workmanship. The interior swaths are indeed coarse; but some of the exterior bands vie with the most artistic productions of the modern loom.

The peculiarity of the Egyptian structure is a great disparity between the warp and the woof; the warp generally containing three or even four