Probably there was as much wonder excited by the same thought, when King Henry VIII. wore the first pair of silk stockings brought to England from Spain; and when Francis I. looked after the mulberry trees in France, and fixed some silk weavers at Lyons; and when our Queen Mary passed a law forbidding servant-maids to wear ribbons on bonnets; and when monarch after monarch passed acts to teach how silk should be boiled, and whence it should be brought, and who should, and who should not, wear it when wrought; but the perplexity and amazement of king, lords, and commons could hardly, at any time, have exceeded that of the humblest visitor of to-day in any dye-house at Coventry. We know something of the fact of this astonishment; for we have been noting the wonders that are to be found on the premises of Messrs. Leavesley and Hands at Coventry.
On entering, we see, ranged along the counters, half round the room, bundles of glossy silk, of the most brilliant colors. Blues, rose-colors, greens, lilacs, make a rainbow of the place. It is only two days since this silk was brought in in a very different condition. The throwster (to throw, means to twist or twine), after spinning the raw silk, imported from Italy, Turkey, Bengal, and China, into thread fit for the loom, sent it here in bundles, gummy, harsh, dingy; except, indeed, the Italian, which looks, till washed, like fragments of Jason's fleece. If bundles, and regiments of bundles, like these, come into one dye-house every few days, to be prepared for the weaving of ribbons alone, and for the ribbon-weaving of a single town, it is overwhelming to think of the amount of production required for the broad silk-weaving of England, of Europe, of the world. Of the silk dyed at Coventry, about eighty per cent. is used for the ribbon-weaving of the city and neighborhood; and the quantity averages six tons and a half weekly. Of the remaining twenty per cent., half is used for the manufacture of fringes; and the other half goes to Macclesfield, Congleton, and Derby.