Tradition preserved, and experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts: society was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of exchange; and every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the industry of a thousand hands.

The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously ascribed to the gods.

In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length _silk_, have been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom.

In the choice of those colors which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple which the Phnicians extracted from a shell-fish, was restrained to the sacred person and palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason were denounced against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the throne..