as became her state and dignity. "She maketh for herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple;" while the conspicuous elegance of the robes worn by her husband makes him "known when he sitteth among the elders in the gates." Five hundred years after the date of this description, we hear of a fearful tragedy at the court of Persia, that grew out of a magnificent robe made for Xerxes the king by his chief queen Amestris; and still five centuries later, we find the Emperor Augustus, lord of all the wealth of Rome, refusing to wear any stuffs excepting those woven for him by his wife and daughters. The ancient kingdoms and nations crumble into dust; but as the new peoples spring up, we find the women, from the queen to the peasant, still at the distaff and the loom. The four sisters of the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan were famous for their skill in spinning, weaving, and embroidery; and the Saxon ladies in general were so accomplished in needlework, that it was celebrated on the Continent under the name of opus Anglicanum. Mr. Wright, in his History of the Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England, informs us that, down to about the close of the sixteenth century, "women as a rule were closely confined to their domestic labours, in spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other work of a similar kind; a hand-loom was almost a necessary article of furniture in a well-regulated household; and spinning was so universal that we read sometimes of an apartment in the house especially devoted to it,—a family spinning-room. Even to the present day, in legal language, the only occupation acknowledged as that of an unmarried woman is that of a spinster. The young ladies of great families were brought up not only strictly, but even tyrannically, by their mothers, who kept them constantly at work, exacted from them almost slavish deference and respect, and even counted upon their earnings."
Finally, we may complete the picture by glancing at our own countrywomen of only a hundred years ago as sketched by the Rev. Lyman Beecher in his account of his boyhood. Among their other crops, he and his uncle raised "an acre
