but they are competent to dye from any
pattern.

The dyers say that their ancestors went to
the south to learn, and brought the art from
Mooltan, in the reign of Akhbar, when
Lahore was in a flourishing condition. That
when the Sikhs first took possession of the
town, trades of all kinds were discouraged;
and here occurs the battery we cannot force,
the terrible parenthesis (jub shuhur bur-bad
hogeea). The dyers emigrated, some to
Jumoo and some to Jugraon, but returned, on
the government assuming a more settled
aspect under Runjeet Singh. They are all
Mussulmen. They earn a living, with no
margin out of which to save. They hire no
labourers; but all the males of a house,
father, brothers, sons, and nephews, work
together. Their shops are all disorderly,
dirty, and unwholesome, surrounded by their
little hoards of filth.

Finally, and again by means of an intervening
broker, the dyed silk is taken to the
weaver's. The Lahore weaver works very
much as the English weaver worked a hundred
years ago, except that his machinery is
even ruder. The number of weavers in
Lahore is four hundred and forty-seven: they
are at work in about a hundred and thirty
shops. They are all Mussulmen and the
earnings of one of them rarely exceed fourpence
halfpenny a day. The whole cost of a
loom is between sixteen and seventeen shillings.

These people all work, except the dyers,
in confined apartments; and it is curious,
that although the winding and the twisting
could be done very well indeed by women,
there is not one woman employed in the silk
manufacture at Lahore.

Having spoken our word on behalf of
encouragement to the beginnings of a silk trade
in the Punjaub, we are reminded to add, that
free admission of silk goods from Lahore,
France, or from any other foreign place is not
courted by the customs of this country.
English silk manufactures are protected, and
however much the English farmer may believe
in the protective principle, the English manufacturer
has wit enough to beg that he may
not be put on the low footing of a domestic
pet. The manufacturers of broad silk in
Manchester, in consequence of the depressed
state of their trade, have been petitioning the
Government of late, not for any compensation
or protection, but for the cessation of
protective duties in their favour. They
believe that their foreign trade is seriously
damaged by the impression made in the
markets of the world, that in the matter of
silk England is unable to compete with the
continental manufacturer, and that therefore
she bolsters up her trade with a protective
duty. To this error the broad silk manufacturers
object, and they desire, therefore, in a
manly way, to be put out of leading-strings,
and left to depend solely on their own exertions.
That, indeed, is what we must all do,
sooner or later; and a government that would
assist its subjects in their industry should not
only open new roads of enterprise, but also
take away as much as possible the turnpike
gates from any that are now frequented.

THE GREAT CRANFORD PANIC.

IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIRST.

SOON after the events of which I gave an
account in my last paper, I was summoned
home by my father's illness; and for a time
I forgot, in anxiety about him, to wonder
how my dear friends at Cranford were getting
on, or how Lady Glenmire could reconcile
herself to the dulness of the long visit which
she was still paying to her sister-in-law,
Mrs. Jamieson. When my father grew a
little stronger I accompanied him to the seaside,
so that altogether I seemed banished
from Cranford, and was deprived of the opportunity
of hearing any chance intelligence
of the dear little town for the greater part of
that year. Late in November—when we had
returned home again, and my father was
once more in good health—I received a letter
from Miss Matey; and a very mysterious
letter it was. She began many sentences
without ending them, running them one into
another, in much the same confused sort of
way in which written words run together on
blotting-paper. All I could make out was,
that if my father was better (which she hoped
he was), and would take warning and wear
a great coat from Michaelmas to Lady-day, if
turbans were in fashion, could I tell her? such
a piece of gaiety was going to happen as had
not been seen or known of since Wombwell's
lions came, when one of them ate a little
child's arm; and she was, perhaps, too old to
care about dress, but a new cap she must
have; and, having heard that turbans were
worn, and some of the county families likely
to come, she would like to look tidy, if I
would bring her a cap from the milliner I
employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her
to forget that she wrote to beg I would come
and pay her a visit next Tuesday; when she
hoped to have something to offer me in the
way of amusement, which she would not now
more particularly describe, only sea-green
was her favourite colour. So she ended her
letter; but in a P.S. she added, she thought
she might as well tell me what was the
peculiar attraction to Cranford just now;
Signor Brunoni was going to exhibit his
wonderful magic in the Cranford Assembly
Rooms, on Wednesday and Friday evening in
the following week.

I was very glad to accept the invitation
from my dear Miss Matey, independently of
the conjuror; and most particularly anxious
to prevent her from disfiguring her small
gentle mousey face with a great Saracen's
head turban; and, accordingly, I bought
her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cup, which,