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Scan 305
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 291. See the scan on archive.org.
1that vehicle, to operate as indicated for the sandal wood.
3In studying the art of colouring different substances, it is curious to note that, although it was familiar to oriental peoples from the remotest ages, it appears to have been scarcely, if at all, known or practised among the western nations until comparatively recent times. The enormous value set by the Greeks and Romans on the dyed stuffs of Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India, is an indication of this. For example, when the Greeks under Alexander, after the capture of Susa, sacked the treasury of Darius, they estimated the purple cloths found there at five thousand talents (about one-and-a-quarter millions of our money); and, in the reign of Augustus, a pound of Syrian dyed wool was worth in Rome a sum equal to thirty pounds sterling. The art of dyeing was by some of the eastern peoples associated with their religions, and the most unaccountable prejudices hindered its development westward, previous to the Dark Ages. Even when the light of the Renaissance dawned in Europe, the revival was slow, until the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Florence became its occidental home, where, about a century later, there were said to be no less than two hundred dye-works in existence; while, among the hundred guilds established in Paris about 1260, under Louis IX., a company of dyers finds a place. But it was not until after the discovery of America that the materials for colouring fabrics and other substances were increased to any appreciable extent by the importation of logwood, quercitron, Brazil wood, cochineal, annatto, and other dye stuffs, with all of which, with the excep-
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