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8 4 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876. King Henry of Navarre, and sustained by the political economy of Colbert. It grew up in the genial atmosphere of the most splendid courts of Europe. The chemistry of Berthollet and Dumas furnished dyes for its fabrics ; the traditions of the Renaissance and the pencil of Watteau gave it designs; and Chevreuil imparted to it the secrets of harmonizing and contrasting colors. While, in later periods, the protective influences of the Government (whether empire or republic) have never been wanting, the pre-eminence of the silk-manufacture of France , has been sustained by a working population who have inherited the traditions and secrets of manipulation from generations of artisans, and by art schools for workmen, which Lyons was the first city in the world to inaugurate. The visitors at the Exhibition, whose imagination had been excited by the learned researches of Michel upon the precious stuffs of the Middle Ages, or the splendidly-colored plates of the characteristic silken tissues of every period recently published in Paris, might have experienced some disappointment at the comparatively small display of the figured brocades, damasks, and velvets so conspicuous in the personal costumes of the earlier periods. Mainly, as is asserted, through the influence of the Franco-Prussian war, which plunged France into mourning, the figured and brocaded stuffs were replaced by plain fabrics in personal costumes, although now beginning to reappear. It may not be generally known that it is in the perfect fabrication of the plain stuffs, especially the plain black silks, that the highest art of the manufacturer consists, as no inequality of thread or unevenness of tissue or dye can be concealed by the figure. Of the plain tissues of this description in this section recognized by the expert Judges as of incomparable excellence, it is useless to attempt a description. To be appreciated, they must be seen or worn. There was no lack of fabrics whose beauty was due to design and color. Conspicuous among them were printed foulards, upon which the arts of design and of impression would seem to have been ex hausted. The miraculous power of the Jacquard loom to produce the most complicated designs was most tastefully and appropriately shown in a woven representation in silk, upon a background of tissue, about two feet long arid as many broad, of the mulberry in leaves and fruit, with the silk-worm and moth in every stage of development; the colors exquisitely shaded, the mulberry branch being intertwined with a ribbon bearing the significant motto, vestit, ornat, ditat. Although decoration is sparsely used in stuffs for dresses, it still finds an infinite field for application in stuffs for upholstery, and especially in fabrics for church vestments. Antiquarian learning seems