There are printed samples with whose writers fame has been busy; but who can say what curiosities of letter-writing daily mingle with the mass that pours through the London Post-Office? Can it be this continual custody and superintendence of so large a share of their fellow-creatures' wisdom, fortunes, and folly, that endows post-office functionaries in every quarter with such an amount of proverbial crustiness, if the word be admissible? Do they, from the nature of their business, know too much about the public to think them worth civility, so that nobody has yet discovered a very polite postmaster or man? A strange life the latter leads in our great cities. The truest representative of destiny seems his scarlet coat, seen far through street and lane: at one door he leaves the news of failure and ruin, and at another the intelligence of a legacy. Here his message is the death of a friend, while to the next neighbor he brings tidings of one long absent, or the increase of kindred; but without care or knowledge of their import, he leaves his letters at house after house, and goes his way like a servant of time and fortune, as he is, to return again, it may be, with far different news, as their tireless wheels move on. Are there any that have never watched for his coming? The dwellers in palaces and garrets, large families, and solitary lodgers, alike look out for him with anxious hope or fear. Strange it is for one to read over those letters so watched and waited for, when years have passed over since their date, and the days of the business, the friendship, or perhaps the wooing, to which they belong are numbered and finished!
How has the world without and within been altered to the correspondents since they were written? Has success or ill fortune attended the speculations by which they set such store? What have been their effects on outward circumstances, and through that certain channel, on the men? Has the love been forgotten? Have the friends become strange or enemies? Have some of them passed to the land whose inhabitants send back no letters? And how have their places been filled? Truly, if evidence were ever wanting regarding the uncertainty of all that rests on earth, it might be found in a packet of old letters.
A CHAPTER ON SHAWLS.
We scarcely know a truer test of a gentlewoman's taste in dress than her selection of a shawl, and her manner of wearing it: and yet if the truth must be owned, it is the test from which few Englishwomen come with triumph. Generally speaking, the shawl is not their forte, in fact they are rather afraid of it. They acknowledge its comfort and convenience for the open carriage, or the sea-side promenade, but rarely recognize it for what it is, a garment capable of appearing the most feminine and graceful in the world. They are too often oppressed by a heap of false notions on the subject; have somehow an idea that a shawl is "old" or "dowdy;" and yet have a dim comprehension that the costly shawls which they more frequently hear of than see, must have some unimagined merits to prove an excuse for their price.
The Frenchwoman, on the contrary, has traditions about "Cashmeres," and remembers no blank of ignorance on the subject. She played at dressing her doll with one, you may be sure; chronicled as an epoch in her life, her first possession of the real thing; holds it as precious as a diamond, and as something to which appertains the same sort of intrinsic value; and shrugs her shoulders with compassionate contempt at an Englishwoman's ignorant indifference on this subject—just as a lover of olives pities the coarse palate which rejects them. Truly the taste for the shawl is a little inherent, and a great deal acquired and cultivated; as appreciation for the highest attributes of every department of art ever must be, from a relish for Canova's chefs-d'œuvres down to a relish for M. Soyer's dishes.
Of course among those we are addressing, there is a minority who do know, and duly esteem a beautiful shawl: perhaps, from the possession of wealth, they have long been accustomed to be surrounded by objects of rare and exquisite fabric, and their practiced eyes would be quick at detecting inferiority: perhaps without great riches or the personal possession of valuable attire, a fine taste may have been cultivated by circumstances: and perhaps they are Anglo-Indians, or the relatives and near friends of Anglo-Indians, who know well a "Cashmere,"—measuring every other shawl in the world by and from it—and to whom the word conjures up a host of memories half sunshine and half shadow.
It was not until quite the close of the last century, that Cashmeres were prized in Europe. Travellers' tales had mentioned them, it is true, but that was before the locomotive age, and when travelers were few, and traveling unspeakably tedious; when soldiers went to India to hold and increase their country's territory; when a few traders made princely fortunes; but when every system of interchange was narrow and exclusive, and people were taught to be content with clumsy common wares, instead of raising them to excellence by the spur of competition. It is said that in the year 1787, the embassadors of Tippoo Saib left behind them at Paris a few Cashmere shawls—intended as gracious presents we presume—but which were regarded solely as curiosities, and not even much esteemed in that capacity, for we learn that they were employed as dressing-gowns, and even used for carpeting! Not till after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt did they become the rage; and a solid good resulted from that campaign in the introduction of a fabric destined to be the model of one of the most famous manufactures of the French.
Madame Emile Gaudin, a lady of Greek extraction and a reigning beauty, is reputed to have first worn a Cashmere shawl in Paris; but if we know any thing of the "Consul's Wife," or the "Empress Josephine," she was not very far behind, for her love of Cashmeres was next to her love of flowers, as more than one anecdote might be called in to testify. What scenes this history of an inanimate object conjures up to the mind's eye. These leaders of fashion when the old century went out on the young Republic of France, whose Master was already found—who were they? The wives of men who were working out the destiny of Europe, guided by a chief who, be he judged for good or evil, looms on the page of history in giant proportions!