ad long
resided in China, perhaps in the royal city of Nankin, the seat of a
monarch addicted to foreign superstitions, and who actually received an
embassy from the Isle of Ceylon. Amidst their pious occupations,
they viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, the
manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silk-worms, whose education
(either on trees or in houses) had once been considered as the labor of
queens. [75] They soon discovered that it was impracticable to transport
the short-lived insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be
preserved and multiplied in a distant climate. Religion or interest had
more power over the Persian monks than the love of their country: after
a long journey, they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project
to the emperor, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and promises
of Justinian. To the historians of that prince, a campaign at the foot
of Mount Caucasus has seemed more deserving of a minute relation than
the labors of these missionaries of commerce, who again entered China,
deceived a jealous people by concealing the eggs of the silk-worm in a
hollow cane, and returned in triumph with the spoils of the East. Under
their direction, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the
artificial heat of dung; the worms were fed with mulberry leaves;
they lived and labored in a foreign climate; a sufficient number of
butterflies was saved to propagate the race, and trees were planted
to supply the nourishment of the rising generations. Experience and
reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt, and the Sogdoite
ambassadors acknowledged, in the succeeding reign, that the Romans were
not inferior to the natives of China in the education of the
insects, and the manufactures of silk, [76] in which both China and
Constantinople have been surpassed by the industry of modern Europe. I
am not insensible of the benefits of elegant luxury; yet I reflect
with some pain, that if the importers of silk had introduced the art of
printing, already practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and
the entire decads of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of
the sixth century.

A larger view of the globe might at least have promoted the improvement
of speculative science, but the Christian geography was forcibly
extracted from texts of Scripture, and the study of nature was the
surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The orthodox faith confined