Under the above technical name is produced in Glasgow a manufacture
little known beyond the sphere of those immediately engaged in the
business, the importance of which, however, as a means of employment
to the poorer Scotch and Irish peasantry, renders it deserving of more
attention than it has hitherto received. Sewed muslins include all
those articles which are composed of muslin with a pattern embroidered
on it by the hand--such as collars, sleeves, chemisettes, &c. together
with the long strips of embroidery used, like laces, for trimming
dresses, petticoats, &c. and called, technically, trimmings. The
manufacture of these articles in the form in which they are now used
was for a long period peculiar to France, and that country alone
supplied all the rest of the world with the limited quantities which
the high cost permitted to be consumed. An embroidered collar,
thirty-five years ago, was an article of luxury only attainable by the
rich, while the far greater part either dispensed with it altogether,
or contented themselves with one of plain muslin or cheap net. Soon
after that period, the rudiments of the manufacture began to be
established at Glasgow, where for some time it made but moderate
progress, and was confined to the production of a very low class of
goods, leaving still to the French all the finer and more tasteful
departments of the trade. During the last ten years, however, the
progress has been very rapid; and now it supplies abundantly, with
cheap and good embroidery, the whole British and American demand, to
the almost total exclusion of both French and Swiss work.

The process by which a perfect piece of embroidery, delicately worked
in a graceful pattern, and as white as snow, is produced, is far more
complicated than might be imagined. The simple plan by which
industrious ladies work a single collar on a traced pattern, with