maidens, and his home was made beautiful by his wife. and his sisters and their slaves. There, as in mediæval homes, lessons of morality and religion, and the love and fame of noble deeds, were taught by the painting of the needle to the minds of the young men, who would have scorned more direct teaching; and the children felt the influence, as the women wove what the bards sang.

Alas! we have but few specimens of embroideries of which we know the history, earlier than the tenth and eleventh centuries. Yet from the days of the books of the Old Testament and the song of the siege of Troy, down to the present time, the woman of the house has adorned not only herself and her dear lord, but she has hung the walls, the seats, the bed, and the tables with her beautiful creations.

Homer's women were all artists with the needle. Venus seeking Helen,—

"Like fair Laodice in form and face,

The loveliest nymph of Priam's royal race,
Here in the palace at her loom she found :
The golden web her own sad story crown'd.
The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize),
And the dire triumph of her fatal eyes.”2

This must have been intended for hangings.
Hecuba's wardrobe is thus described :-

"The Phrygian queen to her rich wardrobe went,
Where treasured odours breathed a costly scent;
There lay the vestures of no vulgar art,
Sidonian maids embroider'd every part.
Here, as the queen revolved with careful eyes
The various textures and the various dyes
She chose a web that shone superior far,

And glow'd refulgent as the morning star."3

The women of the Middle Ages were great at the

'These remnants are not, like the straws in amber, only precious because they are curious; they are most suggestive as works of art.

loom and frame. From the Kleine Heldenbuch of the thirteenth century, Rock quotes these lines:

"Who taught me to embroider in a frame with silk,

And to sketch and design the wild and tame

Beasts of the forest and field?

Also to picture on plain surfaces;

Round about to place golden borders

A narrow and a broad one

With stags and hinds, lifelike."

Gudrun, like the women of Homer, embroidered history-that of the ancestors of Siegfried.

But in the Middle Ages the embroiderers were ambitious artists. The deeds of Roland and the siege of Troy, all romantic and classical lore, provided subjects for the needle.

Shakespeare gives a pretty picture of the graceful weaver and embroiderer:

"Would ever with Marina be :-
Be't when she weaves the sleided silk,
With fingers long, small, white as milk ;
Or when she would with sharp neeld wound
The cambric, which she makes more sound
By hurting it. . . .

Deep clerks she dumbs; and with her neeld composes
Nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry,
That even her art sisters the natural roses."

Before closing this Introduction, I will take the opportunity to protest against the abuse of the phrase High Art." It is generally appropriated by that which is the lowest and most feeble.

An old design for a chair or table, by no means remarkable originally, but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once

1

Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," act iv. 20; v. 5.

"fashionable" and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits-this also is "high art." Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead of hanging draperies. The term is never used when we speak of the great arts-painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is, in fact, only the slang of the cabinetmaker, the upholsterer, and milliner.

All true Art is very high indeed and apparent; and needs not to be introduced with a puff. It sits enthroned between Poetry and History. Even those who are ignorant of its laws feel its influence, and the soothing grace which it sheds, falling like the rain, equally upon the just and the unjust. Man's nature always responds to the truly high and beautiful; only the most degraded are deprived of this source of happiness. And there are but few women, till debased by cruelty, misery, or drink, that do not try in some humble way (but especially with their needle) to adorn their own persons, their children, and their homes; and if their art is not high, it yet has the power to elevate them. While the most ambitious women try a higher flight, into the regions of poetry, literature, painting, and even sculpture (why has no woman ever been an architect?), millions have enjoyed the art of the needle for thousands of years, and it will continue to be a solace and a delight as long as the world lasts, for, like all art, it gives the ever new joy of creation.

Surely it is a humanizing and Christian principle which in Italy permits artistic work to be done in the prisons where criminals are confined for life. Sisters of Mercy teach lace-making to the wretched. women who, having committed great crimes, may never be seen again. The produce of the work helps to pay the expense of the prison, and at the same time a very small percentage is given to the prisoners to send to their friends, or to spend on little comforts, thus encouraging the poor human creatures to exercise their best powers. We believe this is sometimes allowed also in England and France.

14

CHAPTER I.

STYLE.

In venturing to approach so great a subject as the history of style, I would beg my readers to believe how well I am aware that on each point much more has been already carefully treated by previous writers, than will fall within the limits of a chapter that is intended only to throw light on textile art, and especially on embroidery.

I suppose it is the same in all subjects of human speculation which are worthy of serious study; and therefore I ought not to have been surprised to find how much has already been written on needlework and embroidery, and how unconsciously I, at least, have passed by and ignored these notices, till it struck me that I ought to know something of the history and principles of the art which with others, I was striving to revive and improve.

Then new and old facts crowded round me, and became significant and interesting. I longed to know something of the first worker and the first needle; and behold the needle has been found!-among the débris of the life of the Neolithic cave-man, made of bone and very neatly fashioned.

Alas! the workwoman and her work are gone to dust; but there is the needle!-proof positive that the craft existed before the last glacial period in Britain.1 How long ago this was, we may conjecture, but can never finally ascertain. Then I find embroidery named by the earliest historians, by every poet of antiquity, and by the first travellers in the East; and it has been the subject

1

Boyd Dawkins' "Early Man in Britain," p. 285. See also chapter on stitches (post), p. 195.

of laws and enactments from the date of the Code of Manu in India, to the present century. One becomes eager to systematize all this information, and to share with the workers and thinkers of the craft, the pleasure found in its study.

Perhaps what is here collected may appear somewhat bald and disjointed; but antiquity, both human and historical, is apt to be bald; and its dislocation and disjointed condition are owing to the frequent cataclysms, physical, political, and social, which needlework has survived, bringing down to us the same stitches which served the same purposes for decoration under the Code of Manu, and adorned the Sanctuary in the wilderness; and those stitches probably were not new then.

I propose to give a slight sketch of the origin of the styles' that have followed each other, noting the national influences that have displaced or altered them, and the overlap of style caused by outside events.

First, I would define what "STYLE" means.

Style is the mark impressed on art by a national period, short or long. It fades, it wanes, and then some historical element enters on the scene, which carries with it new materials, needs, and tastes (either imported or springing up under the new conditions). The style of the day in art and literature alters so perceptibly, that all who have had any artistic training are at once aware of the difference.

Of late years, the science of history has been greatly assisted by the science of language. When the mute language of art shall have been patiently deciphered, the historian will be furnished with new powers in his researches after truth.

The first "ineffaceable" is a word; the second a pattern. This is proved by the history of needlework.

1

Some of these styles survive; some are still perceptible as traditions or echoes; some have totally disappeared in our modern art, such as the Primitive or the Egyptian.