Embroidered book coverings were often very beautiful, either as simply clothing the boards, or when finished with metal-work corners, backs, and clasps.

I quote the following lines, said to have been written by Tasso on a case for a book, embroidered for him by Leonora d'Este :

"Questo prezioso dono,

Ch' ornar coll' ago ad Eleanora piacque,
Lo vidde Aracne, e tacque.

Or se la mano, che la piaga fè al core,

Si bello fè d' amore il dolce laberinto,
Come uscirne potro, se non estinto ?"

In the catalogue of Charles V.'s library, the materials used for bindings are thus named: Soie veluyau, satin damas, taffetas, camelot, cendal, and drap d'or; and many were embroidered.

Tact, discretion, and knowledge are required when we undertake to adorn the home to be lived in; and while employing the art of embroidery to embellish it, we must never forget that harmony, and the absence of anything startling, tends to the grandiose as well as the comfortable. Bright bits of colouring should be reserved for pictorial art, or for small objects, such as cushions and stools. If for the general tint blue be chosen, let it be either pure pale colour, like the æther, or a soft one, pale or dark, such as indigo; but the startling aniline blues should be avoided. as being offensive to the nerves of the eye. If red be the foundation colour, let it be Venetian red, part scarlet, part crimson; or pure crimson (Tyrian purple), or pure scarlet (cochineal). Never employ scarlet with a yellow tinge; it may not affect yourself, but it is blinding to many eyes. Avoid brickdust, which is simply a dirty mixture of earthy colours. Of green there are few shades that are not beautiful, soothing, and more or less fitted for a background to needlework. Olive-green, sea-green, pea-green, emerald

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green, and sage-green,-Nature teaches us how these harmonize together and with all other colours. Only arsenical green is impracticable and repulsive. Yellow, pale as a primrose, glowing as gold, or tender as butter, is always beautiful; but one tint we would exclude from our list, called "buff," which never can assimilate with any other colour, and is often the refuge of the weakminded man that cannot face the responsibility of choosing an atmosphere in which he will have to spend many hours of his existence, when the walls, the ceiling, and the hangings will inevitably obtain a subtle, but real influence on his nerves; which, in the case of buff, will be that of a yellow fog, while pale primrose will have the effect of early sunrise, and pure gold that of sunset.

A rule to be respected is that decoration should be reposing instead of exciting. The unexpected, which is an element in the enjoyment of what is new, should be such as to become the more agreeable the longer we are accustomed to it. Mr. Morris's golden rule is this: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." In decorative art, and therefore in embroidery, the first object to consider is beauty-beauty in conception, proportion, drawing, and colour. I would not have it thought that I am placing our secondary art too high, and giving it too much importance, when I apply to it the first essential rules of art; but one of these furnishes my excuse. It is that “the simplest and smallest creation should be as faultless as the greatest and grandest." Now beauty cannot be obtained, even in little works, without proportion in size, harmony and balance in colour, and correctness in form, and these require the careful study of first principles.

'I would add, "except that which is consecrated by time or sentiment."

Proportion in size is most important, both as regards ourselves and our surroundings-objectively and subjectively. When our masters, the Greeks, wished to express force and majesty, they sculptured their gods of unearthly size, larger than their heroes, who yet exceeded in stature their human models. The statue of the god placed in the temple was the largest object seen, and the delicacy and refinement of the details in dress, throne, and base only enhanced the effect of majestic proportion.

In the temple men were to be reminded of their own nothingness. In the gymnasium, and on the racecourse, and at the public games, the surrounding pictures and statues were all intended to excite ambition by showing men the heroic size to be attained by the awards of fame. But at home, in the house, man is already supreme, and needs no incentive to assert himself, and no tall standard by which he may be measured. The Lares and Penates themselves were very small objects to look at, whatever may have been the thoughts they suggested. Nothing is so alarming or unpleasant as gigantic figures worked in tapestry or embroidery.

And if even the guardian gods of the house were kept in due subjection as to size, why not all decorations, and especially those representing the flowers of the field? Certainly in worked decorations flowers should be no larger than in nature-perhaps on the whole they are best rather smaller. Botanical monstrosities on the wall dwarf the flowers in a bow-pot near them, and nature has her own lovely proportions, which should be studied and respected. These remarks, of course, apply exclusively to domestic decoration, which is the special object of our art, and for the guidance of which the suggestions contained in this chapter are intended.

I would strongly advocate the return to the old system for the production of large embroideries. If ladies would design, or have designed for them, curtains or tapestries, and let the work-frame be the permanent occupier of the morning sitting-room, they might at least commence works that members of the family or friends might continue and complete at their leisure; and should they at any time hang fire, a needlewoman or clever professional worker might be called in to help to finish it. Thus ladies might assist the art of needlework by their own original ideas, and give individual beauty to their homes, and an impetus to the occupation which helps to support so many of our struggling sisters. The frame or métier is always a pretty object in the drawing-room or boudoir. The French understand this well; and make it one of their most useful "properties" in their scenic representations of refined home life.

I will conclude this chapter with two quotations. The first is part of Sir Digby Wyatt's advice in a Cambridge Lecture. "You can never hope (he says) to have the means of supplying yourself with what is beautiful unless you take pains to add to the production of that beauty. The colour which the decorative painter” (and the embroiderer also) "may cast around you is neither more nor less than an atmosphere in which your eye will be either strengthened or debilitated. If you accustom your eye only or mainly to contemplate what is satisfactory in colour and form to the highest tastes, it will gradually become allured to such delicacy of organization as to reject unintentionally all that is repugnant to perfect taste."

Mr. Morris, in a lecture to the "Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design," says of ugly furnishings: "Herein the rich people have defrauded themselves as well as the poor. You will see a refined and highly

educated man nowadays, who has been to Italy and Egypt and where not, who can talk learnedly enough (and fantastically enough sometimes) about art and literature of past days, sitting down without signs of discomfort in a house that, with all its surroundings, is just brutally vulgar and hideous. All his education has done for him no more than that."

"You cannot civilize man unless you give him a share in art." But the man must be civilized by education to accept that share of art that his life offers to him. It must be admitted that though a man may be educated enough to enable him to theorize, he may yet be too poor to furnish with taste. If he is able to act up to his theories, and to surround himself with what is refined, and fail to do so, and is contented not to stir in this matter, he is not truly educated.

"Now that which breeds art is art. Any piece of work that is well done is so much help to the cause. "The cause is the Democracy of Art, the ennobling of daily and common work."