it ought to supplement. The fringe should belong to the whole design, and be carefully fitted to the spaces occupied by the colours above it, each of its compartments or divisions being filled in with those tints which are most conspicuous in the general design and would show effectively in the warp. It is not necessary to account for all the colours, as the threads employed to form the woof would naturally disappear at the sides of the web. The sections of the fringe should be skilfully arranged so as to reappear at equal distances, or at least they should be so balanced as to produce that effect. If this is impossible, the fringe should be all of one shade, matching exactly the ground of the textile. It may be relieved by clustered knobs, or hanging beads or cups of different colours and gold. The celebrated pluvial at Aix-laChapelle has a fringe of gold bells hanging to a gold cord, which amalgamates with the pattern.' The veils of the Sanctuary in the wilderness were fringed with attached ornaments, bells, blossoms, knops, flowers, and fruit, which sounds extremely pretty.

To resume, let me once more urge that in church. work neither time nor trouble be spared; nor yet money grudged, if possible. The design should be full of intention, the stitching perfect, and the materials most carefully chosen for tints, for endurance and smoothness. Remember that no inferior substitute will serve to give present effect, nor will it last into the future.

Design, as I have elsewhere said, is all the better for being to a certain degree circumscribed, relegated, and regulated by the laws of traditional usage, as well as those of good taste, and this applies especially to ecclesiastical design.

These laws serve as the frame which encloses the

bells.

Resembling the fringe of St. Cuthbert's corporax, with its silver

motive thought, and makes it a complete whole, that can admit of no amplifications.

New symbols should not be adopted except for the expression of new facts or altered circumstances, and these can but seldom enter into liturgical art.

There is so much already formulated and admitted, and the area in which we may gather our materials is so large, that we need not seek for more than we find under our hand, ready for use.

Besides the symbolism of dogma, we have all the heraldry of the Saints; and can repeat and vary the emblems of those to whom the church we are working for is dedicated. The keys of St. Peter, the sword of St. Paul, the lilies of the Virgin, the cross of St. Andrew, the eagle of St. John, I need hardly enumerate all these legitimate sources of decoration. Then there is the lay heraldry which belongs to the history of each church, and which memorializes the reign of the monarch when it was begun, finished, or restored, and the pious work and care of the founder and benefactor, the architect, and sometimes that of the sculptor.

Now as our forefathers accepted all this material for ecclesiastical design, remodelling it to their own uses in different centuries, so we cannot ourselves do better than imitate them, and profit by their experience; never missing an opportunity of studying ancient embroideries; and while we admire in them all that is admirable, and appreciate their historical and archæological value, we may yet extract greater benefit for ourselves, by criticizing what is imperfect, as well as what is possibly a descent and failure from a higher type.

We must make a judicious selection of what to imitate and what to avoid.

As a general rule, I should warn the young artist against the imitation of "naïveté" and so-called “quaint

ness;" especially in our designs for Church embroidery as it is hardly a noble quality in art, though we look on it with a tender pity, half-way between admiration and contempt, when we find it inevitably in mediæval work ; struggling to overcome the expression of something difficult, and expressing a difficulty only partly overcome. We find ourselves putting our minds into the attitude of the artist who conceived those figures with arms conventionally growing out of the encasing garment; conventionally holding a book, and giving a blessing with a conventional twist, not entirely ungraceful, nor devoid of a certain dignity, rather felt than perceived. Yet we contemplate them with a smile of conscious superiority, appreciating our own refined sense of their merits and infantine progress towards something good, that time—a long time—would, and did evolve. But those efforts at last culminated in a Christian art, such as is seen. in the splendid forms and adornments in stone, gold, silver, glass, and embroideries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Such splendours as the windows of Bourges, the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, or those of the Cathedral of Toledo, or King's College Chapel at Cambridge. Such sculptures and traceries as those of the Puits de Moise at Dijon, and the Chapter House at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. Such embroideries as the Syon cope, and the Borghese triptych. These are types worthy of all praise, and they are full of instruction to the student of ecclesiastical art.

The Kensington Museum offers us endless help and suggestions in its very interesting collection of liturgical vestments of every date and school; and its textiles, illustrated by the inventory of their learned collector, Dr. Rock, are most instructive.1

This valuable collection of textiles is so ancient and therefore os frail, that it seems a pity to send portions of it continually travelling

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In the library of that museum are to be found many of the learned works on these subjects by French and German savants. The exhibitions in the English counties are never without a case or a room full of embroideries, collected from the treasure-chests of the neighbouring churches and country houses, and especially from those of the ancient Roman Catholic families. The colleges. of Oscott and Stoneyhurst have collected, by purchase or by gift, many fine relics of the craft, which are most liberally granted for exhibition.

For those who can go further afield there is instruction in almost every Continental town. Rome, Florence, Milan, Toledo, Sens, Rheims, Aix-la-Chapelle, Berne, Vienna, Halberstadt, Berlin, and Munich-each and all have stores of beautiful liturgical objects carefully preserved; of many dates, and many styles, and showing endless varieties of design, which can be employed on new works by careful selection and adaptation. Most of these belong to the eleventh and succeeding centuries; any earlier examples are fragmentary, and have generally been taken from the tombs of kings and bishops.

It seems to savour of desecration, this opening of shrines and disturbing the ashes of the illustrious dead, if only for the satisfaction of archæological curiosity. But except where it has hitherto been protected by the sanctity of the tomb, there is so little that remains to us,— so few textiles have survived the friction of use, or even that of the air, through as many as a thousand years or more, that we may plead the hunger for truth, and the

about the country for loan exhibitions. Change of climate-cold, heat, and damp-carelessness in packing and unpacking-above all, the reckless exposure to floods of sunshine even when they are protected from dust by glass,-all these endanger the preservation of what can never be replaced, and has only survived till now because of the quiet and darkness in which it has lain for centuries.

eager desire for proofs of identity and verification of historical legends, which are to be extracted from the shape of a garment, from the pattern on the border, or the lettering on the web of which it is composed; whence we reverently cut a fragment, and preserve it under glass.

"If studious, copie fair what time hath blurr'd,
Redeem truth from his jawes."1

Before closing this chapter, I would wish to observe that I have entered into the subject of church decoration in no ritualistic spirit; I do not treat it theologically, but as art; and if these decorations are to be carried out at all, I feel that I am rendering a service to those whose duty or pleasure it is to provide them, by pointing out where they may find the principles which have been the spring and life of medieval art, and the survivals which are now the best exponents of those principles to guide us in the works of our day.

George Herbert, "The Churchyard Porch," v. 15.