the acorn and pears being about the same size,
but all beautifully worked in Point-lace stitches over wooden moulds.
The hound and the hare, the butterfly and the grub, and the strange
birds make up one of the most typical Stuart pictures.

The next illustration shows another development of picture-making. Here
the grounding is of white satin, as in the previous illustration, but
the figures are worked on canvas separately, in fine petit-point
stitch, afterwards being cut away and placed on the white satin ground
with a few silk stitches and the whole outlined with a fine black silk
cord. The subject is "The Finding of Moses," and is as full of
anachronisms as the last, only that here again Pharaoh's daughter is
worked in memory of Queen Henrietta Maria, and the tiny boy in the
corner is Charles II., and Moses the infant Duke of York. The
four-winged cherubs are the guardian angels who are watching over the
lost fortunes of the Stuart family, and the rose of England and the lilies
of France which form the border are emblematical of the royal lineage of
their lost King's family. The hound and hare still chase each other
gaily round the border, and in the picture the hare is seen emerging,
like the Stuarts, from exile and obscurity.

Sufficient has perhaps been said to cause those who possibly may have
misunderstood these pictures to give them another glance, and allow
imagination to carry them back to the times of the exiled Royal Family
and their brave adherents, whose women allowed not their memories to
slumber nor their labours to flag. These pictures must have been made
during the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II. In no case, to my
knowledge, has King Charles II. been depicted in stitchery, nor yet
Catherine of Braganza. James II. is equally ignored, and with him their
mission seemed to have been accomplished. Possibly the people had had by
this time sufficient of the Stuarts, and the memory of King Charles the
martyr had waxed dim. Certain it is that with James II. Stuart
needlework pictures suddenly ceased.

[Illustration: STUART PICTURE, SHOWING THE FINDING OF MOSES.

(_S.K.M. Collection._)]

_Stump work Symbols._

The symbolism of the various animals, birds, insects, and flowers which
are, apparently without rhyme or reason, placed in one great disarray in
the Stuart pictures is said to have been heraldic and symbolic. The
sunbeam coming from a cloud, the white falchion, and the chained hart
are