commercial failure of the city began,
at the death of Charles le Temeraire, Duke of Burgundy.[404] Plate 48
shows a portion of his tent hangings woven with the order of the
golden fleece taken at the battle of Grandson--now in the museum at
Berne. Till then Arras had supplied most of the splendid decorations of
which we find such marvellous lists. Every possible subject--religious,
romantic, historical, and allegorical--was pressed into the service,
and pictured hangings were supposed to instruct, amuse, and edify the
beholders. The dark ages were illuminated, and their barbarity
softened, by these constant appeals to men's highest instincts, and to
the memories of their noblest antecedents and aspirations, which
clothed their walls, and so became a part of their daily lives. The
great Flemish and French workshops became the illustrators of the
history of the world, as it was then read or being enacted. It is a
record of faiths, religious and political; and of national and family
lives and their changes. The Exhibition at Brussels in 1880 showed, by
its "Catalogue Raisonne," how much could be extracted from its storied
tapestries of both archaeological and artistic information.[405]

Though the art continued to be the servant of refined luxury in the
fifteenth century, Arras itself had done its work,[406] and was
superseded as the greatest weaver of artistic tapestry by a neighbour
and rival. Brussels, which had been gradually asserting itself as a
weaving community, from that date absorbed most of the trade of Arras,
and thence forwards, till Henri IV. established the works of the
Savonnerie, Brussels led European taste, and employed the best
artists. Brussels employed Leonardo da Vinci and Mantegna, Giovanni da
Udine, Raphael, and later, Rubens and the great Dutch painters, to
design cartoons for tapestry works. Raphael's pupil, Michael Coxsius,
of Mechlin, superintended the copying of his master's cartoons.
Shortly afterwards, Antwerp, Oudenarde, Lille, Tournai, Valenciennes,
Beauvais, Aubusson, and Bruges all had their schools;[407] and the
adept can trace their differences and peculiarities, and name their
birthplace, without referring to their trade-mark, or to that of the
manufacturer, which is usually to be found in the outer border.
Poitiers, Troyes, Beauvais, Rheims, and St. Quentin likewise had their
schools, and became famous.

Want of space prevents my entering more fully into this subject of the
northern