requires the
superintendence of the best artists, and the weavers themselves must
needs have the highest technical education to enable them to copy
really fine designs. These artistic requirements, besides the extreme
tediousness of the work, make it the most expensive of all luxurious
decorations--even more costly than embroideries by the hand, covering
the same spaces. However, the two styles of hangings never can enter
into competition, except in a financial point of view. Tapestries are
the best fitted for wall coverings, and embroideries for curtains of
all kinds--for beds, for windows, and for portieres.

The old hangings are now again having their day, and we are striving
to save and restore all that remain to us. We must continue to guard
these treasures from the moths, their worst enemies; and science
should be invoked to assist us in the preservation of these precious
works of art, of which the value is now again understood and
appreciated, and which increases with every decade that is added to
their antiquity.

Tapestry, as art, has its own peculiar beauties, and one of them is
the softening, yet brilliant effect of the alternate lights and
shadows of the ridge-like surface; the separation of each stitch and
thread also casting minute shadows in the opposite direction, and
giving an iridescent effect. It is a mistake to struggle against this
inherent quality, instead of seeking to utilize it. The coarser and
simpler tapestries of our ancestors are really more beautiful and
effective in large spaces--flat in the arrangement of colours, and
sharply outlined--than the imitations of paintings of the last two
centuries, in which every detail of form and colour is sought to be
expressed.[436]

M. Blanc says that tapestries were intended to cover the bare walls,
but not to make us forget their existence. The wall being intended for
comfort and defence, the mind is solaced with the idea it conveys. It
is a mistake, therefore, to substitute a surface picture, so real that
it at once does away with this impression of security, while a
certain conventional art should amuse the mind with shadowy
representations and suggestions.

It is, perhaps, fortunate that the possibilities of tapestry weaving
are restricted, and thus its very imperfections become the sources of
its best qualities as decoration and comfort. One element of textile
weaving, the use of gold, both in the backgrounds and in the
draperies, takes it at