f domestic embroidery ought to be looked upon as that of
an important factor in the humanizing effect of aesthetic culture.

The woman of the house has always been strong to fulfil her part in
this civilizing influence with the implement which custom has awarded
to her. Every man in the ancient East began his life under the tent or
in the palace adorned by the hands of his mother and her maidens, and
his home was made beautiful by his wife and his sisters and their
slaves. There, as in mediaeval homes, lessons of morality and religion,
and the love and fame of noble deeds, were taught by the painting of
the needle to the minds of the young men, who would have scorned more
direct teaching; and the children felt the influence, as the women
wove what the bards sang.

Alas! we have but few specimens of embroideries of which we know the
history, earlier than the tenth and eleventh centuries.[10] Yet from
the days of the books of the Old Testament and the song of the siege
of Troy, down to the present time, the woman of the house has adorned
not only herself and her dear lord, but she has hung the walls, the
seats, the bed, and the tables with her beautiful creations.

Homer's women were all artists with the needle. Venus seeking Helen,--

"Like fair Laodice in form and face,
The loveliest nymph of Priam's royal race,
Here in the palace at her loom she found:
The golden web her own sad story crown'd.
The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize),
And the dire triumph of her fatal eyes."[11]

This must have been intended for hangings.

Hecuba's wardrobe is thus described:--

"The Phrygian queen to her rich wardrobe went,
Where treasured odours breathed a costly scent;
There lay the vestures of no vulgar art,
Sidonian maids embroider'd every part.
Here, as the queen revolved with careful eyes
The various textures and the various dyes
She chose a web that shone superior far,
And glow'd refulgent as the morning star."[12]

The women of the Middle Ages were great at the loom and frame. From
the Kleine Heldenbuch of the thirteenth century, Rock quotes these
lines:--

"Who taught me to embroider in a frame with silk,
And to sketch and design the wild and tame
Beasts of the forest and field?
Also to picture on plain surfaces;
Round about to place golden borders--
narrow and a broad one--
With stags and hinds, lifelike."

Gudrun, lik