enabled to give the sequel of the story--Arachne's
transformation into the Spider, as--
A PARAPHRASE AND A PARABLE.

Lo! how Minerva, recklessly defied,
Struck down the maiden of artistic pride,
Who, all distraught with terror and despair,
Suspended her lithe body in mid-air;
Deeming, if thus she innocently died,
The sacred vengeance would be pacified.
Not so: implacable the goddess cried--
"Live on! hang on! and from this hour begin
Out of thy loathsome self new threads to spin;
No splendid tapestries for royal rooms,
But sordid webs to clothe the caves and tombs.
Nor blame the Poet's Metamorphoses:
Man's Life has Transformations hard as these;
Thou shall become, as Ages hand thee down,
The drear day-worker of the crowded town,
Who, envying the rough tiller of the soil,
Plies her monotonous unhealthy toil,
Passing through joyless day to sleepless night
With mind enfeebled and decaying sight,
Till some good genius,[437] kindred though apart,
Resolves to raise thee from the vulgar mart,
And once more links thee to the World of Art."

[387] Appendix 3.

[388] Guicciardini ascribes the invention of woven
tapestry to Arras, giving no dates; so we do not know
whether he attributes it to the Belgic Atrebates or to
their successors, the Franks. In either case the craft
was probably imported from the East.

[389] The Atrebates were the inhabitants of that Belgic
region till the fifth century; now it is the province of
Artois, probably a corruption of the name "Atrebates."
Taylor, "Words and Places" (1865), pp. 229-385.

[390] Castel, "Des Tapisseries," p. 30.

[391] Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist. ix., 13. Cited in
Yule's "Marco Polo," p. 68.

[392] Castel, "Des Tapisseries," p. 31.

[393] The commentators of Vasari, MM. Lechanche and
Jenron, believe that this art was coeval in the Low
Countries with Roman civilization and Christianity; but
it would appear that the weavers had fled to Britain to
escape from the Romans. Ibid. p. 52. Traces of the name
Arras have been found by Bochart and Frahn in Ar-ras,
the Arabian name for the river Araxes and the people who
inhabit its shores; but this may be accidental, and is
at best an uncertai