s a beautiful example of this
sort of decoration at Holland House, where the dining-room is adorned
with pilasters worked on velvet in gold and coloured silks, with
tapestries between them. This is Florentine work, of the sixteenth or
beginning of the seventeenth century.

Hangings entirely in needlework, to cover large spaces, are rare, but
a few are to be found all over Europe in museums, palaces, and private
houses, which are interesting as objects of art. The genealogical tree
of the Counts of Kyburg, designed in the sixteenth century, and
carried to France as plunder, and now restored to its home near
Zurich, is a remarkable instance of a piece of needlework that
deserved the value placed on it. Many splendid pieces of embroidered
tapestries are at the Cluny Museum. The beatitudes of St. Catherine,
from the castle at Tarrascon, and the hangings worked in applique and
flat stitches with portraits of Henri IV., Jeanne d'Albret, &c., are
monuments of industry, and design; and are very beautiful.

There, is a large room at Castle Ashby hung with tapestry in cross
stitches, worked by the ladies of the family, and finished 150 years
ago. The industry shown here is indubitable, but the designs are
barbarously bad and funny. In the Palazzo Giustini at Florence there
is a suite of hangings worked also in cross stitches of the same
period, of which the design is very clever and graceful, and the
effect beautiful and artistic. An irregular bank of brown earth is
crowded with grasses and small flowers about a foot above the dado,
and from this grow rose-bushes, covered with blossoms of different
shades, held back to a treillage of delicate "cane colours." The
leafage is brown, against a sky that is not blue, but which rather
reminds one of blue than of grey. It is conventionally treated, and
the effect is singularly rich and harmonious. Had it been a little
more naturalistic, it would have looked too much like a painted
picture; but as it is, the decoration is charming, and so universally
admired that we cannot but wonder it has never been imitated. In the
Borghese Palace at Rome there is a ball-room hung with white satin
embroidered with wreaths of flowers, and a similar one in the Caetani
Palace, on crimson satin. These are about 150 years old, and are so
far above being mere objects of fashion, that they must be placed by
their beauty of design and execution amongst objects of art, and so
will probably survive more centur