g the forms which follow upon each other; and
tracing them back in the order of their natural sequence; so as to
guide us to the root, nay, to the seed[18] of each and all art.

The subsidiary art of embroidery, in its highest form the handmaid of
architecture, is full of suggestion, and may assist us greatly in the
search which culminates in the text of "In the beginning."

The other point of view from which style should be considered is the
aesthetic. This enables us to criticize the works of different periods;
extracting, as far as we may, rules for the beautiful and the
commendable, and seeking to find the "why?" also observing the
operation of the law by which decay follows too soon after the best
and highest efforts of genius, thought, and invention in art.

My present object is the history of consecutive styles, in so far as
they concern needlework.

Alas! nothing endures. This law is acknowledged by Goethe, when he
makes Jove answer Venus, who bewailed that all that is beautiful must
die,--that he had only bestowed beauty on the evanescent.

It seems as if the moment the best is attained, men, ceasing to
struggle for the better, fall back at once hopelessly and become mere
imitators. They no longer follow a type, but copy a model, and then
copy the copy. Imitation is a precipice, a swift descent through
poverty of thought into the chaos of mannerism, in the place of style.

The imitative tendency, as existing in all human minds, cannot be
ignored or despised. In individuals it accompanies enthusiasm for the
beautiful, and the graceful charm of sympathy. It maintains continuity
between specimen and specimen, between artist and artist, between
century and century; and it is this which enables an adept to say with
certainty of consecutive styles, "This is Spanish work of the
sixteenth century; that is Flemish or German work of the seventeenth
century."

The theory of development and of the survival of the fittest has been
worked so hard, that it sometimes breaks down under the task imposed
upon it. It would need to include Death in its procedure. In our
creed, Death, means the moment of entrance into a higher existence;
but in art it means extinction, leaving behind neither a history nor
an artisan--only, perhaps, an infinitely small tradition, like the
grain of corn preserved in the wrappings of a mummy, from which at
first accident, and then care and culture, may evoke a future life.

The various ways in