convinced of the great superiority of our
needlework in the Middle Ages. As information about our own art must
be valuable to us, I give a short account of English embroidery.

In England our art, like our language, is mixed. Our early history is
one of repeated conquest, and we can only observe where style has
flowed in from outside, or has formed itself by grafting upon the stem
full of vitality already planted and growing. It is interesting to
seek its root.

There is every reason to believe, from the evidence of the animal
remains of the Neolithic Age (including those of sheep), that they
came with their masters from the central plateau of Asia.

The overlap of the Asiatic civilizations over the barbarism of
Northern Europe shows that Assyria[555] as well as Egypt was a highly
organized empire, and the Mediterranean peoples far advanced in the
arts of life, while the Neolithic man survived and lingered in
Britain, France, and Scandinavia. Yet, even at that early period, the
craft of spinning and the use of the needle were practised by the
women of Britain.[556]

Our first glimpses of art may have come to us by Phoenician traders,
touching at the Scilly Islands and thence sailing to the coasts of
Cornwall and Ireland. From Ireland we have curious relics as witnesses
of their presence--amongst others, jewellery connected by, or pendant
from, "Trichinopoly" chains, similar to those dug out of Etruscan
tombs, and which were probably imported into Ireland as early as the
sixth century B.C.[557]

In the Bronze Age the chiefs and the rich men wore linen or woollen
homespun. Fragments of these have been found in the Scale House barrow
at Rylston, in Yorkshire. Dr. Rock says that an ancient Celtic barrow
was opened not long ago in Yorkshire, in which the body was wrapped in
plaited (not woven) woollen material.[558] Before this time the Cymri
in Britain probably wore plaited grass garments; they also sewed
together the skins of animals with bone needles.

Dyeing and weaving were well understood in Britain before the advent
of the Romans. Hemp and flax, however, though native to the soil, were
not employed by the early Britons. Linen perhaps came to us first
through the Phoenicians, and afterwards through the Celts, and was
naturalized here by the Romans.

Anderson ("Scotland in Early Christian Times") gives a high place to
the forms of pagan art which prevailed in the British Isles, before
the Roman civilization; an