ia), it may well be said, when was it _not_ the fashion? and I
must answer, "only since the days of Queen Anne." It seems as if
before that time our designs for work were partially influenced by the
fine Indian specimens which had surreptitiously crept into England.
Some of these are very cleverly executed. Huge conventional trees grow
from a green strip of earth carrying every variety of leaf and flower
done in many stitches. The individual leaf or flower is often very
beautiful. On the bank below, small deer and lions disport themselves,
and birds twice their size perch on the branches (plate 84).[611] But
even where the work is finest, the incongruities are too annoying. The
modern excuse for it, "that it is quaint," does not reconcile us to
its extravagant effect. To be quaint in art is, as I have said before,
to be funny without intending it; and these curtains are funny by
their absence of all intention or perspective, and when hung they
make everything in the room look disproportionate to the unnatural
size of the foliage. (Plate 85.) Specimens of this work are to be
found in most English country houses. It has lasted till now, partly
because the crewels first manufactured in the sixteenth century were
of an excellent quality, and secondly, because there was no gold to
make it worth any one's while to destroy them; so the old hangings
went up into the attics in all the disgrace of shabbiness, and have
come down again as family relics. Even the moths have been deprived of
their prey, by these curtains having served for the beds of the
household, so that they have been kept for their nearly 300 years of
existence, aired and dusted. Much of this work has been recovered from
farmhouses and cottages in tolerable preservation. In many cases the
flowers have survived the stout linen grounds on which they were
worked. The Royal School of Needlework has often been commissioned to
restore and transfer the crewel trees on to a new backing. The
hangings and the curtains I have described, prevailed from the end of
Elizabeth's reign to that of Queen Anne, and gradually deteriorated.
The stitches, of which the variety at first was infinite, had given
place to a coarse uniform stem stitch--"gobble stitch." The materials
also were of inferior quality, and less durable, so that the latest
specimens are in general in the worst condition.

It is remarkable how little the beautiful Continental work influenced
our English school. We w