ry worked by The
Associated Artists, 1883.]

It is by far the most important work accomplished by needle weaving
which has ever been made in America, and is as veritable a copy of the
original as if it were painted with brush and pigment, instead of being
woven with threads of silk. The low lights of the evening sky, the
reflections of the boats, and the stooping figures of the fishermen, the
perspective of the distant shore, and the wonderful grouping in the
foreground, keep their charm in the tapestry as they do in the picture.
Even the mystery of the twilight is rendered, with the subtle effect we
feel, but can scarcely define, in the original drawing.

It has been a curiously direct process from the hand of the great
master, to this new reproduction, although it stands so far from his
time and life. His very thought was painted by his very hand upon the
paper of the cartoon, and this painted thought has been photographed
upon another paper which has served as a guide to the copy.

It makes us sharers in the art riches of Raphael's own time, to see a
new embodiment of his thought appearing as a part of the nineteenth
century's accomplishments and possessions.

After this achievement we naturally began to look for appropriate use
for the small tapestries, but here came our stumbling block. The breed
of princes, who had been the former patrons of such works of art, were
all asleep in their graves, and knew not America, or its ambitions, and
our native breed was not an hereditary one, building galleries in
palaces, and collecting there the largest of precious accomplishments in
artistic skill in order to perpetuate their own memories, as well as to
enrich their descendants. Our princes were perhaps as rich as they, and
possibly as powerful, but their ambitions did not usually extend to a
line of posterity. Their palaces were contracted to a "three score and
ten" size; for each of them, no matter how wide his capability of
enjoyment, knew that it was personal and ended when his little spark of
life should be extinguished. I gladly record, however, that in these
later days some of them have made the American world their heirs, and
are building and enriching museums and colleges, making them palaces of
growth and enlightenment, and so giving to the many what an older race
of princes built and enriched and guarded for the few.

But in the meantime what were we to do about our tapestries? They were
costly, very costly t