y, the faithful wife of an enterprising
monarch, with whom she lived for thirty-three years so harmoniously
that her death had such an effect on her husband as to cause him to
relinquish, never again to resume, his usual amusements.[26]

Little did the affectionate wife think, whilst employed over this
task, that her domestic tribute of regard should become an historical
memento of her country, and blazon forth her illustrious husband's
deeds, and her own unwearying affection, to ages upon ages hereafter
to be born. For independently of the interest which may be attached to
this tapestry as a pledge of feminine affection, a token of
housewifely industry, and a specimen of ancient stitchery, it derives
more historic value as the work of the Conqueror's wife, than if it
were the production of a later time. For it holds good with these
historical tapestries as with the written histories and romances of
the middle ages;--authors wrote and ladies wrought (we mean no pun)
their characters, _not_ in the costume of the times in which the
action or event celebrated took place, but in that in which they were
at the time engaged; and thus, had Matilda the Empress worked this
tapestry, it is more than probable that she would have introduced the
armorial bearings which were in her time becoming common, and
especially the Norman leopards, of which in the tapestry there is not
the slightest trace. In her time too the hair was worn so long as to
excite the censures of the church, whilst at the time of the Conquest
the Normans almost shaved their heads; and this circumstance, more
than the want of beards, is supposed by Mr. Stothard[27] to have led
to the surmise of the Anglo-Saxon spies that the Normans were all
priests. This circumstance is faithfully depicted in the tapestry,
where also the chief weapon seen is a lance, which was little used
after the Conquest. These peculiarities, with several others which
have been commented on by antiquarian writers, seem to establish the
date of this production as coeval with the action which it represents,
and therefore invaluable as an historical document.

"It is, perhaps," says one of the learned writers on the Bayeux
tapestry, "a characteristic of the literature of the present age to
deduce history from sources of second-rate authority; from ballads and
pictures rather than from graver and severer records. Unquestionably
this is the preferable course, if amusement, not truth, be the object