positive charm (for frank people
at least) in the frank confession of the way the work is done.

There are many degrees in the frankness with which this convention has
been accepted, according perhaps to the coarseness of the canvas ground,
perhaps to the personality of the worker. The animal forms at the top of
Illustration 6 are uncompromisingly square; the floral devices on the
same page, though they fall, as it were inevitably, into square lines,
are less rigidly formal. The inevitableness of the square line is
apparent in the sprig below (7). It was evidently meant to be freely
drawn, but the influence of the mesh betrays itself; and the design, if
it loses something in grace, gains also thereby in character.

[Illustration: 6. CANVAS-STITCH.]

[Illustration: 7. CANVAS-STITCH.]

There is literally no end to the variety of stitches, as they are
called, belonging to this group, and their names are a babel of
confusion. Florentine, Parisian, Hungarian, Spanish, Moorish, Cashmere,
Milanese, Gobelin, are only a few of them; but they stand, as a rule,
rather for stitch arrangements than for stitches. A small selection of
them is given in Illustration 8.

[Sidenote: TENT-STITCH A.]

What is known as tent-stitch (A in the sampler opposite) is a sort of
half cross-stitch; its peculiarity is that it covers only one thread of
the canvas at a stroke, and is therefore on a more minute scale than
stitches which are two or three threads wide, as cross-stitch may, and
cushion-stitch must, be. It derives its name from the old word tenture,
or tenter (_tendere_, to stretch), the frame on which the embroidress
distended her canvas. The word has gone out of use, but we still speak
of tenter-hooks. The stitch is serviceable enough in its way, but is
discredited by the monstrous abuse of it referred to already. A picture
in tent-stitch is even more foolish than a picture in mosaic. It cannot
come anywhere near to pictorial effect; the tesserae will pronounce
themselves, and spoil it.

[Illustration: 8. CANVAS-STITCH SAMPLER.]

[Illustration: 9. CUSHION AND SATIN STITCHES.]

[Sidenote: CROSS-STITCH B.]

This kind of half cross-stitch worked on the larger scale of ordinary
cross-stitch would look meagre. It is filled out, therefore (B), by
horizontal lines of the thread laid across the canvas, and over these
the stitch is worked.

[Sidenote: CUSHION-STITCH C.]

Cushion-stitch consists of diagonal lines of upright stitches,