d full of most fertile suggestion and most admirable advice.

Even to read of the marvellous works of embroidery that were fashioned in
bygone ages is pleasant. Time has kept a few fragments of Greek
embroidery of the fourth century B.C. for us. One is figured in M.
Lefebure's book--a chain-stitch embroidery of yellow flax upon a
mulberry-coloured worsted material, with graceful spirals and
palmetto-patterns: and another, a tapestried cloth powdered with ducks,
was reproduced in the _Woman's World_ some months ago for an article by
Mr. Alan Cole. {115} Now and then we find in the tomb of some dead
Egyptian a piece of delicate work. In the treasury at Ratisbon is
preserved a specimen of Byzantine embroidery on which the Emperor
Constantine is depicted riding on a white palfrey, and receiving homage
from the East and West. Metz has a red silk cope wrought with great
eagles, the gift of Charlemagne, and Bayeux the needle-wrought epic of
Queen Matilda. But where is the great crocus-coloured robe, wrought for
Athena, on which the gods fought against the giants? Where is the huge
velarium that Nero stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, on which was
represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by steeds?
How one would like to see the curious table-napkins wrought for
Heliogabalus, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that
could be wanted for a feast; or the mortuary-cloth of King Chilperic,
with its three hundred golden bees; or the fantastic robes that excited
the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were embroidered with
'lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters--all, in fact,
that painters can copy from nature.' Charles of Orleans had a coat, on
the sleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning
'_Madame_, _je suis tout joyeux_,' the musical accompaniment of the words
being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those
days, formed with four pearls. {116} The room prepared in the palace at
Rheims for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy was decorated with 'thirteen
hundred and twenty-one _papegauts_ (parrots) made in broidery and
blazoned with the King's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one
butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the Queen's
arms--the whole worked in fine gold.' Catherine de Medicis had a
mourning-bed made for her 'of black velvet embroidered with pearls and
powdered with crescents and suns.' Its c