etiquette. The Revolution, however, ruined many of the manufactures.
Alencon survived, and Napoleon encouraged it, and endeavoured to renew
the old rules about the necessity of wearing point-lace at Court
receptions. A wonderful piece of lace, powdered over with devices of
bees, and costing 40,000 francs, was ordered. It was begun for the
Empress Josephine, but in the course of its making her escutcheons were
replaced by those of Marie Louise.

M. Lefebure concludes his interesting history by stating very clearly his
attitude towards machine-made lace. 'It would be an obvious loss to
art,' he says, 'should the making of lace by hand become extinct, for
machinery, as skilfully devised as possible, cannot do what the hand
does.' It can give us 'the results of processes, not the creations of
artistic handicraft.' Art is absent 'where formal calculation pretends
to supersede emotion'; it is absent 'where no trace can be detected of
intelligence guiding handicraft, whose hesitancies even possess peculiar
charm . . . cheapness is never commendable in respect of things which are
not absolute necessities; it lowers artistic standard.' These are
admirable remarks, and with them we take leave of this fascinating book,
with its delightful illustrations, its charming anecdotes, its excellent
advice. Mr. Alan Cole deserves the thanks of all who are interested in
art for bringing this book before the public in so attractive and so
inexpensive a form.

_Embroidery and Lace_: _Their Manufacture and History from the Remotest
Antiquity to the Present Day_. Translated and enlarged by Alan S. Cole
from the French of Ernest Lefebure. (Grevel and Co.)

HENLEY'S POEMS
(_Woman's World_, December 1888.)

'If I were king,' says Mr. Henley, in one of his most modest rondeaus,

'Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear;
Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather;
And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere,
If I were king.'

And these lines contain, if not the best criticism of his own work,
certainly a very complete statement of his aim and motive as a poet. His
little _Book of Verses_ reveals to us an artist who is seeking to find
new methods of expression and has not merely a delicate sense of beauty
and a brilliant, fantastic wit, but a real passion also for what is
horrible, ugly, or grotesque. No doubt, everything that is worthy of
existence is worthy also of art--at least, one