ly little interest except for the archeologist in
digging so far into the past for an art that has left us but
traditions and museum fragments, let us skim but lightly the surface
of this time, only picking up the glistening facts that attract the
mind's eye, so that we may quickly reach the enchanted land of more
recent times which yet appear antique to the modern.

[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY

Boston Museum of Fine Arts]

[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY

Boston Museum of Fine Arts]

There are those to whom reading the Bible was a forced task during
childhood, a class which slipped the labour as soon as years gave
liberty of choice. There are others who have always turned as
naturally to its accounts of grand ceremony and terrible battles as to
the accounts of Caesar, Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne. But in either case,
whatever the reason for the eye to absorb these pages of ancient
Hebrew history, the impression is gained of superb pomp. And always
concerned with it are descriptions of details, lovingly impressed, as
though the chronicler was sure of the interest of his audience. In
this enumeration, decorative textiles always played a part. Such
textiles as they were exceed in extravagance of material any that we
know of European production, for in many cases they were woven
entirely of gold and silver, and even set with jewels. These gorgeous
fabrics shone like suns on the magnificent pomp of priest and ruler,
and declared the wealth and power of the nation. They departed from
the original intention of protecting shivering humanity from chill
draughts or from close and cold association with the stones of
architectural construction, and became a luxury of the eye, a source
of bewilderment to the fancy and a lively intoxication to those
who--irrespective of class, or of century--love to compute display in
coin.

But, dipping into the history of one ancient country after another, it
is easy to see that the usual fabric for hanging was woven of wool, of
cotton and of silk, and carried the design in the weaving. Babylon
the great, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Greece in its heroic times, Rome
under the Emperors--not omitting China and India of the Far
East--these countries of ancient peoples all knew the arts of dyeing
and weaving, of using the materials that we employ, and of introducing
figures symbolic, geometric, or realistic into the weaving. Beyond a
doubt the high loom has been known to man since pre