he had ever loved-the darling of his age, now on the eve of a first separation, broke out into extravagant joy at the prospect, and testified no anxiety at the separation but to take with him his playthings and his dumb favourites, the sudden revulsion of feelings came upon Andrew like an ice-bolt, and there he stood motionless, looking sternly and fixedly on the poor child, who was soon awed and silenced by his father's unwonted aspect, and stood trembling before him, fearing he knew not what. At last he softly whispered, sidling closely up, and looking earnestly and fearfully in his father's face: "Shall I not go to school, then? Jenny said I should." Old The second quiet interrogatory restored to Andrew the use of speech, and the mastery over all his softer feelings. "Yes," he replied, taking the boy's hand and grasping it within his own as he led him homeward. "Yes, Josiah, you shall go to school, you have been kept too long at home; to-morrow is Sunday, but on Monday you shall go. On Monday, my child, you shall leave your father." That last sentence and a something he perceived but did not comprehend in his father's manner and voice, painfully affected the boy; and he burst into tears, and clinging to his father's arms, sobbed out : "But you will go with me, father, and you will come and see me every day, will you not? and I shall soon come home again?" That artless burst of natural affection fell like balm on Andrew's irritable feelings, and he caught up the child and blessed and kissed him; and then they "reasoned together," and the father told his boy how he should fetch him home every Saturday with Dobbin, and how they should still go hand-in-hand to church on Sunday, and how his lamb and the gray colt should be taken care of in his absence; and his hoop and other toys might be carried with him to school. Then the child began again his joyous prattle with now and then a sob between, and the father kissed his wet glowing cheek, carrying him all the way home in his arms; and thus lovelingly they entered the little garden and the pretty cottage, and sat down side-by-side to the neat homely ineal old Jenny had provided. (To be continued.) A TRUE COMPLIMENT. "Longfellow," says a popular writer, "is the healthiest, the heartiest, and the most harmonious of all the American poets. True to nature, he is truest to himself. The most barren legend is made fruitful by the warmth and fervour of his intellect; but when, as in the song of Hiawatha, he adopts a tradition intrinsically charged with the elements of social progress, his genious, bearing its broad pinions to the sky, shows us only the more unmistakably how yearningly it leans to man and to man's happiness." A VISION. BY M. L. R. I see a beautiful river, Like a silver ribbon unrolled: On its banks is a shining harvest Ripened and yellow as gold. And voyagers float on the current, Striving each to be first in the race, And they heed not the rich abundance Left thus on the banks to waste. They stop their ears to the voices But onward, with joy and laughter, In their happiness float along, While the rippling waters answer To the music of their song. They say: "We were made for the sunshine, We hunger not for the grain." But God has raised up reapers To bind up the golden sheaves, And God has appointed gleaners For all that the binder leaves. With prayer and an upward looking, With a sickle keen and bright, They reap the glorious harvest Of purity, wisdom, and light. And the precious seed they gather In the season of hope and youth, Shall live in its sweetest fullness In the blessed bread of truth. The bread for the perishing body, For the heart that is fainting and chilled, The food for the soul of the mourner, Of which all can eat and be filled. WOMAN'S WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES. King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Sir Bedivere's heart misgave him twice ere he could obey the dying commands of King Arthur, and fling away so precious a relic. The lonely maiden's industry has been equalled by many of her mortal sisters, sitting, not indeed "upon the hidden bases of the hills," but in all the varied human habitations built above them since the days of King Arthur. ters of the Middle Ages were perforce domestic; no wonder they excelled in needlework. To women of any culture it was almost the only tangible form of creative art they could command, and the love of the beautiful implanted in their souls must find some expression. The great pattern-book of nature, filled with graceful forms, in ever-varied arrangement, and illuminated by delicate tints or gorgeous hues, suggested the beauty they endeavoured to represent. Whether religious devotion, human affection, or a taste for dress prompted them, the needle was the instrument to effect their purpose. The monogram of the blessed Mary's name, intertwined with pure white lilies on the deep blue ground, was designed and embroidered with holy reverence, and laid on the altar of the Lady-chapel by the trembling hand of one whose sorrows had there found solace, or by another in token of gratitude for joys which were heightened by a conviction of celestial sympathy. The pennon of the knight—a silken streamer affixed to the top of the lance-bore his crest, or an emblematic allusion to some event in his career, embroidered, it was supposed, by the hand of his lady-love. A yet more sacred gift was the scarf worn across the shoulder-an indispensable appendage to a knight fully equipped. The richness, beauty, and skill displayed in the needlework of the Middle Ages demonstrate the perfection that art had attained; while church inventories, wills, and costumes represented in the miniatures of illuminated manuscripts and elsewhere, amaze us by the quantity as well as the quality of this department of woman's work. Though regal robes and heavy church vestments were sometimes wrought by monks, yet to woman's taste and skill the greater share of the result must be attributed, the professional hands being those of nuns and their pupils in convents. The life of woman in those days was extremely monotonous. For the mass of the people there hardly existed any means of locomotion, the swampy state of the land in England and on the continent allowing few roads to be made, except such as were traversed by pack-horses. Ladies of rank who wished to journey were borne on litters carried upon men's shoulders; and, until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, few representations of Not only were the appointment of the warcarriages appear. Such a conveyance is de- riors adorned by needlework, but the ladies picted in an illustration of the Romance of the must have found ample scope for industry and Rose, where Venus, attired in the fashionable taste in their own toilets. The Anglo-Saxon costume of the fifteenth century, is seated in a women as far back as the eighth century exchare, by courtesy a chariot, but in fact a celled in needlework, although judging from the clumsy covered waggon without springs. Six representations which have come down to us, doves are perched upon the shafts, and fastened their dress was much less ornamented than that by medieval harness. The goddess of course of the gentlemen. During the eighth, ninth, possessed superhuman powers for guiding this and tenth centuries there were few changes in extraordinary equipage, but to mere mortals it fashion. A purple gown or robe, with long must have been a slow coach, and a horribly yellow sleeves, and coverchief wrapt round the uncomfortable conveyance even when horses head and neck, frequently appears, the edges were substituted for doves. An ordinance of of the long gown and sleeves being slightly orPhilip le Bel, in 1294, forbids any wheel-namented by the needle. How the ladies carriages to be used by the wives of citizens, as too great a luxury. As the date of the coach which Venus guides is two hundred years later, it is difficult to imagine what style of equipage belonged to those ladies over whom Philip le Bel tyrannized. With so little means of going about, our sis dressed their hair in those days is more difficult to decide, as the coverchief conceals it. Crisping-needles to curl and plait the hair, and golden hair-cauls, are mentioned in Saxon writings, and give us reason to suppose that the locks of the fair damsels were not neglected. In the eleventh century the embroidery upon the long gowns becomes more elaborate, and other changes of the mode appear. From the report of an ancient Spanish ballad, the art of needlework and taste in dress must have attained great perfection in that country while our Anglo-Saxon sisters were wearing their plain long gowns. The fair Sybilla is described as changing her dress seven times in one evening, on the arrival of that successful and victorious knight, Prince Baldwin. First, she dazzles him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw colour, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array becomes her best; but when "Lastly in white she comes, and loosely Down in ringlets floats her hair, 'O,' exclaimed the Prince, what beauty! Ne'er was princess half so fair.'" Simplicity and natural grace carried the day after all, as they generally do with men of true taste. "Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone," says that nice observer of human nature, Jane Austen. "Man only knows man's insensibility to a new gown." We hope, however, that the dressmakers and tirewomen of the fair Sybilla, who had expended so much time and invention, were handsomely rewarded by the Prince, since they must have been most accomplished needlewomen and handmaids to have got up their young lady in so many costumes and in such rapid succession. A very odd fashion appears in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of embroidering heraldic devices on the long gowns of the ladies of rank. In one of the illuminations of a famous psalter, executed for Sir Geoffery Loutterell, who died in 1345, that nobleman is represented armed at all points, receiving from the ladies of his family his tilting helmet, shield, and pavon. His coat of arms is repeated on every part of his own dress, and is embroidered on that of his wife, who wears also the crest of her own family. Marie de Hainault, wife of the first Duke of Bourbon, 1354, appears in a corsage and train of ermine, with a very fierce-looking lion rampant embroidered twice on her long gown. Her jewels are magnificent. Anne, Dauphine d'Auvergne, wife of Louis, second Duke of Bourbon, married in 1371, displays an heraldic dolphin of very sinister aspect upon one side of her corsage, and on the skirt of her long gown, which, divided in the centre, seems to be composed of two different stuffs, that opposite to the dolphin being powdered with fleur de lis. Her circlet of jewels is very elegant, and is worn just above her brow, while the hair is braided close to the face. An attendant lady wears neither train nor jewels, but her dress is likewise formed of different material, divided like that of the Dauphine. Six little parrots are emblazoned on the right side, one on her sleeve, two on her corsage, and three on her skirt. The fashion of embroidering armorial bearings on ladies' dresses must have given needlewomen a vast deal of work. It died out in the fifteenth century. It was the custom in feudal times for knightly families to send their daughters to the castles of their suzerain lords, to be trained to weave and embroider. The young ladies on their return home instructed the more intelligent of their female servants in these arts. Ladies of rank in all countries prided themselves upon the number of these attendants, and were in the habit of passing the morning surrounded by their work women, singing the chansons à toile, as ballads composed for these hours were called. Estienne Jodelle, a French poet, 1573, addressed a fair lady whose cunning fingers plied the needle in words thus translated: "I saw thee weave a web with care, Since naught so plain can be: If needlework had its poetry it had also its reckonings. Old account-books bear many entries of heavy payments for working materials used by industrious queens and indefatigable ladies of rank. Good authorities state that, before the sixth century, all silk materials were brought to Europe by the Seres, ancestors of the ancient Bokharians, whence it derived its name of Serica. In 551 silk-worms were introduced by two monks into Constantinople, but the Greeks monopolized the manufacture until 1130, when Roger King of Sicily, returning from a crusade, collected some Greek manufacturers, and established them at Palermo, whence the trade was disseminated over Italy. In the thirteenth century Bruges was the great mart for silk. The stuffs then known were velvet, satin (called samite), and taffetaall of which were stitched with gold or silver thread. The expense of working materials was therefore very great, and royal ladies condescended to superintend sewing-schools. Editha, consort of Edward the Confessor, was a highly accomplished lady, who sometimes intercepted the master of Westminster School and his scholars in their walks, questioning them in Latin. She was also skilled in all feminine works, embroidering the robes of her royal husband with her own hands. Of all the fair ones, however, who have wrought for the service of a king, since the manufacture of Excalibur, let the name of Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, stand at the head of the record, in spite of historians' doubts. Matilda, born about the year 1031, was carefully educated. She had beauty, learning, industry; and the Bayeux tapistry connected with her name still exists, a monument of her achievements in the art of needlework. It is, as everybody knows, a pictured chronicle of the conquest of England-a wife's tribute to the glory of her husband. As a specimen of ancient stitchery and feminine industry, this work is extremely curious. The tapestry is two hundred and twenty-two feet in length and twenty in width. It is worked in different-coloured worsteds on white cloth, now brown with age. The attempts to represent the human figure are very rude, and it is merely given in outline. Matilda evidently had very few colours at her disposal, as the horses are depicted of any hue, blue, green, or yellow; the arabesque patterns introduced are rich and varied. During the French Revolution this tapestry was demanded by the insurgents to cover their guns; but a priest succeeded in concealing it until the storm had passed. Bonaparte knew its value. He caused it to be brought to Paris and displayed, after which he restored the precious relic to Bayeux. We have many records of royal ladies who practised and patronized needlework. Anne of Brittany, first wife of Louis XII. of France, caused three hundred girls, daughters of the nobility, to be instructed in that art under her personal supervision. Her daughter Claude pursued the same laudable plan. Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, and mother of Henry IV. of France, a woman of vigorous mind, was skilled also in the handicraft of the needle, and wrought a set of hangings called "The Prison Opened," meaning that she had broken the bonds of the pope. The practice of teaching needlework continued long at the French court, and it was there that Mary of Scotland learned the art in which she so much excelled. When cast into prison she beguiled the time and soothed the repentant anxieties of her mind with the companionship of her needle. The specimens of her work yet existing are principally bed-trimmings, hangings, and coverlets, composed of dark satin, upon which flowers separately embroidered are transferred. The romances and lays of chivalry contain many dsscriptions of the ornamental needlework of those early days. In one of the ancient ballads a knight, after describing a fair damsel whom he had rescued and carried to his castle, adds that she "knewe how to sewe and marke all manner of silken worke," and no doubt he made her repair many of his mantles and scarfs frayed and torn by time and tourney. The beautiful Elaine covered the shield of Sir Launcelot with a case of silk, upon which devices were braided by her fair hands, and added, from her own design, "A border fantasy of branch and flower, And yellow-throated nestling in the nest." When he went to the tourney she gave him a red sleeve "broidered with great pearls," which he bound upon his helmet. It is recorded that in a tournament at the court of Burgundy in 1445, one of the knights received from his lady a sleeve of delicate dove-colour, which he fastened on his left arm. These sleeves were made of a different material from the dress, and generally of a richer fabric elaborately ornamented; so they were considered valuable enough to form a separate legacy in wills of those centuries. Maddalena Doni in her portrait, painted by Raphael, which hangs in the Pitti Palace at Florence, wears a pair of these rich, heavy sleeves fastened slightly at the shoulder, and worn over a shorter sleeve belonging to her dress. Thus we see how it was that a lady could disengage her sleeve at the right moment and give it to the fortunate knight. The art of adorning linen was practised from the earliest times. Threads were drawn and fashioned with the needle, or the ends of the cloth unravelled and plaited into geometrical patterns. St. Cuthbert's curious grave-clothes, as described by an eyewitness to his disinterment in the twelth century, were ornamented with cut-work, which was used principally for ecclesiastical purposes, and was looked upon in England till the dissolution of the monasteries as a church secret. The open-work embroidery, which went under the general name of cut-work, is the origin of lace. The history of lace by Mrs. Bury Palliser, published a few years since, is worthy of the exquisite fabric of which it treats. The author has woven valuable facts, historical associations, and curious anecdotes into the web of her narrative, with an industry and skill rivalling the work of her medieval sisters. The illustrations of this beautiful volume are taken from rare specimens of ancient and modern lace, so perfectly executed as quite to deceive the eye and almost the touch. Italy and Flanders dispute the invention of point or needle-made lace. The Italians probably derived the art of needlework from the Greeks who took refuge in Italy during the troubles of the Lower Empire. Its origin was undoubtedly Byzantine, as the places which were in constant intercourse with the Greek empire were the cities where point-lace was earliest made. The traditions of the Low Countries also ascribe it to an Eastern origin, assigning the introduction of lace-making to the Crusaders on their return from the Holy Land. North, asserts that the Italians learned embroidery A modern writer, Francis from the Saracens, as Spaniards learned the same art from the Moors, and in proof of this theory, states that the word embroider is derived from the Arabic, and does not belong to any European language. In the opinion of some authorities the English word lace comes from the Latin word licina, signifying the hem or fringe of a garment; others suppose it derived from the word laces, which appears in AngloNorman statutes, meaning braids which were used to unite different parts of the dress. In England the earliest lace was called passament, from the fact that the threads were passed over each other in its formation; and it is not until the reign of Richard III. that the word lace appears in royal accounts. The French term dentelle is also of modern date, and was not used until fashion caused passament to be made with a toothed edge, when the designation passament dentelé appears. But whatever the origin of the name, lacemaking and embroidery have employed many fingers and worn out many eyes, and even created revolutions. In England, until the time of Henry VIII., shirts, handkerchiefs, sheets, and pillow-cases were embroidered in silks of different colours, until the fashion gave way to cut-work and lace. Italy produced lace fabrics early in the fifteenth century; and the Florentine poet Firenzuola, who flourished about 1520, composed an elegy upon a collar of raised pointlace made by the hand of his mistress. Portraits of Venetian ladies dated as early as 1500 reveal white lace trimmings; but at that period lace was professedly only made by nuns for the service of the church, and the term nuns' work has been the designation of lace in many places to a very modern date. Venice was famed for point, Genoa for pillow laces. English Parliamentary records have statutes on the subject of Venice laces; at the coronation of Richard III. fringes of Venice and mantle laces of gold and white silk appear. "To know the age and pedigrees Of points of Flanders and Venise," depends much upon the ancient pattern-books yet in existence. Parchment patterns drawn and pricked for pillow lace, bearing the date of 1577, were lately found covering old lawbooks published in Albisola, a town near Savona, which was a place celebrated for its laces, as we infer from the fact that it was long the custom of the daughters of the nobles to select these laces for their wedding shawls and veils. There is a pretty tradition at Venice, handed down among the inhabitants of the Lagoons, which says that a sailor brought home to his betrothed a branch of the delicate coralline known as "mermaids' lace." The girl, a worker in points, attracted by the grace of the coral imitated it with her needle, and after much toil produced the exquisite fabric which as Venice point soon became the mode in all Europe. Lace-making in Italy formed the occupation of many women of the higher classes, who wished to add to their incomes. Each lady had a number of workers, to whom she supplied patterns pricked by herself, paying her workwomen at the end of every week, each day being notched on a tally. at In the convent of Gesù Bambino Rome, curious specimens of old Spanish con ventual work-parchment patterns with lace in progress-have been found. They belonged to Spanish nuns, who long ago taught the art of lace-making to novices. Like all point-lace, this appears to be executed in separate pieces, given out by the nuns, and then joined together by a skilful hand. We see the pattern traced, the work partly finished, and the very thread left, as when "Sister Felice Vittoria" laid down her work, centuries ago. Mrs. Palliser received from Rome photographs of these valuable relics, engravings from which she has inserted in her history of lace. Aloe-thread was then used for lace-making, as it is now in Florence for sewing straw-plait. Spanish point has been as celebrated as that of Flanders or Italy. Some traditions aver that Spain taught the art to Flanders. Spain had no cause to import laces: they were extensively made at home, and were less known than the manufacture of other countries, because very little was exported. The numberless images of the Madonna and patron saints dressed and undressed daily, together with the albs of the priests and decorations of the altars, caused an immense consumption for ecclesiastica! uses. Thread-lace was manufactured in Spain in 1492, and in the Cathedral of Granada is a lace alb presented to the church by Ferdinand and Isabella-one of the few relics of ecclesiastical grandeur preserved in the country. Cardinal Wiseman, in a letter to Mrs. Palliser, states that he had himself officiated in this vestment, which was valued at ten thousand crowns. The fine church lace of Spain was little known in Europe until the revolution of 1830, when splendid specimens were suddenly thrown into the market-not merely the heavy lace known as Spanish point, but pieces of the most exquisite description, which could only have been made (says Mrs. Palliser) by those whose time was not money. Among the Saxon Hartz Mountains is the old town of Annaburg, and beneath a lime-tree in its ancient burial-ground stands a simple monument with this inscription: "Here lies Barbara Uttman, died on the 14th of January, 1576, whose invention of lace in the year 1561 made her the benefactress of the Hartz Mountains. 'An active mind, a skilful hand, Bring blessings down on Fatherland.'" Barbara was born in 1514. Her parents, burghers of Nuremberg, removed to the Hartz Mountains for the purpose of working a mine in that neighbourhood. It is said that Barbara learned the art of lace-making from a native of Brabant, a Protestant, whom the cruelties of the Duke of Alva had driven from her country. Barbara, observing the mountain girls making nets for the miners to wear over their hair, took great interest in the improvement of their work, and succeeded in teaching them a fine knitted tricot, and afterwards a lace ground. In 1561, having procured aid from Flanders, she set up a workshop in Annaburg for lace-making. |