the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mahomet had stood under it.  The Duchess de la Ferte wore a dress of reddish-brown velvet, the skirt of which, adjusted in graceful folds, was held up by big butterflies made of Dresden china; the front was a tablier of cloth of silver, upon which was embroidered an orchestra of musicians arranged in a pyramidal group, consisting of a series of six ranks of performers, with beautiful instruments wrought in raised needle-work.  ‘Into the night go one and all,’ as Mr. Henley sings in his charming Ballade of Dead Actors.

Many of the facts related by M. Lefebure about the embroiderers’ guilds are also extremely interesting.  Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts, to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild was prohibited from using gold of less value than ’eight sous (about 6s.) the skein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread with silk, because that made the work false and bad.’  The test or trial piece prescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer was ’a single figure, a sixth of the natural size, to be shaded in gold’; whilst one not the son of a master was required to produce ’a complete incident with many figures.’  The book of crafts also mentions ’cutters-out and stencillers and illuminators’ amongst those employed in the industry of embroidery.  In 1551 the Parisian Corporation of Embroiderers issued a notice that ’for the future, the colouring in representations of nude figures and faces should be done in three or four gradations of carnation-dyed silk, and not, as formerly, in white silks.’  During the fifteenth century every household of any position retained the services of an embroiderer by the year.  The preparation of colours also, whether for painting or for dyeing threads and textile fabrics, was a matter which, M. Lefebure points out, received close attention from the artists of the Middle Ages.  Many undertook long journeys to obtain the more famous recipes, which they filed, subsequently adding to and correcting them as experience dictated.  Nor were great artists above making and supplying designs for embroidery.  Raphael made designs for Francis I., and Boucher for Louis XV.; and in the Ambras collection at Vienna is a superb set of sacerdotal robes from designs by the brothers Van Eyck and their pupils.  Early in the sixteenth century books of embroidery designs were produced, and their success was so great that in a few years French, German, Italian, Flemish, and English publishers spread broadcast books of design made by their best engravers.  In the same century, in order to give the designers opportunity of studying directly from nature, Jean Robin opened a garden with conservatories, in which he cultivated strange varieties of plants then but little known in our latitudes.  The rich brocades and brocadelles of the time are characterised by the introduction of large flowery patterns, with pomegranates and other fruits with fine foliage.