write a
second part, to be devoted to design, colour, and the common-sense
modes of treating decorative art, as applied especially to embroidered
hangings, furniture, dress, and the smaller objects of luxury.

Circumstances have, since then, obliged me to reconsider this
intention; and I have found it more practicable to cast the
information which I have collected from Eastern and Western sources
into the form of a separate work, which in no way supersedes or
interferes with the technical instruction supposed to be conveyed in a
handbook. I have found so much amusement in learning for myself the
history of the art of embroidery, and in tracing the beginnings and
the interchanges of national schools, that I cannot but hope that I
may excite a similar interest in some of my readers, and so induce
those who are capable, to help and lift it to a higher place than it
has been allowed in these latter days to occupy. If I have given too
important a position to the art of needlework, I would observe that
while I have been writing, decorative embroidery has come to the
front, and is at this moment one of the hobbies of the day; and I
would point out that it contains in itself all the necessary elements
of art; it may exercise the imagination and the fancy; it needs
education in form, colour, and composition, as well as the craft of a
practised hand, to express its language and perfect its beauty.

I confess that when I undertook this task, I did not anticipate the
time I have had to spend in collecting and epitomizing the many
notices to be found in German, French, and English authors, on what
has been considered among us, at least in this century, as merely a
secondary art, and therefore, as such, of little importance. Cursory
notices of needlework are scattered through almost every book on art;
and under the head of textiles it is usual to find embroidery
acknowledged as being worthy of notice, though not to be named in
company with sculpture, architecture, or painting, however beautifully
or thoughtfully its works may be carried out. I have tried to show
that it deserves higher estimation.

My first intention was simply to consider STYLE, good or bad, as it
influences our embroidery of to-day, and to find some rules by which
to guide that of the future in its next phase. But when we search into
the fluctuations of style, and their causes, we find they have an
historical succession, and that we must begin at the beginning a