to pay the expense of the
prison, and at the same time a very small percentage is
given to the prisoners to send to their friends, or to
spend on little comforts, thus encouraging the poor
human creatures to exercise their best powers. We
believe this is sometimes allowed also in England and
France.

CHAPTER I.

STYLE.

In venturing to approach so great a subject as the history of style, I
would beg my readers to believe how well I am aware that on each point
much more has been already carefully treated by previous writers, than
will fall within the limits of a chapter that is intended only to
throw light on textile art, and especially on embroidery.

I suppose it is the same in all subjects of human speculation which
are worthy of serious study; and therefore I ought not to have been
surprised to find how much has already been written on needlework and
embroidery, and how unconsciously I, at least, have passed by and
ignored these notices, till it struck me that I ought to know
something of the history and principles of the art which with others,
I was striving to revive and improve.

Then new and old facts crowded round me, and became significant and
interesting. I longed to know something of the first worker and the
first needle; and behold the needle has been found!--among the debris
of the life of the Neolithic cave-man, made of bone and very neatly
fashioned.

Alas! the workwoman and her work are gone to dust; but _there_ is the
needle!--proof positive that the craft existed before the last glacial
period in Britain.[15] How long ago this was, we may conjecture, but
can never finally ascertain. Then I find embroidery named by the
earliest historians, by every poet of antiquity, and by the first
travellers in the East; and it has been the subject of laws and
enactments from the date of the Code of Manu in India, to the present
century. One becomes eager to systematize all this information, and to
share with the workers and thinkers of the craft, the pleasure found
in its study.

Perhaps what is here collected may appear somewhat bald and
disjointed; but antiquity, both human and historical, is apt to be
bald; and its dislocation and disjointed condition are owing to the
frequent cataclysms, physical, political, and social, which needlework
has survived, bringing down to us the same stitches which served the
same purposes for decoration under the Code of Manu, and adorned t