e an offering to St. Cuthbert of
a sacred ornament she had worked with gold and precious stones, and the
cope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which are preserved at Durham, are
considered to be specimens of opus Anglicanum. In the year 800, the
Bishop of Durham allotted the income of a farm of two hundred acres for
life to an embroideress named Eanswitha, in consideration of her keeping
in repair the vestments of the clergy in his diocese. The battle
standard of King Alfred was embroidered by Danish princesses; and the
Anglo-Saxon Gudric gave Alcuid a piece of land, on condition that she
instructed his daughter in needle-work. Queen Mathilda bequeathed to the
Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen a tunic embroidered at Winchester by
the wife of one Alderet; and when William presented himself to the
English nobles, after the Battle of Hastings, he wore a mantle covered
with Anglo-Saxon embroideries, which is probably, M. Lefebure suggests,
the same as that mentioned in the inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral,
where, after the entry relating to the broderie a telle (representing the
conquest of England), two mantles are described--one of King William,
'all of gold, powdered with crosses and blossoms of gold, and edged along
the lower border with an orphrey of figures.' The most splendid example
of the opus Anglicanum now in existence is, of course, the Syon cope at
the South Kensington Museum; but English work seems to have been
celebrated all over the Continent. Pope Innocent IV. so admired the
splendid vestments worn by the English clergy in 1246, that he ordered
similar articles from Cistercian monasteries in England. St. Dunstan,
the artistic English monk, was known as a designer for embroideries; and
the stole of St. Thomas a Becket is still preserved in the cathedral at
Sens, and shows us the interlaced scroll-forms used by Anglo-Saxon MS.
illuminators.

How far this modern artistic revival of rich and delicate embroidery will
bear fruit depends, of course, almost entirely on the energy and study
that women are ready to devote to it; but I think that it must be
admitted that all our decorative arts in Europe at present have, at
least, this element of strength--that they are in immediate relationship
with the decorative arts of Asia. Wherever we find in European history a
revival of decorative art, it has, I fancy, nearly always been due to
Oriental influence and contact with Oriental nations. Our own keenly
intellect