and needlework, this art would have developed into needlework
tapestry. The groups would have outgrown their frames, and left their
picture spaces on the walls, and, stretching into life-size figures,
have become hangings of silken broidery, such as we find in Spain and
Italy, from the hands of nuns or noble ladies.

[Illustration: EMBROIDERED PICTURE in silks, with a painted sky.

_Courtesy of Essex Institute, Salem, Mass._]

[Illustration: CORNELIA AND THE GRACCHI. Embroidered picture in silks,
with velvet inlaid, worked by Mrs. Lydia Very of Salem at the age of
sixteen while at Mrs. Peabody's school.

_Courtesy of Essex Institute, Salem, Mass._]

The influence of the Bethlehem teaching lasted long enough to build up a
very fine and critical standard of embroidery in America. It would be
difficult to overestimate the importance of the influence of this school
of embroidery upon the needlework practice of a growing country. Its
qualities of sincerity, earnestness, and respect for the art of
needlework gave importance to the work of hands other than that of
necessary labor, and these qualities influenced all the various forms of
work which followed it. The first divergence from the original work was
in its application, rather than its method, for instead of having a
strictly decorative purpose its application became almost exclusively
personal. Flower embroidery of surpassing excellence was its general
feature. The materials for the development of this form of art were
usually satin, or the flexible undressed India silk which lent itself so
perfectly to ornamentation. Breadths of cream-white satin, of a
thickness and softness almost unknown in the present day, were stretched
in Chippendale embroidery frames, and loops and garlands of flowers of
every shape and hue were embroidered upon them. They were often done for
skirts and sleeves of gowns of ceremony, giving a distinction even
beyond the flowered brocades so much coveted by colonial belles.

This beautiful flower embroidery was, like its predecessor, the rare
picture embroidery, too exacting in its character to be universal. It
needed money without stint for its materials, and luxurious surroundings
for its practice. Some of the beautiful old gowns wrought in that day
are still to be seen in colonial exhibitions, and are even occasionally
worn by great-great-granddaughters at important mimic colonial
functions.

Floss embroidery upon silk and satin was not e