layed for some time in
Paris, and afterwards at some seaport towns. M. Denon had the charge
of it committed to him by Bonaparte, but it was afterwards restored
to Bayeux. It was at the time of the usurper's threatened invasion of
our country that so much value was attached to, and so much pains
taken to exhibit this roll. "Whether," says Dibdin, "at such a sight
the soldiers shouted, and, drawing their glittering swords,

"Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,--"

confident of a second representation of the same subject by a second
subjugation of our country--is a point which has not been exactly
detailed to me! But the supposition may not be considered very violent
when I inform you that I was told by a casual French visitor of the
tapestry, that '_pour cela, si Bonaparte avait eu le courage, le
resultat auroit ete comme autrefois_.' Matters, however, have taken
_rather_ a different turn."

The tapestry is coiled round a machine like that which lets down the
buckets to a well, and a female unrols and explains it. It is worked
in different coloured worsteds on white cloth, to which time has given
the tinge of brown holland; the parts intended to represent flesh are
left untouched by the needle. The colours are somewhat faded, and not
very multitudinous. Perhaps it is the little variety of colours which
Matilda and her ladies had at their disposal which has caused them to
depict the horses of any colour--"blue, green, red, or yellow." The
outline, too, is of course stiff and rude.[28] At the top and bottom
of the main work is a narrow allegorical border; and each division or
different action or event is marked by a branch or tree extending the
whole depth of the tapestry; and most frequently each tableau is so
arranged that the figures at the end of one and the beginning of the
next are turned from each other, whilst above each the subject of the
scene and the names of the principal actors are wrought in large
letters. The subjects of the border vary; some of AEsop's fables are
depicted on it, sometimes instruments of agriculture, sometimes
fanciful and grotesque figures and borders; and during the heat of the
battle of Hastings, when, as Montfaucon says, "le carnage est grand,"
the appropriate device of the border is a _layer of dead men_.

"From the fury of the Normans, good Lord deliver us," was, we are
told, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries a petition in the
Litanies of all nations.[29]