ving,
needlework, and embroidery, formed the chief occupation of those whose
rank exonerated them, even in more primitive days, from the menial
drudgery of a household.

The Greek females led exceedingly retired lives, being far more
charily admitted to a share of the recreations of the nobler sex than
we of these privileged days. The ancient Greeks were very
magnificent--very: magnificent senators, magnificent warriors,
magnificent men; but they were a people trained from the cradle for
exhibition and publicity; domestic life was quite cast into the shade.
Consequently and necessarily their women were thrown to greater
distance, till it happened, naturally enough, that they seemed to form
a distinct community; and apartments the most distant and secluded
that the mansion afforded were usually assigned to them. Of these, in
large establishments, certain ones were always appropriated to the
labours of the needle.

"Je ne dirai" (says the sarcastic author of Anacharsis) "qu'un mot sur
l'education des filles. Suivant la difference des etats, elles
apprennent a lire, ecrire, coudre, filer, preparer la laine dont on
fait les vetemens, et veiller aux soins du menage. En general, les
meres exhortent leurs filles a se conduire avec sagesse; mais elles
insistent beaucoup plus sur la necessite de se tenir droites,
d'effacer leurs epaules, de serrer leur sein avec un large ruban,
d'etre extremement sobres, et de prevenir, par toutes sortes de
moyens, un embonpoint qui nuirait a l'elegance de la taille et a la
grace des mouvemens."

Homer, the great fountain of ancient lore, scarcely throughout his
whole work names a female, Greek or Trojan, but as connected naturally
and indissolubly with this feminine occupation--needlework. Thus, when
Chryses implores permission to ransome his daughter, Agamemnon
wrathfully replies--

"I will not loose thy daughter, till old age
Find her far distant from her native soil,
Beneath my roof in Argos, at her task
Of tissue-work."

And Iris, the "ambassadress of Heaven," finds Helen in her own
recess--

"----weaving there a gorgeous web,
Inwrought with fiery conflicts, for her sake
Wag'd by contending nations."

Hector foreseeing the miseries consequent upon the destruction of
Troy, says to Andromache--

"But no grief
So moves me as my grief for thee alone,
Doom'd then to follow some imperious Greek,
A weeping captive, to the distan