roofs of the houses of Bagdat. He asked the reason,
and was told that the inhabitants of Bagdat were drying their clothes,
which they had newly washed, on account of the approach of the Bairam.
The caliph was so concerned that any should be so poor as to be
obliged to wash their old clothes for want of new ones with which to
celebrate this festival, that he ordered a great quantity of gold to
be instantly made into bullets, proper to be shot out of crossbows,
which he and his courtiers threw, by this means, upon every terrace of
the city where he saw garments spread to dry.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Book viii. chap. 48.

[6] Ciampini, Vetera Monimenta, cap. xiii.

[7] "Licia qui texunt, et Carmina; Carmina Musis,
Licia contribuunt, casta Minerva, tibi.
Ast ego rem sociam non dissociabo, Sabina,
Versibus inscripsi, quae mea texta meis."

[8] "Sive probas Tyrio textam sub tegmine vestem,
Seu placet inscripti commoditas tituli.
Ipsius haec Dominae concennat utrumque venustas:
Has geminas artes una Sabina colet."

CHAPTER VI.

THE DARK AGES.--"SHEE-SCHOOLS."

"There was an auncient house not far away,
Renown'd throughout the world for sacred lore
And pure unspotted life: so well they say
It govern'd was, and guided evermore
Through wisedome of a matrone grave and hore,
Whose onely joy was to relieve the needes
Of wretched soules, and helpe the helplesse pore:
All night she spent in bidding of her bedes,
And all the day in doing good and godly dedes."

Faerie Queene.

"Meantime, whilst monks' _pens_ were thus employed, nuns
with their _needles_ wrote histories also: that of
_Christ his passion_ for their altar-clothes; and other
Scripture- (and more legend-) stories in hangings to
adorn their houses."--Fuller, Ch. Hist., B. 6.

Needlework is an art so indissolubly connected with the convenience
and comfort of mankind at large, that it is impossible to suppose any
state of society in which it has not existed. Its modes varied, of
course, according to the lesser or greater degrees of refinement in
other matters with which it was connected; and when we find from
Muratori that "nulla s'e detto fin qui dell'Arte del Tessere dopo la
declinazione del Romano Imperio; e solo in fuggire s'e parlato di
alcune vesti degli antichi," we may fairly infer that the _ornamental_
needlework of the time was