rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course
as clothing.

Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to
her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than
it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept
more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold.
The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced
his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the
lessening of care in every department.

Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to
weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work. Various other
expedients were resorted to beside the Sixteenth Century equivalent of
"Step lively." Large tapestries were not set on a single loom, but
were woven in sections, cunningly united when finished. In this manner
more men could be impressed into the manufacture of a single piece. A
wicked practice was introduced of painting or dyeing certain woven
parts in which the colours had been ill-selected.

All these things resulted in constantly increasing restrictions by the
guild of tapissiers and by order of royal patrons. But fraud is hard
to suppress when the animus of the perpetrator is wrong. Laws were
made to stop one fault after another, until in the end the weavers
were so hampered by regulations that work was robbed of all enthusiasm
or originality.

It was at this time that Brussels adopted the low-warp loom. In other
words, after a brilliant period of prolific and beautiful production,
Brussels began to show signs of deterioration. Her hour of triumph was
past. It had been more brilliant than any preceding, and later times
were never able to touch the same note of purity coupled with
perfection. The reason for the decline is known, but reasons are of
scant interest in the face of the deplorable fact of decadence.

The Italian method of drawing cartoons was adopted by the Flemish
cartoonists at this time, but as it was an adoption and not a natural
expression of inborn talent, it fell short of the high standard of the
Renaissance. But that is not to say that we of to-day are not ready to
worship the fruit of the Italian graft on Flemish talent. A tapestry
belonging to the Institute of Art in Chicago well represents this
hybrid expression of drawing. (Plate facing page 78.) The principal
figures are inspired by such as are seen in the _Mercury_ of Mr.
Blumenthal's co