most elusive. Knowledge
is to be gained only by a lover of the objects, a lover willing to
spend long hours in association with his love, prowling among
collections, comparing, handling, studying designs, discerning
colours, searching for details, and indulging withal a nice feeling
for textures, a vision that feels them even without touch of the hand.

If the study of design has not given a keen scent for the vague
quality which we call "feeling," the eye would better be trained still
further, for herein lies the secret of success in difficult places,
and not only that, but if he have not this sense he is deprived of one
of the most subtile thrills that the arts can excite.

But this sense is not a matter of untrained intuition. It is the
flower of erudition, the flame from a full heart, or whatever dainty
thing you choose to call it. It has its origin primarily in keen
observation of the various important schools of design that have
interested the world for centuries. We unconsciously augment it even
in following the side-path of history in this modest volume. Our
studies here are but those of a summer morn or a winter eve, yet they
are in vain if they have not set up a measuring standard or two within
the mind.

GOTHIC DRAWING

First, and dearest to the lover of designs, comes the Gothic, the
style practised by those conscientious romantic children-in-art, the
Primitives. Their characteristics in tapestry are much the same as in
painting, as in sculpture; for, weavers, painters, book-makers,
sculptors, were all expressing the same matter, all following the same
fashion. Therefore, to one's help comes any and every work of the
primitive artists. Making allowance for the difference in medium, the
same religious feeling is seen in the Burgundian set of _The
Sacraments_ in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, as is found
in stone carving of the time which decorated churches and tombs.

The figures in the Gothic tapestries show a dignified restraint, a
solemnity of pose, recalling the deadly seriousness with which
children play the game of grown-ups. The artists of that day had to
keep to their traditions; to express without over-expression, was
their difficult task (as it is ours), but they had behind them the
rigidity of the Byzantine and Early Christian, so that every free
line, every vigorous pose or energetic action, was forging ahead into
a new country, a voyage of adventure for the daring artist. Qui