estry it began with a freedom of drawing
in figures, and an adoption of classic ornament and architecture. In
this connexion it is interesting to note the introduction of Greek or
Roman detail in the columns that divide the scenes, to see saints
gathered by temples of classic form instead of Gothic. If Renaissance
details appear in a hanging called Gothic, it is easy to see that the
piece was woven after Europe was infected with modern art, and this is
an assistance in placing dates; at least, it checks the tendency to
slip back too far in antiquity, a tendency of which we in a new
country are entirely guilty.

Lest too long a lingering on the subject of design become wearisome, a
mention of later designs is made briefly. The simplicity of the early
Renaissance, the perfection of the high Renaissance, are both shown in
tapestry as well as in paintings, and so, too, is exemplified the
inflation that ended in tiresome exuberance.

After the fruit was ripe it fell into decay. After Sixteenth Century
perfection, Seventeenth Century designs fell of their own overweight,
figures were too exaggerated, draperies billowed out as in a perpetual
gale, architecture and landscapes were too important, and tapestries
became frankly pictures to attract the attention. To this class of
design belong all those monstrosities which reflected and distorted
the art of Raphael, and which have been intimately associated with
Scriptural subjects down to our own times.

After Raphael, Rubens. Familiarity with this heroic painter is the key
to placing all the magnificent designs similar to the set of _Antony
and Cleopatra_ (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).

Then came the easily recognisable designs of the French ateliers of
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. These are so frequently
brought before us as to seem almost like products of our own day. The
earlier ones seem (as ever) the purer art, the less sensual,
appealing to the more impersonal side of man, dealing in battles and
in classic subjects. Later, the drawings, becoming more directly
personal, in the time of Louis XIV portrayed events in the _Life of
the King_; in the next reign, slipping into the pleasures of the
_Royal Hunts_, from which the descent was easy into depicting nothing
higher than the soft loveliness of the fantastic life of the time as
led by those of high estate. From Lebrun to Watteau one can trace the
gradual seductive decline, where heroic ideal lowers