reformed, too, at this time, for we are now at the era
when tapestry had its last run of best days, that is to say, at the
time when France began her wondrous ascendency under Louis XIV. In
Italy colours had grown garish. Too much light in that country of the
sun, flooded and over-coloured its pictured scenes. Tints were too
strong, masses of blue and yellow and red glared all in tones purely
bright. They may have suited the twilight of the church, the gloom of
a palace closed in narrow streets, but they scourge the modern eye as
does a blasting light. The Gothic days gave borders the deep soft
tones of serious mood; the Renaissance played on a daintier scale; the
Seventeenth Century rushed into too frank a palette.

It remained for Rubens and Lebrun to find a scheme both rich and
subdued, to bring back the taste errant. Here let me note a
peculiarity of colour, noticeable in work of Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Century borders. The colour tone varies in different pieces
of the same set, and this is not the result of fading, but was done by
deliberate intent, one side border being light and another dark, or
one entire border being lighter than others of the same set.

Lest in speaking of borders, too much reference might be made to the
history of tapestry in general, I have left out Simon Vouet and Henri
Lerambert as inspired composers of the frame which enclosed their
cartoons; but it is well to say briefly that these men at least had
not followed false gods, and were not guilty of the flagrant offence
to taste that put a smirch on Italian art. These are the men who
preceded the establishment of State ateliers under Louis XIV and who
made productive the reign of Henri IV.

If Rubens kept to a style of large detail, that was a popular one and
had many followers in a grandiose age. Lebrun in borders harked back
to the classics of Greece and Rome, thus restoring the exquisite
quality of delicacy associated with a thousand designs of amphorae,
foliated scrolls and light grotesques. But he expressed himself more
individually and daringly in the series called _The Months_ and _The
Royal Residences_. This set is so celebrated, so delectable, so
grateful to the eye of the tapestry lover, that familiarity with it
must be assumed. You recollect it, once you have seen no more than a
photograph of one of its squares. But it cannot be pertinent here, for
it has no important border, say you. No, rather it is all border. Look
what