similar. The models of Behagle, Oudry, Charron are copied with
fidelity to their loveliness, and it is these that after a few years
of wear on furniture take on that mellowness which long association
with human hands alone can give. It is scarcely necessary to say that
antique furniture tapestry is rare; its use has been too hard to
withstand the years. Therefore, we may with joy and the complacency of
good taste acquire new coverings of the Don Quixote or AEsop's Fables
designs for our latter-day furniture or for the fine old pieces from
which the original tapestries have vanished.

ENGLAND

The chapter on Mortlake looms shows what was accomplished by
deliberate importation of an art coveted but not indigenous. It is
interesting to compare this with England's entirely modern and
self-made craft of the last thirty years. I allude to the tapestry
factory established by William Morris and called Merton Abbey. Mr.
Morris preferred the word arras as attached to his weavings, tapestry
having sometimes the odious modern meaning of machine-made figured
stuffs for any sort of furniture covering. But as Arras did not invent
the high-warp hand-loom, nor did the Saracens, nor the Egyptians, it
is but quibbling to give it arbitrarily the name of any particular
locale.

It seems that enough can never be said about the versatility of
William Morris and the strong flood of beauty in design that he sent
rippling over arid ground. It were enough had he accomplished only the
work in tapestry. It is not too strong a statement that he produced at
Merton Abbey the only modern tapestries that fill the primary
requirements of tapestries.

How did he happen upon it in these latter days? By worshipping the old
hangings of the Gothic perfection, by finding the very soul of them,
of their designers and of their craftsmen; then, letting that soul
enter his, he set his fingers reverently to work to learn, as well,
the secret of the ancient workman.

It was as early as 1885 that he began; was cartoonist, dyer,
tapissier, all, for the experiment, which was a small square of
verdure after the manner of the Gothic, curling big acanthus leaves
about a softened rose, a mingling of greens of ocean and shady reds.
Perhaps it was no great matter in the way of tapestry, but it was to
Morris like the discovery of a new continent to the navigator.

His was the time of a so-called aesthetic school in England. Watts,
Rossetti and Burne-Jones were harki