factory of wondrous
taste. In _Truth Blindfolded_ (plate facing page 258), Mr. Byram Shaw
has drawn the central figure as Cabanel might have done a decade ago,
while every other figure in the group might have been done by some
hand dead these four hundred years.

Morris' manner of procedure differed little from that of the decorator
Lebrun, although his work was a private enterprise and in no way to be
compared with the royal factory of a rich king. Burne-Jones drew the
figures; H. Dearle, a pupil, and Philip Webb drew backgrounds and
animals, but Morris held in his own hands the arrangement of all. It
was as though a gardener brought in a sheaf of cut roses and the
master hand arranged them. Mr. Dearle directed some compositions with
skill and talent.

With the passing of William Morris an inevitable change is visible in
the cartoons. The Gothic note is not continued, nor the atmosphere of
sanctity, which is its usual accompaniment. A tapestry of 1908 from
the design of _The Chace_ by Heyward Sumner suggests long hours with
the Flemish landscapists of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
with a jarring note of Pan dragged in by the ears to huddle under
foliage obviously introduced for this purpose.

[Illustration: THE PASSING OF VENUS

Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones]

[Illustration: ANGELI LAUDANTES

Merton Abbey Tapestry]

But criticism of this aberration cannot hurt the wondrous inspired
work directed by Morris, and which it were well for a beauty-loving
world to have often repeated. Unhappily, the Merton Abbey works are
bound not to repeat the superb series of the _Grail_. The entire set
has been woven twice, and three pieces of it a third time--and there
it ends. This is well for the value of the tapestries, but is it not a
providence too thrifty when the public is considered? In ages to come,
perhaps, other looms will repeat, and our times will glow with the
fame thereof.

Before leaving the subject of the Merton Abbey tapestries, it is
interesting to note a technical change in the weaving. By
intertwisting the threads of the chain or warp at the back, a way is
found to avoid the slits in weaving that are left to be sewn together
with the needle in all old work. This method has been proved the
stronger of the two. The strain of hanging proves too great for the
strength of the stitches, and on many a tapestry appear gaping wounds
which call for yet more stitching. But in