erseverance with which they were
employed. The garments of the clergy at this period were richly
embroidered, so much so, as to excite the admiration of the pope, and
induce him to issue a bull to the English priests, enjoining them to
procure him vestments equally gorgeous. Many of these were the free-will
offerings of the rich, and the fruits of highborn ladies' industry.
Fringe-making of gold and silver, worked upon lace without the aid of the
needle, was another species of occupation afforded them, and constituted
the Phrygian work often spoken of by old historians. Cyprian work was a
variety of embroidery, inasmuch as it was a thin, transparent texture
like gauze, named _cyprus_, worked with gold. Cyprus was a term applied
also to black crape, then appropriated exclusively to widows' mourning;
possibly this might have been the origin of "wearing the cypress."
Embroidery was not alone confined to ornaments of dress, or even clerical
vestments; hangings for the chambers, and pictures on almost every
possible subject, were produced from the needle.

The tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, attributed to Matilda, the queen of
the Conqueror, represents the history of Harold, king of England, and
William of Normandy, from the embassy of the former to Duke William, at
the command of Edward the Confessor, to his final overthrow at Hastings.
The ground of this work is a white linen cloth or canvas, one foot eleven
inches in depth, and two hundred and twelve in length. The figures are
all in their proper colours, of a style not unlike those of japan ware,
having no pretence to symmetry or proportion. It is preserved with great
care in the cathedral dedicated to Thomas a Becket, in Normandy, and is
annually exhibited for eight days, commencing on St. John's day, and is
called _Duke William's toilette_.

It is, however, extremely questionable whether it was the work of the
royal lady,--many figures in it would indicate that its manufacture was
of more recent date--be it as it may, it is a wondrous specimen of
patient industry, and valuable for the representation of manners and
customs of the times traced upon it.

Here we bid farewell to castle halls, to the ghosts of belted knights and
hooded dames, to spinning wheels and tapestries, falcons, jennets,
tournaments, and banquets, to the border's bord upon the skirting of his
lord's domain, the serf's log hut, the cowherd's shed, and the prisoner's
dungeon,--the moat, once d