THE WEAVER'S ART.

Or all antiquarian studies there is perhaps none more interesting than that of costume; for if our enquiries into the architecture and decorations of past ages enable us to conjure up scenes that have long passed away, a knowledge of costume gives us the power of peopling those scenes, and of realizing the descriptions of the chroniclers, which would otherwise be but so much dry history. From the destruction of the Roman empire until the end of the thirteenth century there was really but little essential change in European costume; the antique tunic still held its place, it was generally girded up, and had tight sleeves. Over this rich men wore another tunic, not girded, which came down to the calf of the leg. The sleeves of this were sometimes shorter and sometimes longer than that of the under-tunic, and above all came the cloak. The hood was a separate garment, and could be worn with or without the cloak, being indeed a far more comfortable head-covering than anything we possess, for not only did it cover the head, but it also most effectually prevented the weather from penetrating to the neck. About the middle of the fourteenth century architecture began to change for the worse, indulging in tracery, crockets, pinnacles, small mouldings, and such like vanities, and the costume followed the bad example. Instead of the flowing dresses falling into folds, every vestment was made tight to the body; and although during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries the colours were brilliant and the ensemble highly picturesque, there were too many offences against good taste and right principle for us ever to regret the loss of it. The acme of bad taste was reached in the last century, when men wore large wigs, and when hardly one single article of dress was elegant or fell into its natural folds; but still there was colour. In the present day our dress, with the exception of the abominable chimney-pot hat, is a little better as regards form, but still dreadfully unpicturesque and totally without folds. As to colour, it has utterly disappeared, with the exception of a small spot round the neck in the shape of

the scarf. Nor are the ladies much better; their dress followed nearly the same vicissitudes as those of the men, being anciently little more than a series of very long tunics one over the other, so arranged as to allow the under ones to be seen; sometimes slits were cut in the upper ones for the same laudable purpose, more especially to shew the girdle, and were christened by the satirists of the day as "the devil's peepholes." Sometimes the under gown became tight to the body, the skirt being made full by means of gores, as at the end of the twelfth century, and again in the fifteenth. The present fashion of making the body tight and plaiting the skirt round the waist may be traced to the beginning of the sixteenth century in Germany, and among other examples may be seen in Albert Durer's "Melancholy," as it is called, but which is really the Genius of the Industrial Arts.

Now in the Middle Ages it was a very different affair as regards costume from what it is at the present day, when it is almost impossible to tell any man's station in life from his dress, and when you may travel for hundreds of miles in the same railway carriage with a nobleman without for one moment suspecting him to be anything more than Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown. In the Middle Ages, as I said before, it was very different, for the richer classes largely imported beautiful stuffs from the East, and afterwards from Sicily and Italy. Of course nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a very good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clugny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepul

chre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration. Both what is called the Lombardic character and the black letter are admirably adapted for borders of woven fabrics, and indeed for ornament generally, but they were seldom used. In modern times we find black letter inscriptions rather profusely used in the Houses of Parliament, but unfortunately they are so managed as to be almost illegible.

Very curious is the piece of stuff found at Palermo in the tomb of the Emperor Henry VI., who died in 1196. The pattern consists of antelopes and parrots placed face to face, the ground being filled up with some Arabic-looking foliage. The animals and ornaments are in gold, but the ground at present

is a reddish murrey colour silk, although in all probability it was originally what was called the diarhodon, which we are told strikes the look with the appearance of fire. The other shades of the same colour were the rhodinum and the leucorhodina, which were probably rose colour and pink respectively. Many other pieces of stuff have been preserved and published, for example in Willemin's Monuments inédits, but they all appear to have been designs in small patterns, and very nearly agree with the modern Indian kincob, and they mostly contain some. sort of bird or animal. The patterns then became gradually larger until the middle of the fifteenth century, when what may be called the pine pattern became very fashionable; as this pattern was very large, it was not very often that much of it could be seen, but as it was generally made of gold and velvet, besides being full of small details, the effect was always good, even when only a small piece was used.

In the Museum at South Kensington will be found a most valuable and interesting series of examples of ancient woven fabrics, as well as those decorated with embroidery, and in them the increase of the size of the pattern can be most distinctly traced. Some of the diapers are very curious; one of them consists of a series of castles, in each are two men holding hawks the size of each diaper being about 6 in., and the date the fourteenth century. Another pattern is composed of angels with censers, executed in yellow on a purple ground, powdered with yellow stars; the carnations and the clouds from which the angels issue are white. But the most gorgeous of all are the large patterns, executed in cloth of gold and red velvet, more especially when the gold wire is raised and looped. A fine piece of this sort of work forms the centre of the well-known pall of the Fishmongers' Company.

But however rich might be the stuffs, our ancestors were by no means contented with them; on the contrary, the desire to possess what no one else possessed very often induced them to call in the aid of embroidery; this consisted of embroidery proper for the more precious articles, and of appliqué for those of less value. For instance, the surcoat of William Earl of Albemarle, temp. Henry III., published in the Vetusta Monumenta, is executed in this manner. As to the embroidery proper, it reached such an excess that Philippe le Hardi had some garments which had cost him 800 Parisian livres, or

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about £1,200 of our money. Joinville, who gives us this information, says that he "never saw a single embroidered coat or ornamented saddle in the possession of the king his father or of any other lord. He (the king) answered that he had done wrong in embroidering his arms, and that he had some coats which had cost him 800 Parisian livres. I replied that he would have acted better if he had given them in charity, and had his dress made of good sendal, lined and strengthened with his arms, like as the king his father had done." Our own King Henry III. was far from setting so good an example to his contemporaries as St. Louis did. Among other instances of his extravagance in the matter of embroidery may be cited the altar frontal given by him to Westminster Abbey. The account begins with the canvas, and the wax for waxing it; then follows six marks of gold and the making them into thread; then we have two pounds of white silk and the same of yellow; five marks and a half of pearls; two marks of large pearls for the border; one pound of thick silk; the wages of four women working on the aforesaid cloth for three years and three quarters; 786 enamels for the border; 76 great enamels; 550 garnets for the border-for gold and for the making of the settings of same-for silver picture placed under the enamels, &c. The whole expense of this piece of embroidery must have reached some £4,000 of our money.

But embroidery, expensive as it was, by no means satisfied the rich of those days; jewels, and more particularly pearls, were in great request for what are called the orphreys, i. e. the borders of garments. When the tomb at Palermo of Constanza, the consort of the Emperor Henry VI., was opened, the orphreys of her dress were found to be composed of gold filagree, gold cloissonné enamels, and the rest of the ground filled up with small pearls; the whole sewed on linen.

Occasionally the ornaments of dresses were made of solid metal sewed on to the stuff: Henry VIII. and his courtiers are related to have worn such dresses, i. e. powdered with solid ornaments, at a grand feast, and afterwards let the people strip off the said ornaments. The Japanese robes of state are also decorated in a similar manner; and Oliphant, giving a description of the dresses of the Commissioners for signing the treaty made by Lord Elgin, says that one gentleman had his robes elegantly ornamented with silver skulls. I have only met