FOOTNOTE:
[124] She was then a mere child, not more, if I remember rightly, than twelve years old.
CHAPTER XXI.
“LES ANCIENNES TAPISSERIES;” TAPESTRY OF ST. MARY’S HALL, COVENTRY; TAPESTRY OF HAMPTON COURT.
“There is a sanctity in the past.”
Bulwer.
All monuments of antiquity are so speedily passing away, all traces of those bygone generations on which the mind loves to linger, and which in their dim and indistinct memories exercise a spell, a holy often, and a purifying spell on the imagination are so fleeting, and when irrevocably gone will be so lamented—that all testimonies which throw certain light on the habits and manners of the past, how slight soever the testimonies they afford, how trivial soever the characteristics they display, are of the highest possible value to an enlightened people, who apply the experience of the past to its legitimate and noblest use, the guidance and improvement of the present.
In this point of view the work which forms the subject of this chapter[125] assumes a value which its intrinsic worth—beautiful as is its execution—would not impart to it; and it is thus rendered not less valuable as an historical record, than it is attractive as a work of taste.
“Là chez eux, (we quote from the preface to the work itself,) c’est un siège ou un tournoi; ici un festin, plus loin une chasse; et toujours, chasse, festin, tournoi, siège, tout cela est pourtraict au vif, comme aurait dit Montaigne, tout cela nous retrace au naturel la vie de nos pères, nous montre leurs châteaux, leurs églises, leurs costumes, leurs armes et même, grâce aux légendes explicatives, leur langage à diverses époques. Il y a mieux. Si nous nous en rapportons à l’inventaire de Charles V., exécuté en 1379, toute la littérature française des siècles féconds qui précédèrent celui de ce sage monarque, aurait été par ces ordres traduite en laine.”
This book consists of representations of all the existing ancient tapestries which activity and research can draw from the hiding-places of ages, copied in the finest outline engraving, with letter-press descriptions of each plate. They are published in numbers, and in a style worthy of the object. We do not despair of seeing this spirited example followed in our own country, where many a beautiful specimen of ancient tapestry, still capable of renovation by care—is mouldering unthought of in the lumber-rooms of our ancient mansions.