ON MRS. MONTAGUE’S FEATHER HANGINGS.
“The birds put off their ev’ry hue,
To dress a room for Montague.
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows and his starry eyes;
The pheasant plumes, which round infold
His mantling neck with downy gold;
The cock his arch’d tail’s azure shew;
And, river blanch’d, the swan his snow.
All tribes beside of Indian name,
That glossy shine, or vivid flame,
Where rises, and where sets the day,
Whate’er they boast of rich and gay,
Contribute to the gorgeous plan,
Proud to advance it all they can.
This plumage, neither dashing shower,
Nor blasts that shape the dripping bow’r,
Shall drench again or discompose—
But screen’d from ev’ry storm that blows
It boasts a splendour ever new,
Safe with protecting Montague.”
Some Canadian women embroider with their own hair and that of animals; they copy beautifully the ramifications of moss-agates, and of several plants. They insinuate in their works skins of serpents and morsels of fur patiently smoothed. If their embroidery is not so brilliant as that of the Chinese, it is not less industrious.
The negresses of Senegal embroider the skin of different animals of flowers and figures of all colours.
The Turks and Georgians embroider marvellously the lightest gauze or most delicate crape. They use gold thread with inconceivable delicacy; they represent the most minute objects on morocco without varying the form, or fraying the finest gold, by a proceeding quite unknown to us. They frequently ornament their embroidery with pieces of money of different nations, and travellers who are aware of this circumstance often find in their old garments valuable and interesting coins.
The Saxons imitate the designs of the most accomplished work-people; their embroidery with untwisted thread on muslin is the most delicate and correct we are acquainted with of that kind.
The embroidery of Venice and Milan has long been celebrated, but its excessive dearness prevents the use of it. There is also much beautiful embroidery in France, but the palm for precedence is ably disputed by the Germans, especially those of Vienna.
This progress and variations of this luxury amongst various nations would be a subject of curious research, but too intricate and lengthened for our pages. We have intimations of it at the earliest period, and there is no age in which it appears to have been totally laid aside, no nation in which it was in utter disrepute. Some of its most beautiful patterns have been, as in architecture, the adaptation of the moment from natural objects, for one of the first ornaments in Roman embroidery, when they departed from their primitive simplicity in dress, was the imitation of the leaf of the acanthus—the same leaf which imparted grace and ornament to the Corinthian capital.
But it would be endless to enter into the subject of patterns, which doubtless were everywhere originally simple enough, with
“here and there a tuft of crimson yarn,
Or scarlet crewel.”