![[See larger image]](#8958526208864448133_tapestry034.jpg.id-2528927344385396846.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
DEATH OF ANANIAS.—FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY RAPHAEL
From the Palace of Madrid
![[See larger image]](#8958526208864448133_tapestry035.jpg.id-3998812586139908014.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
Indeed, the Gothic tapestries more than any other existing pictures take us back to that epoch of our lives when we lived in romance, when the Sleeping Beauty hid in just such towers, when the prince rode such a horse and appeared an elegant young knight. The inscrutable mystery of those folk of other days is like the inscrutable mystery of that childhood time, the Mediæval time of the imagination, and those of us who remember its joys gaze silent and happy in the tapestry room of the Ducal Palace at Nancy, or in Mary’s Chamber at Holyrood, or in any place whatever where hang the magic pictured cloths.
When the highest development of a style is reached a change is sure to come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes of certain fortunate owners, do not contain marks of decadence—only of transition. It is a style that was replaced, but not one that died the death of decadence.