They found great favour also in England, into which country one-third of the lace manufactured throughout the Département du Nord was smuggled in 1789.[[639]] The broad black Lille lace has always been specially admired, and was extensively used to trim the long silk mantles of the eighteenth century.[[640]]
In 1788 there were above 16,000 lace-makers at Lille, and it made 120,000 pieces[[641]] of lace, representing a value of more than £160,000. In 1851 the number of lace-makers was reduced to 1,600; it is still gradually diminishing, from the competition of the fabric of Mirecourt and the numerous other manufactures established at Lille, which offer more lucrative wages than can be obtained by lace-making.
Fig. 110.
Lille.
The old straight-edged is no longer made, but the rose pattern of the Mechlin is adopted, and the style of that lace copied: the semé of little square dots (points d'esprit) on the ground—one of the characteristics of Lille lace—is still retained. In 1862 Mrs. Palliser saw at Lille a complete garniture of beautiful workmanship, ordered for a trousseau at Paris, but the commercial crisis and the revolutions of 1848 virtually put an end to the lace industry of Lille and Arras.
ARRAS (Artois) (Dép. Pas-de-Calais).
"Arras of ryche arraye,
Fresh as floures in Maye."—Skelton.
Arras, from the earliest ages, has been a working city. Her citizens were renowned for the tapestries which bore their name: the nuns of her convents excelled in all kinds of needlework. In the history of the Abbaye du Vivier,[[642]] we are told how the abbess, Madame Sainte, dite la Sauvage, set the sisters to work ornaments for the church:—