[104] Woltmann and Woermann, Eng. Trans., p. 202.
[105] Charlemagne’s dress, in his tomb, was covered with golden elephants. This must have been Indian. His mantle was “parsemé” with golden bees.
[106] Elsewhere there is a notice of Miss Morritt’s really beautifully embroidered landscapes at Rokeby; and all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not, however, disprove the objections against employing the most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing subjects alien to the art of embroidery.
[107] See Redgrave’s “Manual of Design,” pp. 50-61.
[108] See Appendix 21, by Ch. T. Newton, to the first edition of Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” He gives, as instances of this pattern, certain coins from Prienè, where the River Mæander is symbolized by the angular key pattern. Appendix, [No. 1].
[109] “(Euripides loquitur) Not horse-cocks, nor yet goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets” (Aristophanes, “The Frogs,” v. 939-944). The Persian carpets, which are the legitimate descendants of Babylonian art, are curiously fragmentary. In a modern design are to be seen birds, indicated by a head, bill, and eyes; little coffee-pots, and flowers broken off at the stalks, and small quadrupeds without any particular form; also the prehistoric cross, the Tau, and bits of broken-up wave and key patterns. All these, repeated into a pattern, remind us of scraps in a kaleidoscope, thrown together accidentally, or else taken up by chance where history and art have dropped them.
[110] “Soma” or “Homa” (“Sarcostemma Viminale vel Brevistigma”), from Cashmere and the Hindu Cush, still used by the Brahmins, and the juice of which was the first intoxicant of the human race. See Birdwood’s “Indian Art,” vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.
[111] “The Hom, the sacred Persian tree, is constantly placed between two animals, chained to it.” See Pl. [23], Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
[112] The Hom or Homa, the sacred tree of Assyrian and Persian sculpture and textiles, is accounted for as a pattern by Dr. Rock, who says: “From the earliest antiquity a tradition came down through middle Asia, of some holy tree, perhaps the tree of life spoken of as growing in Paradise.” It is always represented as something like a shrub, and is a conventional portrait of a palm; but Rock says it has every look of having belonged to the family of the Asclepiadeæ. For its last transformation into a vine, see Pl. [24].
[113] Rock’s “Introduction,” p. cxxxi.