among her ladies embroidering, and she came to meet them with a skein of red silk around her neck. In those days they wrought and made lace with colored silk. We can imagine how the bright floss must have trembled over the tumultuous beatings of that wronged heart during the cruel interview that followed. But the work of Catherine of Aragon was not for vanity's sake, nor even to pass the heavy hours. In her native Spain the rarest laces were made for the church, and not only nuns, but ladies of the world, wove pious thoughts in with that fairy web. Perhaps nowhere else, save else, save in Rome, was the church lace so rich as in Spain. Images of favorite saints and Madonnas had wardrobes of regal magnificence, changed every day, and the altars and vestments were no less regally adorned. Beckford writes that, in 1787, the Marchioness of Cogalhudo, wife of the eldest son of the semi-regal race of Medina Coeli, was appointed Mistress of the Robes to Our Lady of La Solidad, in Madrid; and that the office was much coveted. It is supposed that the peasantry of Bedfordshire, in England, first learned lace-making through the charity of Queen Catherine. While at Ampthill, it is recorded that, when not at her devotions, she, with her ladies, "wrought a needle-work costly and artificially, which she intended for the honor of God to bestow on some of the churches." The country people had the greatest love and respect for the disgraced queen; and, till lately, the lace-makers held Cattern's Day," the 25th of November, as the holiday of their craft, “in memory of good Queen Catherine, who, when trade was dull, burnt all her laces, and ordered new to be made. The ladies of the court followed her example, and the fabric once more revived." Lace was and is considered a suitable present from a king to a pontiff. These earlier gifts were, it is true, sometimes of gold and silver lace wrought with precious stones, but they were scarcely more costly than the later white-thread points. In the Exhibition of 1859 was shown a dress valued at 200,000 francs, the most costly work ever executed at Alençon. This Napoleon III. purchased for the empress, who, it is said, presented it to his Holiness the Pope as a trimming for his rochet. Also, so early as the XIIIth century, the English cut-work was so fine that, according to Matthew Paris, Pope Innocent IV. sent official letters to some of the Cistercian abbots of England to procure a certain quantity of those vestments for his own use. His Holiness had seen and admired the orfrays of the English clergy. The finest specimens extant of this old English work (opus Anglicanum) are the cope and maniple of S. Cuthbert, taken from his coffin many years ago in the cathedral of Durham, and now preserved in the chapter library of that city. One who has seen them declares them beautiful beyond description. This work seems to have been at first used only for ecclesiastical purposes, and the making of it to have been a secret preserved in the monasteries. Nor have the clergy been merely the wearers of lace. We hear of monks being praised for their skill in "imbrothering "; and S. Dunstan himself did not disdain to design patterns for church lace. Pattern-books for these needle-laces were made by monks as well as laymen, and plates in them represent men seated at the embroidering frame. Some of these old pattern books of the XVIth cen tury are preserved in the library of S. Geneviève at Paris, inherited from the monastery of that name. These books are prized and sought for as some of the earliest specimens of block-printing. But few remain, and doubtless their high price prevented them from being made in great numbers. Their place was taken by samplers, into which were copied the patterns desired. From these old lacesamplers come the later alphabetical samplers, which many now living will remember to have made in their youth. Large quantities of rich old lace were lost in the last century, when the French Revolution brought in gauzes and blondes, and fashion tossed aside as worthless these exquisite products of the needle. In Italy, where the custom was to preserve old family lace, less was destroyed; but in England it was handed over to servants or farm people, or stowed away in attics, and afterwards burned. Some ladies gave point-laces which now they could not afford to buy, to their children to dress their dolls with. Sometimes it was thrown away as old rags. In the church, however, fashion. had no power, and old lace has been usually preserved. Some collections are exceedingly valuable. Notable among these is that of the Rohan family, who gave princes-archbishops to Strasbourg. Baroness de Oberkirck, in Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVI., writes: "We met the cardinal coming out of his chapel dressed in a soutane of scarlet moire and rochet of inestimable value. When, on great occasions, he officiates at Versailles, he wears an alb of old lace of needlepoint of such beauty that his assistants were almost afraid to touch it. His arms and device are worked in a medallion above the large flowers." This alb is estimated at 100,000 livres. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which lace was used prior to the French Revolution, or the immense extravagance of the sums spent on it. Everybody wore it, even servants emulating their masters and mistresses. It trimmed everything, from the towering Fontanges, which rose like a steeple from ladies' heads, to the boot-tops and shoe-rosettes of men. Men wore lace ruffles not only at the wrist, but at the knee, lace ruffs, cravats, collars, and garters; and bed furniture was made of lace, or trimmed with it, costly as it was. A pair of ruffles would amount to 4,000 livres, a lady's cap to 1,200 livres. We read that Mme. du Barry gave 487 francs for lace enough to trim a pillow-case, and 77 livres for a pair of ruffles. Lace fans were made in 1668, and lace-trimmed bouquet-holders are not a new fancy. When the Doge of Venice made his annual visit to the convent Delle Vergini, the lady abbess used to meet him in the parlor, surrounded by her novices, and present him a nosegay in a gold handle trimmed with the richest lace that could be found in Venice. Voltaire says that the mysterious Iron Mask was passionately fond of fine linen and rich lace, So extravagant had the use of this luxury become that in England there was an outcry against it, and the Puritans laid great stress on discarding vanity in clothing. We have a little scene illustrative, between the Princess Mary and Lady Jane Grey. The princess had given the maiden some gorgeous dresses trimmed with lace. "What shall I do with it?" asks Lady Jane. "Gentlewoman, wear it," was the reply, a little vexed, may be." Nay," says Lady Jane, "that were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God's will, and leave my Lady and needle-work Elizabeth, which followeth God's lace, cut-work, and will." "My Lady Elizabeth," however, set aside her scruples before long, and, when queen, did not hesitate to adorn herself as bravely as she might, though she had no mind her fashions should be copied by the vulgar; for we read that, when the London Apprentices adopted white stitching and guards as ornaments for their collars, Queen Elizabeth forbade it, and ordered that the first transgressor should be publicly whipped in the hall of his company. There is another incident, which, as one of the sex in whom vanity is supposed to be prominent, we take special pleasure in relating. The Puritan nobles had not in dress conformed to Puritan rules as strictly as some desired, the foreign ambassadors dressing as richly as ever. When, therefore, the Spanish envoy accredited to the Protectorate of Cromwell arrived and was about to have an audience, Harrison begged Lord Warwick and Colonel Hutchinson to set an example by not wearing either gold or silver lace. These gentlemen did not disapprove of rich clothing, but, rather than give offence, they and their associates appeared the next day in plain black suits. But, to their astonishment, Harrison entered dressed in a scarlet coat so covered with lace and clinquant as to hide the material of which it was made. Whereupon Mrs. Hutchinson remarks that Harrison's "godly speeches were only made that he might appear braver above the rest in the eyes of the strangers." point; but this proving ineffectual, since everybody smuggled, another act was passed setting a penalty of twenty shillings a yard and forfeiture. We regret to learn that forfeiture meant, in some cases at least, burning, and that large quantities of the finest Flanders lace were seized and actually burned. It reminds one of the burning of Don Quixote's library of chivalric records. Flanders, however, with its nunneries full of lace-makers, and its thousands of people depending on the trade, had no mind to be thus crippled without retaliation. An act was immediately passed prohibiting the importation of English wool; whereupon the wool-staplers echoed with addition the groans of the lace-makers, and England was forced to repeal the act so far as the Low Countries were concerned. As we have said, everybody in England smuggled lace in those days. Smuggling seems indeed to be everywhere looked on as the least shameful of law-breaking. But never, perhaps, were officers of the customs as incorruptible as these. Suspicious persons were searched, no matter what their rank, and no person living within miles of a seaport dared to wear a bit of foreign lace unless they could prove that it had been honestly obtained. Many were the devices by which men and women sought to elude the customs. When a deceased clergyman of the English Church was conveyed home from the Low Countries for burial, it was found that only his head, hands, and feet were in the coffin-the body had been replaced by Flanders lace of immense value. Years after, when the body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, who had died in France, was brought over, the custom-house officers not Lace has frequently employed the thoughts of law-makers, and in 1698 was the subject of a legislative duel between England and Flanders.. There was already in England an act prohibiting the importation of bone-lace (ie. bobbin-lace), loom- only searched the coffin, but poked the corpse with a stick to make sure that it was a body. The High Sheriff of Westminster was more fortunate, for he succeeded in smuggling £6,000 worth of lace in the coffin that brought over from Calais the body of Bishop Atterbury. In the present century, Lady Ellenborough, wife of the lord chief-justice, was stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace found secreted in the lining of her carriage. At one period, much lace was smuggled into France from Belgium by means of dogs trained for the purpose. A dog was caressed and petted at home, then, after a while, sent across the frontier, where he was tied up, starved, and ill-treated. The skin of a larger dog was then fitted to his body, the intervening space filled with lace, and the poor animal was released. Of course he made haste to scamper back to his former home. A propos of the customs, there is a story in which George III. had an active part, and displayed his determination to protect home manufactures. On the marriage of his sister, Princess Augusta, to the Duke of Brunswick, the king ordered that all stuffs and laces worn should be of English manufacture. The nobility, intent on outshining each other on this grand occasion, took but little notice of the command. We may well believe that the rooms of the court milliner were gorgeous with these preparations; that there was unusual hurry and flurry lest everything should not be done in time; and that high-born and beautiful ladies were constantly besieging the doors, bringing additions to the stock. Fancy, then, the consternation of the expectant and excited dames, when, only three days before the wedding, the customs made a descent on this costly finery, and carried off in one fell swoop the silver, the gold, and the laces! There was not only the loss of these dear gewgaws to mourn, but a new toilet to be prepared in three days! The camp, too, as well as the church and the court, has cherished lace, and the warriors of those days did not fight less gallantly because they went into battle elegantly arrayed. Lace ruffles at the wrist did not weaken the sword or sabre stroke, nor laces on the neck and bosom make faint the heart beneath. Possibly they helped to a nobler courtesy and a braver death; for slovenly dress tends to make slovenly manners, and slovenly manners often lead to careless morals. A graceful fashion called the Steinkerk had a martial origin, and was named from the battle so-called, wherein Marshal Luxembourg won the day against William of Orange. On that day, the young princes of the blood were suddenly and unexpectedly called into battle. Hastily knotting about their necks the laced cravats then in fashion, and usually tied with great nicety, they rushed into action, and won the fight. In honor of that event, both ladies and gentlemen wore their cravats and scarfs loosely twisted and knotted, the ends sometimes tucked through the button-hole, sometimes confined by a large oval-shaped brooch; and Steinkerks became the rage. But evidence enough, perhaps, has been brought to prove that lace is not an entirely trivial subject of dis course. We may, however, add that Dr. Johnson condescended to define net lace in his most Johnsonian man ner. It is, he says, "anything retic ulated or decussated, with interstice between the intersections." Afte that, ladies may wear their ruffles no only with pleasure, but with respect for if he was so learned in defining lace. plain net, what unimaginable erudi- cut-worked, and out of cut-work grew tion would have entered his definition of Honiton guipure, or the points of Alençon, Brussels, or Venice! Spiders were probably the first creatures that made lace, though the trees held a delicate white network under the green of their leaves. After the spiders came the human race, following closely. Old Egyptian pictures and sculptures show us women engaged in twisting threads; and the Scriptures are full of allusions to "fine twined linen" and needlework. Almost as soon as garments were worn they began to be adorned at the edges; and among savages, to whom garments were of slight consequence, tattooing was practised, which is the same idea in a different form. The Israelites probably learned from the Egyptians, and from them the art travelled westward. One theory is that Europe learned it from the Saracens. It matters but little to us which is the real version. It is most likely that all the children of Adam and Eve had some fancy of this sort which reached greater perfection in the more cultivated tribes and nations, and was by them taught to the others. The waved or serrated edges of leaves would suggest such adornments to them, or the fur hanging over the edge of the rude skins they wore. The very waves of the sea, that curled over in snowy spray at their tips, had a suggestion of lace and ornamental bordering; and the clouds of sunrise and sunset were fringed with crimson and gold by the sun. Flower petals were finished with a variegated edge, and it was not enough that birds had wings, but they must be ornamented. When embroidery at length became an art, the Phrygian women excelled all others. Presently close embroidery became open-worked or This cut-work was made in various ways. In one kind, a network of thread was made on a frame, and under this was gummed a piece of fine cloth. Then those parts which were to remain thick were sewed round on to the cloth; and afterward the superfluous cloth was cut away. A Another kind was made entirely of thread, which was arranged on a frame in lines diverging from the centre like a spider's web, and worked across and over with other threads, forming geometrical patterns. Later, a fabric still more like our modern lace was made. groundwork was netted by making one stitch at the beginning, and increasing a stitch on each side till the requisite size was obtained. On this ground was worked the pattern, sometimes darned in with counted stitches, sometimes cut out of linen, and appliqué. Still another kind was drawn-work, threads being drawn from linen or muslin, and the thinned cloth worked into lace. Specimens still exist of a six-sided lace net made in this way, with sprigs worked over it. The earlier rich laces were not made of white thread. Gold, silver, and silk were used. The Italians, who claim to have invented point lace, were the great makers of gold lace. Cyprus stretched gold into a wire, and wove it. From Cyprus the art reached Genoa, Venice, and Milan; and gradually all Europe learned to make gold lace. In England, the complaint was raised that the gold of the realm was sensibly diminishing in this way, and in 1635 an act was passed prohibiting the melting down of bullion to make gold or silver "purl." And not only in Western and Southern Europe was |