My youngest son shall here remain
To guard these lonely towers,
And shut the silver bolt that keeps
Sae fast your painted bowers.

"And first she wet her comely cheeks,
And then her boddice green,

Her silken cords of twisted twist,
Well plett with silver sheen ;
And apron set with mony a dice
Of needlewark sae rare,

Wove by nae hand, as ye may guess,
Save that of Fairly fair."

But it harmonises better with our ideas of high or royal life to hear of some trophy for the warrior, some ornament for the knightly bower, or some decorative offering for the church, emanating from the taper fingers of the courtly fair, than those kirtles and boddices which, be they ever so magnificent, seem to appertain more naturally to the "milliner's practice." Therefore, though we give the gentle Fairly fair all possible praise for notability

in the

"Apron set with mony a dice

Of needlework sae rare,"

we certainly look with more regard on such work as that of the Danish princesses who wrought a standard with the national device, the Raven,* on it,

*This sacred stan lard was taken by the Saxons in Devonshire, in a fortunate onset, in which they slew one of the Sea-kings with eight hundred of his followers. So superstitious a reverence was attached to this ensign that its loss is said to have broken the spirit of even these ruthless plunderers. It was woven by the sisters of Inguar and Ubba, who divined by it. If the Raven (which was worked on it) moved briskly in the wind, it was a sign of victory, but if it drooped and hung heavily, it was supposed to prognosticate discomfiture

and which was long the emblem of terror to those opposed to it on the battle-field. Of a gentler character was the stupendous labour of Queen Matilda -the Bayeux tapestry-on which we have dwelt too long elsewhere to linger here, and which was wrought by her and under her superintendence.

Queen Adelicia, the second wife of Henry I., was a lady of distinguished beauty and high talent: she was remarkable for her love of needlework, and the skill with which she executed it. One peculiar production of her needle has recently been described by her accomplished biographer; it was a standard which she embroidered in silk and gold for her father, during the memorable contest in which he was engaged for the recovery of his patrimony, and which was celebrated throughout Europe for the exquisite taste and skill displayed by the royal Adelicia in the design and execution of her patriotic achievement. This standard was unfortunately captured at a battle near the castle of Duras, in 1129, by the Bishop of Liege and the Earl of Limbourg, the old competitor of Godfrey for Lower Lorraine, and was by them placed as a memorial of their triumph in the great church of St. Lambert, at Liege, and was for centuries carried in procession on Rogation days through the streets of that city. The church of St. Lambert was destroyed during the French Revolution. The plain where this memorable trophy was taken is still called the "Field of the Standard."

Perhaps, second only to Queen Matilda's work, or indeed superior to it, as being entirely the production of her own hand, were the needlework pieces of Joan D'Albert, who ascended the throne

of Navarre in 1555. Though her own career was varied and eventful, she is best known to posterity as the mother of the great Henry IV. She adopted the reformed religion, of which she became, not without some risk to her crown thereby, the zealous protectress, and on Christmas-day, 1562, she made a public profession of the Protestant faith; she prohibited the offices of the Catholic religion to be performed in her domains, and suffered in consequence many alarms from her Catholic subjects. But she possessed great courage and fortitude, and baffled all open attacks. Against concealed treachery she could not contend. She died suddenly at the court of France in 1572, as it was strongly suspected, by poison.

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This queen possessed a vigorous and cultivated understanding; was acquainted with several languages, and composed with facility both in prose and verse. Her needlework, the amusement and solace of her leisure hours, was designed by her as a commemoration of her love for, and steadiness to, the reformed faith." It is thus described by Boyle: "She very much loved devices, and she wrought with her own hand fine and large pieces of tapestry, among which was a suit of hangings of a dozen or fifteen pieces, which were called THE PriSONS OPENED; by which she gave us to understand that she had broken the pope's bonds, and shook off his yoke of captivity. In the middle of every picce is a story of the Old Testament which savours of liberty-as the deliverance of Susannah; the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt; the setting Joseph at liberty, &c. And at all the cor

ners are broken chains, shackles, racks, and gibbets; and over them in great letters, these words of the third chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, UBI SPIRITUS IBI LIBERTAS.

To show yet more fully the aversion she had conceived against the Catholic religion, and particularly against the sacrifice of the mass, having a fine and excellent piece of tapestry, made by her mother, Margaret, before she had suffered herself to be cajoled by the ministers, in which was perfectly well wrought the sacrifice of the mass, and a priest who held out the holy host to the people, she took out the square in which was this history, and, instead of the priest, with her own hand substituted a fox, who turning to the people, and making a horrible grimace with his paws and throat, delivered these words, DOMINUS VOBISCUM.

We are told that Anne of Brittany, the good Queen of France, assembled three hundred of the children of the nobility at her court, where, under her personal superintendence, they were instructed in such accomplishments as became their rank and sex, but the girls, most especially, made accomplished needle-women. Embroidery was their occupation during some specified hours of every day, and they wrought much tapestry, which was presented by their royal protectress to different churches.

Her daughter Claude, the queen of Francis I., formed her court on the same model and maintained the same practice; Queen Anne Boleyn was educated in her court, and was doomed to consume a large portion of her time in the occupation of the

needle. It was an employment little suited to her lively disposition and coquettish habits, and we do not hear, during her short occupation of the throne, that she resorted to it as an amusement.

"Ai lavori d'Aracne, all'ago, ai fusi

Inchinar non degnò la man superba."

The practice of devoting some hours to embroidery seems to have continued in the French court. When the young Queen of Scots was there, the French princesses assembled every afternoon in the queen's (Catherine of Medici's) private apartment, where" she usually spent two or three hours in embroidery with her female attendants."

It is also said, that Katharine of Arragon was in the habit of employing the ladies of her court in needlework, in which she was herself extremely assiduous, working with them and encouraging them by her example. Burnet records, that when two legates requested once to speak with her, she came out to them with a skein of silk about her neck, and told them she had been within at work with her women. An anecdote, as far as regards the skein of silk, somewhat more housewifely than queenly.

In this she differed much from her successor, Queen Catherine Parr, for having had her nativity cast when a child, and being told, from the disposition of the stars and planets in her house, that she was born to sit in the highest seat of imperial majesty; child as she was, she was so impressed by the prediction, that when her mother required her to work she would say, "My hands are ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not needles and spindles."