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shall perceive that one of her greatest troubles in prison, before her separation from the king and the dauphin, was the being deprived of her sewing implements.

"During the early part of Louis XVI.'s imprisonment, and while the treatment of him and his family was still human, his majesty employed himself in educating his son; while the queen, on her part, educated her daughter. Then they passed some time in needlework, knitting, or tapestrywork.

"At this time the royal family were in great want of clothes, insomuch that the princesses were employed in mending them every day; and Madame Elizabeth was often obliged to wait till the king was gone to bed, in order to have his to repair. The linen they brought to the Tower had been lent them by friends, some by the Countess of Sutherland, who found means to convey linen and other things for the use of the dauphin. The queen wished to write a letter to the countess expressive of her thanks, and to return some of these articles, but her majesty was debarred from pen and ink; and the clothes she returned were stolen by her jailors, and never found their way to their right owner.

"After many applications a little new linen was obtained; but the sempstress having marked it with crowns, the municipal officers insisted on the princesses picking the marks out, and they were forced to obey.

“Dec. 7.—An officer, at the head of a deputation from the commune, came to the king and read a decree, ordering that the persons in confinement

should be deprived of all scissors, razors, knives— instruments usually taken from criminals; and that the strictest search should be made for the same, as well on their persons as in their apartments. The king took out of his pocket a knife and a small morocco pocket-book, from which he gave the penknife and scissors. The officer searched every corner of the apartments, and carried off the razors, the curling-irons, the powder-scraper, instruments for the teeth, and many articles of gold and silver. They took away from the princesses their knittingneedles and all the little articles they used for their embroidery. The unhappy queen and princesses were the more sensible of the loss of the little instruments taken from them, as they were in consequence forced to give up all the feminine handiworks which till then had served to beguile prison hours. At this time the king's coat became ragged, and as the Princess Elizabeth, his sister, was mending it, as she had no scissors, the king observed that she had to bite off the thread with her teethWhat a reverse!' said the king, looking tenderly upon her; you were in want of nothing at your pretty house at Montreuil.' Ah, brother!' she replied, can I feel a regret of any kind while I share your misfortunes?""

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The Empress Josephine is said to have played and sung with exquisite feeling: her dancing is said to have been perfect. She exercised her pencil, and-though such be not now antiquated for an élégante - her needle and embroidery-frame, with beautiful address.

Towards the close of her eventful career, when,

after her divorce from Bonaparte, she kept a sort of domestic court at Navarre or Malmaison, she and her ladies worked daily at tapestry or embroideryone reading aloud whilst the others were thus occupied; and the hangings of the saloon at Malmaison were entirely her own work. They must have been elegant; the material was white silk, the embroidery roses, in which at intervals were entwined her own initials.

An interesting circumstance is related of a conversation between one of those ministering spirits a sœur de la charité and Josephine, in a time of peculiar excitement and trouble. At the conclusion of it, the sœur, having discovered with whom she was conversing, added, " Since I am addressing the mother of the afflicted, I no longer fear my being indiscreet in any demand I may make for suffering humanity. We are in great want of lint; if your majesty would condescend". "I promise you shall have some; we will make it ourselves."

From that moment the evenings were employed at Malmaison in making lint, and the empress yielded to none in activity at this work.

Few of my readers will have accompanied me to this point without anticipating the name with which these slight notices of royal needlewomen must conclude a name which all know, and which, knowing, all reverence as that of a dignified princess, a noble and admirable matron-Adelaide, our Dowager Queen. It was hers to reform the morals of a court which, to our shame, had become licentious; it was hers to render its charmed circle as pure and virtuous as the domestic hearth of the most scrupulous

British matron; it was hers to combine with the chilling etiquette of regal state the winning virtues of private life, and to weave a wreath of domestic virtues, social charities, and beguiling though simple occupations, round the stately majesty of England's throne.

The days are past when it would be either pleasurable or profitable for the Queen of the British empire to spend her days, like Matilda or Katharine, "in poring over the interminable mazes of tapestry;" but it is well known that Queen Adelaide, and, in consequence of her Majesty's example, those around her, habitually occupied their leisure moments in ornamental needlework; and there have been, of late years, few Bazaars throughout the kingdom, for really beneficent purposes, which have not been enriched by the contributions of the Queen Dowager-contributions ever gladly purchased at a high price, not for their intrinsic worth, but because they had been wrought by a hand which every Englishwoman had learnt to respect and love.

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CHAPTER XXV.

ON MODERN NEEDLEWORK.

"Our Country everywhere is fild

With Ladies, and with Gentlewomen, skild

In this rare Art."

TAYLOR.

"For here the needle plies its busy task,

The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower
Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,
Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,
And curling tendrils gracefully dispos'd,
Follow the nimble fingers of the fair;

A wreath that cannot fade."

Cowper.

"The great variety of needleworks which the ingenious women of other countries, as well as of our own, have invented, will furnish us with constant and amusing employment; and though our labours may not equal a Mineron's or an Aylesbury's, yet, if they unbend the mind, by fixing its attention on the progress of any elegant or imitative art, they answer the purpose of domestic amusement; and, when the higher duties of our station do not call forth our exertions, we may feel the satisfaction of knowing that we are, at least, innocently employed."

MRS. GRIFfiths.

THE triumph of modern art in needlework is probably within our own shores, achieved by our own countrywoman,- Miss Linwood. "Miss Lin

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