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quite exploded. There are some lingering remnants of a superstitious regard for them which may have had their origin in these very times and circumstances. For how surely, where they are rigidly traced, are our country customs, our vulgar ceremonies, our apparently absurd and senseless usages, found to emanate from some principle or superstition of general and prevailing adoption. In some counties we cannot enter a farm-house where the mantel-piece in the parlour is not decorated with a diadem of peacock feathers, which are carefully dusted and preserved. And in houses of more assuming pretensions the same custom frequently prevails; and we knew a lady who carefully preserved some peacock feathers in a drawer long after her association with people in a higher station than that to which she originally belonged had made her ashamed to display them in her parlour. This could not be for mere ornament: there is some idea of luck attached to them, which seems not improbably to have arisen from circumstances connected originally with the Vow of the Peacock." At any rate, the religious care with which peacocks' feathers are preserved by many who care not for them as ornaments, is not a whit more ridiculous than to see people gravely turn over the money in their pockets when they first hear the cuckoo, or joyfully fasten a dropped horse-shoe on their threshold, or shudderingly turn aside if two straws lie across in their path, or thankfully seize an old shoe accidentally met with, heedless of the probable state of the beggared foot that may unconsciously have left it there, or any other of the million unaccountable customs

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which diversify and enliven country life, and which still prevail and flourish, notwithstanding the extensive travels and sweeping devastations of the modern" schoolmaster."

Do not our readers recollect Cowper's thanksgiving" on finding the heel of a shoe?"

"Fortune! I thank thee, gentle goddess! thanks!
Not that my muse, though bashful, shall deny
She would have thanked thee rather, hadst thou cast
A treasure in her way; for neither meed

Of early breakfast, to dispel the fumes

And bowel-raking pains of emptiness,

Nor noontide feast, nor ev'ning's cool repast,

Hopes she from this-presumptuous, though perhaps
The cobbler, leather-carving artist, might.
Nathless she thanks thee, and accepts thy boon,
Whatever; not as erst the fabled cock,
Vain-glorious fool! unknowing what he found,
Spurned the rich gem thou gavest him. Wherefore, ah!
Why not on me that favour, (worthier sure!)
Conferr'dst, goddess! thou art blind, thou sayest:
Enough! thy blindness shall excuse the deed."

Return we to our needlework.

We have clear proof that, before the end of the seventh century, our fair countrywomen were skilled not merely in the use of the needle as applied to necessary purposes, but also in its application to the varied and elegant embroidered garments to which we have so frequently alluded, as forming properties of value and consideration. They were chiefly executed by ladies of the highest rank and greatest piety-very frequently, indeed, by those of royal blood-and were usually (as we have before observed) devoted to the embellishment of the church, or the decoration of its ministers. It was

not unusual to bequeath such properties. "I give," said the wife of the Conqueror, in her will, "to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, my tunic worked at Winchester by Alderet's wife, and the mantle embroidered with gold, which is in my chamber, to make a cope. Of my two golden girdles, I give that which is ornamented with emblems for the purpose of suspending the lamp before the great altar."* Amongst some costly presents sent by Isabella, Queen of Edward the Second, to the Pope, was a magnificent cope, embroidered and studded with large white pearls, and purchased of the executors of Catherine Lincoln, for a sum equivalent to between two and three thousand pounds of present money. Another cope, thought worthy to accompany it, was also the work of an Englishwoman, Rose de Bureford, wife of John de Bureford, citizen and merchant of London.

Anciently, banners, either from being made of some relic, or from the representation on them of holy things, were held sacred, and much superstitious faith placed in them; consequently the pious and industrious finger was much occupied in working them. King Arthur, when he fought the eighth battle against the Saxons, carried the "image of Christ and of the blessed Mary (always a virgin) upon his shoulders." Over the tomb of Oswald, the great Christian hero, was laid a banner of purple wrought with gold. When St. Augustine first came to preach to the Saxons, he had a cross borne before him, with a banner, on which was the image of our

*The name of Dame Leviet has descended to posterity as an embroiderer to the Conqueror and his Queen.

Saviour Christ.

The celebrated standard of the Danes had the sacred raven worked on it; and the ill-fated Harold bore to the field of Hastings a banner with the figure of an armed man worked in gold thread: to the same field William bore a standard, a gift from the Pope, and blessed by his Holiness.

It is recorded of St. Dunstan, who, as our readers well know, excelled in many pursuits, and especially in painting, for which he frequently forsook his peculiar occupation of goldsmith, that on one occasion, at the earnest request of a lady, he tinted a sacerdotal vestment for her, which she afterwards embroidered in gold thread in an exquisitely beautiful style. Most of these embroidered works were first tinted, very probably in the way in which they now are, or until the freer influx of the more beautiful German patterns, they lately were; and it is from this previous tinting that they are so frequently described in the old books as painted garments, pictured vestments, &c., this term by no means seeming usually to imply that the use of the needle had been neglected or superseded in them. The garments of Edward the Confessor, which he wore upon occasions of great solemnity, were sumptuously embroidered with gold by the hands of Edgitha, his Queen. The four princesses, daughters of King Edward the Elder, were most carefully educated: their early years were chiefly devoted to literary pursuits, but they were nevertheless most assiduously instructed in the use of the needle, and are highly celebrated by historians for their assiduity and skill in spinning, weaving, and needlework.

This was so far, says the historian, from spoiling the fortunes of those royal spinsters, that it procured them the addresses of the greatest princes then in Europe, and one," in whom the whole essence of beauty had centered, was demanded from her brother by Hugh, King of the Franks."

Our fair readers may take some interest in knowing what were the propitiatory offerings of a noble suitor of those days.

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Perfumes, such as never had been seen in England before; jewels, but more especially emeralds, the greenness of which, reflected by the sun, illumined the countenances of the bystanders with agreeable light; many fleet horses, with their trappings, and, as Virgil says, 'champing their golden bits;' an alabaster vase, so exquisitely chased, that the corn-fields really seemed to wave, the vines to bud, the figures of men actually to move, and so clear and polished, that it reflected the features like a mirror; the sword of Constantine the Great, on which the name of its original possessor was read in golden letters; on the pommel, upon thick plates of gold, might be seen fixed an iron spike, one of the four which the Jewish faction prepared for the crucifixion of our Lord; the spear of Charles the Great, which, whenever that invincible Emperor hurled in his expeditions against the Saracens, he always came off conqueror; it was reported to be the same which, driven into the side of our Saviour by the hand of the centurion, opened, by that precious wound, the joys of paradise to wretched mortals; the banner of the most blessed martyr Maurice, chief of the Theban legion, with which the

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