for the beauty and richness of the colours. Of the work itself, its combination of dignity with decorative effect, it can only be said that nothing like it has been produced till in our own day Mr. William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones have given us "The Epiphany."
The ground of the borders, nearly two feet wide, is worked entirely in gold. In richness indeed the tapestries are unsurpassed. Of such Spenser may well have thought when he wrote—
"For round about the walls yclothed were
With goodly arras of great maiesty,
Woven with gold and silk so close and nere,
That the rich metalllurked privily,
As faining to be hid from envious eye."
A competent authority has even styled them "the finest ancient tapestries in existence."[1]
III
From what remains of Henry's and Wolsey's tapestries, we can well imagine the magnificence of the Palace when Cavendish described it. This gorgeousness was maintained under Elizabeth. She delighted in tapestry as well as in needlework. Her "two presence-chambers shone with tapestry of gold and silver, and silk of various colours; her bed was covered with costly coverlets of silk, wrought in various
- ↑ Miss Lambert, "Handbook of Needlework," 1846.
