DERBYSHIRE TAPESTRY. I09 



and perhaps in the kingdom, it occupies the worst position 

 in the liouse. It can only have been placed here when its merits 

 were neither understood nor appreciated, whether at the erection 

 of the house or at a later period. It illustrates the highest efforts 

 of the tapisers' craft before its decline. The colours are almost 

 as fresh as the day it was woven, and it appears to have suffered 

 but little from the effects of time. There is nothing in our 

 National collection at the South Kensington so simple, so digni- 

 fied, and beautiful as this. If only the hangings in this apartment 

 could exchange sides with each other, and the pictures be sus- 

 pended elsewhere, the treasures of Hardwick would be more 

 conspicuous, and its beauties the more appreciated. 



It is to the generosity of the Duke of Devonshire, our noble 

 Vice-President, that we are indebted for the beautiful illustrations 

 of this enchanting work of art. 



The tapestry of almost every period was illustrative of the 

 culture and feeling of its time ; that of the fourteenth century, 

 the period of romance and minstrelsy, finds its satisfaction in 

 delineations of the incidents of legendary story mingled with 

 devotional representations of saintly or sacred subjects. In the 

 fifteenth century it becomes more realistic, and makes us 

 acquainted with living or historical celebrities and their achieve- 

 ments, or the pastimes and transactions of everyday life. The 

 sixteenth century again, the period of the Renaissance (the 

 N^ew Birth of the classical era), gradually extinguishes the feeling 

 of the Christian age by the introduction of mythological heroes, 

 whose doings are the theme of classical prose and song, con- 

 currently with the substitution of Grecian and Roman architec- 

 ture for that of Christian development. Gods and goddesses, 

 their loves and animosities, earthly heroes and their struggles, 

 classical structures and heathen temples, crowd the textile hang- 

 ings of this and the following centuries, until the extinction of all 

 true artistic feeling about the commencement of the present 

 century. 



The early tapestry at Hardwick is a charming illustration of 

 the hangings of the fifteenth century, in which we are privileged 



