FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 375 



this lecture,* hangs an old silken sampler of great-grandame's 

 work : representing the domestic life of Abraham : chiefly the 

 stories of Isaac and Ishrnael. Sarah at her tent-door, watching 

 with folded arms, the dismissal of Hagar : above, in a wilderness 

 f nil of fruit trees, birds, and butterflies, little Ishmael lying at 

 the root of a tree, and the spent bottle under another ; Hagar in 

 prayer, and the angel appearing to her out of a wreathed line of 

 gloomily undulating clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the 

 midst, surmount the entire composition in two arches, out of 

 which descend shafts of (I suppose) beneficent rain ; leaving, 

 however, room, in the corner opposite to Ishmael's angel, for 

 Isaac's, who stays Abraham in the sacrifice : the ram in the 

 thicket, the squirrel in the plum tree above him, and the 

 grapes, pears, apples, roses, and daisies of the foreground, 

 being all wrought with involution of such ingenious needle- 

 work as may well rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and 

 the innocent pleasure of it, with the truest works of Florentine 

 engraving. Nay ; the actual tradition of many of the forms of 

 ancient art is in many places evident, as for instance in the 

 spiral summits of the flames of the wood on the altar, which 

 are like a group of first-springing fern. On the wall opposite 

 is a smaller composition, representing Justice with her bal- 

 ance and sword, standing between the sun and moon, with a 

 background of pinks, borage, and corncockle : a third is only 

 a cluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks ; but 

 the spirits of Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the work 

 and the richness of pleasurable fancy is as great still, in 

 these silken labours, as in the marble arches and golden roof 

 of the cathedral of Moiireal. 



But what is the use of explaining or analyzing it ? Such 

 work as this means the patience and simplicity of ah 1 feminine 

 life ; and can be produced, among us at least, no more, 

 Gothic tracery itself, another of the instinctive labyrinthine 

 intricacies of old, though analyzed to its last section, has be- 

 come now the symbol only of a foolish ecclesiastical sect, re- 

 tained for their shibboleth, joyless and powerless for all good. 

 The very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of our fields, though 

 * In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster. 



