brilliant flowers and creeping weeds amongst
them. The luxuriant clusters of a grape-vine
cover the whole front of the house, which serves
as home to the letters, arts, sciences, and
antiquities of Bayeux; and chief amongst them
all, to that famous chronicle in worsted of the
conquest of England by the Normans, which
was worked by Matilda, the wife of William the
Conqueror, and by the ladies of her court.

We used to believe that other theory of the
production of this tapestry which attributes it
to Saxon maidens, professional embroideresses
commissioned by Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's
brother; but, now we have seen it, good-bye for
ever to that notion! It is certainly the work of
amateurs; very feeble amateurs at the beginning,
and very heedless some of them too, but
who improved as they went on, and gathered
interest in their self-imposed task. Nevertheless,
we can follow for some way the hand of a
naughty damsel, who traced the legs of her
knights in white cotton, and neglected to fill
them up; and we are of opinion that, after a
time, some good-natured gentleman, with a
better idea of drawing a horse than the ladies,
was pressed into their service, and helped them
with their designs. The achievement is so old,
was done by such noble fingers, records
specifically such vast events, that masculine
historians speak of it with awful respect; but a
lady may be allowed a laugh at its grotesqueries,
for surely Matilda and her ladies must have
laughed as they wrought at some of them. The
black horse standing on its head at the Battle
of Hastings, for instance—was a serious countenance
inclined over him, from the tip of his nose
on which he is balanced, to the tip of his erect
tail? Who drew him? That wild witty fellow,
Robert Carthose, perhaps, Matilda's favourite son;
for to a well-regulated feminine imagination the
conception would have been impossible.

And as for the work, it is not beautiful nor
exquisite, nor even curious as handicraft. The
groups are outlined in white chain-stitch, and
each figure is filled in all of one colour, with
those fine worsteds which we used to work over
balls when we were children, and called cruels.
The stitch employed is the long cruelling stitch,
and a lady might easily do a knight and a horse
in a day. The word tapestry describes the
famous relic very inexactly to those who have
only seen old English work. Queen Matilda's
chronicle is done on a piece of coarse linen
cloth, about seventy-five yards long, and half
a yard deep, and the linen unadorned is the
background. It consists of fifty-eight groups
or scenes, the explanation of each being worked
in Latin under it, and forming the lower
border; the upper border is composed of the
shields and crests of the knights and gentlemen
who took part in the Conquest. As it is
now arranged, even those who run may read it.
On the ground floor of the library glass cases
have been constructed, in which it is stretched
at length on the line of the eye. We began at
the beginning, where the cloth is much
decayed and roughly mended, but where the
first group of the story is as legible as on the
day it was done, and there we read from scene
to scene the famous tale of the invasion and
conquest of England.

We have read it elsewhere in scores of books,
but still it makes an oddly vivid and fresh
impression on us in the old worsted chronicle.
The figures have no anatomy, the faces no
expression, but the action of them is lively and
true. There is King Edward sending Harold
to Duke William, to tell him he shall one day
be king of England. That opens the epic, and
it goes on dramatically through Harold's journey
and voyage, his shipwreck and capture by
the Count of Ponthieu, his deliverance and
reception by William, at Rouen, to the great
scene in the palace at Bayeux, where he swears
upon a hidden shrine of relics to recognise and
support the Duke of Normandy's right to the
English throne. Then follows Edward's death,
and Harold's acceptance of the crown, to the
great joy of the people; his coronation, and the
soothsayers predicting evil days for him, from
the sign of a star that has appeared. The news
of these events is carried to William, who
commands ships to be built, sets sail, and lands at
Pevensey. The cooks prepare meat, and
William dines, then holds a council at Hastings,
and, after various preliminary scenes, harangues
his army, and engages Harold. Harold's
brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, are slain, his
army is cut to pieces, and he falls with arms in
his hands. On the field of victory, William
returns thanks to God; and there Matilda's
worsted chronicle concludes— frayed and worn
at the end as at the beginning, but still telling
the story of her lord's great conquest
completely, and as fairly as any of the chroniclers
who have written it with pen and ink.

The library has other treasures—pictures,
scientific and archaeological collections; and in
the long upper room where the books live,
there was one person deep in study, without
his coat. The open windows look over the
green square; and when we have finished
our investigation, thither we take our lazy
way, to eat pears and échaudés for our lunch
(if ever you go to Bayeux, don't try to lunch
on échaudés; they are no better than
bubbles). We found a bench in partial shade
under the limes, where sat an old gentleman
raising a lean hand to feel a breath of air; there
was not a breath. But here, as elsewhere, the
boys were irrepressible. A busy group, out of
school, came upon the Place to fly kites—one a
kite of Brobdingnag. Oh, the perseverance, the
patience, of those close-cropped lads, coaxing
this monster kite to rise! They tried and failed,
and tried and failed again; until at last a stray
breeze for a vagary caught it up, drifted it
twenty yards or so, and then dropped it like a
shot. This was too much. The master of the
kite wound up his string, and lifting his
precious big toy from the ground, walked off with
it, disheartened for the day.

Really, Bayeux is a very quiet place. We
wonder whether anybody was ever born here—
anybody remarkable, that is. Yes, the Chartiers
were—Alain the poet, secretary to Charles the