Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/236

 Dickens does not mention it) as a fashionable pastime. The "white design"—animals, landscape, or marine—was printed on a black background, which was cut away with great dexterity, the spaces being small and intricate. When all the black paper had been removed, the flimsy tracery was pasted on a piece of coloured paper, thus presenting—after hours of patient labour—much the same appearance that it had in the beginning. It was then glassed, framed, and presented to appreciative parents, as a proof of their daughter's industry and taste.

The most famous work of art ever made out of paper was probably the celebrated "herbal" of Mrs. Delany,—Mrs. Delany whom Burke pronounced "the model of an accomplished gentlewoman." She acquired her accomplishments at an age when most people seek to relinquish theirs,—having learned to draw when she was thirty, to paint when she was forty, and to write verse when she was eighty-two. She also "excelled in embroidery and shell-work"; and when Miss Burney made her first visit to St. James's Place, she found Mrs.