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 with variety in the treatment of them. Make yourseif thoroughly master of the essential points, in whatever elements you choose as the basis of your design, before you set pencil to paper; and you will find in almost any natural form you fix upon more than enough to give you all the variety and richness you require, if you have sufficient natural fancy to play with it.

Lastly: return again and again, and for evermore, to Nature. The value of studying specimens of old embroidery is immense; it makes you familiar with the principles and methods, which experience has found to be true and useful; it puts you into possession of the traditions of the art. He that has no reverence for the traditions of his art seals his own doom; he that is careless about them, or treats them with superciliousness, or will not give the time and 418