Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/129

 monarch. For the slight variations in these stuffs from those upon the Westminster monument, we will account, a little further on, while treating the subject of symbolism, Section VII.

The seemliness, not to say comfort, of private life, was improved by the use, after several ways, of textiles. Let the historian contrast the manners, even in a royal palace during the twelfth century, with those that are now followed in every tradesman's home. Then, rich barons and titled courtiers would sprawl amid the straw and rushes, strewed in the houses even of the king, upon the floor in every room, which, as Wendover says: "junco solent domorum areæ operiri;" and, platting knots with the litter, fling them with a gibe at the man who had been slighted by the prince. Not quite a hundred years later, when Eleanor of Castile came to London for her marriage with our first Edward, she found her lodgings furnished, under the directions of the Spanish courtiers who had arrived before her, with hangings and curtains of silk around the walls, and carpets spread upon the ground. This sorrowed some of our people; more of them giggled at the thought that some of these costly things were laid down to be walked upon, as we learn from Matthew Paris: "Cum venisset illa nurus nobilissima (Alienora) ad hospitium sibi assignatum invenit illud holosericis palliis et tapetiis, ad similitudinem templi appensis; etiam pavimentum aulæis redimitum, Hispanis, secundum patriæ suæ forte consuetudinem hoc procurantibus." Now, our houses have a carpet for every room as well as on its stair-*case, and not a few of our shops are carpeted throughout.

The Emperor Aurelian's wife once tried to coax out of her imperial husband a silk cloak—only one silk cloak. "No," was the answer; "I could never think," said that lord of the earth, "of buying such a thing; it sells for its weight in gold;" as we showed before, p. xix. Now, however, little does the woman of the nineteenth century suspect, when she goes forth pranked out in all her bravery of dress, that an Egyptian Cleopatra equally with a Roman empress would have looked with a grudging eye upon her gay silk gown and satin ribbons; or that, as late as three hundred years ago, even her silken hose would have been an offering worthy of an English queen's (Elizabeth's) acceptance. Little, too, does that tall young man who, as he stands behind the lady's chariot going to a Drawing-room, ever and anon lets drop a stealthy but complaisant look upon his own legs shining in soft blushing silk—ah! little does he dream that in that old palace before