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400 before Englishmen began to travel in oriental countries or to read of elephants and castles going into battle. Perhaps some knight of the first crusade brought back the idea. Old Leofric and his Godiva, of course, have their place in the galaxy of worthies. In a unique and curious recess stands the old chair of state, with all its carved clusters of emblems, effigies, and allegories. Solid, shining like ebony, made of oak growing before the Conquest, it offers a seat of honour to you, on which kings and queens have sat on festal Occasions. But perhaps many visiters will be most attracted to a breadth of curiously wrought tapestry thirty feet long and ten feet deep, that fills the whole space of the north end of the hall under the great stained window. It is paged off into six compartments, each with its group like the painted panels of the Rotunda in the Capitol at Washington. Its history also lies in the blue mist of legendary fiction, which makes it all the more interesting. A considerable volume of historical incident might be translated out of these illuminated pages of needle-work. Indeed, both for its architectural features, its antiquity, and internal embellishment and symbolic heraldry, no other hall in England that I have seen presents so many aspects of interest to the visiter.

Coventry does not look like a city that has sewed new patches to this old garment of antiquity.