But there is much more beautiful lace than either Point de Paris or Point de Lille taught in the Turnhout school. The girls pass from the Lille room to Malines, known in the city of its birth as the “spider-web of Malines.” Nothing could be more airy and exquisite than its delicate hexagonal mesh, much more difficult to make than either of the preceding varieties because it must be worked without the aid of pins, with only the eye to guide in securing the requisite uniformity and exactness. No lace demands greater skill or greater patience; since in addition to the difficulty of working without supporting pins, is the difficulty of handling the extremely fine thread employed. The patterns are usually of delicate flowers and leaves, with open-work stitches introduced to add ever greater lightness to the whole. The dentellières in the Malines room work chiefly on insertions and flounces to be used for handkerchiefs or fichus or dainty blouses, or perhaps for wedding gowns. The Committee has given them, too, many orders for inserts for table centers or doilies, so exquisite that one feels they should be used only under glass. Scarcely an important family in Belgium but treasures a bit of old Malines. Among my rarest pleasures were those I enjoyed, when the conversation turning upon lace, a friend has said: “But would you care to see my mother’s Malines, or my great, great-grandmother’s?”—and she has brought from a brocade box a filmy, ivory-colored collar or flounce, or a scarf or bonnet, all of a breath-taking loveliness and delicacy never to be reproduced. I remember, too, a Christmas mass and the marvelous flounce that fell from beneath the white and gold chasuble worn by Cardinal Mercier over the scarlet of his robe. It is only in Turnhout that any considerable quantity of Malines is yet made, and despite all the efforts of the Committee and of other lovers of beautiful lace, there is little hope that it will live much longer. When the old artists, for so they should be named, die, few young women are found willing still to sacrifice their years to the spider-web. The women of the Lace Committee believe there is no future work more important than that of improving the 200 and more lace schools of their country. In the lace normal school at Bruges, in the national school of design at Brussels, the excellent Needle Point school at Zele, and in such schools as this one at Turnhout, they see the hope of the lace art; they urge that the Government increase its subsidies to these and other deserving institutions. Education and ever better education of the lace-woman is their watchword. II COURTRAI _Early Home of Valenciennes_