Her castles, houses, and more especially Westminster Abbey, are of all the colors in the rainbow, and much smaller than the persons entering them, and yet in every figure there is spirit, in every face expression, and throughout, William, Harold, and Odo, bear countenances which are not to be mistaken. Harold has moustaches, which none of the Normans wore. There we find Harold taking his extorted oath; the death of King Edward, the Saxons gazing with horror at the three-tailed comet; the ship-building of yellow, green, and red boards, cut out of trees with most ludicrous foliage; the moon just as it is described; the disembarkation, where a bare-legged mariner wades out, anchor in hand; the very comical foraging party; the repast upon landing, where Odo is saying grace with two fingers raised in benediction, while the meat is served on shields, and fowls carried round spitted upon arrows. Then follows the battle, where William is seen raising his helmet by its nose-guard, and looking exceedingly fierce as he rallies his men; where horses and men tumble head over heels, and where, finally, Matilda broke off with a pattern of hawberks traced out, and no heads or legs put to them. What stayed her hand? Was it her grief at the conduct of her first-born that took from her all heart to proceed with her memorial, or was it only the hand of death that closed her toil, her womanly record of her husband’s achievements? The border must not be forgotten. It is a narrow edge above and below. At first it is worked with subjects from Phaedrus’s fables (on having translated which was rested the fame of Henry’s scholarship), and very cleverly are they chosen; for, as if in comment on Harold’s visit to Rouen, we find in near neighborhood the stork with her head in the wolf’s mouth, and the crow letting fall her cheese into the fox’s jaws. Matilda did not upbraid the Normans by working the Parliament of Lillebonne, but she or her designer surely had it in mind when a herd of frightened beasts was drawn, an ape in front of them making an oration to what may be a lion, as it is much bigger than the rest; but as Matilda never saw a lion, the likeness is not remarkable. Further on are representations of agriculture, sowing, reaping, &c. Wherever there is a voyage, fishes swim above and below, and in the battle there is a border plentiful in dead men. The Bayeux tapestry--the “Toile de St. Jean,” as it is there called, from the feast-day when the cathedral was hung with it--remained unknown and forgotten, till it was brought to light by one of the last people that could have been expected--Napoleon. He was then full of his plan for invading England, and called general attention to the toile de St. Jean, to bring to mind the Norman Invasion, and show that England had once been conquered.