In those times, more or less as now, women made lace at home, and brought the results of their long and patient labour to the dealers, who bought and sold it at a fabulous profit. A few specimens of the finest lace of the sixteenth century are still in existence, and are worn on great occasions by Italian ladies whose ancestresses wore them more than three hundred years ago; but the art of making such lace is extinct. Glance only, for instance, at a picture by Carpaccio, in the Museo Civico of Venice, representing two patrician ladies of the fifteenth century, one of whom wears white lace on her gown. It is of the kind known as ‘point coupé’ or cut point, and is the same which Francesco Vinciolo taught the French a hundred years later when it was no longer thought fine enough, in Venice, for ornamenting anything but sheets and pillow-cases. It is inimitable now. Or look at the exquisite lace of network stitch with which Gentile Bellini loved to adorn the women he portrayed. Yet in the sixteenth century still further progress had been made, and the ‘air point’ was created, which surpassed in fineness anything imagined before then, and for which fabulous prices were paid. The collar of Louis XIV. was of this point, and it is said that as no thread could be spun fine enough for it, white human hair was used. There is also a story to the effect that the Emperor Joseph II., who ascended the throne in 1765, ordered a set of air point worth the improbable, though not very great price of 77,777 francs. As neither Austrians nor Venetians used the franc, the story is most likely of French origin. Another lace greatly valued in Venice was the ‘rose point,’ which is probably the best known of the ancient laces. It was preferred, for collars, both by high officials and great ladies, and the Dogesses often used it for their veils. The Doge Francesco Morosini possessed some wonderful specimens of it, which I am told are still in the possession of his descendants. One more stitch was invented in the sixteenth century, which oddly enough obtained the generic name of ‘Venetian point.’ There is a pretty story about it. A sailor, says the legend, came home from a long voyage and brought his sweetheart a kind of seaweed known to botanists by the name of _Halimedia Opuntia_, of which the little branches were so fine that the people called the plant ‘Siren’s hair.’ The man sailed again on another voyage, and the girl, full of loving and anxious thoughts for him, occupied herself by copying the dried plant with her needle, and in so doing created the Venetian point. The minister Colbert introduced it into France a century later, under Louis XIV., and gave it his own name; and the King and the Republic quietly quarrelled about this French infringement of a Venetian monopoly. In the end, the Inquisitors of State issued a decree which was intended to recall errant and erring Venetian lace-workers and glass-blowers to the security of their homes:--