More popular than crochet had ever been, leather frames for pictures, cut out of leaves copied from Nature, or the pinning down of fern leaves on a soft cloth or silk began to be; for these Indian ink, used with a fine brush made an effective background. Ruskin's gospel of following Nature had not been preached in vain. Accomplished women like the late Lady Marion Alford began to revive, with improvements of her own, the art of embroidering flowers, plants, birds and butterflies in wool or silk; while the stately arum lilies were used for screens, and gorgeous poppies for curtains. Next came a renascence of lace work. Many amateurs produced beautiful samples of pillow and point; but the work was trying to the eyes, and competed unfairly with the poor professionals of Honiton or Nottingham. The early days of Ritualism popularized the copying of the borders of the old painted missals and prettily occupied many drawing rooms. Oil painting on pottery, wood, and glass came in during the early South Kensingtonian period. All young ladies now were water colour artists, or busied themselves with colouring panels and dados on their friend's walls. Brass work was a later and not very long lived development. It was costly; it was noisy; the long suffering male gradually rose up against it. Iron work, the torturing into fantastic shapes of ductile strips of metal, was a little more enduring; but it required too much accuracy and too many instruments ever to be very popular. The beautiful glass painting in churches of Lady Canning and Lady Waterford was admired rather than reproduced. Irish cabins supplied a modish industry to English drawing rooms in drawn linen work. The principle of this seems to be hem stitching, or unbinding work into the spaces left by the drawn threads. Poker work done within the outline traced by this simple instrument on a wooden board, is practised successfully by ladies of genius who could touch nothing without adorning it, but is scarcely to be commended to bunglers or in school rooms.[118] CHAPTER XXXI THE REIGN OF LAW AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS:--HOME AND COLONIAL Significance of the New Law Court buildings in London. Early efforts after law reform in Parliament. No appreciable result till 1841. Slow progress and subsequent changes, culminating in the 1869 Commission, and the 1873 Judicature Act. The popular consequences of this, and general view of our legal system as it affects to-day the Colonies as well as the mother country.