Other cities besides Tarsus gave their names to various shades of purple; according as they were dyed at Antioch, Alexandria, or Naples. Each place had a particular shade which distinguished it from the others. It is not now possible to ascertain what were the exact distinctions of tint. Sky-blue was a colour everywhere in church use for certain festivals throughout England. In the early inventories the name for that tint is “Indicus,” “Indus,” reminding us of our present _indigo_. In later lists it is called “Blodius,” not sanguinary but blue. Murrey, or a reddish brown, is also often specified. Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clear on the other--a thing sometimes now looked upon as a wonder in modern weaving--might occasionally be met with here at the mediæval period: Exeter cathedral had, in 1327, a silk cloth “of red colour inside and yellow outside.” At York, in 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable silke,” “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.” Marble silk had a weft of several colours so woven as to make the whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of tints. There were many such vestments in old St. Paul’s. During full three centuries this marble silk found great favour among us; for Henry Machyn, in his curious diary, tells us how “the old qwyne of Schottes rod thrught London,” and how “then cam the lord tresorer with a C. gret horsse and ther cotes of marbull,” etc., to meet her the 6th of November, 1551. CHAPTER VIII. We must now speak of embroidery. The art of working with the needle flowers, fruits, human and animal forms, or any fanciful design, upon webs woven of silk, linen, cotton, wool, hemp, besides other kinds of stuff, is of the highest antiquity. Those patterns, after so many fashions, which we see figured upon the garments worn by men and women on Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but especially on the burned-clay vases made and painted by the Greeks in their earliest as well as in later times, or which we read about in the writings of that people, were not wrought in the loom, but worked by the needle.