_Spangles_, when they happened to be used, were not like such as are now employed, but fashioned after another and artistic shape, and put on in a different manner. Before me lies a shred from the chasuble belonging to the set of vestments wrought, it is said, by Isabella of Spain and her maids of honour, and worn the first time high mass was sung in Granada, after it had been taken by the Spaniards from the Moors. Upon this shred are flowers, well thrown up in relief, done in spangles on a crimson velvet ground. These spangles--some in gold, some in silver--are, though small, in several sizes; all are voided--that is, hollow in the middle--with the circumference not flat, but convex, and are sewed on like tiles one overlapping the other, and thus produce a rich and pleasing effect. Our present spangles, in the flat shape, are quite modern. Sadly overlooked, or but scantily employed on modern embroideries, is the process of DIAPERING, after so many graceful and ever-varying forms to be found almost always upon mediæval works of the needle. The garments worn by high personages in the embroidery, and meant to imitate a golden textile, were done in gold _passing_ sometimes by itself, sometimes with coloured silk thread laid down alternately aside it, so as to lend a tinge of green, crimson, pink, or blue, to the imagined tissue of the robe, as if it were made of a golden stuff shot with the adopted tint. For putting on this gold passing, it was of course required to sew it down. Now, from this very needful and mechanical requirement, those mediæval needlewomen sought and got an admirable as well as ingenious element of ornamentation, and so truthful too. Of this our ladies at this day, seem, from their work, to have a very narrow, short idea. Taking thin (usually red) silk, and while fastening the golden or silver passing, they dotted it all over in small stitches set exactly after a way that showed the one same pattern. So teeming were their brains in this matter that hardly the same design in diapering is twice to be found upon the same embroidered picture. With no other appliance they were thus enabled to lend to their draperies the appearance of having been, not wrought by the needle, but actually cut out of a piece of textile, and for which they have been sometimes mistaken. Of the many samples here of this kind of diapering we select one or two--Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, which is so very fine, and of itself quite enough for showing what we wish to point out, and to warrant our praises of the method; No. 8837, p. 200, is another worth attention. THREAD EMBROIDERY, after several of its modes, is represented here; and though the specimens are not many, some of them are splendid. By our English women, hundreds of years gone by, among other applications of the needle, one was to darn upon linen netting or work thereon with other kinds of stitchery, religious subjects for Church-use; or flowers and animals for household furniture.