Stained and patterned papers for wall-hanging are even yet unknown but in a very few places on the Continent. The employment of them as furniture among ourselves is comparatively very modern, and came to England, it is likely, through our trade with China. Though in Italy the state apartment and the reception rooms of a palace are hung always with rich damasks, and often with fine tapestry, while some old examples of gilt and beautifully-wrought leather trailed all over with coloured flowers and leaves are still to be found, the rooms for domestic use have their whitewashed walls adorned at best with a coloured ornamentation, bestowed upon them by the cheap and ready process of stencilling. From early times up to the middle of the sixteenth century, our cathedrals and parish churches, our castles, manorial houses, and granges, the dwellings of the wealthy everywhere, used to be ornamented with wall-painting done, not in “fresco,” but in “secco;” that is, distemper. Upon high festivals the walls of the churches were overspread with tapestry and needlework; so, too, those in the halls of the gentry, for some solemn ceremonial. Our high-born ladies used to spend their leisure hours in working these “hallings,” as they were called; and while Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh’s monastery at Chester, sings the praises of the patron-saint of his church, he gives us a charming picture of how a large hall was arrayed here in England with needlework, for a solemn feast some time about the latter end of the fifteenth century. First of all, according to the then wont, when great folks were bidden to a feast:-- All herbes and flowers, fragraunt, fayre and swete Were strawed in halles, and layd under theyr fete. Clothes of gold and arras were hanged in the hall Depaynted with pyctures and hystoryes manyfolde, Well wroughte and craftely. The story of Adam, Noe, and his shyppe; the twelve sones of Jacob; the ten plages of Egypt, and-- Duke Josue was joyned after them in pycture, * * * * * Theyr noble actes and tryumphes marcyall Fresshly were browdred in these clothes royall. * * * * * But over the hye desse in pryncypall place Where the sayd thre Kynges sat crowned all The best hallynge hanged as reason was, Whereon were wrought the ix orders angelicall, Dyvyded in thre ierarchyses, not cessynge to call, _Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus_, blessed be the Trynite, _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_, thre persons in one deyte.[405] The tapestries here will afford much help to the artist if he have to paint a dining room with festive doings going on, any time during the latter portion of the mediæval period; but such “hallings” are by no means scarce. Not so, however, such pieces of room hangings as he may find here at No. 1370, p. 76; No. 1297, p. 296; No. 1465 p. 298. Their fellows are nowhere else to be met with.