The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes, and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals, the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444] “due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445] “unum pulvinar breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446] “capa de quodam panno Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo contextis.”[447] Even here, under No. 8229, p. 151, we have from the East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers and fruits, not only birds and beasts--elephants included--but such odd things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say, and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them. [443] Test. Vet. i. 228. [444] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299. [445] Ibid. [446] St. Paul’s, p. 316. [447] Ibid. p. 318. SECTION VIII.--LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES. For those who bestow their attention upon Literature and Languages, this collection must have, at times, an especial value, whichever way their choice may lead them, whether towards subjects of biblical, classic or mediæval study: proofs of this, we think, may be gathered, up and down the whole of this “Introduction.” With regard to our own country, we deem it quite impossible for any one among us to properly know the doings, in private and in public, throughout this land in by-gone days, or to take in all the beauty of many a passage in our prose writers, much less understand several particulars in the poetry of the middle ages, without an acquaintance, such as may be made here, with the textiles and needlework of that period.