But she is a lady before whom strength and pride fall nerveless and abased; her gracious smiles are to be wooed, not commanded; her bright presence may be won, not forced; "For spotless, and holy, and gentle, and bright, She glides o'er the earth like an angel of light." Possessing all the gentleness of her mother--_Taste_, she shrinks from everything rude or abrupt; and when, as has frequently been the case, persons have attempted to lay violent hands upon her, she has invariably eluded their vigilance, by leaving in her place, tricked out in her superabundant ornaments to blind them, her half-brother--_Whim_, who sprang from the same father--_Wit_, but by another mother--_Humour_. She herself, wanderer as she is, is not without her favourite haunts, in which she lingers as if even loath to quit them at all. Finally, wherever yet the _accomplished_ needlewoman has been found, in the Jewish tabernacle of old--in the Grecian dome where the "Tale of Troy divine" glowed on the canvass--or in the bower of the high-born beauty of the "bright days of the sword and the lance"--in the cell of the pale recluse--or in the turretted prison of the royal captive--there has FANCY been her devoted friend, her inseparable companion. FOOTNOTE: [124] She was then a mere child, not more, if I remember rightly, than twelve years old. CHAPTER XXI. "LES ANCIENNES TAPISSERIES;" TAPESTRY OF ST. MARY'S HALL, COVENTRY; TAPESTRY OF HAMPTON COURT. "There is a sanctity in the past." Bulwer. All monuments of antiquity are so speedily passing away, all traces of those bygone generations on which the mind loves to linger, and which in their dim and indistinct memories exercise a spell, a holy often, and a purifying spell on the imagination are so fleeting, and when _irrevocably_ gone will be so lamented--that all testimonies which throw certain light on the habits and manners of the past, how slight soever the testimonies they afford, how trivial soever the characteristics they display, are of the highest possible value to an enlightened people, who apply the experience of the past to its legitimate and noblest use, the guidance and improvement of the present. In this point of view the work which forms the subject of this chapter[125] assumes a value which its intrinsic worth--beautiful as is its execution--would not impart to it; and it is thus rendered not less valuable as an historical record, than it is attractive as a work of taste.