Nor did there need; for the Gobelins has ever since remained the first manufactory of this kind in the world. The quantity of the finest and noblest works that have been produced by it, and the number of the best workmen bred up therein are incredible; and the present flourishing condition of the arts and manufactures of France is, in great measure, owing thereto. Tapestry work in particular is their glory. During the superintendence of M. Colbert, and his successor M. de Louvois, the making of tapestry is said to have been practised to the highest degree of perfection. The celebrated painter, Le Brun, was appointed chief director, and from his designs were woven magnificent hangings of Alexander's Battles--The Four Seasons--the Four Elements--and a series of the principal actions of the life of Louis XIV. M. de Louvois, during his administration, caused tapestries to be made after the most beautiful originals in the king's cabinet, after Raphael and Julio Romano, and other celebrated Italian painters. Not the least interesting part of the process was that performed by the _rentrayeurs_, or fine-drawers, who so unite the breadths of the tapestry into one picture that no seam is discernible, but the whole appears like one design. The French have had other considerable manufactories at Auvergne, Felletin and Beauvais, but all sank beneath the superiority of the Gobelins, which indeed at one time outvied the renown of that far-famed town, whose productions gave a title to the whole species, viz., that of Arras. Walpole gives an intimation of the introduction of tapestry weaving into England, so early as the reign of Edward III., "De inquirendo de mystera Tapiciorum, London;" but usually William Sheldon, Esq., is considered the introducer of it, and he allowed an artist, named Robert Hicks, the use of his manor-house at Burcheston, in Warwickshire; and in his will, dated 1570, he calls Hicks "the only auter and beginner of tapistry and arras within this realm." At his house were four maps of Oxford, Worcester, Warwick, and Gloucestershires, executed in tapestry on a large scale, fragments of which are or were among the curiosities of Strawberry-hill. We meet with little further notice of this establishment.