The old weavers set them low in the picture, used them as space-fillers wherever space lay happily before them, and they never exaggerated their size, a virtue of which the full Renaissance cannot boast. They are the simplest sort of flowers, the corolla of petals turning as frankly toward the observer as the sunflower turns toward her god, and little bells hanging as regularly as a chime. These are their characteristics, easily recognisable and expressing the unsophisticated charm of the creations of honest childish hands. Irrelevancy is theirs, too. They spring from stones or pavement as well as from turf or garden, and thus express the more ardently their love for man and for close association with him. When they are seen after this manner, it is sure that the early men have set them, just as Shakespeare, at the same epoch, set violets blue and daisies pied, cowslip, rosemary "for remembrance," and other familiar dainties, in the grim foundation stones of his tragedies. A comparison of the different hangings available to the amateur, or of the pictured examples given in this book, will reveal more than can be well set down with the pen. The use of flowers in the set of _The Baillee des Roses_ is exceptional, in that here the flowers form a harmonious decorative scheme and are at the same time an important part of the story which is pictured. In other earliest examples they playfully peep within the limits of the hanging. Important use is, however, made of them in that altogether entrancing set of _The Lady and the Unicorn_, where they indicate the beauties of a fascinating park in which the delicate lady and her attendant led a wondrous life guarded by two beasts as fabulous as faithful, and the whole region of leaves and petals but serving as a paradise for delectable white rabbits and piquant monkeys. Could any modern indicate by sophistry of brush or brain so intoxicating a fairyland, so gracious a field of dear delights? COSTUMES A minute study of all the details of costume and accessories is one of the measuring sticks with which we count the years of a tapestry's life. This applies more particularly to the work prior to the Renaissance, to the time when all characters were dressed in the mode of the day--another evidence of that ingenuousness that delights us who have passed the period where it is possible.