"gaseuse"-were employed to finish the work of the "assembleuse" before it was handed over to the "mignonneuse," who sewed on the engrêlure (purl), and passed it to the "picoteuse," who added the picots to the cordonnet of edge and fillings, keeping the points straight by passing a fine horse-hair through the top loops. This horse-hair is a peculiarity of the Alençon picots, only found in rare cases in Brussels needle point; and in many old specimens it is lost, being either purposely or accidentally drawn out. After a piece of Alençon point had been finished so far, the "affineuse" completed and amended any minor defects in the working, and handed it over to the "affiqueuse," who removed inequalities in the toile (inside the cordonnet) by polishing the surface of the flowers with an instrument called "afficot," made of steel, ivory, or hard wood; teeth of animals or lobster claws were used for the same purpose.* The patterns of Alençon belong to the rococo, or the dotted style, significant of the early eighteenth century work. The mode of making the true Alençon ground, which defies time or wear, is now lost and forgotten; and modern attempts to rescue this art from oblivion have signally failed. Although Alençon still produces point-lace, the flowers are all applied to machine-made net, and the entire fabric partakes of the flimsy character of modern laces. The lace generally known under the Queen Lace-Book. Queen Office, London. name of Brussels point is not real point, but is made on the pillow, and can not therefore technically rank among the needle-made laces. Brussels point-lace réseau was a simple needle-made ground done in open button-hole stitch. It is now made on the bobbin-net machine introduced into Belgium in 1834. The earliest Brussels needle point was made toward the end of the Renaissance period. It closely resembles the grounded point of Venice in workmanship, but essentially differs from it in design, and never shows the small raised knobs in the pattern characteristic of the former. The point d'Alençon, in its day, was excessively dear, when a "parure" would cost 30,000 livres. The Valenciennes, whose fabrication goes back to the fifteenth century, had no less value; for it required more than a year for a work-woman, working fifteen hours a day, to finish a pair of cuffs worth 400 livres. Nowadays no one could be found to make them as beautiful, and few amateurs to buy them as dear. Yet the difficulties of the work should not discourage the modern workwoman. If she begins with the help of the machine-made braids, she will soon be won to the more elaborate works. The Greek lace is the Reticella of the olden time, and led the way in laces. It affords charming opportunities for the modern work-woman, with its geometrical designs. The point d'Angleterre is coming into vogue. Its stitch, as the sarcasm of "The Revolt of the Laces" indicates, is not of the most delicate kind, yet it is effective, and can be very varied. The bridal veil of the Duchess of Connaught was of the point d'Angleterre. Many books of the present day* give patterns for the "filling" stitches of many of these laces, and any lady of leisure can not find a more charming occupation than to take up the study of the Venice point, Spanish point, point d'Angleterre, and Greek lace, as well as the less artistic work with the braid. The needle must have been welcomed as a valuable invention in its early days. Women were not trusted with it at first, probably. It was only a prerogative of the manly race. When it was so far refined as to become the delicate steel instrument of nowadays, instead of the thorn earliest used, it must have appeared as wonderful an invention as the sewing-machine of the present day. To take the close "over-and-over" stitches of what cessary part of a woman's education to put together side by side a number of exquisite stitches that should never be seen. This advance was helped by the feeling that sewing was an admirable occupation for woman, and that it was a very good plan to find some work to keep her out of mischief. The heroines of the Greek poems and of chivalric days passed their lonely hours, when deserted by their heroes, in their tapestry embroidery; the domestic women of later days have their "plain needlework" with which to fill up their solitary days, setting stitch by stitch in long seams of sheets and shirts. Nowadays we are finding more active occupations for women. In public life and private there is more varied work for them to do, and the modern inventions with the sewing-machine are relieving them from the necessity of spending so many hours over the long seams. is now called "seaming," was probably considered at first a fastidious refinement -a waste of time for those who had not a large leisure. Originally it was enough, and certainly accomplishing a great deal, if the seams were strongly held together, and the advance must have been long and gradual before the days of our grandmothers were reached; and it was a ne In America, Old Point- Lace, No. 2 of "Tilton's Needlework Series," Boston, gives information of manner of work, with illustrations of numerous "filling" stitches. But plain sewing can not be given up. The sewing-machines can not yet do it all. Nor can our young girls learn by nature how to sew. They have to begin each of them separately to learn how to hold a needle, how to use a thimble, how to take small stitches. Especially they have to learn not to fall into bad habits, not to get into bad ways, which can seldom be unlearned. For it is almost as hard for our young girls to learn how to sew as for the first great-great-granddaughter of Eve, who had a thorn put into her hand for the purpose, and they are about as awkward as said young woman must have been. It is not quite as hard, for some of our girls do see older sisters and mothers at work, and know what needles and thread are, and are helped by their unconscious imitation of the civilization around them. Some of our girls know! But do they all? Many of them come to the public schools from homes where needles and thread are as much unknown as in the old aboriginal tents. And as for those that come from more fastidious homes, it would astonish many to know how few have ever had a chance to sit and watch the slow and careful passing in and out of the needle and thread through the seam. We still need a thorough instruction in sewing for our girls in the schools. They need it for the old reason that they may learn how to keep their clothes together, and for the later reason that they may know how to occupy their leisure time. The sewing-machine and the new duties of public and private life do not take from one of our girls the privileges of using that delicate instrument of civilization. It is more helpful to her than the cigar, than the glass of sherry, or tumbler of beer. The plain seam is a sedative for her. How her thoughts can go ambling off into fields of imagination as she sits over a bit of plain work! She can plan out a charming romance, or lay down the project of some helpful reform, as she draws her needle mechanically in and out of her seam. And besides the sedative power, there can be found an inspiration in the needle. There are so many women of artistic tendencies who have never had a chance to fully cultivate their powers, or who, perhaps, could not have risen to a high point if they had, who do know how to make their homes artistic. They put flowers together so that you remember them-just that bunch of flowers-as you do a picture by a master. Their motion and ordering of a room give an ineffable air of grace to what would be mere " clutter" if otherwise disposed. It is they who are to elevate and exalt our lives by showing how the needle can enter the province of art. But it must be remembered that something must be done for them besides putting 66 art" with a hyphen before "needlework." Art is long; there is no short road through its "province." A pupil in art-needlework can not graduate in six lessons. Our girls must take example from their German sisters, and begin with a study of drawing and of color; they must learn the history of the whole subject; they must learn how to practice their eyes as well as their hands; and, above all, to remember that they are to put into their handiwork the inspiration of true art. KEATS. Urox thy toinb 'tis graven, "Here lies one Now crested proud in tidal majesty, In each Protean rainbow-tint that stains The breathing canvas of the atmosphere, We read an exhalation of thy strains: Thus, on the scroll of Nature, everywhere, Thy name, a deathless syllable, remains. REMINISCENCES OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. T is now a little more than half a cen- | plished and self-instructed naturalists Itury since remarkable man, who on adventurous voyage united in his own person the rarest of combinations-that of being one of the greatest painters of bird and animal life that the world has ever known, and at the same time one of its most accomVOL. LXI.-No. 365.-43 from New Orleans to Liverpool. Alone, unknown (save to an admiring few), almost unfriended, poor in purse, though wonderfully buoyant in hopes, knowing no one in all that strange region whither How many and how striking are the contrasts presented in the lives of our two pioneer ornithologists, Alexander Wilson and Audubon! The self-instructed Paisley weaver struggled up to his mission under the gravest disadvantages. By him the art of bird-painting had been acquired with fingers stiffened by toil and manual labor, and late in life-a drawback never to be fully overcome; and all that he had so nobly achieved had been accomplished before he was forty-seven years old, for Wilson died in his forty-eighth year. Audubon, on the other hand, was the son of a gentleman, had been educated with all the advantages that wealth can bestow, and his native taste for painting had been early trained and matured into a rich de he had laid out his course, John James | ship, which terminated only at last when Audubon, the first of our American-born the spirit of his illustrious teacher had ornithologists, went forth with the high "o'erinformed its tenement of clay." resolve to accomplish the great mission of his life. He left the shores of his native Louisiana on the 19th of May, 1826, and two months later, after an uneventful but prosperous voyage, landed in the commercial capital of England. He was then just forty-six years old, and though well past the meridian of life, was in the very prime of a wonderfully well preserved and still vigorous manhood. From early youth up his life had been consecrated to the one great aspiration that had filled all his waking thoughts, and to which he had sacrificed almost everything that man usually holds most dear position in society, wealth, prosperity in business, and every other ambition. We need not here repeat the story of his wonderful success, the enthusiastic wel-velopment under the guidance of the celcome that greeted him everywhere in the Old World, the fame that followed the exhibition of his unequalled bird-paintings, with the final accomplishment of his most sanguine hopes, and the fulfillment of his most ardent wishes. With all these exciting and eventful episodes in his later life, surpassing in their strange interest anything that romance can invent, imagination conceive, or fancy create, the world is already familiar. The only aim of our paper is to draw one side a single fold of the curtain to his inner life, and to give a passing insight into the real nature of one whom it was the writer's privilege to love and cherish, and by whom he was in return honored with a warmth of friendship far beyond his own deserts. Early in the fall of 1836, the writer, then a mere tyro in the study of ornithology, but an enthusiastic admirer of the great ornithologist and bird-painter, and proud as an American of his countryman's fame and achievements, first met with Mr. Audubon. It had been his privilege in a maiden effort, written when hardly more than a boy, to defend the object of his fervent admiration from the hypercritical attacks of a writer whose sincere friendship for Alexander Wilson seemed to have blinded him to the transcendent merits of Wilson's most worthy successor. He had been more than repaid by the warm and affectionate gratitude with which his feeble tribute had been received by him in whose behalf it had been essayed, and this meeting was followed by a life-long friend ebrated David. At the age in life when Wilson had been called from his earthly labors, Audubon was really only just entering upon his brilliant career. The one died in the very midst of his labors, his work unfinished; the other saw his mission accomplished, his efforts crowned with a wonderful success, and to him was granted a serene old age. Audubon was a little more than fiftysix years old at the time our acquaintance began, and yet no one a stranger to this fact would have imagined that so many years of active life could have passed over that brow with its still untinged locks of raven hue. His form was erect, his movements were almost youthful in their ease and activity, and his features were wonderfully fresh in their mature and manly beauty. Everything about him bespoke, in unmistakable tokens, his "simple, single-hearted, enthusiastic, and persevering character, which it was impossible to regard without affectionate admiration." About ten years before we first met with Mr. Audubon, the author of the Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life had first encountered our "American Woodsman," as he then delighted to call himself, in "Stately Edinborough throned on crags," and has given his first impressions of him with a felicitous and graphic fidelity. His vivid portraiture presents a picture of the man identical with our own later recollections, except that those raven locks" had been shorn and made to con |