But the reader may ask what is
about which one heard so much of old?
Happily, we have before us in the present collection, as well as elsewhere in this country, the means of helping our continental friends with an answer to their question.
Looking well into that very fine and invaluable piece of English needle-*work, the Syon cope, No. 9182, p. 275, we find that for the human face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however, after the further side had been made, they fell, and were so carried on through the rest of the fleshes; in some instances, too, even all through the figure, draperies and all. But this was done in a sort of chain stitch, and a newly practised mechanical appliance was brought into use. After the whole figure had thus been wrought with this kind of chain stitch in circles and straight lines, then with a little thin iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were pressed down those middle spots in the faces that had been worked in circular lines; as well, too, as that deep wide dimple in the throat, especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a play of light and shadow is brought out, that, at a short distance, lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief. Chain stitch, then, worked in circular lines, and relief given to parts by hollows sunk into the faces, and other portions of the persons, constitute the elements of the "opus Anglicum," or embroidery after the English manner. How the chain-stitch was worked into circles for the faces, and straight lines for the rest of the figures, is well shown by a wood-*cut, after a portion of the Steeple Aston embroideries, given in the Archæological Journal, t. iv. p. 285.
Though, indeed, not merely the faces and the extremities, but the dress too of the persons figured, were sometimes wrought in chain-stitch, and afterwards treated as we have just described, the more general practice was to work the draperies in our so-called feather-stitch, which used to be also employed for the grounding, but diapered after a pretty, though simple, zig-zag design, as we find in the Syon cope.
Apart from its stitching in circles, and those hollows, there are elements in the design for sacred art-work almost peculiar to mediæval England. Upon the rood loft in old Westminster Abbey, stood hard by the cross two six-winged seraphim, each with his feet upon a wheel; so, too, in the Syon cope, as well as in English needlework on chasubles
