C.A.  Stothard undertook the task; and he has executed it in the course of two successive visits with the greatest accuracy and skill.  The engravings from his drawings we may hope shortly to see:  meanwhile, to give you some idea of the original, I enclose a sketch, which has no other merit than that of being a faithful transcript.  It is reduced one half from a tracing made from the tapestry itself.  By referring to Montfaucon, you will find the figure it represents under the fifty-ninth inscription in the original, where “a knight, with a private banner, issues to mount a led horse.”  His beardless countenance denotes him a Norman; and the mail covering to his legs equally proves him to be one of the most distinguished characters.

[Illustration:  Figure from the Bayeux Tapestry]

Within the few last years this tapestry has been the subject of three interesting papers, read before the Society of Antiquaries.  The first and most important, from the pen of the Abbe de la Rue[89], has for its object the refutation of the opinions of Montfaucon and Lancelot, who, following the commonly received tradition, refer the tapestry to the time of the conquest, and represent it as the work of Queen Matilda and her attendant damsels.  The Abbe’s principal arguments are derived from the silence of contemporary authors, and especially of Wace, who was himself a canon of Bayeux;—­from its being unnoticed in any charters or deeds of gift connected with the cathedral;—­from the improbability that so large a roll of such perishable materials would have escaped destruction when the cathedral was burned in 1106;—­from the unfinished state of the story;—­from its containing some Saxon names unknown to the Normans;—­and from representations taken from the fables of AEsop being worked on the borders, whereas the northern parts of Europe were not made acquainted with these fables, till the translation of a portion of them by Henry Ist, who thence obtained his surname of Beauclerk.—­These and other considerations, have led the learned Abbe to coincide in opinion with Lord Littleton and Mr. Hume, that the tapestry is the production of the Empress Maud, and that it was in reality wrought by natives of our own island, whose inhabitants were at that time so famous for labors of this description, that the common mode of expressing a piece of embroidery, was by calling it an English work.

The Abbe shortly afterwards found an opponent in another member of the society, Mr. Hudson Gurney, who, without following his predecessor through the line of his arguments, contented himself with briefly stating the three following reasons for ascribing the tapestry to Matilda, wife to the Conqueror[90].—­First, that in the many buildings therein pourtrayed, there is not the least appearance of a pointed arch, though much pointed work is found in the ornaments of the running border; whilst, on the contrary, the features of Norman architecture, the square buttress, flat