Middletown transcript., 1878-03-16
NO. IL.
Flemish Tapestry-weavers in Venice.

Rialto. I can picture them, with their.
flowing yellow hair, and blue Northern
eyes, and coarse dark dress, with
tongues unused to the soft lagoon
speech, passing the long days in the
low shops where the great bright webs
stretched from floor to ceiling, feeling
the soft wind blow from the mainland,
bringing breath of mountains, and a
thought of homesickness, and dream
of the rich grass growth and the gabled
cabins of the Flemish plains. A gentle
company-stalwart men and soft-eyed
women, like the Northern Madonnas,
and fair-haired children whom the
young colorists, passing by on their
way across the Rialto to the great hos
pitable painter-houses, begged from
their parents for a days posing as
angels in their Holy Families.
The gold-loeked Flemish maiden,
looking up from her bright warp,
would find 1.-THE shape atthe window
darkening the room-some mad young
fellow, with dark eyes and flowing
locks, and a saucy plume in his hat
an art student on his way to one of
the great studios across the canal.
And the girl would leave her weaving,
and grasp the glowing red carnations
that were flung at her feet. The shape
glided away, and the girl laid the flow
ers against her golden hair and her
white throat, and wove the burning
hue into the drapery she wrought, and
piled her shuttle to the rythm of an
old love ballad. And if there be
knot in the smooth texture, will not
posterity know that herea hand tou CHI
ed the hand Of the weaver, or a quick
caress turned her eyes from the even
mesh? They will not be hard on the
poor child, those gray-beard senators
for whom the tapestry is ordered, for
they too have been young, and have
flung the passionate carnations in at
fair women's windows in the dear la
gooA fashion.
Sometimes mightier shadow would
darken the low rooms, and at the open
door would stand some great painter
Titan, perchance, or Pordenone, or Ii
Robust himself, and the gentle North
ern people would rise from their looms
and bid him welcome, and listen to
his Judgment on their work, for which
he himself might have furnished the
design. And they would bring forth
their red wine and their pale green
salad, like the color they wrought into
their tapestry. And the painter sat
among them, with the children on his
knee, and smiled on the fair young
girls, and helped the patient mothers
with their stumbling Venetian speech,
so difficult for their Northern mouths.
And anon some stately red-robed SEN
ator would issue from his gondola
shell and enter the low dwelling to in
spect the work that was to adorn the
reverend halls of justice and smile be-
nignly upon the group. Ay, it was
beautiful, the large-heartedness of that
old-time genius that did not fear to
brush its skirts against the door-stone
of the toiling artisan.
[ wonder if, then as now, there were
cafe on the piazza before the Rialto,
this side the Fondaco of the German
merchants, and if the weavers took
their wives and children their for a
fiesta nights treat after SO many days
spent in the dingy shops of San Saliva
tore. l can fancy how, on Sunday
mornings after they had said their
PRAYERS in the old market church
among the dusky canvases of Fra Sc
bastiano, some great numbering barge
would pause at the nearest riva, and
the pale weaver with his wife and
children would enter it with their
slaves and pilgrim wallets, and bid the
dark ragged oarsmen push off, and
they would thread the canals to the
lagoon behind the city, where the Alps
tower blue in the morning air, and
their homsick hearts would leap with
ioy. and across the lagoon they would
find the towering meadows of the
mainland, with corn fields and lily
grown bitches like those Of Flanders,
and vines wreathing their luxuriant
arms about the mulberry-trees with
the added glory of the South, and
there, lying close to nature, they would
dream themselves fla away in the hazy
Northern meadows.-CHARLoTTE AD-
ANS. in Harper's Magazine for March.
Extravaganza is rapidly running the
Khedive of Egypt. He sustains up
ward of twenty palaces, in which he
supports in luxury three wives and
nine hundred women from the harem.
Each of the grown up princes of the
blood also has his separate palace and
retinue of servants, and the horses in
the stables of the father and sons are
numbered by hundreds.
CHOW shall we utilize the Chinese 2"
asks ii California Press. We sup
pose it never occurred to the Calaforn-
-. - ,oo+r;Ey fba Chinese and sell