There is indeed every reason to consider it as one of the most
valuable historical monuments which France possesses. It has also
given rise to a great deal of archeological discussion. Montfauçon,
Ducarel, and De La Rue, have come forward successively--but more
especially the first and last; and Montfauçon in particular has
favored the world with copper-plate representations of the whole.
Montfauçon's plates are generally much too small; and the more
enlarged ones are too ornamental.

It is right, first of all, that you should have an idea how this piece
of tapestry is preserved, or rolled up. You see it here, therefore,
precisely as it appears after the person who shows it, takes off the
cloth with which it is usually covered. The first portion of the
needle-work, representing the embassy of Harold from Edward the
Confessor to William Duke of Normandy, is comparatively much
defaced--that is to say, the stitches are worn away, and little more
than the ground, or fine close linen cloth remains. It is not far from
the beginning--and where the color is fresh, and the stitches are,
comparatively, preserved--that you observe the portrait of Harold.

You are to understand that the stitches, if they may be so called,
are threads laid side by side--and bound down at intervals by cross
stitches, or fastenings--upon rather a fine linen cloth; and that the
parts intended to represent flesh are left untouched by the needle.
I obtained a few straggling shreds of the worsted with which it is
worked. The colors are generally a faded or bluish green, crimson, and
pink. About the last five feet of this extraordinary roll are in a
yet more decayed and imperfect state than the first portion. But the
designer of the subject, whoever he was, had an eye throughout to
Roman art--as it appeared in its later stages. The folds of the