The indefatigable, patient, invincible, inquisitive, sometimes
tedious, but almost always amusing German traveler, Herr Kohl, has
recently been pursuing his earnest investigations in Belgium. His book
on the Netherlands has just been issued, and we shall translate, with
abridgments, one of its most instructive and agreeable chapters;--that
relating to Lace-making.

The practical acquaintance of our female readers with that elegant
ornament, lace, is chiefly confined to wearing it, and their
researches into its quality and price. A few minutes' attention to
Mr. Kohl will enlighten them on other subjects connected with what
is to them a most interesting topic, for lace is associated with
recollections of mediæval history, and with the palmy days of the
Flemish school of painting. More than one of the celebrated masters of
that school have selected, from among his laborious countrywomen, the
lace-makers (or, as they are called in Flanders, _Speldewerksters_),
pleasing subjects for the exercise of his pencil. The plump,
fair-haired Flemish girl, bending earnestly over her lace-work, whilst
her fingers nimbly ply the intricately winding bobbins, figure in many
of those highly esteemed representations of homely life and manners
which have found their way from the Netherlands into all the principal
picture-galleries of Europe.

Our German friend makes it his practice, whether he is treating of
the geology of the earth, or of the manufacture of Swedish bodkins,
to begin at the very beginning. He therefore commences the history
of lace-making, which, he says, is, like embroidery, an art of very
ancient origin, lost, like a multitude of other origins, "in the
darkness of by-gone ages." It may, with truth, be said that it is