This world-renowned relic of antiquity, which Dibdin half-satirically
describes as 'an exceedingly curious document of the conjugal attachment
and enthusiastic veneration of Matilda,' is now kept with the greatest
care, and is displayed on a stand under a glass case, in its entire
length, 227 feet. It is about 20 inches wide, and is divided into 72
compartments. Every line is expressed by coarse stitches of coloured
thread or worsted, of which this arrow's head is a facsimile, and the
figures are worked in various colours, the groundwork and the flesh
tints being generally left white. The extraordinary preservation of the
tapestry, when we consider, not only the date of the work, but the
vicissitudes to which it has been subjected, is so remarkable, that the
spectator is disposed to ask to see the 'original,' feeling sure that
this fresh, bright-looking piece of work cannot have lasted thus for
eight hundred years. And when we remember that it was carried from town
to town by order of Napoleon I., and also exhibited on the stage on
certain occasions; that it has survived the Revolution, and that the
cathedral, which it was originally intended to adorn, has long been
levelled with the ground, we cannot help approaching it with more than
ordinary interest; an interest in which the inhabitants, and even the
ecclesiastics of Bayeux, scarcely seem to share. It was but a few years
ago that the priests of the cathedral, when asked by a traveller to be
permitted to see the tapestry, were unable to point it out; they knew
that the '_toile St. Jean_,' as it is called, was annually displayed in
the Cathedral on St. John's Day, but of its historical and antiquarian
interest they seemed to take little heed.

The scenes, which (as is well known) represent the principal events in
the Norman Conquest, are arranged in fifty-eight groups. The legend of
the first runs thus:--