SWITZERLAND.
235
most finished style upon the plate, together with an inscriptiondated 1718.”
Misson, who visited Nuremberg in 1608, describes the dressof a newly married pair as rich in the extreme. That of thebridegroom as black, “ fort charge de dentelles; ” the bride astricked out in the richest “ dentelle antique,” her petticoattrimmed with “ des tresses d’or et de dentelle noire.”
Perhaps the finest collection of old German point is preserved,or rather was so, five-and-thirty years since, in the palace of theancient, but now extinct, prince-archbishops of Bamberg.
The modem laces of Bohemia are tasteless in design. Themanufacture is of early date. “ The Bohemian women,” writesMoryson, “ delight in black cloth with lace of light colours.” Inthe beginning of the present century, upwards of 60,000 people,men, women, and children, w r ere occupied in the BohemianErzgebirge alone in lace-making. Since the introductionof the bobbin-net machine into Austria, 1831, the number hasdecreased. There are now scarcely 1^000 employed in the commonlaces, and about 4000 on Valenciennes and points. 30 Austria sentto the International Exhibition of 1874 specimens of needle pointand point plat, made in the school of the Grand Duchess Sophie,and specimens of border laces in the style of those of Auvergnewere exhibited from the Erzgebirge and Bohemia.
Countess Nako and Mr. Artaria, both of Vienna, possess finecollections of lace.
SWITZERLAND.
“ Dans un vallon fort bien nomme Travers,
S’eleve un mont, vrai sejour des liivers.”— Voltaire.
In 1572, one Symphorien Thelusson, a merchant of Lyons,having escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew, concealedhimself in a bale of goods, in which he reached Geneva, and washospitably received by the inhabitants. When, after the lapse ofnear a hundred and twenty years, crowds of French emigrantsarrived in the city, driven from their homes on the revocation ofthe Edict of Nantes, a descendant of this same Thelusson took a
36 “ Austria .”—Report of the International Exhilrition of 1862.