making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave the worse to the menials.

I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with an extract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, and saw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwards witnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. The queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as she walked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of the garter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chain she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." As she swept on in this magnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, and always in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke to her kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to give her hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels. The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed for the most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fifty gentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where she graciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long live Queen Elizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people." The music in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in half an hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:

"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, he spread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while the Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with particular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court."

The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants.
II

We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely, dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of the period more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study the origin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking and uncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities," 1611, we have an Englishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. The Venetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion, a thousand years old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to the body, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin also black—but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satin and taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good taste characterized their apparel. "In both these things," says Coryat, "they differ much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, we use many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, and unseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted." On festival days, in processions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps of crimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knights differed from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns, with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and red pantofles.

Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of his countrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety and fickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shape his apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Even the gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewd popish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void of judgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity, the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than to describe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanish guise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable; then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is best liked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short French breeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen in England."

This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to the tarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees; insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of attire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suits of apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!" "And how men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings and sending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams of our hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."

The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes the head was polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to grow long like a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under the ears, round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shaved from the chin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of the Marquis Otto; some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, others grown long. If a man have a lean