23547	----	SAM LAMBERT AND THE NEW WAY STORE A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks Published by Grand Rapids Show Case Co. Grand Rapids: Michigan Copyright, 1912, Grand Rapids Show Case Co. Grand Rapids, Mich. CHAPTER I. Sam Lambert had the best clothing store in Medeena County--a corner store on the main street of Medeena opposite the Court House Square. Medeena had four clothing stores, not counting The Blue Front, down by the Depot, with its collection of cheap watches in the window, a yellow guitar, two large accordions and a fiddle with a broken E string. Everybody in the County knew Sam Lambert. As a merchant and a citizen he was a whole bunch of live wires. A big-boned, free-hearted fellow--lucky enough to just escape being run for sheriff, as some thought he was too good natured, the "gang" was afraid he was not pliant enough, and Sam didn't want to be away from the store. Sam took great pride in his clothing business and kept pace with the most advanced ideas in the trade. He was awake to the marvelous development of the ready-to-wear business. He carried the best and took a positive delight in each season's new models. He recalled the old days of "hand-me-downs," and he had lived to see the two best tailors in Medeena take to bushelling "ready" garments, with less and less of that to be done--principally changing a button or shortening a trouser's length. Sam was broad-gauge in everything he did. He sold his goods at the marked price, for cash only--got a decent profit and told you so. Why shouldn't he? He had a sense of style. He was keenly alive to the artistry of clothes and his enthusiasm was contagious. Sam was firmly convinced that a man has to spend money to make money in the clothing business. He said that a part of the value you deliver to a customer consists in giving him a better opinion of himself: making him feel like a king for a day and that the best is none too good for him. "A store," he would tell the boys, "cannot be run on the low gear. You must keep her keyed up. Relax when the store is empty, but when you go to meet a customer put on the tension--take a brace--get spring into your step--learn to bunch your vitality and get it across. But keep your energy inside. "Don't bounce and don't talk too much. Keep yourself in hand. Be quiet but alert. "Concentrate! For the time being there is but one person in the world and that is the customer, and the most interesting thing in life is the thing he came in to see. "You can size up your man while you are going forward to meet him. But by all means take him easy. Undue interest might embarrass him. Suppose he only wants a pair of 15c. socks; if he does, there is a test of your ability that you may not realize. "Many a clerk who can close a Twenty dollar transaction with tact and dispatch never seems able to handle a Ten cent sale so that the customer goes out feeling pleased with himself. "Nine men out of ten who come into the store are self-conscious. The thing to do is to make your man feel that his requirement is important simply because it is his requirement. "A good salesman keeps his own personality in the background: he keeps the store and the sale in the background. He puts all the emphasis on service to the customer, and to do this he must mentally put himself in the customer's place. "Try to be as interested in the customer's finding what he wants as if the article was for yourself; but don't insist on his taking only the thing that appeals to you. "Quietly dominate the sale, but leave him plenty of room for the exercise of his own taste and ideas. "Most men, though they may not show it, are slightly on the defensive when they come into a clothing store. That is why it is so very important that there be no talking or laughing among the clerks. "You may find it hard to realize the effect of a whisper or a titter on the part of the store's help when a customer is present. In nearly every case the man becomes sensitive or resentful and thinks he is being ridiculed. "Try it yourself sometime by going into a strange store in another line of business in a distant city: when you hear a laugh or a remark passed among the clerks, see if you don't wonder if there isn't something wrong with your clothes or feel sure that comment is being made on your appearance or behavior. "There is another form of impatience or self-consciousness on the part of a customer who is more or less acquainted with the store. He hurries past everyone in front, headed for the part of the store where he thinks the goods he wants are kept. "It is bad policy to step in front of him or otherwise impede his progress. If there is no one to wait on him follow quietly and be on hand when he lands at his destination. "A clerk often wonders why customers persist in doing this. "It is because they have an idea of the location of what they want and blindly strike out for it with a certain nervous desire to cover the intermediate ground as quickly as possible. "Remember that while you feel perfectly at home in the store, few customers do. It is your business to put them at ease and certainly to do nothing to make them uncomfortable. "When a man comes in for a suit of clothes he usually has some sort of a mental picture of the thing he desires. An idea, clearly defined or hazy, is in his mind as to the general color and effect of the suit he wants. "It is something he has noticed worn by someone else--looked at in a show window, or seen in an illustration. "In most cases it will not be the thing he finally buys. It may be a chalk-line stripe or a Shepherd's Plaid worn by a drummer who boarded the 6.30 Lightning Express. In the glow of the lamps and the bustle and excitement of the Station platform the thing looked possible: but confronted in the store with the very style and pattern he backs away from it, though 'it looked good on the other man.' "Find out what he has in mind; meet it as nearly as you can and get it out of the way. Otherwise he will not concentrate on other goods. He will hold to this mental picture and measure everything you show him by it--much to your disadvantage. "One of the worst possible things is to ask a man about what price suit he wants. "Keep price in the background. Time enough to feel him out on that subject. No man likes to have you take the measure of his pocket-book. "You must use your judgment in gauging him as to what to show him. "The important thing is to get at the picture he has in mind, and the price too, if you can do so without asking him to name the figure. "Never ask a customer how he liked the last suit you sold him. Let by-gones be by-gones. This is a new deal. Whether he was entirely satisfied is not the point now. Don't raise dangerous questions. "There are a dozen reasons why his last purchase may not be remembered with pleasure--reasons that have nothing to do with the value he received or the actual merit of the clothes. "If he voluntarily mentions the last suit with praise take it as a natural occurrence and pass it over; you will try to do even better by him this time. "If he complains of his last purchase don't argue. Leave the subject as soon as possible and get down to the question in hand. "Have confidence in your goods, in your prices and in yourself as a salesman. "There are more sales lost for lack of firmness and decision at the right time than for any other cause. "Among the clerks in the best and biggest of stores there are ten good openers of a sale to one good closer. "Be a closer. "It requires judgment and decision of character, but you can learn to do it. "When a woman goes into a cloak and suit department, she is not satisfied to buy until she has been made to feel that she has pretty well canvassed the assortment, seen practically everything in the stock at the range and along the line she is seeking. "She has merchandise imagination and thinks of the possible garments back there in the stock that she might have liked better. "In this regard a man is somewhat easier to handle. "It is a fact often demonstrated that clerks can close a sale more quickly where the stock is kept on hangers instead of piled on tables. "The preliminaries are more quickly covered. Having walked down the line the customer is better satisfied that the whole selection is placed at his disposal. "There is no secret about it. Nothing held back. No mysterious pile of garments on a table that he cannot see. "Note the tendency of the customer to investigate a pile of coats--lifting up the corners and looking at the patterns. "A coat in plain view, taken off the hanger, is more obviously a thoughtful selection of a garment definitely suited for him and he is the more ready to make it his own. "The important thing in closing a sale is to narrow down the choice as soon as you can to one or two strong possibilities, flanked by a bad one--that is, a style or a pattern that you know the customer doesn't want. "When this point is reached it is well to move the customer away from the rest of the stock, say to some distant corner where he can stand on a rug and look in the mirror-- "Where his whole attention can be given to one suit, or at most a choice between two. "A sale must be opened easily. The customer should never be made to feel that he is being restricted in his selection. But the moment you can form an idea of what he wants you can probably think of just the thing for him. "If you handle him right he accepts your knowledge of the assortment, instead of demanding a complete canvass of the stock. "It is then you may know that you have established his confidence. "In a comparatively short time you can narrow him down to a choice where by a tactful show of firmness you can help him decide. "In the handling of almost every sale there is a point beyond which the customer begins to flounder and show indecision. "The weak salesman leads him on and on with no stopping point--no place to close--and the prospective sale fades to a 'just looking today' excuse. "This is a universal fault among retail clerks. "The test of salesmanship is in closing a sale. "Be a closer! "Never guy a customer or 'kid him along' for the amusement of a by-stander or a fellow clerk. This is a common practice in some clothing stores. The offender is usually a self-satisfied clerk who has had just enough success as a salesman to make him egotistical. "He thinks he is a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. His favorite victim is some half-witted fellow--tho' a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a yokel or a foreigner. "There is no doubt," said Sam Lambert, "that the medal for the longest ears and the loudest bray in the clothing business belongs to this Smart Aleck type of clerk known as a 'kidder'. "To say nothing of the respect he owes the customer, it is astonishing how he can presume to work his cheap little side-play on any human being, when even a dog is sensitive to ridicule and knows when he is being laughed at." CHAPTER II. No one questioned Sam Lambert's power as a business getter, nor the alertness of his store-keeping methods. He was prodigal of his own energy--never spared himself. He looked after the important things and left details to others. As with every man who is a constructive force in the world of affairs, Sam's friends and relatives shook their heads--said that he needed a balance-wheel. This was dinned into his ears so often that he finally came to believe it. So after many Sunday afternoon business discussions, it was arranged that he was to take into the business his wife's cousin, one Lemuel Stucker, who had spent twenty years saving $9000 as general manager for a flour and feed concern. Stucker had worked out elaborate sets of figures to prove the needed economies of management. He was so tireless and sincere, so careful and exact, that it was with a great sense of relief that Sam turned the store over to him. Here, at last, was a man who could lift from his shoulders the daily burden of management. Sam's real interest in the change, as those who knew him might have guessed, was a desire for new enterprise. He had long had an eye on a fine opening for a clothing store in the neighboring town of Bridgeville, twenty miles away, and he lost no time in carrying out this project. During the ensuing year he was so engrossed with the Bridgeville branch that Medeena rarely saw him, and Lemuel Stucker's rather discouraging reports on the state of business were attributed to Lem's conservatism and natural depression of mind. Lem was Sam's opposite in almost every particular. A small, sallow man with a black shoe-string necktie and a look of general regret. He spent most of his time untying knots in pieces of string, picking up bits of wrapping paper and sharpening short lead-pencils, and he was great on buying brooms. His effect on the store was one of immediate and prevalent blight. You may wonder why the boys did not complain of conditions to Sam, but Lem was manager--and there is something so virtuous and convincing about a first-class retrencher. His wise saws and thrifty sayings are infectious and he makes everybody so low-spirited that they are ready to catch anything. No more good window displays--tacks, colored cheesecloth and other accessories cost money, and the sun was bad for the goods. No more trim on the counters and shelves. Stop the high-power electric light in front of the store and reduce the lamps inside. These things did not all occur at once, but so gradually that it was hard to realize just what had happened to the store. The windows got streaky and the inside of the store looked dingy and cold. Then the conservative spirit got into the buying. Nothing but black cheviots with a few drab and gray worsteds. Perhaps it was just as well, for when a customer came into the store and saw Stucker he thought it was raining outside. Sam Lambert had always prided himself on keeping alive what he called the "buying spirit" in the store. Nowadays a customer got a sense of caution. The feeling was one of disapproval of all extravagance. Instead of purchasing a suit, the man wondered where his next month's rent was coming from, bought a pair of cottonade pants and hurried home. Trade fell off steadily. Affairs went on this way for a twelvemonth and then something happened. Two of Sam's principal competitors were reported to be remodeling their stores--and what was more, they were going to put in wardrobe systems and carry all their garments on hangers. This aroused Sam and he made an immediate investigation. He found that one of the stores had contracted for the old type of wooden wall cabinets where the clothes hung behind panelled doors. But the other was installing glass wardrobes, where the stock would be on view. This discovery cut Sam like a knife. He investigated further, and was delighted to find that his wardrobe competitor, with the temptation to save a few dollars, had ordered a second-rate type of glass wardrobe, with pull-out rods that swing inside the case, without a locking device to prevent them from breaking the glass. Without saying anything to Stucker he telegraphed the best wardrobe concern in the country to send their representative at once. CHAPTER III. At eleven o'clock the following day a quiet man wearing double-lens spectacles and a pre-occupied air came into the store, asked for Mr. Lambert and was directed to the rear where Stucker was showing Sam the wisdom of leaving the night covers over the black goods during the day to protect the stock from dust. Sam was so keyed up on the wardrobe question that he heard only about half that Stucker was saying. When the man with the spectacles arrived Sam guessed his mission without waiting for a word of greeting. "You," said Sam, "are here to talk wardrobes; let's see what you've got." "Before I talk wardrobes, or, if you please, the New Way system," began the salesman, "I would prefer to get a fair idea of the amount and kind of stock you carry and how you care for it now." "Just as I thought," interrupted Stucker. "You're afraid our stock is too big for your wardrobe capacity. "Well, I don't want to discourage you, but when you count the suits on the table, don't forget to add about 50 dozen pair of knee pants and odd trousers stored in case-goods boxes under the tables. "Remember too, that when you take the tables out, you must find another place for our last years sweaters, mufflers, caps, gloves and underwear, as well as all our advance stock of shirts, hosiery and ties which we keep under the tables because we have no room for them on our side shelving. You can see it is piled to the ceiling now; and all that on top is active stock." "That reminds me, Mr. Stucker, of a joke your friend Jones, over at Dennisville, played on Sakes, his partner. "Before we remodelled their store, they had a lot of money tied up in stock piled under the tables like you have. Most of it was odds and ends--left overs of many seasons that Jones knew even a clearance sale would not clean up. "He inventoried the lot and shipped 72 dozen pair of knee pants to New York, and wrote the auctioneer to send a check for whatever amount they brought. "The funny part of it, Sakes never discovered that the stock was gone until about three weeks later, when he noticed a check in the mail and asked Jones what it was for. "You can do the same thing, Mr. Stucker, with your stock under the tables, and the check you will get will help buy New Way sectional shelving that will give you about three times the capacity your furnishing department has now; so it will not be necessary to climb to the ceiling for your active stock or dig under the tables for your out of season goods. "Before we discuss detail, Mr. Lambert," continued the salesman, "I have something to say about the practical arrangement of the inside of the store. "The business of a store is to sell goods. A customer may come in for one item. You want him to buy two or three or a half a dozen. The easier you make it for him, the less he has to cross and recross the store to complete his purchases--the more goods you will sell him. "What you want--what every merchant wants--and what few have--is a practical, natural selling arrangement of the goods. "The invention of a practical wardrobe merely made the right plan possible. "Our business is to suggest the plan and fit the wardrobe arrangement to the needs of a store. "Every clothing store has its own individuality. Each problem must be worked out on the ground with a full knowledge of the stock and the business, the history of the store, the nature of its trade and the personality of its proprietor." Sam's interest was excited. This point of view was new to him, but he could see the truth of it and he was impatient to get at the heart of the matter as far as his own store was concerned. "You're right," he said, "about the personality and individuality of a store; and for that reason don't tell me to put the furnishing goods shelving down the middle of the store. This is a clothing store and not a haberdashery." "Mr. Lambert," said the salesman, "you have hit the nail squarely on the head. This is a double room, a very different problem from that of a single store. I looked over the place of one of your competitors this morning. He also has a double store with much the same arrangement as yours and I find that he is making a mistake--adopting a plan that is about five years behind the times. "You see, in the earlier days of the wardrobe, there was no such thing as a center wardrobe. Therefore the clothing had to be hung against the wall in pull-out cabinets. When the clothing went to the side walls the furnishings had to move to the center floor space. "Such an arrangement is not practical for a double store and the effect is bad. It kills the first impression of a big store. The shelving will look bare if it is not trimmed, and if it is trimmed your big double room looks like two small stores divided by a wall. "The center shelving will always have stock boxes piled on top and that will throw one side of the store always in shadow. Besides, this arrangement divides the trade and screens half of it from view. "The stock is cut in two and looks small. "One salesman can not wait on the furnishing goods trade without neglecting half of it all the time. If you have two clerks, a customer must be taken from one side to the other for his ties or underwear, and there you are again, both on one side at the same time. "If another customer came along they'd have to stop in the middle of a sale and refer him to a clerk around in the other aisle. "A furnishing goods department should be continuous. The sale of a shirt will lead to the purchase of a tie or a collar or hosiery. The goods should be in sight so that they automatically suggest themselves. "You enter this store and the first impression you get is a big clothing store. That is what you want. Clothing dominates the store. Furnishing goods and hats are important and necessary side lines. No one would mistake it for a haberdasher's. You have been known from the beginning as the leading clothier. That's the reputation you want to keep. "Mr. Lambert, one of the important problems of this store is to house your stock in new fixtures and at the same time widen your aisles. "You can not see how that is possible. It is really the only problem I have to solve for you, and it is easy." The little man with the big spectacles had things moving. He was not much of a salesman but he knew all about merchandising in a retail store. And he certainly was familiar with every store fixture and selling device that had ever been invented, its good and bad points, where it was practical and where it was not. "Before a merchant puts money into store equipment," said the wardrobe man, "he ought to be sure that he is getting the very latest and most improved models. He owes this to himself as a protection for his investment. "There is always a temptation to save a few dollars by adopting a poor imitation or some out-of-date device. "The latest and best is the cheapest in the end, especially when you consider convenience and durability. "A pretty safe guide is to see what the biggest and best stores everywhere are installing today. "You will find such merchants as John Wanamaker in his Philadelphia and New York stores equipping his clothing departments solely with New Way Crystal Wardrobes; "Browning, King & Company in seventeen cities; "Schuman, Kennedy, Posner, Talbot Company, Jordan-Marsh & Company, Leopold Morse Company, McCullough & Parker in Boston; "George Muse Company in Atlanta; "Mullen & Bluett of Los Angeles; "Becker of San Francisco; "Burkhardt of Cincinnati; "Lazarus, and Meyer Israel of New Orleans; "And more than a thousand others--all the representative stores of their localities. "These men have selected the New Way Crystal Wardrobes after careful comparison with every other device on the market. "They have found the New Way Crystal Wardrobe the most sightly and compact--having the largest capacity with the greatest ease of operation. "They find that they show the goods better; that the clerks can work faster from them; that half a dozen clerks can sell from one wardrobe at the same time; that one boy can keep the stock in good shape where four were inadequate under any other plan. "They find that the New Way people have basic patents on special features, such as the New Way disappearing doors that divide in the center, and slide into the ends of the wardrobe and do not project into the aisle. "The New Way revolving rack with the patent locking device, which works loaded or unloaded with equal ease--no friction, no leverage, no noise. "They find the New Way low center wardrobes give an unobstructed view all over the store and are the only wardrobes made that are entirely practical for grouping in front of a furnishing or hat department. "Likewise the high double deck wall wardrobes have more than double the capacity of tables." The wardrobe man illustrated his talk with photographs and backed his arguments with figures. The upshot of it was that he made a complete ground plan of the Lambert store with a modern selling arrangement and New Way fixtures in their proper places. But before Stucker would admit the wisdom of the improvement, he argued it from every point of view. "The farmer trade," he said, "would imagine that they would have to pay higher prices for clothing to make up the cost of new fixtures." This, mind you, today when the farmer is the most enlightened member of the community--when he is using progressive methods in marketing his own product, to reduce his costs and increase his profits! Lem acknowledged that the clothiers who are handling the finest merchandise are fitting up their stores with New Way Crystal Wardrobes, and he didn't like to admit that the Lambert Store didn't sell high grade merchandise. He conceded that fine goods in every other line of trade are treated with the care and respect they deserve, otherwise they would suffer in the handling and cease to be fine merchandise. Finally, Lem admitted that the discerning public does judge a merchant's stock by the way he treats it, so that the store with New Way Wardrobes as a feature is not only the most progressive store, but in practically every instance the most prosperous in the clothing trade of its locality. After Sam had given the order his one thought was impatience for the completion of the job. "I must have that stuff all installed so that I can have my opening a week ahead of the other people. "Here, Stucker," called Sam to that gloomy soul, who had gone behind a stock of work-shirts, while the order was being signed, "we'll let you dispose of the old fixtures. That's a job that's just about your size. "I tell you, Stucker, a natural-born retrencher has his virtues. But if you give him rope enough he will retrench you out of business. He never builds anything. If it wasn't for the creative man there would be nothing to retrench. "The retrencher is all right if you don't pay him too much. He is worth about $10 a month, because you can find fifty of them in any old man's home that you can hire for less money than that. "No, Lem, I won't be unfair. You're not as bad as all that. It takes all kinds of people to make a world and there is plenty of room for both of us in this business--there always will be leaks to stop and work to do for an earnest man who has the interest of the store at heart. "The fault has been in the division of our labor. I'll show you the way we can get the best out of ourselves." "Sam," said Lem, "I reckon I've been looking at the world through a crack in the fence and I'll have to widen out my view a little. You give me the books and the sales slips to look after. In the meantime I'm going to make the most exact inventory this store ever had and be ready to check in the fresh stock that is to go in these New Way wardrobes. "My talents are all right if I don't try to cover too much territory." The two men shook hands. All was in readiness on the day set. Everybody in Medeena County came to the Grand Opening, and Sam Lambert's New Way Store is doing the business of the town. 
21914	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 21914-h.htm or 21914-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/9/1/21914/21914-h/21914-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/9/1/21914/21914-h.zip) THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK by L. FRANK BAUM Pictures by Ike Morgan Chicago The Reilly & Britton Co. 1905 Copyright 1905 by L. Frank Baum Every Right Reserved The Unique Adventures of the WOGGLE-BUG ONE day Mr. H. M. Woggle-Bug, T. E., becoming separated from his comrades who had accompanied him from the Land of Oz, and finding that time hung heavy on his hands (he had four of them), decided to walk down the Main street of the City and try to discover something or other of interest. The initials "H. M." before his name meant "Highly Magnified," for this Woggle-Bug was several thousand times bigger than any other woggle-bug you ever saw. And the initials "T. E." after his named meant "Thoroughly Educated"--and so he was, in the Land of Oz. But his education, being applied to a woggle-bug intellect, was not at all remarkable in this country, where everything is quite different than Oz. Yet the Woggle-Bug did not suspect this, and being, like so many other thoroughly educated persons, proud of his mental attainments, he marched along the street with an air of importance that made one wonder what great thoughts were occupying his massive brain. Being about as big, in his magnified state, as a man, the Woggle-Bug took care to clothe himself like a man; only, instead of choosing sober colors for his garments, he delighted in the most gorgeous reds and yellows and blues and greens; so that if you looked at him long the brilliance of his clothing was liable to dazzle your eyes. I suppose the Waggle-Bug did not realize at all what a queer appearance he made. Being rather nervous, he seldom looked into a mirror; and as the people he met avoided telling him he was unusual, he had fallen into the habit of considering himself merely an ordinary citizen of the big city wherein he resided. So the Woggle-Bug strutted proudly along the street, swinging a cane in one hand, flourishing a pink handkerchief in the other, fumbling his watch-fob with another, and feeling his necktie was straight with another. Having four hands to use would prove rather puzzling to you or me, I imagine; but the Woggie-Bug was thoroughly accustomed to them. Presently he came to a very fine store with big plate-glass windows, and standing in the center of the biggest window was a creature so beautiful and radiant and altogether charming that the first glance at her nearly took his breath away. Her complexion was lovely, for it was wax; but the thing which really caught the Woggle-Bug's fancy was the marvelous dress she wore. Indeed, it was the latest (last year's) Paris model, although the Woggle-Bug did not know that; and the designer must have had a real woggly love for bright colors, for the gown was made of red cloth covered with big checks which were so loud the fashion books called them "Wagnerian Plaids." Never had our friend the Woggle-Bug seen such a beautiful gown before, and it afflicted him so strongly that he straightaway fell in love with the entire outfit--even to the wax-complexioned lady herself! Very politely he tipped his to her; but she stared coldly back without in any way acknowledging the courtesy. "Never mind," he thought; "'faint heart never won fair lady.' And I'm determined to win this kaliedoscope of beauty or perish in the attempt!" You will notice that our insect had a way of using big words to express himself, which leads us to suspect that the school system in Oz is the same they employ in Boston. As, with swelling heart, the Woggle-Bug feasted his eyes upon the enchanting vision, a small green tag that was attached to a button of the waist suddenly attracted his attention. Upon the tag was marked: "Price $7.93--GREATLY REDUCED." "Ah!" murmured the Woggle-Bug; "my darling is in greatly reduced circumstances, and $7.93 will make her mine! Where, oh where, shall I find the seven ninety-three wherewith to liberate this divinity and make her Mrs. Woggle-Bug?" "Move on!" said a gruff policeman, who came along swinging his club. And the Woggle-Bug obediently moved on, his brain working fast and furious in the endeavor to think of a way to procure seven dollars and ninety-three cents. You see, in the Land of Oz they use no money at all, so that when the Woggle-Bug arrived in America he did not possess a single penny. And no one had presented him with any money since. "Yet there must be several ways to procure money in this country," he reflected; "for otherwise everybody would be as penniless as I am. But how, I wonder, do they manage to get it?" Just then he came along a side street where a number of men were at work digging a long and deep ditch in which to lay a new sewer. "Now these men," thought the Woggle-Bug, "must get money for shoveling all that earth, else they wouldn't do it. Here is my chance to win the charming vision of beauty in the shop window!" Seeking out the foreman, he asked for work, and the foreman agreed to hire him. "How much do you pay these workmen?" asked the highly magnified one. "Two dollars a day," answered the foreman. "Then," said the Woggle-Bug, "you must pay me four dollars a day; for I have four arms to their two, and can do double their work." "If that is so, I'll pay you four dollars," agreed the man. The Woggle-Bug was delighted. "In two days," he told himself, as he threw off his brilliant coat and placed his hat upon it, and rolled up his sleeves; "in two days I can earn eight dollars--enough to purchase my greatly reduced darling and buy her seven cents worth of caramels besides." He seized two spades and began working so rapidly with his four arms that the foreman said: "You must have been forewarned." "Why?" asked the Insect. "Because there's a saying that to be forewarned is to be four-armed," replied the other. "That is nonsense," said the Woggle-Bug, digging with all his might; "for they call you the foreman, and yet I only see one of you." "Ha, ha!" laughed the man, and he was so proud of his new worker that he went into the corner saloon to tell his friend the barkeeper what a treasure he had found. It was just after noon that the Woggle-Bug hired as a ditch-digger in order to win his heart's desire; so at noon on the second day he quit work, and having received eight silver dollars he put on his coat and rushed away to the store that he might purchase his intended bride. But, alas for the uncertainty of all our hopes! Just as the Woggle-Bug reached the door he saw a lady coming out of the store dressed in identical checks with which he had fallen in love! At first he did not know what to do or say, for the young lady's complexion was not wax--far from it. But a glance into the window showed him the wax lady now dressed in a plain black tailor-made suit, and at once he knew the wearer of the Wagnerian plaids was his real love, and not the stiff creature behind the glass. "Beg pardon!" he exclaimed, stopping the young lady; "but you're mine. Here's the seven ninety-three, and seven cents for candy." But she glanced at him in a haughty manner, and walked away with her nose slightly elevated. He followed. He could not do otherwise with those delightful checks shining before him like beacon-lights to urge him on. The young lady stepped into a car, which whirled away rapidly. For a moment he was nearly paralyzed at his loss; then he started after the car as fast as he could go, and this was very fast indeed--he being a woggle-bug. Somebody cried: "Stop, thief!" and a policeman ran out to arrest him. But the Woggle-Bug used his four hands to push the officer aside, and the astonished man went rolling into the gutter so recklessly that his uniform bore marks of the encounter for many days. Still keeping an eye on the car, the Woggle-Bug rushed on. He frightened two dogs, upset a fat gentleman who was crossing the street, leaped over an automobile that shot in front of him, and finally ran plump into the car, which had abruptly stopped to let off a passenger. Breathing hard from his exertions, he jumped upon the rear platform of the car, only to see his charmer step off at the front and walk mincingly up the steps of a house. Despite his fatigue, he flew after her at once, crying out: "Stop, my variegated dear--stop! Don't you know you're mine?" But she slammed the door in his face, and he sat down upon the steps and wiped his forehead with his pink handkerchief and fanned himself with his hat and tried to think what he should do next. Presently a very angry man came out of the house. He had a revolver in one hand and a carving-knife in the other. "What do you mean by insulting my wife?" he demanded. "Was that your wife?" asked the Woggle-Bug, in meek astonishment. "Of course it is my wife," answered the man. "Oh, I didn't know," said the insect, rather humbled. "But I'll give you seven ninety-three for her. That's all she's worth, you know; for I saw it marked on the tag." The man gave a roar of rage and jumped into the air with the intention of falling on the Woggle-Bug and hurting him with the knife and pistol. But the Woggle-Bug was suddenly in a hurry, and didn't wait to be jumped on. Indeed, he ran so very fast that the man was content to let him go, especially as the pistol wasn't loaded and the carving-knife was as dull as such knives usually are. But his wife had conceived a great dislike for the Wagnerian check costume that had won for her the Woggle-Bug's admiration. "I'll never wear it again!" she said to her husband, when he came in and told her that the Woggle-Bug was gone. "Then," he replied, "you'd better give it to Bridget; for she's been bothering me about her wages lately, and the present will keep her quite for a month longer." So she called Bridget and presented her with the dress, and the delighted servant decided to wear it that night to Mickey Schwartz's ball. Now the poor Woggle-Bug, finding his affection scorned, was feeling very blue and unhappy that evening, When he walked out, dressed (among other things) in a purple-striped shirt, with a yellow necktie and pea-green gloves, he looked a great deal more cheerful than he really was. He had put on another hat, for the Woggle-Bug had a superstition that to change his hat was to change his luck, and luck seemed to have overlooked the fact that he was in existence. The hat may really have altered his fortunes, as the Insect shortly met Ikey Swanson, who gave him a ticket to Mickey Schwartz's ball; for Ikey's clean dickey had not come home from the laundry, and so he could not go himself. The Woggle-Bug, thinking to distract his mind from his dreams of love, attended the hall, and the first thing he saw as he entered the room was Bridget clothed in that same gorgeous gown of Wagnerian plaid that had so fascinated his bugly heart. The dear Bridget had added to her charms by putting seven full-blown imitation roses and three second-hand ostrich-plumes in her red hair; so that her entire person glowed like a sunset in June. The Woggle-bug was enraptured; and, although the divine Bridget was waltzing with Fritzie Casey, the Insect rushed to her side and, seizing her with all his four arms at once, cried out in his truly educated Bostonian way: "Oh, my superlative conglomeration of beauty! I have found you at last!" Bridget uttered a shriek, and Fritzie Casey doubled two fists that looked like tombstones, and advanced upon the intruder. Still embracing the plaid costume with two arms, the Woggle-Bug tipped Mr. Casey over with the other two. But Bridget made a bound and landed with her broad heel, which supported 180 pounds, firmly upon the Insect's toes. He gave a yelp of pain and promptly released the lady, and a moment later he found himself flat upon the floor with a dozen of the dancers piled upon him--all of whom were pummeling each other with much pleasure and a firm conviction that the diversion had been planned for their special amusement. But the Woggle-Bug had the strength of many men, and when he flopped the big wings that were concealed by the tails of his coat, the gentlemen resting upon him were scattered like autumn leaves in a gust of wind. The Insect stood up, rearranged his dress, and looked about him. Bridget had run away and gone home, and the others were still fighting amongst themselves with exceeding cheerfulness. So the Woggle-Bug selected a hat which fit him (his own having been crushed out of shape) and walked sorrowfully back to his lodgings. "Evidently that was not a lucky hat I wore to the ball," he reflected; "but perhaps this one I now have will bring about a change in my fortunes." Bridget needed money; and as she had worn her brilliant costume once and allowed her friends to see how becoming it was, she carried it the next morning to a second-hand dealer and sold it for three dollars in cash. Scarcely had she left the shop when a lady of Swedish extraction--a widow with four small children in her train--entered and asked to look at a gown. The dealer showed her the one he had just bought from Bridget, and its gay coloring so pleased the widow that she immediately purchased it for $3.65. "Ay tank ets a good deal money, by sure," she said to herself; "but das leedle children mus' have new fadder to mak mind un tak care dere mudder like, by yimminy! An' Ay tank no man look may way in das ole dress I been wearing." She took the gown and the four children to her home, where she lost no time in trying on the costume, which fitted her as perfectly as a flour-sack does a peck of potatoes. "Das _beau_--tiful!" she exclaimed, in rapture, as she tried to see herself in a cracked mirror. "Ay go das very afternoon to valk in da park, for das man-folks go crazy-like ven he sees may fine frocks!" Then she took her green parasol and a hand-bag stuffed with papers (to make it look prosperous and aristocratic) and sallied forth to the park, followed by all her interesting flock. The men didn't fail to look at her, as you may guess; but none looked with yearning until the Woggle-Bug, sauntering gloomily along a path, happened to raise his eyes and see before him his heart's delight the very identical Wagnerian plaids which had filled him with such unbounded affection. "Aha, my excruciatingly lovely creation!" he cried, running up and kneeling before the widow; "I have found you once again. Do not, I beg of you, treat me with coldness!" For he had learned from experience not to unduly startle his charmer at their first moment of meeting; so he made a firm attempt to control himself, that the wearer of the checked gown might not scorn him. The widow had no great affection for bugs, having wrestled with the species for many years; but this one was such a big-bug and so handsomely dressed that she saw no harm in encouraging him--especially as the men she had sought to captivate were proving exceedingly shy. "So you tank Ay I ban loavely?" she asked, with a coy glance at the Insect. "I do! With all my heart I do!" protested the Woggle-Bug, placing all four hands, one after another, over that beating organ. "Das mak plenty trouble by you. I don'd could be yours!" sighed the widow, indeed regretting her admirer was not an ordinary man. "Why not?" asked the Woggle-Bug. "I have still the seven ninety-three; and as that was the original price, and you are now slightly worn and second-handed, I do not see why I need despair of calling you my own." It is very queer, when we think of it, that the Woggle-Bug could not separate the wearer of his lovely gown from the gown itself. Indeed, he always made love directly to the costume that had so enchanted him, without any regard whatsoever to the person inside it; and the only way we can explain this remarkable fact is to recollect that the Woggle-Bug was only a woggle-bug, and nothing more could be expected of him. The widow did not, of course, understand his speech in the least; but she gathered the fact that the Woggle-Bug had id money, so she sighed and hinted that she was very hungry, and that there was a good short-order restaurant just outside the park. The Woggle-Bug became thoughtful at this. He hated to squander his money, which he had come to regard a sort of purchase price with which to secure his divinity. But neither could he allow those darling checks to go hungry; so he said: "If you will come with me to the restaurant, I will gladly supply you with food." The widow accepted the invitation at once, and the Woggle-Bug walked proudly beside her, leading all of the four children at once with his four hands. Two such gay costumes as those worn by the widow and the Woggle-Bug are seldom found together, and the restaurant man was so impressed by the sight that he demanded his money in advance. The four children, jabbering delightedly in their broken English, clambered upon four stools, and the widow sat upon another. And the Woggle-Bug, who was not hungry (being engaged in feasting his eyes upon the checks), laid down a silver dollar as a guarantee of good faith. It was wonderful to see so much pie and cake and bread-and-butter and pickles and dough-nuts and sandwiches disappear into the mouths of the four innocents and their comparatively innocent mother. The Woggle-Bug had to add another quarter to the vanished dollar before the score was finally settled; and no sooner had the tribe trooped out restaurant than they turned into the open portals of an Ice-Cream Parlor, where they all attacked huge stacks of pale ice-cream and consumed several plates of lady-fingers and cream-puffs. Again the Woggle-Bug reluctantly abandoned a dollar; but the end was not yet. The dear children wanted candy and nuts; and then they warned pink lemonade; and then pop-corn and chewing-gum; and always the Woggle-Bug, after a glance at the entrancing costume, found himself unable to resist paying for the treat. It was nearly evening when the widow pleaded fatigue and asked to be taken home. For none of them was able to eat another morsel, and the Woggle-Bug wearied her with his protestations of boundless admiration. "Will you permit me to call upon you this evening?" asked the Insect, pleadingly, as he bade the wearer of the gown good-bye on her door-step. "Sure like!" she replied, not caring to dismiss him harshly; and the happy Woggle-Bug went home with a light heart, murmuring to himself: "At last the lovely plaids are to be my own! The new hat I found at the ball has certainly brought me luck." I am glad our friend the Woggle-Bug had those few happy moments, for he was destined to endure severe disappointments in the near future. That evening he carefully brushed his coat, put on a green satin necktie and a purple embroidered waist-coat, and walked briskly towards the house of the widow. But, alas! as he drew near to the dwelling a most horrible stench greeted his nostrils, a sense of great depression came over him, and upon pausing before the house his body began to tremble and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. For the wily widow, wishing to escape her admirer, had sprinkled the door-step and the front walk with insect Exterminator, and not even the Woggle-Bug's love for the enchanting checked gown could induce him to linger longer in that vicinity. Sick and discouraged, he returned home, where his first act was to smash the luckless hat and replace it with another. But it was some time before he recovered from the horrors of that near approach to extermination, and he passed a very wakeful and unhappy night, indeed. Meantime the widow had traded with a friend of hers (who had once been a wash-lady for General Funston) the Wagnerian costume for a crazy quilt and a corset that was nearly as good as new and a pair of silk stockings that were not mates. It was a good bargain for both of them, and the wash-lady being colored--that is, she had a deep mahogany complexion--was delighted with her gorgeous gown and put it on the very next morning when she went to deliver the wash to the brick-layer's wife. Surely it must have been Fate that directed the Woggle-Bug's steps; for, as he walked disconsolately along, an intuition caused him to raise his eyes, and he saw just ahead of him his affinity--carrying a large clothes-basket. "Stop!" he called our, anxiously; "stop, my fair Grenadine, I implore you!" The colored lady cast one glance behind her and imagined that Satan had at last arrived to claim her. For she had never before seen the Woggle-Bug, and was horrified by his sudden and unusual appearance. "Go 'way, Mars' Debbil! Go 'way an' lemme 'lone!" she screeched, and the next minute she dropped her empty basket and sped up the street with a swiftness that only fear could have lent her flat-bottomed feet. Nevertheless, the Woggle-Bug might have overtaken her had he not stepped into the clothes-basket and fallen headlong, becoming so tangled up in the thing that he rolled over and over several times before he could free himself. Then, when he had picked up his hat, which was utterly ruined, and found his cane, which had flown across the street, his mahogany charmer in the Wagnerian Plaids had disappeared from view. With a sigh at his latest misfortune he returned home for another hat, and the agitated wash-lady, imagining that the devil had doubtless been lured by her beautiful gown, made haste to sell it to a Chinaman who lived next door. Its bright colors pleased the Chink, who ripped it up and made it over into a Chinese robe, with flowing draperies falling to his heels. He dressed himself in his new costume and, being proud of possessing such finery, sat down on a bench outside his door so that everyone passing by could see how magnificent he looked. It was here the wandering Woggle-Bug espied him; and, recognizing at once the pattern and colors of his infatuating idol, he ran up and sat beside the Chinaman, saying in agitated but educated tones: "Oh my prismatic personification of gigantic gorgeousness!--again I have found you!" "Sure tling," said the Chink with composure. "Be mine! Only be mine!" continued the enraptured Woggle-Bug. The Chinaman did not quite understand. "Two dlolla a day," he answered, cautiously. "Oh, joy," exclaimed the insect in delight; "I can then own you for a day and a half--for I have three dollars left. May I feel your exquisite texture, my dearest Fabric?" "No flabic. No feelee. You too flesh. I _man_ Chinaman!" returned the Oriental calmly. "Never mind that! 'Tis your beautiful garment I love. Every check in that entrancing dress is a joy and a delight to my heart!" While the Woggle-Bug thus raved, the Chinaman's wife (who was Mattie De Forest before she married him) heard the conversation, and decided this love affair had gone far enough. So she suddenly appeared with a broomstick, and with it began pounding the Woggle-Bug as fiercely as possible--and Mattie was no weakling, I assure you. The first blow knocked the Insect's hat so far over his eyes that he was blinded; but, resolving not to be again cheated out of his darling, he grasped firmly hold of the Wagnerian plaids with all four hands, and tore a goodly portion of it from the frightened Celestial's body. Next moment he was dashing down the street, with the precious cloth tucked securely underneath an arm, and Mattie, being in slight dishabile, did not think best to follow him. The triumphant joy of the Woggle-Bug can well be imagined. No more need he chase the fleeting vision of his love--no more submit to countless disappointments in his efforts to approach the object of his affection. The gorgeous plaids were now his own (or a large part of them, anyway), and upon reaching the quiet room wherein he lodged he gloated long and happily over its vivid coloring and violent contrasts of its glowing hues. To the eyes of the Woggle-Bug nothing could be more beautiful, and he positively regretted the necessity of ever turning his gaze from this bewitching treasure. That he might never in the future be separated from the checks, he folded them, with many loving caresses, into compact form, and wrapped them in a sheet of stout paper tied with cotton cord that had a love-knot at the end. Wherever he went, thereafter, he carried the parcel underneath his left upper arm, pressed as closely to his heart as possible. And this sense of possession was so delightful that our Woggle-Bug was happy as the day is long. In the evening his fortunes changed with cruel abruptness. He walked out to take the air, and noticing a crowd people standing in an open space and surrounding a huge brown object, our Woggle-Bug stopped to learn what the excitement was about. Pushing his way through the crowd, and hugging his precious parcel, he soon reached the inner circle of spectators and found they had assembled to watch a balloon ascension. The Professor who was to go up with the balloon had not yet arrived; but the balloon itself was fully inflated and tugging hard at the rope that held it, as if anxious to escape the blended breaths of the people that crowded around. Just below the balloon was a small basket, attached to the netting of the gas-bag, and the Woggle-Bug was bending over the edge of this, to see what it contained, when a warning cry from the crowd caused him to pause and glance over his shoulder. Great horrors and crumpled creeps! Springing toward him, with a scowl on his face and a long knife with a zig-zag blade in his uplifted hand, was that very Chinaman from whose body he had torn the Wagnerian plaids! The plundered Celestial was evidently vindictive, and intended to push the wicked knife into the Woggle-Bug's body. Our hero was a brave bug, as can easily be proved; but he did not wait for the knife to arrive at the broad of his back. Instead, he gave a yell (to show he was not afraid) and leaped nimbly into the basket of the balloon. The descending knife, missing its intended victim, fell upon the rope and severed it, and instantly the great balloon from the crowd and soared majestically toward the heavens. The Woggle-Bug had escaped the Chinaman, but he didn't know whether to be glad or not. For the balloon was earning him into the clouds, and he had no idea how to manage it, or to make it descend to earth again. When he peered over the edge of the basket he could hear the faint murmur of the crowd, and dimly see the enraged Professor (who had come too late) pounding the Chinaman, while the Chinaman tried to dissect the Professor with his knife. Then all was blotted out; clouds rolled about him; night fell. The man in the moon laughed at him; the stars winked at each other as if delighted at the Woggle-Bug's plight, and a witch riding by on her broomstick yelled at him to keep on the right side of the road, and not run her down. But the Woggle-Bug, squatted in the bottom of the basket and hugging his precious parcel to his bosom, paid no attention to anything but his own thoughts. He had often ridden in the Gump; but never had he been so high as this, and the distance to the ground made him nervous. When morning came he saw a strange country far beneath him, and longed to tread the earth again. Now all woggle-bugs are born with wings, and our highly-magnified one had a beautiful, broad pair of floppers concealed beneath ample coat-tails. But long ago he had learned that his wings were not strong enough to lift his big body from the ground, so he had never tried to fly with them. Here, however, was an occasion when he might put these wings to good use, for if he spread them in the air and then leaped over the side of the basket they would act in the same way a parachute does, and bear him gently to the ground. No sooner did this thought occur to him than he put it into practice. Disentangling his wings from his coat-tails, he spread them as wide as possible and then jumped from the car of the balloon. Down, down the Woggle-Bug sank; but so slowly that there was no danger in the flight. He began to see the earth again, lying beneath him like a sun-kissed panorama of mud and frog-ponds and rocks and brushwood. There were few trees, yet it was our insect's fate to drop directly above what trees there were, so that presently he came ker-plunk into a mass of tangled branches--and stuck there, with his legs dangling helplessly between two limbs and his wings caught in the foliage at either side. Below was a group of Arab children, who at first started to run away. But, seeing that the queer creature which had dropped from the skies was caught fast in the tree, they stopped and began to throw stones and clubs at it. One of the missiles struck the tree-limb at the right of the Woggle-Bug and jarred him loose. The next instant he fluttered to the ground, where his first act was to fold up his wings and tuck them underneath his coat-tails again, and his next action was to assure himself that the beloved plaids were still safe. Then he looked for the Arab children; but they had scuttled away towards a group of tents, and now several men with dark skins and gay clothing came from the tents and ran towards the Woggle-Bug. "Good morning," said our hero, removing his hat with a flourish and bowing politely. "Meb-la-che-bah!" shouted the biggest Arab, and at once two others wound coils of rope around the Woggle-Bug and tied the ends in hard knots. His hat was knocked off and trampled into the mud by the Shiek (who was the big Arab), and the precious parcel was seized and ruthlessly opened. "Very good!" said the Shiek, eyeing the plaids with pleasure. "My slaves shall make me a new waistcoat of this cloth." "No! oh, no!" cried the agonized Insect; "it is taken from a person who has had small-pox and yellow-fever and toothache and mumps--all at the same time. Do not, I bet you, risk your valuable life by wearing that cloth!" "Bah!" said the Shiek, scornfully; "I have had all those diseases and many more. I am immune. But now," he continued, "allow me to bid you good-bye. I am sorry to be obliged to kill you, but such is our custom." This was bad news for the Woggle-Bug; but he did not despair. "Are you not afraid to kill me?" he asked, as if surprised. "Why should I be afraid?" demanded the Shiek. "Because it is well-known that to kill a woggle-bug brings bad luck to one." The Shiek hesitated, for he was very superstitious. "Are you a woggle-bug?" he asked. "I am," replied the Insect, proudly. "And I may as well tell you that the last person who killed one of my race had three unlucky days. The first his suspenders broke (the Arab shuddered), the second day he smashed a looking-glass (the Arab moaned), and the third day he was chewed up by a crocodile." Now the greatest aversion Arabs have is to be chewed by a crocodile, because these people usually roam over the sands of the desert, where to meet an amphibian is simply horrible; so at the Woggle-Bug's speech they set up a howl of fear, and the Shiek shouted: "Unbind him! Let not a hair of his head be injured!" At once the knots in the ropes were untied, and the Woggle-Bug was free. All the Arabs united to show him deference and every respectful attention, and since his own hat had been destroyed they wound about his head a picturesque turban of an exquisite soiled white color, having stripes of red and yellow in it. Then the Woggle-Bug was escorted to the tents, where he suddenly remembered his precious plaids, and asked that the cloth he restored to him. Thereupon the Shiek got up and made a long speech, in which he described his grief at being obliged to refuse the request. At the end of that time one of the women came op to them with a lovely waistcoat which she had manufactured out of the Wagnerian plaids; and when the Shiek saw it he immediately ordered all the tom-toms and kettle-drums in the camp destroyed, as they were no longer necessary. Then he put on the gorgeous vestment, and turned a deaf ear to the Woggle-Bug's agonized wails. But there were some scraps of cloth left, and to show that he was liberal and good-natured, the Shiek ordered these manufactured into a handsome necktie, which he presented Woggle-Bug in another long speech. Our hero, realizing a larger part of his darling was lost to him, decided to be content with the smaller share; so he put on the necktie, and felt really proud of its brilliance and aggressive elegance. Then, bidding the Arabs farewell, he strode across the desert until he reached the borders of a more fertile and favored country. Indeed, he found before him a cool and enticing jungle, which at first seemed deserted. But while he stared about him a sound fell upon his ear, and he saw approaching a young lady Chimpanzee. She was evidently a personage of some importance, for her hair was neatly banged just over her eyes, and she wore a clean white pinafore with bows of pink ribbon at the shoulders. "Good morning, Mr. Beetle," said she, with merry laughter. "Do not, I beg of you, call me a beetle," exclaimed our hero, rather peevishly; "for I am actually a Woggle-Bug, and Highly-Magnified at that!" "What's in a name?" laughed the gay damsel. "Come, let me introduce you to our jungle, where strangers of good breeding are always welcome." "As for breeding," said the Woggle-Bug, "my father, although of ordinary size, was a famous Bug-Wizard in his day, and claimed descent from the original protoplasm which constituted the nucleus of the present planetary satellite upon which we exist." "That's all right," returned Miss Chim. "Tell that to our king, and he'll decorate you with the medal of the Omnipotent Order of Onerous Orthographers, Are you ready to meander?" The Woggle-Bug did not like the flippant tone in which maiden spoke; but he at once followed her. Presently they came to a tall hedge surrounding the Inner Jungle, and without this hedge stood a patrol of brown bears who wore red soldier-caps and carried gold-plated muskets in their hands. "We call this the bearier," said Miss Chim, pointing to the soldiers, "because they oblige all strangers to paws." "I should think it was a bearicade," remarked the Woggle-Bug. But when they approached the gateway the officer in charge saluted respectfully to Miss Chim, and permitted her to escort the Woggle-Bug into the sacred precincts of the Inner Jungle. Here his eyes were soon opened to their widest capacity in genuine astonishment. The Jungle was as clean and as well-regulated as any city of men the Insect had ever visited. Just within the gate a sleek antelope was running a pop-corn stand, and a little further on a screech-owl stood upon a stump playing a violin, while across her breast was a sign reading: "I am blind--at present." As they walked up the street they came to a big grey monkey turning a hand-organ, and attached to a cord was a little nigger-boy whom the monkey sent into the crowd of animals, standing by to gather up the pennies, pulling him back every now and then by means of the cord. "There's a curious animal for you," said Miss Chim, pointing to the boy. "Those horrid things they call men, whether black or white, seem to me the lowest of all created beasts." "I have seen them in a highly civilized state," replied the Woggle-Bug, "and they're really further advanced than you might suppose." But Miss Chim gave a scornful laugh, and pulled him away to where a hippopotamus sat under the shade of a big tree, mopping his brow with a red handkerchief--for the weather was somewhat sultry. Before the hip was a table covered with a blue cloth, and upon the cloth was embroidered the words: "Professor Hipmus, Fortune Teller." "Want your fortune told?" asked Miss Chim. "I don't mind," replied the Woggle-Bug. "I'll read your hand," said the Professor, with a yawn that startled the insect. "To my notion palmistry is the best means of finding out what nobody knows or cares to know." He took the upper-right hand of the Woggle-Bug, and after adjusting his spectacles bent over it with an air of great wisdom. "You have been in love," announced the Professor; "but you got it in the neck." "True!" murmured the astonished Insect, putting up his left lower hand to feel of the beloved necktie. "You think you have won," continued the Hip; "but there are others who have 1, 2. You have many heart throbs before you, during your future life. Afterward I see no heart throbs whatever. Forty cents, please." "Isn't he just wonderful?" asked Miss Chim, with enthusiasm. "He's the greatest fortune teller in the jungle." "On account of his size, I suppose," returned the Woggle-Bug, as they walked on. Soon they came to the Royal Palace, which was a beautiful bower formed of vines upon which grew many brilliant-hued forest flowers. The entrance was guarded by a Zebra, who barred admission until Miss Chim whispered the password in his ear. Then he permitted them to enter, and the Chimpanzee immediately ushered the Woggle-Bug into the presence of King Weasel. This monarch lay coiled upon a purple silk cushion, half asleep and yet wakeful enough to be smoking a big cigar. Beside him crouched two prairie-dogs who were combing his hair very carefully, while a red squirrel perched near his head and fanned him with her bushy tail. "Dear me, what have we here?" exclaimed the King of the Jungle, in a querulous tone, "Is it an over-grown pinch-bug, or is it a kissing-bug?" "I have the honor to be a Woggle-Bug, your Majesty!" replied our hero, proudly. "Sav, cut out that Majesty," snapped the King, with a scowl. "If you can find anything majestic about me, I'd like to know what it is." "Don't treat him with any respect," whispered Miss Chim to the Insect, "or you'll get him riled. Sneer at him, and slap his face if you get a chance." The Woggle-Bug took the hint. "Really," he told the King. "I have never seen a more despicable creature than you. The admirable perspicacity inherent in your tribe seems to have deteriorated in you to a hyperbolated insousancy." Then he reached out his arms and slapped the king four times, twice on one side of his face and twice on the other. "Thanks, my dear June-Bug," said the monarch; "I now recognize you to be a person of some importance." "Sire, I am a Woggle-Bug, highly magnified and thoroughly educated. It is no exaggeration to say I am the greatest Woggle-Bug on earth." "I fully believe it, so pray do not play any more foursomes on my jaw. I am sufficiently humiliated at this moment to recognize you as a Sullivanthauros, should you claim to be a member of that extinct race." Then two little weasels--a boy weasel and a girl weasel--came into the bower and threw their school-books at the squirrel so cleverly that one hit the King upon the nose and smashed his cigar and the other caught him fairly in the pit of his stomach. At first the monarch howled a bit; then he wiped the tears from his face and said: "Ah, what delightful children I have! What do you wish, my darlings?" "I want a cent for chewing gum," said the Girl Weasel. "Get it from the Guinea-Pig; you have my assent. And what does my dear boy want?" "Pop," went the Weasel, "our billy-goat has swallowed the hare you gave me to play with." "Dear me," sighed the King, "how often I find a hair in the butter! Whenever I reign people carry umbrellas; and my son, although quite polished, indulges only in monkey-shines! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown! but if one is scalped, the loss of the crown renders the head still more uneasy." "Couldn't they find a better king than you?" enquired the Woggle-Bug, curiously, as the children left the bower. "Yes; but no worse," answered the Weasel; "and here in the jungle honors are conferred only upon the unworthy. For if a truly great animal is honored he gets a swelled head, and that renders him unbearable. They now regard the King of the Jungle with contempt, and that makes all my subjects self-respecting." "There is wisdom in that," declared the Woggle-Bug, approvingly; "a single glance at you makes me content with being so excellent a bug." "True," murmured the King, yawning. "But you tire me, good stranger. Miss Chim, will you kindly get the gasoline can? It's high time to eradicate this insect." "With pleasure," said Miss Chim, moving away with a smile. But the Woggle-Bug did not linger to be eradicated. With one wild bound he cleared the door of the palace and sprinted up the entrance of the Jungle. The bear soldiers saw him running away, and took careful aim and fired. But the gold-plated muskets would not shoot straight, and now the Woggle-Bug was far distant, and still running with all his might. Nor did he pause until he had emerged from the forest and crossed the plains, and reached at last the city from whence he had escaped in the balloon. And, once again in his old lodgings, he looked at himself in the mirror and said: "After all, this necktie is my love--and my love is now mine forevermore! Why should I not be happy and content?" THE END. _A full account of the Woggle-Bug is given in Mr. Baum's delightful counter story, _THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ,_ in which is also narrated the amazing adventures of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Animated Saw Horse. 
11078	----	Proofreading Team. WHAT DRESS MAKES OF US By DOROTHY QUIGLEY Illustrations by ANNIE BLAKESLEE 1897 I am indebted to the editors of the New York _Sun_ and New York _Journal_ for kindly allowing me to include in this book articles which I contributed to their respective papers. PREFACE. Did you ever observe, dear comrade, what an element of caricature lurks in clothes? A short, round coat on a stout man seems to exaggerate his proportions to such a ridiculous degree that the profile of his manly form suggests "the robust bulge of an old jug." A bonnet decorated with loops of ribbon and sprays of grass, or flowers that fall aslant, may give a laughably tipsy air to the long face of a saintly matron of pious and conservative habits. A peaked hat and tight-fitting, long-skirted coat may so magnify the meagre physical endowments of a tall, slender girl that she attains the lank and longish look of a bottle of hock. Oh! the mocking diablery in strings, wisps of untidy hair, queer trimmings, and limp hats. Alas! that they should have such impish power to detract from the dignity of woman and render man absurd. Because of his comical attire, an eminent Oxford divine, whose life and works commanded reverence, was once mistaken for an ancient New England spinster in emancipated garments. His smoothly shaven face, framed in crinkly, gray locks, was surmounted by a soft, little, round hat, from the up-turned brim of which dangled a broken string. His long frock-coat reached to just above his loosely fitting gaiters. The fluttering string, whose only reason for being at all was to keep the queer head-gear from sailing away on the wind, gave a touch of the ludicrous to the boyish hat which, in its turn, lent more drollery than dignity to the sanctified face of the old theologian. Who has not seen just such, or a similar sight, and laughed? Who has not, with the generosity common to us all, concluded these were the mistakes and self-delusions of neighbors, relatives, and friends, in which we had no share? I understand how it is with you. I am one of you. Before I studied our common errors I smiled at my neighbor's lack of taste, reconstructed my friends, and cast contemptuous criticism upon my enemies. One day I took a look at myself, and realized that "I, too, am laughable on unsuspected occasions." The humbling knowledge of seeing myself objectively, gave me courage to speak to the heart of you certain home truths which concern us all, in homely language which we can all understand. That you may discern the comicality and waggery in ill-chosen clothes, I have endeavored to hint to you in these talks some of the ways gew-gaws and garments make game of us. May you discover that your dress is not making you a laughable object; but if, by any chance, you should note that your clothes are caricaturing you, take heart. Enjoy the joke with the mirth that heals and heartens, and speedily correct your mistakes. The lines of your form, the modelling of your face, are they not worthy of your discerning thought? Truly! Whatever detracts from them detracts from sculpture, painting, and poetry, and the world is the loser. A word to the thinking is sufficient. D.Q. CONTENTS. PREFACE CHAPTER I. HOW WOMEN OF CERTAIN TYPES SHOULD DRESS THEIR HAIR Style for Wedge-Shaped Faces Style for Heavy Jaws Style for Eyes Set Too High Style for Eyes Set Too Low Style for Long Faces with Long Noses For Faces with Protruding Noses CHAPTER II. HINTS FOR THE SELECTION OF BECOMING AND APPROPRIATE STYLES IN HEAD-GEAR The Magic of the Bonnet Style for Women with Broad Face and Heavy Chin Style for Women with Tapering Chin Hat for the Chubby Woman For Women Who Have Sharp and Prominent Profiles For the Woman with an Angular Face Women Who should Not Wear Horns CHAPTER III. LINES THAT SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AND CONSIDERED IN MAKING COSTUMES Style for Tall Slender Women The Coat the Short Stout Women should Wear The Cloak or Cape for a Tall Women CHAPTER IV. HOW PLUMP AND THIN BACKS SHOULD BE CLOTHED CHAPTER V. CORSAGES APPROPRIATE FOR WOMEN WITH UNBEAUTIFULLY MODELLED THROATS AND SHOULDERS CHAPTER VI. HINTS ON DRESS FOR ELDERLY WOMEN CHAPTER VII. HOW MEN CARICATURE THEMSELVES WITH THEIR CLOTHES WHAT DRESS MAKES OF US. * * * * * CHAPTER I. HOW WOMEN OF CERTAIN TYPES SHOULD DRESS THEIR HAIR. The pleasing, but somewhat audacious statement of the clever writer who asserted, "In the merciful scheme of nature, there are no plain women," is not as disputable as it may seem. Honest husbands, to be sure, greet the information with dissenting guffaws; gay deceivers reflect upon its truth by gallantly assenting to it, with a mocking little twinkle in their eyes; and pretty women, upon hearing it, remark sententiously "Blind men and fools may think so." Discerning students of womankind, however, know that if every woman would make the best of her possibilities, physically, mentally, and spiritually, it would be delightfully probable that "in the merciful scheme of nature" there need be no plain women. Have we not Lord Chesterfield's word for it, that "No woman is ugly when she is dressed"? It is no unworthy study to learn to make the best of, and to do justice to, one's self. Apropos of this, to begin--where all fascinating subjects should begin--at the head, it behooves every woman who wishes to appear at her best, to study the modelling of her face that she may understand both its defective and perfect lines. By a proper arrangement of her hair a woman can do much to obscure or soften her bad features, and heighten the charm of her good ones. Romancers have written, and poets have sung, of the bewitchment in nut-brown locks, golden tresses, and jetty curls. Every woman, if so inclined, may prove for herself the transfiguring effect in a becoming coiffure. In fact, the beauty of a woman's face and her apparent age are greatly affected by the way she wears her hair. A most important detail that too few consider, is, the proper direction in which to comb the hair. Women literally toss their tresses together without any attention to the natural inclination of the individual strands or fibres. They comb their hair "against the grain." Those who do so never have beautifully and smoothly arranged coiffures. Each little hirsute filament has a rebellious tendency to go in the direction nature intended it should, and refuses to "stay where it is put," giving the head in consequence, an unkempt and what is termed an "unladylike" appearance. The criss-cross effect resulting from combing and arranging the hair contrary to "the grain" is conspicuously apparent in the coiffure of no less a personage than Eleanora Duse, who, as may be seen from the picture, pays little attention to the natural tendency of the dark tresses that cover her shapely head. The bang has the dishevelled appearance of a pile of jack-straws. The side-locks instead of being combed or brushed to follow the contour of the head, fall loosely and fly in opposite directions. [Illustration: NO. 2] The difference in appearance between the women of the smart sets in America and those of less fashionable circles is due, in a great measure, to the beautifully dressed coiffures of the former. A hair-dresser arranges, at least once a week, the hair of the modish woman if her maid does not understand the art of hair-dressing. Many women of the wealthy world have their maids taught by a French coiffeur. A wise woman will adopt a prevailing mode with discretion, for, what may be essentially appropriate for one, may be fatally inappropriate for another. In adjusting her "crown of glory" a woman must consider the proportions of her face. She should be able to discern whether her eyes are too near the top of her head or, too far below; whether she has a square or wedge-shaped chin; a lean, long face, or a round and bountifully curved one. She should be alert to her defects and study never to emphasize nor exaggerate them. Why, through stupidity or carelessness, make a cartoon of yourself, when with a proper appreciation of your possibilities you can be a pleasing picture? It is just as glorious to be a fine picture or a poem as it is to paint the one, or write the other. Indeed, a woman who harmoniously develops the best within her has the charm of an exquisite poem and inspires poets to sing; and if by the grace and beauty of her dress she enhances her natural endowments and makes herself a pleasing picture, the world becomes her debtor. In the important matter of becomingly arranging the hair, the following sketches and suggestions may hint to bright, thinking, women what styles to choose or avoid. For Wedge-Shaped Faces. [Illustration: NO. 3] [Illustration: NO. 4] The least-discerning eye can see that the wedge-Shaped face No. 3 is caricatured, and its triangular proportions made more evident, by allowing the hair to extend in curls or a fluffy bang on either side of the head. Women with delicately modelled faces with peaked chins should avoid these broad effects above their brows. It is obvious in the sketch No. 4, that the wedge-shaped face is perceptibly improved by wearing the hair in soft waves, or curls closely confined to the head and by arranging a coil or high puff just above and in front of the crown. This arrangement gives a desirable oval effect to the face, the sharp prominence of the chin being counteracted by the surmounting puffs. For Heavy Jaws. It may readily be seen that a woman with the square, heavy-jawed face pictured by No. 5, should not adopt a straight, or nearly straight, bang, nor wear her hair low on her forehead, nor adjust the greater portion of her hair so that the coil cannot be seen above the crown of her head. The low bang brings into striking relief all the hard lines of her face and gives the impression that she has pugilistic tendencies. [Illustration: NO. 5] To insure artistic balance to her countenance, and bring out the womanly strength and vital power of her face, her hair should be arranged in coils, puffs, or braids that will give breadth to the top of her head as shown by No. 6. A fluffy, softly curled bang adds grace to the forehead and gives it the necessary broadness it needs to lessen and lighten the heaviness of the lower part of the face. A bow of ribbon, or an aigrette of feathers, will add effectively the crown of braids or puffs which a wise woman with a square jaw will surmount her brow if she wishes to subdue the too aggressive, fighting qualities of her strong chin. [Illustration: NO. 6] For Short Faces. The sisterhood who have short, chubby faces should, in a measure, observe certain rules that apply in a small degree to those who have heavy chins. As may be observed even with a casual glance, the little short-faced woman depicted by No. 7, causes her round facial disk to appear much shorter than it really is by allowing her hair to come so far down on her forehead. She further detracts from her facial charms by wearing "water-waves." Water-waves are scarcely to be commended for any type of face, and they are especially unbecoming to the woman who is conspicuously "roly-poly." The round eyes, knobby nose, and round mouth are brought into unattractive distinctness by being re-duplicated in the circular effects of the hair. This mode of dressing the hair makes a short face look common and insignificant. [Illustration: NO. 7] Do you not see that this type is immensely improved by the arrangement of the coiffure in No. 8? By combing her hair off her forehead her face acquires a look of alertness and intelligence, besides being apparently lengthened. She can wear her bang in soft crimps brushed back from her brow, if this plain arrangement is too severe. [Illustration: NO. 8] For Eyes Set Too High. A low forehead is supposed to be a sign of beauty in woman. The brows of the famous Venuses are low and broad. Perhaps for this reason many women wear their hair arranged low upon their foreheads. Whether the hair should be worn low on the brow depends chiefly on two things,--"the setting of the eyes, and the quality of the face." [Illustration: NO. 8-1/2] A good rule to observe is the artistic one, to the effect that "the eyes of a woman should be in the middle of her head." That is, if an imaginary line were drawn across the top of the head and another below the chin, exactly midway between the two the eyes should be set. The Japanese type of woman should carefully observe the foregoing hint. Observe No. 8-1/2. Nature has not been artistic. The eyes are too near the top of the head. The defect is exaggerated and emphasized by the wearing of the hair low on the forehead. In some faces of this type the face is brutalized in appearance by this arrangement. The expression and whole quality of the countenance can be greatly improved by arranging the hair as shown by No. 9, which is the soft Pompadour style. The Duchess of Marlborough, formerly Consuelo Vanderbilt, frames her naïve, winsome face, which is of the Japanese type, in a style somewhat like this. Her dark hair forms an aureole above her brow, and brings into relief the dainty, oval form of her face. Even simply brushing the hair off the forehead without crimp or roll will improve the appearance of this type of face and give it a better artistic balance. [Illustration: NO. 9] [Illustration: NO. 10] For Eyes Set Too Low. Women whose eyes are set too far down in their faces should adopt a mode of arranging their hair exactly the opposite of those whose eyes are set too near the top of their heads. It is apparent that No. 10 exaggerates the distance of her eyes from the crown of her head, and makes them appear to be set lower than they really are by building her hair high, and by brushing her bang back so severely from her brow. A bald forehead is rarely becoming to any woman. A few stray curls or soft waves lend grace to even the most perfect of brows. [Illustration: NO. 11] By bringing the hair down over the forehead, as suggested in No. 11, a woman with this type of face can easily improve her appearance. By this graceful arrangement her face loses the childish and sometimes stupid expression that is peculiar to the type, as may be discerned in No. 10. When the hair is properly arranged this element of childlikeness lends a certain appealing sweetness not unattractive even in the faces of matured matrons. By dressing the hair low so the coil does not appear above the crown, as in No. 11, the eyes are apparently properly placed. For Long Faces with Long Noses. The woman who wears her silken tresses arranged on either side of her head, draped like curtains from a central parting, is to be envied if she can do it and yet look young and pretty. She is the Madonna type and seems to possess all the attributes of gentleness, modesty, and meekness, and angelic sweetness that are supposed to characterize the distinctively feminine woman. This is the ideal style of coiffure much bepraised by man, because, according to a bright modern Amazon, "it makes a woman look so meek." [Illustration: NO. 12] The only type to which it is really becoming is the Italian. The type with _matte_ complexion, soft eyes, finely chiselled nose, and delicately oval chin, look ideally sweet and feminine with the hair arranged _à la_ Madonna. [Illustration: NO. 13] Long faces of the form pictured by No. 12 exaggerate the longness and leanness of their faces by wearing their locks like looped curtains. A long nose with two long lines on either side of the cheek seems longer than it is, as the observer may discern three lines instead of only the nasal one, and the impression of longness is emphasized. Not only is the length of the countenance made more noticeable, but years and years are apparently added to the actual age. That No. 13, which shows a parting and soft waves that do not come below the ears, is to be preferred by a woman whose features are of this character need hardly be explained. The improvement in looks is quite obvious. [Illustration: NOS. 14 AND 15] No. 14 is an example of a misguided woman of the pudgy type who, for some inexplicable reason, arranges her hair in the Madonna style. It is utterly unsuited to her face. Unless her ears are deformed this style of hirsute lambrequins should not be worn by a full, round-faced woman. The arrangement sketched in No 15 adds effectively to her appearance, not only making her look younger, but less inane. [Illustration: NO. 16] For Faces with Protruding Noses. Women with decidedly protruding, or irregular, tip-tilted noses should be especially careful in arranging their coiffures. Any woman who arranges her hair as in sketch No. 16 caricatures her facial defects by increasing the too protuberant lines of her nose. The distance from the end of her nose and the tip of the topmost knot of hair is too long for either beauty or intelligence. The shape of her head acquires idiotic proportions, and her nose is placed entirely "out of drawing" and is obtrusively conspicuous when seen in profile. This type of woman is generally classified among the inquisitive, bright, and energetic. She should aim to modify the unhappy angularity of her profile as well as to repress her gossipy tendencies. The graduated coil of hair and waved coiffure, shown by No. 17, are most felicitous in their effect on this type of face. [Illustration: NO. 17] [Illustration: NO. 18] No. 18 reveals an error in an opposite direction. The snubbed-nose girl, by fixing her hair in a bun-like coil, gives the impression that her coiffure is held by invisible strings by her nose, which gets a more elevated look than it otherwise would have, because of the bad angle at which the coil is placed. [Illustration: NO. 19] No. 19, which is a picturesque variation of the popular coif, manifestly improves this type of face, and makes the nose appear less obtrusive. A woman should carefully study the contour of her head from every side; the modelling of her face; the length and inclination of her nose; the setting of her eyes; and the breadth and form of her brow, and adopt a becoming coiffure that will give artistic balance to her face, and never absolutely change the style whatever the mode in hair-dressing may be. In England, the court hair-dresser years ago studied the character of the head and face of the Princess of Wales, and designed a coiffure for her which she has never varied until recently; then she merely arranged her fringe lower down on her forehead than she has ever worn it before. The general style, however, she preserves intact, and wears her hair, and has for many years, as is shown in the picture--No. 20. Her daughters, who have faces the same shape as hers, dress their coiffures similarly. In never changing the style of arranging her hair, the Princess of Wales owes in no small degree her apparent air of youthfulness. [Illustration: NO. 20] NO MATTER WHAT THE PREVAILING STYLE THESE RULES MAY BE PRACTICALLY APPLIED. CHAPTER II. HINTS FOR THE SELECTION OF BECOMING AND APPROPRIATE STYLES IN HEAD-GEAR. Closely allied to the subject of hair-dressing is that of head-gear. Indeed many of the hints regarding appropriate coiffures for certain styles of faces are equally applicable to the selection of suitable hats and bonnets. The choosing of millinery is the more momentous of the two, of course, for I need scarcely remind you that Nature left us no choice in hair. No matter what its color or texture we desire to keep it and if we are wise we will make the best of it. In regard to hats we are personally responsible and our follies are upon our own heads. The power of caricature being greater in hats than in hair-dressing, is it not fit that we should give careful and intelligent consideration to the selection of our millinery that the ugly lines in our otherwise beautiful faces may not be at the mercy of mocking bunches of ribbons, comically tilted straws, or floppy bits of lace? The Magic of The Bonnet. Once upon a time, I think that was the exact date, there was a man distinguished in a certain kingdom as the ugliest person in the realm. According to a blithe romancer, he was so distinctively unpleasing in form and feature that he challenged the attention of the king who, in whimsical mood, made him a royal retainer. The man so conspicuously lacking in beauty enjoyed his eminent position and privileges for some time. But even ugliness, if it attain distinction, will excite envy in the low-minded. A former associate of the unbeautiful man in invidious temper brought the news one day to the king, that there was an old woman in his domain that was uglier than the lowly-born man who by kingly favor held so high a place. "Bring her to the court. Judges shall be called to decide. If she is uglier she shall stay and he shall go," was the royal mandate. When the old woman appeared she was easily decided to be by far the uglier of the two. At the critical moment when the king was upon the eve of dismissing the man from his retinue, a friend of the unfortunate shouted, "Put her bonnet on him!" This was done, and lo! a fearful change was wrought. By unanimous acclamation he was declared to be "the ugliest creature on earth." The old woman, true to the instincts of her sex, refused to wear her bonnet again. Like many of her sisters of modern times, she had not before discovered the possibilities in a bonnet to enhance the beauty of the face or decrease its charms. If woman could see themselves objectively, as did the old woman, they would keenly realize the necessity of considering the lines of hat or bonnet in relation to those of their faces, and would learn to obscure defects and bring into prominence their prettiest features. As there are a few rules to govern what each type should select, every one of the fair sisterhood has an equal opportunity to improve her appearance by selecting in the millinery line the distinctive adornment suited to her individual style. [Illustration: NO. 22] For Women with Broad Face and Heavy Chin. By a curious law of contrariety the woman with a broad, heavy chin seems to have an ungovernable penchant for trig little round bonnets, or trim turbans with perky aigrettes, like that in sketch No. 22. By obeying this wilful preference she obscures whatever delicacy may be in the modelling of her features and brings into conspicuous relief the ugliest lines of her face. Her chin is apparently increased in heaviness and the broadness of her face is made prominent. She could easily have restored the artistic balance to her facial lines by wearing a large hat, rather heavily trimmed, as in No. 23, thus effectively modifying the strong curves of the chin and signally improving her appearance. If a woman's face is fairly proportioned, not too short for its breadth, and she can not afford plumes, this type of woman can still give a becoming balance to her face by adopting hats that are trimmed with flamboyant bows that flare horizontally across the hat, diverging from a central knot in the from. [Illustration: NO. 23] For the Woman with Tapering Chin. [Illustration: NO. 24] The woman who is the exact opposite of the type with the ample lower jaw, but whose chief disadvantage lies in her broad, manly brow and tiny tapering chin, should avoid all horizontal trimmings, bows or broad hat-brims. It is clear, in No. 24, that such trimmings increase the wedge-like appearance of the face and give it the grotesque suggestion of an ordinary flower-pot in which grows a sickly plant. This type can perceptibly improve upon nature by choosing the style of hat and neck-gear shown by No. 25. [Illustration: NO. 25] The crinkly ovals that form the brim of the hat, and the soft, graceful arrangement of the hair in front that decreases the too broad effect of the brow, and the full fluffy ruff snuggled up closely to the chin, produce a pleasing transformation of the meagre-looking original that to the uninitiated seems little short of magical. The broad, cravat-like bows, and the flaring ones known as "incroyables," were beneficently wedge-like faces and throats that have lost the seductive curves of youth. Hat for the Chubby Woman. [Illustration: NO. 26] That amiable type of woman formed conspicuously upon the circular plan often unconsciously impresses the fact of her fatal tendency to rotundity by repeating the roundness of her globular eyes, the disk-like appearance of her snub nose and the circle of her round mouth, and the fulness of her face by wearing a little, round hat in the style portrayed by No. 26. [Illustration: NO. 27] The curls of her bang, the feathers in her hat, the high collar of her jacket make more significant the fact that her lines are not artistic and that her face is unbeautifully round. She can enhance her charms and apparently decrease the too spherical cut of her countenance by adopting the mode illustrated in No. 27. The angular bows on the hat, the geometric lines of the broad hat-brim, the precise cut of the lapels on the corsage, the neat throat-band and V-shaped vesture--all insinuate in a most engaging way a dignity and fine, high-bred poise totally obliterated by the circular style of dress erroneously adopted by the misguided woman in No. 26. [Illustration: NO. 28] For Women Who Have Sharp and Prominent Profiles. In buying a hat many of the "unfair sex"--as the modern wag dubs the progressive sisters who wish to have all man's rights and privileges and keep their own besides--never seem to consider their heads but from a front point of view. In consequence, as sketch No 28 hints, a head seen from the side frequently appears, if not idiotically, very inartistically, proportioned. [Illustration: NO. 29] Occasionally a hat presents as comical an effect in a from as in a side view, as may be seen in No. 29. The wearer was an elderly woman with gray hair which hung down in a half-curled bang on either side of her thin face. Her hat which was simply "dripping" with feathers suggested a fanciful letter "T" and exaggerated the thinness of her face in a remarkably funny way. The feathers overhanging the brim increased the broadness of the hat, and looked singularly waggish fluttering against the spriggy-looking projections of gray hair. The rules for the wedge-shaped face, as may readily be discerned, apply here. [Illustration: NOS. 30 AND 31] Women who have sharp and prominently outlined profiles have a curious tendency to choose hats, the brims of which project too far forward in front, and turn up too abruptly and ungracefully in the back. As shown in No. 30 the protruding brim gives the head and face the unattractive proportions of the capital letter "F." The length of the nose is emphasized by the line of the hat-rim above it and it appears unduly obtrusive. The flat arrangement of the hair and the curve of the hat-brim in the back also exaggerate the obtrusive qualities of the features. By choosing a hat somewhat similar to the one sketched in No. 31, the unattractive sharpness of the profile is modified, and the alert, agreeable quality of the face, that was obscured by the shelf-like brim, becomes apparent. The observer feels, if he does not voice it, that it is a progressive spirit advancing forward instead of an ungainly head-piece that looks like a curious trowel. For the Woman with an Angular Face. [Illustration: NOS. 32 AND 33] The woman with the angular features presented in No. 32 should not wear a sailor-hat or any hat with a perfectly straight rim. The sailor-hat or any style bordering on it should be selected with utmost discrimination. This mode is unbecoming to a woman more than forty; or, to one who through grief or worry prematurely attains a look of age, or to one whose features are irregular. The straight brim across the face is very trying. It casts a shadow deepening the "old marks" and instead of being a frame to set off, it seems to cut off, the face at an inartistic angle. The woman with angular features, as may be seen by No. 33, can wear with impunity, and always should wear, a hat the brim of which is waved, turned, twisted, or curved in graceful lines. The uneven brim of her hat makes an effective complement to the angularity of her chin, which is further softened by the feathery ruff that encircles her throat. The curves of the ostrich plumes, and the studied carelessness of the arrangement of her coiffure, subdue the angles of her face which are brought out in unbecoming prominence by the sailor-hat. Women Who should Not Wear Horns. The velvet horns on either side of a hat, the steeple-like central adornments that were once much in favor, and the Mercury wings that ornament the coiffure for evening dress, produce some startling, disagreeable, and amusing effects not altogether uninteresting to consider. Faces in which the eyes are set too near the forehead acquire a scared look by being surmounted by a bonnet upon which the trimming gravitates to a point in an arrangement not unsuggestive of a reversed fan, horns, or a steeple. The most unpleasing developments result from the wearing of the horn-like trimmings either in velvet or jet. If the face above which they flare has less of the spiritual than the coarse propensities in it, the grotesque turns and twists in the head-gear emphasize the animality in the lines characteristic of low-bred tendencies, and the whole countenance is vulgarized. One face acquires the look of a fox, another of a certain type of dog, and so on. The most amusing exaggerations of distinctive facial lines are produced by Mercury wings. The good-natured woman of the familiar type depicted in No. 34 brings every bovine attribute of her placid countenance into conspicuous relief by surmounting her face with the wings of the fleet-footed god. The cow-like form and serenity of her features are made laughably obvious. [Illustration: NO. 34] Short, delicately-faced women can adorn their coiffures with Mercury wings with most charming results. Wings, or perpendicular bows, add length to the lines of the short face, giving it a certain suggestion of refinement and distinction that is wholly destroyed by the wearing of any trimmings that show at the sides. NO MATTER WHAT THE PREVAILING STYLE THESE RULES MAY BE PRACTICALLY APPLIED. CHAPTER III. LINES THAT SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AND CONSIDERED IN MAKING COSTUMES. Mme. La Mode, much misrepresented as are all who are embarrassed with world-wide popularity always considers when designing fashions that women vary in form, as in mood. She suits all needs, although this fact has never been cast to her credit. With a beautiful sense of adjustment--as obvious as that in Nature, that projects the huge watermelon to ripen on a slender vine on the ground and swings a greengage plum on the stout stem of a tree to mature in storm or shine--Mme. La Mode, arbiter of styles, balances her fashions. Never came the big hat without the small bonnet. Accompanying the long cloak is the never-failing short cape. Side by side may be found the long coat and the short, natty jacket. This equilibrium in wearing apparel may be traced through all the vagaries of fashion. Everybody's need has been considered, but everybody has not considered her need. The short, stout woman passes by the long coat better adapted to her and seizes a short jacket--a homeopathic tendency of like suiting like, sometimes efficacious in medicine, but fatal in style. Style for Tall Slender Woman. The very tall, slender woman frequently ignores a jaunty jacket and takes a long coat like that shown in No. 36. To even the sluggish fancy of an unimaginative observer she suggests a champagne bottle, and to the ready wit she hints of no end of amusing possibilities for caricature. The very tall woman should know that long lines from shoulder to foot give height, and she must discerningly strive to avoid length of line in her garments until she dons the raiment of the angels. [Illustration: NOS. 36 AND 37] Horizontal lines crossing the figure seem to decrease height, and should be used as much as possible in the arranging and trimming of the tall woman's garments. By selecting a shorter coat equally modish, as shown by No. 37, the too tall woman shortens her figure perceptibly. The belt cuts off from her height in a felicitous way, and the collar, also horizontal, materially improves the size of her throat. The high collar, such as finishes the coat, in No. 36, adds to the length. Those who have too long arms can use horizontal bands on sleeves most advantageously. The Coat the Short Stout Woman should Wear. The short jacket that so graciously improved the appearance of the slender specimen of femininity is sinister in its effect on the short, stout woman, in sketch No. 38. It should be the study of her life to avoid horizontal lines. Length of limb is to be desired because it adds distinction. Her belt, the horizontal effect of the skirt of the jacket, the horizontal trimming of the bottom of the skirt, all apparently shortening her height, tend to make her ordinary and commonplace in appearance. [Illustration: NOS. 38 AND 39] If her hips are not too pronounced she can wear the long coat, shown in picture No. 39. The V-shaped vesture gives her a longer waist, and the long lines of the revers add to the length of her skirt. If her hips are too prominent, she should avoid having any tight-fitting garments that bring the fact into relief. She should not wear the long coat, but she can effectively modify it to suit her needs, by only having a skirt, or tabs, or finishing straps in the back. If her jacket or basque is finished off with a skirt effect, it is best to have the little skirt swerve away just at the hip-line, half revealing and half concealing it. The front should be made in a jacket effect, finishing just at the waist-line and opening over a blouse front that will conceal the waist-line. It is best for the too short, stout woman to obscure her waist-line as much as possible, to apparently give her increase of height. To put the waist-line high up adds to length of limb, and, of course, is to be desired, but the fact that what is added below is taken from above the waist, should impel careful discrimination in the arrangement of this equatorial band. The Cloak or Cape for a Tall Woman. The long circular cloak is another graceful garment that can be worn with charming effect by the woman of classic height, but should never be in the wardrobe of a very tall woman except for use at the opera, when its service is chiefly required in the carriage, or when its wearer is sitting. It is so obvious, in sketch No. 40, that the vertical lines the folds of the cloak naturally fall into give a steeple-like appearance to the tall woman it enfolds, that it is scarcely necessary to comment upon it. [Illustration: NO. 40] That her judicious selection should have been the short cape, which comes, as all capes should, to be artistic, well below the elbows, is clearly illustrated in picture No. 41. The horizontal trimming very becomingly plays its part in the generally improving effect. [Illustration: NO. 41] The one who can wear the long cloak in an unchallengeable manner is the short, stout woman, shown in sketch No. 42. By wearing the short cape with circular, fluffy collarette, sketched in No. 43, she gives herself the look of a smothered, affrighted Cochin China chicken; or, as an imaginative school-girl remarked of her mother who wore a cape of similar style, "she looks as if her neck were encircled by bunches of asparagus." [Illustration: NOS. 42 AND 43] The military dignity she acquires by wearing the long cape is becoming to a degree, and gives her distinction in form. By remembering that horizontal trimmings apparently decrease the height, and that vertical lines add to it, those who desire to appear at their best will use discernment in dividing their basques with yokes, or corsage mountings at the bust-line or frills at the hip-line. A flounce on the corsage at the bust-line, another at the hip-line, and yet another at the bottom of the shirt, increases the impression of bulkiness most aggressively and gives a barrel-like appearance to the form of a stout woman that is decidedly funny, as may be seen in sketch No. 44. A study of the lines of the form will not only aid one in adopting a more becoming style of dress, but will sharpen the artistic perceptions, thus adding to the joy of life. [Illustration: NO. 44] "A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face" and should be clothed so that its lines may appear at their best, and not be exaggerated and caricatured. The figure is seen many more times than the face, and the defects of the former are more conspicuous than those of the latter. Do not be unjust to your beautiful body, the temple of your soul; above all, do not caricature it by selecting your clothes with indiscriminating taste. NO MATTER WHAT THE PREVAILING MODE THESE RULES MAY BE PRACTICALLY APPLIED. CHAPTER IV. HOW PLUMP AND THIN BACKS SHOULD BE CLOTHED. She was from the middle-West, and despite the fact that she was married, and that twenty-one half-blown blush roses had enwreathed her last birthday cake, she had the alert, quizzical brightness of a child who challenges everybody and everything that passes with the countersign--"Why?" She investigated New York with unabashed interest, and, like many another superior provincial, she freely expressed her likes and dislikes for its traditions, show-places, and people with a commanding and amusing audacity. Her objections were numerous. The chief one that made a deep impression upon her metropolitan friends was her disapproval of Sarah Bernhardt's acting. The middle-Westerner, instead of becoming ecstatic in her admiration, and at a loss for adjectives at the appearance of the divine Sarah, merely perked at the great French artist for some time and then demanded, querulously: "What's the matter with her? Why does she play so much with her back to the audience? I don't like it." It was a shock to the adorers of Sarah Bernhardt to hear her so irreverently criticised. They loyally united in her defence, and sought to squelch the revolter by loftily explaining that the actress turned her back so often to the audience because she had such a noble, generous nature and desired to give the other actors a chance. "She lets them take the centre of the stage, as they say in the profession," remarked one of the party, who prided herself upon being versed in the _argot_ of the theatre. "But she plays with her back to the audience when she is speaking and acting, and everybody else on the stage is still but herself," petulantly insisted the Western Philistine, showing no signs of defeat. The situation was not wholly agreeable. The worshippers of Sarah could say nothing more in justification of her turning her back on them, but, with true feminine logic, concluded, "If Sarah Bernhardt turns her back on the audience it is right, and that is all there is to say." Just at this dramatic moment a voice from the adjoining row providentially interposed. The voice belonged to a well-known exponent of physical culture, who was never so happy as when instructing the intellectually needy. She said: "I will tell you why she plays with her back towards the audience more than any other actress upon the stage to-day." The middle-Westerner, no less impressed than her metropolitan friends, listened eagerly. The exponent of straight backs and high chests explained didactically: "The back is wonderfully expressive; indeed it is full of vital expression. Bernhardt knows this better than any other actress because she has studied statuary with the passion of a sculptor, and because she understands that, not only the face, but the entire physical structure, is capable of expressing dramatic emotions. Strong feeling and action may be strikingly revealed by the back. Imprecations, denunciations, even prayers, seem to be charged with more force when an actress delivers them with her back turned, or half-turned to the audience. "Bernhardt's back expresses a storm of fury when she imprecates vengeance," said the voice of authority. "Not only on the stage is the expression of the back discernible, and a knowledge of its character valuable, but in every-day life in drawing-room and street. How many women consider their backs when they dress? Look at the backs here deformed by laces and fallals," she went on contemptuously. "The majority of women never look below their chins and I believe not one in ten ever looks thoughtfully at her back," she said emphatically. The dramatic value of a well-poised, expressive back may only concern the thousands of young women who are aspiring to be a Sarah Bernhardt or a Rachel; but a knowledge of what constitutes a properly and artistically clothed back should be of interest to all women in civilized countries. That there is much truth in the assertion that "the majority of women never look below their chins, and not one in ten ever looks thoughtfully at her back," every observer of womankind might testify. [Illustration: NO. 45] The open placket-hole and sagging waist-band, sketched in No. 45, is an all too familiar sight that advertises the fact that too few women take even a cursory look at their backs. Fathers and brothers who wish to protect their womankind from adverse criticism frequently give impromptu lectures upon this very subject, as this slovenly arrangement of skirt and basque is not only seen in Grand Street, Second Avenue, and equally unfashionable quarters, but in Fifth Avenue where the modish set are _en évidence_. If the dainty safety-pin displayed in No. 46, goes out of vogue, the time-honored custom of sewing hooks to the waist-band of the dress, is always in fashion. Indeed, many women prefer this way of connecting separate skirt and waist to using a conspicuous pin. This is almost too trivial a detail to discourse upon, but it is as true that details make dress as it is that "trifles make life"--and neither life nor dress is a trifle. [Illustration: NO. 46] The offence in No. 45 is more the result of untidiness than of a lack of artistic discrimination. Nos. 46-1/2 and 47, on the contrary, outrage the laws of art, and display ignorance of the value and beauty of lines. No. 46-1/2 might serve to conceal a deformity of the shoulders. That really seems its only excuse for being. The full, ugly, straight pleat that falls to just below the waist-line lends neither grace nor style to the figure. It is too short to give the distinction and dignity that handsome wraps with long lines almost invariably do, although they seem to add age to the form. There is a hint of youth in this ungraceful jacket to be sure, but it is not especially attractive in its suggestion of youthfulness. [Illustration: NO. 46-1/2] [Illustration: NO. 47] No. 47, with a line at the neck-band, crossed bands in the centre of the shoulders, and lines across the back, is obviously inartistic. The back of a Venus, even, would be detracted from by such criss-crossed effects. Happy the woman who has so shapely a back she can afford to allow her waist to fit smoothly and plainly, unbroken by any conspicuous lines. If bands must be used to remedy the deficiencies of ungenerous Nature, let them be at the neck and waist; and if the back is unconscionably long, a band, or fold, or ruffle across the shoulders is to be commended. [Illustration: NO. 48] No. 48 reveals a glaring error frequently made by the thin sisterhood. A tall, slender woman with a long waist, should not emphasize her length of lines by wearing pointed or V-shaped effects. The V-shaped arrangement, either in cut or trimmings, apparently increases her "longness and leanness." She should aim to shorten her waist instead of lengthening it as the basque finished with a point obviously does. The drooping sleeves elongate her shoulder-lines, and bring into clearer relief her meagre proportions. She can easily improve her appearance by adopting either style of gown portrayed by Nos. 49, or 50. The broad belt at the waist-line in No. 49, and the flamboyant lace or braided piece that adorns the shoulders, perceptibly adds to her breadth and decreases her length. [Illustration: NO. 49] [Illustration: NO. 50] No. 50 is a felicitous cut for a street dress for a slim sister. The jaunty bloused waist smartly conceals deficiencies in fine points. The tall, thin sisterhood should eschew pointed effects and study to attain apparent breadth by using trimmings arranged horizontally. Bands of velvet, braid in waved lines, ruffles, and not too deeply cut scallops, may be used effectively by the very slender, who sometimes appear as if they are "without form and void," as the earth was "in the beginning." [Illustration: NO. 51] No. 51 is an exposition of the mistake made by the sturdy sisterhood of stout and pendulous proportions. It is plain to be seen that the fluffy ruche at the throat-band, and the ruffle at the shoulder, and the spreading bow at the waist, and the trimmed sleeves, add bulkiness to a form already too generously endowed with flabby rotundity. Corpulent women must forego the swagger little basques or any sort of short, flounced effects below the waist-line. [Illustration: NO. 52] [Illustration: NO. 53] Nos. 52 and 53 are eminently adapted to the matron of ample dimensions. One observer of beauty-giving effects has not unadvisedly called the waist-line "the danger-line." A stout sister, above all others, should not accentuate the waist-line. She should conceal it as much as possible. The coat back of No. 52 apparently lengthens the waist. The same effect is produced by the arrangement of ribbons in No. 53, and by the long-pointed basque. V-shaped effects and long-pointed basques are as becoming to those burdened with flesh as they are unbecoming to tall, thin women. Long, graceful folds and draperies are admirable for the stout sisterhood, who should avoid short sacques and tight-fitting garments that give the on-looker an uncomfortable impression; there is too much in a small space. Very light colors and thin textures that billow and float should be eschewed by the large, fleshy woman who wishes to give the impression that she possesses the lines of a finely modelled statue. She should avoid puffs and any suggestion of the pulpy and clumsy, and be careful not to sub-divide the body of her dress by plaits or braids laid on horizontally across or above the bust, or below the hips. Horizontal lines invariably decrease the height; for that reason stout women should not wear dresses cut square in the neck, but should adhere to the graceful V-or heart-shaped cut which has a tendency to give length. The rotund woman with a short waist, sketched in No. 54, may improve her figure, as shown in No. 55, by choosing belts and collars the exact shade of her shirt-waists in summer, and by not cutting off her height by any sort of outside belt on winter gowns. [Illustration: NO. 54] [Illustration: NO. 55] Tall, stout women should forego high heels on their shoes, high hats, and striped dresses. Although stripes increase the effect of height, they also add to that of breadth. A plain cloth basque and skirt of striped material make a happy compromise and can be worn with becoming effect by a stout woman. [Illustration: NO. 56] A basque cut high behind and on the shoulders apparently gives height. A very stout woman should never wear double skirts or tunics or dresses with large sprawling patterns, such as depicted by cut No. 56, which suggests furniture stuffs. A large woman who had a fancy for wearing rich brocades figured with immense floral designs was familiarly called by her kind friends "the escaped sofa." White, or very light colors, should never be worn by the stout; they greatly increase the apparent size. Large plaids should also be eschewed. Small checks and plaids may sometimes be becoming. Neither the too thin nor the too stout should adopt a style of gown that caricatures the form as does the voluminous wrapper, finished with a box-pleat, as shown in No. 57. There is no grace in straight lines. [Illustration: NOS. 57 AND 58] No. 58, which accentuates the height of the over-tall, thin woman, is better adapted to enhance the charms of a woman of finer proportions. The bony and scrawny, of the type of No. 58, seem to have a perverse desire to wear what makes their poverty in physical charms only more conspicuous. A woman of distinction in Boston, who is exceedingly thin and tall, wore Watteau pleats so frequently, even on reception and evening gowns that she was dubbed by a wag "the fire-escape," a title which so strikingly characterized her style, that the term was adopted by all her friends when they exchanged confidences concerning her. The garment with the Watteau pleat is not unlike the princesse gown which is a very trying style except to handsomely proportioned women. A tall, well-developed woman, such as shown in sketch No. 59, adorns the princesse gown and attains in it a statuesque beauty. In suggesting statuary it fulfils the true ideal of dress, which should hint of poetry, art, sculpture, painting. The massing of colors; the arrangement of lines, the quality of textures, the grace and poise of the wearer--do not these hint of picture, statue, music? CHAPTER V. CORSAGES APPROPRIATE FOR WOMEN WITH UNBEAUTIFULLY MODELLED THROATS AND SHOULDERS. Despite the traditional belief that a décolleté corsage is a tyrannous necessity of evening dress, a woman not graciously endowed with a beautifully modelled throat and shoulders may, with perfect propriety, conceal her infelicitous lines from the derisive gaze of a critical public. Women are indebted to that gentle genius, La Duse, for the suggestion that a veiled throat and bust may charmingly fulfil the requirements of evening dress, and also satisfy that sense of delicacy peculiar to some women who have not inherited from their great-great-grandmothers the certain knowledge that a low-necked gown is absolutely decorous. The women who does not possess delicate personal charms commends herself to the beauty-loving by forbearing to expose her physical deficiencies. Unless it is because they are enslaved by custom, it is quite incomprehensible why some women will glaringly display gaunt proportions that signally lack the exquisite lines of firm and solid flesh. A throat like a ten-stringed instrument, surmounting square shoulders that end in knobs that obtrude above unfilled hollows, is an unpleasing vision that looms up conspicuously too often in opera-box and drawing-room. [Illustration: NO. 61] The unattractive exhibition 61, is a familiar sight in the social world. How insufferably ugly such uncovered anatomy appears in the scenery of a rich and dainty music-room may be readily imagined by those who have been spared the unpleasing display. It is so obvious that shoulders like these should always be covered that it seems superfluous to remark that this type should never wear any sleeve that falls below the shoulder-line. [Illustration: NO. 62] The sleeve falling off the shoulder was invented for the classic contour, set forth in No. 62. Nor ribbons, nor lace, nor jewel are needed to enhance the perfect beauty of a fine, slender, white throat, and the felicitous curves of sloping shoulders. One whose individual endowments are as meagre as are those presented in No. 61 may improve her defects by adopting either style of corsage, shown in sketches Nos. 63 and 64. A woman's throat may lack a certain desirable roundness, and her shoulders may recede in awkward lines, and yet between these defective features the curves may have a not unpleasing daintiness and delicacy in modelling that can be advantageously revealed. A modish velvet throat-band, such as is shown by No. 63, is one of the most graceful conceits of fashion. The too slim throat encircled by velvet or ornamented with a jewelled buckle or brooch is effectively framed. The unsightly lines of the shoulders are covered, and just enough individual robustness is disclosed to suggest with becoming propriety the conventional décolleté corsage. The Princess of Wales is as constant to her velvet or pearl neck-band, as to her especial style of coiffure. Her throat, in evening dress, never appears unadorned by one or the other of these beautiful bands that so cleverly conceal defects and seem to bring out more richly the texture and coloring of handsome bare shoulders. [Illustration: NO. 63] [Illustration: NO. 64] Those who do not approve of the décolleté style of dress, or whose ungraceful proportions might well be entirely concealed, can wear with appropriateness and benefit the corsage shown in No. 64. This has much in its favor for a slender body. The upper part of the waist may be made of chiffon or crêpe, which is beautifully--one might say benignly--translucent. It has an insinuating transparency that neither reveals nor conceals too much. The neck-band of velvet or satin, full and soft, apparently enlarges the throat. The sleeves may be in whatever style in cut prevails. This costume carries perfectly into effect the requirements of evening dress, and may be worn with equal fitness to formal functions or to informal affairs. A coat-sleeve of lace, crêpe, or chiffon, beflounced at the wrist, may be inserted under the short satin sleeves when the occasion does not require gloves. The soft, white setting of thin textures around the throat and shoulders clears the complexion and brings into relief the pretty, delicate lines of a refined face. [Illustration: NOS. 65 and 66] It is plain to be seen that the unattractive specimen of femininity, No. 65., with the long, wrinkled neck and sharply lined face is unbecomingly costumed in the V-shaped basque and corsage which apparently elongate her natural lankness. A charming and always fashionable yoke-effect that she can wear to advantage is shown by No. 66. This style of corsage is equally effective for a too thin or a too muscular neck. The filling is of tulle. A square-cut corsage is most becoming to the woman whose narrow shoulders have a consumptive droop. The angular cut apparently heightens the shoulders and decreases their too steeple-like inclination. The round cut, if it frames a full throat, is also an effective style for sloping shoulders. The V-shaped cut is most becoming to the short-necked woman, whose aim should be to increase the length of her throat. It is not only the too thin neck that needs to be clothed with discrimination. Throats and shoulders that are too robust are improved by being covered. The arms and shoulders, however, are often the chief beauty of a fleshy woman, and it is to her advantage to give them as effective a setting as possible. [Illustration: NO. 68] [Illustration: NO. 67] As is obvious in No. 67, the stout woman apparently increases her breadth by wearing a flamboyant corsage, and she hides the most exquisite lines of her arm with her sleeves. The princesse style of gown, in No. 68, gives her apparent length of waist. The modest lace flounce that falls in vertical folds decreases her formidable corsage. The knotted twist of silk reveals the full beauty of her arm. [Illustration: NO. 69] In dressing the throat there are a few rules to be remembered. A too long, stem-like neck may be apparently shortened by a standing ruff or a full, soft band of velvet. The tight, plain band of velvet should never be worn by a woman with a very slim neck, as is plainly discernible in sketch No. 69. [Illustration: NO. 70] The plain, military collar emphasizes the thinness of the slender woman's throat; but the soft crushed fold of velvet apparently enlarges the pipe-like proportions of the thin woman's neck, as may be seen in sketch No. 70. The tight-fitting collar should not be worn by the corpulent woman with a thick neck, as is shown by sketch No. 71. [Illustration: NO. 71] The thickness of the throat of the woman pictured in No. 72 may seem due to the folds of the velvet, which give a pleasing hint of a slender throat, a delusion not to be despised by the woman burdened with flesh. [Illustration: NO. 72] All the sisterhood,--stout, thin, long-throated, or short,--should know the hour when the withering touch of age begins to shrink the soft, round curves distinctive of the full, sweet throat of healthful youth. No regretful vanity should be allowed to glamour their eyes to the fact that Time has them by the throat, to put it melodramatically. The wise woman will not please herself with a fatal delusion. She will realize it is illusion she needs-yards of it--lace or velvet, or any beautifying texture that will conceal the deadly lines of age. CHAPTER VI. HINTS ON DRESS FOR ELDERLY WOMEN. Dress has much to do with a youthful or aged appearance. Shawls and long mantles that fall from the shoulders give even youthful figures a look of age, because the lines are long and dignified and without especial grace. Beautiful wraps, or coats that do not come very far below the hip-line, can be worn becomingly by elderly ladies, neither emphasizing their years nor making them appear too frivolously attired. There is a smack of truth in the maxim, _As a woman grows old the dress material should increase in richness and decrease in brightness_. Handsome brocades, soft, elegant silks, woollen textures, and velvets are eminently suitable and becoming to women who are growing old. Black, and black-and-white, soft white chiffon veiled in lace, cashmeres, and such refined tissues should be selected by those in "the first wrinkles of youth." Grays combined with filmy white material, dull bronzes lightened with cream-tinted lace, are also charmingly appropriate. Pale blue veiled in chiffon is another grateful combination. White should be worn more than it is by old ladies. It is so suggestive of all that is clean, bright, and dainty; and if there is anything an old lady should strive to be in her personal appearance it is dainty. Exquisite cleanliness is one of the most necessary attributes of attractive old age, and any texture that in its quality and color emphasizes the idea of cleanliness should commend itself to those in their "advanced youth." Little old thin women, large ones too, for that matter, who are wrinkled and colorless, should not wear diamonds. The dazzling white gems with pitiless brilliancy bring out the pasty look of the skin. The soft glow of pearls, the cloudlike effects of the opal, the unobtrusive lights of the moonstone harmonize with the tints of hair and skin of the aged. Elderly women should not wear bright flowers on their bonnets or hats. Fresh-looking roses above a face that has lost its first youthfulness only make that fact more obvious. Forget-me-nots, mignonettes, certain pretty white flowers, the palest of pink roses, or the most delicate tint of yellow veiled with lace are not inappropriate for those who do not enjoy wearing sombre bonnets and hats which are composed only of rich, black textures. Lace cleverly intermingled with velvet and jewelled ornaments of dull, rich shades are exceedingly effective on the head-gear of the old. Those who are gray-haired--and indeed all women as they grow old--should wear red above their brows instead of under their chins. A glint of rich cardinal velvet, or a rosette of the same against gray hair is beautiful. Lace! Lace! Lace! and still more Lace for the old. _Lace is an essential to the dress of a woman more than forty years of age_. Jabots, ruches, yokes, cascades, vests, and gowns of lace, black or white, are all for the old. Rich lace has an exquisitely softening effect on the complexion. Thin women with necks that look like the strings of a violin should swathe, smother, decorate, and adorn their throats with lace or gossamer fabrics that have the same quality as lace. These airy textures, in which light and shadow can so beautifully shift, subdue roughnesses of the skin and harshness in lines. Old Dame Nature is the prime teacher of these bewitching artifices. Note her fine effects with mists and cobwebs, with lace-like moss on sturdy old oaks, the bloom on the peach and the grape. Nature produces her most enchanting colorings with dust and age. Laces, gauzes, mulls, chiffons, net, and gossamer throw the same beautiful glamour over the face and they are fit and charming accompaniments of gray hair, which is a wonderful softener of defective complexions and hard facial lines. Too much cannot be written upon the proper arrangement in the neck-gear of the aged. The disfiguring wrinkles that make many necks unsightly may be kept in obeyance by massaging. No matter what the fashion in neck-gear, the aged must modify it to suit their needs. An old lady with a thin, pipe-stem neck should adopt a full ruche and fluffy, soft collar-bands. I cannot forbear repeating that tulle as light as thistle bubbles, either white or gray or black, is exquisitely effective for thin, scrawny necks. The fleshy, red neck should be softened with powder and discreetly veiled in chemisettes of chiffon and delicate net. Old ladies may keep in the style, thus being in the picture of the hour; but it is one of the divine privileges of age that it can make its own modes. Absolute cleanliness, cleanliness as exacting as that proper nurses prescribe for babies, is the first and most important factor in making old age attractive. Rich dress, in artistic colors, soft, misty, esthetic, comes next; then the idealizing scarfs, collars, jabots, and fichus of lace and tulles. Old people becomingly and artistically attired have the charm of rare old pictures. If they have soul-illumined faces they are precious masterpieces. CHAPTER VII. HOW MEN CARICATURE THEMSELVES WITH THEIR CLOTHES. Although in the dress of man there are fewer possibilities of caricature than in that of woman, yet, "the masterpieces of creation" frequently exaggerate in a laughable--and sometimes a pitiable--way, certain physical characteristics by an injudicious choice of clothes. As the fashion in hair-dressing does not grant man the privilege of enhancing his facial attractions; nor of obscuring his defects by a becomingly arranged coiffure; and, as the modes in neck-gear are such that he cannot modify the blemishes of a defective complexion by encircling his athletic or scrawny throat with airy tulle, or dainty lace, that arch-idealizer of pasty-looking faces; and as he has forsworn soft, trailing garments that conceal unclassic curves and uninspiring lines of nether limbs, it behooves him to be more exactingly particular even than woman in the selection of his wearing apparel. Far be it from me, however, to remind man of his many limitations--in dress. That he can never know the rapture of donning a becoming spring bonnet, nor the pleasure of possessing "real lace" things, nor the sensuous charm of being enwrapped in caressing furs, or sleazy, silken garments as exquisite in color and texture as beautiful, fresh flowers, only delicate consideration for his feelings constrains me from expatiating upon at length. I would rather be able to remind him that he can make his limitations his advantages, than reveal to him what he misses in not being a woman. To treat of this important subject adequately and convincingly, one would require the masterly discernment of a skillful and accomplished tailor, the experienced knowledge of a well-dressed man, and the alertly critical perception of a loving woman who, even in the matter of clothes, wishes the dearest of men to her, to do full justice to himself and her ideal of him on all occasions. Although certain of the foregoing qualifications must needs be lacking, nevertheless this timorous pen, with more trepidation than courage it must be confessed, begs to call attention to a few obvious details in masculine attire that caricature, more or less, peculiarities in the forms and features of men. To be sure, in the matter of head-gear man is not conspicuously at the mercy of burlesquing ribbons, flowers, and feathers, and he has fewer opportunities than women to make himself ridiculous, yet a few suggestions regarding certain shapes of head-gear for certain types of faces, applicable to women are equally applicable to him. The same rule that applies to the women of the wedge-shaped type of face applies to the man of the wedge-shaped type, as may be seen in sketches Nos. 75 and 76. It is obvious that the youth depicted in No. 75 detracts from the manliness of his face and emphasizes the pointed appearance of his countenance by wearing a hat with a broad brim projecting over his ears. This style of hat appears more frequently in straw than in any other texture, but the effect of a wide, projecting rim is the same in any material. No. 76, it is plain, improves the appearance of the long, slim-faced man. An alpine hat would not be unbecoming to him, the high oval of the crown forming a balance for the lower part of the face. [Illustration: NO. 75] [Illustration: NO. 76] The man with a pugilistic chin should endeavor to select a hat that will not make his heavy jaw as prominent as does the stiff derby, in No. 77. [Illustration: NO. 77] A soft alpine hat, or one somewhat of the style of No. 78, improves his appearance. The high crown and wide, gracefully rolling brim counter-balance the weight and prominence of the jaw. [Illustration: NO. 78] Apropos of the minor details of man's garments, the button as a feature of clothes has never been fully done justice to. It is a sustaining thing we know, something we can hang to, fasten to, and even tie to. That properly placed buttons contribute to our mental poise and therefore to our physical repose, is hinted in that absurdly engaging story, anent the smart boy who was the envy of his spelling-class, because he always stood first. You remember, no doubt, that an envious but keen-eyed classmate observed that the smart speller worked off his nervous apprehensiveness by twirling the top button of his coat as he correctly spelled word after word, day in and day out; and how the keen-eyed one played the part of a stealthy villain and surreptitiously cut the button off the coat. And do you remember the dramatic ending? How the smart one on the fatal day sought to "press the button" and finding it gone, lost his wits completely and failed ignominiously? Many of us when we have lost a sustaining button, have we not felt as ridiculously helpless and wit-benumbed as the smart speller? [Illustration: NO. 79] We all sub-consciously acknowledge our dependence upon buttons, but not many of us, evidently, have observed that even buttons have a certain possibility of caricature in them; and that they may add to, or detract from, the appearance of manly forms. The consideration of properly placed buttons may seem trivial to you, but if you will observe sketches Nos. 79 and 80, you may discern that a thin man may apparently increase his breadth and add a certain manly touch to his figure, by changing the buttons at the waist-line of his coat. The buttons placed so near together, in No. 79, really make his toothpick proportions too obvious. His back is made to look broader by placing the buttons wider apart, as shown in No. 80, and changing the cut of his coat-tail. [Illustration: NO. 80] That the fat man may also present a more attractive back to his enemies by considering the placing of his buttons, may be seen in drawings Nos. 81 and 82. The buttons decorating No. 81 are placed so far apart that they increase in an ungainly way the breadth of the back at the waist-line. If they are placed nearer together, and the seams graduated to meet them, they give the illusion of better and more desirable proportions, as may be seen in No. 82. [Illustration: NO. 81] [Illustration: NO. 82] That the thin man may also present a more imposing and broader front to the world, is suggested in sketches Nos. 83 and 84. The contracted look of the coat in No. 83 is somewhat due to the buttons of his double-breasted coat being placed too closely together. The slender man who wishes to give the impression of being broad-chested may have the buttons on his coat placed a little farther apart than fashion may allow, as shown in sketch 84. The proportions may be easily preserved by a careful adjustment of the shoulder-seams and the seams under the arms. [Illustration: NO. 83] [Illustration: NO. 84] [Illustration: NO. 85] The waist-line is not so much "a danger line" to man as to woman, yet man should not wholly ignore his equator. If he is long-waisted he can apparently balance his proportions by having his skirt shortened, as in No. 85, and his waist-line raised the merest bit. If he is too short-waisted he can lengthen his skirt and lower his waist-line, as shown in No. 86. In the one he escapes appearing too long and lanky in body, and in the other he obscures a lack of becoming inches that tends to give him a dumpy appearance. [Illustration: NO. 86] If you study your fellow-men you will observe that few are really perfectly proportioned. One man will have the body of a viking on the legs of a dwarf, or one will have the legs of an Apollo supporting the short body of a pigmy. The man who has a kingly body, too broad in proportion to his legs, as shown in sketch No. 87, should endeavor to modify his physical defect by the careful selection of his coats. He should have his coats cut to give him as much length of leg as possible. A skilful tailor will know just what subtle changes and adjustments to make. The improvement in appearance and gain in height is pictured in sketch 88. The coat being shorter and the waist of the trousers being raised a trifle, the man's limbs seem longer, which is an improvement. Long lines tend to give elegance and grace in bearing. Another thing for the too robust type of man to consider is the style of his trousers. No. 87 hints what he must not choose. Such brazen plaids only make him appear offensively aggressive in size. Long, fine lines, such as shown in No. 88, give an impression of length and apparently lessen the width. [Illustration: NO. 87] Too long lines, however, are almost as undesirable as too short ones. Over-tall, thin men sometimes make themselves look like telegraph poles or flagstaffs by wearing short coats that expose in a graceless way the whole length of their limbs. They suggest cranes and other fowl that give the impression of being "all legs." [Illustration: NO. 88] When the legs are proportioned more like a stick of macaroni or a lead pencil than the shapely limbs of an Adonis, they appear exceedingly funny when surmounted by a short coat, such as pictured in No. 89. A famous general in the Civil War did not despise cotton as a fortification to protect him from the onslaught of the enemy. The over-tall, thin man, who is not unsuggestive of a picket, should not be ashamed to fortify himself with cotton or any other sort of padding that intelligent tailors keep in stock. He should build his shoulders up a bit and be generally, but most carefully and artistically, enlarged. His coat should be lengthened, as in sketch go, to cut off just as much of the longness of limb as can possibly be allowed without destroying artistic proportions. The very tall, thin man who unthinkingly wears a very short coat should be brave and never turn his back to his enemy. [Illustration: NO. 89] If he wears black and white check trousers and a short blue coat, he should travel with a screen. A man in just such a rig attracted no end of comment in a fashionable hotel. The caricaturing effect of his trousers and coat were unspeakably comical. The wearer had a face as grave as an undertaker's and the air of a serious-minded college professor; but he had the nondescript look of a scarecrow composed of whatever available garments could be obtained from the cast-off wardrobe of summer boarders in a farmhouse. [Illustration: NO. 90] Coats assuredly have the power of making cartoons--living, jocular cartoons--of their wearers. It would hardly seem necessary to call attention to the fact that a man of huge dimensions should not wear a short coat, such as shown in sketch No. 91, yet his type is too frequently seen attired in this style. A man so dressed certainly seems the living exemplification of the definition of a jug, namely, "a vessel usually with a swelling belly, narrow mouth, and a handle, for holding liquors." It cannot be reiterated too often that a large, stout man should aim to acquire the distinction and dignity given by long lines. If his body is proportioned so he really has neither length of torso nor of limb he must pay more attention to the cut of his clothes and attain length in whatever artistic way he can. The long coat, as may be seen in sketch No. 92, not only apparently adds length but it conceals too protuberant curves. [Illustration: NOS. 91 and 92] Of course, character counts far more than clothes, we will all agree to that, but at first glance it is a man's clothes that impress people. Clothes affect our behavior somewhat. For instance, "When the young European emigrant, after a summer's labor puts on for the first time a new coat, he puts on much more. His good and becoming clothes put him on thinking that he must behave like people who are so dressed; and silently and steadily his behavior mends." Of course, there is an uplifting truth in George Herbert's maxim, "This coat with my discretion will be brave," yet, I am inclined to think that the majority of men who will stop to consider will agree with Emerson, who says, "If a man has not firm nerves and has keen sensibility, it is perhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop and dress himself irreproachably. He can then dismiss all care from his mind, and may easily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortification that turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gayly into conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. I am not ignorant,--I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared 'that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.'" A popular clothier in New York, understanding this trait of his fellow-men, voices this same sentiment in his advertisement in this succinct way: "Seriously now. Have you ever stopped to think that if you wear good clothing it adds much to that independent, easy feeling you should have when you come in contact with other men?" I think it was Lord Chesterfield who said: "A man is received according to his appearance, and dismissed according to his merits." There is a bit of truth in this we would all admit, I have no doubt, if we studied the question. Clothes affect our own poise, ease, and attitude toward others and the expression of others toward us, but, after all, we rely upon the man or woman instead of upon the impression we receive from the clothes. The garments, after we have noticed them in a superficial way, are chiefly interesting to us, because they are arch-betrayers of the physical and mental poise of the man. No matter what the cut of the cloth, no matter what _cachet_ of a fashionable tailor a suit may have, or what its richness of material, the attitude "à la decadence" of No. 93 would make the best clothes in Christendom look shabby and unattractive. [Illustration: NO. 93] This too familiar carriage of the American man makes one wish to have the power to reverse the faces--as Dante did those of the false prophets, so those who stand "à la decadence" might see what ridiculous figures they cut in drawing-room and street. The curved backs and rounded-out shoulders would make fair-looking chests, and the flat chests would represent respectable-looking backs. A man owes it to the spirit within him not to stand or walk in such an attitude. He should brace up and keep bracing up persistently, unremittently, until he attains a more manly bearing. [Illustration: NO. 94] The wholly alive fellow pictured in sketch No. 94 would make homespun look elegant. His chest is forward. He does not sag in front at the waist, protruding his abdomen in not only an inartistic, but an unhealthy manner; but he strides masterfully forward with an air of inspiriting "aliveness." The perfect poise of his attitude is not unsuggestive of the Apollo Belvedere--the model for all men--a picture of which every college boy should have to place beside the prettiest girl in his collection of pretty girls, to constantly remind him to carry himself like a young god. 
1051	----	SARTOR RESARTUS: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh By Thomas Carlyle. 1831 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, _How the apples were got in_, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichats. How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as _a Clothed Animal_; whereas he is by nature a _Naked Animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cow-horn, emit his _Horet ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen_; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it, "By geometric scale Doth take the size of pots of ale;" still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all English culture and endeavor, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this abtruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo; treating expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. "_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J. U. D. etc. Stillschweigen und Cognie. Weissnichtwo_, 1831. "Here," says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, "comes a Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance.... A work," concludes the well-nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, "interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and Philanthropy (_derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but must and will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honor." Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase: _Mochte es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im Brittischen Boden gedeihen_! CHAPTER II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. If for a speculative man, "whose seedfield," in the sublime words of the Poet, "is Time," no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an "extensive Volume," of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytizing creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose: How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need thereof; how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the Author of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was to publish Article after Article on this remarkable Volume, in such widely circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand connected with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant? If, indeed, all party-divisions in the State could have been abolished, Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except _Fraser's Magazine_? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the "agitation and attention" which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying "some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West:" a work on Professor Teufelsdrockh "were undoubtedly welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, or any other of those patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory of British Literature;" might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated; for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to those same "patriotic _Libraries_," the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our _Sartor Resartus_, which is properly a "Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh," hourly advancing. Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant: [*] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let him hear. * With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--O. Y. On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_; Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favor with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels _No cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise. CHAPTER III. REMINISCENCES. To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special contributions to the _Isis_ could never be more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_, [*] and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was _Zur Grunen Gans_, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed this toast: _Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufels Namen_ (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and--'s)! One full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt doch ein echter Spass_- _und Galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _Wo steckt doch der Schalk_? added they, looking round: but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. * Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer. In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? Thy little figure, there as, in loose ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to "think and smoke tobacco," held in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear logically founded Transcendentalism of thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof. How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him the _Ewige Jude_, Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering Jew. To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing; which Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction; but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their daily _Allgemeine Zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in German Universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft_, or as we should say in English, "Professor of Things in General," he had never delivered any Course; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, imagined they had done enough, if "in times like ours," as the half-official Program expressed it, "when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, facilitated." That actual Lectures should be held, and Public Classes for the "Science of Things in General," they doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only established the Professorship, nowise endowed it; so that Teufelsdrockh, "recommended by the highest Names," had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the Want of the Age (_Zeitbedurfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation and Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent University; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government consider that occasion did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grune Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scrutinize him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three men Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four _Orte_ or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, _Airts_: the sitting room itself commanded three; another came to view in the _Schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_, showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_), were for the most part visible there. "I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," we have heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except Schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of To-day, without a Yesterday or a To-morrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." "_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.--All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein Werther_, sit above it all; I am alone with the stars." We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, "united in a common element of dust." Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdrockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, "they never appear without their umbrella." Had we not known with what "little wisdom" the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a _Rath_, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was "the very Spirit of Love embodied:" blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemuth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwartig aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favor of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder; we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on _Clothes_. Additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity leaving Kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on the "Origin and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly return. CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERISTICS. It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More specially may it now be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with our public. Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humor of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr. Lingard_, from your Oriental _Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese fables_, and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ and the _Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh, is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humor, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire. Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable "Extra-Harangues;" and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnamable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavor. CHAPTER V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. "As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_," observes our Professor, "so could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois_, properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavors, an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Color! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, so does the Color betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. "For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why I am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same _Spirit of Clothes_ I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province." Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh, has nevertheless contrived to take in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Compilers of some _Library_ of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, "at present the glory of British Literature"? If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,"--very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound glances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment. But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Nurnbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis Vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic hilibegs (though breeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed," says he, "was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. "Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years. "He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of _Movable Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or _Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. "But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, "Man is a Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all." Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. "Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this luggage at the rate of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it." CHAPTER VI. APRONS. One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on _Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though John Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop;" what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following? "Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (_Teufels-schmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c. Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote? "I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in England."--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals of Rags picked annually from the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost chaos of Life, which they keep alive!"--Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. Farther down we meet with this: "The Journalists are now the true Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, in that language, under the title of _Satan's Invisible World Displayed_; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermochte night aufzutreiben_)." Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature! CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every way interesting have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On Ancient Armor_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's _Zeitkurzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to: "Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled up here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue. "Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. "Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_ [a perhaps untranslatable article]; also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat (_ohne Gesass_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap them. "Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's head-gear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmantel_). "As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it." Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen "was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her"? We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his _devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection:-- "By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written."--Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest? "The simplest costume," observes our Professor, "which I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Colombian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck; and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied." With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their _Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes commences: all untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes." He says in so many words, "Society is founded upon Cloth;" and again, "Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limbos, and in either case be no more." By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical Reason' proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim: Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favor us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation:-- "With men of a speculative turn," writes Teufelsdrockh, "there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am I; the thing that can say 'I' (_das Wesen das sich ICH nennt_)? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stonewalls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,--the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another. "Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some embodied, visualized Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum_. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-colored visions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake! Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. "Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. _The whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _Nature abhors a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, _Nothing can act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, are from the first the master-colors of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER: have not all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting Now? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time; there _is_ no Space and no Time: WE are--we know not what;--light-sparkles floating in the ether of Deity! "So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousand-fold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the 'phantasy of our Dream;' or what the Earth-Spirit in _Faust_ names it, _the living visible Garment of God_:-- "'In Being's floods, in Action's storm, I walk and work, above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean; A seizing and giving The fire of Living: 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.' Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? "It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I--good Heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed off into the Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rat-grinder, get new material to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly articulated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive? "Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. "For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries." CHAPTER IX. ADAMITISM. Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm? Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to thyself and mankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys; half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that "Horse I ride;" and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a "sailor of the air;" the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best: here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy. Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh forgotten what he said lately about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "condition miserable indeed"? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to the "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"? Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, "so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age "as a Sign," would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man. For example:-- "You see two individuals," he writes, "one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and anatomized;' Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing can act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no _clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. "Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is a Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that _he wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. "Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the Clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like." Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret! Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw:-- "What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott_! How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilized Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls." Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum_! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "a forked Radish with a head fantastically carved"? And why might he not, did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a Bed of Justice? "Solace of those afflicted with the like!" Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a "physical or psychical infirmity" before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded on by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the maddest? "It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh, "in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him." "O my Friends, we are [in Yorick Sterne's words] but as 'turkeys driven, with a stick and red clout, to the market:' or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!" CHAPTER X. PURE REASON. It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized Life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and "bladders with dried peas." To linger among such speculations, longer than mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about "Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen," and the Kings being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," says Teufelsdrockh; "the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable difference? From Clothes." Much also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere "Hail fellow well met," and Chaos were come again: all which to any one that has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, _Society in a state of Nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:-- "Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?" Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdrockh; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods. "To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colors and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, 'the true SHEKINAH is Man:' where else is the GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?" In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view. Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gypsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honorable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, "unimaginable formless, dark with excess of bright"? Under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:-- "The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. 'The Philosopher,' says the wisest of this age, 'must station himself in the middle:' how true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. "Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our Imagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love; since all was created by God? "Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!" For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. "Wonder," says he, "is the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_." That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small favor with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. "Shall your Science," exclaims he, "proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time." In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of "Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the street populous with mere justice-loving men:" that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates:-- "The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole _Mecanique Celeste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. "Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,--he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?--_Armer Teufel_! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? 'Explain' me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sand-blind Pedant." CHAPTER XI. PROSPECTIVE. The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth? Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole:-- "Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead? "As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. "Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself." Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? "All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful; the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye? "Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a Body. "Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mantel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn them." Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:-- "Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES." Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy (_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known and seen; "till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculative scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavor lies before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, "do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is properly the _only_ object that interests man:' thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but Biography or Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished individuals. "By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, "by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? "To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds? "No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the unexampled favor you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial Planet!" And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with "fullest insight," we find--Six considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "The continued Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connection, without recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of "P.P. Clerk of this Parish." Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, "On receiving the Doctor's-Hat," lie wash-bills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant. So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilize and discompose it! As we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavoring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up. Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own. BOOK II. CHAPTER I. GENESIS. In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. "In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only (_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, '_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!' before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. '_Das nenn' ich mir einen Konig_, There is what I call a King,' would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes.' "Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. "Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_), it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zuruckgefordert_. 'Good Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.' Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlor-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was decipherable, other document or indication none whatever. "To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do with this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious Individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General." Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, In his twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou. "And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual.... "The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, and embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian 'Diogenes' mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humor? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit (_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. "For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says, _Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes_?" "Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions! "Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grandnephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nursling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him than whimpering." Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the "good Gretchen Futteral," or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride? CHAPTER II. IDYLLIC. "HAPPY season of Childhood!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh: "Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and for thy Nursling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth, too frost-nipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel." In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing "in trustful derangement" among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme outpost from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how "the brave old Linden," stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered up from the central _Agora_ and _Campus Martius_ of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. "Glorious summer twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors); and the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would not tell of them!" Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that "brave old Linden "? Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following? "In all the sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden Trieb_): the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls." Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that relates it: "My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine the architectural, how much less the moral significance!" More graceful is the following little picture: "On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their gilding." With "the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry" we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a "certain deeper sympathy with animated Nature:" but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this: "Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching in again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower world?" It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other, crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teufelsdrockh, "I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. "Nevertheless," continues he, "I too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address myself."--Thou rogue! Is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he continues: "If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number: "Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.' Eagerly I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. "In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the World_! "Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves with the month of May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighborly Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall? "But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and simultaneously poured down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurry-burly. Nut-brown maids and nut-brown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long ox-goads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. "Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly Firmament; waited on by the four golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols,--did the Child sit and learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World: what matters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. "Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost overshadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as basis and as bourn for our whole being, it is there. "For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good Activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favorable beyond the most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more could I have wished? On the other side, however, things went not so well. My Active Power (_Thatkraft_) was unfavorably hemmed in; of which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. "In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, nay of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my upbringing. It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, every way unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. Andreas too attended Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears,--as, I trust, he has received; but my Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation Religious. How indestructibly the Good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of Evil! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son that only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?" To which last question we must answer: Beware, O Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride! CHAPTER III. PEDAGOGY. Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to use his own words, "he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that," he will proceed to handle it. Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent "Passivity" of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European; above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will behoove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor. Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of his History, Teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he "cannot remember ever to have learned;" so perhaps had it by nature. He says generally: "Of the insignificant portion of my Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a down-bent, broken-hearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows of things: History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic." That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? "It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age." In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of TIME, and its relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes? Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. "With my first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium," writes he, "my evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and _Schuldthurm_ (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonized creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome! "Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." His school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he says, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannize over the weak." He admits that though "perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was "incredibly nimble"), than to his "virtuous principles:" "if it was disgraceful to be beaten," says he, "it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." On the whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "He wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestum_) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to its _breadth_? We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were "mechanically" taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself "went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things;" and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are, and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. "My Teachers," says he, "were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. "Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hod-man is discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing; and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there should be world-honored Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?" In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to have died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. "The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!" Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. "Thus was I doubly orphaned," says he; "bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no other_; in which fixed idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous." In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdrockh has become a University man; though how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In _Sagittarius_, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even more than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts: scraps of regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand." Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humor of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colors, some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh waxed into manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdrockh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _Sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with such matter as this: "The University where I was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well; which name, however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. "It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. "Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all! Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary! "This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favorite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent of being Gulled. "How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, like a strong brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual re-painting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers! They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called Educating, now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain mute admiration. "Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better coming, nay come? As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavor and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed." That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. "The hungry young," he says, "looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. Among eleven hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, I succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid: I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to read character in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended." Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "fever-paroxysms of Doubt;" his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith; and how "in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings." To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapor than of clear flame? From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humor, to be addressing himself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present rather the following small thread of Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these University years. "Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality (_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humor of character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my first practical knowledge of the English and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be turned out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. 'How has our head on the outside a polished Hat,' would Towgood exclaim, 'and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables.'--'Man, indeed,' I would answer, 'has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frisch zu, Bruder_! Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _Frisch zu_!' "Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed Herr Towgood I was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras." So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has dived under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does any reader "in the interior parts of England" know of such a man? CHAPTER IV. GETTING UNDER WAY. "Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, apparently as quitting College, "was there realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Day-moth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. "How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the Scottish Brass-smith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. "With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfurst_), or Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!" By which last wire-drawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call "getting under way"? "Not what I Have," continues he, "but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its nature original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. "Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (_Brodzwecke_), preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; and realize much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (_fast war ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut." We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, "breaks off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, _No Object and no Rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his "neck-halter" sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen Rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby "an _Auscultator_ of respectability," what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connections, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. "My fellow Auscultators," he says, "were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. "Great practical method and expertness" he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? "Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been appointed to struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as "a man of genius" against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly protests. "As if," says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper." How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that "the prompt nature of Hunger being well known," we are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, "does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless," continues he, "that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive." Which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that "there is always life for a living one," we must profess ourselves unable to explain. Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: "The (_Inkblot_), tied down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: "_Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens eingeladen_." Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his _Excellenz_ (the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once had the honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (_die auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On some points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him." That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. "The Universe," he says, "was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only possible by battle." "I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Madchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_Bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of." In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," says he, "that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet." That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to work,--in the right direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust, "To eat into itself, for lack Of something else to hew and hack;" But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. "So far hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!" Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh too admits, is "to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)"? Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connection with the Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of the "not uncholeric" old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English reader: HIC JACET PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, ZAEHDARMI COMES, EX IMPERII CONCILIO, VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI EQUES. QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES PLUMBO CONFECIT: VARII CIBI CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS, IN STERCUS PALAM CONVERTIT. NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM OPERA SEQUUNTUR. SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS, FIMETUM ADSPICE. PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_]. CHAPTER V. ROMANCE. "For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For what?--_Beym Himmel_! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what might, I resolved to try." Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter Northwest Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. "If in youth," writes he once, "the Universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (_Personlichkeit_) is ever holy to us; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all _Thees_ in bonds of Love: but it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case of the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of Fantasy, flames forth that fire-development of the universal Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically denominate LOVE. "In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free! "As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh evidently meaning himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls (_Holden_)--_Ach Gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought. "Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!" Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting the thin walls of your "reverberating furnace," so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were Madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the "crater of an extinct volcano"! From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the "First Love which is infinite" can be followed by no second like unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed, which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of purchasing. Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how Teufelsdrockh in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendor and color, his Firework blazes off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real name Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Specially, by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. "It was appointed," says our Philosopher, "that the high celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough." We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's Cousin; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed relatives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her circle? Was it by the humid vehicle of _AEsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as an ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature. "Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiographer, "what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write, but must have paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings." But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in AEsthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of "harps and pure voices making the stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself. "Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks: so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the SUIT in the bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock him, and see whether there were Humor in him? "Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. "Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague colorings of Rumor, from the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever think of him; O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, gathered favor for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. "Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Damon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect; wherein also Fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic hues." It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one "Philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly pouring forth Philistinism (_Philistriositaten_.); little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, "persuaded into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. "Of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, "the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her she answered with attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush! "The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gayly in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor; and the poor claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as the light grew more aerial on the mountaintops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness; and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the still Eternity. "To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper, It is good for us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn." Poor Teufelsdrockh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the Queen of Hearts would see a "man of genius" also sigh for her; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. "Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (_Zeitbuhne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no better red wine than he had before." Alas! witness also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for prize of a "high-souled Brunette," as if the Earth held but one and not several of these! He says that, in Town, they met again: "day after day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness: him what Graceful (_Holde_) would ever love? Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And now, O now! 'She looks on thee,' cried he: 'she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? The Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers!' Thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. "In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature enrolled to him. Fairest Blumine! And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was there so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a Morning-star; did not her presence bring with it airs from Heaven? As from AEolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the distance; Life bloomed up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and could not discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison melt away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress? _Ach Gott_! His whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had he named it Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought." Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped; for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere "Children of Time," can abide by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, "how in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to cut asunder these so blissful bonds." He even appears surprised at the "Duenna Cousin," whoever she may have been, "in whose meagre hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish "absolved Auscultator," before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known "religion of young hearts" keep the human kitchen warm? Pshaw! thy divine Blumine, when she "resigned herself to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, though but "a woman of genius," than thou, a pretended man. Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with what royal splendor it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be organized? Besides, of what profit were it? We view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at the final scene:-- "One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet no more." The thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. "'Farewell, then, Madam!' said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes; in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time and for the last!" Thus was Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why, then--"thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss." CHAPTER VI. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm could you predict his demeanor. To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh precipitated through "a shivered Universe" in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly lifts his _Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), "old business being soon wound up;" and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe! Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass vial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs to again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdrockh as we remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. "One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture," adds he, "whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it." But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the Journals: only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,--might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within: that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in _Capricornus_ and _Aquarius is_ no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were "made like unto a wheel." Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: "A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toy-box, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of Lifebreath: for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little Dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if our Buried ones there slumber!" Does Teufelsdrockh as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity, towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take only one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither? Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:-- "Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength. "To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that suit thee better: 'Whoso can look on Death will start at no shadows.' "From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards; for now the Valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. "The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding favors: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near: _Du Himmel_! It was Herr Towgood and--Blumine! With slight unrecognizing salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, _I remained alone, behind them, with the Night_." Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _Clothes-Volume_, where it stands with quite other intent: "Some time before Small-pox was extirpated," says the Professor, "there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the _Sorrows of Werter_, was there man found who would say: Come let us make a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek." Too true! We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with more haste than progress. Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatsirender_), living by the grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the neighborhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. Fact unparalleled in Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavor. For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, where they can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to emit. Teufelsdrockh vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact with public History itself. For example, those conversations and relations with illustrious Persons, as Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? The Editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a different duty. If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind, the Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the answer is more distinct than favorable. "A nameless Unrest," says he, "urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary lying solace. Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I; the ground burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone! Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Phantasms for itself: towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great Cities, to great Events: but found there no healing. In strange countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilization, it was ever the same: how could your Wanderer escape from--_his own Shadow_? Nevertheless still Forward! I felt as if in great haste; to do I saw not what. From the depths of my own heart, it called to me, Forwards! The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded to me, Forwards! _Ach Gott_, I was even, once for all, a Son of Time." From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School was still active enough? He says elsewhere: "The _Enchiridion of Epictetus_ I had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling." Thou foolish Teufelsdrockh How could it else? Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: _The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought_, though it were the noblest? "How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, hast thou considered the 'rugged all-nourishing Earth,' as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? While thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild eggs in the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris _Estrapades_ and Vienna _Malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. That I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,--by suicide. In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal." Poor Teufelsdrockh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew,--save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by footprints), write his _Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh_; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _Sorrows of Werter_, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape "from his own Shadow"! Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron publishes his _Sorrows of Lord George_, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his _Sorrows of Napoleon_ Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.--Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof! CHAPTER VII. THE EVERLASTING NO. Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the "Son of Time," in any case, stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation; wherefrom the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an "excellent Passivity;" but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first "ruddy morning" in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. He himself says once, with more justness than originality: "Men is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope." What, then, was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For, as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, "that, for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, Worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury:" to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way: "Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and _see_ing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Phantasm, made up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that _he_ was 'the chief of sinners;' and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Wordmonger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? I know not: only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect!" Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. "But what boots it (_was thut's_)?" cries he: "it is but the common lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siecle de Louis Quinze_, and not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_ ), thou hadst no other outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rain-proof, crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him?" Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. "One circumstance I note," says he: "after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me! I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance to her. 'Truth!' I cried, 'though the Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy.' In conduct it was the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _This thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me: living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there." Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured! "The painfullest feeling," writes he, "is that of your own Feebleness (_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, _Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one, _Know what thou canst work at_. "But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first, last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all too cruelly belied? The speculative Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?" A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for example: "How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drug-shop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust!" Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough? "From Suicide a certain after-shine (_Nachschein_) of Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot,--how were it? On which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage." "So had it lasted," concludes the Wanderer, "so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dew-drop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Death-song, that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy whom _he_ finds in Battle's splendor), and thought that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil: nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured. "Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked myself: 'What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. "Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: 'Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's);' to which my whole Me now made answer: '_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!' "It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a Man." CHAPTER VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. Though, after this "Baphometic Fire-baptism" of his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, "Indignation and Defiance," especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectra-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many "Saints' Wells," and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to "eat his own heart;" and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state? "Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set before your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches thee. "Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubal-cain downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou go to Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon; thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly devised almighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; only like a little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body itself forth from the great mystic Deep. "Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon up to the extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges may belong; and thirdly--Books. In which third truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that already number some hundred and fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.--Fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervor, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: but canst thou not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?" No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows:-- "Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps; ay, there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed down out of sight, like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest level,--intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? Konig Ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled! The greensward is torn up and trampled down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings, blown away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Skulls.--Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure; and next year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life for the Living! "What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'Natural Enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men; Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightaway the word 'Fire!' is given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, 'what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!'--In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!" Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-colored world, and pertinently enough note what is passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on; towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, favorable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough in these so boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable things, might not Teufelsdrockh acquire! "I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, "including those of Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics, Topographics came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself only. "Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting, and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the World well lost; oftener than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me. "For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagon-load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study, the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not forgotten. For--" --But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the "White Water-roses" (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an "Ideologist." "He himself," says the Professor, "was among the completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists: in the Idea (_in der Idee_) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carriere ouverte aux talens_ (The Tools to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless." More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has a "light-blue Spanish cloak" hanging round him, as his "most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment;" and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. "Silence as of death," writes he; "for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp? "Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, 'Be so obliging as retire, Friend (_Er ziehe sich zuruck, Freund_), and with promptitude!' This logic even the Hyperborean understands: fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return. "Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more _Mind_, though all but no _Body_ whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. "With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trimberg: 'God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below.'" But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of Teufelsdrockh, under so much outward shifting! Does Legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. "At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our Autobiographer, "I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed into these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!" Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a second youth. "This," says our Professor, "was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive must necessarily pass." CHAPTER IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA. "Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, _Work thou in Well-doing_, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, _Eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper? "To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors!--Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!" He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to him: "Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient men (_tuchtigen Manner_) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even exemplars." So that, for Teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "glorious revolution:" these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some purifying "Temptation in the Wilderness," before his apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was "that high moment in the _Rue de l'Enfer_," then, properly the turning-point of the battle; when the Fiend said, _Worship me, or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _Apage Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavor to combine for their own behoof. He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."--And again: "Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-todtung_), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his Locality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire. "Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide Way-farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. "Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not thou the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? "Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's! "With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellowman: with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes!--Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that '_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;' by strange, steep ways had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the '_Divine Depth of Sorrow_' lie disclosed to me." The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "A vain interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic _Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_. "But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. "So true is it, what I then said, that _the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, _Unity_ itself divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write: 'It is only with Renunciation (_Entsagen_) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.' "I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_." "_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!" cries he elsewhere: "there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." And again: "Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that '_Worship of Sorrow_'? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning." Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the "perennial continuance of Inspiration;" on Prophecy; that there are "true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:" with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. "Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," thus apostrophizes the Professor: "shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and--thyself away. "Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? To the '_Worship of Sorrow_' ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for which latter whoso will, let him worry and be worried." "Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear out one another's eyes, struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration,' and such like: try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but Leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty." Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:-- "To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.'--Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all such cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!'--If Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certain extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! "But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: '_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer. "May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your 'America is here or nowhere'? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! "But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World. "I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work." CHAPTER X. PAUSE. Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdrockh, through the various successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as Conversion. "Blame not the word," says he; "rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in our modern Era, though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew nothing of Conversion; instead of an _Ecce Homo_, they had only some _Choice of Hercules_. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists." It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh commences: we are henceforth to see him "work in well-doing," with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself: "Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do something: this let him _do_.--Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, furnishable with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that _Sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a _Fiat_. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honor enough therein to spend and be spent? "By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, "have I thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of Opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. "Nay how knowest thou," cries he, "but this and the other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working Institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? Some one's doing, it without doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?" Does Teufelsdrockh, here glance at that "SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY (_Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft_)," of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectra-like through these inexpressible Paper-bags? "An Institution," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the Society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France; and contributions, both of money and of meditation pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round this Palladium." Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable _Eigenthums-conservirende_ ("Owndom-conserving") _Gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again hints: "At a time when the divine Commandment, _Thou shalt not steal_, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgrus's Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has all but faded away from the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, _Thou shalt steal_, is everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that _we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent_, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors. If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written _Program_ in the Public Journals, with its high _Prize-Questions_ and so liberal _Prizes_, could have proceeded,--let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the _Concurrenz_ (Competition)." We ask: Has this same "perhaps not ill-written _Program_," or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic? If so, what are those _Prize-Questions_; what are the terms of Competition, and when and where? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags! Or is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us? Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification! What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing forth the same! Our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German Hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being all but invisible, we lately noticed, and with effort decipher, the following: "What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by stringing together bead-rolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how your Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness bear the blame. But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags for the present. Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if "not what he did, yet what he became:" the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external Life-element, Teufelsdrockh, reaches his University Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapor, may hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain "pools and plashes," we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained down again into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the _Philosophy of Clothes_, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. If now, before reopening the great _Clothes-Volume_, we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the _Clothes-Philosophy_, let not our discouragement become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of conjecture. So much we already calculate: Through many a little loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdrockh; his strange mystic, almost magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas on TIME, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may his somewhat peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one _Garment_, a "Living Garment," woven and ever a-weaving in the "Loom of Time;" is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole _Clothes-Philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in? Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built? Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows of things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. The "Passivity" given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in any public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, and a life of Meditation. The whole energy of his existence is directed, through long years, on one task: that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. But is not this same looking through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the first preliminary to a _Philosophy of Clothes_? Do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher purport of such a Philosophy; and what shape it must assume with such a man, in such an era? Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottos through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. BOOK III. CHAPTER I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World; recognizing in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true Platonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such, more or less complete, rending and burning of Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes. Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to dig out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of the Professor's, can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications stand out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about _Perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at:-- "Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," says Teufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came Splendors and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him. "The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than AEtna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine.--'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, 'with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!' "Historical Oil-painting," continues Teufelsdrockh, "is one of the Arts I never practiced; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he! "Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns, and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love." George Fox's "perennial suit," with all that it held, has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the _Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdrockh, himself is no Quaker; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which that "Incident" is here brought forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the community, by way of testifying against the "Mammon-god," and escaping from what he calls "Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair," where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of levelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realized. Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle step forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old Distinctions be re-established? Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof? CHAPTER II. CHURCH-CLOTHES. Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire:-- "By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the _Vestures_, under which men have at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious Principle; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving WORD. "These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when 'two or three are gathered together,' that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my Belief gains quite _infinitely_ the moment I can convince another mind thereof'! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost ME! "Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapter-houses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him," says the oracular Professor, "read on, light of heart (_getrosten Muthes_). "But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;--then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting rawhide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civilized or even to rational men. "Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life,--some generation-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. "All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second Volume, _On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume, as treating practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work on _Clothes_, and is already in a state of forwardness." And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes! CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS. Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations on _Symbols_. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of "Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" and how "Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth." Let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks:-- "The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our Professor, "who shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity. "Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame (_Schaam_) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing Press with its Newspapers: _du Himmel_! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose? "Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. "For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched: He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a 'Gospel of Freedom,' which he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real." "Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one huge Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priest-ridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism smothers him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other way? "Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. In which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by calculated or calculable 'Motives'? What make ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillaise Hymns, and Reigns of Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been in _Love_? Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time, and the medicating virtue of Nature." "Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in from the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike? "Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round which the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself? Intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and generally all national or other sectarian Costumes and Customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there glimmers something of a Divine Idea; as through military Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, of Right. Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. "Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to Sense, let but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the Time-Figure (_Zeitbild_)! Then is it fit that men unite there; and worship together before such Symbol; and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. "Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art: in them (if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _Iliads_, and the like, have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. But nobler than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men; for what other Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. "Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognize a present God, and worship the Same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious Symbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could worse or better body forth the Godlike: some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought not yet reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. "But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them; and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, their decline. "Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but a piece of gilt wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little price.' A right Conjurer might I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held. "Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it. "When, as the last English Coronation [*] I was preparing," concludes this wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little assistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation?" * That of George IV.--ED. CHAPTER IV. HELOTAGE. At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag _Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place here. Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _Institute_ of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed:-- "Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. "A second man I honor, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavor are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. "Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness." And again: "It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him; and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?" Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The old Spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most thickly peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let Governments think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep alive?" "And yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!" "True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor elsewhere: "too crowded indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are they?--Preserving their Game!" CHAPTER V. THE PHOENIX. Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these Writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! He says expressly: "For the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond two days." "Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is no longer any Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but only of a common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get, and cries 'Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us alone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and sleep! "Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!" We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practical men in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that such wonders are visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a "deceased or expiring Society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. "What, for example," says he, "is the universally arrogated Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? For some half-century, it has been the thing you name 'Independence.' Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?" But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of Nature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "what can follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. "Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have given the quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet time." Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World," says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once _divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watch-coat for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but Job's-news to the humane reader. "Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best." Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded to this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a "huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were raining down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those "unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_ pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a ghastly affectation of life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. "Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there is Society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows." Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said: "_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le passe, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:-- "When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. "For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?" Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country. CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES. As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head:-- "Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I discern no special connection with wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with, than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. "For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE; is not this thy brother ALIVE? 'There is but one temple in the world,' says Novalis, 'and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body.' "On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it. "The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty, or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others. "Did not King _Toomtabard_, or, in other words, John Baliol, reign long over Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the 'Toom Tabard' (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honors! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth. "Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilized Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the Prison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. Oh, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!" To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of "Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject. For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe! CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS. For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries," there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind element come tones of a melodious Death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birth-song. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general:-- "In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. "Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: 'Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable Glass bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any Post-bag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time: there has a Hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, which must be darned up again!' "Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe. "If now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?--Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton! It was Tubal-cain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine. "Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. As palpable lifestreams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal _Communion of Saints_, wide as the World itself, and as the History of the World. "Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and roll onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance: for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an English Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower: the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer." Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles:-- "Remark, not without surprise," says Teufelsdrockh, "how all high Titles of Honor come hitherto from Fighting. Your _Herzog_ (Duke, _Dux_) is Leader of Armies; your Earl (_Jarl_) is Strong Man; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? "The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity is that of King. _Konig_ (King), anciently _Konning_, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be fitly entitled King." "Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it written by Theologians: a King rules by divine right. He carries in him an authority from God, or man will never give it him. Can I choose my own King? I can choose my own King Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him: but he who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as conceivable." The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous conflict of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable Film dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. And then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his own! It is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration. Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the Elective Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: "Satisfy yourselves," he says, "by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether FREEDOM, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the British constitution, even slightly?--He says, under another figure: "But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, To rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than the Representative Machine will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name of Free, 'when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental festoons.'"--Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of such an assertion as this: "The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!" Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as was our hest, for "organic filaments," we ask, may not this, touching "Hero-worship," be of the number? It seems of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes:-- "True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of Reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the Higher does he feel himself exalted. "Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even in this: that man had forever cast away Fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial Reverence, which is the higher and highest? "Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox _Hero-worship_. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest time may stand secure." Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what Teufelsdrockh, is looking at? He exclaims, "Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. "But if such things," continues he, "were done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green? If, in the most parched season of Man's History, in the most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was at best but a scientific _Hortus Siccus_, bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for when Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? Know that there is in man a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show the dullest clodpoll, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship." Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:-- "There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Prophecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou listen, and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some barefooted, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?" Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve:-- "But there is no Religion?" reiterates the Professor. "Fool! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine Church-_Homiletic_ lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay fractions even of a _Liturgy_ could I point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the Common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and name him--Goethe. "But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred _Miserere_; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together." CHAPTER VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed. Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours:-- "Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or shut Turnpike? "'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?' ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. "Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of meaning. "'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be? "They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. "Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;' this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane? "System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through AEons of AEons. "We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream. "Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental? "Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realized. "Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth rind. "But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. "Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were _Anywhen_, straightway to be _Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time! "Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both _are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting Now. "And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with God!--know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. "That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith? Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practices on us. "Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. "Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done. "Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. "Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. "O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. "So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 'We _are such stuff_ As Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep!'" CHAPTER IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE. Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have many British Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man; through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space themselves! And now does the spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in _Faust_,-- "'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by; " or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, Shakespeare,-- "And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind;" begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen to be inevitable? Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us! Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all? Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout; the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according to ability. New laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be built; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable even for the halt? Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer by our side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. To these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some word of encouragement be said. Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work? Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it? In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the Clothes-Screen, as through a magical _Pierre-Pertuis_, thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,--then art thou profited beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor; nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes; and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worth-ships) are properly a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In which case, must it not also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the Vestures which _it_ has to fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and spun? But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulterior or Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never so remotely on that promised Volume of the _Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft_ (Newbirth of Society),--we humbly suggest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the very threshold of his Science; nothing even of those "architectural ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth: we mean, Dandies and Tailors. In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following Chapters. CHAPTER X. THE DANDIACAL BODY. First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdrockh would call a "Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with him; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his Idea an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We called him a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_, to the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character? And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen of him preserved in spirits! Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. It is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which:-- "In these distracted times," writes he, "when the Religious Principle, driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organization,--into how many strange shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. "Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that country, one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject, is that of the _Dandies_; concerning which, what little information I have been able to procure may fitly stand here. "It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally without sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided (_schweben_). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough; also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, _Self-worship_; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mahomet, and others, strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. "For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken _Lingua-franca_, or English-French); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. "They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is named _Almack's_, a word of uncertain etymology. They worship principally by night; and have their High-priests and High-priestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call _Fashionable Novels_: however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others not. "Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured myself some samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. In vain that I summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_), and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel-piping there; to which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _Delirium Tremens_, and a melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a general breaking up of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly forbore. Was there some miracle at work here; like those Fire-balls, and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, have also more than once scared back the Alien? Be this as it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest I could give of a Sect too singular to be omitted. "Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another _Fashionable Novel_. But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. Round one of those Book-packages, which the _Stillschweigen'sche Buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets (_Maculatur-blatter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mahometan reverence even for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name _Magazine_, appears something like a Dissertation on this very subject of _Fashionable Novels_! It sets out, indeed, chiefly from a Secular point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _Pelham_, who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the Religious physiognomy and physiology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby I have endeavored to profit. Nay, in one passage selected from the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what appears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the German world; therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally from the Original:-- ARTICLES OF FAITH. '1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. '2. The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly rolled. '3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. '4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. '5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings. '6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. '7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips.' "All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. "In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also in the main Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has published Books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. The members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various places of establishment: in England they are generally called the _Drudge_ Sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the _White Negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, the _Ragged-Beggar_ Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them entitled _Hallanshakers_, or the _Stook of Duds_ Sect; any individual communicant is named _Stook of Duds_ (that is, Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as _Bogtrotters, Redshanks, Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor-Slaves_: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what seems indubitable, that the original Sect is that of the _Poor-Slaves_; whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. "The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution: we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to conjecture. "Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed be found in the present Volume; for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Language it did not seem describable. Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colors; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, like a university-cap, with what view is unknown. "The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, or Russian origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they are liable to out-breakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. "In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters); a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed, with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _Point_, into the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the victual _Potatoes-and-Point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and _Potheen_, which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as the English _Blue-Ruin_, and the Scotch _Whiskey_, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely consumed. "An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of _The late John Bernard_, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall look into. "First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the original: POOR-SLAVE HOUSEHOLD. "'The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments; the one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken Board, which was scooped out in the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with.' The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. "But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Penman himself has his abode:-- DANDIACAL HOUSEHOLD. "'A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small size monopolize the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bath-room. Folding-doors in the background.--Enter the Author,' our Theogonist in person, 'obsequiously preceded by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron.' "Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of English national Existence; striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses. "In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion of Drudges_, as there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet affects to look down on Drudgism: but perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant. "To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day part England between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will form one body: the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan; sweeping up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, refractory Pot-wallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening: they are hollow Cones that boil up from the infinite Deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling in, daily the empire of the two Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is out-deluged! "Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the 'Machinery of Society'), with batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive; one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state: till your whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there bottled up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's thunder-peal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon.--Or better still, I might liken"-- Oh, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the more. We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting out Religion: but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _Dandiacal Body_! Or was there something of intended satire; is the Professor and Seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we should have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a Teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean while, if satire were actually intended, the case is little better. There are not wanting men who will answer: Does your Professor take us for simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. CHAPTER XI. TAILORS. Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been sufficiently drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as expressed in the concluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. Let him speak his own last words, in his own way:-- "Upwards of a century," says he, "must elapse, and still the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering Humanity be closed. "If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call any one a _Schneider_ (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet _schneidermassig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a _Tailor's-Melancholy_, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I know not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his _Schneider mit dem Panier_? Why of Shakspeare, in his _Taming of the Shrew_, and elsewhere? Does it not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both!' Did not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact. "Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, whether it is disputable or not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the sartorius? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to perform? Can he not arrest for debt? Is he not in most countries a taxpaying animal? "To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which conviction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated towards a higher Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light: that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that 'he snatched the Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings:' but which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that snatches? For, looking away from individual cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic Dominion,--is not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organized into Polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating Mankind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?--What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods for men; brought them down to us; and raised us up to them?' "And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will recognize that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God. "As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone! "Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one was 'Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;' and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors become forever venerable. "Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion may here find its conclusion." CHAPTER XII. FAREWELL. So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the Editor desire? If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter? Of Professor Teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. Who will not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? Regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his mad humors British Criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our Literary men! As it might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his own English purity? Even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the "Time-Prince," or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome. Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone, Literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this. A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: "How were Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man." And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: "It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Ghoul, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream." But what of the awe-struck Wakeful who find it a Reality? Should not these unite; since even an authentic Spectre is not visible to Two?--In which case were this Enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous Pitch-pan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the Night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's bosom!--We say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who knows what mad Hopes this man may harbor? Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago, the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious Epistle; wherein much is said about the "Population-Institute;" much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph:-- "_Ew. Wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the Public Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. "It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the _Gans_ or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: _Es geht an_ (It is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew. Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the _Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.-- "To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening said merely: 'Here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them make a false application.' Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time! "Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by Authority; where much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_ itself, is thought to be reposited." Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also! Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdrockh, is actually in London! Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, _fare-well_! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a state of quarrel? APPENDIX. This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the title, "_Testimonies of Authors_," some straggle of real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (_Author's Note, of_ 1868.) TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER. _Taster to Bookseller_.--"The Author of _Teufelsdrockh_ is a person of talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it would take with the public seems doubtful. For a _jeu d'esprit_ of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy; and reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on tables and answered that he was learning to be lively. _Is_ the work a translation?" _Bookseller to Editor_.--"Allow me to say that such a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar: I now enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_Ms. (penes nos), London, 17th September_, 1831. II. CRITIC OF THE SUN. "_Fraser's Magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. "_Sartor Resartus_ is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigor. But what does the writer mean by 'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally intelligible? We quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the _Sartor Resartus_; which may be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way: indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning: 'The fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' Here is a"...--_Sun Newspaper, 1st April_, 1834. III. NORTH--AMERICAN REVIEWER. ... "After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no such persons as Professors Teufelsdrockh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the 'present Editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the Philosophy of Clothes; and that the _Sartor Resartus_ is the only treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed Editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in plain English, a _hum_. "Without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant character. The whole German press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have been printed, seems to be under the control of _Stillschweigen and Co. _--Silence and Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are making so great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London! How happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed, close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present Editor' upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of _Weissnichtwo_--'Know-not-where'--at which place the work is supposed to have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes, maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. We suspect that the city of _Know-not-where_ might be called, with at least as much propriety, _Nobody-knows-where_, and is to be found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of _Entepfuhl_--'Duck-pond'--where the supposed Author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of _Hinterschlag_, where he had his education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. The names of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh? The supposed bearer of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and through all manner of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find 'the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor Heuschrecke--'Grasshopper'--though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.' The same may be said of _Blumine_--'Flower-Goddess'--the heroine of the fable; and so of the rest. "In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended German original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of Clothes, or dress. _Clothes, their Origin and Influence_, is the title of the supposed German treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh and the rather odd name of _Sartor Resartus_--the Tailor Patched--which the present Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, which Teufelsdrockh, is supposed to have professed at the university of Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and in the form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men end maddens--_virginibus puerisque_--and calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they will--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humor. If the last improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should have found their way to England, the author, we think, would stand some chance of being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to say. In the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. "The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the German language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a great familiarity with German literature; and we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite character."--_North-American Review, No. 89, October_, 1835. IV. NEW ENGLAND EDITORS. "The Editors have been induced, by the expressed desire of many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets [*] in which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer date. * _Fraser's_ (London) _Magazine_, 1833-34. "The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will have a sudden and general popularity. They will not undertake, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which the Author delights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all! But we will venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, and cover a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, no book has been published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The Author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. "But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age--we had almost said, of the hour--in which we live; exhibiting in the most just and novel light the present aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gayety the Writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue."--_Preface to Sartor Resartus: Boston_, 1835, 1837. SUNT, FUERUNT VEL FUERE. LONDON, 30th June, 1838. Transcriber's Note: All spelling and punctuation was kept as in the printed text. Italicized phrases are delimited by _underscores_. Footnotes (there are only four) have been placed at the ends of the paragraphs referencing them. 
34092	----	Transcriber's Notes: For the text version, the capitalization on the title page was adjusted to attempt to preserve relative importance of the text on the page. Chapter descriptions in the Table of Contents were changed from all caps to Title Case. Small caps elsewhere were converted to all caps. Gesperrt (spaced out lettering), used in various places in the front matter, and for chapter numbers, was not retained. Words in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. Punctuation varies widely and was kept as printed; most other inconsistencies were kept as printed. Inconsistencies in spelling retained, along with the few corrections made, are listed at the end of this text. The original plates do not have captions. To make it easier for the reader to check the text against the description of the figures, the contents of each "List of Illustrations" entry has been copied into the illustration tag for the corresponding plate. Except for the frontispiece (Pl. 1), the captions for the plates have been moved from the original mid-paragraph placement to between paragraphs. [Illustration: Pl. 1. Figure 1. Head-dress of Lady Ardene. 2. A kind of hat. 3. Steeple head-dress. 4, 6. Head-dresses of Lady Rolestone. 5. Heart-shaped head-dresses. 7, 8. Head-dresses of the time of Henry VIII. 9, 11. Hats of the time of George II. 10. Nithsdale hood. 12. Hat of the time of William III. 13, 14. Hats of the time of Charles I. 15, 16, 17. Head-dresses of 1798. 18. Head-dress of 1700. 19. Head-dress of the time of Henry VI. 20. Combination of figs. 7, 8. 21, 22. Hats for ladies in 1786. 23. Style of 1785. 24, 25, 26. Style of 1782. ] DRESS AS A FINE ART. WITH SUGGESTIONS ON CHILDREN'S DRESS. By MRS. MERRIFIELD. With an Introduction on HEAD DRESS. By Prof. Fairholt. BOSTON: JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY. CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON. 1854. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by JOHN P. JEWETT & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND, WOOD CUT AND BOOK PRINTER, CORNHILL, BOSTON. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. PREFACE. The fact that we derive our styles of dress from the same source as the English, and that the work of Mrs. Merrifield has been circulated among the forty thousand subscribers of the "London Art Journal," might perhaps be deemed sufficient apology for offering it in its present form to the American public. It has received the unqualified approbation of the best publications in this country;--entire chapters having been copied into the periodicals of the day; this added to the above, and also to the high standing of the author, has induced the publishers to offer it to the great reading public of this country. The chapter on Head-dresses, which commences the book, is of much interest in itself, and affords an explanation of many of the descriptions in the body of the work. The closing chapter, on Children's Dress, by Mrs. Merrifield, will be deemed of more value by most persons than the cost of the entire work. A few verbal alterations only have been made in the original;--the good sense of every reader will enable him to understand the local allusions, and where they belong to England alone, to make the application. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. Description of Head-Dresses, 1 CHAPTER II. Dress, as a Fine Art, 10 CHAPTER III. The Head, 53 CHAPTER IV. The Dress, 61 CHAPTER V. The Feet, 73 CHAPTER VI. Remarks on Particular Costumes, 84 CHAPTER VII. Ornament--Economy, 95 CHAPTER VIII. Some Thoughts on Children's Dress.--By Mrs. Merrifield, 121 ILLUSTRATIONS. PLATE I. Figure 1. Head-dress of Lady Ardene. 2. A kind of hat. 3. Steeple head-dress. 4, 6. Head-dresses of Lady Rolestone. 5. Heart-shaped head-dresses. 7, 8. Head-dresses of the time of Henry VIII. 9, 11. Hats of the time of George II. 10. Nithsdale hood. 12. Hat of the time of William III. 13, 14. Hats of the time of Charles I. 15, 16, 17. Head-dresses of 1798. 18. Head-dress of 1700. 19. Head-dress of the time of Henry VI. 20. Combination of figs. 7, 8. 21, 22. Hats for ladies in 1786. 23. Style of 1785. 24, 25, 26. Style of 1782. PLATE II. Figure 27. Style of 1782. 28, 30. Head-dress of 1790. 29. Head-dress of the French peasantry. 31. Fashion of 1791. 32, 33. Fashion of 1789. 36. Head-dress of the commencement of the present century. 35. English housemaid. 37. Gigot sleeves, with cloak worn over. 38. From a picture in the Louvre. PLATE III. Figure 39. Dress, with short waist and sleeves. 41. Dress of the mother of Henry IV. 40. Dress of Henrietta Maria. 42. From the "Illustrated London News." PLATE IV. Figures 43, 44. From the plates of Sommaering, shows the waist of the Venus of antiquity. 45, 46. The waist of a modern lady, from the above. 49. From the "London News." 50. Woman of Mitylene. 53. Algerine woman. 54. The archon's wife. PLATE V. Figure 47. Athenian peasant. 48. Shepherdess of Arcadia. 51. Athenian woman. 52. French costume of the tenth century. 62. Lady of the time of Henry V. PLATE VI. Figure 55. After Parmegiano. 56. Titian's daughter. 57. Lady Harrington. 59. Roman peasant. 61. Gigot sleeves. PLATE VII. Figure 63. From Bonnard's Costumes. 64. Sancta Victoria. 65. Anne, Countess of Chesterfield, from Vandyck. 67. Woman of Markinitza. PLATE VIII. Figure 60. Lady Lucy Percy, from Vandyck. 69, 70. By Jules David, in "Le Moniteur de la Mode." 68. The hoop, after Hogarth. PLATE IX. Figure 66. From Rubens's "Descent from the Cross." 71. From a drawing by Gainsborough. 72. Woman of Myconia. 74. Queen Anne. PLATE X. Figure 73. Charlotte de la Tremouille. 75. After Gainsborough. 76. After Gainsborough. 77. Costume of Mrs. Bloomer. PLATE XI. Figure 78. From the embroidery on fig. 47, pl. 5. 79. From the sleeve of the same dress, above. 80. From the sleeve of the pelisse. 81. The pattern embroidered from the waist to the skirt of the dress, fig. 51, pl. 5. 82. The border of the shawl, fig. 51. 83. Sleeve of the same, figure 51. 84. Design on the apron, fig. 48, pl. 5. 85. From the border of the same dress, fig. 48. PLATE XII. Figure 86. Pattern round the hem of the long under dress, fig. 51, pl. 5. 87, 88. Borders of shawls. 89. Infant's dress, exhibited at the World's Fair in London. 90, 91. From "Le Moniteur de la Mode," by Jules David and Réville, published at Paris, London, New York, and St. Petersburg. CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF HEAD-DRESSES. Fig. 1 is a front view of a head-dress of Lady Arderne, (who died about the middle of the fifteenth century.) The caul of the head-dress is richly embroidered, the veil above being supported by wires, in the shape of a heart, with double lappets behind the head, which are sometimes transparent, as if made of gauze. Such gauze veils, or rather coverings for the head-dress, are frequently seen in the miniatures of MSS. Figs. 2, 3, are here selected from the royal MS. In Fig. 3, the steeple head-dress of the lady is entirely covered by a thin veil of gauze, which hangs from its summit, and projects over her face. Fig. 2 has a sort of hat, widening from its base, and made of cloth of gold, richly set with stones. Such jewelled head-dresses are represented on the heads of noble ladies, and are frequently ornamented in the most beautiful manner, with stones of various tints. The slab to the memory of John Rolestone, Esq., sometime Lord of Swarston, and Sicili, his wife, in Swarkstone Church, Derbyshire, who died in 1482, gives the head-dress of the said Sicili as represented in Fig. 6. It is a simple cap, radiating in gores over the head, having a knob in its centre and a close falling veil of cloth affixed round the back. It seems to have been constructed as much for comfort as for show: the same remark may be applied to Fig. 4, which certainly cannot be recommended for its beauty, being a stunted cone, with a back veil closely fitting about the neck, and very sparingly ornamented; it was worn by Mary, wife of John Rolestone, who died in 1485. These may both have been plain country ladies, far removed from London, and little troubled with its fashionable freaks. Fig. 5 represents the fashionable head-dress of the last days of the house of York. It has been termed the heart-shaped head-dress, from the appearance it presents when viewed in front, which resembles that of a heart, and sometimes a crescent. It is made of black silk or velvet, ornamented with gold studs, and having a jewel over the forehead. It has a long band or lappet, such as the gentlemen then wore affixed to their hats. Figs. 7 and 8 represent head-dresses worn in the time of Henry VIII. These are a sort of cap, which seem to combine coverchief and hood. Fig. 7 was at this time the extreme of fashion. It is edged with lace, and ornamented with jewelry, and has altogether a look of utter unmeaningness and confusion of form. Fig. 8 has a hood easier of comprehension, but no whit better in point of elegance than her predecessors; it fits the head closely, having pendent jewels round the bottom and crossing the brow. Figs. 9 and 11 are hats of a very simple style, such as were worn during the reign of George II., when an affected simplicity, or milk-maiden look, was coveted by the ladies, both high and low. The hood worn by Fig. 10 was a complete envelope for the head, and was used in riding, or travelling, as well as in walking in the parks. These were called Nithsdales, because Lady Nithsdale covered her husband's face with one of them, after dressing him in her clothes, and thus disguised he escaped from the Tower. Fig. 12 represents a hat worn during the reign of William III. by a damsel who was crying, "Fair cherries, at sixpence a pound!" It is of straw, with a ribbon tied around it in a simple and tasteful manner; the hat is altogether a light and graceful affair, and its want of obtrusiveness is perhaps its chief recommendation. Figs. 13 and 14 are hats such as were worn by citizens and their wives during the reigns of James and Charles I. Figs. 15, 16, 17, were such head-dresses as were in vogue in 1798. Fig. 15 was of a deep orange color, with bands of dark chocolate brown; a bunch of scarlet tufts came over the forehead, and it was held on the head by a kerchief of white muslin tied beneath the chin. Fig. 16 is a straw bonnet, the crown decorated with red perpendicular stripes, the front over the face plain, and a row of laurel leaves surrounds the head; a lavender-colored tie secures it under the chin. Bonnets somewhat similar to those now worn were fashionable two years previous to this; yet a small, low-crowned hat, like the one in Fig. 17, was as much patronized as any head-dress had ever been. Cocked hats, such as is represented in Fig. 18, were worn by the gentlemen in the last part of the year 1700. Fig. 19 represents one of the head-dresses worn during the reign of Henry VI. It is a combination of coverchief and turban. Fig. 20 is a combination of the head-dress of Fig. 7 with the lappeted hood of Fig. 8. In 1786, a very large-brimmed hat became fashionable with the ladies, and continued in vogue for the next two years; an idea of the back view of it is given in Fig. 21, and a front view in Fig. 22. It was decorated with triple feathers, and a broad band of ribbon was tied in a bow behind, and allowed to stream down the back. The elegance of turn which the brim of such a hat afforded was completely overdone by the enormity of its proportion; and the shelter it gave the face can now be considered as the only recommendation of this fashion. The hat worn by Fig. 23 was the style of 1785. Feathers were then much in favor, and a poet of the time writes of the ladies,-- "No longer they hunt after ribbons and lace; _Undertakers_ have got in the milliner's place; With hands sacrilegious they've plundered the dead, And transferred the gay plumes from the hearse to the head." [Illustration: Pl. 2. Figure 27. Style of 1782. 28, 30. Head-dress of 1790. 29. Head-dress of the French peasantry. 31. Fashion of 1791. 32, 33. Fashion of 1789. 36. Head-dress of the commencement of the present century. 35. English housemaid. 37. Gigot sleeves, with cloak worn over. 38. From a picture in the Louvre. ] Fig. 24 represents the head-dress worn in 1782. At no period in the history of the world was any thing more absurd in head-dress than the one here depicted. The body of this erection was formed of tow, over which the hair was turned, and false hair added in great curls; bobs and ties, powdered to profusion, then hung all over with vulgarly large rows of pearls, or glass beads, fit only to decorate a chandelier; flowers as obtrusive were stuck about this heap of finery, which was surmounted by broad silken bands and great ostrich feathers, until the head-dress of a lady added three feet to her stature, and "the male sex," to use the words of the "Spectator," "became suddenly dwarfed beside her." To effect this, much time and trouble were wasted, and great personal annoyance was suffered. Heads, when properly dressed, "kept for three weeks," as the barbers quaintly phrased it; that they would not really "keep" longer, may be seen by the many receipts they gave for the destruction of insects, which bred in the flour and pomatum so liberally bestowed upon them. Fig. 25 is another fashionable outdoor head-dress. Fig. 26 represents one of the hats invented to cover the head when full dressed. It is as extravagant as the head-dresses. It is a large but light compound of gauze, wire, ribbons, and flowers, sloping over the forehead, and sheltering the head entirely by its immensity. Fig. 27 shows how immensely globular the head of a lady had become; it swells all around like a huge pumpkin, and curls of a corresponding size aid in the caricature which now passed as fashionable taste. As if this were not load enough for the fair shoulders of the softer sex, it is swathed with a huge veil or scarf, giving the wearer an exceedingly top-heavy look. In 1790, the ladies appeared in hats similar to those worn by the gentlemen in 1792; these are represented in Figs. 28 and 30. They were gayly decorated with gold strings, and tassels, crossed and recrossed over the crown. The brims were broad, raised at the sides, and pointed over the face in a manner not inelegant. Fig. 29 has the tall, ugly bonnet, copied from the French peasantry; a long gauze border is attached to the edges, which hangs like a veil around the face, and partially conceals it. A hat of a very piquant character was adopted by the ladies in 1791, of which a specimen is given in Fig. 31. It is decorated with bows, and a large feather nods not ungracefully over the crown from behind. A person with good face and figure must have looked becomingly beneath it. Fig. 32 is an example of the bad taste which still peeped forth. It is one of the most fashionable head-dresses worn in 1789, and is the back view of a lady's head, surmounted by a very small cap or hat, puffed round with ribbon; the hair is arranged in a long, straight bunch down the neck, where it is tied by a ribbon, and flows in curls beneath; long curls repose one on each shoulder, while the hair at the sides of the head is frizzed out on each side in a most fantastic form. The hat of Fig. 33, shaped like a chimney pot, and decorated with small tufts of ribbon, and larger bows, which fitted on a lady's head like the cover on a canister, was viewed with "marvellous favor" by many a fair eye, in the year 1789. It was sometimes bordered with lace, as in Fig. 29, thus hiding the entire head, and considerably enhancing its ugliness. CHAPTER II. DRESS, AS A FINE ART. In a state so highly civilized as that in which we live, the art of dress has become extremely complicated. That it is an art to set off our persons to the greatest advantage must be generally admitted, and we think it is one which, under certain conditions, may be studied by the most scrupulous. An art implies skill and dexterity in setting off or employing the gifts of nature to the greatest advantage, and we are surely not wrong in laying it down as a general principle, that every one may endeavor to set off or improve his or her personal appearance, provided that, in doing so, the party is guilty of no deception. As this proposition may be liable to some misconstruction, we will endeavor to explain our meaning. In the first place, the principle is acted upon by all who study cleanliness and neatness, which are universally considered as positive duties, that are not only conducive to our own comfort, but that society has a right to expect from us. Again: the rules of society require that to a certain extent we should adopt those forms of dress which are in common use, but our own judgment should be exercised in adapting these forms to our individual proportions, complexions, ages, and stations in society. In accomplishing this object, the most perfect honesty and sincerity of purpose may be observed. No deception is to be practised, no artifice employed, beyond that which is exercised by the painter, who arranges his subjects in the most pleasing forms, and who selects colors which harmonize with each other; and by the manufacturer, who studies pleasing combinations of lines and colors. We exercise taste in the decoration and arrangement of our apartments and in our furniture, and we are equally at liberty to do so with regard to our dress; but we know that taste is not an instinctive perception of the beautiful and agreeable, but is founded upon the observance of certain laws of nature. When we conform to these laws, the result is pleasing and satisfactory; when we offend against them, the contrary effect takes place. Our persons change with our years; the child passes into youth, the youth into maturity, maturity changes into old age. Every period of life has its peculiar external characteristics, its pleasures, its pains, and its pursuits. The art of dress consists in properly adapting our clothing to these changes. We violate the laws of nature when we seek to repair the ravages of time on our complexions by paint, when we substitute false hair for that which age has thinned or blanched, or conceal the change by dyeing our own gray hair; when we pad our dress to conceal that one shoulder is larger than the other. To do either is not only bad taste, but it is a positive breach of sincerity. It is bad taste, because the means we have resorted to are contrary to the laws of nature. The application of paint to the skin produces an effect so different from the bloom of youth, that it can only deceive an unpractised eye. It is the same with the hair: there is such a want of harmony between false hair and the face which it surrounds, especially when that face bears the marks of age, and the color of the hair denotes youth, that the effect is unpleasing in the extreme. Deception of this kind, therefore, does not answer the end which it had in view; it deceives nobody but the unfortunate perpetrator of the would-be deceit. It is about as senseless a proceeding as that of the goose in the story, who, when pursued by the fox, thrust her head into a hedge, and thought that, because she could no longer see the fox, the fox could not see her. But in a moral point of view it is worse than silly; it is adopted with a view to deceive; it is _acting a lie_ to all intents and purposes, and it ought to be held in the same kind of detestation as falsehood with the tongue. Zimmerman has an aphorism which is applicable to this case--"Those who conceal their age do not conceal their folly." The weak and vain, who hope to conceal their age by paint and false hair, are, however, morally less culpable than another class of dissemblers, inasmuch as the deception practised by the first is so palpable that it really deceives no one. With regard to the other class of dissemblers, we feel some difficulty in approaching a subject of so much delicacy. Yet, as we have stated that we are at liberty to improve our natural appearance by well-adapted dress, we think it our duty to speak out, lest we should be considered as in any way countenancing deception. We allude to those physical defects induced by disease, which are frequently united to great beauty of countenance, and which are sometimes so carefully concealed by the dress, that they are only discovered after marriage. Having thus, we hope, established the innocence of our motives, we shall proceed to mention the legitimate means by which the personal appearance may be improved by the study of the art of dress. Fashion in dress is usually dictated by caprice or accident, or by the desire of novelty. It is never, we believe, based upon the study of the figure. It is somewhat singular that while every lady thinks herself at liberty to wear any textile fabric or any color she pleases, she considers herself bound to adopt the form and style of dress which the fashion of the day has rendered popular. The despotism of fashion is limited to _form_, but _color_ is free. We have shown, in another essay, (see closing chapter,) what licentiousness this freedom in the adoption and mixture of colors too frequently induces. We have also shown that the colors worn by ladies should be those which contrast or harmonize best with their individual complexions, and we have endeavored to make the selection of suitable colors less difficult by means of a few general rules founded upon the laws of harmony and contrast of colors. In the present essay, we propose to offer some general observations on form in dress. The subject is, however, both difficult and complicated, and as it is easier to condemn than to improve or perfect, we shall more frequently indicate what fashions should not be adopted, than recommend others to the patronage of our readers. The immediate objects of dress are twofold--namely, decency and warmth; but so many minor considerations are suffered to influence us in choosing our habiliments, that these primary objects are too frequently kept out of sight. Dress should be not only adapted to the climate, it should also be light in weight, should yield to the movements of the body, and should be easily put on or removed. It should also be adapted to the station in society, and to the age, of the individual. These are the essential conditions; yet in practice how frequently are they overlooked; in fact, how seldom are they observed! Next in importance are general elegance of form, harmony in the arrangement and selection of the colors, and special adaptation in form and color to the person of the individual. To these objects we purpose directing the attention of the reader. It is impossible, within the limits we have prescribed ourselves, to enter into the subject of dress minutely; we can only deal with it generally, and lay down certain broad principles for our guidance. If these are observed, there is still a wide margin left for fancy and fashion. These may find scope in trimmings and embroidery; the application of which, however, must also be regulated by good taste and knowledge. The physical variety in the human race is infinite; so are the gradations and combinations of color; yet we expect a few forms of dress to suit every age and complexion! Instead of the beautiful, the graceful, and the becoming, what are the attractions offered by the dress makers? What are the terms used to invite the notice of customers? Novelty and distinction. The shops are "Magasins de Nouveautés," the goods are "distingués," "recherchés," "nouveaux," "the last fashion." The new fashions are exhibited on the elegant person of one of the dress maker's assistants, who is selected for this purpose, and are adopted by the purchaser without reflecting how much of the attraction of the dress is to be ascribed to the fine figure of the wearer, how much to the beauty of the dress, or whether it will look equally well on herself. So the fashion is set, and then it is followed by others, until at last it becomes singular not to adopt some modification of it, although the extreme may be avoided. The best dressers are generally those who follow the fashions at a great distance. Fashion is the only tyrant against whom modern civilization has not carried on a crusade, and its power is still as unlimited and despotic as it ever was. From its dictates there is no appeal; health and decency are alike offered up at the shrine of this Moloch. At its command its votaries melt under fur boas in the dog days, and freeze with bare necks and arms, in lace dresses and satin shoes, in January. Then, such is its caprice, that no sooner does a fashion become general, than, let its merits or beauties be ever so great, it is changed for one which perhaps has nothing but its novelty to recommend it. Like the bed of Procrustes, fashions are compelled to suit every one. The same fashion is adopted by the tall and the short, the stout and the slender, the old and the young, with what effect we have daily opportunities of observing. Yet, with all its vagaries, fashion is extremely aristocratic in its tendencies. Every change emanates from the highest circles, who reject it when it has descended to the vulgar. No new form of dress was ever successful which did not originate among the aristocracy. From the ladies of the court, the fashions descend through all the ranks of society, until they at last die a natural death among the cast-off clothes of the housemaid. Fig. 35. Had the Bloomer costume, which has obtained so much notoriety, been introduced by a tall and graceful scion of the aristocracy, either of rank or talent, instead of being at first adopted by the middle ranks, it might have met with better success. We have seen that Jenny Lind could introduce a new fashion of wearing the hair, and a new form of hat or bonnet, and Mme. Sontag a cap which bears her name. But it was against all precedent to admit and follow a fashion, let its merits be ever so great, that emanated from the stronghold of democracy. We are content to adopt the greatest absurdities in dress when they are brought from Paris, or recommended by a French name; but American fashions have no chance of success in aristocratic England. It is beginning at the wrong end. The eccentricities of fashion are so great that they would appear incredible if we had not ocular evidence of their prevalence in the portraits which still exist. At one period we read of horned head-dresses, which were so large and high, that it is said the doors of the palace at Vincennes were obliged to be altered to admit Isabel of Bavaria (queen of Charles VI. of France) and the ladies of her suite. In the reign of Edward IV., the ladies' caps were three quarters of an ell in height, and were covered by pieces of lawn hanging down to the ground, or stretched over a frame till they resembled the wings of a butterfly.[1] At another time the ladies' heads were covered with gold nets, like those worn at the present day. Then, again, the hair, stiffened with powder and pomatum, and surmounted by flowers, feathers, and ribbons, was raised on the top of the head like a tower. Such head-dresses were emphatically called "_têtes_." (See chapter on Head-Dress.) Fig. 36. But to go back no farther than the beginning of the present century, where Mr. Fairholt's interesting work on British Costume terminates, what changes have we to record! The first fashion we remember was that of scanty clothing, when slender figures were so much admired, that many, to whom nature had denied this qualification, left off the under garments necessary for warmth, and fell victims to the colds and consumptions induced by their adoption of this senseless practice. To these succeeded waists so short that the girdles were placed almost under the arms, and as the dresses were worn at that time indecently low in the neck, the body of the dress was almost a myth. Fig. 39. [1] Mr. Planché has shown, in his "History of British Costume," that these head-dresses are the prototypes of those still worn by the women of Normandy. About the same time, the sleeves were so short, and the skirts so curtailed in length, that there was reason to fear that the whole of the drapery might also become a myth. A partial reaction then took place, and the skirts were lengthened without increasing the width of the dresses, the consequence of which was felt in the country, if not in the towns. Then woe to those who had to cross a ditch or a stile! One of two things was inevitable; either the unfortunate lady was thrown to the ground,--and in this case it was no easy matter to rise again,--or her dress was split up. The result depended entirely upon the strength of the materials of which the dress was composed. The next variation, the _gigot_ sleeves, namely, were a positive deformity, inasmuch as they gave an unnatural width to the shoulders--a defect which was further increased by the large collars which fell over them, thus violating one of the first principles of beauty in the female form, which demands that this part of the body should be narrow; breadth of shoulder being one of the distinguishing characteristics of the stronger sex. We remember to have seen an engraving from a portrait, by Lawrence, of the late Lady Blessington, in which the breadth of the shoulders appeared to be at least three quarters of a yard. When a person of low stature, wearing sleeves of this description, was covered with one of the long cloaks, which were made wide at the shoulders to admit the sleeves, and to which was appended a deep and very full cape, the effect was ridiculous, and the outline of the whole mass resembled that of a haycock with a head on the top. Fig. 37. One absurdity generally leads to another; to balance the wide shoulders, the bonnets and caps were made of enormous dimensions, and were decorated with a profusion of ribbons and flowers. So absurd was the whole combination, that, when we meet with a portrait of this period, we can only look on it in the light of a caricature, and wonder that such should ever have been so universal as to be adopted at last by all who wished to avoid singularity. The transition from the broad shoulders and gigot sleeves to the tight sleeves and graceful black scarf was quite refreshing to a tasteful eye. These were a few of the freaks of fashion during the last half century. Had they been quite harmless, we might have considered them as merely ridiculous; but some of them were positively indecent, and others detrimental to health. We grieve especially for the former charge: it is an anomaly for which, considering the modest habits and education of our countrywomen, we find it difficult to account. It is singular that the practice of wearing dresses cut low round the bust should be limited to what is called full dress, and to the higher, and, except in this instance, the more refined classes. Is it to display a beautiful neck and shoulders? No; for in this case it would be confined to those who had beautiful necks and shoulders to display. Is it to obtain the admiration of the other sex? That cannot be; for we believe that men look upon this exposure with unmitigated distaste, and that they are inclined to doubt the modesty of those young ladies who make so profuse a display of their charms. But if objectionable in the young, whose youth and beauty might possibly be deemed some extenuation, it is disgusting in those whose bloom is past, whether their forms are developed with a ripe luxuriance which makes the female figures of Rubens appear in comparison slender and refined, or whether the yellow skin, stretched over the wiry sinews of the neck, remind one of the old women whom some of the Italian masters were accustomed to introduce into their pieces, to enhance, by contrast, the beauty of the principal figures. Every period of life has a style of dress peculiarly appropriate to it, and we maintain that the uncovered bosom so conspicuous in the dissolute reign of Charles II., and from which, indeed, the reign of Charles I. was not, as we learn from the Vandyck portraits, exempt, should be limited, even in its widest extension, to feminine youth, or rather childhood. If the dress be cut low, the bust should be covered after the modest and becoming fashion of the Italian women, whose highly picturesque costume painters are so fond of representing. The white drapery has a peculiarly good effect, placed as it is between the skin and richly-colored bodice. As examples of this style of dress, we may refer to Sir Charles Eastlake's "Pilgrims in Sight of Rome," "The Grape Gatherer of Capri," by Lehmann, and "The Dancing Lesson," by Mr. Uwins, all of which are engraved in the _Art Journal_. Another hint may be borrowed from the Italian costume; we may just allude to it _en passant_. If bodices fitting to the shape must be worn, they should be laced across the front in the Italian fashion. Fig. 38. By this contrivance the dress will suit the figure more perfectly, and as the lace may be lengthened or shortened at pleasure, any degree of tightness may be given, and the bodice may be accommodated to the figure without compressing it. We find by the picture in the Louvre called sometimes "Titian's Mistress" that this costume is at least as old as Titian. We have noticed the changes and transitions of fashion; we must mention one point in which it has continued constant from the time of William Rufus until the present day, and which, since it has entailed years of suffering, and in many instances has caused death, demands our most serious attention. We allude to the pernicious practice of tight lacing, which, as appears from contemporary paintings, was as general on the continent as in England. The savage American Indian changes the shape of the soft and elastic bones of the skull of his infant by compressing it between two boards; the intelligent but prejudiced Chinese suffers the head to grow as nature formed it, but confines the foot of the female to the size of an infant's; while the highly-intellectual and well-informed European lady limits the growth of her waist by the pressure of the stays. When we consider the importance of the organs which suffer by these customs, surely we must acknowledge that the last is the most barbarous practice of the three. We read in the history of France that the war-like Franks had such a dislike to corpulency that they inflicted a fine upon all who could not encircle their waists with a band of a certain length. How far this extraordinary custom may have been influential in introducing the predilection for small waists among the ladies of that country, as well as our own through the Norman conquerors, we cannot determine. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the whole of the upper part of the body, from the waist to the chin, was encased in a cuirass of whalebone, the rigidity of which rendered easy and graceful movement impossible. The portrait of Elizabeth by Zucchero, with its stiff dress and enormous ruff, and which has been so frequently engraved, must be in the memory of all our readers. Stiffness was indeed the characteristic of ladies' dress at this period; the whalebone cuirass, covered with the richest brocaded silks, was united at the waist with the equally stiff vardingale or fardingale, which descended to the feet in the form of a large bell, without a single fold. There is a portrait in the possession of Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, when quite young, in a dress of this kind; and one cannot help pitying the poor girl's rigid confinement in her stiff and uncomfortable dress. Fig. 41 represents Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV., in the fardingale. [Illustration: Pl. 3. Figure 39. Dress, with short waist and sleeves. 41. Dress of the mother of Henry IV. 40. Dress of Henrietta Maria. 42. From the "Illustrated London News." ] With Henrietta Maria dresses cut low in the front, (Fig. 40,) and flowing draperies, as we find them in the Vandyck portraits, came into fashion, but the figure still retained its stiffness around the waist, and has continued to do so through all the gradations and variations in shape and size of the hoop petticoat, and the scanty draperies of a later period, until the present day.[2] [2] The fardingale differed from the hoop in the following particulars: The hoop petticoat was gathered round the waist, while the fardingale was without a fold of any description. The most extraordinary instances we remember to have seen of the fardingale, are in two or three pictures of the Virgin in the Spanish gallery in the Louvre, where the fardingale in which the Virgin is dressed takes the form of an enormous mitre. If the proportions of the figure were generally understood, we should not hear of those deplorable, and in many cases fatal, results of tight lacing which have unfortunately been so numerous. So general has the pernicious practice been in this country, that a medical friend, who is professor of anatomy in a provincial academy, informed us that there was great difficulty in procuring a model whose waist had not been compressed by stays. That this is true of other localities besides that alluded to, may be inferred from a passage in Mr. Hay's lecture to the Society of Arts "On the Geometrical Principles of Beauty," in which he mentions having, for the purpose of verifying his theory, employed "an artist who, having studied the human figure at the life academies on the continent, in London, and in Edinburgh, was well acquainted with the subject," to make a careful drawing of the best living model which could be procured for the purpose. Mr. Hay observes, with reference to this otherwise fine figure, that "the waist has evidently been compressed by the use of stays." In further confirmation of the prevalence of this bad habit, we may refer to Etty's pictures, in which this defect is but too apparent. We fear, from Mr. Planché's extracts, that the evil was perpetuated by the poets and romance writers of the Norman period; and we are sure that the novelists of our own times have much to answer for on this score. Had they not been forever praising "taper waists," tight lacing would have shared the fate of other fashions, and have been banished from all civilized society. Similar blame does not attach to the painter and sculptor. The creations of their invention are modelled upon the true principles of proportion and beauty, and in their works a small waist and foot are always accompanied by a slender form. In the mind of the poet and novelist the same associations may take place: when a writer describes the slender waist or small foot, he probably sees _mentally_ the whole slender figure. The small waist is a _proportionate_ part of the figure of his creation. But there is this difference between the painter and sculptor, and the novelist. The works of the first two address themselves to the eye, and every part of the form is present to the spectator; consequently, as regards form, nothing is left to the imagination. With respect to the poet and novelist, their creations are almost entirely mental ones; their descriptions touch upon a few striking points only, and are seldom so full as to fill up the entire form: much is, therefore, necessarily left to the imagination of the reader. Now, the fashion in which the reader will supply the details left undetermined by the poet and novelist, and fill up their scanty and shadowy outlines, depends entirely upon his knowledge of form; consequently, if this be small, the images which arise in the mind of the reader from the perusal of works of genius are confused and imperfect, and the proportions of one class of forms are assigned to, or mingled with, those of others, without the slightest regard to truth and nature. When we say, therefore, that writers leave much to the imagination, it may too frequently be understood, to the _ignorance_ of the reader; for the imaginations of those acquainted with form and proportion, who generally constitute the minority, always create well-proportioned ideal forms; while the ideal productions of the uneducated, whether expressed by the pencil, the chisel, or the pen, are always ill proportioned and defective. The most efficient method of putting an end to the practice of tight lacing will be, not merely to point out its unhealthiness, and even dangerous consequences, because these, though imminent, are uncertain,--every lady who resorts to the practice hoping that she, individually, may escape the penalty,--but to prove that the practice, so far from adding to the beauty of the figure, actually deteriorates it. This is an effect, not doubtful, like the former case, but an actual and positive fact; and, therefore, it supplies a good and sufficient reason, and one which the most obtuse intellect can comprehend, for avoiding the practice. Young ladies will sometimes, it is said, run the risk of ill health for the sake of the interest that in some cases attaches to "delicate health;" but is there any one who would like to be told that, by tight lacing, she makes her figure not only deformed, but positively ugly? This, however, is the plain unvarnished truth; and, by asserting it, we are striking at the root of the evil. The remedy is easy: give to every young lady a general knowledge of form, and of the principles of beauty as applied to the human frame, and when these are better understood, and acted on, tight lacing will die a natural death. The study of form, on scientific principles, has hitherto been limited entirely to men; and if some women have attained this knowledge, it has been by their own unassisted efforts; that is to say, without the advantages which men derive from lectures and academical studies. In this, as in other acquirements, the pursuit of knowledge, as regards women, is always attended with difficulties. While fully concurring in the propriety of having separate schools for male and female students, we do think that a knowledge of form may be communicated to all persons, and that a young woman will not make the worse wife, or mother, for understanding the economy of the human frame, and for having acquired the power of appreciating its beauties. We fear that there are still some persons whose minds are so contracted as to think that, not only studies of this nature, but even the contemplation of undraped statuary, are derogatory to the delicacy and purity of the female mind; but we are satisfied that the thinking part of the community will approve the course we recommend. Dr. Southwood Smith, who is so honorably distinguished by his endeavors to promote the sanatory condition of the people, strenuously advocates the necessity of giving to all women a knowledge of the structure and functions of the body, with a view to the proper discharge of their duties as mothers. He remarks (Preface to "Philosophy of Health") on this subject, "I look upon that notion of delicacy which would exclude women from knowledge calculated in an extraordinary degree to open, exalt, and purify their minds, and to fit them for the performance of their duties, as alike degrading to those to whom it affects to show respect, and debasing to the mind that entertains it." At the present time, the knowledge of what constitutes true beauty of form is, perhaps, best acquired by the contemplation of good pictures and sculpture. This may not be in the power of every body; casts, however, may be frequently obtained from the best statues; and many of the finest works of painting are rendered familiar to us by engravings. The _Art Journal_ has done much in diffusing a taste for art, by the engravings it contains from statues, and from the fine works of English art in the "Vernon Gallery." Engravings, however, can of course represent a statue in one point of view only; but casts are now so cheap as to be within the reach of all persons. Small models of the "Greek Slave" are not unfrequently offered by the Italian image venders for one shilling; and although these are not sharp enough to draw from, the form is sufficiently correct to study the general proportions of the figure; and as this figure is more upright than statues usually are, it may be found exceedingly useful for the above purpose. One of these casts, or, if possible, a sharper and better cast of a female figure, should be found on the _toilette_ of every young lady who is desirous of obtaining a knowledge of the proportions and beauties of the figure. We believe it will always be found that the beauty of a figure depends not only upon the symmetry of the parts individually, but upon the harmony and proportion of each part to the rest. The varieties of the human form have been classed under the general heads of the broad, the proportionate, and the slender. The first betokens strength; and what beauty soever, of a peculiar kind, it may display in the figure of the Hercules, it is not adapted to set off the charms of the female sex. If, however, each individual part bears a proportionate relation to the whole, the figure will not be without its attraction. It is only when the proportions of two or three of the classes are united in one individual, that the figure becomes ungraceful and remarkable. The athletic--if the term may be applied to females--form of the country girl would appear ridiculous with the small waist, and the white and taper fingers, and small feet of the individuals who come under the denomination of slender forms. The tall and delicate figure would lose its beauty if united to the large and broad hands which pertain to the stronger type. A small waist and foot are as great a blemish to an individual of the broad variety as a large waist and foot are to the slender. "There is a harmony," says Dr. Wampen, "between all the parts in each kind of form, but each integral is only suited to its own kind of form. True beauty consists not only in the harmony of the elements, but in their being suitable to the kind of form." Were this fundamental truth but thoroughly understood, small waists and small feet would be at a discount. When they are recognized _as small_, they have ceased to be beautiful, because they are disproportionate. Where every part of a figure is perfectly proportioned to the rest, no single parts appear either large or small. The ill effects of the stays in a sanatory point of view have been frequently pointed out, and we hope are now understood. It will, therefore, be unnecessary to enlarge on this head. We have asserted that stays are detrimental to beauty of form; we shall now endeavor to show in what particulars. [Illustration: Pl. 4. Figures 43, 44. From the plates of Sommaering, shows the waist of the Venus of antiquity. 45, 46. The waist of a modern lady, from the above. 49. From the "London News." 50. Woman of Mitylene. 53. Algerine woman. 54. The archon's wife. ] The natural form of the part of the trunk which forms the waist is not absolutely cylindrical, but is flattened considerably in front and back, so that the breadth is much greater from side to side than from front to back. This was undoubtedly contrived for wise purposes; yet fashion, with its usual caprice, has interfered with nature, and by promulgating the pernicious error that a rounded form of the waist is more beautiful than the flattened form adopted by nature, has endeavored to effect this change by means of the stays, which force the lower ribs closer together, and so produce the desired form. Nothing can be more ungraceful than the sudden diminution in the size of the waist occasioned by the compression of the ribs, as compared with the gently undulating line of nature; yet, we are sorry to say, nothing is more common. A glance at the cuts, Figs. 43, 44, 45, 46, from the work of Sommæring, will explain our meaning more clearly than words. Fig. 43 represents the natural waist of the Venus of antiquity; Fig. 45, that of a lady of the modern period. The diagrams 44 and 46 show the structure of the ribs of each. It will be seen that, by the pressure of the stays, the arch formed by the lower ribs is entirely closed, and the waist becomes four or five inches smaller than it was intended by nature. Is it any wonder that persons so deformed should have bad health, or that they should produce unhealthy offspring? Is it any wonder that so many young mothers should have to lament the loss of their first born? We have frequently traced tight lacing in connection with this sad event, and we cannot help looking upon it as cause and effect. By way of further illustration, we refer our readers to some of the numerous engravings from statues in the _Art Journal_, which, though very beautiful, are not distinguished by small waists. We may mention, as examples, Bailey's "Graces;" Marshall's "Dancing Girl Reposing;" "The Toilet," by Wickman; "The Bavaria," by Schwanthaler; and "The Psyche," by Theed. There is another effect produced by tight lacing, which is too ungraceful in its results to be overlooked, namely, that a pressure on one part is frequently, from the elasticity of the figure, compensated by an enlargement in another part. It has been frequently urged by inconsiderate persons, that, where there is a tendency to corpulency, stays are necessary to limit exuberant growth, and confine the form within the limits of gentility. We believe that this is entirely a mistake, and that, if the waist be compressed, greater fulness will be perceptible both above and below, just as, when one ties a string tight round the middle of a pillow, it is rendered fuller at each end. With reference to the waist, as to every thing else, the _juste milieu_ is literally the thing to be desired. It has been already observed, that a small waist is beautiful only when it is accompanied by a slender and small figure; but, as the part of the trunk, immediately beneath the arms, is filled with powerful muscles, these, when developed by exercise, impart a breadth to this part of the figure which, by comparison, causes the waist to appear small. A familiar example of this, in the male figure, presents itself in the Hercules, the waist of which appears disproportionately small; yet it is really of the normal size, its apparent smallness being occasioned by the prodigious development of the muscles of the upper part of the body. The true way of diminishing the apparent size of the waist, is, as we have remarked above, by increasing the power of the muscles of the upper part of the frame. This can only be done by exercise; and as the habits of society, as now constituted, preclude the employment of young ladies in household duties, they are obliged to find a substitute for this healthy exertion in calisthenics. There was a time when even the queens of Spain did not disdain to employ their royal hands in making sausages; and to such perfection was this culinary accomplishment carried at one period, that it is upon record that the Emperor Charles V., after his retirement from the cares and dignities of the empire, longed for sausages "of the kind which Queen Juaña, now in glory, used to pride herself in making in the Flemish fashion." (See Mr. Stirling's "Cloister Life of Charles V.") This is really like going back to the old times, when-- "The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts." In England, some fifty years ago, the young ladies of the ancient city of Norwich were not considered to have completed their education, until they had spent some months under the tuition of the first confectioner in the city, in learning to make cakes and pastry--an art which they afterwards continued when they possessed houses of their own. This wholesome discipline of beating eggs and whipping creams, kneading biscuits and gingerbread, was calculated to preserve their health, and afford sufficient exercise to the muscles of the arms and shoulders, without having recourse to artificial modes of exertion. It does not appear that the ancients set the same value upon a small waist as the moderns; for, in their draped female figures, the whole circuit of the waist is seldom visible, some folds of the drapery being suffered to fall over a part, thus leaving its exact extent to the imagination. The same remark is applicable to the great Italian painters, who seldom marked the whole contour of the waist, unless when painting portraits, in which case the costume was of course observed. It was not so, however, with the shoulders, the true width of which was always seen; and how voluminous soever the folds of the drapery around the body, it was never arranged so as to add to the width of the shoulders. Narrow shoulders and broad hips are esteemed beauties in the female figure, while in the male figure the broad shoulders and narrow hips are most admired. [Illustration: Pl. 5. Figure 47. Athenian peasant. 48. Shepherdess of Arcadia. 51. Athenian woman. 52. French costume of the tenth century. 62. Lady of the time of Henry V. ] The costume of the modern Greeks is frequently very graceful, (Fig. 47, peasant from the environs of Athens,) and it adapts itself well to the figure, the movements of which it does not restrain. The prevailing characteristics of the costume are a long robe, reaching to the ground, with full sleeves, very wide at the bands. This dress is frequently embroidered with a graceful pattern round the skirt and sleeves. Over it is worn a pelisse, which reaches only to the knees, and is open in front; either without any sleeves, or with tight ones, finishing at the elbows; beneath which are seen the full sleeves of the long robe. The drapery over the bust is full, and is sometimes confined at the waist by a belt; at others it is suffered to hang loosely until it meets the broad, sash-like girdle which encircles the hips, and which hangs so loosely that the hands are rested in its folds as in a pocket. The drapery generally terminates at the throat, under a necklace of coins or jewels. The most usual form of head-dress is a veil so voluminous as to cover the head and shoulders; one end of the veil is frequently thrown over the shoulder, or gathered into a knot behind. The shoes, apparently worn only for walking, consist generally of a very thick sole, with a cap over the toes. One glance at the graceful figures in the plates is sufficient to show how unnecessary stays are to the beauty of the figure. Fig. 48, Shepherdess of Arcadia. The modern Greek costumes which we have selected for our illustrations, from the beautiful work of M. de Stackelberg, ("Costumes et Peuples de la Grèce Moderne," published at Rome, 1825,) suggest several points for consideration, and some for our imitation. The dress is long and flowing, and high in the neck. It does not add to the width of the shoulders; it conceals the exact size of the waist by the loose pelisse, which is open in front; it falls in a graceful and flowing line from the arm-pits, narrowing a little at the waist, and spreading gently over the hips, when the skirt falls by its own weight into large folds, instead of curving suddenly from an unnaturally small waist over a hideous bustle, and increasing in size downward to the hem of the dress, like a bell, as in the present English costume. Figs. 42 and 49 are selected from the "Illustrated London News." (Volume for 1851, July to December, pp. 20 and 117.) The one represents out-door costume, the other in-door. Many such are scattered through the pages of our amusing and valuable contemporary. For the out-door costume we beg to refer our readers to the large woodcut in the same volume, (pp. 424, 425.) If a traveller from a distant country, unacquainted with the English and French fashions, were to contemplate this cut, he would be puzzled to account for the remarkable shape of the ladies, who all, more or less, resemble the figure we have selected for our illustration; and, if he is any thing of a naturalist, he will set them down in his own mind as belonging to a new species of the genus _homo_. Looking at this and other prints of the day, we should think that the artists intended to convey a satire on the ladies' dress, if we did not frequently meet with such figures in real life. The lady in the evening dress (Fig. 49) is from a large woodcut in the same journal representing a ball. This costume, with much pretension to elegance, exhibits most of the faults of the modern style of dress. It combines the indecently low dress, with the pinched waist, and the hoop petticoat. In the figure of the woman of Mitylene, (Fig. 50,) the true form and width of the shoulders are apparent, and the form of the bust is indicated, but not exposed, through the loosely fitting drapery which covers it. In the figure of the Athenian peasant, (Fig. 47,). the loose drapery over the bust is confined at the waist by a broad band, while the hips are encircled by the sash-like girdle in which the figure rests her hands. The skirt of the pelisse appears double, and the short sleeve, embroidered at the edge, shows the full sleeve of the under drapery, also richly embroidered. In the second figure from the environs of Athens, (Fig. 51,) we observe that the skirt of the pelisse, instead of being set on in gathers or plaits, as our dresses are, is "gored," or sloped away at the top, where it unites almost imperceptibly with the body, giving rise to undulating lines, instead of sudden transitions and curves. In the cut of the Arcadian peasant, (Fig. 48,) the pelisse is shortened almost to a spencer, or _côte hardie_, and it wants the graceful flow of the longer skirt, for which the closely fitting embroidered apron is no compensation. This figure is useful in showing that tight bodies may be fitted to the figure without stays. The heavy rolled girdle on the hips is no improvement. The dress of the Algerine woman, (Fig. 53,) copied from the "Illustrated London News," bears a strong resemblance to the Greek costume, and is very graceful. It is not deformed either by the pinched waist or the stays. In the tenth century, the French costume (Fig. 52) somewhat resembled that of the modern Greeks; the former, however, had not the short pelisse, but, in its place, the ladies wore a long veil, which covered the head, and reached nearly to the feet. The Greek and Oriental costume has always been a favorite with painters: the "Vernon Gallery" furnishes us with two illustrations; and the excellent engravings of these subjects in the _Art Journal_ enable us to compare the costumes of the two figures while at a distance from the originals. The graceful figure of "The Greek Girl," (engraved in the _Art Journal_ for 1850,) painted by Sir Charles Eastlake, is not compressed by stays, but is easy and natural. The white under-drapery is confined at the waist, which is short, by a broad girdle, which appears to encircle it more than once, and adds to the apparent length of the waist; the open jacket, without a collar, falls gracefully from the shoulders, and conceals the limits of the waist; every thing is easy, natural, and graceful. M. De Stackelberg's beautiful figure of the "Archon's Wife" (Fig. 54) shows the district whence Sir C. Eastlake drew his model. There is the same flowing hair,--from which hang carnations, as in the picture in the "Vernon Gallery,"--the same cap, the same necklace. But in the baron's figure, we find the waist encircled with a broad band, six or seven inches in width, while the lady rests her hand on the sash-like girdle, which falls round the hips. Turn we now to Pickersgill's "Syrian Maid," (engraved in the _Art Journal_ for 1850:) here, we see, the artist has taken a painter's license, and represented the fair Oriental in stays, which, we believe, are happily unknown in the East. How stiff and constrained does this figure appear, after looking at Sir C. Eastlake's beautiful "Greek Girl;" how unnatural the form of the chest! The limits of the waist are not visible, it is true, in the "Syrian Maid," but the shadow is so arranged, that the rounded form, to which we have before alluded, and which fashion deems necessary, is plainly perceptible; and an impression is made that the waist is small and pinched. We could mention some cases in which the girdle is omitted altogether, without any detriment to the gracefulness of the figure. Such dresses, however, though illustrative of the principle, are not adapted to the costume of real life. In sculpture, however, they frequently occur. We may mention Gibson's statue of her majesty, the female figure in M'Dougall's "Triumph of Love," and "Penelope," by Wyatt, which are engraved in the _Art Journal_, (the first in the year 1846, the others in 1849.) But the drapery of statues can, however, scarcely be taken as a precedent for that of the living subject, and although we mention that the girdle is sometimes dispensed with, we are far from advocating this in practice; nay, we consider the sash or girdle is indispensable; all that we stipulate for is, that it should not be so tight as to compress the figure, or impede circulation. In concluding our remarks on this subject, we would observe, that the best means of improving the figure are to secure freedom of motion by the use of light and roomy clothing, and to strengthen the muscles by exercise. We may also observe, that singing is not only beneficial to the lungs, but that it strengthens the muscles, and increases the size of the chest, and, consequently, makes the waist appear smaller. Singing, and other suitable exercises in which both arms are used equally, will improve the figure more than all the backboards in the world. CHAPTER III. THE HEAD. There is no part of the body which has been more exposed to the vicissitudes of fashion than the head, both as regards its natural covering of hair, and the artificial covering of caps and bonnets. At one time, we read of sprinkling the hair with gold dust; at another time, the bright brown hair, of the color of the horse-chestnut, so common in Italian pictures, was the fashion. This color, as well as that beautiful light golden tint sometimes seen in Italian pictures of the same period, was frequently the result of art, and receipts for producing both tints are still to be found in old books of "_secreti_." Both these were in their turn discarded, and after a time the real color of the hair was lost in powder and pomatum. The improving taste of the present generation is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in permitting us to preserve the natural color of the hair, and to wear our own, whether it be black, brown, or gray. There is also a marked improvement in the more natural way in which the hair has been arranged during the last thirty years. We allude, particularly, to its being suffered to retain the direction intended by nature, instead of being combed upright, and turned over a cushion a foot or two in height. These head-dresses, emphatically called, from their French origin, _têtes_, were built or plastered up only once a month: it is easy to imagine what a state they must have been in during the latter part of the time. Madame D'Oberkirch gives, in her Memoirs, an amusing description of a novel head-dress of this kind. We transcribe it for the amusement of our readers. "This blessed 6th of June she awakened me at the earliest dawn. I was to get my hair dressed, and make a grand _toilette_, in order to go to Versailles, whither the queen had invited the Countess du Nord, for whose amusement a comedy was to be performed. These Court _toilettes_ are never-ending, and this road from Paris to Versailles very fatiguing, especially where one is in continual fear of rumpling her petticoats and flounces. I tried that day, for the first time, a new fashion--one, too, which was not a little _gênante_. I wore in my hair little flat bottles, shaped to the curvature of the head; into these a little water was poured, for the purpose of preserving the freshness of the natural flowers worn in the hair, and of which the stems were immersed in the liquid. This did not always succeed, but when it did, the effect was charming. _Nothing could be more lovely than the floral wreath crowning the snowy pyramid of powdered hair!_" Few of our readers, we reckon, are inclined to participate in the admiration of the baroness, so fancifully expressed, for this singular head-dress. We do not presume to enter into the question whether short curls are more becoming than long ones, or whether bands are preferable to curls of any kind; because, as the hair of some persons curls naturally, while that of others is quite straight, we consider that this is one of the points which must be decided accordingly as one style or the other is found to be most suitable to the individual. The principle in the arrangement of the hair round the forehead should be to preserve or assist the oval form of the face: as this differs in different individuals, the treatment should be adapted accordingly. The arrangement of the long hair at the back of the head is a matter of taste; as it interferes but little with the countenance, it may be referred to the dictates of fashion; although in this, as in every thing else, simplicity in the arrangement, and grace in the direction of the lines, are the chief points to be considered. One of the most elegant head-dresses we remember to have seen, is that worn by the peasants of the Milanese and Ticinese. They have almost uniformly glossy, black hair, which is carried round the back of the head in a wide braid, in which are placed, at regular intervals, long silver pins, with large heads, which produce the effect of a coronet, and contrast well with the dark color of the hair. [Illustration: Pl. 6. Figure 55. After Parmegiano. 56. Titian's daughter. 57. Lady Harrington. 59. Roman peasant. 61. Gigot sleeves. ] The examples afforded by modern sculpture are not very instructive, inasmuch as the features selected by the sculptors are almost exclusively Greek, whereas the variety in nature is infinite. With the Greek features has also been adopted the antique style of arranging the hair, which is beautifully simple; that is to say, it is parted in the front, and falling down towards each temple, while the long ends rolled lightly back from the face so as to show the line which separates the hair from the forehead, or rather where it seems, as it were, to blend with the flesh tints--an arrangement which assists in preserving the oval contour of the face, are passed over the top of the ear, and looped into the fillet which binds the head. The very becoming arrangement of the hair in the engraving, from a portrait by Parmegianino, (Fig. 55,) is an adaptation of the antique style, and is remarkable for its simplicity and grace. Not less graceful, although more ornamental, is the arrangement of the hair in the beautiful figure called "Titian's Daughter." Fig. 56. In both these instances, we observe the line--if line it may be called--where the color of the hair blends so harmoniously with the delicate tints of the forehead. The same arrangement of the hair round the face may be traced in the pictures by Murillo, and other great masters. Sir Joshua Reynolds has frequently evinced consummate skill in the arrangement of the hair, so as to show the line which divides it from the forehead. For some interesting remarks on this subject, we refer our readers to an "Essay on Dress," republished by Mr. Murray from the "Quarterly Review." Nothing can be more graceful than Sir Joshua's mode of disposing of the hair when he was able to follow the dictates of his own good taste; and he deserves great credit for the skill with which he frequently treated the enormous head-dresses which in his time disfigured the heads of our countrywomen. The charming figure of Lady Harrington (Fig. 57) would have been perfect without the superstructure on her beautiful head. How stiff is the head-dress of the next figure, (Fig. 58,) also, after Sir Joshua, when compared with the preceding. The graceful Spanish mantilla, to which we can only allude, is too elegant to be overlooked: the modification of it, which of late years has been introduced into this country, is to be considered rather as an ornament than as a head-covering. It has been recently superseded by the long bows of ribbon worn at the back of the head--a costume borrowed from the Roman peasants. Fig. 59. The fashion for young people to cover the hair with a silken net, which, some centuries ago, was prevalent both in England and in France, has been again revived. Some of the more recent of these nets are very elegant in form. The hats and bonnets have, during the last few years, been so moderate in size, and generally so graceful in form, that we will not criticize them more particularly. It will be sufficient to observe that, let the brim be what shape it will, the crown should be nearly of the form and size of the head. If this principle were always kept in view, as it should be, we should never again see the monster hats and bonnets which, some years ago, and even in the memory of persons now living, caricatured the lovely forms of our countrywomen. CHAPTER IV. THE DRESS. We shall consider the dress, by which we mean, simply, the upper garment worn within doors, as consisting of three parts--the sleeve, the body, and the skirt. The sleeve has changed its form as frequently as any part of our habiliments: sometimes it reached to the wrist, sometimes to a short distance below the shoulder. Sometimes it was tight to the arm; sometimes it fell in voluminous folds to the hands; now it was widest at the top, then widest at the bottom. To large sleeves themselves there is no objection, in a pictorial point of view, provided that their point of junction with the shoulder is so conspicuous that they do not add to the apparent width of the body in this part. The lines of the sleeves should be flowing; and they are much more graceful when they are widest in the lower part, especially when so open as to display to advantage the beautiful form of the wrist and fore-arm. In this way, they partake of the pyramid, while the inelegant gigot sleeve, which for so long a period enjoyed the favor of the ladies, presents the form of a cone reverted, and is obviously out of place in the human figure. When the large sleeve, supported by canes or whalebones, forms a continuous line with the shoulder, it gives an unnatural width to this part of the figure--an effect that is increased by the large collar which conceals the point where the sleeve meets the dress. Examples of the large, open sleeve, in its extreme character, may be studied with most advantage in the portraits of Vandyck. Fig. 60, Lady Lucy Percy, after Vandyck. The effect of these sleeves is frequently improved by their being lined with a different color, and sometimes by contrasting the rich silk of the outer sleeve with the thin gauze or lace which forms the immediate covering of the arm. The figures in the plates will show the comparative gracefulness of two kinds of large sleeves, namely, that which is widest at the top, and that which is widest below. If the outline of the central figure of our more modern group, (Fig. 61,)--consisting of three figures, which is copied from a French work,--were filled up with black, a person ignorant of the fashion might, from the great width of the shoulders, have mistaken it for the Farnese Hercules in petticoats. The large sleeves, tight in the upper part, and enlarging gradually to the wrist, which are worn by the modern Greeks, are extremely graceful. When these are confined below the elbow, which is sometimes done for convenience, they resemble somewhat the elbow sleeves with wide ruffles which were so common in the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Sleeves like those now worn in Greece were fashionable in France in the tenth century, and again about the beginning of the sixteenth century. They were also worn by Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV., and are seen in Fig. 41. A very elegant sleeve, fitting nearly close at the shoulder, and becoming very full and long till it falls in graceful folds almost to the feet, prevailed in England during the time of Henry V. and VI. Fig. 62, copied from a manuscript of the time of Henry V., now preserved in the British Museum. On the authority of Professor Heideloff, it is said to have existed also in Flanders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in France in the fifteenth century. In the examples of continental costume, the _tout ensemble_ is graceful, and especially the head-dress; while in England the elegant sleeve is accompanied with very short waists, and with the hideous, horned head-dresses then fashionable. The effect of these sleeves much resembles that of the mantles of the present day, and from its wide flow is only adapted for full dress, or out-of-door costume. The sleeves worn under these full ones were generally tight. At a much later period, the large sleeves were made of more moderate dimensions, both in length and width, and a full sleeve of fine lawn or muslin, fastened at the wrist with a band, and edged with a lace ruffle, was worn beneath. This kind of sleeve has recently been again introduced into England, but has given place to another form, in which the under sleeve of lace or muslin, being of the same size as the upper, suffers the lower part of the arm to be visible. The effect of this sleeve, which is certainly becoming to a finely-formed arm, is analogous to that of the elbow sleeve, which, with its deep ruffles of point lace, is frequent on the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds. [Illustration: Pl. 7. Figure 63. From Bonnard's Costumes. 64. Sancta Victoria. 65. Anne, Countess of Chesterfield, from Vandyck. 67. Woman of Markinitza. ] The slashed sleeve, criticized by Shakspeare in the "Taming of the Shrew," was sometimes very elegant. The form in which it appears in Fig. 63, worn in the fifteenth century, is particularly graceful. Not so, however, the lower part of the sleeve. In the preceding remarks, we have considered the sleeve merely in a picturesque point of view, without reference to its convenience or inconvenience. The length of the waist has always been a matter of caprice. Sometimes the girdle was placed nearly under the arms; sometimes it passed to the opposite extreme, and was suffered to fall upon the hips. Sometimes it was drawn tightly round the middle, when it seemed to cut the body almost in two, like an hourglass. Judging from what we see, we should say that this is a feat which many ladies of the present time are endeavoring to achieve. The first and third cases are almost equally objectionable, because they distort the figure. The hip girdle, which is common in Greece (as shown in Figs. 48 and 53) and Oriental countries, prevailed also in England and France some centuries ago. The miniatures of old manuscripts furnish us with examples of long-waisted dresses fitting closely to the person, sometimes stiffened like the modern stays, at others yielding to the figure. The waist of this kind of dress reached to the hips, where it was joined to the full petticoat, which was gathered round the top--an extremely ungraceful fashion. The hip girdle, properly used, is, however, by no means inelegant. It is not at all necessary that it should coincide with the waist of the dress; it should be merely looped or clasped loosely round the figure, and suffered to fall to its place by its own weight. But to enable it to do so in a graceful manner, it is essential that the skirt of the dress should be so united with the body as to produce no harsh lines of separation, or sudden changes of curvature; as, for example, when the skirt is set on in full plaits, or gathers, and spread over a hoop. We have before noticed, that this point was attended to by Rubens, (Fig. 66,) by Vandyck, (Fig. 65,) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and by the modern Greeks. We refer also to the elegant figure 64. The most natural situation for the girdle, or point of junction of the body with the skirt, is somewhere between the end of the breast bone and the last rib, as seen in front--a space of about three or four inches. Fashion may dictate the exact spot, but within this space it cannot be positively wrong. The effect is good when the whole space is filled with a wide sash folded round the waist, as in Sir C. Eastlake's "Greek Girl," or some of the graceful portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds. How much more elegant is a sash of this description than the stiff line which characterizes the upper part of the dress of "Sancta Victoria." (Fig. 64.) The whalebone, or busk, is absolutely necessary to keep the dress in its proper place. The resemblance in form between the body of the dress of this figure and those now or recently in fashion cannot fail to arrest the attention of the reader. Stiff, though, as it undoubtedly is, the whole dress is superior to the modern in the general flow of the lines uniting the body and skirt. Long skirts are more graceful than short ones, and a train of moderate length adds to the elegance of a dress, but not to its convenience. Long dresses, also, add to the apparent height of a figure, and for this reason they are well adapted to short persons. For the same reason, waists of moderate length are more generally becoming than those that are very long, because the latter, by shortening the skirt of the dress, diminish the apparent height. Besides the variation in length, the skirts of dresses have passed through every gradation of fulness. At one time, it was the fashion to slope gradually from the waist, without gathers or plaits; then a little fulness was admitted at the back; then a little at the front, also. The next step was to carry the fulness all round the waist. In the graceful costume of the time of Vandyck, and even in the more stiff and formal dress delineated in the pictures of Rubens, the skirt was united to the body by large, flat plaits, when the fulness expanded gradually and gracefully, and the rich material of the dress spread in well-arranged folds to the feet. The lines were gently undulating and graceful, and that unnatural and clumsy contrivance called a "bustle"--a near relation of the hoop and fardingale--was at that time happily unknown. This principle of uniting the skirt gradually with the body of the dress is carried out to the fullest extent by the modern Greeks. In the figure of the peasant from the neighborhood of Athens, (Fig. 47,) the pelisse is made without gathers or plaits: the skirt, which hangs full round the knees, is "gored" or sloped away till it fits the body at the waist. The long underskirt is, as we find from the figure of the woman of Makrinitza, (Fig. 67,) gathered several times, so as to lie flat to the figure, instead of being spread over the inelegant "bustle." It is only necessary to compare these graceful figures, in which due regard has been paid to the undulating lines of the figure, with a fashionable lady of the present day, whose "polka jacket," or whatever may be the name of this article of dress, is cut with violent and deep curves, to enable it to spread itself over the bustle and prominent folds of the dress. [Illustration: Pl. 8. Figure 60. Lady Lucy Percy, from Vandyck. 69, 70. By Jules David, in "Le Moniteur de la Mode." 68. The hoop, after Hogarth. ] Not satisfied with the bustle in the upper part of the skirt, some ladies of the present day have returned to the old practice of wearing hoops, to make the dresses stand out at the base. These are easily recognized in the street by the "swagging"--no other term will exactly convey the idea--from side to side of the hoops, an effect which is distinctly visible as the wearer walks along. It is difficult to imagine what there is so attractive in the fardingale and hoop, that they should have prevailed, in some form or other, for so many years, and that they should have maintained their ground in spite of the cutting, though playful, raillery of the "Spectator," and the jeers and caricatures of less refined censors of the eccentricities of dress. They were not recommended either by beauty of line or convenience, but by the tyrant Fashion, and we owe some gratitude to George IV., who banished the last relics of this singular fashion from the court dress, of which, until his time, it continued to form a part. Who could imagine that there would be an attempt to revive the hoop petticoat in the nineteenth century? We invite our readers to contrast the lines of the drapery in the figures after Vandyck, (Figs. 60 and 61,) and those in the modern Greek costume, (Figs. 51 and 54,) with that of a lady in a hoop, after a satirical painter, Hogarth, (Fig. 68,) and two figures from a design by Jules David, in "Le Moniteur de la Mode," a modern fashionable authority in dress. (Figs. 69 and 70.) There can be no doubt which is the most graceful. The width of the shoulders and the tight waist of the latter, will not escape the notice of our readers. CHAPTER V. THE FEET. The same bad taste which insists upon a small waist, let the height and proportions of the figure be what they will, decrees that a small foot is essential to beauty. Size is considered of more importance than form; and justly so if it is a _sine qua non_ that the foot must be small, because the efforts that are made to diminish its size generally render it deformed. We have before mentioned that to endeavor to diminish the size of the human body in a particular part, is like tying a string round the middle of a pillow; it only makes it larger at the extremities. It is so with the waist, it is so with the foot. If it be crippled in length, or in width across the toes, it spreads over the instep and sides. The Italians and other nations of the south of Europe have smaller hands and feet than the Anglo-Saxons; and as this fact is generally known, it is astonishing that people of sense should persist in crippling themselves merely for the reputation of having small feet. Here again we have to complain of poets and romance writers; ladies would not have pinched their feet into small shoes, if these worthies had not sung the praises of "tiny feet." "Her feet, beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, As if they feared the light." Nor are painters--portrait painters, we mean, and living ones too--it is needless however, to mention names--entirely free from blame for thus ministering to vanity and false taste. They have sacrificed truth to fashion in painting the feet smaller than they could possibly be in nature. But it is not only with the endeavor to cripple their dimensions that we are inclined to quarrel. We object _in toto_ to the shape of the shoe, which bears but little resemblance to that of the foot. We have heard persons say that they could never see any beauty in a foot. No wonder, when they saw none but those that were deformed by corns and bunions. How unlike is such a foot to the beautiful little--for little it really is in this case--fat foot of a child, before its beauty has been spoiled by shoes, or even to those of the barefooted children one sees so frequently in the street. Were it not for these opportunities of seeing nature we, in this country, should have but little idea of the true shape of the human foot, except what we learn from statues. According to a recent traveller, we must go to Egypt to see beautiful feet. It is impossible, he says, to see any thing more exquisite than the feet and hands of the female peasants. The same beauty is conspicuous in the Hindoo women. Let us compare now the shape of the foot with that of the sole of a shoe. When the foot is placed on the ground, the toes spread out, the great toe is in a straight line with the inner side of the foot, and there is an opening between this and the second toe. The ancients availed themselves of this opening to pass through it one of the straps that suspended the sandal. The moderns on the contrary press the toes closely together, in order to confine them within the limits of the shoe; the consequence is, that the end of the great toe is pressed towards the others, and out of the straight line, the joint becomes enlarged, and thus the foundation is laid for a bunion; while the toes, forced one upon another, become distorted and covered with corns. One of the consequences of this imprisonment of our toes is, that, from being squeezed so closely together, they become useless. Let any one try the experiment of walking barefooted across the room, and while so doing look at the foot. The toes, when unfettered by the shoes, spread out and divide from one another, and the body rests on a wider and firmer base. We begin to find we have some movement in our toes; yet, how feeble is their muscular power, compared with that of persons who are unaccustomed to the use of shoes! The Hindoo uses his toes in weaving; the Australian savage is as handy (if the term can be applied to feet) with this member, as another man is with his hands; it is the unsuspected instrument with which he executes his thefts. The country boy, who runs over the roof of a house like a cat, takes off his shoes before he attempts the hazardous experiment; he has a surer hold with his foot on the smooth slates and sloping roof. The exercise of the muscles of the foot has the effect of increasing the power of those of the calf of the leg; and the thinner the sole, and the more pliant the materials of which the shoe is made, the more the power is developed. Dancing masters, who habitually wear thin shoes, have the muscles of the leg well developed, while ploughmen, who wear shoes with soles an inch thick, have very little calf to their leg. The French sabot is, we consider, better than the closely fitting shoe of our country people; because it is so large, that it requires some muscular exertion to keep it in its place. We have frequently seen French boys running in sabots, the foot rising at every step almost out of the unyielding wooden shoe. Wooden clogs and pattens are as bad as the thick shoes of the country people. When clogs are necessary, the sole should be made of materials which will yield to the motion of the foot. The American Indian's moccasins are a much better covering for the foot than our shoes. If thick soles are objectionable by impeding the free movement of the limb, what shall we say to the high heel which was once so popular, and which threatens again to come into fashion? It is to be hoped, however, when the effects of wearing high heels are duly considered, that this pernicious custom will not make progress. It is well for their poor unfortunate votaries, that the introduction of certain fashions is gradual; that both mind and body--perhaps we should be more correct in saying the person of the wearer and the eye of the spectator--are, step by step, prepared for the extreme point which certain fashions attain; they have their rise, their culminating point, and their decline. The attempt to exchange the short waists, worn some thirty or forty years ago, for the very long waists seen during the past year, would have been unsuccessful; the transition would have been too great--too violent; the change was effected, but it was the work of many years. The same thing took place with regard to the high head-dresses which were so deservedly ridiculed by Addison, and in an equally marked degree with respect to high heels. The shoes in the cut, after Gainsborough, (Fig. 71,) are fair specimens of what were in fashion in his time. Let the reader compare the line of the sole with that of the human foot placed, as nature intended it, flat on the ground. The heel was in some cases four and a half inches high; the line, therefore, must have been in this case, a highly inclined plane, undulating in its surface, like the "line of beauty" of Hogarth. The position of the foot is that of a dancer resting on the toes, excepting that the heel is supported, and the strain over the instep and contraction of the muscles of the back of the leg and heel must be considerable; so much so we are told, that the contraction of the latter becomes habitual; consequently, those persons who have accustomed themselves to the use of high heels, are never afterwards able to do without them. It is said that "pride never feels pain;" we should think the proverb was made for those who wear high heels, for we are told, although we cannot speak from personal experience, that the pain on first wearing shoes of this kind, in which the whole weight of the body seems to thrust the toes forward into the shoe, is excruciating; nothing but fashion could reconcile one to such voluntary suffering. The peas in the shoes of the pilgrims could scarcely be more painful. [Illustration: Pl. 9. Figure 66. From Rubens's "Descent from the Cross." 71. From a drawing by Gainsborough. 72. Woman of Myconia. 74. Queen Anne. ] It was with some surprise that we found among M. Stackelberg's graceful costumes of modern Greece a pair of high-heeled shoes, (Fig. 72,) which might rival in ugliness and inconvenience any of those worn in England. We have known an instance where the lady's heels were never less than an inch and a half high. We were sorry to observe some of these high-heeled shoes in the great exhibition, and still more so, to see that shoes with heels an inch high are likely to be fashionable this season. Could we look forward to this height as the limit of the fashion, we might reconcile ourselves to it for a time; but, judging from past experience, there is reason to fear that the heel will become continually higher, until it attains the elevation of former years. Not content with imprisoning our feet in tight shoes, and thereby distorting their form and weakening their muscular power, we are guilty of another violence towards nature. Nature has made our toes to turn inwards; when man is left to himself the toes naturally take this direction, though in a much less degree than in the infant. The American Indian will trace a European by his footprints, which he detects by the turning out of the toes; a lesson we are taught in our childhood, and especially by our dancing master. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, "The gestures of children, being all dictated by nature, are graceful; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing master." Now, observe the consequence of turning out the toes. The inner ankle is bent downwards towards the ground, and the knees are drawn inwards, producing the deformity called knock-kneed; thus the whole limb is distorted, and consequently weakened; there is always a want of muscular power in the legs of those who turn their toes very much outwards. It must be remarked, however, that women, from the greater breadth of the frame at the hips, naturally turn the toes out more than men. In this point also, statues may be studied with advantage. Where form only is considered, it is generally safer to refer to examples of sculpture than painting; because in the latter, the artist is apt to lose sight of this primary object in his attention to color and form; besides, it is the sculptor only, who makes an exact image of a figure which is equally perfect, seen from all points of view. The painter makes only a pictorial or perspective representation of nature, as seen from one point of view only. What pains we take to distort and disfigure the beautiful form that nature has bestowed upon the human race! Now building a tower on the head, then raising the heel at the expense of the toe; at one time confining the body in a case of whalebone, and compressing it at the waist like an hour glass; at another, surrounding it with the enormous and ungraceful hoop, till the outline of the figure is so altered, that a person can scarcely recognize her own shadow as that of a human being. CHAPTER VI. REMARKS ON PARTICULAR COSTUMES. We must now offer a few brief remarks upon certain costumes which appear to us most worthy of our attention and study, for their general elegance and adaptation to the figure. Of the modern Greek we have already spoken. The style of dress which has been immortalized by the pencil of Vandyck is considered among the most elegant that has ever prevailed in this country. It is not, however, faultless. The row of small curls around the face, however becoming to some persons, is somewhat formal; and although the general arrangement of the hair, which preserves the natural size and shape of the head, is more graceful than that of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, we think it would have been more pleasing had it left visible the line which divides the hair from the forehead. With regard to the dress itself, it is apparent, in the first place, that the figures are spoiled by stays; secondly, that the dress is cut too low in front; and thirdly, that the large sleeves sometimes give too great width in front to the shoulders. These defects are, in some degree, counterbalanced by the graceful flow of the ample drapery, and of the large sleeves, which are frequently widest at their lower part, and by the gently undulating line which unites the waist of the dress with the skirt. The Vandyck dress, with its voluminous folds, is, however, more appropriate to the inhabitants of palaces, than to the ordinary occupants of this working-day world. The drapery is too wide and flowing for convenience. The annexed cut, (Fig. 73,) representing Charlotte de la Tremouille, the celebrated Countess of Derby, exhibits some of the defects and many of the beauties of the Vandyck dress. Lely's half-dressed figures may be passed over without comment; they are draped, not dressed. Kneller's are more instructive on the subject of costume. The dress of Queen Anne, (Fig. 74,) in Kneller's portrait, is graceful and easy. The costume is a kind of transition between the Vandyck and Reynolds style. The sleeves are smaller at the shoulder than in the former, and larger at the lower part than in the latter; in fact, they resemble those now worn by the modern Greeks. The dress is cut higher round the bust, and is longer in the waist than the Vandycks, while the undulating line uniting the body and skirt is still preserved. While such good examples were set by the painters--who were not, however, the inventors of the fashions they painted--it is astonishing that these graceful styles of dress should have been superseded in real life by the lofty head-dresses and preposterous fashions which prevailed during the same period and long afterwards, and which even the ironical and severe remarks of Addison, in the "Spectator," were unable to banish from the circles of fashion. Speaking of the dresses of ladies during the reigns of James II. and William III., Mr. Planché, in his "History of British Costumes," says, "The tower or commode was still worn, and the gowns and petticoats flounced and furbelowed, so that every part of the garment was in curl;" and a lady of fashion "looked like one of those animals," says the "Spectator," "which in the country we call a Friesland hen." But in 1711 we find Mr. Addison remarking, "The whole sex is now dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies who were once nearly seven foot high, that at present want some inches of five. How they come to be thus curtailed I cannot learn; whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new: though I find most are of opinion they are at present like trees lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before." The costume of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as treated by this great artist, though less splendid, appears to us, with the exception of the head-dress, nearly as graceful, and far more convenient than the Vandyck dress. It is more modest, more easy, and better adapted to show the true form of the shoulders, while the union of the body of the dress with the skirt is effected in the same graceful manner as in the Vandyck portraits. The materials of the drapery in the latter are generally silks and satins; of the former, it is frequently muslin and stuff of a soft texture, which clings more closely to the form. That much of the elegance of both styles of dress is to be attributed to the skill and good taste of the painters, is evident from an examination of portraits by contemporary artists. Much also may be ascribed to the taste of the wearer. There are some people who, though habited in the best and richest clothes, never appear well dressed; their garments, rumpled and untidy, look as if they had been pitched on them, like hay, with a fork; while others, whose dress consists of the most homely materials, appear well dressed, from the neatness and taste with which their clothes are arranged. [Illustration: Pl. 10. Figure 73. Charlotte de la Tremouille. 75. After Gainsborough. 76. After Gainsborough. 77. Costume of Mrs. Bloomer. ] Many of the costumes of Gainsborough's portraits are elegant and graceful, with the frequent exception of the extravagant head-dress and the high-heeled shoes. The easy and very pleasing figure, (Fig. 75,) after this accomplished artist, is not exempt from the above defects. In our next illustration, (Fig. 76,) Gainsborough has not been so happy. The lady is almost lost in her voluminous and fluttering drapery, and the dishevelled hair and the enormous hat give to the figure much of the appearance of a caricature. Leaving now the caprices of fashion, we must notice a class of persons who, from a religious motive, have resisted for two hundred years the tyranny of fashion, and, until recently, have transmitted the same form of dress from mother to daughter for nearly the same period of years. The ladies of the Society of Friends, or, as they are usually called, "Quakers," are still distinguished by the simplicity and neatness of their dress--the quiet drabs and browns of which frequently contrast with the richness of the material--and by the absence of all ornament and frippery. Every part of their dress is useful and convenient; it has neither frills, nor flounces, nor trimmings to carry the dirt and get shabby before the dress itself, nor wide sleeves to dip in the plates and lap up the gravy and sauces, nor artificial flowers, nor bows of ribbons. The dress is long enough for decency, but not so long as to sweep the streets, as many dresses and shawls are daily seen to do. Some few years back the Quaker ladies might have been reproached with adhering to the letter, while they rejected the spirit, of their code of dress by adhering too literally to the costume handed down to them. The crowns of their caps were formerly made very high, and for this reason it was necessary that the crowns of their bonnets should be high enough to admit the cap crown; hence the peculiarly ugly and remarkable form of this part of the dress. The crown of the cap has, however, recently been lowered, and the Quaker ladies, with much good sense, have not only modified the form of their bonnets, but have also adopted the straw and drawn silk bonnet in their most simple forms. In the style of their dress, also, they occasionally approach so near the fashions generally worn, that they are no longer distinguishable by the singularity of their dress, but by its simplicity and chasteness. We venture now to devote a few words to the Bloomer costume, (Fig. 77,) although we are aware that we are treading on tender ground, especially as the costume involves a sudden and complete change in the dress. Independently of its merits or demerits, there are several reasons why it did not succeed in this country. In the first place, as we have before observed, it originated in America, and was attempted to be introduced through the middle ranks. In the second place, the change which it endeavored to effect was too sudden. Had the alteration commenced with the higher classes, and the change been effected gradually, its success might possibly have been different. Thirdly, the large hat, so well adapted to the burning sun of America, was unnecessary, and remarkable when forming a part of the costume of adult ladies in this country, although we have seen that hats quite as large were worn during the time of Gainsborough. Another reason for the ill success of the Bloomer costume is to be found in the glaring and frequently ill-assorted colors of the prints of it, which were every where exposed in the shop windows. By many sober-minded persons, the large hat and glaring colors were looked upon as integral parts of the costume. The numerous caricatures also, and the injudicious attempts to make it popular by getting up "Bloomer Balls," contributed to render the costume ridiculous and unpopular. Setting aside the hat, the distinguishing characteristics of the costume are the short dress, and a polka jacket fitting the body at the throat and shoulders, and confined at the waist by a silken sash, and the trousers fastened by a band round the ankle, and finished off with a frill. On the score of modesty there can be no objection to the dress, since the whole of the body is covered. On the ground of convenience it recommends itself to those who, having the superintendence of a family, are obliged frequently to go up and down stairs, on which occasions it is always necessary to raise the dress before or behind, according to circumstances. The objection to the trousers is not to this article of dress being worn, since that is a general practice, but to their being seen. Yet we suspect few ladies would object on this account to appear at a fancy ball in the Turkish costume. The disadvantages of the dress are its novelty--for we seldom like a fashion to which we are entirely unaccustomed--and the exposure which it involves of the foot, the shape of which, in this country, is so frequently distorted by wearing tight shoes of a different shape from the foot. The short dress is objectionable in another point of view, because, as short petticoats diminish the apparent height of the person, none but those who possess tall and elegant figures will look well in this costume; and appearance is generally suffered to prevail over utility and convenience. If to the Bloomer costume had been added the long under-dress of the Greek women, or had the trousers been as full as those worn by the Turkish and East Indian women, the general effect of the dress would have been much more elegant, although perhaps less useful. Setting aside all considerations of fashion, as we always do in looking at the fashions which are gone by, it was impossible for any person to deny that the Bloomer costume was by far the most elegant, the most modest, and the most convenient. CHAPTER VII. ORNAMENT--ECONOMY. Ornament, although not an integral part of dress, is so intimately connected with it, that we must devote a few words to the subject. Under the general term of ornament we shall include bows of ribbon, artificial flowers, feathers, jewels, lace, fringes, and trimmings of all kinds. Some of these articles appear to be suited to one period of life, some to another. Jewels, for instance, though suitable for middle age, seem misplaced on youth, which should always be characterized by simplicity of apparel; while flowers, which are so peculiarly adapted to youth, are unbecoming to those advanced in years; in the latter case there is contrast without harmony; it is like uniting May with December. The great principle to be observed with regard to ornament is, that it should be appropriate, and appear designed to answer some useful purpose. A brooch, or a bow of ribbon, for instance, should fasten some part of the dress; a gold chain should support a watch or an eyeglass. Trimmings are useful to mark the borders or edges of the different parts of the dress; and in this light they add to the variety, while by their repetition they conduce to the regularity of the ornamentation. [Illustration: Pl. 11. Figure 78. From the embroidery on fig. 47, pl. 5. 79. From the sleeve of the same dress, above. 80. From the sleeve of the pelisse. 81. The pattern embroidered from the waist to the skirt of the dress, fig. 51, pl. 5. 82. The border of the shawl, fig. 51. 83. Sleeve of the same, figure 51. 84. Design on the apron, fig. 48, pl. 5. 85. From the border of the same dress, fig. 48. ] Ornament is so much a matter of fashion, that beyond the above remarks it scarcely comes within the scope of our subject. There is one point, however, to which the present encouragement of works of design induces us to draw the attention of our readers. We have already borrowed from the beautiful work of M. de Stackelberg, some of the female figures in illustration of our views with regard to dress; we have now to call the attention of our readers to the patterns embroidered on the dresses. These are mostly of classic origin, and prove that the descendants of the Greeks have still sufficient good taste to appreciate and adopt the designs of their glorious ancestors. The figures in the plates being too small to show the patterns, we have enlarged some of them from the original work, in order to show the style of design still cultivated among the peasants of Greece, and also because we think the designs may be applied to other materials besides dress. Some of them appear not inappropriate to iron work. When will our people be able to show designs of such elegance? Fig. 78 is an enlarged copy of the embroidery on the robe of the peasant from the environs of Athens, (Fig. 47.) It extends, as will be seen, half way up the skirt. Fig. 79 is from the sleeve of the same dress. Fig. 80 is the pattern embroidered on the sleeve of the pelisse. Fig. 81 is the pattern from the waist to the hem of the skirt of an Athenian peasant's dress, (Fig. 51.) Fig. 82 is the border to the shawl; Fig. 83, the sleeve of the last-mentioned dress; Fig. 84, the design on the apron of the Arcadian peasant, (Fig. 48.) Fig. 85 is the border of the same dress. Fig. 86 is the pattern round the hem of the long under-dress of the Athenian peasant, (Fig. 51;) Fig. 87, the border of a shawl, or something of the kind. Fig. 88 is another example. The brocade dress of Sancta Victoria (Fig. 64) offers a striking contrast to the simple elegance of the Greek designs. It is too large for the purpose to which it is employed, and not sufficiently distinct; and, although it possesses much variety, it is deficient in regularity; and one of the elements of beauty in ornamental design, namely, repetition, appears to be entirely wanting. In these respects, the superiority of the Greek designs is immediately apparent. They unite at once symmetry with regularity, and variety with repetition. [Illustration: Pl. 12. Figure 86. Pattern round the hem of the long under dress, fig. 51, pl. 5. 87, 88. Borders of shawls. 89. Infant's dress, exhibited at the World's Fair in London. 90, 91. From "Le Moniteur de la Mode," by Jules David and Réville, published at Paris, London, New York, and St. Petersburg. ] The examination of these designs suggests the reflection that when we have once attained a form of dress which combines ease and elegance with convenience, we should tax our ingenuity in inventing ornamental designs for decorating it, rather than seek to discover novel forms of dress. The endless variety of textile fabrics which our manufacturers are constantly producing, the variety, also, in the colors, will, with the embroidery patterns issued by our schools of design, suffice to appease the constant demand for novelty, which exists in an improving country, without changing the form of our costume, unless to adopt others which reason and common sense point out as superior to that in use. We are told to try all things, and to hold fast to that which is good. The maxim is applicable to dress as well as to morals. The subject of economy in dress, an essential object with many persons, now claims our attention. We venture to offer a few remarks on this head. Our first recommendation is to have but few dresses at a time, and those extremely good. If we have but few dresses, we wear them, and wear them out while they are in fashion; but if we have many dresses at once, some of them become quite old-fashioned before we have done with them. If we are rich enough to afford the sacrifice, the old-fashioned dress is got rid of; if not, we must be content to appear in a fashion that has long been superseded; and we look as if we had come out of the tombs, or as if one of our ancestors had stepped out of her picture frame, and again walked the earth. As to the economy of selecting the best materials for dresses, we argue thus: Every dress must be lined and made up, and we pay as much for making and lining an inferior article, as we do for one of the best quality. Now, a good silk or merino will wear out two bad ones; therefore, one good dress, lining and making, will cost less than two inferior ones, with the expenses of lining and making them. In point of appearance, also, there is no comparison between the two; the good dress will look well to the last, while one of inferior quality will soon look shabby. When a good silk dress has become too shabby to be worn longer as a dress, it becomes, when cut up, useful for a variety of purposes; whereas an inferior silk, or one purely ornamental, is, when left off, good for nothing. Plain dresses, that is to say, those of a single color, and without a pattern, are more economical as well as more quiet in their appearance than those of various colors. They are also generally less expensive, because something is always paid for the novelty of the fashion; besides, colored and figured dresses bear the date on the face of them, as plainly as if it was there in printed characters. The ages of dress fabrics are known by the pattern; therefore dresses of this description should be put on as soon as purchased, and worn out at once, or they will appear old-fashioned. There is another reason why vari-colored dresses are less economical than others. Where there are several colors, they may not all be equally fast, and if only one of them fades the dress will lose its beauty. Trimmings are not economical; besides their cost in the first instance, they become shabby before the dress, and if removed, they generally leave a mark where they have been, and so spoil the appearance of the dress. Dresses made of one kind of material only, are more durable than those composed of two; as, for instance, of cotton and silk, of cotton and worsted, or of silk and worsted. When the silk is merely thrown on the face of the material, it soon wears off. This is also the case in those woollen or cotton goods which have a silken stripe. The question of economy also extends to colors, some of which are much more durable than others. For this we can give no rule, except that drabs and other "Quaker colors," as they are frequently called, are amongst the most permanent of all colors. For other colors we must take the word of the draper. There is no doubt, however, but that the most durable colors are the cheapest in the end. In the selection of colors, the expense is not always a criterion; something must be paid for fashion and novelty, and perhaps for the cost of the dye. The newest and most expensive colors are not always those which last the longest. It is not economical to have the dresses made in the extremity of the fashion, because such soon become remarkable; but the fashions should be followed at such a distance, that the wearer may not attract the epithet of old-fashioned. We conclude this part of our subject with a few suggestions relative to the selection of different styles and materials of dress. The style of dress should be adapted to the age of the wearer. As a general rule, we should say that in youth the dress should be simple and elegant, the ornaments being flowers. In middle age, the dress may be of rich materials, and more splendid in its character; jewels are the appropriate ornaments. In the decline of life, the materials of which the dress is composed may be equally rich, but with less vivacious colors: the tertiaries and broken colors are particularly suitable, and the character of the whole costume should be quiet, simple, and dignified. The French, whose taste in dress is so far in advance of our own, say, that ladies who are _cinquante ans sonnés_, should neither wear gay colors, nor dresses of slight materials, flowers, feathers, or much jewelry; that they should cover their hair, wear high dresses and long sleeves. Tall ladies may wear flounces and tucks, but they are less appropriate for short persons. As a general rule, vertical stripes make persons appear taller than they really are, but horizontal stripes have a contrary effect. The latter, Mr. Redgrave says, are not admissible in garment fabrics, "since, crossing the person, the pattern quarrels with all the motions of the human figure, as well as with the form of the long folds in the skirts of the garment. For this reason," he continues, "large and pronounced checks, however fashionable, are often in bad taste, and interfere with the graceful arrangement of the drapery." Is it to show their entire contempt for the principles of design that our manufacturers introduced last year not only horizontal stripes of conspicuous colors, but checks and plaids of immense size, as autumnal fashions for dress fabrics? We had hoped that the ladies would have shown the correctness of their taste by their disapproval of these unbecoming designs, but the prevalence of the fashion at the present time is another evidence of the triumph of fashion over good taste. A white and light-colored dress makes the wearers appear larger, while a black or dark dress causes them to appear smaller than they actually are. A judicious person will, therefore, avail herself of these known effects, by adopting the style of dress most suitable to her stature. To sum up, in a few words, our impressions on this subject, we should say that the best style of dress is that which, being exactly adapted to the climate and the individual, is at once modest, quiet, and retiring, harmonious in color and decoration, and of good materials. We conclude with the following admirable extract from Tobin's "Honeymoon," which we earnestly recommend to the attention of our fair readers. I'll have no glittering gewgaws stuck about you To stretch the gaping eyes of idiot wonder, And make men stare upon a piece of earth, As on the star-wrought firmament--no feathers, To wave as streamers to your vanity; Nor cumbrous silk, that with its rustling sound Makes proud the flesh that bears it. She's adorned Amply, that in her husband's eye looks lovely-- The truest mirror that an honest wife Can see her beauty in! _Julia._ I shall observe, sir. _Duke._ I should like well to see you in the dress I last presented you. _Julia._ The blue one, sir? _Duke._ No, love,--the white. Thus modestly attired, A half-blown rose stuck in thy braided hair, With no more diamonds than those eyes are made of, No deeper rubies than compose thy lips, Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them, With the pure red and white, which that same hand Which blends the rainbow, mingles in thy cheeks; This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter) In graceful motion to harmonious sounds, And thy free tresses dancing in the wind, Thou'lt fix as much observance, as chaste dames Can meet without a blush. We look forward hopefully to a day when art-education will be extended to all ranks; when a knowledge of the beautiful will be added to that of the useful; when good taste, based upon real knowledge and common sense, will dictate our fashions in dress as in other things. We have schools of art to reform our taste in pottery, hardware, and textile fabrics, not to speak of the higher walks of art, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The handle of a jug, the stem of a wine glass, the design for dress silks or lace veils, will form the subjects of lectures to the students of the various schools of design; disquisitions are written on the important question whether the ornamental designs should represent the real form of objects, or only give a conventional representation of them; while the study of the human figure, the masterpiece of creation, is totally neglected, except by painters and sculptors. We hope that the study of form will be more extended, that it will be universal, that it will, in fact, enter into the general scheme of education, and that we shall hereafter see as much pains bestowed in improving by appropriate costume the figure which nature has given us, as we do now in distorting it by tight stays, narrow and high-heeled shoes, and all the other deformities and eccentricities of that many-faced monster, fashion. The economy of the frame, and the means of preserving it in health and beauty, should form an integral part of education. There can be no true beauty without health; and how can we hope to secure health if we are ignorant of the means of promoting it, or if we violate its precepts by adopting absurd and pernicious fashions? Surely it is not too much to hope that dressmakers will hereafter attend the schools of design, to study the human form, and thence learn to appreciate its beauties, and to clothe it with appropriate dress, calculated to display its beauties to the greatest advantage, and to conceal its defects--the latter with the reservation we have already noticed. We hope, also, that the shoemaker will learn to model the shoe upon the true form of the foot. Manufacturers are now convinced of the importance and utility of schools of design; and whether the article hereafter to be produced be a cup and saucer, a fender, a pattern for a dress, or for furniture, for a service of plate or a diamond tiara, it is thought proper that the pupil, as a preliminary course that cannot be dispensed with, should commence with the study of the human figure. Yet is not dress an art-manufacture as well as a cup and saucer, or a teaboard? Is there less skill and talent, less taste required to clothe the form which we are told is made after God's own image, than to furnish an apartment? Why should not dressmakers and tailors attend the schools of design, as well as those artisans who are intended to be employed in what are called art-manufactures? Why should not shoemakers be taught the shape and movements of the foot? If this were the case, we are satisfied that an immediate and permanent improvement would be the consequence in our style of dress. Would any person acquainted with the human form, and especially with the little round form of an infant, have sent to the Great Exhibition an infant's robe shaped like that in our cut. Fig. 89. An infant with a waist "growing fine by degrees and beautifully less"!--was there ever such a deformity? We believe that many portrait painters stipulate that they should be allowed to dictate the dress, at least as regards the arrangement of the colors, of their sitters; the reason of this is, that the painter's selection of dress and color is based upon the study of the figure and complexion of the individual, or the knowledge of the effects of contrast and harmony of lines, tissues, and colors, while the models which are presented for his imitation too frequently offer to his view a style of dress, both as regards form and color, which set the rules of harmony at defiance. Now, only suppose that the dressmaker had the painter's knowledge of form and harmony of lines and colors, what a revolution would take place in dress? We should no longer see the tall and the short, the slender and the stout, the brown and the fair, the old and the young, dressed alike, but the dress would be adapted to the individual; and we believe that, were the plan of study we recommend generally adopted, this purpose might always be effected without the sacrifice of what is now the grand desideratum in dress--novelty. The reasons why the art of dressmaking has not hitherto received the attention which it deserves, are to be sought for in the constitution of society. The branches of manufacture which require a knowledge of design, such as calico printing, silk and ribbon weaving, porcelain and pottery, and hardware manufactures, are conducted on a large scale by men of wealth and talent, who, if they would compete successfully with rival manufacturers, find it necessary to study and apply to their own business all the improvements in science, with which their intercourse with society gives them an opportunity of becoming acquainted. It is quite otherwise with dressmaking. A woman is at the head of every establishment of this kind, a woman generally of limited education and attainments, from whom cannot be expected either liberality of sentiment or enlarged views, but who possibly possesses some tact and discrimination of character, which enables her to exercise a kind of dictatorial power in matters of dress over her customers; these customers are scarcely better informed on the subject than herself. The early life of the dressmaker is spent in a daily routine of labor with the needle, and when she becomes a mistress in her turn, she exacts from her assistants the same amount of daily labor that was formerly expected from herself. Work, work, work with the needle from almost childhood, in the same close room from morning to night, and not unfrequently from night to morning also, is the everlasting routine of the monotonous life of the dressmakers. They are working for bread, and have no leisure to attend to the improvement of the mind, and the want of this mental cultivation is apparent in the articles they produce by their labor. When one of the young women who attends these establishments to learn the trade, thinks she has had sufficient experience, she leaves the large establishment, and sets up in business on her own account. In this new situation she works equally hard, and has, therefore, no time for improving her mind or taste. Of the want of this, however, she is not sensible, because she can purchase for a trifle all the newest patterns, and the thought never enters her poor little head, that the same fashion may not suit all her customers. This defective education of the dressmakers, or rather their want of knowledge of the human form, is one of the great causes of the prevalence of the old fashion of tight lacing; it is so much easier to make a closely-fitting body suit over a tight stay than it is on the pliant and yielding natural form, in which, if one part be drawn a little too tight, or the contrary, the body of the dress is thrown out of shape. Supposing, on the other hand, the fit to be exact, it is so difficult to keep such a tight-fitting body in its place on the figure without securing its form by whalebones, that it is in vain to expect the stays to become obsolete until the tight-fitting bodice is also given up. This will never take place until not only the ladies who are to be clothed, but the dressmakers, shall make the human form their study, and direct their efforts to set off their natural advantages by attending to the points which are their characteristic beauties. A long and delicate throat, falling shoulders, not too wide from point to point, a flat back, round chest, wide hips--these are the points which should be developed by the dress. Whence it follows, that every article of dress which shortens the throat, adds height or width to the shoulders, roundness to the back, or flatness to the chest, must be radically wrong in principle, and unpleasant and repulsive in effect. In the same manner, whatever kind of dress adds to the height of a figure already too tall and thin, or detracts from the apparent height of the short and stout, must be avoided. These things should form the study of the dressmaker. As society is now constituted, however, the dressmaker has not, as we have already observed, leisure to devote to studies of the necessity and importance of which she is still ignorant. The reform must be begun by the ladies themselves. They must acquire a knowledge of form, and of the principles of beauty and harmony, and so exercise a controlling influence over the dressmakers. By this means, a better taste will be created, and the dressmakers will at length discover their deficiency in certain guiding principles, and will be driven at last to resort to similar studies. But in this case a startling difficulty presents itself--the poor dressmaker is at present over-worked: how can she find leisure to attend the schools of design, or even pursue, if she had the ability, the necessary studies at home? A girl is apprenticed to the trade at the age of thirteen or fourteen; she works at it all her life, rising early, and late taking rest; and what is the remuneration of her daily toil of twelve hours? Eighteen pence, or at most two shillings a day, with her board![3] As she reckons the value of the latter at a shilling, it follows, that the earnings of a dressmaker, in the best period of her life, who goes out to work, could not exceed fifteen shillings, or, at the most, eighteen shillings a week, if she did not--at the hazard of her health, which, indeed, is frequently sacrificed--work at home before she begins, and after she has finished, her day's work abroad. The carpenter or house painter does not work harder, or bring to bear on his employment greater knowledge, than the poor dressmaker; yet he has four shillings sixpence a day, without his board, while she has only what is equivalent to two shillings sixpence, or three shillings. What reason can be assigned why a woman's work, if equally well done, should not be as well paid as that of a man? A satisfactory reason has yet to be given; the fact, however, is indisputable, that women are not in general so well paid for their labor as men. [3] Of course it will be understood that these are the English prices; but does not the comparison hold good between male and female labor in this country? Although these remarks arose naturally out of our subject, we must not digress too far. To return to the dressmaker. If the hours of labor of these white slaves who toil in the dressmaking establishments were limited to ten or twelve hours, as in large factories, two consequences would follow: the first is, that more hands would be employed, and the second, that the young women would have time to attend schools, and improve their minds. If they could also attend occasional lectures on the figure, and on the harmony of color and costume with reference to dress, the best effects would follow. Those dressmakers who are rich enough, and, we may add, many ladies also, take in some book of fashions with colored illustrations, and from this they imbibe their notions of beauty of form and elegance of costume. How is it possible, we would ask, for either the dressmaker or the ladies who employ them to acquire just ideas of form, or of suitable costume, when their eyes are accustomed only to behold such deformed and unnatural representations of the human figure as those in the accompanying plates? Figs. 90 and 91. Is it any wonder that small waists should be admired, when the books which aspire to be the handmaids and mirrors of fashion present to their readers such libels on beauty of form? Now, suppose that lithographed drawings of costumes issued occasionally from the schools of design, is it not reasonable to suppose that, with the knowledge which the students have acquired of the human figure, the illustrations would be more accurate imitations of nature? An eye accustomed to the study of nature can scarcely bear to contemplate, much less to imitate, the monsters of a depraved taste which disgrace the different publications that aspire to make known the newest fashions. Many of the illustrations of these publications, although ill proportioned, are executed in a certain stylish manner which takes with the uneducated, and the mechanical execution of the figures is also good. This, however, is so far from being an advantage, that it only renders them the more dangerous; like the song of the siren, they lead only to evil. We are told that many of the first Parisian artists derive a considerable part of their income from drawing the figures in the French books of fashion and costume, and that, in the early part of his career, Horace Vernet, the president of the French Academy, did not disdain to employ his talents in this way. We cannot, however, refrain from expressing our surprise and honest indignation that artists of eminence, especially those who, like the French school, have a reputation for correct drawing, and who must, therefore, be so well acquainted with the actual as well as ideal proportions of the female figure, should so prostitute their talents as to employ them in delineating the ill-proportioned figures which appear in books of fashions. It is no small aggravation of their offence, in our eyes, that the figures should be drawn in such graceful positions, and with the exception of the defective proportions, with so much skill. These beauties only make them more dangerous; the goodness of their execution misleads the unfortunate victims of their fascination. What young lady, unacquainted with the proportions of the figure, could look on these prints of costumes and go away without the belief that a small waist and foot were essential elements of beauty? So she goes home from her dressmaker's, looks in the glass, and not finding her own waist and foot as small as those in the books of fashion, gives her stay-lace an extra tightening pull, and, regardless of corns, squeezes her feet into tight shoes, which makes the instep appear swollen. Both the figures in our last plates were originally drawn and engraved by Jules David, and Reville, in "_Le Moniteur de la Mode_," which is published at Paris, London, New York, and St. Petersburg. Let our readers look at these figures, and say whether the most determined votary of tight lacing ever succeeded in compressing her waist into the proportions represented in these figures. We should like to hear that lectures were given occasionally, by a lady in the female school of design, on the subjects of form, and of dress in its adaptation to form and to harmony of color. We have no doubt that a lady competent to deliver these lectures will readily be found. After a course of these lectures, we do not hesitate to predict that illustrations of fashion emanating from this source would be, in point of taste, every thing that could be desired. We venture to think that the students of the female school may be as well and as profitably employed in designing costumes, as in inventing patterns for cups and saucers or borders for veils. Until some course, of the nature we have indicated, is adopted, we cannot hope for any permanent improvement in our costume. CHAPTER VIII. SOME THOUGHTS ON CHILDREN'S DRESS. BY MRS. MERRIFIELD. Can any good and sufficient reason be given, said a friend, as we were contemplating the happy faces and lively gestures of a party of boys and girls, who, one cold, frosty evening, were playing at the old game called "I sent a letter to my love," why, when one of the party picks up the ball which another has thrown down, the boys always stoop, while the girls (with the exception of one little rosy girl, who is active and supple as the boys) invariably drop on one knee? At first we almost fancied this must be a new way of playing the game; but when one of the seniors threw a handful of _bonbons_ among the children, and in their eager scramble to pick up the tempting sweets we observed the same respective actions, namely, that the boys stooped, while the girls knelt on one knee, we began to meditate on the cause of this diversity of action. A little more observation convinced us that the girls, though equally lively, were less free in their movement than the boys. We observed, also, that every now and then some of the girls stopped and hitched their clothes, (which appeared almost in danger of falling off,) with an awkward movement, first upon one shoulder, and then on the other, while others jerked one shoulder upwards, which caused the sleeve on that side to sink nearly to the elbow. "Now," we exclaimed, "we can solve the problem: the different actions are caused by the difference in the dress; let us see where the difference lies." So we continued our observations, and soon found that the boys were all dressed in high dresses up to the throat, while the bands which encircled their waists were so loose as merely to keep the dress in its place without confining it; in short, that their dress did not offer the slightest restraint on their freedom of movement. It was otherwise with the girls, excepting the little rosy girl before mentioned: they were dressed in low dresses, and their shoulders were so bare that we involuntarily thought of a caterpillar casting its skin, and began to fear, from the uneasy movement of their shoulders, that the same thing might happen to the children, when we observed that this was rendered impossible by the tightness of the clothes about the waist. The mystery was now cleared up; the tightness of the dress at the waist, while it prevented the children from "slipping shell," as it were, entirely destroyed their freedom of movement. We could not help contrasting these poor girls--dressed in the very pink of fashion, with their bare shoulders, compressed waists, and delicate appearance--with the rosy face, quick and active movement, and thick waist of the little girl before alluded to; and we sighed as we thought that, induced by the culpable folly or ignorance of parents, "Pale decay Would steal before the steps of time, And snatch 'their' bloom away." "Whence does it arise," continued my friend, "that the boys are clad in warm dresses, suited to the season, their chests and arms protected from the wintry air, and their feet incased in woollen stockings, while the girls are suffered to shiver at Christmas in muslin dresses, with bare necks and arms, and silk or thin cotton stockings? Are they less susceptible of cold than boys? Is their circulation less languid, that their clothes are so much thinner? Are their figures better, their health stronger, for the compression of their tender bodies by stays?" At this point our cogitations were stopped by a summons to supper; and after supper, hats and shawls were produced, and we took our leave. Our young companions, fatigued with their exertions, soon fell asleep in the corners of the carriage, and we were left to our own meditations. Our thoughts once more reverted to the subject of children's dress, and gradually assumed the following form:-- The subject of dress, which is so important both to our health and comfort, is usually treated as a matter of fashion, and is regulated partly by individual fancy, partly by the dictates of the _modiste_. Fashion, as it applies to the costume of men, is, with the exception of the hat, controlled by convenience and common sense; but with regard to the dress of women and children, neither of these considerations has any weight. The most extravagant and _bizarre_ arrangements of form and colors will meet with admirers and imitators, provided they emanate from a fashionable source. The dress of children, especially, appears to be exceedingly fantastic in its character, and, with regard to that of girls, is ill adapted to secure the enjoyment of health and the perfect development of the figure. We venture to offer a few remarks on this highly interesting theme. In discussing the subject of children's dress, several points present themselves for our consideration, namely, first, the adaptation of the costume to the climate, the movements, and healthful development of the figure; and secondly, the general elegance of the habiliments, the harmony of the colors, and their special adaptation to the age and individual characteristics of children. The first are essential conditions; the latter, though too frequently treated as the most important, may, in comparison with the first, be deemed non-essentials. We shall remark on these subjects in the before-mentioned order. With regard to the adaptation of the dress of children to the climate, this appears so evident that any observations upon it might be deemed almost unnecessary; yet, in practice, how little is it understood! The great object in view in regulating the warmth of the clothing, is to guard the wearer from the vicissitudes of the climate, and to equalize the circulation, which is accelerated by heat and retarded by cold. Children are habitually full of activity, which quickens the circulation and produces a determination to the skin; in other words, causes some degree of perspiration, and if this, perspiration be suddenly checked by the application of cold, illness in some shape or other is induced. In order to lessen this risk, the clothing should be light and warm; sufficiently warm to shield the child from the effects of cold, but not to elevate greatly the temperature of the body. The latter would only render the child more susceptible of cold. Children are, by some over-careful but not judicious parents, so burdened with clothes that one is surprised to find they can move under the vast encumbrance. There is much diversity of opinion among medical men as to the propriety of wearing flannel next to the skin. The arguments appear to be in favor of the practice, provided that the thickness of the flannel be proportioned to the seasons of the year. In winter it should be thick; in summer it can scarcely be too thin. Flannel is preferable to linen or calico, because, although it may be saturated with perspiration, it never strikes cold to the skin; whereas linen, under similar circumstances, always does, and the sudden application of cold to the skin, when warmed by exercise, checks the circulation, and causes illness. Parents are frequently guilty of much inconsistency in the clothing of their children. The child, perhaps, has delicate lungs; it must, therefore, have warm clothing; so garment after garment, made fashionably, that is to say, very full and very short, is heaped one upon the other over the chest and upper part of the body, until the poor child can scarcely move under the heavy burden with which, with mistaken kindness, it has been laden, while the lower limbs, in which the circulation is most languid, and which require to be protected as well as the chest, are frequently exposed to the air, and the foot is covered with a shoe which is too thin to keep it dry. The consequence of this arrangement is, that the child, oppressed by the weight of its clothing, becomes overheated, and being cooled too hastily, catches severe colds. The habiliments of children cannot be too light in weight; and this is perfectly consistent with a proper degree of warmth. Those parents are greatly to blame who, influenced only by appearance, and the wish to dress their children fashionably, add to the weight of their clothing by introducing so much unnecessary fulness into the skirts. The next point for consideration, and which is not inferior in importance to the last, is the adaptation of the dress to the movements and healthful development of the figure; and, strange to say, this point is almost entirely overlooked by those who have the management and control of children, although a few honest and sensible medical men have raised their warning voices against the system now pursued. We hear every where of the march of intellect; we are perpetually told that the schoolmaster is abroad; lessons and masters of all kinds are endeavoring "To teach the young idea how to shoot;" while the little delicate frame which is to bear all this mental labor is left to the ignorance of mothers and nurses, and the tender mercies of the dressmaker, who seems to think that the human frame is as easily moulded into an imitation of those libels on humanity represented in books of fashionable costume as the materials with which she works. Would that we had powers of persuasion to convince our readers how greatly these figures, with their excessively-small waists, hands and feet, deviate from the actual proportions of well-formed women! Unfortunately, the pinched waist is too common in real life for those unacquainted with the proportions of the figure not to think it one of the essential elements of beauty. So far, however, from being a beauty, a small waist is an actual blemish. Never, until the economy of the human frame is studied by all classes, and a knowledge of the principles on which its beauties depend is disseminated among all ranks, can we hope that just ideas will be entertained on this subject. If there is one thing in which the schoolmaster or the reformer is more wanted than in another, it is in our dress. From our birth to our death we are the slaves of fashion, of prejudice, and of circumstances. The tender, unresisting infant, the delicate girl, the mature woman, alike suffer from these evil influences; some fall victims to them, others suffer during life. Let us consider the dress of an infant. Here, however, it must be acknowledged that of late years much improvement has taken place in some respects, although much still remains to be done. Caps, with their trimming of three or four rows of lace, and large cockades which rivalled in size the dear little round face of the child, are discontinued almost entirely within doors, though the poor child is still almost overwhelmed with cap, hat, and feathers, in its daily airings, the additional weight which its poor neck has to sustain never once entering into the calculation of its mother and nurse. Fine feathers, it is said, make fine birds. This may be true with respect to the feathered creation, but it is not so with regard to children. They suffer from the misplaced finery, and from the undue heat of the head. And yet the head has, generally speaking, been better treated by us than the rest of the body. When we look back upon the history of costume, it really seems as if men--or women, shall we say?--had exercised their ingenuity in torturing the human frame, and destroying its health and vigor. The American Indian compresses the tender skull of the infant, and binds its little body on to a flat board; the Chinese squeezes the feet of the females; the Italian peasants, following the custom of the Orientals, still roll the infant in swathing bands; the little legs of the child, that when left to its own disposal are in perpetual motion, now curled up to the body, then thrust out their extreme length, to the evident enjoyment of their owner, are extended in a straight line, laid side by side, and bandaged together, so that the infant reminds one in shape of a mummy. In this highly cultivated country we are guilty towards our infants of practices quite as senseless, as cruel, and as contrary to nature. The movements of the lower limbs, so essential to the healthy growth of the child, are limited and restrained, if not altogether prevented, by the great weight that we hang upon them. The long petticoats, in which every infant in this country has been for centuries doomed to pass many months of its existence, are as absurd as they are prejudicial to the child. The evil has of late years rather increased than diminished, for the clothes are not only made much longer, but much fuller, so that the poor victim has an additional weight to bear. Many instances can be mentioned in which the long clothes have been made a yard and a quarter long. The absurdity of this custom becomes apparent, if we only imagine a mother or nurse of short statue carrying an infant in petticoats of this length; and we believe that long clothes are always made totally irrespective of the height of mother or nurse. Imagine one or the other treading on the robe, and throwing herself and the child down! Imagine, also, the probable consequences of such an accident! And when one ventures to express doubts as to the propriety of dressing an infant in long clothes, instead of arguments in their favor, one is met by the absurd remark, "A baby looks so grand in long clothes!" We have for some years endeavored, as far as our influence extended, to put an end to this practice, and in some cases we have so far succeeded as to induce the mother to short-coat the child before it was three months old, and even previous to this period to make the under garments of a length suited to the size of the child, while the frock or robe, as it is called, retained the fashionable length. The latter, being of fine texture, did not add considerably to the weight of the clothes. Children who have the free use of their limbs not only walk earlier than others, but are stronger on their feet. Another evil practice, which some years since prevailed universally, was that of rolling a bandage, three inches in width, and two or three yards in length, round the body of the child. The pain that such a bandage, from its unyielding nature, would occasion, not to speak of its ill effects on the health, may be readily imagined. This bandage was, in fact, a kind of breaking in for the tight lacing, the penalty which most females in this country have had, at some period or other, to undergo. There is no end of the inconsistencies of children's dress. If, in early infancy, they are buried in long petticoats, no sooner can they walk than the petticoats are so shortened that they scarcely cover the child's back when it stoops. The human race has a wonderful power of accommodating itself to a variety of temperatures and climates; but perhaps it is seldom exposed to greater vicissitudes than in the change from long clothes to the extremely short and full ones that are now fashionable. The very full skirt is not so warm in proportion to its length as one of more moderate fulness; because, instead of clinging round the figure, it stands off from it, and admits the air under it. The former is also heavier than the latter, inasmuch as it contains more material; and the weight of the clothing is a great disadvantage to a child. A sensible medical writer, Dr. John F. South, in an excellent little work entitled "Domestic Surgery," makes some very judicious observations relative to children's dress. Of the fashion of dressing boys with the tunic reaching to the throat, and trousers, which are both so loose as to offer no impediment to freedom of motion, he approves; but he condemns, in the strongest terms, "the unnatural"--Mr. South remarks he had almost said "atrocious--system to which, in youth, if not in childhood, girls are subjected for the improvement of their figure and gait." It is fortunate for the present generation that it is the fashion for the dresses of even little girls to be made as high as the throat; the old fashion of cutting the frock low round the neck, which still exists in what is called "full dress," is objectionable on more than one account. In the first place, it is objected to on the consideration of health; because the upper part of the chest is not protected from the influence of currents of air, and by this means, as Mr. South observes, the foundation is laid for irritable lungs. In the next place, the dress is generally suffered to fall off the shoulders, and is, in fact, only retained in its place by the tight band about the waist. To avoid the uneasiness occasioned by the pressure of the latter, the child slips its clothes off one shoulder, generally the right, which it raises more than the other; the consequence of this is, that the raised shoulder becomes permanently higher than the other, and the spine is drawn towards the same side. It is said that there is scarcely one English woman in fifty who has not one shoulder higher or thicker than the other; and there appears but little doubt that much of this deformity is to be ascribed to the above-mentioned cause. In confirmation of this opinion, it may be mentioned that the practice of wearing dresses low in the neck is almost peculiar to English girls; French girls, nearly from infancy, wear high dresses, and it is certain that deformity is not so frequent among French women as it is among English. The discipline of tight lacing is frequently begun so early in life, that the poor victim has little or no recollection of the pain and suffering occasioned by the pressure of the stiff and uncomfortable stays before the frame has become accustomed to them. Those of our readers who were fortunate enough to escape this infliction in early life, and who adopted stiff stays at a more mature age, can bear testimony to the suffering occasioned by them during the first few weeks of their use. "O," said a girl who put on stiff stays, for the first time, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, "I wish bedtime was come, that I might take off these stiff and uncomfortable stays, they pain me so much." "Hush, hush!" exclaimed a starch old maiden aunt, shocked at what she thought the indelicacy of the expression which pain had wrung from the poor girl; "you must bear it for a time; you will soon get used to it." Used to it! Yes, indeed, as the cook said the eels did to skinning, and with, as regards the poor girls, almost as disastrous consequences. There are three points of view in which tight lacing is prejudicial. It weakens the muscles of the shoulders and chest, which rust, as it were, for want of use; it injures, by pressure, the important organs contained in the chest and trunk; and, lastly, instead of improving the figure, it positively and absolutely deforms it. A waist disproportionately small, compared with the stature and proportions of the individual, is a greater deformity than one which is too large; the latter is simply clumsy; it does not injure the health of the person, while the former is not only prejudicial to health, but to beauty. Were our fair readers but once convinced of this fact, there would be an end of tight lacing; and the good results arising from the abolition of this practice would be evident in the improved health of the next generation. What a host of evils follow in the steps of tight lacing! Indigestion, hysteria, spinal distortion, consumption, liver complaints, disease of the heart, cancer, early death!--these are a few of them, and enough to make both mothers and daughters tremble. It is an aggravation of the evil that is brought upon us frequently by the agency of a mother--of her upon whose affection and experience a child naturally relies in all things, and whose lamentable ignorance of what constitutes beauty of form, as well as her subjection to the thraldom of fashion, is the prolific source of so much future misery to her unsuspecting daughter. Education is the order of the day; but surely that education must be very superficial and incomplete, of which the study of the economy of the human form, its various beauties, and the wonderful skill with which it was created, form no part. A girl spends several years in learning French, Italian, and German, which may be useful to her should she meet with French, Italians, or Germans, or should she visit the continent; she spends three, four, five, and sometimes six hours a day, in practising on the piano, frequently without having any real talent for this accomplishment, while she is kept in utter ignorance of that which is of vital consequence not only to herself, but to her future offspring, namely, a knowledge of what constitutes true beauty, and contributes to the preservation of health, and, we may also add, of good humor and happiness; for it is one of the evils attending ill health, that it frequently induces a fretful and irritable state of mind. Instead of the really useful knowledge of the economy of the frame, and the means of preserving health, girls are taught the constrained attitudes and the artificial deportment of the dancing master. The remark of Sir Joshua Reynolds on this subject has been often quoted. He said, "All the motions of children are full of grace; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing master." To dancing itself there is not the slightest objection; it is at once an agreeable and healthy occupation, and it affords a pleasing and innocent recreation. The pleasure which most children take in it, in spite of the "exercises" which they are compelled to practise, proves, we think, its utility. The treatment of the feet is on a par with that of the rest of the body. The toes are thrust close together into a shoe, the shape of the sole of which does not resemble that of the foot. It is generally narrower than the foot, which, therefore, hangs over the sides. The soles of children's shoes are, moreover, made alike on both sides, whereas the inside should be nearly straight, and the width of the sole should correspond exactly with that of the foot. Boots, which have been so fashionable of late years, are very convenient, and have a neat appearance, but they are considered to weaken the ankle, because the artificial support which they give to that part prevents the full exercise of the muscles, which waste from want of use. Shoes should be cut short in the quarter, because the pressure necessary to keep such shoes as are now worn on the feet will, in this case, be on the instep instead of the toes, which will, by this arrangement, have more room. We shall conclude our observations on children's dress, considered in a sanitary point of view, in the words of Mr. South. "If, then, you wish your children, girls especially, to have the best chance of health, and a good constitution, let them wear flannel next their skin, and woollen stockings in winter; have your girls' chests covered to the collar bones, and their shoulders _in_, not _out_ of their dresses, if you would have them straight; and do not confine their chests and compress their digestive organs by bone stays, or interfere with the free movement of their chests by tight belts, or any other contrivance, if you desire their lungs should do their duty, upon which so mainly depends the preservation of health."--_Sharpe's London Magazine._ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ NOTE.--The Fig. 58, referred to on the top of page 59, is not found in the plate; but the same style of dressing the hair may be seen in Fig. 57. Transcriber's Notes and Amendments: Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation retained: Ardene/Arderne Makrinitza/Markinitza Parmegianino/Parmegiano Sommæring/Sommaering Reville/Réville outdoor/out-door 'Head Dress' on the title page was left un-hyphenated, as printed. Amendments to the text as originally printed: List of Illustrations and Chapter VII (caption for plate XII.) '89, 90. From "Le Moniteur de la Mode,"' to '90, 91. From "Le Moniteur de la Mode,"' Chapter II. 'The lady in the evening dress (Fig 49)' to 'The lady in the evening dress (Fig. 49)' Chapter VI. 'The materials of the drapery in the latter is' to 'The materials of the drapery in the latter are' Chapter VII. 'ribbon, artificial flowers. feathers,' to 'ribbon, artificial flowers, feathers,' 'the environs of Athens, (Fig. 49.)' to 'the environs of Athens, (Fig. 47.)' 
10940	----	[Illustration] [Illustration: The Queen of Sheba before Solomon (_Costume of 15th century_.) Fac-simile of a miniature from the _Breviary_ of the Cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling. Bibl. of S. Marc, Venice. (From a copy in the possession of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.) The King inclines his sceptre towards the Queen indicating his appreciation of her person and her gifts; five ladies attend the Queen and five of the King's courtiers stand on his right hand.] Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages, and During the Renaissance Period. By Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob), Curator of the Imperial Library of the Arsenal, Paris. Illustrated with Nineteen Chromolithographic Prints by F. Kellerhoven and upwards of _Four Hundred Engravings on Wood_. Preface. The several successive editions of "The Arts of the Middle Ages and Period of the Renaissance" sufficiently testify to its appreciation by the public. The object of that work was to introduce the reader to a branch of learning to which access had hitherto appeared only permitted to the scientific. That attempt, which was a bold one, succeeded too well not to induce us to push our researches further. In fact, art alone cannot acquaint us entirely with an epoch. "The arts, considered in their generality, are the true expressions of society. They tell us its tastes, its ideas, and its character." We thus spoke in the preface to our first work, and we find nothing to modify in this opinion. Art must be the faithful expression of a society, since it represents it by its works as it has created them--undeniable witnesses of its spirit and manners for future generations. But it must be acknowledged that art is only the consequence of the ideas which it expresses; it is the fruit of civilisation, not its origin. To understand the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is necessary to go back to the source of its art, and to know the life of our fathers; these are two inseparable things, which entwine one another, and become complete one by the other. The Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages:--this subject is of the greatest interest, not only to the man of science, but to the man of the world also. In it, too, "we retrace not only one single period, but two periods quite distinct one from the other." In the first, the public and private customs offer a curious mixture of barbarism and civilisation. We find barbarian, Roman, and Christian customs and character in presence of each other, mixed up in the same society, and very often in the same individuals. Everywhere the most adverse and opposite tendencies display themselves. What an ardent struggle during that long period! and how full, too, of emotion is its picture! Society tends to reconstitute itself in every aspect. She wants to create, so to say, from every side, property, authority, justice, &c., &c., in a word, everything which can establish the basis of public life; and this new order of things must be established by means of the elements supplied at once by the barbarian, Roman, and Christian world--a prodigious creation, the working of which occupied the whole of the Middle Ages. Hardly does modern society, civilised by Christianity, reach the fullness of its power, than it divides itself to follow different paths. Ancient art and literature resuscitates because custom _insensibly_ takes that direction. Under that influence, everything is modified both in private and public life. The history of the human race does not present a subject more vast or more interesting. It is a subject we have chosen to succeed our first book, and which will be followed by a similar study on the various aspects of Religious and Military Life. This work, devoted to the vivid and faithful description of the Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, answers fully to the requirements of contemporary times. We are, in fact, no longer content with the chronological narration and simple nomenclatures which formerly were considered sufficient for education. We no longer imagine that the history of our institutions has less interest than that of our wars, nor that the annals of the humbler classes are irrelevant to those of the privileged orders. We go further still. What is above all sought for in historical works nowadays is the physiognomy, the inmost character of past generations. "How did our fathers live?" is a daily question. "What institutions had they? What were their political rights? Can you not place before us their pastimes, their hunting parties, their meals, and all sorts of scenes, sad or gay, which composed their home life? We should like to follow them in public and private occupations, and to know their manner of living hourly, as we know our own." In a high order of ideas, what great facts serve as a foundation to our history and that of the modern world! We have first royalty, which, weak and debased under the Merovingians, rises and establishes itself energetically under Pépin and Charlemagne, to degenerate under Louis le Débonnaire and Charles le Chauve. After having dared a second time to found the Empire of the Caesars, it quickly sees its sovereignty replaced by feudal rights, and all its rights usurped by the nobles, and has to struggle for many centuries to recover its rights one by one. Feudalism, evidently of Germanic origin, will also attract our attention, and we shall draw a rapid outline of this legislation, which, barbarian at the onset, becomes by degrees subject to the rules of moral progress. We shall ascertain that military service is the essence itself of the "fief," and that thence springs feudal right. On our way we shall protest against civil wars, and shall welcome emancipation and the formation of the communes. Following the thousand details of the life of the people, we shall see the slave become serf, and the serf become peasant. We shall assist at the dispensation of justice by royalty and nobility, at the solemn sittings of parliaments, and we shall see the complicated details of a strict ceremonial, which formed an integral part of the law, develop themselves before us. The counters of dealers, fairs and markets, manufactures, commerce, and industry, also merit our attention; we must search deeply into corporations of workmen and tradesmen, examining their statutes, and initiating ourselves into their business. Fashion and dress are also a manifestation of public and private customs; for that reason we must give them particular attention. And to accomplish the work we have undertaken, we are lucky to have the conscientious studies of our old associates in the great work of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to assist us: such as those of Emile Bégin, Elzéar Blaze, Depping, Benjamin Guérard, Le Roux de Lincy, H. Martin, Mary-Lafon, Francisque Michel, A. Monteil, Rabutau, Ferdinand Séré, Horace de Viel-Castel, A. de la Villegille, Vallet de Viriville. As in the volume of the Arts of the Middle Ages, engraving and chromo-lithography will come to our assistance by reproducing, by means of strict fac-similes, the rarest engravings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the most precious miniatures of the manuscripts preserved in the principal libraries of France and Europe. Here again we have the aid of the eminent artist, M. Kellerhoven, who quite recently found means of reproducing with so much fidelity the gems of Italian painting. Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob). Table of Contents. Condition of Persons and Lands Disorganization of the West at the Beginning of the Middle Ages.--Mixture of Roman, Germanic, and Gallic Institutions.--Fusion organized under Charlemagne.--Royal Authority.--Position of the Great Feudalists.--Division of the Territory and Prerogatives attached to Landed Possessions.--Freeman and Tenants.--The Læti, the Colon, the Serf, and the Labourer, who may be called the Origin of the Modern Lower Classes.--Formation of Communities.--Right of Mortmain. Privileges and Rights (Feudal and Municipal) Elements of Feudalism.--Rights of Treasure-trove, Sporting, Safe-Conducts, Ransom, Disinheritance, &c.--Immunity of the Feudalists.--Dues from the Nobles to their Sovereign.--Law and University Dues.--Curious Exactions resulting from the Universal System of Dues.--Struggles to enfranchise the Classes subjected to Dues.--Feudal Spirit and Citizen Spirit.--Resuscitation of the System of Ancient Municipalities in Italy, Germany, and France.--Municipal Institutions and Associations.--The Community.--The Middle-Class Cities (_Cités Bourgeoises_).--Origin of National Unity. Private Life in the Castles, the Towns, and the Rural Districts The Merovingian Castles.--Pastimes of the Nobles: Hunting, War.--Domestic Arrangements.--Private Life of Charlemagne.--Domestic Habits under the Carlovingians.--Influence of Chivalry.--Simplicity of the Court of Philip Augustus not imitated by his Successors.--Princely Life of the Fifteenth Century.--The bringing up of Latour Landry, a Noble of Anjou.--Varlets, Pages, Esquires, Maids of Honour.--Opulence of the Bourgeoisie.--"Le Ménagier de Paris."--Ancient Dwellings.--State of Rustics at various Periods.--"Rustic Sayings," by Noël du Fail. Food and Cookery History of Bread.--Vegetables and Plants used in Cooking.--Fruits.--Butchers' Meat.--Poultry, Game.--Milk, Butter, Cheese, and Eggs.--Fish and Shellfish.--Beverages: Beer, Cider, Wine, Sweet Wine, Refreshing Drinks, Brandy.--Cookery.--Soups, Boiled Food, Pies, Stews, Salads, Roasts, Grills.--Seasoning, Truffles, Sugar, Verjuice.--Sweets, Desserts, Pastry,--Meals and Feasts.--Rules of Serving at Table from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries. Hunting Venery and Hawking.--Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.--Gaston Phoebus and his Book.--The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.--Sporting Societies and Brotherhoods.--Sporting Kings: Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.--Treatise on Venery.--Sporting Popes.--Origin of Hawking.--Training Birds.--Hawking Retinues.--Book of King Modus.--Technical Terms used in Hawking.--Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.--Fowling. Games and Pastimes Games of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.--Games of the Circus.--Animal Combats.--Daring of King Pepin.--The King's Lions.--Blind Men's Fights.--Cockneys of Paris.--Champ de Mars.--Cours Plénières and Cours Couronnées.--Jugglers, Tumblers, and Minstrels.--Rope-dancers.--Fireworks.--Gymnastics.--Cards and Dice.--Chess, Marbles, and Billiards.--La Soule, La Pirouette, &c.--Small Games for Private Society.--History of Dancing.--Ballet des Ardents.--The "Orchésographie" (Art of Dancing) of Thoinot Arbeau.--List of Dances. Commerce State of Commerce after the Fall of the Roman Empire; its Revival under the Frankish Kings; its Prosperity under Charlemagne; its Decline down to the Time of the Crusaders.--The Levant Trade of the East.--Flourishing State of the Towns of Provence and Languedoc.--Establishment of Fairs.--Fairs of Landit, Champagne, Beaucaire, and Lyons.--Weights and Measures.--Commercial Flanders.--Laws of Maritime Commerce.--Consular Laws.--Banks and Bills of Exchange.--French Settlements on the Coast of Africa.--Consequences of the Discovery of America. Guilds and Trade Corporations Uncertain Origin of Corporations.--Ancient Industrial Associations.--The Germanic Guild.--Colleges.--Teutonic Associations.--The Paris Company for the Transit of Merchandise by Water.--Corporations properly so called.--Etienne Boileau's "Book of Trades," or the First Code of Regulations.--The Laws governing Trades.--Public and Private Organization of Trades Corporations and other Communities.--Energy of the Corporations.--Masters, Journeymen, Supernumeraries, and Apprentices.--Religious Festivals and Trade Societies.--Trade Unions. Taxes, Money, and Finance Taxes under the Roman Rule.--Money Exactions of the Merovingian Kings.--Varieties of Money.--Financial Laws under Charlemagne.--Missi Dominici.--Increase of Taxes owing to the Crusades.--Organization of Finances by Louis IX.--Extortions of Philip lo Bel.--Pecuniary Embarrassment of his Successors.--Charles V. re-establishes Order in Finances.--Disasters of France under Charles VI., Charles VII., and Jacques Coeur.--Changes in Taxation from Louis XI. to Francis I.--The Great Financiers.--Florimond Robertet. Law and the Administration of Justice The Family the Origin of Government.--Origin of Supreme Power amongst the Franks.--The Legislation of Barbarism humanised by Christianity.--Right of Justice inherent to the Right of Property.--The Laws under Charlemagne.--Judicial Forms.--Witnesses.--Duels, &c.--Organization of Royal Justice under St. Louis.--The Châtelet and the Provost of Paris.--Jurisdiction of Parliament, its Duties and its Responsibilities.--The Bailiwicks.--Struggles between Parliament and the Châtelet.--Codification of the Customs and Usages.--Official Cupidity.--Comparison between the Parliament and the Châtelet. Secret Tribunals The Old Man of the Mountain and his Followers in Syria.--The Castle of Alamond, Paradise of Assassins.--Charlemagne the Founder of Secret Tribunals amongst the Saxons.--The Holy Vehme.--Organization of the Tribunal of the _Terre Rouge_, and Modes adopted in its Procedures.--Condemnations and Execution of Sentences.--The Truth respecting the Free Judges of Westphalia.--Duration and Fall of the Vehmie Tribunal.--Council of Ten, in Venice; its Code and Secret Decisions.--End of the Council of Ten. Punishments Refinements of Penal Cruelty.--Tortures for different Purposes.--Water, Screw-boards, and the Rack.--The Executioner.--Female Executioners.--Tortures.--Amende Honorable.--Torture of Fire, Real and Feigned.--Auto-da-fé.--Red-hot Brazier or Basin.--Beheading.--Quartering.--The Wheel.--Garotting.--Hanging.--The Whip.--The Pillory.--The Arquebuse.--Tickling.--Flaying.--Drowning.--Imprisonment.--Regulations of Prisons.--The Iron Cage.--"The Leads" of Venice. Jews Dispersion of the Jews.--Jewish Quarters in the Mediæval Towns.--The _Ghetto_ of Rome.--Ancient Prague.--The _Giudecca_ of Venice.--Condition of the Jews; Animosity of the People against them; Vexations Treatment and Severity of the Sovereigns.--The Jews of Lincoln.--The Jews of Blois.--Mission of the _Pastoureaux_.--Extermination of the Jews.--The Price at which the Jews purchased Indulgences.--Marks set upon them.--Wealth, Knowledge, Industry, and Financial Aptitude of the Jews.--Regulations respecting Usury as practised by the Jews.--Attachment of the Jews to their Religion. Gipsies, Tramps, Beggars, and Cours des Miracles First Appearance of Gipsies in the West.--Gipsies in Paris.--Manners and Customs of these Wandering Tribes.--Tricks of Captain Charles.--Gipsies expelled by Royal Edict.--Language of Gipsies.--The Kingdom of Slang.--The Great Coesre, Chief of the Vagrants; his Vassals and Subjects.--Divisions of the Slang People; its Decay, and the Causes thereof.--Cours des Miracles.--The Camp of Rogues.--Cunning Language, or Slang.--Foreign Rogues, Thieves, and Pickpockets. Ceremonials Origin of Modern Ceremonial.--Uncertainty of French Ceremonial up to the End of the Sixteenth Century.--Consecration of the Kings of France.--Coronation of the Emperors of Germany.--Consecration of the Doges of Venice.--Marriage of the Doge with the Sea.--State Entries of Sovereigns.--An Account of the Entry of Isabel of Bavaria into Paris.--Seats of Justice.--Visits of Ceremony between Persons of Rank.--Mourning.--Social Courtesies.--Popular Demonstrations and National Commemorations--New Year's Day.--Local Festivals.--_Vins d'Honneur_.--Processions of Trades. Costumes Influence of Ancient Costume.--Costume in the Fifteenth Century.--Hair.--Costumes in the Time of Charlemagne.--Origin of Modern National Dress.--Head-dresses and Beards: Time of St. Louis.--Progress of Dress: Trousers, Hose, Shoes, Coats, Surcoats, Capes.--Changes in the Fashions of Shoes and Hoods.--_Livrée_.--Cloaks and Capes.--Edicts against Extravagant Fashions.--Female Dress: Gowns, Bonnets, Head-dresses, &c.--Disappearance of Ancient Dress.--Tight-fitting Gowns.--General Character of Dress under Francis I.--Uniformity of Dress. Table of Illustrations. I. Chromolithographs. 1. The Queen of Sheba before Solomon. Fac-simile of a Miniature from the Breviary of Cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling. Costumes of the Fifteenth Century. 2. The Court of Marie of Anjou, Wife of Charles VII. Fac-simile of a Miniature from the "Douze Perilz d'Enfer." Costumes of the Fifteenth Century. 3. Louis XII. leaving Alexandria, on the 24th April, 1507, to chastise the City of Genoa. From a Miniature in the "Voyage de Gênes" of Jean Marot. 4. A Young Mother's Retinue. Miniature from a Latin "Terence" of Charles VI. Costumes of the Fourteenth Century. 5. Table Service of a Lady of Quality. Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Roman de Renaud de Montauban." Costumes of the Fifteenth Century. 6. Ladies Hunting. From a Miniature in a Manuscript Copy of "Ovid's Epistles." Costumes of the Fifteenth Century. 7. A Court Fool. Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century. 8. The Chess-players. After a Miniature of the "Three Ages of Man." (End of the Fifteenth Century.) 9. Martyrdom of SS. Crispin and Crépinien. From a Window in the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts (Fifteenth Century). 10. Settlement of Accounts by the Brotherhood of Charité-Dieu, Rouen, in 1466. A Miniature from the "Livre des Comptes" of this Society (Fifteenth Century). 11. Decapitation of Guillaume de Pommiers and his Confessor at Bordeaux in 1377 ("Chroniques de Froissart"). 12. The Jews' Passover. Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Missal of the Fifteenth Century of the School of Van Eyck. 13. Entry of Charles VII. into Paris. A Miniature from the "Chroniques d'Enguerrand de Monstrelet." Costumes of the Sixteenth Century. 14. St. Catherine surrounded by the Doctors of Alexandria. A Miniature from the Breviary of Cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling. Costumes of the Fifteenth Century. 15. Italian Lace-work, in Gold-thread. The Cypher and Arms of Henri III. (Sixteenth Century). II. Engravings. Aigues-Mortes, Ramparts of the Town of Alms Bag, Fifteenth Century Amende honorable before the Tribunal America, Discovery of Anne of Brittany and the Ladies of her Court Archer, in Fighting Dress, Fifteenth Century Armourer Arms of Louis XI. and Charlotte of Savoy Arms, Various, Fifteenth Century Bailiwick Bailliage, or Tribunal of the King's Bailiff, Sixteenth Century Baker, The, Sixteenth Century Balancing, Feats of, Thirteenth Century Ballet, Representation of a, before Henri III. and his Court Banner of the Coopers of Bayonne " " La Rochelle " Corporation of Bakers of Arras " " Bakers of Paris " " Boot and Shoe Makers of Issoudun " Corporation of Publichouse-keepers of Montmédy " Corporation of Publichouse-keepers of Tonnerre " Drapers of Caen " Harness-makers of Paris " Nail-makers of Paris " Pastrycooks of Caen " " La Rochelle " " Tonnerre " Tanners of Vie " Tilers of Paris " Weavers of Toulon " Wheelwrights of Paris Banquet, Grand, at the Court of France Barber Barnacle Geese Barrister, Fifteenth Century Basin-maker Bastille, The Bears and other Beasts, how they may be caught with a Dart Beggar playing the Fiddle Beheading Bell and Canon Caster Bird-catching, Fourteenth Century Bird-piping, Fourteenth Century Blind and Poor Sick of St. John, Fifteenth Century Bob Apple, The Game of Bootmaker's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece, Thirteenth Century Bourbon, Constable de, Trial of, before the Peers of France Bourgeois, Thirteenth Century Brandenburg, Marquis of Brewer, The, Sixteenth Century Brotherhood of Death, Member of the Burgess of Ghent and his Wife, from a Window of the Fifteenth Century Burgess at Meals Burgesses with Hoods, Fourteenth Century Burning Ballet, The Butcher, The, Sixteenth Century Butler at his Duties Cards for a Game of Piquet, Sixteenth Century Carlovingian King in his Palace Carpenter, Fifteenth Century Carpenter's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece, Fifteenth Century Cast to allure Beasts Castle of Alamond, The Cat-o'-nine-tails Celtic Monument (the Holy Ox) Chamber of Accounts, Hotel of the Chandeliers in Bronze, Fourteenth Century Charlemagne, The Emperor " Coronation of " Dalmatica and Sandals of " receiving the Oath of Fidelity from one of his great Barons " Portrait of Charles, eldest Son of King Pepin, receiving the News of the Death of his Father Charles V. and the Emperor Charles IV., Interview between Château-Gaillard aux Andelys Châtelet, The Great Cheeses, The Manufacture of, Sixteenth Century Chilpéric, Tomb of, Eleventh Century Clasp-maker Cloth to approach Beasts, How to carry a Cloth-worker Coins, Gold Merovingian, 628-638 " Gold, Sixth and Seventh Centuries " " Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries " Gold and Silver, Thirteenth Century " " Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries " Silver, Eighth to Eleventh Centuries Cologne, View of, Sixteenth Century Comb in Ivory, Sixteenth Century Combat of a Knight with a Dog, Thirteenth Century Companion Carpenter, Fifteenth Century Cook, The, Sixteenth Century Coppersmith, The, Sixteenth Century Corn-threshing and Bread-making, Sixteenth Century Costume of Emperors at their Coronation since the Time of Charlemagne " King Childebert, Seventh Century " King Clovis, Sixth Century " Saints in the Sixth to Eighth Century " Prelates, Eighth to Tenth Century " a Scholar of the Carlovingian Period Costume of a Scholar, Ninth Century " a Bishop or Abbot, Ninth Century " Charles the Simple, Tenth Century " Louis le Jeune " a Princess " William Malgeneste, the King's Huntsman " an English Servant, Fourteenth Century " Philip the Good " Charles V., King of France " Jeanne de Bourbon " Charlotte of Savoy " Mary of Burgundy " the Ladies of the Court of Catherine de Medicis " a Gentleman of the French Court, Sixteenth Century " the German Bourgeoisie, Sixteenth Century Costumes, Italian, Fifteenth Century Costumes of the Thirteenth Century " the Common People, Fourteenth Century " a rich Bourgeoise, of a Peasant-woman, and of a Lady of the Nobility, Fourteenth Century " a Young Nobleman and of a Bourgeois, Fourteenth Century " a Bourgeois or Merchant, of a Nobleman, and of a Lady of the Court or rich Bourgeoise, Fifteenth Century " a Mechanic's Wife and a rich Bourgeois, Fifteenth Century " Young Noblemen of the Court of Charles VIII " a Nobleman, a Bourgeois, and a Noble Lady, of the time of Louis XII " a rich Bourgeoise and a Nobleman, time of Francis I Counter-seal of the Butchers of Bruges in 1356 Country Life Cour des Miracles of Paris Court Fool " of Love in Provence, Fourteenth Century " of the Nobles, The " Supreme, presided over by the King " of a Baron, The " Inferior, in the Great Bailiwick Courtiers amassing Riches at the Expense of the Poor, Fourteenth Century Courts of Love in Provence, Allegorical Scene of, Thirteenth Century Craftsmen, Fourteenth Century Cultivation of Fruit, Fifteenth Century " Grain, and Manufacture of Barley and Oat Bread Dance called "La Gaillarde" " of Fools, Thirteenth Century " by Torchlight Dancers on Christmas Night David playing on the Lyre Dealer in Eggs, Sixteenth Century Deer, Appearance of, and how to hunt them with Dogs Deputies of the Burghers of Ghent, Fourteenth Century Dice-maker Distribution of Bread, Meat, and Wine Doge of Venice, Costume of the, before the Sixteenth Century " in Ceremonial Costume of the Sixteenth Century " Procession of the Dog-kennel, Fifteenth Century Dogs, Diseases of, and their Cure, Fourteenth Century Dortmund, View of, Sixteenth Century _Drille_, or _Narquois_, Fifteenth Century Drinkers of the North, The Great Druggist Dues on Wine Dyer Edict, Promulgation of an Elder and Juror, Ceremonial Dress of an Elder and Jurors of the Tanners of Ghent Eloy, St., Signature of Empalement Entry of Louis XI. into Paris Equestrian Performances, Thirteenth Century Estrapade, The, or Question Extraordinary Executions Exhibitor of Strange Animals Falcon, How to train a New, Fourteenth Century " How to bathe a New Falconer, Dress of the, Thirteenth Century " German, Sixteenth Century Falconers, Thirteenth Century " dressing their Birds, Fourteenth Century Falconry, Art of, King Modus teaching the, Fourteenth Century " Varlets of, Fourteenth Century Families, The, and the Barbarians Fight between a Horse and Dogs, Thirteenth Century Fireworks on the Water Fish, Conveyance of, by Water and Land Flemish Peasants, Fifteenth Century Franc, Silver, Henry IV. Franks, Fourth to Eighth Century " King or Chief of the, Ninth Century " King of the, dictating the Salic Law Frédégonde giving orders to assassinate Sigebert, from a Window of the Fifteenth Century Free Judges Funeral Token Gallo-Roman Costumes Gaston Phoebus teaching the Art of Venery German Beggars " Knights, Fifteenth Century " Soldiers, Sixth to Twelfth Century " Sportsman, Sixteenth Century Ghent, Civic Guard of Gibbet of Montfaucon, The Gipsies Fortune-telling " on the March Gipsy Encampment " Family, A " who used to wash his Hands in Molten Lead Goldbeater Goldsmith Goldsmiths of Ghent, Names and Titles of some of the Members of the Corporation of, Fifteenth Century " Group of, Seventeenth Century. Grain-measurers of Ghent, Arms of the Grape, Treading the Grocer and Druggist, Shop of a, Seventeenth Century Hanging to Music Hare, How to allure the Hatter Hawking, Lady setting out, Fourteenth Century Hawks, Young, how to make them fly, Fourteenth Century Hay-carriers, Sixteenth Century Herald, Fourteenth Century Heralds, Lodge of the Heron-hawking, Fourteenth Century Hostelry, Interior of an, Sixteenth Century Hôtel des Ursins, Paris, Fourteenth Century Hunting-meal Imperial Procession Infant Richard, The, crucified by the Jews at Pontoise Irmensul and Crodon, Idols of the Ancient Saxons Iron Cage Issue de Table, The Italian Beggar " Jew, Fourteenth Century " Kitchen, Interior of " Nobleman, Fifteenth Century Jacques Coeur, Amende honorable of, before Charles VII " House of, at Bourges Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, Provost of Paris, and Michelle de Vitry, his Wife (Reign of Charles VI.) Jerusalem, View and Plan of Jew, Legend of a, calling the Devil from a Vessel of Blood Jewish Ceremony before the Ark " Conspiracy in France " Procession Jews taking the Blood from Christian Children " of Cologne burnt alive, The " Expulsion of the, in the Reign of the Emperor Hadrian " Secret Meeting of the John the Baptist, Decapitation of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, Assassination of Judge, Fifteenth Century Judicial Duel, The Jugglers exhibiting Monkeys and Bears, Thirteenth Century " performing in Public, Thirteenth Century King-at-Arms presenting the Sword to the Duc de Bourbon King's Court, The, or Grand Council, Fifteenth Century Kitchen, Interior of a, Sixteenth Century. " and Table Utensils Knife-handles in Ivory, Sixteenth Century Knight in War-harness Knight and his Lady, Fourteenth Century Knights and Men-at-Arms of the Reign of Louis le Gros Labouring Colons, Twelfth Century Lambert of Liége, St., Chimes of the Clock of Landgrave of Thuringia and his Wife Lawyer, Sixteenth Century Leopard, Hunting with the, Sixteenth Century Lubeck and its Harbour, View of, Sixteenth Century Maidservants, Dress of, Thirteenth Century Mallet, Louis de, Admiral of France Mark's Place, St., Venice, Sixteenth Century Marseilles and its Harbour, View and Plan of, Sixteenth Century Measurers of Corn, Paris, Sixteenth Century Measuring Salt Merchant Vessel in a Storm Merchants and Lion-keepers at Constantinople Merchants of Rouen, Medal to commemorate the Association of the Merchants of Rouen, Painting commemorative of the Union of, Seventeenth Century Merchants or Tradesmen, Fourteenth Century Metals, The Extraction of Miller, The, Sixteenth Century Mint, The, Sixteenth Century Musician accompanying the Dancing New-born Child, The Nicholas Flamel, and Pernelle, his Wife, from a Painting of the Fifteenth Century Nobility, Costumes of the, from the Seventh to the Ninth century " Ladies of the, in the Ninth Century Noble Ladies and Children, Dress of, Fourteenth Century Noble Lady and Maid of Honour, Fourteenth Century Noble of Provence, Fifteenth Century Nobleman hunting Nogent-le-Rotrou, Tower of the Castle of Nut-crackers, Sixteenth Century Occupations of the Peasants Officers of the Table and of the Chamber of the Imperial Court Oil, the Manufacture of, Sixteenth Century Old Man of the Mountain, The Olifant, or Hunting-horn, Fourteenth Century " " details of Orphaus, Gallois, and Family of the Grand Coesre, Fifteenth Century Palace, The, Sixteenth Century Palace of the Doges, Interior Court of the Paris, View of Partridges, Way to catch Paying Toll on passing a Bridge Peasant Dances at the May Feasts Pheasant-fowling, Fourteenth Century Philippe le Bel in War-dress Pillory, View of the, in the Market-place of Paris, Sixteenth Century Pin and Needle Maker Ploughmen. Fac-simile of a Miniature in very ancient Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Pond Fisherman, The Pont aux Changeurs, View of the ancient Pork-butcher, The, Fourteenth Century Poulterer, The, Sixteenth Century Poultry-dealer, The Powder-horn, Sixteenth Century Provost's Prison, The Provostship of the Merchants of Paris, Assembly of the, Sixteenth Century Punishment by Fire, The Purse or Leather Bag, with Knife or Dagger, Fifteenth Century Receiver of Taxes, The Remy, St., Bishop of Rheirns, begging of Clovis the restitution of the Sacred Vase, Fifteenth Century River Fishermen, The, Sixteenth Century Roi de l'Epinette, Entry of the, at Lille Roman Soldiers, Sixth to Twelfth Century Royal Costume _Ruffés_ and _Millards_, Fifteenth Century Sainte-Geneviève, Front of the Church of the Abbey of Sale by Town-Crier Salt-cellar, enamelled, Sixteenth Century Sandal or Buskin of Charlemagne Saxony, Duke of Sbirro, Chief of Seal of the Bateliers of Bruges in 1356 " Corporation of Carpenters of St. Trond (Belgium) " Corporation of Clothworkers of Bruges " Corporation of Fullers of St. Trond " Corporation of Joiners of Bruges " " Shoemakers of St. Trond " Corporation of Wool-weavers of Hasselt " Free Count Hans Vollmar von Twern " Free Count Heinrich Beckmann " " Herman Loseckin " " Johann Croppe " King Chilpéric " United Trades of Ghent, Fifteenth Century Seat of Justice held by Philippe de Valois Secret Tribunal, Execution of the Sentences of the Sémur, Tower of the Castle of Serf or Vassal, Tenth Century Serjeants-at-Arms, Fourteenth Century Shepherds celebrating the Birth of the Messiah Shoemaker Shops under Covered Market, Fifteenth Century Shout and blow Horns, How to Simon, Martyrdom of, at Trent Slaves or Serfs, Sixth to Twelfth Century Somersaults Sport with Dogs, Fourteenth Century Spring-board, The Spur-maker Squirrels, Way to catch Stag, How to kill and cut up a, Fifteenth Century Staircase of the Office of the Goldsmiths of Rouen, Fifteenth Century Stall of Carved Wood, Fifteenth Century Standards of the Church and the Empire State Banquet, Sixteenth Century Stoertebeck, Execution of Styli, Fourteenth Century Swineherd Swiss Grand Provost Sword-dance to the Sound of the Bagpipe, Fourteenth Century Sword-maker Table of a Baron, Thirteenth Century Tailor Talebot the Hunchback Tinman Tithe of Beer, Fifteenth Century Token of the Corporation of Carpenters of Antwerp Token of the Corporation of Carpenters of Maëstricht Toll under the Bridges of Paris Toll on Markets, levied by a Cleric, Fifteenth Century Torture of the Wheel, Demons applying the Tournaments in Honour of the Entry of Queen Isabel into Paris Tower of the Temple, Paris Trade on the Seaports of the Levant, Fifteenth Century Transport of Merchandise on the Backs of Camels University of Paris, Fellows of the, haranguing the Emperor Charles IV. Varlet or Squire carrying a Halberd, Fifteenth Century View of Alexandria, Sixteenth Century Village Feast, Sixteenth Century Village pillaged by Soldiers Villain, the Covetous and Avaricious Villain, the Egotistical and Envious Villain or Peasant, Fifteenth Century Villain receiving his Lord's Orders Vine, Culture of the Vintagers, The, Thirteenth Century Votive Altar of the Nautes Parisiens Water Torture, The Weight in Brass of the Fish-market at Mans, Sixteenth Century Whale Fishing William, Duke of Normandy, Eleventh Century Winegrower, The Wire-worker Wolves, how they may be caught with a Snare Woman under the Safeguard of Knighthood, Fifteenth Century Women of the Court, Sixth to Tenth Century Woodcock, Mode of catching a, Fourteenth Century Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages, and During the Renaissance Period. Condition of Persons and Lands. Disorganization of the West at the Beginning of the Middle Ages.--Mixture of Roman, Germanic, and Gallic Institutions.--Fusion organized under Charlemagne.--Royal Authority.--Position of the Great Feudalists.--Division of the Territory and Prerogatives attached to Landed Possessions.--Freemen and Tenants.--The Læti, the Colon, the Serf, and the Labourer, who may be called the Origin of the Modern Lower Classes.--Formation of Communities.--Right of Mortmain. The period known as the Middle Ages, says the learned Benjamin Guérard, is the produce of Pagan civilisation, of Germanic barbarism, and of Christianity. It began in 476, on the fall of Agustulus, and ended in 1453, at the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II., and consequently the fall of two empires, that of the West and that of the East, marks its duration. Its first act, which was due to the Germans, was the destruction of political unity, and this was destined to be afterwards replaced by religions unity. Then we find a multitude of scattered and disorderly influences growing on the ruins of central power. The yoke of imperial dominion was broken by the barbarians; but the populace, far from acquiring liberty, fell to the lowest degrees of servitude. Instead of one despot, it found thousands of tyrants, and it was but slowly and with much trouble that it succeeded in freeing itself from feudalism. Nothing could be more strangely troubled than the West at the time of the dissolution of the Empire of the Caesars; nothing more diverse or more discordant than the interests, the institutions, and the state of society, which were delivered to the Germans (Figs. 1 and 2). In fact, it would be impossible in the whole pages of history to find a society formed of more heterogeneous or incompatible elements. On the one side might be placed the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, Germans, Franks, Saxons, and Lombards, nations, or more strictly hordes, accustomed to rough and successful warfare, and, on the other, the Romans, including those people who by long servitude to Roman dominion had become closely allied with their conquerors (Fig. 3). There were, on both sides, freemen, freedmen, colons, and slaves; different ranks and degrees being, however, observable both in freedom and servitude. This hierarchical principle applied itself even to the land, which was divided into freeholds, tributary lands, lands of the nobility, and servile lands, thus constituting the freeholds, the benefices, the fiefs, and the tenures. It may be added that the customs, and to a certain degree the laws, varied according to the masters of the country, so that it can hardly be wondered at that everywhere diversity and inequality were to be found, and, as a consequence, that anarchy and confusion ruled supreme. [Illustration: Figs. 1 and 2.--Costumes of the Franks from the Fourth to the Eighth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original Documents in the great Libraries of Europe.] [Illustration: Fig. 3.--Costumes of Roman Soldiers. Fig. 4.--Costume of German Soldiers. From Miniatures on different Manuscripts, from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries.] The Germans (Fig. 4) had brought with them over the Rhine none of the heroic virtues attributed to them by Tacitus when he wrote their history, with the evident intention of making a satire on his countrymen. Amongst the degenerate Romans whom those ferocious Germans had subjugated, civilisation was reconstituted on the ruins of vices common in the early history of a new society by the adoption of a series of loose and dissolute habits, both by the conquerors and the conquered. [Illustration: Fig. 5.--Costumes of Slaves or Serfs, from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original Documents in the great Libraries of Europe.] In fact, the conquerors contributed the worse share (Fig. 5); for, whilst exercising the low and debasing instincts of their former barbarism, they undertook the work of social reconstruction with a sort of natural and innate servitude. To them, liberty, the desire for which caused them to brave the greatest dangers, was simply the right of doing evil--of obeying their ardent thirst for plunder. Long ago, in the depths of their forests, they had adopted the curious institution of vassalage. When they came to the West to create States, instead of reducing personal power, every step in their social edifice, from the top to the bottom, was made to depend on individual superiority. To bow to a superior was their first political principle; and on that principle feudalism was one day to find its base. Servitude was in fact to be found in all conditions and ranks, equally in the palace of the sovereign as in the dwellings of his subjects. The vassal who was waited on at his own table by a varlet, himself served at the table of his lord; the nobles treated each other likewise, according to their rank; and all the exactions which each submitted to from his superiors, and required to be paid to him by those below him, were looked upon not as onerous duties, but as rights and honours. The sentiment of dignity and of personal independence, which has become, so to say, the soul of modern society, did not exist at all, or at least but very slightly, amongst the Germans. If we could doubt the fact, we have but to remember that these men, so proud, so indifferent to suffering or death, would often think little of staking their liberty in gambling, in the hope that if successful their gain might afford them the means of gratifying some brutal passion. [Illustration: Fig. 6.--King or Chief of Franks armed with the Seramasax, from a Miniature of the Ninth Century, drawn by H. de Vielcastel.] When the Franks took root in Gaul, their dress and institutions were adopted by the Roman society (Fig. 6). This had the most disastrous influence in every point of view, and it is easy to prove that civilisation did not emerge from this chaos until by degrees the Teutonic spirit disappeared from the world. As long as this spirit reigned, neither private nor public liberty existed. Individual patriotism only extended as far as the border of a man's family, and the nation became broken up into clans. Gaul soon found itself parcelled off into domains which were almost independent of one another. It was thus that Germanic genius became developed. [Illustration: Fig. 7.--The King of the Franks, in the midst of the Military Chiefs who formed his _Treuste_, or armed Court, dictates the Salic Law (Code of the Barbaric Laws).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chronicles of St. Denis," a Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal).] The advantages of acting together for mutual protection first established itself in families. If any one suffered from an act of violence, he laid the matter before his relatives for them jointly to seek reparation. The question was then settled between the families of the offended person and the offender, all of whom were equally associated in the object of vindicating a cause which interested them alone, without recognising any established authority, and without appealing to the law. If the parties had sought the protection or advice of men of power, the quarrel might at once take a wider scope, and tend to kindle a feud between two nobles. In any case the King only interfered when the safety of his person or the interests of his dominions were threatened. Penalties and punishments were almost always to be averted by a money payment. A son, for instance, instead of avenging the death of his father, received from the murderer a certain indemnity in specie, according to legal tariff; and the law was thus satisfied. The tariff of indemnities or compensations to be paid for each crime formed the basis of the code of laws amongst the principal tribes of Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of the Salians (Fig. 7). Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to be subservient to the rank of individuals. The more powerful a man was, the more he was protected by the law; the lower his rank, the less the law protected him. The life of a Frank, by right, was worth twice that of a Roman; the life of a servant of the King was worth three times that of an ordinary individual who did not possess that protecting tie. On the other hand, punishment was the more prompt and rigorous according to the inferiority of position of the culprit. In case of theft, for instance, a person of importance was brought before the King's tribunal, and as it respected the rank held by the accused in the social hierarchy, little or no punishment was awarded. In the case of the same crime by a poor man, on the contrary, the ordinary judge gave immediate sentence, and he was seized and hung on the spot. Inasmuch as no political institutions amongst the Germans were nobler or more just than those of the Franks and the other barbaric races, we cannot accept the creed of certain historians who have represented the Germans as the true regenerators of society in Europe. The two sources of modern civilisation are indisputably Pagan antiquity and Christianity. After the fall of the Merovingian kings great progress was made in the political and social state of nations. These kings, who were but chiefs of undisciplined bands, were unable to assume a regal character, properly so called. Their authority was more personal than territorial, for incessant changes were made in the boundaries of their conquered dominions. It was therefore with good reason that they styled themselves kings of the Franks, and not kings of France. Charlemagne was the first who recognised that social union, so admirable an example of which was furnished by Roman organization, and who was able, with the very elements of confusion and disorder to which he succeeded, to unite, direct, and consolidate diverging and opposite forces, to establish and regulate public administrations, to found and build towns, and to form and reconstruct almost a new world (Fig. 8). We hear of him assigning to each his place, creating for all a common interest, making of a crowd of small and scattered peoples a great and powerful nation; in a word, rekindling the beacon of ancient civilisation. When he died, after a most active and glorious reign of forty-five years, he left an immense empire in the most perfect state of peace (Fig. 9). But this magnificent inheritance was unfortunately destined to pass into unworthy or impotent hands, so that society soon fell back into anarchy and confusion. The nobles, in their turn invested with power, were continually at war, and gradually weakened the royal authority--the power of the kingdom--by their endless disputes with the Crown and with one another. [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Charles, eldest Son of King Pepin, receives the News of the Death of his Father and the Great Feudalists offer him the Crown.--Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the "History of the Emperors" (Library of the Arsenal).] [Illustration: Fig. 9. Portrait of Charlemagne, whom the Song of Roland names the King with the Grizzly Beard.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the End of the Sixteenth Century.] The revolution in society which took place under the Carlovingian dynasty had for its especial object that of rendering territorial what was formerly personal, and, as it were, of destroying personality in matters of government. The usurpation of lands by the great having been thus limited by the influence of the lesser holders, everybody tried to become the holder of land. Its possession then formed the basis of social position, and, as a consequence, individual servitude became lessened, and society assumed a more stable condition. The ancient laws of wandering tribes fell into disuse; and at the same time many distinctions of caste and race disappeared, as they were incompatible with the new order of things. As there were no more Salians, Ripuarians, nor Visigoths among the free men, so there were no more colons, læti, nor slaves amongst those deprived of liberty. [Illustrations: Figs. 10 and 11.--Present State of the Feudal Castle of Chateau-Gaillard aux Andelys, which was considered one of the strongest Castles of France in the Middle Ages, and was rebuilt in the Twelfth Century by Richard Coeur de Lion.] Heads of families, on becoming attached to the soil, naturally had other wants and other customs than those which they had delighted in when they were only the chiefs of wandering adventurers. The strength of their followers was not now so important to them as the security of their castles. Fortresses took the place of armed bodies; and at this time, every one who wished to keep what he had, entrenched himself to the best of his ability at his own residence. The banks of rivers, elevated positions, and all inaccessible heights, were occupied by towers and castles, surrounded by ditches, which served as strongholds to the lords of the soil. (Figs. 10 and 11). These places of defence soon became points for attack. Out of danger at home, many of the nobles kept watch like birds of prey on the surrounding country, and were always ready to fall, not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands. Everywhere society was in ambuscade, and waged civil war--individual against individual--without peace or mercy. Such was the reign of feudalism. It is unnecessary to point out how this system of perpetual petty warfare tended to reduce the power of centralisation, and how royalty itself was weakened towards the end of the second dynasty. When the descendants of Hugh Capet wished to restore their power by giving it a larger basis, they were obliged to attack, one after the other, all these strongholds, and practically to re-annex each fief, city, and province held by these petty monarchs, in order to force their owners to recognise the sovereignty of the King. Centuries of war and negotiations became necessary before the kingdom of France could be, as it were, reformed. [Illustration: Fig. 12.--Knights and Men-at-arms, cased in Mail, in the Reign of Louis le Gros, from a Miniature in a Psalter written towards the End of the Twelfth Century.] The corporations and the citizens had great weight in restoring the monarchical power, as well as in forming French nationality; but by far the best influence brought to bear in the Middle Ages was that of Christianity. The doctrine of one origin and of one final destiny being common to all men of all classes constantly acted as a strong inducement for thinking that all should be equally free. Religious equality paved the way for political equality, and as all Christians were brothers before God, the tendency was for them to become, as citizens, equal also in law. This transformation, however, was but slow, and followed concurrently the progress made in the security of property. At the onset, the slave only possessed his life, and this was but imperfectly guaranteed to him by the laws of charity; laws which, however, year by year became of greater power. He afterwards became _colon_, or labourer (Figs. 13 and 14), working for himself under certain conditions and tenures, paying fines, or services, which, it is true, were often very extortionate. At this time he was considered to belong to the domain on which he was born, and he was at least sure that that soil would not be taken from him, and that in giving part of his time to his master, he was at liberty to enjoy the rest according to his fancy. The farmer afterwards became proprietor of the soil he cultivated, and master, not only of himself, but of his lands; certain trivial obligations or fines being all that was required of him, and these daily grew less, and at last disappeared altogether. Having thus obtained a footing in society, he soon began to take a place in provincial assemblies; and he made the last bound on the road of social progress, when the vote of his fellow-electors sent him to represent them in the parliament of the kingdom. Thus the people who had begun by excessive servitude, gradually climbed to power. [Illustration: Fig. 13.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of Paris.] We will now describe more in detail the various conditions of persons of the Middle Ages. The King, who held his rights by birth, and not by election, enjoyed relatively an absolute authority, proportioned according to the power of his abilities, to the extent of his dominions, and to the devotion of his vassals. Invested with a power which for a long time resembled the command of a general of an army, he had at first no other ministers than the officers to whom he gave full power to act in the provinces, and who decided arbitrarily in the name of, and representing, the King, on all questions of administration. One minister alone approached the King, and that was the chancellor, who verified, sealed, and dispatched all royal decrees and orders. As early, however, as the seventh century, a few officers of state appeared, who were specially attached to the King's person or household; a count of the palace, who examined and directed the suits brought before the throne; a mayor of the palace, who at one time raised himself from the administration of the royal property to the supreme power; an arch-chaplain, who presided over ecclesiastical affairs; a lord of the bedchamber, charged with the treasure of the chamber; and a count of the stables, charged with the superintendence of the stables. [Illustration: Fig. 14.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of Paris.] For all important affairs, the King generally consulted the grandees of his court; but as in the five or six first centuries of monarchy in France the royal residence was not permanent, it is probable the Council of State was composed in part of the officers who followed the King, and in part of the noblemen who came to visit him, or resided near the place he happened to be inhabiting. It was only under the Capetians that the Royal Council took a permanent footing, or even assembled at stated periods. In ordinary times, that is to say, when he was not engaged in war, the King had few around him besides his family, his personal attendants, and the ministers charged with the dispatch of affairs. As he changed from one of his abodes to another he only held his court on the great festivals of the year. [Illustration: Fig. 15.--The Lords and Barons prove their Nobility by hanging their Banners and exposing their Coats-of-arms at the Windows of the Lodge of the Heralds.--After a Miniature of the "Tournaments of King Réné" (Fifteenth Century), MSS. of the National Library of Paris.] Up to the thirteenth century, there was, strictly speaking, no taxation and no public treasury. The King received, through special officers appointed for the purpose, tributes either in money or in kind, which were most variable, but often very heavy, and drawn almost exclusively from his personal and private properties. In cases of emergency only, he appealed to his vassals for pecuniary aid. A great number of the grandees, who lived far from the court, either in state offices or on their own fiefs, had establishments similar to that of the King. Numerous and considerable privileges elevated them above other free men. The offices and fiefs having become hereditary, the order of nobility followed as a consequence; and it then became highly necessary for families to keep their genealogical histories, not only to gratify their pride, but also to give them the necessary titles for the feudal advantages they derived by birth. (Fig. 15). Without this right of inheritance, society, which was still unsettled in the Middle Ages, would soon have been dissolved. This great principle, sacred in the eyes both of great and small, maintained feudalism, and in so doing it maintained itself amidst all the chaos and confusion of repeated revolutions and social disturbances. We have already stated, and we cannot sufficiently insist upon this important point, that from the day on which the adventurous habits of the chiefs of Germanic origin gave place to the desire for territorial possessions, the part played by the land increased insensibly towards defining the position of the persons holding it. Domains became small kingdoms, over which the lord assumed the most absolute and arbitrary rights. A rule was soon established, that the nobility was inherent to the soil, and consequently that the land ought to transmit to its possessors the rights of nobility. This privilege was so much accepted, that the long tenure of a fief ended by ennobling the commoner. Subsequently, by a sort of compensation which naturally followed, lands on which rent had hitherto been paid became free and noble on passing to the possession of a noble. At last, however, the contrary rule prevailed, which caused the lands not to change quality in changing owners: the noble could still possess the labourers's lands without losing his nobility, but the labourer could be proprietor of a fief without thereby becoming a noble. To the _comites_, who, according to Tacitus, attached themselves to the fortunes of the Germanic chiefs, succeeded the Merovingian _leudes_, whose assembly formed the King's Council. These _leudes_ were persons of great importance owing to the number of their vassals, and although they composed his ordinary Council, they did not hesitate at times to declare themselves openly opposed to his will. [Illustration: Fig. 16.--Knight in War-harness, after a Miniature in a Psalter written and illuminated under Louis le Gros.] The name of _leudes_ was abandoned under the second of the then French dynasties, and replaced by that of _fidèles_, which, in truth soon became a common designation of both the vassals of the Crown and those of the nobility. Under the kings of the third dynasty, the kingdom was divided into about one hundred and fifty domains, which were called great fiefs of the crown, and which were possessed in hereditary right by the members of the highest nobility, placed immediately under the royal sovereignty and dependence. [Illustration: Fig. 17.--King Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity and Homage from one of his great Feudatories or High Barons.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Cameo, of the "Chronicles of St. Denis." Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal).] Vassals emanating directly from the King, were then generally designated by the title of _barons_, and mostly possessed strongholds. The other nobles indiscriminately ranked as _chevaliers_ or _cnights_, a generic title, to which was added that of _banneret_, The fiefs of _hauberk_ were bound to supply the sovereign with a certain number of knights covered with coats of mail, and completely armed. All knights were mounted in war (Fig. 16); but knights who were made so in consequence of their high birth must not be confounded with those who became knights by some great feat in arms in the house of a prince or high noble, nor with the members of the different orders of chivalry which were successively instituted, such as the Knights of the Star, the Genet, the Golden Fleece, Saint-Esprit, St. John of Jerusalem, &c. Originally, the possession of a benefice or fief meant no more than the privilege of enjoying the profits derived from the land, a concession which made the holder dependent upon the proprietor. He was in fact his "man," to whom he owed homage (Fig. 17), service in case of war, and assistance in any suit the proprietor might have before the King's tribunal. The chiefs of German bands at first recompensed their companions in arms by giving them fiefs of parts of the territory which they had conquered; but later on, everything was equally given to be held in fief, namely, dignities, offices, rights, and incomes or titles. It is important to remark (and it is in this alone that feudalism shows its social bearing), that if the vassal owed obedience and devotion to his lord, the lord in exchange owed protection to the vassal. The rank of "free man" did not necessarily require the possession of land; but the position of free men who did not hold fiefs was extremely delicate and often painful, for they were by natural right dependent upon those on whose domain they resided. In fact, the greater part of these nobles without lands became by choice the King's men, and remained attached to his service. If this failed them, they took lands on lease, so as to support themselves and their families, and to avoid falling into absolute servitude. In the event of a change of proprietor, they changed with the land into new hands. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for them to be so reduced as to sell their freedom; but in such cases, they reserved the right, should better times come, of re-purchasing their liberty by paying one-fifth more than the sum for which they had sold it. We thus see that in olden times, as also later, freedom was more or less the natural consequence of the possession of wealth or power on the part of individuals or families who considered themselves free in the midst of general dependence. During the tenth century, indeed, if not impossible, it was at least difficult to find a single inhabitant of the kingdom of France who was not "the man" of some one, and who was either tied by rules of a liberal order, or else was under the most servile obligations. The property of the free men was originally the "_aleu_," which was under the jurisdiction of the royal magistrates. The _aleu_ gradually lost the greater part of its franchise, and became liable to the common charges due on lands which were not freehold. In ancient times, all landed property of a certain extent was composed of two distinct parts: one occupied by the owner, constituted the domain or manor; the other, divided between persons who were more or less dependent, formed what were called _tenures_. These _tenures_ were again divided according to the position of those who occupied them: if they were possessed by free men, who took the name of vassals, they were called benefices or fiefs; if they were let to læti, colons, or serfs, they were then called colonies or demesnes. [Illustration: Fig. 18.--Ploughmen.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a very ancient Anglo-Saxon Manuscript published by Shaw, with legend "God Spede ye Plough, and send us Korne enow."] The _læti_ occupied a rank between the colon and the serf. They had less liberty than the colon, over whom the proprietor only had an indirect and very limited power. The colon only served the land, whilst the læti, whether agriculturists or servants, served both the land and the owner (Fig. 18). They nevertheless enjoyed the right of possession, and of defending themselves, or prosecuting by law. The serf, on the contrary, had neither city, tribunal, nor family. The læti had, besides, the power of purchasing their liberty when they had amassed sufficient for the purpose. _Serfs_ occupied the lowest position in the social ladder (Fig. 19). They succeeded to slaves, thus making, thanks to Christianity, a step towards liberty. Although the civil laws barely protected them, those of the Church continually stepped in and defended them from arbitrary despotism. The time came when they had no direct masters, and when the almost absolute dependence of serfs was changed by the nobles requiring them to farm the land and pay tithes and fees. And lastly, they became farmers, and regular taxes took the place of tithes and fees. The colons, læti, and serfs, all of whom were more or less tillers of the soil, were, so to speak, the ancestors of "the people" of modern times; those who remained devoted to agriculture were the ancestors of our peasants; and those who gave themselves up to trades and commerce in the towns, were the originators of the middle classes. [Illustration: Fig. 19.--Serf or Vassal of Tenth Century, from Miniatures in the "Dialogues of St. Gregory," Manuscript No. 9917 (Royal Library of Brussels).] As early as the commencement of the third royal dynasty we find in the rural districts, as well as in the towns, a great number of free men: and as the charters concerning the condition of lands and persons became more and more extended, the tyranny of the great was reduced, and servitude decreased. During the following centuries, the establishment of civic bodies and the springing up of the middle classes (Fig. 20) made the acquisition of liberty more easy and more general. Nevertheless, this liberty was rather theoretical than practical; for if the nobles granted it nominally, they gave it at the cost of excessive fines, and the community, which purchased at a high price the right of self-administration, did not get rid of any of the feudal charges imposed upon it. [Illustration: Fig. 20.--Bourgeois at the End of Thirteenth Century.--Fac-simile of Miniature in Manuscript No. 6820, in the National Library of Paris.] Fortunately for the progress of liberty, the civic bodies, as if they had been providentially warned of the future in store for them, never hesitated to accept from their lords, civil or ecclesiastical, conditions, onerous though they were, which enabled them to exist in the interior of the cities to which they belonged. They formed a sort of small state, almost independent for private affairs, subject to the absolute power of the King, and more or less tied by their customs or agreements with the local nobles. They held public assemblies and elected magistrates, whose powers embraced both the administration of civil and criminal justice, police, finance, and the militia. They generally had fixed and written laws. Protected by ramparts, each possessed a town-hall (_hôtel de ville_), a seal, a treasury, and a watch-tower, and it could arm a certain number of men, either for its own defence or for the service of the noble or sovereign under whom it held its rights. In no case could a community such as this exist without the sanction of the King, who placed it under the safeguard of the Crown. At first the kings, blinded by a covetous policy, only seemed to see in the issue of these charters an excellent pretext for extorting money. If they consented to recognise them, and even to help them against their lords, it was on account of the enormous sacrifices made by the towns. Later on, however, they affected, on the contrary, the greatest generosity towards the vassals who wished to incorporate themselves, when they had understood that these institutions might become powerful auxiliaries against the great titulary feudalists; but from the reign of Louis XI., when the power of the nobles was much diminished, and no longer inspired any terror to royalty, the kings turned against their former allies, the middle classes, and deprived them successively of all the prerogatives which could prejudice the rights of the Crown. The middle classes, it is true, acquired considerable influence afterwards by participation in the general and provincial councils. After having victoriously struggled against the clergy and nobility, in the assemblies of the three states or orders, they ended by defeating royalty itself. Louis le Gros, in whose orders the style or title of _bourgeois_ first appears (1134), is generally looked upon as the founder of the franchise of communities in France; but it is proved that a certain number of communities or corporations were already formally constituted, before his accession to the throne. The title of bourgeois was not, however, given exclusively to inhabitants of cities. It often happened that the nobles, with the intention of improving and enriching their domains, opened a kind of asylum, under the attractive title of _Free Towns_, or _New Towns_, where they offered, to all wishing to establish themselves, lands, houses, and a more or less extended share of privileges, rights, and liberties. These congregations, or families, soon became boroughs, and the inhabitants, though agriculturists, took the name of bourgeois. [Illustration: Fig. 21.--Costume of a Vilain or Peasant, Fifteenth Century, from a Miniature of "La Danse Macabre," Manuscript 7310 of the National Library of Paris.] There was also a third kind of bourgeois, whose influence on the extension of royal power was not less than that of the others. There were free men who, under the title of bourgeois of the King _(bourgeois du Roy_), kept their liberty by virtue of letters of protection given them by the King, although they were established on lands of nobles whose inhabitants were deprived of liberty. Further, when a _vilain_--that is to say, the serf, of a noble--bought a lease of land in a royal borough, it was an established custom that after having lived there a year and a day without being reclaimed by his lord and master, he became a bourgeois of the King and a free man. In consequence of this the serfs and vilains (Fig. 21) emigrated from all parts, in order to profit by these advantages, to such a degree, that the lands of the nobles became deserted by all the serfs of different degrees, and were in danger of remaining uncultivated. The nobility, in the interests of their properties, and to arrest this increasing emigration, devoted themselves to improving the condition of persons placed under their dependence, and attempted to create on their domains _boroughs_ analogous to those of royalty. But however liberal these ameliorations might appear to be, it was difficult for the nobles not only to concede privileges equal to those emanating from the throne, but also to ensure equal protection to those they thus enfranchised. In spite of this, however, the result was that a double current of enfranchisement was established, which resulted in the daily diminution of the miserable order of serfs, and which, whilst it emancipated the lower orders, had the immediate result of giving increased weight and power to royalty, both in its own domains and in those of the nobility and their vassals. These social revolutions did not, of course, operate suddenly, nor did they at once abolish former institutions, for we still find, that after the establishment of communities and corporations, several orders of servitude remained. At the close of the thirteenth century, on the authority of Philippe de Beaumanoir, the celebrated editor of "Coutumes de Beauvoisis," there were three states or orders amongst the laity, namely, the nobleman (Fig. 22), the free man, and the serf. All noblemen were free, but all free men were not necessarily noblemen. Generally, nobility descended from the father and franchise from the mother. But according to many other customs of France, the child, as a general rule, succeeded to the lower rank of his parents. There were two orders of serfs: one rigorously held in the absolute dependence of his lord, to such a degree that the latter could appropriate during his life, or after death if he chose, all he possessed; he could imprison him, ill-treat him as he thought proper, without having to answer to any one but God; the other, though held equally in bondage, was more liberally treated, for "unless he was guilty of some evil-doing, the lord could ask of him nothing during his life but the fees, rents, or fines which he owed on account of his servitude." If one of the latter class of serfs married a free woman, everything which he possessed became the property of his lord. The same was the case when he died, for he could not transmit any of his goods to his children, and was only allowed to dispose by will of a sum of about five sous, or about twenty-five francs of modern money. As early as the fourteenth century, serfdom or servitude no longer existed except in "mortmain," of which we still have to speak. [Illustration: The Court of Mary of Anjou, Wife of Charles VII. Her chaplain the learned Robert Blondel presents her with the allegorical Treatise of the "_Twelve Perils of Hell_." Which he composed for her (1455). Fac-simile of a miniature from this work. Bibl. de l'Arsenal, Paris.] _Mortmain_ consisted of the privation of the right of freely disposing of one's person or goods. He who had not the power of going where he would, of giving or selling, of leaving by will or transferring his property, fixed or movable, as he thought best, was called a man of mortmain. [Illustration: Fig. 22.--Italian Nobleman of the Fifteenth Century. From a Playing-card engraved on Copper about 1460 (Cabinet des Estampes, National Library of Paris).] This name was apparently chosen because the hand, "considered the symbol of power and the instrument of donation," was deprived of movement, paralysed, in fact struck as by death. It was also nearly in this sense, that men of the Church were also called men of mortmain, because they were equally forbidden to dispose, either in life, or by will after death, of anything belonging to them. There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land, and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish himself. The mortmains were generally subject to the greater share of feudal obligations formerly imposed on serfs; these were particularly to work for a certain time for their lord without receiving any wages, or else to pay him the _tax_ when it was due, on certain definite occasions, as for example, when he married, when he gave a dower to his daughter, when he was taken prisoner of war, when he went to the Holy Land, &c., &c. What particularly characterized the condition of mortmains was, that the lords had the right to take all their goods when they died without issue, or when the children held a separate household; and that they could not dispose of anything they possessed, either by will or gift, beyond a certain sum. The noble who franchised mortmains, imposed on them in almost all cases very heavy conditions, consisting of fees, labours, and fines of all sorts. In fact, a mortmain person, to be free, not only required to be franchised by his own lord, but also by all the nobles on whom he was dependent, as well as by the sovereign. If a noble franchised without the consent of his superiors, he incurred a fine, as it was considered a dismemberment or depreciation of the fief. As early as the end of the fourteenth century, the rigorous laws of mortmain began to fall into disuse in the provinces; though if the name began to disappear, the condition itself continued to exist. The free men, whether they belonged to the middle class or to the peasantry, were nevertheless still subject to pay fines or obligations to their lords of such a nature that they must be considered to have been practically in the same position as mortmains. In fact, this custom had been so deeply rooted into social habits by feudalism, that to make it disappear totally at the end of the eighteenth century, it required three decrees of the National Convention (July 17 and October 2, 1793; and 8 Ventôse, year II.--that is, March 2, 1794). It is only just to state, that twelve or fourteen years earlier, Louis XVI. had done all in his power towards the same purpose, by suppressing mortmain, both real or personal, on the lands of the Crown, and personal mortmain (i.e. the right of following mortmains out of their original districts) all over the kingdom. [Illustration: Fig. 23.--Alms Bag taken from some Tapestry in Orleans, Fifteenth Century.] Privileges and Rights. Feudal and Municipal. Elements of Feudalism.--Rights of Treasure-trove, Sporting, Safe Conducts, Ransom, Disinheritance, &c.--Immunity of the Feudalists.--Dues from the Nobles to their Sovereign.--Law and University Dues.--Curious Exactions resulting from the Universal System of Dues.--Struggles to Enfranchise the Classes subjected to Dues.--Feudal Spirit and Citizen Spirit.--Resuscitation of the System of Ancient Municipalities in Italy, Germany, and France.--Municipal Institutions and Associations.--The Community.--The Middle-Class Cities (_Cités Bourgeoises_).--Origin of National Unity. So as to understand the numerous charges, dues, and servitudes, often as quaint as iniquitous and vexations, which weighed on the lower orders during the Middle Ages, we must remember how the upper class, who assumed to itself the privilege of oppression on lands and persons under the feudal System, was constituted. The Roman nobles, heirs to their fathers' agricultural dominions, succeeded for the most part in preserving through the successive invasions of the barbarians, the influence attached to the prestige of birth and wealth; they still possessed the greater part of the land and owned as vassals the rural populations. The Grerman nobles, on the contrary, had not such extended landed properties, but they appropriated all the strongest positions. The dukes, counts, and marquises were generally of German origin. The Roman race, mixed with the blood of the various nations it had subdued, was the first to infuse itself into ancient Society, and only furnished barons of a secondary order. These heterogeneous elements, brought together, with the object of common dominion, constituted a body who found life and motion only in the traditions of Rome and ancient Germany. From these two historical sources, as is very judiciously pointed out by M. Mary-Lafon, issued all the habits of the new society, and particularly the rights and privileges assumed by the nobility. These rights and privileges, which we are about to pass summarily in review, were numerous, and often curious: amongst them may be mentioned the rights of treasure-trove, the rights of wreck, the rights of establishing fairs or markets, rights of marque, of sporting, &c. The rights of treasure-trove were those which gave full power to dukes and counts over all minerals found on their properties. It was in asserting this right that the famous Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England, met his death. Adhémar, Viscount of Limoges, had discovered in a field a treasure, of which, no doubt, public report exaggerated the value, for it was said to be large enough to model in pure gold, and life-size, a Roman emperor and the members of his family, at table. Adhémar was a vassal of the Duke of Guienne, and, as a matter of course, set aside what was considered the sovereign's share in his discovery; but Richard, refusing to concede any part of his privilege, claimed the whole treasure. On the refusal of the viscount to give it up he appeared under arms before the gates of the Castle of Chalus, where he supposed that the treasure was hidden. On seeing the royal standard, the garrison offered to open the gates. "No," answered Richard, "since you have forced me to unfurl my banner, I shall only enter by the breach, and you shall all be hung on the battlements." The siege commenced, and did not at first seem to favour the English, for the besieged made a noble stand. One evening, as his troops were assaulting the place, in order to witness the scene, Richard was sitting at a short distance on a piece of rock, protected with a target--that is, a large shield covered with leather and blades of iron--which two archers held over him. Impatient to see the result of the assault, Richard pushed down the shield, and that moment decided his fate (1199). An archer of Chalus, who had recognised him and was watching from the top of the rampart, sent a bolt from a crossbow, which hit him full in the chest. The wound, however, would perhaps not have been mortal, but, shortly after, having carried the place by storm, and in his delight at finding the treasure almost intact, he gave himself up madly to degrading orgies, during which he had already dissipated the greater part of his treasure, and died of his wound twelve days later; first having, however, graciously pardoned the bowman who caused his death. The right of shipwrecks, which the nobles of seaboard countries rarely renounced, and of which they were the more jealous from the fact that they had continually to dispute them with their vassals and neighbours, was the pitiless and barbaric right of appropriating the contents of ships happening to be wrecked on their shores. [Illustration: Figs. 24 and 25.--Varlet or Squire carrying a Halberd with a thick Blade; and Archer, in Fighting Dress, drawing the String of his Crossbow with a double-handled Winch.--From the Miniatures of the "Jouvencel," and the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] When the feudal nobles granted to their vassals the right of assembling on certain days, in order to hold fairs and markets, they never neglected to reserve to themselves some tax on each head of cattle, as well as on the various articles brought in and put up for sale. As these fairs and markets never failed to attract a great number of buyers and sellers, this formed a very lucrative tax for the noble (Fig. 26). [Illustration: Fig. 26.--Flemish Peasants at the Cattle Market.--Miniature of the "Chroniques de Hainaut." Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. fol. 204 (Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, Brussels).] The right of _marque_, or reprisal, was a most barbarous custom. A famous example is given of it. In 1022, William the Pious, Count of Angoulême, before starting for a pilgrimage to Rome, made his three brothers, who were his vassals, swear to live in honourable peace and good friendship. But, notwithstanding their oath, two of the brothers, having invited the third to the Easter festivities, seized him at night in his bed, put out his eyes so that he might not find the way to his castle, and cut out his tongue so that he might not name the authors of this horrible treatment. The voice of God, however, denounced them, and the Count of Angoulême, shuddering with horror, referred the case to his sovereign, the Duke of Aquitaine, William IV., who immediately came, and by fire and sword exercised his right of _marque_ on the lands of the two brothers, leaving them nothing but their lives and limbs, after having first put out their eyes and cut out their tongues, so as to inflict on them the penalty of retaliation. The right of sporting or hunting was of all prerogatives that dearest to, and most valued by the nobles. Not only were the severest and even cruellest penalties imposed on "vilains" who dared to kill the smallest head of game, but quarrels frequently arose between nobles of different degrees on the subject, some pretending to have a feudal privilege of hunting on the lands of others (Fig. 27). From this tyrannical exercise of the right of hunting, which the least powerful of the nobles only submitted to with the most violent and bitter feelings, sprung those old and familiar ballads, which indicate the popular sentiment on the subject. In some of these songs the inveterate hunters are condemned, by the order of Fairies or of the Fates, either to follow a phantom stag for everlasting, or to hunt, like King Artus, in the clouds and to catch a fly every hundred years. The right of jurisdiction, which gave judicial power to the dukes and counts in cases arising in their domains, had no appeal save to the King himself, and this was even often contested by the nobles, as for instance, in the unhappy case of Enguerrand de Coucy. Enguerrand had ordered three young Flemish noblemen, who were scholars at the Abbey of "St. Nicholas des Bois," to be seized and hung, because, not knowing that they were on the domain of the Lord of Coucy, they had killed a few rabbits with arrows. St. Louis called the case before him. Enguerrand answered to the call, but only to dispute the King's right, and to claim the judgment of his peers. The King, without taking any notice of the remonstrance, ordered Enguerrand to be locked up in the big tower of the Louvre, and was nearly applying the law of _retaliation_ to his case. Eventually he granted him letters of pardon, after condemning him to build three chapels, where masses were continually to be said for the three victims; to give the forest where the young scholars had been found hunting, to the Abbey of "St. Nicholas des Bois;" to lose on all his estates the rights of jurisdiction and sporting; to serve three years in the Holy Land; and to pay to the King a fine of 12,500 pounds tournois. It must be remembered that Louis IX., although most generous in cases relating simply to private interests, was one of the most stubborn defenders of royal prerogatives. A right which feudalists had the greatest interest in observing, and causing to be respected, because they themselves might with their wandering habits require it at any moment, was that of _safe convoy_, or _guidance_. This right was so powerful, that it even applied itself to the lower orders, and its violation was considered the most odious crime; thus, in the thirteenth century, the King of Aragon was severely abused by all persons and all classes, because in spite of this right he caused a Jew to be burned so as not to have to pay a debt which the man claimed of him. [Illustration: Fig. 27.--Nobleman in Hunting Costume, preceded by his Servant, trying to find the Scent of a Stag.--From a Miniature in the Book of Gaston Phoebus ("Des Deduitz de la Chasse des Bestes Sauvaiges").--Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (National Library of Paris).] The right of "the Crown" should also be mentioned, which consisted of a circle of gold ornamented in various fashions, according to the different degrees of feudal monarchy, which vassals had to present to their lord on the day of his investiture. The right of seal was a fee or fine they had to pay for the charters which their lord caused to be delivered to them. The duty of _aubaine_ was the fine or due paid by merchants, either in kind or money, to the feudal chief, when they passed near his castle, landed in his ports, or exposed goods for sale in his markets. The nobles of second order possessed among their privileges that of wearing spurs of silver or gold according to their rank of knighthood; the right of receiving double rations when prisoners of war; the right of claiming a year's delay when a creditor wished to seize their land; and the right of never having to submit to torture after trial, unless they were condemned to death for the crime they had committed. If a great baron for serious offences confiscated the goods of a noble who was his vassal, the latter had a right to keep his palfrey, the horse of his squire, various pieces of his harness and armour, his bed, his silk robe, his wife's bed, one of her dresses, her ring, her cloth stomacher, &c. The nobles alone possessed the right of having seats of honour in churches and in chapels (Fig. 28), and to erect therein funereal monuments, and we know that they maintained this right so rigorously and with so much effrontery, that fatal quarrels at times arose on questions of precedence. The epitaphs, the placing of tombs, the position of a monument, were all subjects for conflicts or lawsuits. The nobles enjoyed also the right of _disinheritance_, that is to say, of claiming the goods of a person dying on their lands who had no direct heir; the right of claiming a tax when a fief or domain changed hands; the right of _common oven_, or requiring vassals to make use of the mill, the oven, or the press of the lord. At the time of the vintage, no peasant might sell his wine until the nobles had sold theirs. Everything was a source of privilege for the nobles. Kings and councils waived the necessity of their studying, in order to be received as bachelors of universities. If a noble was made a prisoner of war, his life was saved by his nobility, and his ransom had practically to be raised by the "vilains" of his domains. The nobles were also exempted from serving in the militia, nor were they obliged to lodge soldiers, &c. They had a thousand pretexts for establishing taxes on their vassals, who were generally considered "taxable and to be worked at will." Thus in the domain of Montignac, the Count of Perigord claimed among other things as follows: "for every case of censure or complaint brought before him, 10 deniers; for a quarrel in which blood was shed, 60 sols; if blood was not shed, 7 sols; for use of ovens, the sixteenth loaf of each baking; for the sale of corn in the domain, 43 setiers: besides these, 6 setiers of rye, 161 setiers of oats, 3 setiers of beans, 1 pound of wax, 8 capons, 17 hens, and 37 loads of wine." There were a multitude of other rights due to him, including the provostship fees, the fees on deeds, the tolls and furnaces of towns, the taxes on salt, on leather, corn, nuts; fees for the right of fishing; for the right of sporting, which last gave the lord a certain part or quarter of the game killed, and, in addition, the _dîme_ or tenth part of all the corn, wine, &c., &c. [Illustration: Fig. 28.--Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, Provost of the Merchants of Paris, and Michelle de Vitry, his Wife, in the Reign of Charles VI.--Fragment of a Picture of the Period, which was in the Chapel of the Ursinus, and is now in the Versailles Museum.] This worthy noble gathered in besides all this, during the religious festivals of the year, certain tributes in money on the estate of Montignac alone, amounting to as much as 20,000 pounds tournois. One can judge by this rough sketch, of the income he must have had, both in good and bad years, from his other domains in the rich county of Perigord. It must not be imagined that this was an exceptional case; all over the feudal territory the same state of things existed, and each lord farmed both his lands and the persons whom feudal right had placed under his dependence. [Illustration: Fig. 29.--Dues on Wines, granted to the Chapter of Tournai by King Chilperic.--From the Windows of the Cathedral of Tournai, Fifteenth Century.] To add to these already excessive rates and taxes, there were endless dues, under all shapes and names, claimed by the ecclesiastical lords (Figs. 29 and 30). And not only did the nobility make without scruple these enormous exactions, but the Crown supported them in avenging any act, however opposed to all sense of justice; so that the nobles were really placed above the great law of equality, without which the continuance of social order seemed normally impossible. The history of the city of Toulouse gives us a significant example on this subject. [Illustration: Fig. 30.--The Bishop of Tournai receiving the Tithe of Beer granted by King Chilpéric.--From the Windows of the Cathedral of Tournai, Fifteenth Century.] On Easter Day, 1335, some students of the university, who had passed the night of the anniversary of the resurrection of our Saviour in drinking, left the table half intoxicated, and ran about the town during the hours of service, beating pans and cauldrons, and making such a noise and disturbance, that the indignant preachers were obliged to stop in the middle of their discourses, and claimed the intervention of the municipal authorities of Toulouse. One of these, the lord of Gaure, went out of church with five sergeants, and tried himself to arrest the most turbulent of the band. But as he was seizing him by the body, one of his comrades gave the lord a blow with a dagger, which cut off his nose, lips, and part of his chin. This occurrence aroused the whole town. Toulouse had been insulted in the person of its first magistrate, and claimed vengeance. The author of the deed, named Aimeri de Bérenger, was seized, judged, condemned, and beheaded, and his body was suspended on the _spikes_ of the Château Narbonnais. [Illustration: Fig. 31.--Fellows of the University of Paris haranguing the Emperor Charles IV. in 1377.--From a Miniature of the Manuscript of the "Chroniques de St. Denis," No. 8395 (National Library of Paris).] Toulouse had to pay dearly for the respect shown to its municipal dignity. The parents of the student presented a petition to the King against the city, for having dared to execute a noble and to hang his body on a gibbet, in opposition to the sacred right which this noble had of appealing to the judgment of his peers. The Parliament of Paris finally decided the matter with the inflexible partiality to the rights of rank, and confiscated all the goods of the inhabitants, forced the principal magistrates to go on their knees before the house of Aimeri de Bérenger, and ask pardon; themselves to take down the body of the victim, and to have it publicly and honourably buried in the burial-ground of the Daurade. Such was the sentence and humiliation to which one of the first towns of the south was subjected, for having practised immediate justice on a noble, whilst it would certainly have suffered no vindication, if the culprit condemned to death had belonged to the middle or lower orders. We must nevertheless remember that heavy dues fell upon the privileged class themselves to a certain degree, and that if they taxed their poor vassals without mercy, they had in their turn often to reckon with their superiors in the feudal hierarchy. _Albere_, or right of shelter, was the principal charge imposed upon the noble. When a great baron visited his lands, his tenants were not only obliged to give him and his followers shelter, but also provisions and food, the nature and quality of which were all arranged beforehand with the most extraordinary minuteness. The lesser nobles took advantage sometimes of the power they possessed to repurchase this obligation; but the rich, on the contrary, were most anxious to seize the occasion of proudly displaying before their sovereign all the pomp in their power, at the risk even of mortgaging their revenues for several years, and of ruining their vassals. History is full of stories bearing witness to the extravagant prodigalities of certain nobles on such occasions. Payments in kind fell generally on the abbeys, up to 1158. That of St. Denis, which was very rich in lands, was charged with supplying the house and table of the King. This tax, which became heavier and heavier, eventually fell on the Parisians, who only succeeded in ridding themselves of it in 1374, when Charles V. made all the bourgeois of Paris noble. In the twelfth century, all furniture made of wood or iron which was found in the house of the Bishop at his death, became the property of the King. But in the fourteenth century, the abbots of St. Denis, St. Germain des Prés, St. Geneviève (Fig. 32), and a few priories in the neighbourhood of Paris, were only required to present the sovereign with two horse-loads of produce annually, so as to keep up the old system of fines. This system of rents and dues of all kinds was so much the basis of social organization in the Middle Ages, that it sometimes happened that the lower orders benefited by it. Thus the bed of the Bishop of Paris belonged, after his death, to the poor invalids of the Hôtel Dieu. The canons were also bound to leave theirs to that hospital, as an atonement for the sins which they had committed. The Bishops of Paris were required to give two very sumptuous repasts to their chapters at the feasts of St. Eloi and St. Paul. The holy men of St. Martin were obliged, annually, on the 10th of November, to offer to the first President of the Court of Parliament, two square caps, and to the first usher, a writing-desk and a pair of gloves. The executioner too received, from various monastic communities of the capital, bread, bottles of wine, and pigs' heads; and even criminals who were taken to Montfaucon to be hung had the right to claim bread and wine from the nuns of St. Catherine and the Filles Dieux, as they passed those establishments on their way to the gibbet. [Illustration: Fig. 32.--Front of the Ancient Church of the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, in Paris, founded by Clovis, and rebuilt from the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries.--State of the Building before its Destruction at the End of the Last Century.] Fines were levied everywhere, at all times, and for all sorts of reasons. Under the name of _épices_, the magistrates, judges, reporters, and counsel, who had at first only received sweetmeats and preserves as voluntary offerings, eventually exacted substantial tribute in current coin. Scholars who wished to take rank in the University sent some small pies, costing ten sols, to each examiner. Students in philosophy or theology gave two suppers to the president, eight to the other masters, besides presenting them with sweetmeats, &c. It would be an endless task to relate all the fines due by apprentices and companions before they could reach mastership in their various crafts, nor have we yet mentioned certain fines, which, from their strange or ridiculous nature, prove to what a pitch of folly men may be led under the influence of tyranny, vanity, or caprice. Thus, we read of vassals descending to the humiliating occupation of beating the water of the moat of the castle, in order to stop the noise of the frogs, during the illness of the mistress; we elsewhere find that at times the lord required of them to hop on one leg, to kiss the latch of the castle-gate, or to go through some drunken play in his presence, or sing a somewhat broad song before the lady. At Tulle, all the rustics who had married during the year were bound to appear on the Puy or Mont St. Clair. At twelve o'clock precisely, three children came out of the hospital, one beating a drum violently, the other two carrying a pot full of dirt; a herald called the names of the bride-grooms, and those who were absent or were unable to assist in breaking the pot by throwing stones at it, paid a fine. At Périgueux, the young couples had to give the consuls a pincushion of embossed leather or cloth of different colours; a woman marrying a second time was required to present them with an earthen pot containing twelve sticks of different woods; a woman marrying for the third time, a barrel of cinders passed thirteen times through the sieve, and thirteen spoons made of wood of fruit-trees; and, lastly, one coming to the altar for the fifth time was obliged to bring with her a small tub containing the excrement of a white hen! "The people of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period were literally tied down with taxes and dues of all sorts," says M. Mary-Lafon. "If a few gleams of liberty reached them, it was only from a distance, and more in the hope of the future than as regarded the present. As an example of the way people were treated, a certain Lord of Laguène, spoken of in the old chronicles of the south, may be mentioned. Every year, this cunning baron assembled his tenants in the village square. A large maypole was planted, and on the top was attached a wren. The lord, pointing to the little bird, declared solemnly, that if any 'vilain' succeeded in piercing him with an arrow he should be exempt from that year's dues. The vilains shot away, but, to the great merriment of their lord, never hit, and so had to continue paying the dues." [Illustration: Fig. 33.--Ramparts of the Town of Aigues-Mortes, one of the Municipalities of Languedoc.] One can easily understand how such a system, legalised by law, hampered the efforts for freedom, which a sense of human dignity was constantly raising in the bosoms of the oppressed. The struggle was long, often bloody, and at times it seemed almost hopeless, for on both sides it was felt that the contest was between two principles which were incompatible, and one of which must necessarily end by annihilating the other. Any compromise between the complete slavery and the personal freedom of the lower orders, could only be a respite to enable these implacable adversaries to reinforce themselves, so as to resume with more vigour than ever this desperate combat, the issue of which was so long to remain doubtful. [Illustration: Louis IV Leaving Alexandria on the 24th of April 1507 To chastise the city of Genoa. From a miniature by Jean Marot. No 5091, Bibl. nat'le de Paris.] These efforts to obtain individual liberty displayed themselves more particularly in towns; but although they became almost universal in the west, they had not the same importance or character everywhere. The feudal system had not everywhere produced the same consequences. Thus, whilst in ancient Gaul it had absorbed all social vitality, we find that in Germany, the place of its origin, the Teutonic institutions of older date gave a comparative freedom to the labourers. In southern countries again we find the same beneficial effect from the Roman rule. On that long area of land reaching from the southern slope of the Cevennes to the Apennines, the hand of the barbarian had weighed much less heavily than on the rest of Europe. In those favoured provinces where Roman organization had outlived Roman patronage, it seems as if ancient splendour had never ceased to exist, and the elegance of customs re-flourished amidst the ruins. There, a sort of urban aristocracy always continued, as a balance against the nobles, and the counsel of elected _prud'hommes_, the syndics, jurors or _capitouls_, who in the towns replaced the Roman _honorati_ and _curiales_, still were considered by kings and princes as holding some position in the state. The municipal body, larger, more open than the old "ward," no longer formed a corporation of unwilling aristocrats enchained to privileges which ruined them. The principal cities on the Italian coast had already amassed enormous wealth by commerce, and displayed the most remarkable ardour, activity, and power. The Eternal City, which was disputed by emperors, popes, and barons of the Roman States, bestirred itself at times to snatch at the ancient phantom of republicanism; and this phantom was destined soon to change into reality, and another Rome, or rather a new Carthage, the lovely Venice, arose free and independent from the waves of the Adriatic (Fig. 34). In Lombardy, so thickly colonised by the German conquerors, feudalism, on the contrary, weighed heavily; but there, too, the cities were populous and energetic, and the struggle for supremacy continued for centuries in an uncompromising manner between the people and the nobles, between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In the north and east of the Gallic territory, the instinct of resistance did not exist any the less, though perhaps it was more intermittent. In fact, in these regions we find ambitious nobles forestalling the action of the King, and in order to attach towns to themselves and their houses, suppressing the most obnoxious of the taxes, and at the same time granting legal guarantees. For this the Counts of Flanders became celebrated, and the famous Héribert de Vermandois was noted for being so exacting in his demands with the great, and yet so popular with the small. [Illustration: Fig. 34.--View of St. Mark's Place, Venice, Sixteenth Century, after Cesare Vecellio.] The eleventh century, during which feudal power rose to its height, was also the period when a reaction set in of the townspeople against the nobility. The spirit of the city revived with that of the bourgeois (a name derived from the Teutonic word _burg_, habitation) and infused a feeling of opposition to the system which followed the conquest of the Teutons. "But," says M. Henri Martin, "what reappeared was not the Roman municipality of the Empire, stained by servitude, although surrounded with glittering pomp and gorgeous arts, but it was something coarse and almost semi-barbarous in form, though strong and generous at core, and which, as far as the difference of the times would allow, rather reminds us of the small republics which existed previous to the Roman Empire." Two strong impulses, originating from two totally dissimilar centres of action, irresistibly propelled this great social revolution, with its various and endless aspects, affecting all central Europe, and being more or less felt in the west, the north, and the south. On one side, the Greek and Latin partiality for ancient corporations, modified by a democratic element, and an innate feeling of opposition characteristic of barbaric tribes; and on the other, the free spirit and equality of the old Celtic tribes rising suddenly against the military hierarchy, which was the offspring of conquest. Europe was roused by the double current of ideas which simultaneously urged her on to a new state of civilisation, and more particularly to a new organization of city life. Italy was naturally destined to be the country where the new trials of social regeneration were to be made; but she presented the greatest possible variety of customs, laws, and governments, including Emperor, Pope, bishops, and feudal princes. In Tuscany and Liguria, the march towards liberty was continued almost without effort; whilst in Lombardy, on the contrary, the feudal resistance was very powerful. Everywhere, however, cities became more or less completely enfranchised, though some more rapidly than others. In Sicily, feudalism swayed over the countries; but in the greater part of the peninsula, the democratic spirit of the cities influenced the enfranchisement of the rural population. The feudal caste was in fact dissolved; the barons were transformed into patricians of the noble towns which gave their republican magistrates the old title of consuls. The Teutonic Emperor in vain sought to seize and turn to his own interest the sovereignty of the people, who had shaken off the yokes of his vassals: the signal of war was immediately given by the newly enfranchised masses; and the imperial eagle was obliged to fly before the banners of the besieged cities. Happy indeed might the cities of Italy have been had they not forgotten, in their prosperity, that union alone could give them the possibility of maintaining that liberty which they so freely risked in continual quarrels amongst one another! [Illustration: Fig. 35.--William, Duke of Normandy, accompanied by Eustatius, Count of Boulogne, and followed by his Knights in arms.--Military Dress of the Eleventh Century, from Bayeux Tapestry said to have been worked by Queen Matilda.] The Italian movement was immediately felt on the other side of the Alps. In Provence, Septimanie, and Aquitaine, we find, in the eleventh century, cities which enjoyed considerable freedom. Under the name of communities and universities, which meant that all citizens were part of the one body, they jointly interfered in the general affairs of the kingdom to which they belonged. Their magistrates were treated on a footing of equality with the feudal nobility, and although the latter at first would only recognise them as "good men" or notables, the consuls knew how to make a position for themselves in the hierarchy. If the consulate, which was a powerful expression of the most prominent system of independence, did no succeed in suppressing feudalism in Provence as in Italy, it at least so transformed it, that it deprived it of its most unjust and insupportable elements. At Toulouse, for instance (where the consuls were by exception called _capitouls_, that is to say, heads of the chapters or councils of the city), the lord of the country seemed less a feudal prince in his capital, than an honorary magistrate of the bourgeoisie. Avignon added to her consuls two _podestats_ (from the Latin _potestas_, power). At Marseilles, the University of the high city was ruled by a republic under the presidency of the Count of Provence, although the lower city was still under the sovereignty of a viscount. Périgueux, which was divided into two communities, "the great and the small fraternity," took up arms to resist the authority of the Counts of Périgord; and Arles under its _podestats_ was governed for some time as a free and imperial town. Amongst the constitutions which were established by the cities, from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, we find admirable examples of administration and government, so that one is struck with admiration at the efforts of intelligence and patriotism, often uselessly lavished on such small political arenas. The consulate, which nominally at least found its origin in the ancient grandeur of southern regions, did not spread itself beyond Lyons. In the centre of France, at Poictiers, Tours, Moulin, &c., the urban progress only manifested itself in efforts which were feeble and easily suppressed; but in the north, on the contrary, in the provinces between the Seine and the Rhine, and even between the Seine and the Loire, the system of franchise took footing and became recognised. In some places, the revolution was effected without difficulty, but in others it gave rise to the most determined struggles. In Normandy, for instance, under the active and intelligent government of the dukes of the race of Roll or Rollon, the middle class was rich and even warlike. It had access to the councils of the duchy; and when it was contemplated to invade England, the Duke William (Fig. 35) found support from the middle class, both in money and men. The case was the same in Flanders, where the towns of Ghent (Fig. 36), of Bruges, of Ypres, after being enfranchised but a short time developed with great rapidity. But in the other counties of western France, the greater part of the towns were still much oppressed by the counts and bishops. If some obtained certain franchises, these privileges were their ultimate ruin, owing to the ill faith of their nobles. A town between the Loire and the Seine gave the signal which caused the regeneration of the North. The inhabitants of Mans formed a community or association, and took an oath that they would obtain and maintain certain rights. They rebelled about 1070, and forced the count and his noble vassals to grant them the freedom which they had sworn to obtain, though William of Normandy very soon restored the rebel city to order, and dissolved the presumptuous community. However, the example soon bore fruit. Cambrai rose in its turn and proclaimed the "Commune," and although its bishop, aided by treason and by the Count of Hainault, reduced it to obedience, it only seemed to succumb for a time, to renew the struggle with greater success at a subsequent period. [Illustration: Fig. 36.--Civic Guard of Ghent (Brotherhood of St. Sebastian), from a painting on the Wall of the Chapel of St. John and St. Paul, Ghent, near the Gate of Bruges.] We have just mentioned the Commune; but we must not mistake the true meaning of this word, which, under a Latin form (_communitas_), expresses originally a Germanic idea, and in its new form a Christian mode of living. Societies of mutual defence, guilds, &c., had never disappeared from Germanic and Celtic countries; and, indeed, knighthood itself was but a brotherhood of Christian warriors. The societies of the _Paix de Dieu_, and of the _Trève de Dieu_, were encouraged by the clergy in order to stop the bloody quarrels of the nobility, and formed in reality great religious guilds. This idea of a body of persons taking some common oath to one another, of which feudalism gave so striking an example, could not fail to influence the minds of the rustics and the lower classes, and they only wanted the opportunity which the idea of the Commune at once gave them of imitating their superiors. They too took oaths, and possessed their bodies and souls in "common;" they seized, by force of strategy, the ramparts of their towns; they elected mayors, aldermen, and jurors, who were charged to watch over the interests of their association. They swore to spare neither their goods, their labour, nor their blood, in order to free themselves; and not content with defending themselves behind barricades or chains which closed the streets, they boldly took the offensive against the proud feudal chiefs before whom their fathers had trembled, and they forced the nobles, who now saw themselves threatened by this armed multitude, to acknowledge their franchise by a solemn covenant. It does not follow that everywhere the Commune was established by means of insurrection, for it was obtained after all sorts of struggles; and franchises were sold in some places for gold, and in others granted by a more or less voluntary liberality. Everywhere the object was the same; everywhere they struggled or negotiated to upset, by a written constitution or charter, the violence and arbitrary rule under which they had so long suffered, and to replace by an annual and fixed rent, under the protection of an independent and impartial law, the unlimited exactions and disguised plundering so long made by the nobility and royalty. Circumstanced as they were, what other means had they to attain this end but ramparts and gates, a common treasury, a permanent military force, and magistrates who were both administrators, judges, and captains? The hôtel de ville, or mansion-house, immediately became a sort of civic temple, where the banner of the Commune, the emblems of unity, and the seal which sanctioned the municipal acts were preserved. Then arose the watch-towers, where the watchmen were unceasingly posted night and day, and whence the alarm signal was ever ready to issue its powerful sounds when danger threatened the city. These watch-towers, the monuments of liberty, became as necessary for the burghers as the clock-towers of their cathedrals, whose brilliant peals and joyous chimes gave zest to the popular feasts (Fig. 37). The mansion-houses built in Flanders from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, under municipal influence, are marvels of architecture. [Illustration: Fig. 37.--Chimes of the Clock of St. Lambert of Liége.] Who is there who could thoroughly describe or even appreciate all the happy or unhappy vicissitudes relating to the establishment of the Communes? We read of the Commune of Cambrai, four times created, four times destroyed, and which was continually at war with the Bishops; the Commune of Beauvais, sustained on the contrary by the diocesan prelate against two nobles who possessed feudal rights over it; Laon, a commune bought for money from the bishop, afterwards confirmed by the King, and then violated by fraud and treachery, and eventually buried in the blood of its defenders. We read also of St. Quentin, where the Count of Vermandois and his vassals voluntarily swore to maintain the right of the bourgeois, and scrupulously respected their oath. In many other localities the feudal dignitaries took alarm simply at the name of Commune, and whereas they would not agree to the very best arrangements under this terrible designation, they did not hesitate to adopt them when called either the "laws of friendship," the "peace of God," or the "institutions of peace." At Lisle, for instance, the bourgeois magistrates took the name of _appeasers_, or watchers over friendship. At Aire, in Artois, the members of friendship mutually, not only helped one another against the enemy, but also assisted one another in distress. [Illustration: Fig. 38.--The Deputies of the burghers of Ghent, in revolt against their Sovereign Louis II., Count of Flanders, come to beg him to pardon them, and to return to their Town. 1397--Miniature from Froissart, No. 2644 (National Library of Paris)] Amiens deserves the first place amongst the cities which dearly purchased their privileges. The most terrible and sanguinary war was sustained by the bourgeois against their count and lord of the manor, assisted by King Louis le Gros, who had under similar circumstances just taken the part of the nobles of Laon. From Amiens, which, having been triumphant, became a perfect municipal republic, the example propagated itself throughout the rest of Picardy, the Isle of France, Normandy, Brittany, and Burgundy, and by degrees, without any revolutionary shocks, reached the region of Lyons, where the consulate, a characteristic institution of southern Communes, ended. From Flanders, also, the movement spread in the direction of the German Empire; and there, too, the struggle was animated, and victorious against the aristocracy, until at last the great system of enfranchisement prevailed; and the cities of the west and south formed a confederation against the nobles, whilst those in the north formed the famous Teutonic Hanse, so celebrated for its maritime commerce. The centre of France slowly followed the movement; but its progress was considerably delayed by the close influence of royalty, which sometimes conceded large franchises, and sometimes suppressed the least claims to independence. The kings, who willingly favoured Communes on the properties of their neighbours, did not so much care to see them forming on their own estates; unless the exceptional position and importance of any town required a wise exercise of tolerance. Thus Orleans, situated in the heart of the royal domains, was roughly repulsed in its first movement; whilst Mantes, which was on the frontier of the Duchy of Normandy, and still under the King of England, had but to ask in order to receive its franchise from the King of France. It was particularly in the royal domains that cities were to be found, which, although they did not possess the complete independence of communes, had a certain amount of liberty and civil guarantees. They had neither the right of war, the watch-tower, nor the exclusive jurisdiction over their elected magistrates, for the bailiffs and the royal provosts represented the sovereign amongst them (Fig. 39). [Illustration: Fig. 39.--Bailliage, or Tribunal of the King's Bailiff.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood in the Work of Josse Damhoudere, "Praxis Rerum Civilium." (Antwerp, 1557, in 4to.).] In Paris, less than anywhere, could the kings consent to the organization of an independent political System, although that city succeeded in creating for itself a municipal existence. The middle-class influence originated in a Gallo-Roman corporation. The Company of _Nautes_ or "the Corporation of the Water Trade," formed a centre round which were successively attached various bodies of different trades. Gradually a strong concourse of civic powers was established, which succeeded in electing a municipal council, composed of a provost of merchants, four aldermen, and twenty-six councillors of the town. This council afterwards succeeded in overstepping the royal influence at difficult times, and was destined to play a prominent part in history. There also sprang up a lower order of towns or boroughs than these bourgeois cities, which were especially under the Crown. Not having sufficient strength to claim a great amount of liberty, they were obliged to be satisfied with a few privileges, conceded to them by the nobles, for the most part with a political end. These were the Free Towns or New Towns which we have already named. However it came about, it is certain that although during the tenth century feudal power was almost supreme in Europe, as early as the twelfth century the municipal system had gained great weight, and was constantly progressing until the policy of the kingdom became developed on a more and more extended basis, so that it was then necessary for it to give up its primitive nature, and to participate in the great movement of consolidisation and national unity. In this way the position of the large towns in the state relatively lost their individual position, and became somewhat analogous, as compared with the kingdom at large, to that formerly held by bourgeois in the cities. Friendly ties arose between provinces; and distinct and rival interests were effaced by the general aspiration towards common objects. The towns were admitted to the states general, and the citizens of various regions mixed as representatives of the _Tiers Etat_. Three orders thus met, who were destined to struggle for predominance in the future. We must call attention to the fact that, as M. Henri Martin says, by an apparent contradiction, the fall of the Communes declared itself in inverse ratio to the progress of the _Tiers Etat_. By degrees, as the government became more settled from the great fiefs being absorbed by the Crown, and as parliament and other courts of appeal which emanated from the middle class extended their high judiciary and military authority, so the central power, organized under monarchical form, must necessarily have been less disposed to tolerate the local independence of the Communes. The State replaced the Commune for everything concerning justice, war, and administration. No doubt some valuable privileges were lost; but that was only an accidental circumstance, for a great social revolution was produced, which cleared off at once all the relics of the old age; and when the work of reconstruction terminated, homage was rendered to the venerable name of "Commune," which became uniformly applied to all towns, boroughs, or villages into which the new spirit of the same municipal system was infused. [Illustration: Fig. 40.--Various Arms of the Fifteenth Century.] Private Life in the Castles, the Towns, and the Rural Districts. The Merovingian Castles.--Pastimes of the Nobles; Hunting, War.--Domestic Arrangements.--Private Life of Charlemagne.--Domestic Habits under the Carlovingians.--Influence of Chivalry.--Simplicity of the Court of Philip Angustus not imitated by his Successors.--Princely Life of the Fifteenth Century.--The bringing up of Latour Landry, a Noble of Anjou.--Varlets, Pages, Esquires, Maids of Honour.--Opulence of the Bourgeoisie.--"Le Menagier de Paris."--Ancient Dwellings.--State of Rustics at various Periods.--"Rustic Sayings," by Noël du Fail. Augustin Thierry, taking Gregory of Tours, the Merovingian Herodotus, as an authority, thus describes a royal domain under the first royal dynasty of France:-- "This dwelling in no way possessed the military aspect of the château of the Middle Ages; it was a large building surrounded with porticos of Roman architecture, sometimes built of carefully polished and sculptured wood, which in no way was wanting in elegance. Around the main body of the building were arranged the dwellings of the officers of the palace, either foreigners or Romans, and those of the chiefs of companies, who, according to Germanic custom, had placed themselves and their warriors under the King, that is to say, under a special engagement of vassalage and fidelity. Other houses, of less imposing appearance, were occupied by a great number of families, who worked at all sorts of trades, such as jewellery, the making of arms, weaving, currying, the embroidering of silk and gold, cotton, &c. "Farm-buildings, paddocks, cow-houses, sheepfolds, barns, the houses of agriculturists, and the cabins of the serfs, completed the royal village, which perfectly resembled, although on a larger scale, the villages of ancient Germany. There was something too in the position of these dwellings which resembled the scenery beyond the Rhine; the greater number of them were on the borders, and some few in the centre of great forests, which have since been partly destroyed, and the remains of which we so much admire." [Illustration: Fig. 41.--St. Remy, Bishop of Rheims, begging of Clovis the restitution of the Sacred Vase taken by the Franks in the Pillage of Soissons.--Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature on a Manuscript of the "History of the Emperors" (Library of the Arsenal).] Although historical documents are not very explicit respecting those remote times, it is only sufficient to study carefully a very small portion of the territory in order to form some idea of the manners and customs of the Franks; for in the royal domain we find the existence of all classes, from the sovereign himself down to the humblest slave. As regards the private life, however, of the different classes in this elementary form of society, we have but approximate and very imperfect notions. It is clear, however, that as early as the beginning of the Merovingian race, there was much more luxury and comfort among the upper classes than is generally supposed. All the gold and silver furniture, all the jewels, and all the rich stuffs which the Gallo-Romans had amassed in their sumptuous dwellings, had not been destroyed by the barbarians. The Frank Kings had appropriated the greater part; and the rest had fallen into the hands of the chiefs of companies in the division of spoil. A well-known anecdote, namely, that concerning the Vase of Soissons (Fig. 41), which King Clovis wished to preserve, and which a soldier broke with an axe, proves that many gems of ancient art must have disappeared, owing to the ignorance and brutality of the conquerors; although it is equally certain that the latter soon adopted the tastes and customs of the native population. At first, they appropriated everything that flattered their pride and sensuality. This is how the material remains of the civilisation of the Gauls were preserved in the royal and noble residences, the churches, and the monasteries. Gregory of Tours informs us, that when Frédégonde, wife of Chilpéric, gave the hand of her daughter Rigouthe to the son of the Gothic king, fifty chariots were required to carry away all the valuable objects which composed the princess's dower. A strange family scene, related by the same historian, gives us an idea of the private habits of the court of that terrible queen of the Franks. "The mother and daughter had frequent quarrels, which sometimes ended in the most violent encounters. Frédégonde said one day to Rigouthe, 'Why do you continually trouble me? Here are the goods of your father, take them and do as you like with them.' And conducting her to a room where she locked up her treasures, she opened a large box filled with valuables. After having pulled out a great number of jewels which she gave to her daughter, she said, 'I am tired; put your own hands in the box, and take what you find.' Rigouthe bent down to reach the objects placed at the bottom of the box; upon which Frédégonde immediately lowered the lid on her daughter, and pressed upon it with so much force that the eyes began to start out of the princess's head. A maid began screaming, 'Help! my mistress is being murdered by her mother!' and Rigouthe was saved from an untimely end." It is further related that this was only one of the minor crimes attributed by history to Frédégonde _the Terrible_, who always carried a dagger or poison about with her. Amongst the Franks, as amongst all barbaric populations, hunting was the pastime preferred when war was not being waged. The Merovingian nobles were therefore determined hunters, and it frequently happened that hunting occupied whole weeks, and took them far from their homes and families. But when the season or other circumstances prevented them from waging war against men or beasts, they only cared for feasting and gambling. To these occupations they gave themselves up, with a determination and wildness well worthy of those semi-civilised times. It was the custom for invited guests to appear armed at the feasts, which were the more frequent, inasmuch as they were necessarily accompanied with religious ceremonies. It often happened that these long repasts, followed by games of chance, were stained with blood, either in private quarrels or in a general _mêlée_. One can easily imagine the tumult which must have arisen in a numerous assembly when the hot wine and other fermented drinks, such as beer, &c., had excited every one to the highest pitch of unchecked merriment. [Illustration: Fig. 42.--Costumes of the Women of the Court from the Sixth to the Tenth Centuries, from Documents collected by H. de Vielcastel, in the great Libraries of Europe.] Some of the Merovingian kings listened to the advice of the ministers of the Catholic religion, and tried to reform these noisy excesses, and themselves abandoned the evil custom. For this purpose they received at their tables bishops, who blessed the assembly at the commencement of the meal, and were charged besides to recite chapters of holy writ, or to sing hymns out of the divine service, so as to edify and occupy the minds of the guests. Gregory of Tours bears witness to the happy influence of the presence of bishops at the tables of the Frank kings and nobles; he relates, too, that Chilpéric, who was very proud of his theological and secular knowledge, liked, when dining, to discuss, or rather to pronounce authoritatively his opinion on questions of grammar, before his companions in arms, who, for the most part, neither knew how to read nor write; he even went as far as to order three ancient Greek letters to be added to the Latin alphabet. [Illustration: Fig. 43.--Queen Frédégonde, seated on her Throne, gives orders to two young Men of Térouanne to assassinate Sigebert, King of Austrasia.--Window in the Cathedral of Tournai, Fifteenth Century.] The private properties of the Frank kings were immense, and produced enormous revenues. These monarchs had palaces in almost all the large towns; at Bourges, Châlons-sur-Saône, Châlons-sur-Marne, Dijon, Étampes, Metz, Langres, Mayence, Rheims, Soissons, Tours, Toulouse, Trèves, Valenciennes, Worms, &c. In Paris, they occupied the vast residence now known as the _Thermes de Julien_ (Hôtel de Cluny), which then extended from the hill of St. Geneviève as far as the Seine; but they frequently left it for their numerous villas in the neighbourhood, on which occasions they were always accompanied by their treasury. All these residences were built on the same plan. High walls surrounded the palace. The Roman _atrium_, preserved under the name of _proaulium_ (_preau_, ante-court), was placed in front of the _salutorium_ (hall of reception), where visitors were received. The _consistorium_, or great circular hall surrounded with seats, served for legislation, councils, public assemblies, and other solemnities, at which the kings displayed their royal pomp. The _trichorium_, or dining-room, was generally the largest hall in the palace; two rows of columns divided it into three parts; one for the royal family, one for the officers of the household, and the third for the guests, who were always very numerous. No person of rank visiting the King could leave without sitting at his table, or at least draining a cup to his health. The King's hospitality was magnificent, especially on great religious festivals such as Christmas and Easter. The royal apartments were divided into winter and summer rooms. In order to regulate the temperature hot or cold water was used, according to the season; this circulated in the pipes of the _hypocauste_, or the subterranean furnace which warmed the baths. The rooms with chimneys were called _epicaustoria_ (stoves), and it was the custom hermetically to close these when any one wished to be anointed with ointments and aromatic essences. In the same manner as the Gallo-Roman houses, the palaces of the Frank kings and principal nobles of ecclesiastical or military order had _thermes_, or bath-rooms: to the _thermes_ were attached a _colymbum_, or washhouse, a gymnasium for bodily exercise, and a _hypodrome_, or covered gallery for exercise, which must not be confounded with the _hippodrome_, a circus where horse-races took place. Sometimes after the repast, in the interval between two games of dice, the nobles listened to a bard, who sang the brilliant deeds of their ancestors in their native tongue. Under the government of Charlemagne, the private life of his subjects seems to have been less rough and coarse, although they did not entirely give up their turbulent pleasures. Science and letters, for a long time buried in monasteries, reappeared like beautiful exiles at the imperial court, and social life thereby gained a little charm and softness. Charlemagne had created in his palace, under the direction of Alcuin, a sort of academy called the "School of the Palace," which followed him everywhere. The intellectual exercises of this school generally brought together all the members of the imperial family, as well as all the persons of the household. Charlemagne, in fact, was himself one of the most attentive followers of the lessons given by Alcuin. He was indeed the principal interlocutor and discourser at the discussions, which were on all subjects, religions, literary, and philosophical. [Illustration: Fig. 44.--Costumes of the Nobility from the Seventh to the Ninth Centuries, from Documents gathered by H. de Vielcastel from the great Libraries of Europe.] Charlemagne took as much pains with the administration of his palace as he did with that of his States. In his "Capitulaires," a work he wrote on legislature, we find him descending to the minutest details in that respect. For instance, he not only interested himself in his warlike and hunting equipages, but also in his kitchen and pleasure gardens. He insisted upon knowing every year the number of his oxen, horses, and goats; he calculated the produce of the sale of fruits gathered in his orchards, which were not required for the use of his house; he had a return of the number of fish caught in his ponds; he pointed out the shrubs best calculated for ornamenting his garden, and the vegetables which were required for his table, &c. The Emperor generally assumed the greatest simplicity in his dress. His daily attire consisted of a linen shirt and drawers, and a woollen tunic fastened with a silk belt. Over this tunic he threw a cloak of blue stuff, very long behind and before, but very short on each side, thus giving freedom to his arms to use his sword, which he always wore. On his feet he wore bands of stuffs of various colours, crossed over one another, and covering his legs also. In winter, when he travelled or hunted on horseback, he threw over his shoulders a covering of otter or sheepskin. The changes in fashion which the custom of the times necessitated, but to which he would never submit personally, induced him to issue several strenuous orders, which, however, in reality had hardly any effect. He was most simple as regards his food and drink, and made a habit of having pious or historical works read to him during his repasts. He devoted the morning, which with him began in summer at sunrise, and in winter earlier, to the political administration of his empire. He dined at twelve with his family; the dukes and chiefs of various nations first waited on him, and then took their places at the table, and were waited on in their turn by the counts, prefects, and superior officers of the court, who dined after them. When these had finished the different chiefs of the household sat down, and they were succeeded lastly by servants of the lower order, who often did not dine till midnight, and had to content themselves with what was left. When occasion required, however, this powerful Emperor knew how to maintain the pomp and dignity of his station; but as soon as he had done what was necessary, either for some great religious festival or otherwise, he returned, as if by instinct, to his dear and native simplicity. It must be understood that the simple tastes of Charlemagne were not always shared by the princes and princesses of his family, nor by the magnates of his court (Fig. 45). Poets and historians have handed down to us descriptions of hunts, feasts, and ceremonies, at which a truly Asiatic splendour was displayed. Eginhard, however, assures us that the sons and daughters of the King were brought up under their father's eye in liberal studios; that, to save them from the vice of idleness, Charlemagne required his sons to devote themselves to all bodily exercises, such as horsemanship, handling of arms, &c., and his daughters to do needlework and to spin. From what is recorded, however, of the frivolous habits and irregular morals of these princesses, it is evident that they but imperfectly realised the end of their education. [Illustration: Fig. 45.--Costumes of the Ladies of the Nobility in the Ninth Century, from a Miniature in the Bible of Charles the Bold (National Library of Paris).] Science and letters, which for a time were brought into prominence by Charlemagne and also by his son Louis, who was very learned and was considered skilful in translating and expounding Scripture, were, however, after the death of these two kings, for a long time banished to the seclusion of the cloisters, owing to the hostile rivalry of their successors, which favoured the attacks of the Norman pirates. All the monuments and relics of the Gallo-Roman civilisation, which the great Emperor had collected, disappeared in the civil wars, or were gradually destroyed by the devastations of the northerners. The vast empire which Charlemagne had formed became gradually split up, so that from a dread of social destruction, in order to protect churches and monasteries, as well as castles and homesteads, from the attacks of internal as well as foreign enemies, towers and impregnable fortresses began to rise in all parts of Europe, and particularly in France. [Illustration: Fig. 46.--Towers of the Castle of Sémur, and of the Castle of Nogent-le-Rotrou (Present Condition).--Specimens of Towers of the Thirteenth Century.] During the first period of feudalism, that is to say from the middle of the ninth to the middle of the twelfth centuries, the inhabitants of castles had little time to devote to the pleasures of private life. They had not only to be continually under arms for the endless quarrels of the King and the great chiefs; but they had also to oppose the Normans on one side, and the Saracens on the other, who, being masters of the Spanish peninsula, spread like the rising tide in the southern counties of Languedoc and Provence. It is true that the Carlovingian warriors obtained a handsome and rich reward for these long and sanguinary efforts, for at last they seized upon the provinces and districts which had been originally entrusted to their charge, and the origin of their feudal possession was soon so far forgotten, that their descendants pretended that they held the lands, which they had really usurped regardless of their oath, from heaven and their swords. It is needless to say, that at that time the domestic life in these castles must have been dull and monotonous; although, according to M. Guizot, the loneliness which was the resuit of this rough and laborious life, became by degrees the pioneer of civilisation. "When the owner of the fief left his castle, his wife remained there, though in a totally different position from that which women generally held. She remained as mistress, representing her husband, and was charged with the defence and honour of the fief. This high and exalted position, in the centre of domestic life, often gave to women an opportunity of displaying dignity, courage, virtue, and intelligence, which would otherwise have remained hidden, and, no doubt, contributed greatly to their moral development, and to the general improvement of their condition. [Illustration: Fig. 47.--Woman under the Safeguard of Knighthood, allegorical Scene.--Costume of the End of the Fifteenth Century, from a Miniature in a Latin Psalm Book (Manuscript No. 175, National Library of Paris).] "The importance of children, and particularly of the eldest son, was greater in feudal houses than elsewhere.... The eldest son of the noble was, in the eyes of his father and of all his followers, a prince and heir-presumptive, and the hope and glory of the dynasty. These feelings, and the domestic pride and affection of the various members one to another, united to give families much energy and power..... Add to this the influence of Christian ideas, and it will be understood how this lonely, dull, and hard castle life was, nevertheless, favourable to the development of domestic society, and to that improvement in the condition of women which plays such a great part in the history of our civilisation." [Illustration: Fig. 48.--Court of Love in Provence in the Fourteenth Century (Manuscript of the National Library of Paris).] Whatever opinion may be formed of chivalry, it is impossible to deny the influence which this institution exercised on private life in the Middle Ages. It considerably modified custom, by bringing the stronger sex to respect and defend the weaker. These warriors, who were both simple and externally rough and coarse, required association and intercourse with women to soften them (Fig. 47). In taking women and helpless widows under their protection, they were necessarily more and more thrown in contact with them. A deep feeling of veneration for woman, inspired by Christianity, and, above all, by the worship of the Virgin Mary, ran throughout the songs of the troubadours, and produced a sort of sentimental reverence for the gentle sex, which culminated in the authority which women had in the courts of love (Fig. 48). We have now reached the reign of Philip Augustus, that is to say, the end of the twelfth century. This epoch is remarkable, not only for its political history, but also for its effect on civilisation. Christianity had then considerably influenced the world; arts, sciences, and letters, animated by its influence, again began to appear, and to add charms to the leisure of private life. The castles were naturally the first to be affected by this poetical and intellectual regeneration, although it has been too much the custom to exaggerate the ignorance of those who inhabited them. We are too apt to consider the warriors of the Middle Ages as totally devoid of knowledge, and as hardly able to sign their names, as far as the kings and princes are concerned. This is quite an error; for many of the knights composed poems which exhibit evidence of their high literary culture. It was, in fact, the epoch of troubadours, who might be called professional poets and actors, who went from country to country, and from castle to castle, relating stories of good King Artus of Brittany and of the Knights of the Round Table; repeating historical poems of the great Emperor Charlemagne and his followers. These minstrels were always accompanied by jugglers and instrumentalists, who formed a travelling troop (Fig. 49), having no other mission than to amuse and instruct their feudal hosts. After singing a few fragments of epics, or after the lively recital of some ancient fable, the jugglers would display their art or skill in gymnastic feats or conjuring, which were the more appreciated by the spectators, in that the latter were more or less able to compete with them. These wandering troops acted small comedies, taken from incidents of the times. Sometimes, too, the instrumentalists formed an orchestra, and dancing commenced. It may be here remarked that dancing at this epoch consisted of a number of persons forming large circles, and turning to the time of the music or the rhythm of the song. At least the dances of the nobles are thus represented in the MSS. of the Middle Ages. To these amusements were added games of calculation and chance, the fashion for which had much increased, and particularly such games as backgammon, draughts, and chess, to which certain knights devoted all their leisure. From the reign of Philip Augustus, a remarkable change seems to have taken place in the private life of kings, princes, and nobles. Although his domains and revenues had always been on the increase, this monarch never displayed, in ordinary circumstances at least, much magnificence. The accounts of his private expenses for the years 1202 and 1203 have been preserved, which enable us to discover some curious details bearing witness to the extreme simplicity of the court at that period. The household of the King or royal family was still very small: one chancellor, one chaplain, a squire, a butler, a few Knights of the Temple, and some sergeants-at-arms were the only officers of the palace. The king and princes of his household only changed apparel three times during the year. [Illustration: Fig. 49.--King David playing on the Lyre, surrounded by four Musicians.--Costumes of the Thirteenth Century (from a Miniature in a Manuscript Psalter in the Imperial Library, Paris).] The children of the King slept in sheets of serge, and their nurses were dressed in gowns of dark-coloured woollen stuff, called _brunette_. The royal cloak, which was of scarlet, was jewelled, but the King only wore it on great ceremonies. At the same time enormous expenses were incurred for implements of war, arrows, helmets with visors, chariots, and for the men-at-arms whom the King kept in his pay. Louis IX. personally kept up almost similar habits. The Sire de Joinville tells us in his "Chronicles," that the holy King on his return from his first crusade, in order to repair the damage done to his treasury by the failure of this expedition, would no longer wear costly furs nor robes of scarlet, and contented himself with common stuffs trimmed with hare-skin. He nevertheless did not diminish the officers of his household, which had already become numerous; and being no doubt convinced that royalty required magnificence, he surrounded himself with as much pomp as the times permitted. Under the two Philips, his successors, this magnificence increased, and descended to the great vassals, who were soon imitated by the knights "bannerets." There seemed to be a danger of luxury becoming so great, and so general in all classes of feudal society, that in 1294 an order of the King was issued, regulating in the minutest details the expenses of each person according to his rank in the State, or the fortune which he could prove. But this law had the fate of all such enactments, and was either easily evaded, or was only partially enforced, and that with great difficulty. Another futile attempt to put it in practice was made in 1306, when the splendour of dress, of equipages, and of table had become still greater and more ruinous, and had descended progressively to the bourgeois and merchants. It must be stated in praise of Philip le Bel (Fig. 50) that, notwithstanding the failure of his attempts to arrest the progress of luxury, he was not satisfied with making laws against the extravagances of his subjects, for we find that he studied a strict economy in his own household, which recalled the austere times of Philip Augustus. Thus, in the curious regulations relating to the domestic arrangements of the palace, the Queen, Jeanne de Navarre, was only allowed two ladies and three maids of honour in her suite, and she is said to have had only two four-horse carriages, one for herself and the other for these ladies. In another place these regulations require that a butler, specially appointed, "should buy all the cloth and furs for the king, take charge of the key of the cupboards where these are kept, know the quantity given to the tailors to make clothes, and check the accounts when the tailors send in their claims for the price of their work." [Illustration: Fig. 50.--King Philip le Bel in War-dress, on the Occasion of his entering Paris in 1304, after having conquered the Communes of Flanders.--Equestrian Statue placed in Notre Dame, Paris, and destroyed in 1772.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut from Thevet's "Cosmographie Universelle," 1575.] After the death of the pious Jeanne de Navarre, to whom perhaps we must attribute the wise measures of her husband, Philip le Bel, the expenses of the royal household materially increased, especially on the occasions of the marriages of the three young sons of the King, from 1305 to 1307. Gold, diamonds, pearls, and precious stones were employed profusely, both for the King's garments and for those of the members of the royal family. The accounts of 1307 mention considerable sums paid for carpets, counterpanes, robes, worked linen, &c. A chariot of state, ornamented and covered with paintings, and gilded like the back of an altar, is also mentioned, and must have been a great change to the heavy vehicles used for travelling in those days. Down to the reign of St. Louis the furniture of castles had preserved a character of primitive simplicity which did not, however, lack grandeur. The stone remained uncovered in most of the halls, or else it was whitened with mortar and ornamented with moulded roses and leaves, coloured in distemper. Against the wall, and also against the pillars supporting the arches, arms and armour of all sorts were hung, arranged in suits, and interspersed with banners and pennants or emblazoned standards. In the great middle hall, or dining-room, there was a long massive oak table, with benches and stools of the same wood. At the end of this table, there was a large arm-chair, overhung with a canopy of golden or silken stuff, which was occupied by the owner of the castle, and only relinquished by him in favour of his superior or sovereign. Often the walls of the hall of state were hung with tapestry, representing groves with cattle, heroes of ancient history, or events in the romance of chivalry. The floor was generally paved with hard stone, or covered with enamelled tiles. It was carefully strewn with scented herbs in summer, and straw in winter. Philip Augustus ordered that the Hôtel Dieu of Paris should receive the herbs and straw which was daily removed from the floors of his palace. It was only very much later that this troublesome system was replaced by mats and carpets. The bedrooms were generally at the top of the towers, and had little else by way of furniture, besides a very large bed, with or without curtains, a box in which clothes were kept, and which also served as a seat, and a _priedieu_ chair, which sometimes contained prayer and other books of devotion. These lofty rooms, whose thick walls kept out the heat in summer, and the cold in winter, were only lighted by a small window or loophole, closed with a square of oiled paper or of thin horn. A great change took place in the abodes of the nobility in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Fig. 51). We find, for instance, in Sauval's "History and Researches of the Antiquities of the City of Paris," that the abodes of the kings of the first dynasty had been transformed into Palaces of Justice by Philip le Bel; the same author also gives us a vivid description of the Château du Louvre, and the Hôtel St. Paul, which the kings inhabited when their court was in the capital. But even without examining into all the royal abodes, it will suffice to give an account of the Hôtel de Bohême, which, after having been the home of the Sires de Nesles, of Queen Blanche of Castille, and other great persons, was given by Charles VI., in 1388, to his brother, the famous Duke Louis of Orleans. [Illustration: Fig. 51.--The Knight and his Lady.--Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fourteenth Century; Furnished Chamber.--Miniature in "Othea," Poem by Christine de Pisan (Brussels Library).] "I shall not attempt," says Sauval, "to speak of the cellars and wine-cellars, the bakehouses, the fruiteries, the salt-stores, the fur-rooms, the porters' lodges, the stores, the guard-rooms, the wood-yard, or the glass-stores; nor of the servants; nor of the place where _hypocras_ was made; neither shall I describe the tapestry-room, the linen-room, nor the laundry; nor, indeed, any of the various conveniences which were then to be found in the yards of that palace as well as in the other abodes of the princes and nobles. "I shall simply remark, that amongst the many suites of rooms which composed it, two occupied the two first stories of the main building; the first was raised some few steps above the ground-floor of the court, and was occupied by Valentine de Milan; and her husband, Louis of Orleans, generally occupied the second. Each of these suites of rooms consisted of a great hall, a chamber of state, a large chamber, a wardrobe, some closets, and a chapel. The windows of the halls were thirteen and a half feet[A] high by four and a half wide. The state chambers were eight 'toises,' that is, about fifty feet and a half long. The duke and duchess's chambers were six 'toises' by three, that is, about thirty-six feet by eighteen; the others were seven toises and a half square, all lighted by long and narrow windows of wirework with trellis-work of iron; the wainscots and the ceilings were made of Irish wood, the same as at the Louvre." [Footnote A: French feet.] In this palace there was a room used by the duke, hung with cloth of gold, bordered with vermilion velvet embroidered with roses; the duchess had a room hung with vermilion satin embroidered with crossbows, which were on her coat of arms; that of the Duke of Burgundy was hung with cloth of gold embroidered with windmills. There were, besides, eight carpets of glossy texture, with gold flowers; one representing "The Seven Virtues and the Seven Vices;" another the history of Charlemagne; another that of St. Louis. There were also cushions of cloth of gold, twenty-four pieces of vermilion leather of Aragon, and four carpets of Aragon leather, "to be placed on the floor of rooms in summer." The favourite arm-chair of the princess is thus described in an inventory:--"A chamber chair with four supports, painted in fine vermilion, the seat and arms of which are covered with vermilion morocco, or cordovan, worked and stamped with designs representing the sun, birds, and other devices, bordered with fringes of silk and studded with nails." Among the ornamental furniture were--"A large vase of massive silver, for holding sugar-plums or sweetmeats, shaped like a square table, supported by four satyrs, also of silver; a fine wooden casket, covered with vermilion cordovan, nailed, and bordered with a narrow gilt band, shutting with a key." [Illustration: Fig. 52.--Bronze Chandeliers of the Fourteenth Century (Collection of M. Ach. Jubinal).] In the daily life of Louis of Orleans and his wife, everything corresponded with the luxury of their house. Thus, for the amusement of their children, two little books of pictures were made, illuminated with gold, azure, and vermilion, and covered with vermilion leather of Cordova, which cost sixty _sols parisis, i.e. four hundred francs. But it was in the custom of New Year's gifts that the duke and duchess displayed truly royal magnificence, as we find described in the accounts of their expenses. For instance, in 1388 they paid four hundred francs of gold for sheets of silk to give to those who received the New Year's gifts from the King and Queen. In 1402, one hundred pounds (tournois) were given to Jehan Taienne, goldsmith, for six silver cups presented to Jacques de Poschin, the Duke's squire. To the Sire de la Trémouille Valentine gives "a cup and basin of gold;" to Queen Isabella, "a golden image of St. John, surrounded with nine rubies, one sapphire, and twenty-one pearls;" to Mademoiselle de Luxembourg, "another small golden sacred image, surrounded with pearls;" and lastly, in an account of 1394, headed, "Portion of gold and silver jewels bought by Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans as a New Year's gift," we find "a clasp of gold, studded with one large ruby and six large pearls, given to the King; three paternosters for the King's daughters, and two large diamonds for the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry." [Illustration: Fig. 53.--Styli used in writing in the Fourteenth Century.] Such were the habits in private life of the royal princes under Charles VI.; and it can easily be shown that the example of royalty was followed not only by the court, but also in the remotest provinces. The great tenants or vassals of the crown each possessed several splendid mansions in their fiefs; the Dukes of Burgundy, at Souvigny, at Moulins, and at Bourbon l'Archambault; the Counts of Champagne, at Troyes; the Dukes of Burgundy, at Dijon; and all the smaller nobles made a point of imitating their superiors. From the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the provinces which now compose France were studded with castles, which were as remarkable for their interior, architecture as for the richness of their furniture; and it may be asserted that the luxury which was displayed in the dwellings of the nobility was the evidence, if not the resuit, of a great social revolution in the manners and customs of private life. At the end of the fourteenth century there lived a much-respected noble of Anjou, named Geoffroy de Latour-Landry, who had three daughters. In his old age, he resolved that, considering the dangers which might surround them in consequence of their inexperience and beauty, he would compose for their use a code of admonitions which might guide them in the various circumstances of life. [Illustration: A Young Mother's Retinue Representing the Parisian costumes at the end of the fourteenth century. Fac-simile of a miniature from the latin _Terence_ of King Charles VI. From a manuscript in the Bibl. de l'Arsenal.] This book of domestic maxims is most curious and instructive, from the details which it contains respecting the manners and customs, mode of conduct, and fashions of the nobility of the period (Fig. 54). The author mostly illustrates each of his precepts by examples from the life of contemporary personages. [Illustration: Fig. 54.--Dress of Noble Ladies and Children in the Fourteenth Century.--Miniature in the "Merveilles du Monde" (Manuscript, National Library of Paris).] The first advice the knight gives his daughters is, to begin the day with prayer; and, in order to give greater weight to his counsel, he relates the following anecdote: "A noble had two daughters; the one was pious, always saying her prayers with devotion, and regularly attending the services of the church; she married an honest man, and was most happy. The other, on the contrary, was satisfied with hearing low mass, and hurrying once or twice through the Lord's Prayer, after which she went off to indulge herself with sweetmeats. She complained of headaches, and required careful diet. She married a most excellent knight; but, one evening, taking advantage of her husband being asleep, she shut herself up in one of the rooms of the palace, and in company with the people of the household began eating and drinking in the most riotous and excessive manner. The knight awoke; and, surprised not to find his wife by his side, got up, and, armed with a stick, betook himself to the scene of festivity. He struck one of the domestics with such force that he broke his stick in pieces, and one of the fragments flew into the lady's eye and put it out. This caused her husband to take a dislike to her, and he soon placed his affections elsewhere." "My pretty daughters," the moralising parent proceeds, "be courteous and meek, for nothing is more beautiful, nothing so secures the favour of God and the love of others. Be then courteous to great and small; speak gently with them.... I have seen a great lady take off her cap and bow to a simple ironmonger. One of her followers seemed astonished. 'I prefer,' she said, 'to have been too courteous towards that man, than to have been guilty of the least incivility to a knight.'" [Illustration: Fig. 55.--Noble Lady and Maid of Honour, and two Burgesses with Hoods (Fourteenth Century), from a Miniature in the "Merveilles du Monde" (Manuscript in the Imperial Library of Paris).] Latour-Landry also advised his daughters to avoid outrageous fashions in dress. "Do not be hasty in copying the dress of foreign women. I will relate a story on this subject respecting a bourgeoise of Guyenne and the Sire de Beaumanoir. The lady said to him, 'Cousin, I come from Brittany, where I saw my fine cousin, your wife, who was not so well dressed as the ladies of Guyenne and many other places. The borders of her dress and of her bonnet are not in fashion.' The Sire answered, 'Since you find fault with the dress and cap of my wife, and as they do not suit you, I shall take care in future that they are changed; but I shall be careful not to choose them similar to yours.... Understand, madam, that I wish her to be dressed according to the fashion of the good ladies of France and this country, and not like those of England. It was these last who first introduced into Brittany the large borders, the bodices opened on the hips, and the hanging sleeves. I remember the time, and saw it myself, and I have little respect for women who adopt these fashions.'" Respecting the high head-dresses "which cause women to resemble stags who are obliged to lower their heads to enter a wood," the knight relates what took place in 1392 at the fête of St. Marguerite. "There was a young and pretty woman there, quite differently dressed from the others; every one stared at her as if she had been a wild beast. One respectable lady approached her and said, 'My friend, what do you call that fashion?' She answered, 'It is called the "gibbet dress."' 'Indeed; but that is not a fine name!' answered the old lady. Very soon the name of 'gibbet dress' got known all round the room, and every one laughed at the foolish creature who was thus bedecked." This head-dress did in fact owe its name to its summit, which resembled a gibbet. These extracts from the work of this honest knight, suffice to prove that the customs of French society had, as early as the end of the fourteenth century, taken a decided character which was to remain subject only to modifications introduced at various historical periods. Amongst the customs which contributed most to the softening and elegance of the feudal class, we must cite that of sending into the service of the sovereign for some years all the youths of both sexes, under the names of varlets, pages, squires, and maids of honour. No noble, of whatever wealth or power, ever thought of depriving his family of this apprenticeship and its accompanying chivalric education. Up to the end of the twelfth century, the number of domestic officers attached to a castle was very limited; we have seen, for instance, that Philip Augustus contented himself with a few servants, and his queen with two or three maids of honour. Under Louis IX. this household was much increased, and under Philippe le Bel and his sons the royal household had become so considerable as to constitute quite a large assemblage of young men and women. Under Charles VI., the household of Queen Isabella of Bavaria alone amounted to forty-five persons, without counting the almoner, the chaplains, and clerks of the chapel, who must have been very numerous, since the sums paid to them amounted to the large amount of four hundred and sixty francs of gold per annum. [Illustration: Fig. 56.--Court of the Ladies of Queen Anne of Brittany, Miniature representing this lady weeping on account of the absence of her husband during the Italian war.--Manuscript of the "Epistres Envoyées au Roi" (Sixteenth Century), obtained by the Coislin Fund for the Library of St. Germain des Pres in Paris, now in the Library of St. Petersburg.] Under Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I., the service of the young nobility, which was called "apprenticeship of honour or virtue," had taken a much wider range; for the first families of the French nobility were most eager to get their children admitted into the royal household, either to attend on the King or Queen, or at any rate on one of the princes of the royal blood. Anne of Brittany particularly gave special attention to her female attendants (Fig. 56). "She was the first," says Brantôme in his work on "Illustrious Women," "who began to form the great court of ladies which has descended to our days; for she had a considerable retinue both of adult ladies and young girls. She never refused to receive any one; on the contrary, she inquired of the gentlemen of the court if they had any daughters, ascertained who they were, and asked for them." It was thus that the Admiral de Graville (Fig. 57) confided to the good Queen the education of his daughter Anne, who at this school of the Court of Ladies became one of the most distinguished women of her day. The same Queen, as Duchess of Brittany, created a company of one hundred Breton gentlemen, who accompanied her everywhere. "They never failed," says the author of "Illustrious Women," "when she went to mass or took a walk, to await her return on the little terrace of Blois, which is still called the _Perche aux Bretons_. She gave it this name herself; for when she saw them she said, 'There are my Bretons on the perch waiting for me.'" We must not forget that this queen, who became successively the wife of Charles VIII. and of Louis XII., had taken care to establish a strict discipline amongst the young men and women who composed her court. She rightly considered herself the guardian of the honour of the former, and of the virtue of the latter; therefore, as long as she lived, her court was renowned for purity and politeness, noble and refined gallantry, and was never allowed to degenerate into imprudent amusements or licentious and culpable intrigues. Unfortunately, the moral influence of this worthy princess died with her. Although the court of France continued to gather around it almost every sort of elegance, and although it continued during the whole of the sixteenth century the most polished of European courts, notwithstanding the great external and civil wars, yet it afforded at the same time a sad example of laxity of morals, which had a most baneful influence on public habits; so much so that vice and corruption descended from class to class, and contaminated all orders of society. If we wished to make investigations into the private life of the lower orders in those times, we should not succeed as we have been able to do with that of the upper classes; for we have scarcely any data to throw light upon their sad and obscure history. Bourgeois and peasants were, as we have already shown, long included together with the miserable class of serfs, a herd of human beings without individuality, without significance, who from their birth to their death, whether isolated or collectively, were the "property" of their masters. What must have been the private life of this degraded multitude, bowed down under the most tyrannical and humiliating dependence, we can scarcely imagine; it was in fact but a purely material existence, which has left scarcely any trace in history. [Illustration: Fig. 57.--Louis de Mallet, Lord of Graville, Admiral of France, 1487, in Costume of War and Tournament, from an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century (National Library of Paris, Cabinet des Estampes).] Many centuries elapsed before the dawn of liberty could penetrate the social strata of this multitude, thus oppressed and denuded of all power of action. The development was slow, painful, and dearly bought, but at last it took place; first of all towns sprang up, and with them, or rather by their influence, the inhabitants became possessed of social life. The agricultural population took its social position many generations later. As we have already seen, the great movement for the creation of communes and bourgeoisies only dates from the unsettled period ranging from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, and simultaneously we see the bourgeois appear, already rich and luxurious, parading on all occasions their personal opulence. Their private life could only be an imitation of that in the châteaux; by degrees as wealth strengthened and improved their condition, and rendered them independent, we find them trying to procure luxuries equal or analogous to those enjoyed by the upper classes, and which appeared to them the height of material happiness. In all times the small have imitated the great. It was in vain that the great obstinately threatened, by the exercise of their prerogatives, to try and crush this tendency to equality which alarmed them, by issuing pecuniary edicts, summary laws, coercive regulations, and penal ordinances; by the force of circumstances the arbitrary restrictions which the nobility laid upon the lower classes gradually disappeared, and the power of wealth displayed itself in spite of all their efforts to suppress it. In fact, occasions were not wanting in which the bourgeois class was able to refute the charge of unworthiness with which the nobles sought to stamp it. When taking a place in the council of the King, or employed in the administration of the provinces, many of its members distinguished themselves by firmness and wisdom; when called upon to assist in the national defence, they gave their blood and their gold with noble self-denial; and lastly, they did not fail to prove themselves possessed of those high and delicate sentiments of which the nobility alone claimed the hereditary possession. [Illustration: Fig. 58.--Burgess of Ghent and his Wife, in ceremonial Attire, kneeling in Church, from a painted Window belonging to a Chapel in that Town (Fifteenth Century).] "The bourgeois," says Arnaud de Marveil, one of the most famous troubadours of the thirteenth century, "have divers sorts of merits: some distinguish themselves by deeds of honour, others are by nature noble and behave accordingly. There are others thoroughly brave, courteous, frank, and jovial, who, although poor, find means to please by graceful speech, frequenting courts, and making themselves agreeable there; these, well versed in courtesy and politeness, appear in noble attire, and figure conspicuously at the tournaments and military games, proving themselves good judges and good company." Down to the thirteenth century, however rich their fathers or husbands might be, the women of the bourgeoisie were not permitted, without incurring a fine, to use the ornaments and stuffs exclusively reserved for the nobility. During the reigns of Philip Augustus and Louis IX., although these arbitrary laws were not positively abolished, a heavy blow was inflicted on them by the marks of confidence, esteem, and honour which these monarchs found pleasure in bestowing on the bourgeoisie. We find the first of these kings, when on the point of starting for a crusade, choosing six from amongst the principal members of the _parloir aux bourgeois_ (it was thus that the first Hôtel de Ville, situated in the corner of the Place de la Grève, was named) to be attached to the Council of Regency, to whom he specially confided his will and the royal treasure. His grandson made a point of following his grandsire's example, and Louis IX. showed the same appreciation for the new element which the Parisian bourgeoisie was about to establish in political life by making the bourgeois Etienne Boileau one of his principal ministers of police, and the bourgeois Jean Sarrazin his chamberlain. Under these circumstances, the whole bourgeoisie gloried in the marks of distinction conferred upon their representatives, and during the following reign, the ladies of this class, proud of their immense fortunes, but above all proud of the municipal powers held by their families, bedecked themselves, regardless of expense, with costly furs and rich stuffs, notwithstanding that they were forbidden by law to do so. Then came an outcry on the part of the nobles; and we read as follows, in an edict of Philippe le Bel, who inclined less to the bourgeoisie than to the nobles, and who did not spare the former in matters of taxation:--"No bourgeois shall have a chariot nor wear gold, precious stones, or crowns of gold or silver. Bourgeois, not being either prelates nor dignitaries of state, shall not have tapers of wax. A bourgeois possessing two thousand pounds (tournois) or more, may order for himself a dress of twelve sous six deniers, and for his wife one worth sixteen sous at the most." The sou, which was but nominal money, may be reckoned as representing twenty francs, and the denier one franc, but allowance must be made for the enormous difference in the value of silver, which would make twenty francs in the thirteenth century represent upwards of two hundred francs of present currency. [Illustration: Fig. 59.--The new-born Child, from a Miniature in the "Histoire de la Belle Hélaine" (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, National Library of Paris).] But these regulations as to the mode of living were so little or so carelessly observed, that all the successors of Philippe le Bel thought it necessary to re-enact them, and, indeed, Charles VII., one century later, was obliged to censure the excess of luxury in dress by an edict which was, however, no better enforced than the rest. "It has been shown to the said lord" (the King Charles VII.), "that of all nations of the habitable globe there are none so changeable, outrageous, and excessive in their manner of dress, as the French nation, and there is no possibility of discovering by their dress the state or calling of persons, be they princes, nobles, bourgeois, or working men, because all are allowed to dress as they think proper, whether in gold or silver, silk or wool, without any regard to their calling." At the end of the thirteenth century, a rich merchant of Valenciennes went to the court of the King of France wearing a cloak of furs covered with gold and pearls; seeing that no one offered him a cushion, he proudly sat on his cloak. On leaving he did not attempt to take up the cloak; and on a servant calling his attention to the fact he remarked, "It is not the custom in my country for people to carry away their cushions with them." Respecting a journey made by Philippe le Bel and his wife Jeanne de Navarre to the towns of Bruges and Ghent, the historian Jean Mayer relates that Jeanne, on seeing the costly array of the bourgeois of those two rich cities, exclaimed, "I thought I was the only queen here, but I see more than six hundred!" In spite of the laws, the Parisian bourgeoisie soon rivalled the Flemish in the brilliancy of their dress. Thus, in the second half of the fourteenth century, the famous Christine de Pisan relates that, having gone to visit the wife of a merchant during her confinement, it was not without some amazement that she saw the sumptuous furniture of the apartment in which this woman lay in bed (Fig. 59). The walls were hung with precious tapestry of Cyprus, on which the initials and motto of the lady were embroidered; the sheets were of fine linen of Rheims, and had cost more than three hundred pounds; the quilt was a new invention of silk and silver tissue; the carpet was like gold. The lady wore an elegant dress of crimson silk, and rested her head and arms on pillows, ornamented with buttons of oriental pearls. It should be remarked that this lady was not the wife of a large merchant, such as those of Venice and Genoa, but of a simple retail dealer, who was not above selling articles for four sous; such being the case, we need not be surprised that Christine should have considered the anecdote "worthy of being immortalised in a book." It must not, however, be assumed that the sole aim of the bourgeoisie was that of making a haughty and pompous display. This is refuted by the testimony of the "Ménagier de Paris," a curious anonymous work, the author of which must have been an educated and enlightened bourgeois. The "Ménagier," which was first published by the Baron Jérôme Pichon, is a collection of counsels addressed by a husband to his young wife, as to her conduct in society, in the world, and in the management of her household. The first part is devoted to developing the mind of the young housewife; and the second relates to the arrangements necessary for the welfare of her house. It must be remembered that the comparatively trifling duties relating to the comforts of private life, which devolved on the wife, were not so numerous in those days as they are now; but on the other hand they required an amount of practical knowledge on the part of the housewife which she can nowadays dispense with. Under this head the "Ménagier" is full of information. After having spoken of the prayers which a Christian woman should say morning and evening, the author discusses the great question of dress, which has ever been of supreme importance in the eyes of the female sex: "Know, dear sister," (the friendly name he gives his young wife), "that in the choice of your apparel you must always consider the rank of your parents and mine, as also the state of my fortune. Be respectably dressed, without devoting too much study to it, without too much plunging into new fashions. Before leaving your room, see that the collar of your gown be well adjusted and is not put on crooked." [Illustration: Fig. 60.--Sculptured Comb, in Ivory, of the Sixteenth Century (Sauvageot Collection)] Then he dilates on the characters of women, which are too often wilful and unmanageable; on this point, for he is not less profuse in examples than the Chevalier de Latour-Landry, he relates an amusing anecdote, worthy of being repeated and remembered. "I have heard the bailiff of Tournay relate, that he had found himself several times at table with men long married, and that he had wagered with them the price of a dinner under the following conditions: the company was to visit the abode of each of the husbands successively, and any one who had a wife obedient enough immediately, without contradicting or making any remark, to consent to count up to four, would win the bet; but, on the other hand, those whose wives showed temper, laughed, or refused to obey, would lose. Under these conditions the company gaily adjourned to the abode of Robin, whose wife, called Marie, had a high opinion of herself. The husband said before all, 'Marie, repeat after me what I shall say.' 'Willingly, sire.' 'Marie, say, "One, two, three!"' But by this time Marie was out of patience, and said, 'And seven, and twelve, and fourteen! Why, you are making a fool of me!' So that husband lost his wager. "The company next went to the house of Maître Jean, whose wife, Agnescat well knew how to play the lady. Jean said, 'Repeat after me, one!' 'And two!' answered Agnescat disdainfully; so he lost his wager. Tassin then tried, and said to dame Tassin, 'Count one!' 'Go upstairs!' she answered, 'if you want to teach counting, I am not a child.' Another said, 'Go away with you; you must have lost your senses,' or similar words, which made the husbands lose their wagers. Those, on the contrary, who had well-behaved wives gained their wager and went away joyful." This amusing quotation suffices to show that the author of the "Ménagier de Paris" wished to adopt a jocose style, with a view to enliven the seriousness of the subject he was advocating. The part of his work in which he discusses the administration of the house is not less worthy of attention. One of the most curious chapters of the work is that in which he points out the manner in which the young bourgeoise is to behave towards persons in her service. Rich people in those days, in whatever station of life, were obliged to keep a numerous retinue of servants. It is curious to find that so far back as the period to which we allude, there was in Paris a kind of servants' registry office, where situations were found for servant-maids from the country. The bourgeois gave up the entire management of the servants to his wife; but, on account of her extreme youth, the author of the work in question recommends his wife only to engage servants who shall have been chosen by Dame Agnes, the nun whom he had placed with her as a kind of governess or companion. "Before engaging them," he says, "know whence they come; in what houses they have been; if they have acquaintances in town, and if they are steady. Discover what they are capable of doing; and ascertain that they are not greedy, or inclined to drink. If they come from another country, try to find out why they left it; for, generally, it is not without some serious reason that a woman decides upon a change of abode. When you have engaged a maid, do not permit her to take the slightest liberty with you, nor allow her to speak disrespectfully to you. If, on the contrary, she be quiet in her demeanour, honest, modest, and shows herself amenable to reproof, treat her as if she were your daughter. "Superintend the work to be done; and choose among your servants those qualified for each special department. If you order a thing to be done immediately, do not be satisfied with the following answers: 'It shall be done presently, or to-morrow early;' otherwise, be sure that you will have to repeat your orders." [Illustration: Fig. 61.--Dress of Maidservants in the Thirteenth Century.--Miniature in a Manuscript of the National Library of Paris.] To these severe instructions upon the management of servants, the bourgeois adds a few words respecting their morality. He recommends that they be not permitted to use coarse or indecent language, or to insult one another (Fig. 61). Although he is of opinion that necessary time should be given to servants at their meals, he does not approve of their remaining drinking and talking too long at table: concerning which practice he quotes a proverb in use at that time: "Quand varlet presche à table et cheval paist en gué, il est temps qu'on l'en oste: assez y a esté;" which means, that when a servant talks at table and a horse feeds near a watering-place it is time he should be removed; he has been there long enough. [Illustration: Fig. 62.--Hôtel des Ursins, Paris, built during the Fourteenth Century, restored in the Sixteenth, and now destroyed.--State of the North Front at the End of the last Century.] The manner in which the author concludes his instruction proves his kindness of heart, as well as his benevolence: "If one of your servants fall sick, it is your duty, setting everything else aside, to see to his being cured." It was thus that a bourgeois of the fifteenth century expressed himself; and as it is clear that he could only have been inspired to dictate his theoretical teachings by the practical experience which he must have gained for the most part among the middle class to which he belonged, we must conclude that in those days the bourgeoisie possessed considerable knowledge of moral dignity and social propriety. It must be added that by the side of the merchant and working bourgeoisie--who, above all, owed their greatness to the high functions of the municipality--the parliamentary bourgeoisie had raised itself to power, and that from the fourteenth century it played a considerable part in the State, holding at several royal courts at different periods, and at last, almost hereditarily, the highest magisterial positions. The very character of these great offices of president, or of parliamentary counsel, barristers, &c., proves that the holders must have had no small amount of intellectual culture. In this way a refined taste was created among this class, which the protection of kings, princes, and lords had alone hitherto encouraged. We find, for example, the Grosliers at Lyons, the De Thous and Seguiers in Paris, regardless of their bourgeois origin, becoming judicious and zealous patrons of poets, scholars, and artists. A description of Paris, published in the middle of the fifteenth century, describes amongst the most splendid residences of the capital the hotels of Juvénal des Ursins (Fig. 62), of Bureau de Dampmartin, of Guillaume Seguin, of Mille Baillet, of Martin Double, and particularly that of Jacques Duchié, situated in the Rue des Prouvaires, in which were collected at great cost collections of all kinds of arms, musical instruments, rare birds, tapestry, and works of art. In each church in Paris, and there were upwards of a hundred, the principal chapels were founded by celebrated families of the ancient bourgeoisie, who had left money for one or more masses to be said daily for the repose of the soûls of their deceased members. In the burial-grounds, and principally in that of the Innocents, the monuments of these families of Parisian bourgeoisie were of the most expensive character, and were inscribed with epitaphs in which the living vainly tried to immortalise the deeds of the deceased. Every one has heard of the celebrated tomb of Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle his wife (Fig. 63), the cross of Bureau, the epitaph of Yolande Bailly, who died in 1514, at the age of eighty-eight, and who "saw, or might have seen, two hundred and ninety-five children descended from her." In fact, the religious institutions of Paris afford much curious and interesting information relative to the history of the bourgeoisie. For instance, Jean Alais, who levied a tax of one denier on each basket of fish brought to market, and thereby amassed an enormous fortune, left the whole of it at his death for the purpose of erecting a chapel called St. Agnes, which soon after became the church of St. Eustace. He further directed that, by way of expiation, his body should be thrown into the sewer which drained the offal from the market, and covered with a large stone; this sewer up to the end of the last century was still called Pont Alais. [Illustration: Fig. 63.--Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle, his Wife, from a Painting executed at the End of the Fifteenth Century, under the Vaults of the Cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris.] Very often when citizens made gifts during their lifetime to churches or parishes, the donors reserved to themselves certain privileges which were calculated to cause the motives which had actuated them to be open to criticism. Thus, in 1304, the daughters of Nicholas Arrode, formerly provost of the merchants, presented to the church of St. Jacques-la-Boucherie the house and grounds which they inhabited, but one of them reserved the right of having a key of the church that she might go in whenever she pleased. Guillaume Haussecuel, in 1405, bought a similar right for the sum of eighteen _sols parisis_ per annum (equal to twenty-five francs); and Alain and his wife, whose house was close to two chapels of the church, undertook not to build so as in any way to shut out the light from one of the chapels on condition that they might open a small window into the chapel, and so be enabled to hear the service without leaving their room. [Illustration: Fig. 64.--Country Life--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in a folio Edition of Virgil, published at Lyons in 1517.] We thus see that the bourgeoisie, especially of Paris, gradually took a more prominent position in history, and became so grasping after power that it ventured, at a period which does not concern us here, to aspire to every sort of distinction, and to secure an important social standing. What had been the exception during the sixteenth century became the rule two centuries later. We will now take a glance at the agricultural population (Fig. 64), who, as we have already stated, were only emancipated from serfdom at the end of the eighteenth century. But whatever might have been formerly the civil condition of the rural population, everything leads us to suppose that there were no special changes in their private and domestic means of existence from a comparatively remote period down to almost the present time. A small poem of the thirteenth century, entitled, "De l'Oustillement au Vilain," gives a clear though rough sketch of the domestic state of the peasantry. Strange as it may seem, it must be acknowledged that, with a few exceptions resulting from the progress of time, it would not be difficult, even at the present day, to find the exact type maintained in the country districts farthest away from the capital and large towns; at all events, they were faithfully represented at the time of the revolution of 1789. [Illustration: Fig. 65.--Sedentary Occupations of the Peasauts.--Fac-simile from an Engraving on Wood, attributed to Holbein, in the "Cosmographie" of Munster (Basle, 1552, folio).] We gather from this poem, which must be considered an authentic and most interesting document, that the _manse_ or dwelling of the villain comprised three distinct buildings; the first for the corn, the second for the hay and straw, the third for the man and his family. In this rustic abode a fire of vine branches and faggots sparkled in a large chimney furnished with an iron pot-hanger, a tripod, a shovel, large fire-irons, a cauldron and a meat-hook. Next to the fireplace was an oven, and in close proximity to this an enormous bedstead, on which the villain, his wife, his children, and even the stranger who asked for hospitality, could all be easily accommodated; a kneading trough, a table, a bench, a cheese cupboard, a jug, and a few baskets made up the rest of the furniture. The villain also possessed other utensils, such as a ladder, a mortar, a hand-mill--for every one then was obliged to grind his own corn; a mallet, some nails, some gimlets, fishing lines, hooks, and baskets, &c. [Illustration: Fig. 66.--Villains before going to Work receiving their Lord's Orders.--Miniature in the "Propriétaire des Choses."--Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal, in Paris).] His working implements were a plough, a scythe, a spade, a hoe, large shears, a knife and a sharpening stone; he had also a waggon, with harness for several horses, so as to be able to accomplish the different tasks required of him under feudal rights, either by his proper lord, or by the sovereign; for the villain was liable to be called upon to undertake every kind of work of this sort. His dress consisted of a blouse of cloth or skin fastened by a leather belt round the waist, an overcoat or mantle of thick woollen stuff, which fell from his shoulders to half-way down his legs; shoes or large boots, short woollen trousers, and from his belt there hung his wallet and a sheath for his knife (Figs. 66 and 71). He generally went bareheaded, but in cold weather or in rain he wore a sort of hat of similar stuff to his coat, or one of felt with a broad brim. He seldom wore _mouffles_, or padded gloves, except when engaged in hedging. A small kitchen-garden, which he cultivated himself, was usually attached to the cottage, which was guarded by a large watch-dog. There was also a shed for the cows, whose milk contributed to the sustenance of the establishment; and on the thatched roof of this and his cottage the wild cats hunted the rats and mice. The family were never idle, even in the bad season, and the children were taught from infancy to work by the side of their parents (Fig. 65). If, then, we find so much resemblance between the abodes of the villains of the thirteenth century and those of the inhabitants of the poorest communes of France in the present day, we may fairly infer that there must be a great deal which is analogous between the inhabitants themselves of the two periods; for in the châteaux as well as in the towns we find the material condition of the dwellings modifying itself conjointly with that of the moral condition of the inhabitants. [Illustration: Fig. 67.--The egotistical and envious Villain.--From a Miniature in "Proverbes et Adages, &c.," Manuscript of the La Vallière Fund, in the National Library of Paris, with this legend: "Attrapez y sont les plus fins: Qui trop embrasse mal estraint." ("The cleverest burn their fingers at it, And those who grasp all may lose all.") ] Another little poem entitled, "On the Twenty-four Kinds of Villains," composed about the same period as the one above referred to, gives us a graphic description of the varieties of character among the feudal peasants. One example is given of a man who will not tell a traveller the way, but merely in a surly way answers, "You know it better than I" (Fig. 67). Another, sitting at his door on a Sunday, laughs at those passing by, and says to himself when he sees a gentleman going hawking with a bird on his wrist, "Ah! that bird will eat a hen to-day, and our children could all feast upon it!" Another is described as a sort of madman who equally despises God, the saints, the Church, and the nobility. His neighbour is an honest simpleton, who, stopping in admiration before the doorway of Notre Dame in Paris in order to admire the statues of Pepin, Charlemagne, and their successors, has his pocket picked of his purse. Another villain is supposed to make trade of pleading the cause of others before "Messire le Bailli;" he is very eloquent in trying to show that in the time of their ancestors the cows had a free right of pasture in such and such a meadow, or the sheep on such and such a ridge; then there is the miser, and the speculator, who converts all his possessions into ready money, so as to purchase grain against a bad season; but of course the harvest turns out to be excellent, and he does not make a farthing, but runs away to conceal his ruin and rage. There is also the villain who leaves his plough to become a poacher. There are many other curious examples which altogether tend to prove that there has been but little change in the villager class since the first periods of History. [Illustration: Fig. 68.--The covetous and avaricious Villain.--From a Miniature in "Proverbes et Adages, &c," Manuscript in the National Library of Paris, with this legend: "Je suis icy levant les yeulx Eu ce haut lieu des attendens, En convoitant pour avoir mieulx Prendre la lune avec les dens." ("Even on this lofty height We yet look higher, As nothing will satisfy us But to clutch the moon.") ] Notwithstanding the miseries to which they were generally subject, the rural population had their days of rest and amusement, which were then much more numerous than at present. At that period the festivals of the Church were frequent and rigidly kept, and as each of them was the pretext for a forced holiday from manual labour, the peasants thought of nothing, after church, but of amusing themselves; they drank, talked, sang, danced, and, above all, laughed, for the laugh of our forefathers quite rivalled the Homeric laugh, and burst forth with a noisy joviality (Fig. 69). The "wakes," or evening parties, which are still the custom in most of the French provinces, and which are of very ancient origin, formed important events in the private lives of the peasants. It was at these that the strange legends and vulgar superstitions, which so long fed the minds of the ignorant classes, were mostly created and propagated. It was there that those extraordinary and terrible fairy tales were related, as well as those of magicians, witches, spirits, &c. It was there that the matrons, whose great age justified their experience, insisted on proving, by absurd tales, that they knew all the marvellous secrets for causing happiness or for curing sickness. Consequently, in those days the most enlightened rustic never for a moment doubted the truth of witchcraft. In fact, one of the first efforts at printing was applied to reproducing the most ridiculous stories under the title of the "Evangile des Conuilles ou Quenouilles," and which had been previously circulated in manuscript, and had obtained implicit belief. The author of this remarkable collection asserts that the matrons in his neighbourhood had deputed him to put together in writing the sayings suitable for all conditions of rural life which were believed in by them and were announced at the wakes. The absurdities and childish follies which he has dared to register under their dictation are almost incredible. The "Evangile des Quenouilles," which was as much believed in as Holy Writ, tells us, amongst other secrets which it contains for the advantage of the reader, that a girl wishing to know the Christian name of her future husband, has but to stretch the first thread she spins in the morning across the doorway; and that the first man who passes and touches the thread will necessarily have the same name as the man she is destined to marry. Another of the stories in this book was, that if a woman, on leaving off work on Saturday night, left her distaff loaded, she might be sure that the thread she would obtain from it during the following week would only produce linen of bad quality, which could not be bleached; this was considered to be proved by the fact that the Germans wore dark-brown coloured shirts, and it was known that the women never unloaded their distaffs from Saturday to Monday. Should a woman enter a cow-house to milk her cows without saying "God and St. Bridget bless you!" she was thought to run the risk of the cows kicking and breaking the milk-pail and spilling the milk. [Illustration: Fig. 69.--Village Feast.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Sandrin ou Verd Galant," facetious Work of the End of the Sixteenth Century (edition of 1609).] This silly nonsense, compiled like oracles, was printed as late as 1493. Eighty years later a gentleman of Brittany, named Noel du Fail, Lord of Herissaye, councillor in the Parliament of Rennes, published, under the title of "Rustic and Amusing Discourses," a work intended to counteract the influence of the famous "Evangile des Quenouilles." This new work was a simple and true sketch of country habits, and proved the elegance and artless simplicity of the author, as well as his accuracy of observation. He begins thus: "Occasionally, having to retire into the country more conveniently and uninterruptedly to finish some business, on a particular holiday, as I was walking I came to a neighbouring village, where the greater part of the old and young men were assembled, in groups of separate ages, for, according to the proverb, 'Each seeks his like.' The young were practising the bow, jumping, wrestling, running races, and playing other games. The old were looking on, some sitting under an oak, with their legs crossed, and their hats lowered over their eyes, others leaning on their elbows criticizing every performance, and refreshing the memory of their own youth, and taking a lively interest in seeing the gambols of the young people." The author states that on questioning one of the peasants to ascertain who was the cleverest person present, the following dialogue took place: "The one you see leaning on his elbow, hitting his boots, which have white strings, with a hazel stick, is called Anselme; he is one of the rich ones of the village, he is a good workman, and not a bad writer for the flat country; and the one you see by his side, with his thumb in his belt, hanging from which is a large game bag, containing spectacles and an old prayer book, is called Pasquier, one of the greatest wits within a day's journey--nay, were I to say two I should not be lying. Anyhow, he is certainly the readiest of the whole company to open his purse to give drink to his companions." "And that one," I asked, "with the large Milanese cap on his head, who holds an old book?" "That one," he answered, "who is scratching the end of his nose with one hand and his beard with the other?" "That one," I replied, "and who has turned towards us?" "Why," said he, "that is Roger Bontemps, a merry careless fellow, who up to the age of fifty kept the parish school; but changing his first trade he has become a wine-grower. However, he cannot resist the feast days, when he brings us his old books, and reads to us as long as we choose, such works as the 'Calondrier des Bergers,' 'Fables d'Esope,' 'Le Roman de la Rose,' 'Matheolus,' 'Alain Chartier,' 'Les Vigiles du feu Roy Charles,' 'Les deux Grebans,' and others. Neither, with his old habit of warbling, can he help singing on Sundays in the choir; and he is called Huguet. The other sitting near him, looking over his shoulder into his book, and wearing a sealskin belt with a yellow buckle, is another rich peasant of the village, not a bad villain, named Lubin, who also lives at home, and is called the little old man of the neighbourhood." After this artistic sketch, the author dilates on the goodman Anselme. He says: "This good man possessed a moderate amount of knowledge, was a goodish grammarian, a musician, somewhat of a sophist, and rather given to picking holes in others." Some of Anselme's conversation is also given, and after beginning by describing in glowing terms the bygone days which he and his contemporaries had seen, and which he stated to be very different to the present, he goes on to say, "I must own, my good old friends, that I look back with pleasure on our young days; at all events the mode of doing things in those days was very superior and better in every way to that of the present.... O happy days! O fortunate times when our fathers and grandfathers, whom may God absolve, were still among us!" As he said this, he would raise the rim of his hat. He contented himself as to dress with a good coat of thick wool, well lined according to the fashion; and for feast days and other important occasions, one of thick cloth, lined with some old gabardine. [Illustration: Fig. 70.--The Shepherds celebrating the Birth of the Messiah by Songs and Dances.--Fifteenth Century.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, from a Book of Hours, printed by Anthony Verard.] "So we see," says M. Le Roux de Lincy, "at the end of the fifteenth century that the old peasants complained of the changes in the village customs, and of the luxury which every one wished to display in his furniture or apparel. On this point it seems that there has been little or no change. We read that, from the time of Homer down to that of the excellent author of 'Rustic Discourses,' and even later, the old people found fault with the manners of the present generation and extolled those of their forefathers, which they themselves had criticized in their own youth." [Illustration: Fig. 71.--Purse or Leather Bag, with Knife or Dagger of the Fifteenth Century.] Food and Cookery. History of Bread.--Vegetables and Plants used in Cooking.--Fruits.--Butchers' Meat.--Poultry, Game.--Milk, Butter, Cheese, and Eggs.--Fish and Shellfish.--Beverages, Beer, Cider, Wine, Sweet Wine, Refreshing Drinks, Brandy.--Cookery.--Soups, Boiled Food, Pies, Stews, Salads, Roasts, Grills.--Seasoning, Truffles, Sugar, Verjuice.--Sweets, Desserts, Pastry.--Meals and Feasts.--Rules of Serving at Table from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries. "The private life of a people," says Legrand d'Aussy, who had studied that of the French from a gastronomic point of view only, "from the foundation of monarchy down to the eighteenth century, must, like that of mankind generally, commence with obtaining the first and most pressing of its requirements. Not satisfied with providing food for his support, man has endeavoured to add to his food something which pleased his taste. He does not wait to be hungry, but he anticipates that feeling, and aggravates it by condiments and seasonings. In a word his greediness has created on this score a very complicated and wide-spread science, which, amongst nations which are considered civilised, has become most important, and is designated the culinary art." At all times the people of every country have strained the nature of the soil on which they lived by forcing it to produce that which it seemed destined ever to refuse them. Such food as human industry was unable to obtain from any particular soil or from any particular climate, commerce undertook to bring from the country which produced it. This caused Rabelais to say that the stomach was the father and master of industry. We will rapidly glance over the alimentary matters which our forefathers obtained from the animal and vegetable kingdom, and then trace the progress of culinary art, and examine the rules of feasts and such matters as belong to the epicurean customs of the Middle Ages. Aliments. Bread.--The Gauls, who principally inhabited deep and thick forests, fed on herbs and fruits, and particularly on acorns. It is even possible that the veneration in which they held the oak had no other origin. This primitive food continued in use, at least in times of famine, up to the eighth century, and we find in the regulations of St. Chrodegand that if, in consequence of a bad year, the acorn or beech-nut became scarce, it was the bishop's duty to provide something to make up for it. Eight centuries later, when René du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, came to report to Francis I. the fearful poverty of his diocese, he informed the king that the inhabitants in many places were reduced to subsisting on acorn bread. [Illustration: Figs. 72 and 73.--Corn-threshing and Bread-making.--Miniatures from the Calendar of a Book of Hours.--Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century.] In the earliest times bread was cooked under the embers. The use of ovens was introduced into Europe by the Romans, who had found them in Egypt. But, notwithstanding this importation, the old system of cooking was long after employed, for in the tenth century Raimbold, abbot of the monastery of St. Thierry, near Rheims, ordered in his will that on the day of his death bread cooked under the embers--_panes subcinericios_--should be given to his monks. By feudal law the lord was bound to bake the bread of his vassals, for which they were taxed, but the latter often preferred to cook their flour at home in the embers of their own hearths, rather than to carry it to the public oven. [Illustration: Fig. 74.--The Miller.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] It must be stated that the custom of leavening the dough by the addition of a ferment was not universally adopted amongst the ancients. For this reason, as the dough without leaven could only produce a heavy and indigestible bread, they were careful, in order to secure their loaves being thoroughly cooked, to make them very thin. These loaves served as plates for cutting up the other food upon, and when they thus became saturated with the sauce and gravy they were eaten as cakes. The use of the _tourteaux_ (small crusty loaves), which were at first called _tranchoirs_ and subsequently _tailloirs_, remained long in fashion even at the most splendid banquets. Thus, in 1336, the Dauphin of Vienna, Humbert II., had, besides the small white bread, four small loaves to serve as _tranchoirs_ at table. The "Ménagier de Paris" mentions "_des pains de tranchouers_ half a foot in diameter, and four fingers deep," and Froissart the historian also speaks of _tailloirs_. It would be difficult to point out the exact period at which leavening bread was adopted in Europe, but we can assert that in the Middle Ages it was anything but general. Yeast, which, according to Pliny, was already known to the Gauls, was reserved for pastry, and it was only at the end of the sixteenth century that the bakers of Paris used it for bread. At first the trades of miller and baker were carried on by the same person (Figs. 74 and 75). The man who undertook the grinding of the grain had ovens near his mill, which he let to his lord to bake bread, when he did not confine his business to persons who sent him their corn to grind. [Illustration: Fig. 75.--The Baker.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] At a later period public bakers established themselves, who not only baked the loaves which were brought to them already kneaded, but also made bread which they sold by weight; and this system was in existence until very recently in the provinces. Charlemagne, in his "Capitulaires" (statutes), fixed the number of bakers in each city according to the population, and St. Louis relieved them, as well as the millers, from taking their turn at the watch, so that they might have no pretext for stopping or neglecting their work, which he considered of public utility. Nevertheless bakers as a body never became rich or powerful (Figs. 76 and 77). It is pretty generally believed that the name of _boulanger_ (baker) originated from the fact that the shape of the loaves made at one time was very like that of a round ball. But loaves varied so much in form, quality, and consequently in name, that in his "Dictionary of Obscure Words" the learned Du Cange specifies at least twenty sorts made during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and amongst them may be mentioned the court loaf, the pope's loaf, the knight's loaf, the squire's loaf, the peer's loaf, the varlet's loaf, &c. [Illustration: Fig. 76.--Banner of the Corporation of Bakers of Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 77.--Banner of the Corporation, of Bakers of Arras.] The most celebrated bread was the white bread of Chailly or Chilly, a village four leagues (ten miles) south of Paris, which necessarily appeared at all the tables of the _élite_ of the fourteenth century. The _pain mollet_, or soft bread made with milk and butter, although much in use before this, only became fashionable on the arrival of Marie de Medicis in France (1600), on account of this Tuscan princess finding it so much to her taste that she would eat no other. The ordinary market bread of Paris comprised the _rousset bread_, made of meslin, and employed for soup; the _bourgeoisie bread_; and the _chaland_ or _customer's bread_, which last was a general name given to all descriptions which were sent daily from the neighbouring villages to the capital. Amongst the best known varieties we will only mention the _Corbeil bread_, the _dog bread_, the _bread of two colours_, which last was composed of alternate layers of wheat and rye, and was used by persons of small means; there was also the _Gonesse bread_, which has maintained its reputation to this day. The "table loaves," which in the provinces were served at the tables of the rich, were of such a convenient size that one of them would suffice for a man of ordinary appetite, even after the crust was cut off, which it was considered polite to offer to the ladies, who soaked it in their soup. For the servants an inferior bread was baked, called "common bread." In many counties they sprinkled the bread, before putting it into the oven, with powdered linseed, a custom which still exists. They usually added salt to the flour, excepting in certain localities, especially in Paris, where, on account of its price, they only mixed it with the expensive qualities. The wheats which were long most esteemed for baking purposes, were those of Brie, Champagne, and Bassigny; while those of the Dauphiné were held of little value, because they were said to contain so many tares and worthless grains, that the bread made from them produced headache and other ailments. An ancient chronicle of the time of Charlemagne makes mention of a bread twice baked, or biscuit. This bread was very hard, and easier to keep than any other description. It was also used, as now, for provisioning ships, or towns threatened with a siege, as well as in religious houses. At a later period, delicate biscuits were made of a sort of dry and crumbling pastry which retained the original name. As early as the sixteenth century, Rheims had earned a great renown for these articles of food. Bread made with barley, oats, or millet was always ranked as coarse food, to which the poor only had recourse in years of want (Fig. 78). Barley bread was, besides, used as a kind of punishment, and monks who had committed any serious offence against discipline were condemned to live on it for a certain period. Rye bread was held of very little value, although in certain provinces, such as Lyonnais, Forez, and Auvergne, it was very generally used among the country people, and contributed, says Bruyérin Champier in his treatise "De re Cibaria," to "preserve beauty and freshness amongst women." At a later period, the doctors of Paris frequently ordered the use of bread made half of wheat and half of rye as a means "of preserving the health." Black wheat, or buck wheat, which was introduced into Europe by the Moors and Saracens when they conquered Spain, quickly spread to the northern provinces, especially to Flanders, where, by its easy culture and almost certain yield, it averted much suffering from the inhabitants, who were continually being threatened with famine. It was only later that maize, or Turkey wheat, was cultivated in the south, and that rice came into use; but these two kinds of grain, both equally useless for bread, were employed the one for fattening poultry, and the other for making cakes, which, however, were little appreciated. [Illustration: Fig. 78.--Cultivation of Grain in use amongst the Peasants, and the Manufacture of Barley and Oat Bread.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in an edition of Virgil published at Lyons in 1517.] Vegetables and Plants Used in Cooking.--From the most ancient historical documents we find that at the very earliest period of the French monarchy, fresh and dried vegetables were the ordinary food of the population. Pliny and Columella attribute a Gallic origin to certain roots, and among them onions and parsnips, which the Romans cultivated in their gardens for use at their tables. It is evident, however, that vegetables were never considered as being capable of forming solid nutriment, since they were almost exclusively used by monastic communities when under vows of extreme abstinence. A statute of Charlemagne, in which the useful plants which the emperor desired should be cultivated in his domains are detailed, shows us that at that period the greater part of our cooking vegetables were in use, for we find mentioned in it, fennel, garlic, parsley, shallot, onions, watercress, endive, lettuce, beetroot, cabbage, leeks, carrots, artichokes; besides long-beans, broad-beans, peas or Italian vetches, and lentils. In the thirteenth century, the plants fit for cooking went under the general appellation of _aigrun_, and amongst them, at a later date, were ranked oranges, lemons, and other acid fruits. St. Louis added to this category even fruits with hard rinds, such as walnuts, filberts, and chestnuts; and when the guild of the fruiterers of Paris received its statutes in 1608, they were still called "vendors of fruits and _aigrun_." The vegetables and cooking-plants noticed in the "Ménagier de Paris," which dates from the fourteenth century, and in the treatise "De Obsoniis," of Platina (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of Charlemagne. Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher classes, or perhaps the artichoke, which we know to be only a kind of thistle developed by cultivation, and which at that period had been recently imported. About the same date melons begin to appear; but the management of this vegetable fruit was not much known. It was so imperfectly cultivated in the northern provinces, that, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Bruyérin Champier speaks of the Languedocians as alone knowing how to produce excellent _sucrins_--"thus called," say both Charles Estienne and Liébault in the "Maison Rustique," "because gardeners watered them with honeyed or sweetened water." The water-melons have never been cultivated but in the south. Cabbages, the alimentary reputation of which dates from the remotest times, were already of several kinds, most of which have descended to us; amongst them may be mentioned the apple-headed, the Roman, the white, the common white head, the Easter cabbage, &c.; but the one held in the highest estimation was the famous cabbage of Senlis, whose leaves, says an ancient author, when opened, exhaled a smell more agreeable than musk or amber. This species no doubt fell into disuse when the plan of employing aromatic herbs in cooking, which was so much in repute by our ancestors, was abandoned. [Illustration: Fig. 79.--Coat-of-arms of the Grain-measurers of Ghent, on their Ceremonial Banner, dated 1568.] By a strange coincidence, at the same period as marjoram, carraway seed, sweet basil, coriander, lavender, and rosemary were used to add their pungent flavour to sauces and hashes, on the same tables might be found herbs of the coldest and most insipid kinds, such as mallows, some kinds of mosses, &c. Cucumber, though rather in request, was supposed to be an unwholesome vegetable, because it was said that the inhabitants of Forez, who ate much of it, were subject to periodical fevers, which might really have been caused by noxious emanation from the ponds with which that country abounded. Lentils, now considered so wholesome, were also long looked upon as a doubtful vegetable; according to Liébault, they were difficult to digest and otherwise injurious; they inflamed the inside, affected the sight, and brought on the nightmare, &c. On the other hand, small fresh beans, especially those sold at Landit fair, were used in the most delicate repasts; peas passed as a royal dish in the sixteenth century, when the custom was to eat them with salt pork. Turnips were also most esteemed by the Parisians. "This vegetable is to them," says Charles Estienne, "what large radishes are to the Limousins." The best were supposed to come from Maisons, Vaugirard, and Aubervilliers. Lastly, there were four kinds of lettuces grown in France, according to Liébault, in 1574: the small, the common, the curled, and the Roman: the seed of the last-named was sent to France by François Rabelais when he was in Rome with Cardinal du Bellay in 1537; and the salad made from it consequently received the name of Roman salad, which it has ever since retained. In fact, our ancestors much appreciated salads, for there was not a banquet without at least three or four different kinds. Fruits.--Western Europe was originally very poor in fruits, and it only improved by foreign importations, mostly from Asia by the Romans. The apricot came from Armenia, the pistachio-nuts and plums from Syria, the peach and nut from Persia, the cherry from Cerasus, the lemon from Media, the filbert from the Hellespont, and chestnuts from Castana, a town of Magnesia. We are also indebted to Asia for almonds; the pomegranate, according to some, came from Africa, to others from Cyprus; the quince from Cydon in Crete; the olive, fig, pear, and apple, from Greece. The statutes of Charlemagne show us that almost all these fruits were reared in his gardens, and that some of them were of several kinds or varieties. A considerable period, however, elapsed before the finest and more luscious productions of the garden became as it were almost forced on nature by artificial means. Thus in the sixteenth century we find Rabelais, Charles Estienne, and La Framboisière, physician to Henry IV., praising the Corbeil peach, which was only an inferior and almost wild sort, and describing it as having "_dry_ and _solid_ flesh, not adhering to the stone." The culture of this fruit, which was not larger than a damask plum, had then, according to Champier, only just been introduced into France. It must be remarked here that Jacques Coythier, physician to Louis XI., in order to curry favour with his master, who was very fond of new fruits, took as his crest an apricot-tree, from which he was jokingly called Abri-Coythier. [Illustration: Fig. 80.--Cultivation of Fruit, from a Miniature of the "Propriétaire de Choses" (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris).] It must be owned that great progress has been made in the culture of the plum, the pear, and the apple. Champier says that the best plums are the _royale_, the _perdrigon_, and the _damas_ of Tours; Olivier de Serres mentions eighteen kinds--amongst which, however, we do not find the celebrated Reine Claude (greengage), which owes its name to the daughter of Louis XII., first wife of Francis I. Of pears, the most esteemed in the thirteenth century were the _hastiveau_, which was an early sort, and no doubt the golden pear now called St. Jean, the _caillou_ or _chaillou_, a hard pear, which came from Cailloux in Burgundy and _l'angoisse_ (agony), so called on account of its bitterness--which, however, totally disappeared in cooking. In the sixteenth century the palm is given to the _cuisse dame_, or _madame_; the _bon chrétien_, brought, it is said, by St. François de Paule to Louis XI.; the _bergamote_, which came from Bergamo, in Lombardy; the _tant-bonne_, so named from its aroma; and the _caillou rosat_, our rosewater pear. Amongst apples, the _blandureau_ (hard white) of Auvergne, the _rouveau_, and the _paradis_ of Provence, are of oldest repute. This reminds us of the couplet by the author of the "Street Cries of Paris," thirteenth century:-- "Primes ai pommes de rouviau, Et d'Auvergne le blanc duriau." ("Give me first the russet apple, And the hard white fruit of Auvergne.") The quince, which was so generally cultivated in the Middle Ages, was looked upon as the most useful of all fruits. Not only did it form the basis of the farmers' dried preserves of Orleans, called _cotignac_, a sort of marmalade, but it was also used for seasoning meat. The Portugal quince was the most esteemed; and the cotignac of Orleans had such a reputation, that boxes of this fruit were always given to kings, queens, and princes on entering the towns of France. It was the first offering made to Joan of Arc on her bringing reinforcements into Orleans during the English siege. Several sorts of cherries were known, but these did not prevent the small wild or wood cherry from being appreciated at the tables of the citizens; whilst the _cornouille_, or wild cornelian cherry, was hardly touched, excepting by the peasants; thence came the proverbial expression, more particularly in use at Orleans, when a person made a silly remark, "He has eaten cornelians," _i.e._, he speaks like a rustic. In the thirteenth century, chestnuts from Lombardy were hawked in the streets; but, in the sixteenth century, the chestnuts of the Lyonnais and Auvergne were substituted, and were to be found on the royal table. Four different sorts of figs, in equal estimation, were brought from Marseilles, Nismes, Saint-Andéol, and Pont Saint-Esprit; and in Provence, filberts were to be had in such profusion that they supplied from there all the tables of the kingdom. The Portuguese claim the honour of having introduced oranges from China; however, in an account of the house of Humbert, Dauphin of Viennois, in 1333, that is, long before the expeditions of the Portuguese to India, mention is made of a sum of money being paid for transplanting orange-trees. [Illustration: Figs. 81 and 82.--Culture of the Vine and Treading the Grape.--Miniatures taken from the Calendar of a Prayer-Book, in Manuscript, of the Sixteenth Century.] In the time of Bruyérin Champier, physician to Henry II., raspberries were still completely wild; the same author states that wood strawberries had only just at that time been introduced into gardens, "by which," he says, "they had attained a larger size, though they at the same time lost their quality." The vine, acclimatised and propagated by the Gauls, ever since the followers of Brennus had brought it from Italy, five hundred years before the Christian era, never ceased to be productive, and even to constitute the natural wealth of the country (Fig. 81 and 82). In the sixteenth century, Liébault enumerated nineteen sorts of grapes, and Olivier de Serres twenty-four, amongst which, notwithstanding the eccentricities of the ancient names, we believe that we can trace the greater part of those plants which are now cultivated in France. For instance, it is known that the excellent vines of Thomery, near Fontainebleau, which yield in abundance the most beautiful table grape which art and care can produce, were already in use in the reign of Henry IV. (Fig. 83). [Illustration: Fig. 83.--The Winegrower, drawn and engraved in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] In the time of the Gauls the custom of drying grapes by exposing them to the sun, or to a certain amount of artificial heat, was already known; and very soon after, the same means were adopted for preserving plums, an industry in which then, as now, the people of Tours and Rheims excelled. Drying apples in an oven was also the custom, and formed a delicacy which was reserved for winter and spring banquets. Dried fruits were also brought from abroad, as mentioned in the "Book of Street Cries in Paris:"-- "Figues de Mélités sans fin, J'ai roisin d'outre mer, roisin." ("Figs from Malta without end, And grapes from over the sea.") Butchers' Meat.--According to Strabo, the Gauls were great eaters of meat, especially of pork, whether fresh or salted. "Gaul," says he, "feeds so many flocks, and, above all, so many pigs, that it supplies not only Rome, but all Italy, with grease and salt meat." The second chapter of the Salic law, comprising nineteen articles, relates entirely to penalties for pig-stealing; and in the laws of the Visigoths we find four articles on the same subject. [Illustration: Fig. 84.--Swineherd. Illustration: Fig 85.--A Burgess at Meals. Miniatures from the Calendar of a Book of Hours.--Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century.] In those remote days, in which the land was still covered with enormous forests of oak, great facilities were offered for breeding pigs, whose special liking for acorns is well known. Thus the bishops, princes, and lords caused numerous droves of pigs to be fed on their domains, both for the purpose of supplying their own tables as well as for the fairs and markets. At a subsequent period, it became the custom for each household, whether in town or country, to rear and fatten a pig, which was killed and salted at a stated period of the year; and this custom still exists in many provinces. In Paris, for instance, there was scarcely a bourgeois who had not two or three young pigs. During the day these unsightly creatures were allowed to roam in the streets; which, however, they helped to keep clean by eating up the refuse of all sorts which was thrown out of the houses. One of the sons of Louis le Gros, while passing, on the 2nd of October, 1131, in the Rue du Martroi, between the Hôtel de Ville and the church of St. Gervais, fractured his skull by a fall from his horse, caused by a pig running between that animal's legs. This accident led to the first order being issued by the provosts, to the effect that breeding pigs within the town was forbidden. Custom, however, deep-rooted for centuries, resisted this order, and many others on the same subject which followed it: for we find, under Francis I., a license was issued to the executioner, empowering him to capture all the stray pigs which he could find in Paris, and to take them to the Hôtel Dieu, when he should receive either five sous in silver or the head of the animal. It is said that the holy men of St. Antoine, in virtue of the privilege attached to the popular legend of their patron, who was generally represented with a pig, objected to this order, and long after maintained the exclusive right of allowing their pigs to roam in the streets of the capital. The obstinate determination with which every one tried to evade the administrative laws on this subject, is explained, in fact, by the general taste of the French nation for pork. This taste appears somewhat strange at a time when this kind of food was supposed to engender leprosy, a disease with which France was at that time overrun. [Illustration: Fig. 86.--Stall of Carved Wood (Fifteenth Century), representing the Proverb, "Margaritas ante Porcos," "Throwing Pearls before Swine," from Rouen Cathedral.] Pigs' meat made up generally the greater part of the domestic banquets. There was no great feast at which hams, sausages, and black puddings were not served in profusion on all the tables; and as Easter Day, which brought to a close the prolonged fastings of Lent, was one of the great feasts, this food formed the most important dish on that occasion. It is possible that the necessity for providing for the consumption of that day originated the celebrated ham fair, which was and is still held annually on the Thursday of Passion Week in front of Notre-Dame, where the dealers from all parts of France, and especially from Normandy and Lower Brittany, assembled with their swine. Sanitary measures were taken in Paris and in the various towns in order to prevent the evil effects likely to arise from the enormous consumption of pork; public officers, called _languayeurs_, were ordered to examine the animals to ensure that they had not white ulcers under the tongue, these being considered the signs that their flesh was in a condition to communicate leprosy to those who partook of it. For a long time the retail sale of pork was confined to the butchers, like that of other meat. Salt or fresh pork was at one time always sold raw, though at a later period some retailers, who carried on business principally among the lowest orders of the people, took to selling cooked pork and sausages. They were named _charcuitiers_ or _saucissiers_. This new trade, which was most lucrative, was adopted by so many people that parliament was forced to limit the number of _charcuitiers_, who at last formed a corporation, and received their statutes, which were confirmed by the King in 1475. Amongst the privileges attached to their calling was that of selling red herrings and sea-fish in Lent, during which time the sale of pork was strictly forbidden. Although they had the exclusive monopoly of selling cooked pork, they were at first forbidden to buy their meat of any one but of the butchers, who alone had the right of killing pigs; and it was only in 1513 that the _charcuitiers_ were allowed to purchase at market and sell the meat raw, in opposition to the butchers, who in consequence gradually gave up killing and selling pork (Fig. 87). Although the consumption of butchers' meat was not so great in the Middle Ages as it is now, the trade of a butcher, to which extraordinary privileges were attached, was nevertheless one of the industries which realised the greatest profits. We know what an important part the butchers played in the municipal history of France, as also of Belgium; and we also know how great their political influence was, especially in the fifteenth century. [Illustration: Fig. 87.--The Pork-butcher (_Charcutier_).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Charter of the Abbey of Solignac (Fourteenth Century).] The existence of the great slaughter-house of Paris dates back to the most remote period of monarchy. The parish church of the corporation of butchers, namely, that of St. Pierre aux Boeufs in the city, on the front of which were two sculptured oxen, existed before the tenth century. A Celtic monument was discovered on the site of the ancient part of Paris, with a bas-relief representing a wild bull carrying three cranes standing among oak branches. Archæology has chosen to recognise in this sculpture a Druidical allegory, which has descended to us in the shape of the triumphal car of the Prize Ox (Fig. 88). The butchers who, for centuries at least in France, only killed sheep and pigs, proved themselves most jealous of their privileges, and admitted no strangers into their corporation. The proprietorship of stalls at the markets, and the right of being admitted as a master butcher at the age of seven years and a day, belonged exclusively to the male descendants of a few rich and powerful families. The Kings of France alone, on their accession, could create a new master butcher. Since the middle of the fourteenth century the "Grande Boucherie" was the seat of an important jurisdiction, composed of a mayor, a master, a proctor, and an attorney; it also had a judicial council before which the butchers could bring up all their cases, and an appeal from which could only be considered by Parliament. Besides this court, which had to decide cases of misbehaviour on the part of the apprentices, and all their appeals against their masters, the corporation had a counsel in Parliament, as also one at the Châtelet, who were specially attached to the interests of the butchers, and were in their pay. [Illustration: Fig. 88.--The Holy Ox.--Celtic Monument found in Paris under the Choir of Notre-Dame in 1711, and preserved in the Musée de Cluny et des Thermes.] Although bound, at all events with their money, to follow the calling of their fathers, we find many descendants of ancient butchers' families of Paris, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, abandoning their stalls to fill high places in the state, and even at court. It must not be concluded that the rich butchers in those days occupied themselves with the minor details of their trade; the greater number employed servants who cut up and retailed the meat, and they themselves simply kept the accounts, and were engaged in dealing through factors or foremen for the purchase of beasts for their stalls (Fig. 89). One can form an opinion of the wealth of some of these tradesmen by reading the enumeration made by an old chronicler of the property and income of Guillaume de Saint-Yon, one of the principal master butchers in 1370. "He was proprietor of three stalls, in which meat was weekly sold to the amount of 200 _livres parisis_ (the livre being equivalent to 24 francs at least), with an average profit of ten to fifteen per cent.; he had an income of 600 _livres parisis_; he possessed besides his family house in Paris, four country-houses, well supplied with furniture and agricultural implements, drinking-cups, vases, cups of silver, and cups of onyx with silver feet, valued at 100 francs or more each. His wife had jewels, belts, purses, and trinkets, to the value of upwards of 1,000 gold francs (the gold franc was worth 24 livres); long and short gowns trimmed with fur; and three mantles of grey fur. Guillaume de Saint-Yon had generally in his storehouses 300 ox-hides, worth 24 francs each at least; 800 measures of fat, worth 3-1/2 sols each; in his sheds, he had 800 sheep worth 100 sols each; in his safes 500 or 600 silver florins of ready money (the florin was worth 12 francs, which must be multiplied five times to estimate its value in present currency), and his household furniture was valued at 12,000 florins. He gave a dowry of 2,000 florins to his two nieces, and spent 3,000 florins in rebuilding his Paris house; and lastly, as if he had been a noble, he used a silver seal." [Illustration: Fig. 89.--The Butcher and his Servant, drawn and engraved by J. Amman (Sixteenth Century).] We find in the "Ménagier de Paris" curious statistics respecting the various butchers' shops of the capital, and the daily sale in each at the period referred to. This sale, without counting the households of the King, the Queen, and the royal family, which were specially provisioned, amounted to 26,624 oxen, 162,760 sheep, 27,456 pigs, and 15,912 calves per annum; to which must be added not only the smoked and salted flesh of 200 or 300 pigs, which were sold at the fair in Holy Week, but also 6,420 sheep, 823 oxen, 832 calves, and 624 pigs, which, according to the "Ménagier," were used in the royal and princely households. Sometimes the meat was sent to market already cut up, but the slaughter of beasts was more frequently done in the butchers' shops in the town; for they only killed from day to day, according to the demand. Besides the butchers' there were tripe shops, where the feet, kidneys, &c., were sold. [Illustration: Figs. 90 and 91.--Seal and Counter-Seal of the Butchers of Bruges in 1356, from an impression on green wax, preserved in the archives of that town.] According to Bruyérin Champier, during the sixteenth century the most celebrated sheep in France were those of Berri and Limousin; and of all butchers' meat, veal was reckoned the best. In fact, calves intended for the tables of the upper classes were fed in a special manner: they were allowed for six months, or even for a year, nothing but milk, which made their flesh most tender and delicate. Contrary to the present taste, kid was more appreciated than lamb, which caused the _rôtisseurs_ frequently to attach the tail of a kid to a lamb, so as to deceive the customer and sell him a less expensive meat at the higher price. This was the origin of the proverb which described a cheat as "a dealer in goat by halves." In other places butchers were far from acquiring the same importance which they did in France and Belgium (Figs. 90 and 91), where much more meat was consumed than in Spain, Italy, or even in Germany. Nevertheless, in almost all countries there were certain regulations, sometimes eccentric, but almost always rigidly enforced, to ensure a supply of meat of the best quality and in a healthy state. In England, for instance, butchers were only allowed to kill bulls after they had been baited with dogs, no doubt with the view of making the flesh more tender. At Mans, it was laid down in the trade regulations, that "no butcher shall be so bold as to sell meat unless it shall have been previously seen alive by two or three persons, who will testify to it on oath; and, anyhow, they shall not sell it until the persons shall have declared it wholesome," &c. To the many regulations affecting the interests of the public must be added that forbidding butchers to sell meat on days when abstinence from animal food was ordered by the Church. These regulations applied less to the vendors than to the consumers, who, by disobeying them, were liable to fine or imprisonment, or to severe corporal punishment by the whip or in the pillory. We find that Clément Marot was imprisoned and nearly burned alive for having eaten pork in Lent. In 1534, Guillaume des Moulins, Count of Brie, asked permission for his mother, who was then eighty years of age, to cease fasting; the Bishop of Paris only granted dispensation on condition that the old lady should take her meals in secret and out of sight of every one, and should still fast on Fridays. "In a certain town," says Brantôme, "there had been a procession in Lent. A woman, who had assisted at it barefooted, went home to dine off a quarter of lamb and a ham. The smell got into the street; the house was entered. The fact being established, the woman was taken, and condemned to walk through the town with her quarter of lamb on the spit over her shoulder, and the ham hung round her neck." This species of severity increased during the times of religious dissensions. Erasmus says, "He who has eaten pork instead of fish is taken to the torture like a parricide." An edict of Henry II, 1549, forbade the sale of meat in Lent to persons who should not be furnished with a doctor's certificate. Charles IX forbade the sale of meat to the Huguenots; and it was ordered that the privilege of selling meat during the time of abstinence should belong exclusively to the hospitals. Orders were given to those who retailed meat to take the address of every purchaser, although he had presented a medical certificate, so that the necessity for his eating meat might be verified. Subsequently, the medical certificate required to be endorsed by the priest, specifying what quantity of meat was required. Even in these cases the use of butchers' meat alone was granted, pork, poultry, and game being strictly forbidden. Poultry.--A monk of the Abbey of Cluny once went on a visit to his relations. On arriving he asked for food; but as it was a fast day he was told there was nothing in the house but fish. Perceiving some chickens in the yard, he took a stick and killed one, and brought it to his relations, saying, "This is the fish which I shall eat to-day." "Eh, but, my son," they said, "have you dispensation from fasting on a Friday?" "No," he answered; "but poultry is not flesh; fish and fowls were created at the same time; they have a common origin, as the hymn which I sing in the service teaches me." This simple legend belongs to the tenth century; and notwithstanding that the opinion of this Benedictine monk may appear strange nowadays, yet it must be acknowledged that he was only conforming himself to the opinions laid down by certain theologians. In 817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle decided that such delicate nourishment could scarcely be called mortification as understood by the teaching of the Church. In consequence of this an order was issued forbidding the monks to eat poultry, except during four days at Easter and four at Christmas. But this prohibition in no way changed the established custom of certain parts of Christendom, and the faithful persisted in believing that poultry and fish were identical in the eyes of the Church, and accordingly continued to eat them indiscriminately. We also see, in the middle of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas, who was considered an authority in questions of dogma and of faith, ranking poultry amongst species of aquatic origin. Eventually, this palpable error was abandoned; but when the Church forbade Christians the use of poultry on fast days, it made an exception, out of consideration for the ancient prejudice, in favour of teal, widgeon, moor-hens, and also two or three kinds of small amphibious quadrupeds. Hence probably arose the general and absurd beliefs concerning the origin of teal, which some said sprung from the rotten wood of old ships, others from the fruits of a tree, or the gum on fir-trees, whilst others thought they came from a fresh-water shell analogous to that of the oyster and mussel. As far back as modern history can be traced, we find that a similar mode of fattening poultry was employed then as now, and was one which the Gauls must have learnt from the Romans. Amongst the charges in the households of the kings of France one item was that which concerned the poultry-house, and which, according to an edict of St. Louis in 1261, bears the name of _poulaillier_. At a subsequent period this name was given to breeders and dealers in poultry (Fig. 92). The "Ménagier" tells as that, as is the present practice, chickens were fattened by depriving them of light and liberty, and gorging them with succulent food. Amongst the poultry yards in repute at that time, the author mentions that of Hesdin, a property of the Dukes of Luxemburg, in Artois; that of the King, at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, Rue Saint-Antoine, Paris; that of Master Hugues Aubriot, provost of Paris; and that of Charlot, no doubt a bourgeois of that name, who also gave his name to an ancient street in that quarter called the Marais. [Illustration: Fig. 92.--The Poulterer, drawn and engraved in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] _Capons_ are frequently mentioned in poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but the name of the _poularde_ does not occur until the sixteenth. We know that under the Roman rule, the Gauls carried on a considerable trade in fattened geese. This trade ceased when Gaul passed to new masters; but the breeding of geese continued to be carefully attended to. For many centuries geese were more highly prized than any other description of poultry, and Charlemagne ordered that his domains should be well stocked with flocks of geese, which were driven to feed in the fields, like flocks of sheep. There was an old proverb, "Who eats the king's goose returns the feathers in a hundred years." This bird was considered a great delicacy by the working classes and bourgeoisie. The _rôtisseurs_ (Fig. 94) had hardly anything in their shops but geese, and, therefore, when they were united in a company, they received the name of _oyers_, or _oyeurs_. The street in which they were established, with their spits always loaded with juicy roasts, was called Rue des _Oues_ (geese), and this street, when it ceased to be frequented by the _oyers_, became by corruption Rue Auxours. [Illustration: Fig. 93.--Barnacle Geese.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, from the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, folio, Basle, 1552.] There is every reason for believing that the domestication of the wild duck is of quite recent date. The attempt having succeeded, it was wished to follow it up by the naturalisation in the poultry-yard of two other sorts of aquatic birds, namely, the sheldrake (_tadorna_) and the moorhen, but without success. Some attribute the introduction of turkeys into France and Europe to Jacques Coeur, treasurer to Charles VII., whose commercial connections with the East were very extensive; others assert that it is due to King René, Count of Provence; but according to the best authorities these birds were first brought into France in the time of Francis I. by Admiral Philippe de Chabot, and Bruyérin Champier asserts that they were not known until even later. It was at about the same period that guinea-fowls were brought from the coast of Africa by Portuguese merchants; and the travelling naturalist, Pierre Belon, who wrote in the year 1555, asserts that in his time "they had already so multiplied in the houses of the nobles that they had become quite common." [Illustration: Fig. 94.--The Poultry-dealer.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, after Cesare Vecellio.] The pea-fowl played an important part in the chivalric banquets of the Middle Ages (Fig. 95). According to old poets the flesh of this noble bird is "food for the brave." A poet of the thirteenth century says, "that thieves have as much taste for falsehood as a hungry man has for the flesh of the peacock." In the fourteenth century poultry-yards were still stocked with these birds; but the turkey and the pheasant gradually replaced them, as their flesh was considered somewhat hard and stringy. This is proved by the fact that in 1581, "La Nouvelle Coutume du Bourbonnois" only reckons the value of these beautiful birds at two sous and a half, or about three francs of present currency. [Illustration: Fig. 95.--State Banquet.--Serving the Peacock.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in an edition of Virgil, folio, published at Lyons in 1517.] Game.--Our forefathers included among the birds which now constitute feathered game the heron, the crane, the crow, the swan, the stork, the cormorant, and the bittern. These supplied the best tables, especially the first three, which were looked upon as exquisite food, fit even for royalty, and were reckoned as thorough French delicacies. There were at that time heronries, as at a later period there were pheasantries. People also ate birds of prey, and only rejected those which fed on carrion. Swans, which were much appreciated, were very common on all the principal rivers of France, especially in the north; a small island below Paris had taken its name from these birds, and has maintained it ever since. It was proverbially said that the Charente was bordered with swans, and for this same reason Valenciennes was called _Val des Cygnes_, or the Swan Valley. Some authors make it appear that for a long time young game was avoided owing to the little nourishment it contained and its indigestibility, and assert that it was only when some French ambassadors returned from Venice that the French learnt that young partridges and leverets were exquisite, and quite fit to appear at the most sumptuous banquets. The "Ménagier" gives not only various receipts for cooking them, but also for dressing chickens, when game was out of season, so as to make them taste like young partridges. There was a time when they fattened pheasants as they did capons; it was a secret, says Liébault, only known to the poultry dealers; but although they were much appreciated, the pullet was more so, and realised as much as two crowns each (this does not mean the gold crown, but a current coin worth three livres). Plovers, which sometimes came from Beauce in cart-loads, were much relished; they were roasted without being drawn, as also were turtle-doves and larks; "for," says an ancient author, "larks only eat small pebbles and sand, doves grains of juniper and scented herbs, and plovers feed on air." At a later period the same honour was conferred on woodcocks. Thrushes, starlings, blackbirds, quail, and partridges were in equal repute according to the season. The _bec-figue_, a small bird like a nightingale, was so much esteemed in Provence that there were feasts at which that bird alone was served, prepared in various ways; but of all birds used for the table none could be compared to the young cuckoo taken just as it was full fledged. As far as we can ascertain, the Gauls had a dislike to the flesh of rabbits, and they did not even hunt them, for according to Strabo, Southern Gaul was infested with these mischievous animals, which destroyed the growing crops, and even the barks of the trees. There was considerable change in this respect a few centuries later, for every one in town or country reared domesticated rabbits, and the wild ones formed an article of food which was much in request. In order to ascertain whether a rabbit is young, Strabo tells us we should feel the first joint of the fore-leg, when we shall find a small bone free and movable. This method is adopted in all kitchens in the present day. Hares were preferred to rabbits, provided they were young; for an old French proverb says, "An old hare and an old goose are food for the devil." [Illustration: Fig. 96.--"The way to skin and cut up a Stag."--Fac-simile of a Miniature of "Phoebus, and his Staff for hunting Wild Animals" (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, National Library of Paris).] The hedgehog and squirrel were also eaten. As for roe and red deer, they were, according to Dr. Bruyérin Ohampier, morsels fit for kings and rich people (Fig. 96). The doctor speaks of "fried slices of the young horn of the stag" as the daintiest of food, and the "Ménagier de Paris" shows how, as early as the fourteenth century, beef was dished up like bear's-flesh venison, for the use of kitchens in countries where the black bear did not exist. This proves that bear's flesh was in those days considered good food. Milk, Butter, Eggs, and Cheese.--These articles of food, the first which nature gave to man, were not always and everywhere uniformly permitted or prohibited by the Church on fast days. The faithful were for several centuries left to their own judgment on the subject. In fact, there is nothing extraordinary in eggs being eaten in Lent without scruple, considering that some theologians maintained that the hens which laid them were animals of aquatic extraction. It appears, however, that butter, either from prejudice or mere custom, was only used on fast days in its fresh state, and was not allowed to be used for cooking purposes. At first, and especially amongst the monks, the dishes were prepared with oil; but as in some countries oil was apt to become very expensive, and the supply even to fail totally, animal fat or lard had to be substituted. At a subsequent period the Church authorised the use of butter and milk; but on this point, the discipline varied much. In the fourteenth century, Charles V., King of France, having asked Pope Gregory XI. for a dispensation to use milk and butter on fast days, in consequence of the bad state of his health, brought on owing to an attempt having been made to poison him, the supreme Pontiff required a certificate from a physician and from the King's confessor. He even then only granted the dispensation after imposing on that Christian king the repetition of a certain number of prayers and the performance of certain pious deeds. In defiance of the severity of ecclesiastical authority, we find, in the "Journal of a Bourgeois of Paris," that in the unhappy reign of Charles VI. (1420), "for want of oil, butter was eaten in Lent the same as on ordinary non-fast days." In 1491, Queen Anne, Duchess of Brittany, in order to obtain permission from the Pope to eat butter in Lent, represented that Brittany did not produce oil, neither did it import it from southern countries. Many northern provinces adopted necessity as the law, and, having no oil, used butter; and thence originated that famous toast with slices of bread and butter, which formed such an important part of Flemish food. These papal dispensations were, however, only earned at the price of prayers and alms, and this was the origin of the _troncs pour le beurre_, that is, "alms-box for butter," which are still to be seen in some of the Flemish churches. [Illustration: Fig. 97.--The Manufacture of Oil, drawn and engraved by J. Amman in the Sixteenth Century.] It is not known when butter was first salted in order to preserve it or to send it to distant places; but this process, which is so simple and so natural, dates, no doubt, from very ancient times; it was particularly practised by the Normans and Bretons, who enclosed the butter in large earthenware jars, for in the statutes which were given to the fruiterers of Paris in 1412, mention is made of salt butter in earthenware jars. Lorraine only exported butter in such jars. The fresh butter most in request for the table in Paris, was that made at Vanvres, which in the month of May the people ate every morning mixed with garlic. The consumption of butter was greatest in Flanders. "I am surprised," says Bruyérin Champier, speaking of that country, "that they have not yet tried to turn it into drink; in France it is mockingly called _beurrière;_ and when any one has to travel in that country, he is advised to take a knife with him if he wishes to taste the good rolls of butter." [Illustration: Fig. 98.--A Dealer in Eggs.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut, after Cesare Vecellio, Sixteenth Century.] It is not necessary to state that milk and cheese followed the fortunes of butter in the Catholic world, the same as eggs followed those of poultry. But butter having been declared lawful by the Church, a claim was put in for eggs (Fig. 98), and Pope Julius III. granted this dispensation to all Christendom, although certain private churches did not at once choose to profit by this favour. The Greeks had always been more rigid on these points of discipline than the people of the West. It is to the prohibition of eggs in Lent that the origin of "Easter eggs" must be traced. These were hardened by boiling them in a madder bath, and were brought to receive the blessing of the priest on Good Friday, and were then eaten on the following Sunday as a sign of rejoicing. Ancient Gaul was celebrated for some of its home-made cheeses. Pliny praises those of Nismes, and of Mount Lozère, in Gévaudau; Martial mentions those of Toulouse, &c. A simple anecdote, handed down by the monk of St. Gall, who wrote in the ninth century, proves to us that the traditions with regard to cheeses were not lost in the time of Charlemagne: "The Emperor, in one of his travels, alighted suddenly, and without being expected, at the house of a bishop. It was on a Friday. The prelate had no fish, and did not dare to set meat before the prince. He therefore offered him what he had got, some boiled corn and green cheese. Charles ate of the cheese; but taking the green part to be bad, he took care to remove it with his knife. The Bishop, seeing this, took the liberty of telling his guest that this was the best part. The Emperor, tasting it, found that the bishop was right; and consequently ordered him to send him annually two cases of similar cheese to Aix-la-Chapelle. The Bishop answered, that he could easily send cheeses, but he could not be sure of sending them in proper condition, because it was only by opening them that you could be sure of the dealer not having deceived you in the quality of the cheese. 'Well,' said the Emperor, 'before sending them, cut them through the middle, so as to see if they are what I want; you will only have to join the two halves again by means of a wooden peg, and you can then put the whole into a case.'" Under the kings of the third French dynasty, a cheese was made at the village of Chaillot, near Paris, which was much appreciated in the capital. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the cheeses of Champagne and of Brie, which are still manufactured, were equally popular, and were hawked in the streets, according to the "Book of Street-Cries in Paris,"-- "J'ai bon fromage de Champaigne; Or i a fromage de Brie!" ("Buy my cheese from Champagne, And my cheese from Brie!") Eustache Deschamps went so far as to say that cheese was the only good thing which could possibly come from Brie. The "Ménagier de Paris" praises several kinds of cheeses, the names of which it would now be difficult to trace, owing to their frequent changes during four hundred years; but, according to the Gallic author of this collection, a cheese to be presentable at table, was required to possess certain qualities (in proverbial Latin, "Non Argus, nee Helena, nee Maria Magdalena," &c.), thus expressed in French rhyme:-- "Non mie (pas) blanc comme Hélaine, Non mie (pas) plourant comme Magdelaine, Non Argus (à cent yeux), mais du tout avugle (aveugle) Et aussi pesant comme un bugle (boeuf), Contre le pouce soit rebelle, Et qu'il ait ligneuse cotelle (épaisse croûte) Sans yeux, sans plourer, non pas blanc, Tigneulx, rebelle, bien pesant." ("Neither-white like Helena, Nor weeping as Magdelena, Neither Argus, nor yet quite blind, And having too a thickish rind, Resisting somewhat to the touch, And as a bull should weigh as much; Not eyeless, weeping, nor quite white, But firm, resisting, not too light.") In 1509, Platina, although an Italian, in speaking of good cheeses, mentions those of Chauny, in Picardy, and of Brehemont, in Touraine; Charles Estienne praises those of Craponne, in Auvergne, the _angelots_ of Normandy, and the cheeses made from fresh cream which the peasant-women of Montreuil and Vincennes brought to Paris in small wickerwork baskets, and which were eaten sprinkled with sugar. The same author names also the _rougerets_ of Lyons, which were always much esteemed; but, above all the cheeses of Europe, he places the round or cylindrical ones of Auvergne, which were only made by very clean and healthy children of fourteen years of age. Olivier de Serres advises those who wish to have good cheeses to boil the milk before churning it, a plan which is in use at Lodi and Parma, "where cheeses are made which are acknowledged by all the world to be excellent." The parmesan, which this celebrated agriculturist cites as an example, only became the fashion in France on the return of Charles VIII. from his expedition to Naples. Much was thought at that time of a cheese brought from Turkey in bladders, and of different varieties produced in Holland and Zetland. A few of these foreign products were eaten in stews and in pastry, others were toasted and sprinkled with sugar and powdered cinnamon. "Le Roman de Claris," a manuscript which belongs to the commencement of the fourteenth century, says that in a town winch was taken by storm the following stores were found:--: "Maint bon tonnel de vin, Maint bon bacon (cochon), maint fromage à rostir." ("Many a ton of wine, Many a slice of good bacon, plenty of good roasted cheese.") [Illustration: Table Service of a Lady of Quality Fac-simile of a miniature from the Romance of Renaud de Montauban, a ms. of fifteenth century Bibl. de l'Arsenal] [Illustration: Ladies Hunting Costumes of the fifteenth century. From a miniature in a ms. copy of _Ovid's Epistles_. No 7231 _bis._ Bibl. nat'le de Paris.] Besides cheese and butter, the Normans, who had a great many cows in their rich pastures, made a sort of fermenting liquor from the butter-milk, which they called _serat_, by boiling the milk with onions and garlic, and letting it cool in closed vessels. [Illustration: Fig. 99.--Manufacture of Cheeses in Switzerland.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, folio, Basle, 1549.] If the author of the "Ménagier" is to be believed, the women who sold milk by retail in the towns were well acquainted with the method of increasing its quantity at the expense of its quality. He describes how his _froumentée_, which consists of a sort of soup, is made, and states that when he sends his cook to make her purchases at the milk market held in the neighbourhood of the Rues de la Savonnerie, des Ecrivains, and de la Vieille-Monnaie, he enjoins her particularly "to get very fresh cow's milk, and to tell the person who sells it not to do so if she has put water to it; for, unless it be quite fresh, or if there be water in it, it will turn." Fish and Shellfish.--Freshwater fish, which was much more abundant in former days than now, was the ordinary food of those who lived on the borders of lakes, ponds, or rivers, or who, at all events, were not so far distant but that they could procure it fresh. There was of course much diversity at different periods and in different countries as regards the estimation in which the various kinds of fish were held. Thus Ausone, who was a native of Bordeaux, spoke highly of the delicacy of the perch, and asserted that shad, pike, and tench should be left to the lower orders; an opinion which was subsequently contradicted by the inhabitants of other parts of Gaul, and even by the countrymen of the Latin poet Gregory of Tours, who loudly praised the Geneva trout. But a time arrived when the higher classes preferred the freshwater fish of Orchies in Flanders, and even those of the Lyonnais. Thus we see in the thirteenth century the barbel of Saint-Florentin held in great estimation, whereas two hundred years later a man who was of no use, or a nonentity, was said to resemble a barbel, "which is neither good for roasting nor boiling." [Illustration: Fig. 100.--The Pond Fisherman.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, folio, Basle, 1549.] In a collection of vulgar proverbs of the twelfth century mention is made, amongst the fish most in demand, besides the barbel of Saint-Florentin above referred to, of the eels of Maine, the pike of Chalons, the lampreys of Nantes, the trout of Andeli, and the dace of Aise. The "Ménagier" adds several others to the above list, including blay, shad, roach, and gudgeon, but, above all, the carp, which was supposed to be a native of Southern Europe, and which must have been naturalised at a much later period in the northern waters (Figs. 100, 101, and 102). [Illustration: Fig. 101.--The River Fisherman, designed and engraved, in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] [Illustration: Fig. 102.--Conveyance of Fish by Water and Land.--Fac-simile of an Engraving in the Royal Statutes of the Provostship of Merchants, 1528.] The most ancient documents bear witness that the natives of the sea-coasts of Europe, and particularly of the Mediterranean, fed on the same fish as at present: there were, however, a few other sea-fish, which were also used for food, but which have since been abandoned. Our ancestors were, not difficult to please: they had good teeth, and their palates, having become accustomed to the flesh of the cormorant, heron, and crane, without difficulty appreciated the delicacy of the nauseous sea-dog, the porpoise, and even the whale, which, when salted, furnished to a great extent all the markets of Europe. The trade in salted sea-fish only began in Paris in the twelfth century, when a company of merchants was instituted, or rather re-established, on the principle of the ancient association of Nantes. This association had existed from the period of the foundation under the Gauls of Lutetia, the city of fluvial commerce (Fig. 103), and it is mentioned in the letters patent of Louis VII. (1170). One of the first cargoes which this company brought in its boats was that of salted herrings from the coast of Normandy. These herrings became a necessary food during Lent, and "Sor et blanc harene frès pouldré (couvert de sel)!" ("Herrings smoked, fresh, and salted!") was the cry of the retailers in the streets of Paris, where this fish became a permanent article of consumption to an extent which can be appreciated from the fact that Saint Louis gave annually nearly seventy thousand herrings to the hospitals, plague-houses, and monasteries. [Illustration: Fig. 103.--A Votive Altar of the Nantes Parisiens, or the Company for the Commercial Navigation of the Seine, erected in Lutelia during the reign of Tiberius.--Fragments of this Altar, which were discovered in 1711 under the Choir of the Church of Notre-Dame, are preserved in the Museums of Cluny and the Palais des Thermes.] The profit derived from the sale of herrings at that time was so great that it soon became a special trade; it was, in fact, the regular practice of the Middle Ages for persons engaged in any branch of industry to unite together and form themselves into a corporation. Other speculators conceived the idea of bringing fresh fish to Paris by means of relays of posting conveyances placed along the road, and they called themselves _forains_. Laws were made to distinguish the rights of each of these trades, and to prevent any quarrel in the competition. In these laws, all sea-fish were comprised under three names, the fresh, the salted, and the smoked (_sor_). Louis IX. in an edict divides the dealers into two classes, namely, the sellers of fresh fish, and the sellers of salt or smoked fish. Besides salt and fresh herrings, an enormous amount of salted mackerel, which was almost as much used, was brought from the sea-coast, in addition to flat-fish, gurnets, skate, fresh and salted whiting and codfish. In an old document of the thirteenth century about fifty kinds of fish are enumerated which were retailed in the markets of the kingdom; and a century later the "Ménagier" gives receipts for cooking forty kinds, amongst which appears, under the name of _craspois_, the salted flesh of the whale, which was also called _le lard de carême_. This coarse food, which was sent from the northern seas in enormous slices, was only eaten by the lower orders, for, according to a writer of the sixteenth century, "were it cooked even for twenty-four hours it would still be very hard and indigestible." The "Proverbes" of the thirteenth century, which mention the freshwater fish then in vogue, also names the sea-fish most preferred, and whence they came, namely, the shad from Bordeaux, the congers from La Rochelle, the sturgeon from Blaye, the fresh herrings from Fécamp, and the cuttle-fish from Coutances. At a later period the conger was not eaten from its being supposed to produce the plague. The turbot, John-dory, skate and sole, which were very dear, were reserved for the rich. The fishermen fed on the sea-dragon. A great quantity of the small sea crayfish were brought into market; and in certain countries these were called _santé_, because the doctors recommended them to invalids or those in consumption; on the other hand, freshwater crayfish were not much esteemed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, excepting for their eggs, which were prepared with spice. It is well known that pond frogs were a favourite food of the Gauls and Franks; they were never out of fashion in the rural districts, and were served at the best tables, dressed with green sauce; at the same period, and especially during Lent, snails, which were served in pyramid-shaped dishes, were much appreciated; so much so that nobles and bourgeois cultivated snail beds, somewhat resembling our oyster beds of the present day. The inhabitants of the coast at all periods ate various kinds of shell-fish, which were called in Italy sea-fruit; but it was only towards the twelfth century that the idea was entertained of bringing oysters to Paris, and mussels were not known there until much later. It is notorious that Henry IV. was a great oyster-eater. Sully relates that when he was created a duke "the king came, without being expected, to take his seat at the reception banquet, but as there was much delay in going to dinner, he began by eating some _huîtres de chasse_, which he found very fresh." By _huîtres de chasse_ were meant those oysters which were brought by the _chasse-marées_, carriers who brought the fresh fish from the coast to Paris at great speed. Beverages.--Beer is not only one of the oldest fermenting beverages used by man, but it is also the one which was most in vogue in the Middle Ages. If we refer to the tales of the Greek historians, we find that the Gauls--who, like the Egyptians, attributed the discovery of this refreshing drink to their god Osiris--had two sorts of beer: one called _zythus_, made with honey and intended for the rich; the other called _corma_, in which there was no honey, and which was made for the poor. But Pliny asserts that beer in Gallie was called _cerevisia_, and the grain employed for making it _brasce_. This testimony seems true, as from _brasce_ or _brasse_ comes the name _brasseur_ (brewer), and from _cerevisia, cervoise_, the generic name by which beer was known for centuries, and which only lately fell into disuse. [Illustration: Fig. 104.--The Great Drinkers of the North.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Histoires des Pays Septentrionaux," by Olaus Magnus, 16mo., Antwerp, 1560.] After a great famine, Domitian ordered all the vines in Gaul to be uprooted so as to make room for corn. This rigorous measure must have caused beer to become even more general, and, although two centuries later Probus allowed vines to be replanted, the use of beverages made from grain became an established custom; but in time, whilst the people still only drank _cervoise_, those who were able to afford it bought wine and drank it alternately with beer. However, as by degrees the vineyards increased in all places having a suitable soil and climate, the use of beer was almost entirely given up, so that in central Gaul wine became so common and cheap that all could drink it. In the northern provinces, where the vine would not grow, beer naturally continued to be the national beverage (Fig. 104). In the time of Charlemagne, for instance, we find the Emperor wisely ordered that persons knowing how to brew should be attached to each of his farms. Everywhere the monastic houses possessed breweries; but as early as the reign of St. Louis there were only a very few breweries in Paris itself, and, in spite of all the privileges granted to their corporation, even these were soon obliged to leave the capital, where there ceased to be any demand for the produce of their industry. They reappeared in 1428, probably in consequence of the political and commercial relations which had become established between Paris and the rich towns of the Flemish bourgeoisie; and then, either on account of the dearness of wine, or the caprice of fashion, the consumption of beer again became so general in France that, according to the "Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris," it produced to the revenue two-thirds more than wine. It must be understood, however, that in times of scarcity, as in the years 1415 and 1482, brewing was temporarily stopped, and even forbidden altogether, on account of the quantity of grain which was thereby withdrawn from the food supply of the people (Fig. 105). [Illustration: Fig. 105.--The Brewer, designed and engraved, in the Sixteenth. Century, by J. Amman.] Under the Romans, the real _cervoise_, or beer, was made with barley; but, at a later period, all sorts of grain was indiscriminately used; and it was only towards the end of the sixteenth century that adding the flower or seed of hops to the oats or barley, which formed the basis of this beverage, was thought of. Estienne Boileau's "Book of Trades," edited in the thirteenth century, shows us that, besides the _cervoise_, another sort of beer was known, which was called _godale_. This name, we should imagine, was derived from the two German words _god ael_, which mean "good beer," and was of a stronger description than the ordinary _cervoise_; this idea is proved by the Picards and Flemish people calling it "double beer." In any case, it is from the word _godale_ that the familiar expression of _godailler_ (to tipple) is derived. In fact, there is hardly any sort of mixture or ingredient which has not been used in the making of beer, according to the fashions of the different periods. When, on the return from the Crusades, the use of spice had become the fashion, beverages as well as the food were loaded with it. Allspice, juniper, resin, apples, bread-crumbs, sage, lavender, gentian, cinnamon, and laurel were each thrown into it. The English sugared it, and the Germans salted it, and at times they even went so far as to put darnel into it, at the risk of rendering the mixture poisonous. The object of these various mixtures was naturally to obtain high-flavoured beers, which became so much in fashion, that to describe the want of merit of persons, or the lack of value in anything, no simile was more common than to compare them to "small beer." Nevertheless, more delicate and less blunted palates were to be found which could appreciate beer sweetened simply with honey, or scented with ambergris or raspberries. It is possible, however, that these compositions refer to mixtures in which beer, the produce of fermented grain, was confounded with hydromel, or fermented honey. Both these primitive drinks claim an origin equally remote, which is buried in the most distant periods of history, and they have been used in all parts of the world, being mentioned in the oldest historical records, in the Bible, the Edda, and in the sacred books of India. In the thirteenth century, hydromel, which then bore the name of _borgérafre, borgéraste_, or _bochet_, was composed of one part of honey to twelve parts of water, scented with herbs, and allowed to ferment for a month or six weeks. This beverage, which in the customs and statutes of the order of Cluny is termed _potus dulcissimus_ (the sweetest beverage), and which must have been both agreeable in taste and smell, was specially appreciated by the monks, who feasted on it on the great anniversaries of the Church. Besides this, an inferior quality of _bochet_ was made for the consumption of the lower orders and peasants, out of the honeycomb after the honey had been drained away, or with the scum which rose during the fermentation of the better qualities. [Illustration: Fig. 106.--The Vintagers, after a Miniature of the "Dialogues de Saint Gregoire" (Thirteenth Century).--Manuscript of the Royal Library of Brussels.] Cider (in Latin _sicera_) and perry can also both claim a very ancient origin, since they are mentioned by Pliny. It does not appear, however, that the Gauls were acquainted with them. The first historical mention of them is made with reference to a repast which Thierry II., King of Burgundy and Orleans (596-613), son of Childebert, and grandson of Queen Brunehaut, gave to St. Colomban, in which both cider and wine were used. In the thirteenth century, a Latin poet (Guillaume le Breton) says that the inhabitants of the Auge and of Normandy made cider their daily drink; but it is not likely that this beverage was sent away from the localities where it was made; for, besides the fact that the "Ménagier" only very curtly mentions a drink made of apples, we know that in the fifteenth century the Parisians were satisfied with pouring water on apples, and steeping them, so as to extract a sort of half-sour, half-sweet drink called _dépense_. Besides this, Paulmier de Grandmesnil, a Norman by birth, a famous doctor, and the author of a Latin treatise on wine and cider (1588), asserts that half a century before, cider was very scarce at Rouen, and that in all the districts of Caux the people only drank beer. Duperron adds that the Normans brought cider from Biscay, when their crops of apples failed. By whom and at what period the vine was naturalised in Gaul has been a long-disputed question, which, in spite of the most careful research, remains unsolved. The most plausible opinion is that which attributes the honour of having imported the vine to the Phoenician colony who founded Marseilles. Pliny makes mention of several wines of the Gauls as being highly esteemed. He nevertheless reproaches the vine-growers of Marseilles, Beziers, and Narbonne with doctoring their wines, and with infusing various drugs into them, which rendered them disagreeable and even unwholesome (Fig. 106). Dioscorides, however, approved of the custom in use among the Allobroges, of mixing resin with their wines to preserve them and prevent them from turning sour, as the temperature of their country was not warm enough thoroughly to ripen the grape. Rooted up by order of Domitian in 92, as stated above, the vine only reappeared in Gaul under Protus, who revoked, in 282, the imperial edict of his predecessor; after which period the Gallic wines soon recovered their ancient celebrity. Under the dominion of the Franks, who held wine in great favour, vineyard property was one of those which the barbaric laws protected with the greatest care. We find in the code of the Salians and in that of the Visigoths very severe penalties for uprooting a vine or stealing a bunch of grapes. The cultivation of the vine became general, and kings themselves planted them, even in the gardens of their city palaces. In 1160, there was still in Paris, near the Louvre, a vineyard of such an extent, that Louis VII. could annually present six hogsheads of wine made from it to the rector of St. Nicholas. Philip Augustus possessed about twenty vineyards of excellent quality in various parts of his kingdom. The culture of the vine having thus developed, the wine trade acquired an enormous importance in France. Gascony, Aunis, and Saintonge sent their wines to Flanders; Guyenne sent hers to England. Froissart writes that, in 1372, a merchant fleet of quite two hundred sail came from London to Bordeaux for wine. This flourishing trade received a severe blow in the sixteenth century; for an awful famine having invaded France in 1566, Charles IX. did not hesitate to repeat the acts of Domitian, and to order all the vines to be uprooted and their place to be sown with corn; fortunately Henry III. soon after modified this edict by simply recommending the governors of the provinces to see that "the ploughs were not being neglected in their districts on account of the excessive cultivation of the vine." [Illustration: Fig. 107.--Interior of an Hostelry.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in a folio edition of Virgil, published at Lyons in 1517.] Although the trade of a wine-merchant is one of the oldest established in Paris, it does not follow that the retail sale of wine was exclusively carried on by special tradesmen. On the contrary, for a long time the owner of the vineyard retailed the wine which he had not been able to sell in the cask. A broom, a laurel-wreath, or some other sign of the sort hung over a door, denoted that any one passing could purchase or drink wine within. When the wine-growers did not have the quality and price of their wine announced in the village or town by the public crier, they placed a man before the door of their cellar, who enticed the public to enter and taste the new wines. Other proprietors, instead of selling for people to take away in their own vessels, established a tavern in some room of their house, where they retailed drink (Fig. 107). The monks, who made wine extensively, also opened these taverns in the monasteries, as they only consumed part of their wine themselves; and this system was universally adopted by wine-growers, and even by the king and the nobles. The latter, however, had this advantage, that, whilst they were retailing their wines, no one in the district was allowed to enter into competition with them. This prescriptive right, which was called _droit de ban-vin_, was still in force in the seventeenth century. Saint Louis granted special statutes to the wine-merchants in 1264; but it was only three centuries later that they formed a society, which was divided into four classes, namely, hotel-keepers, publichouse-keepers, tavern proprietors, and dealers in wine _à pot_, that is, sold to people to take away with them. Hotel-keepers, also called _aubergistes_, accommodated travellers, and also put up horses and carriages. The dealers _à pot_ sold wine which could not be drunk on their premises. There was generally a sort of window in their door through which the empty pot was passed, to be returned filled: hence the expression, still in use in the eighteenth century, _vente a huis coupé_ (sale through a cut door). Publichouse-keepers supplied drink as well as _nappe et assiette_ (tablecloth and plate), which meant that refreshments were also served. And lastly, the _taverniers_ sold wine to be drunk on the premises, but without the right of supplying bread or meat to their customers (Figs 108 and 109). [Illustration: Fig. 108.--Banner of the Corporation of the Publichouse-keepers of Montmedy.] [Illustration: Fig. 109.--Banner of the Corporation of the Publichouse-keepers of Tonnerre.] The wines of France in most request from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries were those of Mâcon, Cahors, Rheims, Choisy, Montargis, Marne, Meulan, and Orléanais. Amongst the latter there was one which was much appreciated by Henry I., and of which he kept a store, to stimulate his courage when he joined his army. The little fable of the Battle of Wines, composed in the thirteenth century by Henri d'Andelys, mentions a number of wines which have to this day maintained their reputation: for instance, the Beaune, in Burgundy; the Saint-Emilion, in Gruyenne; the Chablis, Epernay, Sézanne, in Champagne, &c. But he places above all, with good reason, according to the taste of those days, the Saint-Pourçain of Auvergne, which was then most expensive and in great request. Another French poet, in describing the luxurious habits of a young man of fashion, says that he drank nothing but Saint-Pourçain; and in a poem composed by Jean Bruyant, secretary of the Châtelet of Paris, in 1332, we find "Du saint-pourçain Que l'on met en son sein pour sain." ("Saint-Pourçain wine, which you imbibe for the good of your health.") [Illustration: Fig. 110.--Banner of the Coopers of Bayonne.] [Illustration: Fig. 111.--Banner of the Coopers of La Rochelle.] Towards 1400, the vineyards of Aï became celebrated for Champagne as those of Beaune were for Burgundy; and it is then that we find, according to the testimony of the learned Paulmier de Grandmesnil, kings and queens making champagne their favourite beverage. Tradition has it that Francis I., Charles Quint, Henry VIII., and Pope Leon X. all possessed vineyards in Champagne at the same time. Burgundy, that pure and pleasant wine, was not despised, and it was in its honour that Erasmus said, "Happy province! she may well call herself the mother of men, since she produces such milk." Nevertheless, the above-mentioned physician, Paulmier, preferred to burgundy, "if not perhaps for their flavour, yet for their wholesomeness, the vines of the _Ile de France_ or _vins français_, which agree, he says, with scholars, invalids, the bourgeois, and all other persons who do not devote themselves to manual labour; for they do not parch the blood, like the wines of Gascony, nor fly to the head like those of Orleans and Château-Thierry; nor do they cause obstructions like those of Bordeaux." This is also the opinion of Baccius, who in his Latin treatise on the natural history of wines (1596) asserts that the wines of Paris "are in no way inferior to those of any other district of the kingdom." These thin and sour wines, so much esteemed in the first periods of monarchy and so long abandoned, first lost favour in the reign of Francis I., who preferred the strong and stimulating productions of the South. Notwithstanding the great number of excellent wines made in their own country, the French imported from other lands. In the thirteenth century, in the "Battle of Wines" we find those of Aquila, Spain, and, above all, those of Cyprus, spoken of in high terms. A century later, Eustace Deschamps praised the Rhine wines, and those of Greece, Malmsey, and Grenache. In an edict of Charles VI. mention is also made of the muscatel, rosette, and the wine of Lieppe. Generally, the Malmsey which was drunk in France was an artificial preparation, which had neither the colour nor taste of the Cyprian wine. Olivier de Serres tells us that in his time it was made with water, honey, clary juice, beer grounds, and brandy. At first the same name was used for the natural wine, mulled and spiced, which was produced in the island of Madeira from the grapes which the Portuguese brought there from Cyprus in 1420. The reputation which this wine acquired in Europe induced Francis I. to import some vines from Greece, and he planted fifty acres with them near Fontainebleau. It was at first considered that this plant was succeeding so well, that "there were hopes," says Olivier de Serres, "that France would soon be able to furnish her own Malmsey and Greek wines, instead of having to import them from abroad." It is evident, however, that they soon gave up this delusion, and that for want of the genuine wine they returned to artificial beverages, such as _vin cuit_, or cooked wine, which had at all times been cleverly prepared by boiling down new wine and adding various aromatic herbs to it. Many wines were made under the name of _herbés_, which were merely infusions of wormwood, myrtle, hyssop, rosemary, &c., mixed with sweetened wine and flavoured with honey. The most celebrated of these beverages bore the pretentious name of "nectar;" those composed of spices, Asiatic aromatics, and honey, were generally called "white wine," a name indiscriminately applied to liquors having for their bases some slightly coloured wine, as well as to the hypocras, which was often composed of a mixture of foreign liqueurs. This hypocras plays a prominent part in the romances of chivalry, and was considered a drink of honour, being always offered to kings, princes, and nobles on their solemn entry into a town. [Illustration: Fig. 112.--Butler at his Duties.--Fac-simile from a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle," of Munster, folio, Basle, 1549.] The name of wine was also given to drinks composed of the juices of certain fruits, and in which grapes were in no way used. These were the cherry, the currant, the raspberry, and the pomegranate wines; also the _moré_, made with the mulberry, which was so extolled by the poets of the thirteenth century. We must also mention the sour wines, which were made by pouring water on the refuse grapes after the wine had been extracted; also the drinks made from filberts, milk of almonds, the syrups of apricots and strawberries, and cherry and raspberry waters, all of which were refreshing, and were principally used in summer; and, lastly, _tisane_, sold by the confectioners of Paris, and made hot or cold, with prepared barley, dried grapes, plums, dates, gum, or liquorice. This _tisane_ may be considered as the origin of that drink which is now sold to the poor at a sous a glass, and which most assuredly has not much improved since olden times. It was about the thirteenth century that brandy first became known in France; but it does not appear that it was recognised as a liqueur before the sixteenth. The celebrated physician Arnauld de Villeneuve, who wrote at the end of the thirteenth century, to whom credit has wrongly been given for inventing brandy, employed it as one of his remedies, and thus expresses himself about it: "Who would have believed that we could have derived from wine a liquor which neither resembles it in nature, colour, or effect?.... This _eau de vin_ is called by some _eau de vie_, and justly so, since it prolongs life.... It prolongs health, dissipates superfluous matters, revives the spirits, and preserves youth. Alone, or added to some other proper remedy, it cures colic, dropsy, paralysis, ague, gravel, &c." At a period when so many doctors, alchemists, and other learned men made it their principal occupation to try to discover that marvellous golden fluid which was to free the human race of all its original infirmities, the discovery of such an elixir could not fail to attract the attention of all such manufacturers of panaceas. It was, therefore, under the name of _eau d'or_ (_aqua auri_) that brandy first became known to the world; a name improperly given to it, implying as it did that it was of mineral origin, whereas its beautiful golden colour was caused by the addition of spices. At a later period, when it lost its repute as a medicine, they actually sprinkled it with pure gold leaves, and at the same time that it ceased to be exclusively considered as a remedy, it became a favourite beverage. It was also employed in distilleries, especially as the basis of various strengthening and exciting liqueurs, most of which have descended to us, some coming from monasteries and others from châteaux, where they had been manufactured. The Kitchen. Soups, broths, and stews, &c.--The French word _potage_ must originally have signified a soup composed of vegetables and herbs from the kitchen garden, but from the remotest times it was applied to soups in general. As the Gauls, according to Athenæus, generally ate their meat boiled, we must presume that they made soup with the water in which it was cooked. It is related that one day Gregory of Tours was sitting at the table of King Chilpéric, when the latter offered him a soup specially made in his honour from chicken. The poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries mention soups made of peas, of bacon, of vegetables, and of groats. In the southern provinces there were soups made of almonds, and of olive oil. When Du Gueselin went out to fight the English knight William of Blancbourg in single combat, he first ate three sorts of soup made with wine, "in honour of the three persons in the Holy Trinity." [Illustration: Fig. 113.--Interior of a Kitchen of the Sixteenth Century.--Fac-simile from a Woodcut in the "Calendarium Romanum" of Jean Staéffler, folio, Tubingen, 1518.] We find in the "Ménagier," amongst a long list of the common soups the receipts for which are given, soup made of "dried peas and the water in which bacon has been boiled," and, in Lent, "salted-whale water;" watercress soup, cabbage soup, cheese soup, and _gramose_ soup, which was prepared by adding stewed meat to the water in which meat had already been boiled, and adding beaten eggs and verjuice; and, lastly, the _souppe despourvue_, which was rapidly made at the hotels, for unexpected travellers, and was a sort of soup made from the odds and ends of the larder. In those days there is no doubt but that hot soup formed an indispensable part of the daily meals, and that each person took it at least twice a day, according to the old proverb:-- "Soupe la soir, soupe le matin, C'est l'ordinaire du bon chrétien." ("Soup in the evening, and soup in the morning, Is the everyday food of a good Christian.") The cooking apparatus of that period consisted of a whole glittering array of cauldrons, saucepans, kettles, and vessels of red and yellow copper, which hardly sufficed for all the rich soups for which France was so famous. Thence the old proverb, "En France sont les grands soupiers." But besides these soups, which were in fact looked upon as "common, and without spice," a number of dishes were served under the generic name of soup, which constituted the principal luxuries at the great tables in the fourteenth century, but which do not altogether bear out the names under which we find them. For instance, there was haricot mutton, a sort of stew; thin chicken broth; veal broth with herbs; soup made of veal, roe, stag, wild boar, pork, hare and rabbit soup flavoured with green peas, &c. The greater number of these soups were very rich, very expensive, several being served at the same time; and in order to please the eye as well as the taste they were generally made of various colours, sweetened with sugar, and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and aromatic herbs, such as marjoram, sage, thyme, sweet basil, savoury, &c. [Illustration: Fig. 114.--Coppersmith, designed and engraved in the Sixteenth Century by J. Amman.] These descriptions of soups were perfect luxuries, and were taken instead of sweets. As a proof of this we must refer to the famous _soupe dorée_, the description of which is given by Taillevent, head cook of Charles VII., in the following words, "Toast slices of bread, throw them into a jelly made of sugar, white wine, yolk of egg, and rosewater; when they are well soaked fry them, then throw them again into the rosewater and sprinkle them with sugar and saffron." [Illustration: Fig. 115.--Kitchen and Table Uensils:-- 1, Carving-knife (Sixteenth Century); 2, Chalice or Cup, with Cover (Fourteenth Century); 3, Doubled-handled Pot, in Copper (Ninth Century); 4, Metal Boiler, or Tin Pot, taken from "L'Histoire de la Belle Hélaine" (Fifteenth Century); 5, Knife (Sixteenth Century); 6, Pot, with Handles (Fourteenth Century); 7, Copper Boiler, taken from "L'Histoire de la Belle Hélaine" (Fifteenth Century); 8, Ewer, with Handle, in Oriental Fashion (Ninth Century); 9, Pitcher, sculptured, from among the Decorations of the Church of St. Benedict, Paris (Fifteenth Century); 10, Two-branched Candlestick (Sixteenth Century); 11, Cauldron (Fifteenth Century). ] It is possible that even now this kind of soup might find some favour; but we cannot say the same for those made with mustard, hemp-seed, millet, verjuice, and a number of others much in repute at that period; for we see in Rabelais that the French were the greatest soup eaters in the world, and boasted to be the inventors of seventy sorts. We have already remarked that broths were in use at the remotest periods, for, from the time that the practice of boiling various meats was first adopted, it must have been discovered that the water in which they were so boiled became savoury and nourishing. "In the time of the great King Francis I.," says Noël du Fail, in his "Contes d'Eutrapel," "in many places the saucepan was put on to the table, on which there was only one other large dish, of beef, mutton, veal, and bacon, garnished with a large bunch of cooked herbs, the whole of which mixture composed a porridge, and a real restorer and elixir of life. From this came the adage, 'The soup in the great pot and the dainties in the hotch-potch.'" At one time they made what they imagined to be strengthening broths for invalids, though their virtue must have been somewhat delusive, for, after having boiled down various materials in a close kettle and at a slow fire, they then distilled from this, and the water thus obtained was administered as a sovereign remedy. The common sense of Bernard Palissy did not fail to make him see this absurdity, and to protest against this ridiculous custom: "Take a capon," he says, "a partridge, or anything else, cook it well, and then if you smell the broth you will find it very good, and if you taste it you will find it has plenty of flavour; so much so that you will feel that it contains something to invigorate you. Distil this, on the contrary, and take the water then collected and taste it, and you will find it insipid, and without smell except that of burning. This should convince you that your restorer does not give that nourishment to the weak body for which you recommend it as a means of making good blood, and restoring and strengthening the spirits." The taste for broths made of flour was formerly almost universal in France and over the whole of Europe; it is spoken of repeatedly in the histories and annals of monasteries; and we know that the Normans, who made it their principal nutriment, were surnamed _bouilleux_. They were indeed almost like the Romans who in olden times, before their wars with eastern nations, gave up making bread, and ate their corn simply boiled in water. In the fourteenth century the broths and soups were made with millet-flour and mixed wheats. The pure wheat flour was steeped in milk seasoned with sugar, saffron, honey, sweet wine or aromatic herbs, and sometimes butter, fat, and yolks of eggs were added. It was on account of this that the bread of the ancients so much resembled cakes, and it was also from this fact that the art of the pastrycook took its rise. Wheat made into gruel for a long time was an important ingredient in cooking, being the basis of a famous preparation called _fromentée_, which was a _bouillie_ of milk, made creamy by the addition of yolks of eggs, and which served as a liquor in which to roast meats and fish. There were, besides, several sorts of _fromentée_, all equally esteemed, and Taillevent recommended the following receipt, which differs from the one above given:--"First boil your wheat in water, then put into it the juice or gravy of fat meat, or, if you like it better, milk of almonds, and by this means you will make a soup fit for fasts, because it dissolves slowly, is of slow digestion and nourishes much. In this way, too, you can make _ordiat_, or barley soup, which is more generally approved than the said _fromentée_." [Illustration: Fig. 116.--Interior of a Kitchen.--Fac-simile from a Woodcut in the "Calendarium Romanum" of J. Staéffler, folio, Tubingen, 1518.] Semolina, vermicelli, macaroni, &c., which were called Italian because they originally came from that country, have been in use in France longer than is generally supposed. They were first introduced after the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy, and the conquest of the kingdom of Naples; that is, in the reign of Louis XII., or the first years of the sixteenth century. Pies, Stews, Roasts, Salads, &c.--Pastry made with fat, which might be supposed to have been the invention of modern kitchens, was in great repute amongst our ancestors. The manufacture of sweet and savoury pastry was intrusted to the care of the good _ménagiers_ of all ranks and conditions, and to the corporation of pastrycooks, who obtained their statutes only in the middle of the sixteenth century; the united skill of these, both in Paris and in the provinces, multiplied the different sorts of tarts and meat pies to a very great extent. So much was this the case that these ingenious productions became a special art, worthy of rivalling even cookery itself (Figs. 117, 118, and 130). One of the earliest known receipts for making pies is that of Gaces de la Bigne, first chaplain of Kings John, Charles V., and Charles VI. We find it in a sporting poem, and it deserves to be quoted verbatim as a record of the royal kitchen of the fourteenth century. It will be observed on perusing it that nothing was spared either in pastry or in cookery, and that expense was not considered when it was a question of satisfying the appetite. "Trois perdriaulx gros et reffais Au milieu du paté me mets; Mais gardes bien que tu ne failles A moi prendre six grosses cailles, De quoi tu les apuyeras. Et puis après tu me prendras Une douzaine d'alouètes Qu'environ les cailles me mettes, Et puis pendras de ces machés Et de ces petits oiselés: Selon ce que tu en auras, Le paté m'en billeteras. Or te fault faire pourvéance D'un pen de lart, sans point de rance, Que tu tailleras comme dé: S'en sera le pasté pouldré. S tu le veux de bonne guise, Du vertjus la grappe y soit mise, D'un bien peu de sel soit pouldré ... ... Fay mettre des oeufs en la paste, Les croutes un peu rudement Faictes de flour de pur froment ... ... N'y mets espices ni fromaige ... Au four bien à point chaud le met, Qui de cendre ait l'atre bien net; E quand sera bien à point cuit, I n'est si bon mangier, ce cuit." ("Put me in the middle of the pie three young partridges large and fat; But take good care not to fail to take six fine quail to put by their side. After that you must take a dozen skylarks, which round the quail you must place; And then you must take some thrushes and such other little birds as you can get to garnish the pie. Further, you must provide yourself with a little bacon, which must not be in the least rank (reasty), and you must cut it into pieces of the size of a die, and sprinkle them into the pie. If you want it to be in quite good form, you must put some sour grapes in and a very little salt ... ... Have eggs put into the paste, and the crust made rather hard of the flour of pure wheat. Put in neither spice nor cheese ... Put it into the oven just at the proper heat, The bottom of which must be quite free from ashes; And when it is baked enough, isn't that a dish to feast on!") From this period all treatises on cookery are full of the same kind of receipts for making "pies of young chickens, of fresh venison, of veal, of eels, of bream and salmon, of young rabbits, of pigeons, of small birds, of geese, and of _narrois_" (a mixture of cod's liver and hashed fish). We may mention also the small pies, which were made of minced beef and raisins, similar to our mince pies, and which were hawked in the streets of Paris, until their sale was forbidden, because the trade encouraged greediness on the one hand and laziness on the other. Ancient pastries, owing to their shapes, received the name of _tourte_ or _tarte_, from the Latin _torta_, a large hunch of bread. This name was afterwards exclusively used for hot pies, whether they contained vegetables, meat, or fish. But towards the end of the fourteenth century _tourte_ and _tarte_ was applied to pastry containing, herbs, fruits, or preserves, and _pâté_ to those containing any kind of meat, game, or fish. [Illustration: Fig. 117.--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Caen.] [Illustration: Fig. 118.--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Bordeaux.] It was only in the course of the sixteenth century that the name of _potage_ ceased to be applied to stews, whose number equalled their variety, for on a bill of fare of a banquet of that period we find more than fifty different sorts of _potages_ mentioned. The greater number of these dishes have disappeared from our books on cookery, having gone out of fashion; but there are two stews which were popular during many centuries, and which have maintained their reputation, although they do not now exactly represent what they formerly did. The _pot-pourri_, which was composed of veal, beef, mutton, bacon, and vegetables, and the _galimafrée_, a fricassee of poultry, sprinkled with verjuice, flavoured with spices, and surrounded by a sauce composed of vinegar, bread crumbs, cinnamon, ginger, &c. (Fig. 119). The highest aim of the cooks of the Taillevent school was to make dishes not only palatable, but also pleasing to the eye. These masters in the art of cooking might be said to be both sculptors and painters, so much did they decorate their works, their object being to surprise or amuse the guests by concealing the real nature of the disbes. Froissart, speaking of a repast given in his time, says that there were a number of "dishes so curious and disguised that it was impossible to guess what they were." For instance, the bill of fare above referred to mentions a lion and a sun made of white chicken, a pink jelly, with diamond-shaped points; and, as if the object of cookery was to disguise food and deceive epicures, Taillevent facetiously gives us a receipt for making fried or roast butter and for cooking eggs on the spit. [Illustration: Fig. 119.--Interior of Italian Kitchen.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Book on Cookery of Christoforo di Messisburgo, "Banchetti compositioni di Vivende," 4to., Ferrara, 1549.] The roasts were as numerous as the stews. A treatise of the fourteenth century names about thirty, beginning with a sirloin of beef, which must have been one of the most common, and ending with a swan, which appeared on table in full plumage. This last was the triumph of cookery, inasmuch as it presented this magnificent bird to the eyes of the astonished guests just as if he were living and swimming. His beak was gilt, his body silvered, resting 'on a mass of brown pastry, painted green in order to represent a grass field. Eight banners of silk were placed round, and a cloth of the same material served as a carpet for the whole dish, which towered above the other appointments of the table. [Illustration: Fig. 120.--Hunting-Meal.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (National Library of Paris).] The peacock, which was as much thought of then as it is little valued now, was similarly arrayed, and was brought to table amidst a flourish of trumpets and the applause of all present. The modes of preparing other roasts much resembled the present system in their simplicity, with this difference, that strong meats were first boiled to render them tender, and no roast was ever handed over to the skill of the carver without first being thoroughly basted with orange juice and rose water, and covered with sugar and powdered spices. We must not forget to mention the broiled dishes, the invention of which is attributed to hunters, and which Rabelais continually refers to as acting as stimulants and irresistibly exciting the thirst for wine at the sumptuous feasts of those voracious heroes (Fig. 120). The custom of introducing salads after roasts was already established in the fifteenth century. However, a salad, of whatever sort, was never brought to table in its natural state; for, besides the raw herbs, dressed in the same manner as in our days, it contained several mixtures, such as cooked vegetables, and the crests, livers, or brains of poultry. After the salads fish was served; sometimes fried, sometimes sliced with eggs or reduced to a sort of pulp, which was called _carpée_ or _charpie_, and sometimes it was boiled in water or wine, with strong seasoning. Near the salads, in the course of the dinner, dishes of eggs prepared in various ways were generally served. Many of these are now in use, such as the poached egg, the hard-boiled egg, egg sauce, &c. [Illustration: Fig. 121.--Shop of a Grocer and Druggist, from a Stamp of Vriese (Seventeenth Century).] Seasonings.--We have already stated that the taste for spices much increased in Europe after the Crusades; and in this rapid historical sketch of the food of the French people in the Middle Ages it must have been observed to what an extent this taste had become developed in France (Fig. 121). This was the origin of sauces, all, or almost all, of which were highly spiced, and were generally used with boiled, roast, or grilled meats. A few of these sauces, such as the yellow, the green, and the _caméline_, became so necessary in cooking that numerous persons took to manufacturing them by wholesale, and they were hawked in the streets of Paris. These sauce-criers were first called _saulciers_, then _vinaigriers-moustardiers_, and when Louis XII. united them in a body, as their business had considerably increased, they were termed _sauciers-moutardiers-vinaigriers_, distillers of brandy and spirits of wine, and _buffetiers_ (from _buffet_, a sideboard). [Illustration: Fig. 122.--The Cook, drawn and engraved, in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] But very soon the corporation became divided, no doubt from the force of circumstances; and on one side we find the distillers, and on the other the master-cooks and cooks, or _porte-chapes_, as they were called, because, when they carried on their business of cooking, they covered their dishes with a _chape_, that is, a cope or tin cover (Fig. 122), so as to keep them warm. The list of sauces of the fourteenth century, given by the "Ménagier de Paris," is most complicated; but, on examining the receipts, it becomes clear that the variety of those preparations, intended to sharpen the appetite, resulted principally from the spicy ingredients with which they were flavoured; and it is here worthy of remark that pepper, in these days exclusively obtained from America, was known and generally used long before the time of Columbus. It is mentioned in a document, of the time of Clotaire III. (660); and it is clear, therefore, that before the discovery of the New World pepper and spices were imported into Europe from the East. Mustard, which was an ingredient in so many dishes, was cultivated and manufactured in the thirteenth century in the neighbourhood of Dijon and Angers. According to a popular adage, garlic was the medicine (_thériaque_) of peasants; town-people for a long time greatly appreciated _aillée_, which was a sauce made of garlic, and sold ready prepared in the streets of Paris. The custom of using anchovies as a flavouring is also very ancient. This was also done with _botargue_ and _cavial_, two sorts of side-dishes, which consisted of fishes' eggs, chiefly mullet and sturgeon, properly salted or dried, and mixed with fresh or pickled olives. The olives for the use of the lower orders were brought from Languedoc and Provence, whereas those for the rich were imported from Spain and some from Syria. It was also from the south of France that the rest of the kingdom was supplied with olive oil, for which, to this day, those provinces have preserved their renown; but as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries oil of walnuts was brought from the centre of France to Paris, and this, although cheaper, was superseded by oil extracted from the poppy. Truffles, though known and esteemed by the ancients, disappeared from the gastronomie collection of our forefathers. It was only in the fourteenth century that they were again introduced, but evidently without a knowledge of their culinary qualities, since, after being preserved in vinegar, they were soaked in hot water, and afterwards served up in butter. We may also here mention sorrel and the common mushroom, which were used in cooking during the Middle Ages. On the strength of the old proverb, "Sugar has never spoiled sauce," sugar was put into all sauces which were not _piquantes_, and generally some perfumed water was added to them, such as rose-water. This was made in great quantities by exposing to the sun a basin full of water, covered over by another basin of glass, under which was a little vase containing rose-leaves. This rose-water was added to all stews, pastries, and beverages. It is very doubtful as to the period at which white lump sugar became known in the West. However, in an account of the house of the Dauphin Viennois (1333) mention is made of "white sugar;" and the author of the "Ménagier de Paris" frequently speaks of this white sugar, which, before the discovery, or rather colonisation, of America, was brought, ready refined, from the Grecian islands, and especially from Candia. [Illustration: Fig. 123.--The _Issue de Table_.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Treatise of Christoforo di Messisburgo, "Banchetti compositioni di Vivende," 4to., Ferrara, 1549.] Verjuice, or green juice, which, with vinegar, formed the essential basis of sauces, and is now extracted from a species of green grape, which never ripens, was originally the juice of sorrel; another sort was extracted by pounding the green blades of wheat. Vinegar was originally merely soured wine, as the word _vin-aigre_ denotes. The mode of manufacturing it by artificial means, in order to render the taste more pungent and the quality better, is very ancient. It is needless to state that it was scented by the infusion of herbs or flowers--roses, elder, cloves, &c.; but it was not much before the sixteenth century that it was used for pickling herbs or fruits and vegetables, such as gherkins, onions, cucumber, purslain, &c. Salt, which from the remotest periods was the condiment _par excellence_, and the trade in which had been free up to the fourteenth century, became, from that period, the subject of repeated taxation. The levying of these taxes was a frequent cause of tumult amongst the people, who saw with marked displeasure the exigencies of the excise gradually raising the price of an article of primary necessity. We have already mentioned times during which the price of salt was so exorbitant that the rich alone could put it in their bread. Thus, in the reign of Francis I., it was almost as dear as Indian spices. Sweet Dishes, Desserts, &c.--In the fourteenth century, the first courses of a repast were called _mets_ or _assiettes_; the last, "_entremets, dorures, issue de table, desserte_, and _boule-hors_." The dessert consisted generally of baked pears, medlars, pealed walnuts, figs, dates, peaches, grapes, filberts, spices, and white or red sugar-plums. At the _issue de table_ wafers or some other light pastry were introduced, which were eaten with the hypocras wine. The _boute-hors,_ which was served when the guests, after having washed their hands and said grace, had passed into the drawing-room, consisted of spices, different from those which had appeared at dessert, and intended specially to assist the digestion; and for this object they must have been much needed, considering that a repast lasted several hours. Whilst eating these spices they drank Grenache, Malmsey, or aromatic wines (Fig. 123). It was only at the banquets and great repeats that sweet dishes and _dorures_ appeared, and they seem to have been introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the power of the imagination and the talent in execution of the master-cook. The _dorures_ consisted of jellies of all sorts and colours; swans, peacocks, bitterns, and herons, on gala feasts, were served in full feather on a raised platform in the middle of the table, and hence the name of "raised dishes." As for the side-dishes, properly so called, the long list collected in the "Ménagier" shows us that they were served at table indiscriminately, for stuffed chickens at times followed hashed porpoise in sauce, lark pies succeeded lamb sausages, and pike's-eggs fritters appeared after orange preserve. At a later period the luxury of side-dishes consisted in the quantity and in the variety of the pastry; Rabelais names sixteen different sorts at one repast; Taillevent mentions pastry called _covered pastry, Bourbonnaise pastry, double-faced pastry, pear pastry_, and _apple pastry_; Platina speaks of the _white pastry_ with quince, elder flowers, rice, roses, chestnuts, &c. The fashion of having pastry is, however, of very ancient date, for in the book of the "Proverbs" of the thirteenth century, we find that the pies of Dourlens and the pastry of Chartres were then in great celebrity. [Illustration: Fig. 124.--The Table of a Baron, as laid out in the Thirteenth Century.--Miniature from the "Histoire de St. Graal" (Manuscript from the Imperial Library, Paris).] In a charter of Robert le Bouillon, Bishop of Amiens, in 1311, mention is made of a cake composed of puff flaky paste; these cakes, however, are less ancient than the firm pastry called bean cake, or king's cake, which, from the earliest days of monarchy, appeared on all the tables, not only at the feast of the Epiphany, but also on every festive occasion. Amongst the dry and sweet pastries from the small oven which appeared at the _issue de table_, the first to be noticed were those made of almonds, nuts, &c., and such choice morsels, which were very expensive; then came the cream or cheesecakes, the _petits choux_, made of butter and eggs; the _échaudés_, of which the people were very fond, and St. Louis even allowed the bakers to cook them on Sundays and feast days for the poor; wafers, which are older than the thirteenth century; and lastly the _oublies_, which, under the names of _nieules, esterets_, and _supplications_, gave rise to such an extensive trade that a corporation was established in Paris, called the _oublayeurs, oublayers,_ or _oublieux_, whose statutes directed that none should be admitted to exercise the trade unless he was able to make in one day 500 large _oublies_, 300 _supplications_, and 200 _esterets_. Repasts and Feasts. We have had to treat elsewhere of the rules and regulations of the repasts under the Merovingian and Carlovingian kings. We have also spoken of the table service of the thirteenth century (see chapter on "Private Life"). The earliest author who has left us any documents on this curious subject is that excellent bourgeois to whom we owe the "Ménagier de Paris." He describes, for instance, in its fullest details, a repast which was given in the fourteenth century by the Abbé de Lagny, to the Bishop of Paris, the President of the Parliament, the King's attorney and advocate, and other members of his council, in all sixteen guests. We find from this account that "my lord of Paris, occupying the place of honour, was, in consequence of his rank, served on covered dishes by three of his squires, as was the custom for the King, the royal princes, the dukes, and peers; that Master President, who was seated by the side of the bishop, was also served by one of his own servants, but on uncovered dishes, and the other guests were seated at table according to the order indicated by their titles or charges." The bill of fare of this feast, which was given on a fast-day, is the more worthy of attention, in that it proves to us what numerous resources cookery already possessed. This was especially the case as regards fish, notwithstanding that the transport of fresh sea-fish was so difficult, owing to the bad state of the roads. First, a quarter of a pint of Grenache was given to each guest on sitting down, then "hot _eschaudés_, roast apples with white sugar-plums upon them, roasted figs, sorrel and watercress, and rosemary." "Soups.--A rich soup, composed of six trout, six tenches, white herring, freshwater eels, salted twenty-four hours, and three whiting, soaked twelve hours; almonds, ginger, saffron, cinnamon powder and sweetmeats. "Salt-Water Fish.--Soles, gurnets, congers, turbots, and salmon. "Fresh-Water Fish.--_Lux faudis_ (pike with roe), carps from the Marne, breams. "Side-Dishes.--Lampreys _à la boee_, orange-apples (one for each guest), porpoise with sauce, mackerel, soles, bream, and shad _à la cameline_, with verjuice, rice and fried almonds upon them; sugar and apples. [Illustration: Fig. 125.--Officers of the Table and of the Chamber of the Imperial Court: Cup-bearer, Cook, Barber, and Tailor, from a Picture in the "Triomphe de Maximilien T.," engraved by J. Resch, Burgmayer, and others (1512), from Drawings by Albert Durer.] "Dessert.--Stewed fruit with white and vermilion sugar-plums; figs, dates, grapes, and filberts. "Hypocras for _issue de table_, with _oublies_ and _supplications_. "Wines and spices compose the _baute-hors_." To this fasting repast we give by way of contrast the bill of fare at the nuptial feast of Master Helye, "to which forty guests were bidden on a Tuesday in May, a 'day of flesh.'" "Soups.--Capons with white sauce, ornamented with pomegranate and crimson sweetmeats. "Roasts.--Quarter of roe-deer, goslings, young chickens, and sauces of orange, cameline, and verjuice. "Side-Dishes.--Jellies of crayfish and loach; young rabbits and pork. "Dessert.--_Froumentée_ and venison. "Issue.--Hypocras. "Boute-Hors.--Wine and spices." The clever editor of the "Ménagier de Paris," M. le Baron Jerôme Pichon, after giving us this curious account of the mode of living of the citizens of that day, thus sums up the whole arrangements for the table in the fourteenth century: "The different provisions necessary for food are usually entrusted to the squires of the kitchen, and were chosen, purchased, and paid for by one or more of these officials, assisted by the cooks. The dishes prepared by the cooks were placed, by the help of the esquires, on dressers in the kitchen until the moment of serving. Thence they were carried to the tables. Let us imagine a vast hall hung with tapestries and other brilliant stuffs. The tables are covered with fringed table-cloths, and strewn with odoriferous herbs; one of them, called the Great Table, is reserved for the persons of distinction. The guests are taken to their seats by two butlers, who bring them water to wash. The Great Table is laid out by a butler, with silver salt-cellars (Figs. 126 and 127), golden goblets with lids for the high personages, spoons and silver drinking cups. The guests eat at least certain dishes on _tranchoirs_, or large slices of thick bread, afterwards thrown into vases called _couloueres_ (drainers). For the other tables the salt is placed on pieces of bread, scooped out for that purpose by the intendants, who are called _porte-chappes._ In the hall is a dresser covered with plate and various kinds of wine. Two squires standing near this dresser give the guests clean spoons, pour out what wine they ask for, and remove the silver when used; two other squires superintend the conveyance of wine to the dresser; a varlet placed under their orders is occupied with nothing but drawing wine from the casks." At that time wine was not bottled, and they drew directly from the cask the amount necessary for the day's consumption. "The dishes, consisting of three, four, five, and even six courses, called _mets_ or _assiettes_, are brought in by varlets and two of the principal squires, and in certain wedding-feasts the bridegroom walked in front of them. The dishes are placed on the table by an _asséeur_ (placer), assisted by two servants. The latter take away the remains at the conclusion of the course, and hand them over to the squires of the kitchen who have charge of them. After the _mets_ or _assiettes_ the table-cloths are changed, and the _entremets_ are then brought in. This course is the most brilliant of the repast, and at some of the princely banquets the dishes are made to imitate a sort of theatrical representation. It is composed of sweet dishes, of coloured jellies of swans, of peacocks, or of pheasants adorned with their feathers, having the beak and feet gilt, and placed on the middle of the table on a sort of pedestal. To the _entremets_, a course which does not appear on all bills of fare, succeeds the dessert. The _issue_, or exit from table, is mostly composed of hypocras and a sort of _oublie_ called _mestier_; or, in summer, when hypocras is out of season on account of its strength, of apples, cheeses, and sometimes of pastries and sweetmeats. The _boute-hors_ (wines and spices) end the repast. The guests then wash their hands, say grace, and pass into the _chambre de parement_ or drawing-room. The servants then sit down and dine after their masters. They subsequently bring the guests wine and _épices de chambre_, after which each retires home." [Illustration: Figs. 126 and 127.--Sides of an Enamelled Salt-cellar, with six facings representing the Labours of Hercules, made at Limoges, by Pierre Raymond, for Francis I.] But all the pomp and magnificence of the feasts of this period would have appeared paltry a century later, when royal banquets were managed by Taillevent, head cook to Charles VII. The historian of French cookery, Legrand d'Aussy, thus desoribes a great feast given in 1455 by the Count of Anjou, third son of Louis II., King of Sicily:-- "On the table was placed a centre-piece, which represented a green lawn, surrounded with large peacocks' feathers and green branches, to which were tied violets and other sweet-smelling flowers. In the middle of this lawn a fortress was placed, covered with silver. This was hollow, and formed a sort of cage, in which several live birds were shut up, their tufts and feet being gilt. On its tower, which was gilt, three banners were placed, one bearing the arms of the count, the two others those of Mesdemoiselles de Châteaubrun and de Villequier, in whose honour the feast was given. "The first course consisted of a civet of hare, a quarter of stag which had been a night in salt, a stuffed chicken, and a loin of veal. The two last dishes were covered with a German sauce, with gilt sugar-plums, and pomegranate seeds.... At each end, outside the green lawn, was an enormous pie, surmounted with smaller pies, which formed a crown. The crust of the large ones was silvered all round and gilt at the top; each contained a whole roe-deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, one young rabbit, and, no doubt to serve as seasoning or stuffing, a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered with saffron and flavoured with cloves. For the three following courses, there was a roe-deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and covered with powdered ginger; a kid, two goslings, twelve chickens, as many pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat capon stuffed, four chickens covered with yolks of eggs and sprinkled with powder _de Duc_ (spice), a wild boar, some wafers (_darioles_), and stars; a jelly, part white and part red, representing the crests of the three above-mentioned persons; cream with _Duc_ powder, covered with fennel seeds preserved in sugar; a white cream, cheese in slices, and strawberries; and, lastly, plums stewed in rose-water. Besides these four courses, there was a fifth, entirely composed of the prepared wines then in vogue, and of preserves. These consisted of fruits and various sweet pastries. The pastries represented stags and swans, to the necks of which were suspended the arms of the Count of Anjou and those of the two young ladies." In great houses, dinner was announced by the sound of the hunting-horn; this is what Froissard calls _corner l'assiette,_ but which was at an earlier period called _corner l'eau_, because it was the custom to wash the hands before sitting down to table as well as on leaving the dining-room. [Illustration: Fig. 128.--Knife-handles in Sculptured Ivory, Sixteenth Century (Collection of M. Becker, of Frankfort).] [Illustration: Fig. 129.--Nut-crackers, in Boxwood, Sixteenth Century (Collection of M. Achille Jubinal).] For these ablutions scented water, and especially rose-water, was used, brought in ewers of precious and delicately wrought metals, by pages or squires, who handed them to the ladies in silver basins. It was at about this period, that is, in the times of chivalry, that the custom of placing the guests by couples was introduced, generally a gentleman and lady, each couple having but one cup and one plate; hence the expression, to eat from the same plate. Historians relate that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at certain gala feasts, the dishes were brought in by servants in full armour, mounted on caparisoned horses; but this is a custom exclusively attached to chivalry. As early as those days, powerful and ingenious machines were in use, which lowered from the story above, or raised from that below, ready-served tables, which were made to disappear after use as if by enchantment. At that period the table service of the wealthy required a considerable staff of retainers and varlets; and, at a later period, this number was much increased. Thus, for instance, when Louis of Orleans went on a diplomatic mission to Germany from his brother Charles VI., this prince, in order that France might be worthily represented abroad, raised the number of his household to more than two hundred and fifty persons, of whom about one hundred were retainers and table attendants. Olivier de la Marche, who, in his "Mémoires," gives the most minute details of the ceremonial of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, tells us that the table service was as extensive as in the other great princely houses. This extravagant and ruinous pomp fell into disuse during the reigns of Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., but reappeared in that of Francis I. This prince, after his first wars in Italy, imported the cookery and the gastronomic luxury of that country, where the art of good living, especially in Venice, Florence, and Rome, had reached the highest degree of refinement and magnificence. Henry II. and Francis II. maintained the magnificence of their royal tables; but after them, notwithstanding the soft effeminacy of the manners at court, the continued wars which Henry III. and Charles IX. had to sustain in their own states against the Protestants and the League necessitated a considerable economy in the households and tables of those kings. "It was only by fits and starts," says Brantôme, "that one was well fed during this reign, for very often circumstances prevented the proper preparation of the repasts; a thing much disliked by the courtiers, who prefer open table to be kept at both court and with the army, because it then costs them nothing." Henry IV. was neither fastidious nor greedy; we must therefore come down to the reign of Louis XIII. to find a vestige of the splendour of the banquets of Francis I. [Illustration: Fig. 130.--Grand Ceremonial Banquet at the Court of France in the Fourteenth Century, archaeological Restoration from Miniatures and Narratives of the Period. From the "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français" of M. Viollet-Leduc.] From the establishment of the Franks in Gaul down to the fifteenth century inclusive, there were but two meals a day; people dined at ten o'clock in the morning, and supped at four in the afternoon. In the sixteenth century they put back dinner one hour and supper three hours, to which many people objected. Hence the old proverb:-- "Lever à six, dîner à dix, Souper à six, coucher à dix, Fait vivre l'homme dix fois dix." ("To rise at six, dine at ten, Sup at six, to bed at ten, Makes man live ten times ten.") [Illustration: Fig. 131.--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Tonnerre.] Hunting. Venery and Hawking.--Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.--Gaston Phoebus and his Book.--The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.--Sporting Societies and Brotherhoods.--Sporting Kings: Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.--Treatise on Venery.--Sporting Popes.--Origin of Hawking.--Training Birds.--Hawking Retinues.--Book of King Modus.--Technical Terms used in Hawking.--Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.--Fowling. By the general term hunting is included the three distinct branches of an art, or it may be called a science, which dates its origin from the earliest times, but which was particularly esteemed in the Middle Ages, and was especially cultivated in the glorious days of chivalry. _Venery_, which is the earliest, is defined by M. Elzéar Blaze as "the science of snaring, taking, or killing one particular animal from amongst a herd." _Hawking_ came next. This was not only the art of hunting with the falcon, but that of training birds of prey to hunt feathered game. Lastly, _l'oisellerie_ (fowling), which, according to the author of several well-known works on the subject we are discussing, had originally no other object than that of protecting the crops and fruits from birds and other animals whose nature it was to feed on them. Venery will be first considered. Sportsmen always pride themselves in placing Xenophon, the general, philosopher, and historian, at the head of sporting writers, although his treatise on the chase (translated from the Greek into Latin under the title of "De Venatione"), which gives excellent advice respecting the training of dogs, only speaks of traps and nets for capturing wild animals. Amongst the Greeks Arrian and Oppian, and amongst the Romans, Gratius Faliscus and Nemesianus, wrote on the same subject. Their works, however, except in a few isolated or scattered passages, do not contain anything about venery properly so called, and the first historical information on the subject is to be found in the records of the seventh century. Long after that period, however, they still hunted, as it were, at random, attacking the first animal they met. The sports of Charlemagne, for instance, were almost always of this description. On some occasions they killed animals of all sorts by thousands, after having tracked and driven them into an enclosure composed of cloths or nets. This illustrious Emperor, although usually at war in all parts of Europe, never missed an opportunity of hunting: so much so that it might be said that he rested himself by galloping through the forests. He was on these occasions not only followed by a large number of huntsmen and attendants of his household, but he was accompanied by his wife and daughters, mounted on magnificent coursers, and surrounded by a numerous and elegant court, who vied with each other in displaying their skill and courage in attacking the fiercest animals. It is even stated that Aix-la-Chapelle owes its origin to a hunting adventure of Charlemagne. The Emperor one day while chasing a stag required to cross a brook which came in his path, but immediately his horse had set his foot in the water he pulled it out again and began to limp as if it were hurt. His noble rider dismounted, and on feeling the foot found it was quite hot. This induced him to put his hand into the water, which he found to be almost boiling. On that very spot therefore he caused a chapel to be erected, in the shape of a horse's hoof. The town was afterwards built, and to this day the spring of hot mineral water is enclosed under a rotunda, the shape of which reminds one of the old legend of Charlemagne and his horse. The sons of Charlemagne also held hunting in much esteem, and by degrees the art of venery was introduced and carried to great perfection. It was not, however, until the end of the thirteenth century that an anonymous author conceived the idea of writing its principal precepts in an instructive poem, called "Le Dict de la Chace du Cerf." In 1328 another anonymous writer composed the "Livre du Roy Modus," which contains the rules for hunting all furred animals, from the stag to the hare. Then followed other poets and writers of French prose, such as Gace de la Vigne (1359), Gaston Phoebus (1387), and Hardouin, lord of Fontaine-Guérin (1394). None of these, however, wrote exclusively on venery, but described the different sports known in their day. Towards 1340, Alphonse XI., king of Castile, caused a book on hunting to be compiled for his use; but it was not so popular as the instruction of Gaston Phoebus (Fig. 132). If hunting with hounds is known everywhere by the French name of the chase, it is because the honour of having organized it into a system, if not of having originated it, is due to the early French sporting authors, who were able to form a code of rules for it. This also accounts for so many of the technical terms now in use in venery being of French origin, as they are no others than those adopted by these ancient authors, whose works, so to speak, have perpetuated them. [Illustration: Fig. 132.--Gaston Phoebus teaching the Art of Venery.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of "Phoebus and his Staff for Hunting Wild Animals and Birds of Prey" (Manuscript, Fifteenth Century, National Library of Paris)] [Illustration: Fig. 133.--"How to carry a Cloth to approach Beasts."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] The curious miniatures which accompany the text in the original manuscript of Gaston Phoebus, and which have been reproduced in nearly all the ancient copies of this celebrated manuscript, give most distinct and graphic ideas of the various modes of hunting. We find, for instance, that the use of an artificial cow for approaching wild-fowl was understood at that time, the only difference being that a model was used more like a horse than a cow (Fig. 133); we also see sportsmen shooting at bears, wild boars, stags, and such live animals with arrows having sharp iron points, intended to enter deep into the flesh, notwithstanding the thickness of the fur and the creature's hard skin. In the case of the hare, however, the missile had a heavy, massive end, probably made of lead, which stunned him without piercing his body (Fig. 134). In other cases the sportsman is represented with a crossbow seated in a cart, all covered up with boughs, by which plan he was supposed to approach the prey without alarming it any more than a swinging branch would do (Fig. 135). Gaston Phoebus is known to have been one of the bravest knights of his time; and, after fighting, he considered hunting as his greatest delight. Somewhat ingenuously he writes of himself as a hunter, "that he doubts having any superior." Like all his contemporaries, he is eloquent as to the moral effect of his favourite pastime. "By hunting," he says, "one avoids the sin of indolence; and, according to our faith, he who avoids the seven mortal sins will be saved; therefore the good sportsman will be saved." [Illustration: Fig. 134.--"How to allure the Hare."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] From the earliest ages sportsmen placed themselves under the protection of some special deity. Among the Greeks and Romans it was Diana and Phoebe. The Gauls, who had adopted the greater number of the gods and goddesses of Rome, invoked the moon when they sallied forth to war or to the chase; but, as soon as they penetrated the sacred obscurity of the forests, they appealed more particularly to the goddess _Ardhuina_, whose name, of unknown origin, has probably since been applied to the immense well-stocked forests of Ardenne or Ardennes. They erected in the depths of the woods monstrous stone figures in honour of this goddess, such as the heads of stags on the bodies of men or women; and, to propitiate her during the chase, they hung round these idols the feet, the skins, and the horns of the beasts they killed. Cernunnos, who was always represented with a human head surmounted by stags' horns, had an altar even in Lutetia, which was, no doubt, in consequence of the great woods which skirted the banks of the Seine. [Illustration: Fig. 135.--"How to take a Cart to allure Beasts."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] The Gallic Cernunnos, which we also find among the Romans, since Ovid mentions the votary stags' horns, continued to be worshipped to a certain extent after the establishment of the Christian religion. In the fifth century, Germain, an intrepid hunter, who afterwards became Bishop of Auxerre, possessed not far from his residence an oak of enormous diameter, a thorough Cernunnos, which he hung with the skins and other portions of animals he had killed in the chase. In some countries, where the Cernunnos remained an object of veneration, everybody bedecked it in the same way. The largest oak to be found in the district was chosen on which to suspend the trophies both of warriors and of hunters; and, at a more recent period, sportsmen used to hang outside their doors stags' heads, boars' feet, birds of prey, and other trophies, a custom which evidently was a relic of the one referred to. On pagan idolatry being abandoned, hunters used to have a presiding genius or protector, whom they selected from amongst the saints most in renown. Some chose St. Germain d'Auxerre, who had himself been a sportsman; others St. Martin, who had been a soldier before he became Bishop of Tours. Eventually they all agreed to place themselves under the patronage of St. Hubert, Bishop of Liège, a renowned hunter of the eighth century. This saint devoted himself to a religious life, after one day haying encountered a miraculous stag whilst hunting in the woods, which appeared to him as bearing between his horns a luminous image of our Saviour. At first the feast of St. Hubert was celebrated four times a year, namely, at the anniversaries of his conversion and death, and on the two occasions on which his relics were exhibited. At the celebration of each of these feasts a large number of sportsmen in "fine apparel" came from great distances with their horses and dogs. There was, in fact, no magnificence or pomp deemed too imposing to be displayed, both by the kings and nobles, in honour of the patron-saint of hunting (Fig. 136). [Illustration: Fig. 136.--"How to shout and blow Horns."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] [Illustration: Ladies Hunting Costumes of the fifteenth century. From a miniature in a ms. copy of _Ovid's Epistles_ No 7234 _bis._ Bibl. nat'le de Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 137.--German Sportsman, drawn and engraved by J. Amman in the Sixteenth Century.] Hunters and sportsmen in those days formed brotherhoods, which had their rank defined at public ceremonials, and especially in processions. In 1455, Gérard, Duke of Cleves and Burgrave of Ravensberg, created the order of the Knights of St. Hubert, into which those of noble blood only were admitted. The insignia consisted of a gold or silver chain formed of hunting horns, to which was hung a small likeness of the patron-saint in the act of doing homage to our Saviour's image as it shone on the head of a stag. It was popularly believed that the Knights of St. Hubert had the power of curing madness, which, for some unknown reason, never showed itself in a pack of hounds. This, however, was not the only superstitious belief attached to the noble and adventurous occupations of the followers of St. Hubert. Amongst a number of old legends, which mostly belong to Germany (Fig. 137), mention is made of hunters who sold their souls to the devil in exchange for some enchanted arrow which never missed its aim, and which reached game at extraordinary distances. Mention is also made in these legends of various animals which, on being pursued by the hunters, were miraculously saved by throwing themselves into the arms of some saint, or by running into some holy sanctuary. There were besides knights who, having hunted all their lives, believed that they were to continue the same occupation in another world. An account is given in history of the apparition of a fiery phantom to Charles IX. in the forest of Lyons, and also the ominous meeting of Henry IV. with the terrible _grand-veneur_ in the forest of Fontainebleau. We may account for these strange tales from the fact that hunting formerly constituted a sort of freemasonry, with its mysterious rites and its secret language. The initiated used particular signs of recognition amongst themselves, and they also had lucky and unlucky numbers, emblematical colours, &c. The more dangerous the sport the more it was indulged in by military men. The Chronicles of the Monk of Saint-Gall describe an adventure which befell Charlemagne on the occasion of his setting out with his huntsmen and hounds in order to chase an enormous bear which was the terror of the Vosges. The bear, after having disabled numerous dogs and hunters, found himself face to face with the Emperor, who alone dared to stand up before him. A fierce combat ensued on the summit of a rock, in which both were locked together in a fatal embrace. The contest ended by the death of the bear, Charles striking him with his dagger and hurling him down the precipice. On this the hills resounded with the cry of "Vive Charles le Grand!" from the numerous huntsmen and others who had assembled; and it is said that this was the first occasion on which the companions of the intrepid monarch gave him the title of _Grand_ (Magnus), so from that time King Charles became King _Charlemagne_. This prince was most jealous of his rights of hunting, which he would waive to no one. For a long time he refused permission to the monks of the Abbey of St. Denis, whom he nevertheless held in great esteem, to have some stags killed which were destroying their forests. It was only on condition that the flesh of these animals would serve as food to the monks of inferior order, and that their hides should be used for binding the missals, that he eventually granted them permission to kill the offending animals (Fig. 138). If we pass from the ninth to the thirteenth century, we find that Louis IX., king of France, was as keen a sportsman and as brave a warrior as any of his ancestors. He was, indeed, as fond of hunting as of war, and during his first crusade an opportunity occurred to him of hunting the lion. "As soon as he began to know the country of Cesarea," says Joinville, "the King set to work with his people to hunt lions, so that they captured many; but in doing so they incurred great bodily danger. The mode of taking them was this: They pursued them on the swiftest horses. When they came near one they shot a bolt or arrow at him, and the animal, feeling himself wounded, ran at the first person he could see, who immediately turned his horse's head and fled as fast as he could. During his flight he dropped a portion of his clothing, which the lion caught up and tore, thinking it was the person who had injured him; and whilst the lion was thus engaged the hunters again approached the infuriated animal and shot more bolts and arrows at him. Soon the lion left the cloth and madly rushed at some other hunter, who adopted the same strategy as before. This was repeated until the animal succumbed, becoming exhausted by the wounds he had received." [Illustration: Fig. 138.--"Nature and Appearance of Deer, and how they can be hunted with Dogs."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Livre du Roy Modus"--Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (National Library of Paris)] Notwithstanding the passion which this king had for hunting, he was the first to grant leave to the bourgeoisie to enjoy the sport. The condition he made with them was that they should always give a haunch of any animal killed to the lord of the soil. It is to this that we must trace the origin of giving the animal's foot to the huntsman or to the person who has the lead of the hunting party. Louis XI., however, did not at all act in this liberal manner, and although it might have been supposed that the incessant wars and political intrigues in which he was constantly engaged would have given him no time for amusements of this kind, yet he was, nevertheless, the keenest sportsman of his day. This tyrant of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours, who was always miserly, except in matters of hunting, in which he was most lavish, forbade even the higher classes to hunt under penalty of hanging. To ensure the execution of his severe orders, he had all the castles as well as the cottages searched, and any net, engine, or sporting arm found was immediately destroyed. His only son, the heir to the throne, was not exempted from these laws. Shut up in the Castle of Amboise, he had no permission to leave it, for it was the will of the King that the young prince should remain ignorant of the noble exercises of chivalry. One day the Dauphin prayed his governor, M. du Bouchage, with so much earnestness to give him an idea of hunting, that this noble consented to make an excursion into the neighbouring wood with him. The King, however, managed to find it out, and Du Bouchage had great difficulty in keeping his head on his shoulders. One of the best ways of pleasing Louis XI. was to offer him some present relating to his favourite pastime, either pointers, hounds, falcons, or varlets who were adepts in the art of venery or hawking (Figs. 139 and 140). When the cunning monarch became old and infirm, in order to make his enemies believe that he was still young and vigorous, he sent messengers everywhere, even to the most remote countries, to purchase horses, dogs, and falcons, for which, according to Comines, he paid large sums (Fig. 141). On his death, the young prince, Charles VIII., succeeded him, and he seems to have had an innate taste for hunting, and soon made up for lost time and the privation to which his father had subjected him. He hunted daily, and generously allowed the nobles to do the same. It is scarcely necessary to say that these were not slow in indulging in the privilege thus restored to them, and which was one of their most ancient pastimes and occupations; for it must be remembered that, in those days of small intellectual culture, hunting must have been a great, if not at times the only, resource against idleness and the monotony of country life. Everything which related to sport again became the fashion amongst the youth of the nobility, and their chief occupation when not engaged in war. They continued as formerly to invent every sort of sporting device. For example, they obtained from other countries traps, engines, and hunting-weapons; they introduced into France at great expense foreign animals, which they took great pains in naturalising as game or in training as auxiliaries in hunting. After having imported the reindeer from Lapland, which did not succeed in their temperate climate, and the pheasant from Tartary, with which they stocked the woods, they imported with greater success the panther and the leopard from Africa, which were used for furred game as the hawk was for feathered game. The mode of hunting with these animals was as follows: The sportsmen, preceded by their dogs, rode across country, each with a leopard sitting behind him on his saddle. When the dogs had started the game the leopard jumped off the saddle and sprang after it, and as soon as it was caught the hunters threw the leopard a piece of raw flesh, for which he gave up the prey and remounted behind his master (Fig. 142) Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII. often hunted thus. The leopards, which formed a part of the royal venery, were kept in an enclosure of the Castle of Amboise, which still exists near the gate _des Lions_, so called, no doubt, on account of these sporting and carnivorous animals being mistaken for lions by the common people. There, were, however, always lions in the menageries of the kings of France. [Illustration: Fig. 139.--"The Way to catch Squirrels on the Ground in the Woods"--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century)] Francis I. was quite as fond of hunting as any of his predecessors. His innate taste for sport was increased during his travels in Italy, where he lived with princes who displayed great splendour in their hunting equipages. He even acquired the name of the _Father of Sportsmen_. His _netting_ establishment alone, consisted of one captain, one lieutenant, twelve mounted huntsmen, six varlets to attend the bloodhounds; six whips, who had under their charge sixty hounds; and one hundred bowmen on foot, carrying large stakes for fixing the nets and tents, which were carried by fifty six-horsed chariots. He was much pleased when ladies followed the chase; and amongst those who were most inclined to share its pleasures, its toils, and even its perils, was Catherine de Medicis, then Dauphine, who was distinguished for her agility and her graceful appearance on horseback, and who became a thorough sportswoman. [Illustration: Fig. 140.-"The Way of catching Partridges with an Osier Net-Work Apparatus"--Fac-simile of a Miniature in "Livre du Roy Modus."] The taste for hunting having become very general, and the art being considered as the most noble occupation to which persons could devote themselves, it is not surprising to find sporting works composed by writers of the greatest renown and of the highest rank. The learned William Budé, whom Erasmus called the _wonder of France_, dedicated to the children of Francis I. the second book of his "Philologie," which contains a treatise on stag-hunting. This treatise, originally written in Latin, was afterwards translated into French by order of Charles IX., who was acknowledged to be one of the boldest and most scientific hunters of his time. An extraordinary feat, which has never been imitated by any one, is recorded of him, and that was, that alone, on horseback and without dogs, he hunted down a stag. The "Chasse Royale," the authorship of which is attributed to him, is replete with scientific information. "Wolf-hunting," a work by the celebrated Clamorgan, and "Yenery," by Du Fouilloux, were dedicated to Charles IX., and a great number of special treatises on such subjects appeared in his reign. [Illustration: Fig. 141.--"Kennel in which Dogs should live, and how they should be kept."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] His brother, the effeminate Henry III., disliked hunting, as he considered it too fatiguing and too dangerous. On the other hand, according to Sully, Henry IV., _le Béarnais_, who learned hunting in early youth in the Pyrenees, "loved all kinds of sport, and, above all, the most fatiguing and adventurous pursuits, such as those after wolves, bears, and boars." He never missed a chance of hunting, "even when in face of an enemy. If he knew a stag to be near, he found time to hunt it," and we find in the "Memoirs of Sully " that the King hunted the day after the famous battle of Ivry. One day, when he was only King of Navarre, he invited the ladies of Pau to come and see a bear-hunt. Happily they refused, for on that occasion their nerves would have been put to a serious test. Two bears killed two of the horses, and several bowmen were hugged to death by the ferocious animals. Another bear, although pierced in several places, and having six or seven pike-heads in his body, charged eight men who were stationed on the top of a rock, and the whole of them with the bear were all dashed to pieces down the precipice. The only point in which Louis XIII. resembled his father was his love of the chase, for during his reign hunting continued in France, as well as in other countries, to be a favourite royal pastime. We have remarked that St. Germain d'Auxerre, who at a certain period was the patron of sportsmen, made hunting his habitual relaxation. He devoted himself to it with great keenness in his youth, before he became bishop, that is, when he was Duke of Auxerre and general of the troops of the provinces. Subsequently, when against his will he was raised to the episcopal dignity, not only did he give up all pleasures, but he devoted himself to the strictest religious life. Unfortunately, in those days, all church-men did not understand, as he did, that the duties of their holy vocation were not consistent with these pastimes, for, in the year 507, we find that councils and synods forbade priests to hunt. In spite of this, however, the ancient historians relate that several noble prelates, yielding to the customs of the times, indulged in hunting the stag and flying the falcon. [Illustration: Fig. 142.--Hunting with the Leopard, from a Stamp of Jean Stradan (Sixteenth Century).] It is related in history that some of the most illustrious popes were also great lovers of the chase, namely, Julius II, Leo X., and, previously to them, Pius II, who, before becoming Pope, amongst other literary and scientific works, wrote a Latin treatise on venery under his Christian names, Æneas Silvius. It is easy to understand how it happened that sports formerly possessed such attractions for ecclesiastical dignitaries. In early life they acquired the tastes and habits of people of their rank, and they were accordingly extremely jealous of the rights of chase in their domains. Although Pope Clement V., in his celebrated "Institutions," called "Clémentines," had formally forbidden the monks to hunt, there were few who did not evade the canonical prohibition by pursuing furred game, and that without considering that they were violating the laws of the Church. The papal edict permitted the monks and priests to hunt under certain circumstances, and especially where rabbits or beasts of prey increased so much as to damage the crops. It can easily be imagined that such would always be the case at a period when the people were so strictly forbidden to destroy game; and therefore hunting was practised at all seasons in the woods and fields in the vicinity of each abbey. The jealous peasants, not themselves having the right of hunting, and who continually saw _Master Abbot_ passing on his hunting excursions, said, with malice, that "the monks never forgot to pray for the success of the litters and nests (_pro pullis et nidis_), in order that game might always be abundant." [Illustration: Fig. 143.--"How Wolves may be caught with a Snare."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] If venery, as a regular science, dates from a comparatively recent period, it is not so with falconry, the first traces of which are lost in obscure antiquity. This kind of sport, which had become a most learned and complicated art, was the delight of the nobles of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance period. It was in such esteem that a nobleman or his lady never appeared in public without a hawk on the wrist as a mark of dignity (Fig. 147). Even bishops and abbots entered the churches with their hunting birds, which they placed on the steps of the altar itself during the service. [Illustration: Fig. 144.--"How Bears and other Beasts may be caught with a Dart."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).] The bird, like the sword, was a distinctive mark which was inseparable from the person of gentle birth, who frequently even went to war with the falcon on his wrist. During the battle he would make his squire hold the bird, which he replaced on his gauntlet when the fight was over. In fact, it was forbidden by the laws of chivalry for persons to give up their birds, even as a ransom, should they be made prisoners; in which case they had to let the noble birds fly, in order that they might not share their captivity. The falcon to a certain degree partook of his owner's nobility; he was, moreover, considered a noble bird by the laws of falconry, as were all birds of prey which could be trained for purposes of sport. All other birds, without distinction, were declared _ignoble_, and no exception was made to this rule by the naturalists of the Middle Ages, even in favour of the strongest and most magnificent, such as the eagle and vulture. According to this capricious classification, they considered the sparrow-hawk, which was the smallest of the hunting-birds, to rank higher than the eagle. The nickname of this diminutive sporting bird was often applied to a country-gentleman, who, not being able to afford to keep falcons, used the sparrow-hawk to capture partridges and quail. [Illustration: Fig. 145.--Olifant, or Hunting-horn, in Ivory (Fourteenth Century).--From an Original existing in England.] It was customary for gentlemen of all classes, whether sportsmen or not, to possess birds of some kind, "to keep up their rank," as the saying then was. Only the richest nobles, however, were expected to keep a regular falconry, that is, a collection of birds suited for taking all kinds of game, such as the hare, the kite, the heron, &c., as each sport not only required special birds, but a particular and distinctive retinue and establishment. [Illustration: Fig. 146.--Details Hunting-horn of the Fourteenth Century.--From the Original in an English Collection.] Besides the cost of falcons, which was often very great (for they were brought from the most distant countries, such as Sweden, Iceland, Turkey, and Morocco), their rearing and training involved considerable outlay, as may be more readily understood from the illustrations (Figs. 148 to 155), showing some of the principal details of the long and difficult education which had to be given them. To succeed in making the falcon obey the whistle, the voice, and the signs of the falconer was the highest aim of the art, and it was only by the exercise of much patience that the desired resuit was obtained. All birds of prey, when used for sport, received the generic name of _falcon_; and amongst them were to be found the gerfalcon, the saker-hawk, the lanner, the merlin, and the sparrow-hawk. The male birds were smaller than the females, and were called _tiercelet_--this name, however, more particularly applied to the gosshawk or the largest kind of male hawk, whereas the males of the above mentioned were called _laneret, sacret, émouchet._ Generally the male birds were used for partridges and quail, and the female birds for the hare, the heron, and crane. _Oiseaux de poing_, or _hand-birds,_ was the name given to the gosshawk, common hawk, the gerfalcon, and the merlin, because they returned to the hand of their master after having pursued game. The lanner, sparrow-hawk, and saker-hawk were called _oiseaux de leure_, from the fact that it was always necessary to entice them back again. [Illustration: Fig. 147.--A Noble of Provence (Fifteenth Century).--Bonnart's "Costumes from the Tenth to the Sixteenth Century."] The lure was an imitation of a bird, made of red cloth, that it might be more easily seen from a distance. It was stuffed so that the falcon could settle easily on it, and furnished with the wings of a partridge, duck, or heron, according to circumstances. The falconer swung his mock bird like a sling, and whistled as he did so, and the falcon, accustomed to find a piece of flesh attached to the lure, flew down in order to obtain it, and was thus secured. [Illustration: Fig. 148.--King Modus teaching the Art of Falconry.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] The trainers of birds divided them into two kinds, namely, the _niais_ or simple bird, which had been taken from the nest, and the wild bird (_hagard_) captured when full-grown. The education of the former was naturally very much the easier, but they succeeded in taming both classes, and even the most rebellious were at last subdued by depriving them of sleep, by keeping away the light from them, by coaxing them with the voice, by patting them, by giving them choice food, &c. Regardless of his original habits, the bird was first accustomed to have no fear of men, horses, and dogs. He was afterwards fastened to a string by one leg, and, being allowed to fly a short distance, was recalled to the lure, where he always found a dainty bit of food. After he had been thus exercised for several months, a wounded partridge was let loose that he might catch it near the falconer, who immediately took it from him before he could tear it to pieces. When he appeared sufficiently tame, a quail or partridge, previously stripped of a few feathers so as to prevent it flying properly, was put in his way as before. If he was wanted for hunting hares, a stuffed hare was dragged before him, inside of which was a live chicken, whose head and liver was his reward if he did his work well. Then they tried him with a hare whose fore-leg was broken in order to ensure his being quickly caught. For the kite, they placed two hawks together on the same perch, so as to accustom them peaceably to live and hunt together, for if they fought with one another, as strange birds were apt to do, instead of attacking the kite, the sport would of course have failed. At first a hen of the colour of a kite was given them to fight with. When they had mastered this, a real kite was used, which was tied to a string and his claws and beak were filed so as to prevent him from wounding the young untrained falcons. The moment they had secured their prey, they were called off it and given chickens' flesh to eat on the lure. The same System was adopted for hunting the heron or crane (Fig. 159). [Illustration: Fig. 149.--Falconers dressing their Birds.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] It will be seen that, in order to train birds, it was necessary for a large number of the various kinds of game to be kept on the premises, and for each branch of sport a regular establishment was required. In falconry, as in venery, great care was taken to secure that a bird should continue at one object of prey until he had secured it, that is to say, it was most essential to teach it not to leave the game he was after in order to pursue another which might come in his way. To establish a falconry, therefore, not only was a very large poultry-yard required, but also a considerable staff of huntsmen, falconers, and whips, besides a number of horses and dogs of all sorts, which were either used for starting the game for the hawks, or for running it down when it was forced to ground by the birds. [Illustration: Fig. 150.--Varlets of Falconry.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] A well-trained falcon was a bird of great value, and was the finest present that could be made to a lady, to a nobleman, or to the King himself, by any one who had received a favour. For instance, the King of France received six birds from the Abbot of St. Hubert as a token of gratitude for the protection granted by him to the abbey. The King of Denmark sent him several as a gracious offering in the month of April; the Grand Master of Malta in the month of May. At court, in those days, the reception of falcons either in public or in private was a great business, and the first trial of any new birds formed a topic of conversation among the courtiers for some time after. The arrival at court of a hawk-dealer from some distant country was also a great event. It is said that Louis XI. gave orders that watch should be kept night and day to seize any falcons consigned to the Duke of Brittany from Turkey. The plan succeeded, and the birds thus stolen were brought to the King, who exclaimed, "By our holy Lady of Cléry! what will the Duke Francis and his Bretons do? They will be very angry at the good trick I have played them." European princes vied with each other in extravagance as regards falconry; but this was nothing in comparison to the magnificence displayed in oriental establishments. The Count de Nevers, son of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, having been made prisoner at the battle of Nicopolis, was presented to the Sultan Bajazet, who showed him his hunting establishment consisting of seven thousand falconers and as many huntsmen. The Duke of Burgundy, on hearing this, sent twelve white hawks, which were very scarce birds, as a present to Bajazet. The Sultan was so pleased with them that he sent him back his son in exchange. [Illustration: Fig. 151.--"How to train a New Falcon."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] The "Livre du Roy Modus" gives the most minute and curious details on the noble science of hawking. For instance, it tells us that the _nobility_ of the falcon was held in such respect that their utensils, trappings, or feeding-dishes were never used for other birds. The glove on which they were accustomed to alight was frequently elaborately embroidered in gold, and was never used except for birds of their own species. In the private establishments the leather hoods, which were put on their heads to prevent them seeing, were embroidered with gold and pearls and surmounted with the feathers of birds of paradise. Each bird wore on his legs two little bells with his owner's crest upon them; the noise made by these was very distinct, and could be heard even when the bird was too high in the air to be seen, for they were not made to sound in unison; they generally came from Italy, Milan especially being celebrated for their manufacture. Straps were also fastened to the falcon's legs, by means of which he was attached to the perch; at the end of this strap was a brass or gold ring with the owner's name engraved upon it. In the royal establishments each ring bore on one side, "I belong to the king," and on the other the name of the Grand Falconer. This was a necessary precaution, for the birds frequently strayed, and, if captured, they could thus be recognised and returned. The ownership of a falcon was considered sacred, and, by an ancient barbaric law, the stealer of a falcon was condemned to a very curious punishment. The unfortunate thief was obliged to allow the falcon to eat six ounces of the flesh of his breast, unless he could pay a heavy fine to the owner and another to the king. [Illustration: Fig. 152.--Falconers.--Fac-simile from a Miniature in Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, which treats of the "Cour de Jaime, Roi de Maiorque."] A man thoroughly acquainted with the mode of training hawks was in high esteem everywhere. If he was a freeman, the nobles outbid each other as to who should secure his services; if he was a serf, his master kept him as a rare treasure, only parted with him as a most magnificent present, or sold him for a considerable sum. Like the clever huntsman, a good falconer (Fig. 156) was bound to be a man of varied information on natural history, the veterinary art, and the chase; but the profession generally ran in families, and the son added his own experience to the lessons of his father. There were also special schools of venery and falconry, the most renowned being of course in the royal household. The office of Grand Falconer of France, the origin of which dates from 1250, was one of the highest in the kingdom. The Maréchal de Fleuranges says, in his curious "Memoirs"--"The Grand Falconer, whose salary is four thousand florins" (the golden florin was worth then twelve or fifteen francs, and this amount must represent upwards of eighty thousand francs of present currency), "has fifty gentlemen under him, the salary of each being from five to six thousand livres. He has also fifty assistant falconers at two hundred livres each, all chosen by himself. His establishment consists of three hundred birds; he has the right to hunt wherever he pleases in the kingdom; he levies a tax on all bird-dealers, who are forbidden, under penalty of the confiscation of their stock, from selling a single bird in any town or at court without his sanction." The Grand Falconer was chief at all the hunts or hawking meetings; in public ceremonies he always appeared with the bird on his wrist, as an emblem of his rank; and the King, whilst hawking, could not let loose his bird until after the Grand Falconer had slipped his. [Illustration: Fig. 153.--"How to bathe a New Falcon."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] Falconry, like venery, had a distinctive and professional vocabulary, which it was necessary for every one who joined in hawking to understand, unless he wished to be looked upon as an ignorant yeoman. "Flying the hawk is a royal pastime," says the Jesuit Claude Binet, "and it is to talk royally to talk of the flight of birds. Every one speaks of it, but few speak well. Many speak so ignorantly as to excite pity among their hearers. Sometimes one says the _hand_ of the bird instead of saying the _talon_, sometimes the _talon_ instead of the _claw_, sometimes the _claw_ instead of the _nail_" &c. The fourteenth century was the great epoch of falconry. There were then so many nobles who hawked, that in the rooms of inns there were perches made under the large mantel-pieces on which to place the birds while the sportsmen were at dinner. Histories of the period are full of characteristic anecdotes, which prove the enthusiasm which was created by hawking in those who devoted themselves to it. [Illustration: Fig. 154.--"How to make Young Hawks fly."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] Emperors and kings were as keen as others for this kind of sport. As early as the tenth century the Emperor Henry I. had acquired the soubriquet of "the Bird-catcher," from the fact of his giving much more attention to his birds than to his subjects. His example was followed by one of his successors, the Emperor Henry VI., who was reckoned the first falconer of his time. When his father, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (Red-beard), died in the Holy Land, in 1189, the Archdukes, Electors of the Empire, went out to meet the prince so as to proclaim him Emperor of Germany. They found him, surrounded by dogs, horses, and birds, ready to go hunting. "The day is fine," he said; "allow us to put off serious affairs until to-morrow." Two centuries later we find at the court of France the same ardour for hawking and the same admiration for the performances of falcons. The Constable Bertrand du Guesclin gave two hawks to King Charles VI.; and the Count de Tancarville, whilst witnessing a combat between these noble birds and a crane which had been powerful enough to keep two greyhounds at bay, exclaimed, "I would not give up the pleasure which I feel for a thousand florins!" The court-poet, William Crétin, although he was Canon of the holy chapel of Vincennes, was as passionately fond of hawking as his good master Louis XII. He thus describes the pleasure he felt in seeing a heron succumb to the vigorous attack of the falcons:-- "Qui auroit la mort aux dents, Il revivroit d'avour un tel passe-temps!" ("He who is about to die Would live again with such amusement.") [Illustration: Fig. 155.--Lady setting out Hawking.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth. Century).] At a hunting party given by Louis XII. to the Archduke Maximilian, Mary of Burgundy, the Archduke's wife, was killed by a fall from her horse. The King presented his best falcons to the Archduke with a view to divert his mind and to turn his attention from the sad event, and one of the historians tells us that the bereaved husband was soon consoled: "The partridges, herons, wild ducks, and quails which he was enabled to take on his journey home by means of the King's present, materially lessening his sorrow." Falconry, after having been in much esteem for centuries, at last became amenable to the same law which affects all great institutions, and, having reached the height of its glory, it was destined to decay. Although the art disappeared completely under Louis the Great, who only liked stag-kunting, and who, by drawing all the nobility to court, disorganized country life, no greater adept had ever been known than King Louis XIII. His first favourite and Grand Falconer was Albert de Luynes, whom he made prime minister and constable. Even in the Tuileries gardens, on his way to mass at the convent of the Feuillants, this prince amused himself by catching linnets and wrens with noisy magpies trained to pursue small birds. It was during this reign that some ingenious person discovered that the words LOUIS TREIZIÈME, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, exactly gave this anagram, ROY TRÈS-RARE, ESTIMÉ DIEU DE LA FAUCONNERIE. It was also at this time that Charles d'Arcussia, the last author who wrote a technical work on falconry, after praising his majesty for devoting himself so thoroughly to the divine sport, compared the King's birds to domestic angels, and the carnivorous birds which they destroyed he likened to the devil. From this he argued that the sport was like the angel Gabriel destroying the demon Asmodeus. He also added, in his dedication to the King, "As the nature of angels is above that of men, so is that of these birds above all other animals." [Illustration: Fig. 156.--Dress of the Falconer (Thirteenth Century).--Sculpture of the Cathedral of Rouen.] At that time certain religious or rather superstitious ceremonies were in use for blessing the water with which the falcons were sprinkled before hunting, and supplications were addressed to the eagles that they might not molest them. The following words were used: "I adjure you, O eagles! by the true God, by the holy God, by the most blessed Virgin Mary, by the nine orders of angels, by the holy prophets, by the twelve apostles, &c.... to leave the field clear to our birds, and not to molest them: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It was at this time that, in order to recover a lost bird, the Sire de la Brizardière, a professional necromancer, proposed beating the owner of the bird with birch-rods until he bled, and of making a charm with the blood, which was reckoned infallible. [Illustration: Fig. 157.--Diseases of Dogs and their Cure.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fourteenth Century).] Elzéar Blaze expressed his astonishment that the ladies should not have used their influence to prevent falconry from falling into disuse. The chase, he considered, gave them an active part in an interesting and animated scene, which only required easy and graceful movements on their part, and to which no danger was attached. "The ladies knowing," he says, "how to fly a bird, how to call him back, and how to encourage him with their voice, being familiar with him from having continually carried him on their wrist, and often even from having broken him in themselves, the honour of hunting belongs to them by right. Besides, it brings out to advantage their grace and dexterity as they gallop amongst the sportsmen, followed by their pages and varlets and a whole herd of horses and dogs." The question of precedence and of superiority had, at every period, been pretty evenly balanced between venery and falconry, each having its own staunch supporters. Thus, in the "Livre du Roy Modus," two ladies contend in verse (for the subject was considered too exalted to be treated of in simple prose), the one for the superiority of the birds, the other for the superiority of dogs. Their controversy is at length terminated by a celebrated huntsman and falconer, who decides in favour of venery, for the somewhat remarkable reason that those who pursue it enjoy oral and ocular pleasure at the same time. In an ancient Treatise by Gace de la Vigne, in which the same question occupies no fewer than ten thousand verses, the King (unnamed) ends the dispute by ordering that in future they shall be termed pleasures of dogs and pleasures of birds, so that there may be no superiority on one side or the other (Fig. 160). The court-poet, William Crétin, who was in great renown during the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I., having asked two ladies to discuss the same subject in verse, does not hesitate, on the contrary, to place falconry above venery. [Illustration: Fig. 158.--German Falconer, designed and engraved, in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.] It may fairly be asserted that venery and falconry have taken a position of some importance in history; and in support of this theory it will suffice to mention a few facts borrowed from the annals of the chase. The King of Navarre, Charles the Bad, had sworn to be faithful to the alliance made between himself and King Edward III. of England; but the English troops having been beaten by Du Guesclin, Charles saw that it was to his advantage to turn to the side of the King of France. In order not to appear to break his oath, he managed to be taken prisoner by the French whilst out hunting, and thus he sacrificed his honour to his personal interests. It was also due to a hunting party that Henry III., another King of Navarre, who was afterwards Henry IV., escaped from Paris, on the 3rd February, 1576, and fled to Senlis, where his friends of the Reformed religion came to join him. [Illustration: Fig. 159.--Heron-hawking.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] Hunting formed a principal entertainment when public festivals were celebrated, and it was frequently accompanied with great magnificence. At the entry of Isabel of Bavaria into Paris, a sort of stag hunt was performed, when "the streets," according to a popular story of the time, "were full to profusion of hares, rabbits, and goslings." Again, at the solemn entry of Louis XI. into Paris, a representation of a doe hunt took place near the fountain St. Innocent; "after which the queen received a present of a magnificent stag, made of confectionery, and having the royal arms hung round its neck." At the memorable festival given at Lille, in 1453, by the Duke of Burgundy, a very curious performance took place. "At one end of the table," says the historian Mathieu de Coucy, "a heron was started, which was hunted as if by falconers and sportsmen; and presently from the other end of the table a falcon was slipped, which hovered over the heron. In a few minutes another falcon was started from the other side of the table, which attacked the heron so fiercely that he brought him down in the middle of the hall. After the performance was over and the heron was killed, it was served up at the dinner-table." [Illustration: Fig. 160.--Sport with Dogs.--"How the Wild Boar is hunted by means of Dogs."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] We shall conclude this chapter with a few words on bird-fowling, a kind of sport which was almost disdained in the Middle Ages. The anonymous author of the "Livre du Roy Modus" called it, in the fourteenth century, the pastime of the poor, "because the poor, who can neither keep hounds nor falcons to hunt or to fly, take much pleasure in it, particularly as it serves at the same time as a means of subsistence to many of them." In this book, which was for a long time the authority in matters of sport generally, we find that nearly all the methods and contrivances now employed for bird-fowling were known and in use in the Middle Ages, in addition to some which have since fallen into disuse. We accordingly read in the "Roy Modus" a description of the drag-net, the mirror, the screech-owl, the bird-pipe (Fig. 161), the traps, the springs, &c., the use of all of which is now well understood. At that time, when falcons were so much required, it was necessary that people should be employed to catch them when young; and the author of this book speaks of nets of various sorts, and the pronged piece of wood in the middle of which a screech-owl or some other bird was placed in order to attract the falcons (Fig. 162). [Illustration: Fig. 161.--Bird-piping.--"The Manner of Catching Birds by piping."--Fac-simile of Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] Two methods were in use in those days for catching the woodcook and pheasant, which deserve to be mentioned. "The pheasants," says "King Modus," "are of such a nature that the male bird cannot bear the company of another." Taking advantage of this weakness, the plan of placing a mirror, which balanced a sort of wicker cage or coop, was adopted. The pheasant, thinking he saw his fellow, attacked him, struck against the glass and brought down the coop, in which he had leisure to reflect on his jealousy (Fig. 163). Woodcocks, which are, says the author, "the most silly birds," were caught in this way. The bird-fowler was covered from head to foot with clothes of the colour of dead leaves, only having two little holes for his eyes. When he saw one he knelt down noiselessly, and supported his arms on two sticks, so as to keep perfectly still. When the bird was not looking towards him he cautiously approached it on his knees, holding in his hands two little dry sticks covered with red cloth, which he gently waved so as to divert the bird's attention from himself. In this way he gradually got near enough to pass a noose, which he kept ready at the end of a stick, round the bird's neck (Fig. 164). However ingenious these tricks may appear, they are eclipsed by one we find recorded in the "Ixeuticon," a very elegant Latin poem, by Angelis de Barga, written two centuries later. In order to catch a large number of starlings, this author assures us, it is only necessary to have two or three in a cage, and, when a flight of these birds is seen passing, to liberate them with a very long twine attached to their claws. The twine must be covered with bird-lime, and, as the released birds instantly join their friends, all those they come near get glued to the twine and fall together to the ground. [Illustration: Fig. 162.--Bird-catching with a Machine like a Long Arm.--Fac-simile of Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] As at the present time, the object of bird-fowling was twofold, namely, to procure game for food and to capture birds to be kept either for their voice or for fancy as pets. The trade in the latter was so important, at least in Paris, that the bird-catchers formed a numerous corporation having its statutes and privileges. The Pont au Change (then covered on each side with houses and shops occupied by goldsmiths and money-changers) was the place where these people carried on their trade; and they had the privilege of hanging their cages against the houses, even without the sanction of the proprietors. This curious right was granted to them by Charles VI. in 1402, in return for which they were bound to "provide four hundred birds" whenever a king was crowned, "and an equal number when the queen made her first entry into her good town of Paris." The goldsmiths and money-changers, however, finding that this became a nuisance, and that it injured their trade, tried to get it abolished. They applied to the authorities to protect their rights, urging that the approaches to their shops, the rents of which they paid regularly, were continually obstructed by a crowd of purchasers and dealers in birds. The case was brought several times before parliament, which only confirmed the orders of the kings of France and the ancient privileges of the bird-catchers. At the end of the sixteenth century the quarrel became so bitter that the goldsmiths and changers took to "throwing down the cages and birds and trampling them under foot," and even assaulted and openly ill-treated the poor bird-dealers. But a degree of parliament again justified the sale of birds on the Pont an Change, by condemning the ring-leader, [Illustration: Fig. 163.--Pheasant Fowling.--"Showing how to catch Pheasants."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] Pierre Filacier, the master goldsmith who had commenced the proceedings against the bird-catchers, to pay a double fine, namely, twenty crowns to the plaintiffs and ten to the King. [Illustration: Fig. 164.--The Mode of catching a Woodcock.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Livre du Roy Modus" (Fourteenth Century).] It is satisfactory to observe that at that period measures were taken to preserve nests and to prevent bird-fowling from the 15th of March to the 15th of August. Besides this, it was necessary to have an express permission from the King himself to give persons the right of catching birds on the King's domains. Before any one could sell birds it was required for him to have been received as a master bird-catcher. The recognised bird-catchers, therefore, had no opponents except dealers from other countries, who brought canary-birds, parrots, and other foreign specimens into Paris. These dealers were, however, obliged to conform to strict rules. They were required on their arrival to exhibit their birds from ten to twelve o'clock on the marble stone in the palace yard on the days when parliament sat, in order that the masters and governors of the King's aviary, and, after them, the presidents and councillors, might have the first choice before other people of anything they wished to buy. They were, besides, bound to part the male and female birds in separate cages with tickets on them, so that purchasers might not be deceived; and, in case of dispute on this point, some sworn inspectors were appointed as arbitrators. No doubt, emboldened by the victory which they had achieved over the goldsmiths of the Pont an Change, the bird-dealers of Paris attempted to forbid any bourgeois of the town from breeding canaries or any sort of cage birds. The bourgeois resented this, and brought their case before the Marshals of France. They urged that it was easy for them to breed canaries, and it was also a pleasure for their wives and daughters to teach them, whereas those bought on the Pont an Change were old and difficult to educate. This appeal was favourably received, and an order from the tribunal of the Marshals of France permitted the bourgeois to breed canaries, but it forbade the sale of them, which it was considered would interfere with the trade of the master-fowlers of the town, faubourgs, and suburbs of Paris. [Illustration: Fig. 165.--Powder-horn.--Work of the Sixteenth Century (Artillery Museum of Brussels).] Games and Pastimes. Games of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.--Games of the Circus.--Animal Combats.--Daring of King Pepin.--The King's Lions.--Blind Men's Fights.--Cockneys of Paris.--Champ de Mars.--Cours Plénières and Cours Couronnées.--Jugglers, Tumblers, and Minstrels.--Rope-dancers.--Fireworks.--Gymnastics.--Cards and Dice.--Chess, Marbles, and Billiards.--La Soule, La Pirouette, &c.--Small Games for Private Society.--History of Dancing.--Ballet des Ardents.--The "Orchésographie" (Art of Dancing) of Thoinot Arbeau.--List of Dances. People of all countries and at all periods have been fond of public amusements, and have indulged in games and pastimes with a view to make time pass agreeably. These amusements have continually varied, according to the character of each nation, and according to the capricious changes of fashion. Since the learned antiquarian, J. Meursius, has devoted a large volume to describing the games of the ancient Greeks ("De Ludis Graecorum"), and Rabelais has collected a list of two hundred and twenty games which were in fashion at different times at the court of his gay master, it will be easily understood that a description of all the games and pastimes which have ever been in use by different nations, and particularly by the French, would form an encyclopaedia of some size. We shall give a rapid sketch of the different kinds of games and pastimes which were most in fashion during the Middle Ages and to the end of the sixteenth century--omitting, however, the religious festivals, which belong to a different category; the public festivals, which will come under the chapter on Ceremonials; the tournaments and tilting matches and other sports of warriors, which belong to Chivalry; and, lastly, the scenic and literary representations, which specially belong to the history of the stage. We shall, therefore, limit ourselves here to giving in a condensed form a few historical details of certain court amusements, and a short description of the games of skill and of chance, and also of dancing. The Romans, especially during the times of the emperors, had a passionate love for performances in the circus and amphitheatre, as well as for chariot races, horse races, foot races, combats of animals, and feats of strength and agility. The daily life of the Roman people may be summed up as consisting of taking their food and enjoying games in the circus (_panem et circenses_). A taste for similar amusements was common to the Gauls as well as to the whole Roman Empire; and, were historians silent on the subject, we need no further information than that which is to be gathered from the ruins of the numerous amphitheatres, which are to be found at every centre of Roman occupation. The circus disappeared on the establishment of the Christian religion, for the bishops condemned it as a profane and sanguinary vestige of Paganism, and, no doubt, this led to the cessation of combats between man and beast. They continued, however, to pit wild or savage animals against one another, and to train dogs to fight with lions, tigers, bears, and bulls; otherwise it would be difficult to explain the restoration by King Chilpéric (A.D. 577) of the circuses and arenas at Paris and Soissons. The remains of one of these circuses was not long ago discovered in Paris whilst they were engaged in laying the foundations for a new street, on the west side of the hill of St. Geneviève, a short distance from the old palace of the Caesars, known by the name of the Thermes of Julian. Gregory of Tours states that Chilpéric revived the ancient games of the circus, but that Gaul had ceased to be famous for good athletes and race-horses, although animal combats continued to take place for the amusement of the kings. One day King Pepin halted, with the principal officers of his army, at the Abbey of Ferrières, and witnessed a fight between a lion and a bull. The bull was of enormous size and extraordinary strength, but nevertheless the lion overcame him; whereupon Pepin, who was surnamed the Short, turned to his officers, who used to joke him about his short stature, and said to them, "Make the lion loose his hold of the bull, or kill him." No one dared to undertake so perilous a task, and some said aloud that the man who would measure his strength with a lion must be mad. Upon this, Pepin sprang into the arena sword in hand, and with two blows cut off the heads of the lion and the bull. "What do you think of that?" he said to his astonished officers. "Am I not fit to be your master? Size cannot compare with courage. Remember what little David did to the Giant Goliath." Eight hundred years later there were occasional animal combats at the court of Francis I. "A fine lady," says Brantôme, "went to see the King's lions, in company with a gentleman who much admired her. She suddenly let her glove drop, and it fell into the lions' den. 'I beg of you,' she said, in the calmest way, to her admirer, 'to go amongst the lions and bring me back my glove.' The gentleman made no remark, but, without even drawing his sword, went into the den and gave himself up silently to death to please the lady. The lions did not move, and he was able to leave their den without a scratch and return the lady her missing glove. 'Here is your glove, madam,' he coldly said to her who evidently valued his life at so small a price; 'see if you can find any one else who would do the same as I have done for you.' So saying he left her, and never afterwards looked at or even spoke to her." It has been imagined that the kings of France only kept lions as living symbols of royalty. In 1333 Philippe de Valois bought a barn in the Rue Froidmantel, near the Château du Louvre, where he established a menagerie for his lions, bears, leopards, and other wild beasts. This royal menagerie still existed in the reigns of Charles VIII. and Francis I. Charles V. and his successors had an establishment of lions in the quadrangle of the Grand Hôtel de St. Paul, on the very spot which was subsequently the site of the Rue des Lions St. Paul. These wild beasts were sometimes employed in the combats, and were pitted against bulls and dogs in the presence of the King and his court. It was after one of these combats that Charles IX., excited by the sanguinary spectacle, wished to enter the arena alone in order to attack a lion which had torn some of his best dogs to pieces, and it was only with great difficulty that the audacious sovereign was dissuaded from his foolish purpose. Henry III. had no disposition to imitate his brother's example; for dreaming one night that his lions were devouring him, he had them all killed the next day. The love for hunting wild animals, such as the wolf, bear, and boar (see chapter on Hunting), from an early date took the place of the animal combats as far as the court and the nobles were concerned. The people were therefore deprived of the spectacle of the combats which had had so much charm for them; and as they could not resort to the alternative of the chase, they treated themselves to a feeble imitation of the games of the circus in such amusements as setting dogs to worry old horses or donkeys, &c. (Fig. 166). Bull-fights, nevertheless, continued in the southern provinces of France, as also in Spain. At village feasts not only did wrestling matches take place, but also queer kinds of combats with sticks or birch boughs. Two men, blindfolded, each armed with a stick, and holding in his hand a rope fastened to a stake, entered the arena, and went round and round trying to strike at a fat goose or a pig which was also let loose with them. It can easily be imagined that the greater number of the blows fell like hail on one or other of the principal actors in this blind combat, amidst shouts of laughter from the spectators. [Illustration: Fig. 166.--Fight between a Horse and Dogs.--Fac-simile of a Manuscript in the British Museum (Thirteenth Century).] Nothing amused our ancestors more than these blind encounters; even kings took part at these burlesque representations. At Mid-Lent annually they attended with their court at the Quinze-Vingts, in Paris, in order to see blindfold persons, armed from head to foot, fighting with a lance or stick. This amusement was quite sufficient to attract all Paris. In 1425, on the last day of August, the inhabitants of the capital crowded their windows to witness the procession of four blind men, clothed in full armour, like knights going to a tournament, and preceded by two men, one playing the hautbois and the other bearing a banner on which a pig was painted. These four champions on the next day attacked a pig, which was to become the property of the one who killed it. The lists were situated in the court of the Hôtel d'Armagnac, the present site of the Palais Royal. A great crowd attended the encounter. The blind men, armed with all sorts of weapons, belaboured each other so furiously that the game would have ended fatally to one or more of them had they not been separated and made to divide the pig which they had all so well earned. [Illustration: Fig. 167.--Merchants and Lion-keepers at Constantinople.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood from the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Thevet: folio, 1575.] The people of the Middle Ages had an insatiable love of sight-seeing; they came great distances, from all parts, to witness any amusing exhibition. They would suffer any amount of privation or fatigue to indulge this feeling, and they gave themselves up to it so heartily that it became a solace to them in their greatest sorrows, and they laughed with that hearty laugh which may be said to be one of their natural characteristics. In all public processions in the open air the crowd (or rather, as we might say, the Cockneys of Paris), in their anxiety to see everything that was to be seen, would frequently obstruct all the public avenues, and so prevent the procession from passing along. In consequence of this the Provosts of Paris on these occasions distributed hundreds of stout sticks amongst the sergeants, who used them freely on the shoulders of the most obstinate sight-seers (see chapter on Ceremonials). There was no religious procession, no parish fair, no municipal feast, and no parade or review of troops, which did not bring together crowds of people, whose ears and eyes were wide open, if only to hear the sound of the trumpet, or to see a "dog rush past with a frying-pan tied to his tail." [Illustration: Fig. 168.--Free Distribution of Bread, Meat, and Wine to the People.--Reduced Copy of a Woodcut of the Solemn Entry of Charles V and Pope Clement VII into Bologna, in 1530.] This curiosity of the French was particularly exhibited when the kings of the first royal dynasty held their _Champs de Mars_, the kings of the second dynasty their _Cours Plenières_, and the kings of the third dynasty their _Cours Couronnées._ In these assemblies, where the King gathered together all his principal vassals once or twice a year, to hold personal communication with them, and to strengthen his power by ensuring their feudal services, large quantities of food and fermented liquors were publicly distributed among the people (Fig. 168). The populace were always most enthusiastic spectators of military displays, of court ceremonies, and, above all, of the various amusements which royalty provided for them at great cost in those days: and it was on these state occasions that jugglers, tumblers, and minstrels displayed their talents. The _Champ de Mars_ was one of the principal fêtes of the year, and was held sometimes in the centre of some large town, sometimes in a royal domain, and sometimes in the open country. Bishop Gregory of Tours describes one which was given in his diocese during the reign of Chilpéric, at the Easter festivals, at which we may be sure that the games of the circus, re-established by Chilpéric, excited the greatest interest. Charlemagne also held _Champs de Mars_, but called them _Cours Royales,_ at which he appeared dressed in cloth of gold studded all over with pearls and precious stones. Under the third dynasty King Robert celebrated court days with the same magnificence, and the people were admitted to the palace during the royal banquet to witness the King sitting amongst his great officers of state. The _Cours Plénières_, which were always held at Christmas, Twelfth-day, Easter, and on the day of Pentecost, were not less brilliant during the reigns of Robert's successors. Louis IX. himself, notwithstanding his natural shyness and his taste for simplicity, was noted for the display he made on state occasions. In 1350, Philippe de Valois wore his crown at the _Cours Plénières_, and from that time they were called _Cours Couronnées_. The kings of jugglers were the privileged performers, and their feats and the other amusements, which continued on each occasion for several days, were provided for at the sovereign's sole expense. [Illustration: Fig. 169.--Feats in Balancing.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Thirteenth Century).] These kings of jugglers exercised a supreme authority over the art of jugglery and over all the members of this jovial fraternity. It must not be imagined that these jugglers merely recited snatches from tales and fables in rhyme; this was the least of their talents. The cleverest of them played all sorts of musical instruments, sung songs, and repeated by heart a multitude of stories, after the example of their reputed forefather, King Borgabed, or Bédabie, who, according to these troubadours, was King of Great Britain at the time that Alexander the Great was King of Macedonia. The jugglers of a lower order especially excelled in tumbling and in tricks of legerdemain (Figs. 169 and 170). They threw wonderful somersaults, they leaped through hoops placed at certain distances from one another, they played with knives, slings, baskets, brass balls, and earthenware plates, and they walked on their hands with their feet in the air or with their heads turned downwards so as to look through their legs backwards. These acrobatic feats were even practised by women. According to a legend, the daughter of Herodias was a renowned acrobat, and on a bas-relief in the Cathedral of Rouen we find this Jewish dancer turning somersaults before Herod, so as to fascinate him, and thus obtain the decapitation of John the Baptist. [Illustration: Fig. 170.--Sword-dance to the sound of the Bagpipe.--Fac-simile of a Manuscript in the British Museum (Fourteenth Century).] "The jugglers," adds M. de Labédollière, in his clever work on "The Private Life of the French," "often led about bears, monkeys, and other animals, which they taught to dance or to fight (Figs. 171 and 172). A manuscript in the National Library represents a banquet, and around the table, so as to amuse the guests, performances of animals are going on, such as monkeys riding on horseback, a bear feigning to be dead, a goat playing the harp, and dogs walking on their hind legs." We find the same grotesque figures on sculptures, on the capitals of churches, on the illuminated margins of manuscripts of theology, and on prayer-books, which seems to indicate that jugglers were the associates of painters and illuminators, even if they themselves were not the writers and illuminators of the manuscripts. "Jugglery," M. de Labédollière goes on to say, "at that time embraced poetry, music, dancing, sleight of hand, conjuring, wrestling, boxing, and the training of animals. Its humblest practitioners were the mimics or grimacers, in many-coloured garments, and brazen-faced mountebanks, who provoked laughter at the expense of decency." [Illustration: Fig. 171.--Jugglers exhibiting Monkeys and Bears.--Fac-simile of a Manuscript in the British Museum (Thirteenth Century).] At first, and down to the thirteenth century, the profession of a juggler was a most lucrative one. There was no public or private feast of any importance without the profession being represented. Their mimicry and acrobatic feats were less thought of than their long poems or lays of wars and adventures, which they recited in doggerel rhyme to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The doors of the châteaux were always open to them, and they had a place assigned to them at all feasts. They were the principal attraction at the _Cours Plénières_, and, according to the testimony of one of their poets, they frequently retired from business loaded with presents, such as riding-horses, carriage-horses, jewels, cloaks, fur robes, clothing of violet or scarlet cloth, and, above all, with large sums of money. They loved to recall with pride the heroic memory of one of their own calling, the brave Norman, Taillefer, who, before the battle of Hastings, advanced alone on horseback between the two armies about to commence the engagement, and drew off the attention of the English by singing them the song of Roland. He then began juggling, and taking his lance by the hilt, he threw it into the air and caught it by the point as it fell; then, drawing his sword, he spun it several times over his head, and caught it in a similar way as it fell. After these skilful exercises, during which the enemy were gaping in mute astonishment, he forced his charger through the English ranks, and caused great havoc before he fell, positively riddled with wounds. Notwithstanding this noble instance, not to belie the old proverb, jugglers were never received into the order of knighthood. They were, after a time, as much abused as they had before been extolled. Their licentious lives reflected itself in their obscene language. Their pantomimes, like their songs, showed that they were the votaries of the lowest vices. The lower orders laughed at their coarseness, and were amused at their juggleries; but the nobility were disgusted with them, and they were absolutely excluded from the presence of ladies and girls in the châteaux and houses of the bourgeoisie. We see in the tale of "Le Jugleor" that they acquired ill fame everywhere, inasmuch as they were addicted to every sort of vice. The clergy, and St. Bernard especially, denounced them and held them up to public contempt. St. Bernard spoke thus of them in one of his sermons written in the middle of the twelfth century: "A man fond of jugglers will soon enough possess a wife whose name is Poverty. If it happens that the tricks of jugglers are forced upon your notice, endeavour to avoid them, and think of other things. The tricks of jugglers never please God." [Illustration: Fig. 172.--Equestrian Performances.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in an English Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.] From this remark we may understand their fall as well as the disrepute in which they were held at that time, and we are not surprised to find in an old edition of the "Mémoires du Sire de Joinville" this passage, which is, perhaps, an interpolation from a contemporary document: "St. Louis drove from his kingdom all tumblers and players of sleight of hand, through whom many evil habits and tastes had become engendered in the people." A troubadour's story of this period shows that the jugglers wandered about the country with their trained animals nearly starved; they were half naked, and were often without anything on their heads, without coats, without shoes, and always without money. The lower orders welcomed them, and continued to admire and idolize them for their clever tricks (Fig. 173), but the bourgeois class, following the example of the nobility, turned their backs upon them. In 1345 Guillaume de Gourmont, Provost of Paris, forbad their singing or relating obscene stories, under penalty of fine and imprisonment. [Illustration: Fig. 173.--Jugglers performing in public.--From a Miniature of the Manuscript of "Guarin de Loherane" (Thirteenth Century).--Library of the Arsenal, Paris.] Having been associated together as a confraternity since 1331, they lived huddled together in one street of Paris, which took the name of _Rue des Jougleurs_. It was at this period that the Church and Hospital of St. Julian were founded through the exertions of Jacques Goure, a native of Pistoia, and of Huet le Lorrain, who were both jugglers. The newly formed brotherhood at once undertook to subscribe to this good work, and each member did so according to his means. Their aid to the cost of the two buildings was sixty livres, and they were both erected in the Rue St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Julian the Martyr. The chapel was consecrated on the last Sunday in September, 1335, and on the front of it there were three figures, one representing a troubadour, one a minstrel, and one a juggler, each with his various instruments. The bad repute into which jugglers had fallen did not prevent the kings of France from attaching buffoons, or fools, as they were generally called, to their households, who were often more or less deformed dwarfs, and who, to all intents and purposes, were jugglers. They were allowed to indulge in every sort of impertinence and waggery in order to excite the risibility of their masters (Figs. 174 and 175). These buffoons or fools were an institution at court until the time of Louis XIV., and several, such as Caillette, Triboulet, and Brusquet, are better known in history than many of the statesmen and soldiers who were their contemporaries. [Illustration: Fig. 174.--Dance of Fools.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century in the Bodleian Library of Oxford.] At the end of the fourteenth century the brotherhood of jugglers divided itself into two distinct classes, the jugglers proper and the tumblers. The former continued to recite serious or amusing poetry, to sing love-songs, to play comic interludes, either singly or in concert, in the streets or in the houses, accompanying themselves or being accompanied by all sorts of musical instruments. The tumblers, on the other hand, devoted themselves exclusively to feats of agility or of skill, the exhibition of trained animals, the making of comic grimaces, and tight-rope dancing. [Illustration: A Court-Fool, of the 15th Century. Fac-simile of a miniature from a ms. in the Bibl. de l'Arsenal, Th. lat., no 125.] The art of rope dancing is very ancient; it was patronised by the Franks, who looked upon it as a marvellous effort of human genius. The most remarkable rope-dancers of that time were of Indian origin. All performers in this art came originally from the East, although they afterwards trained pupils in the countries through which they passed, recruiting themselves chiefly from the mixed tribe of jugglers. According to a document quoted by the learned Foncemagne, rope-dancers appeared as early as 1327 at the entertainments given at state banquets by the kings of France. But long before that time they are mentioned in the poems of troubadours as the necessary auxiliaries of any feast given by the nobility, or even by the monasteries. From the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century they were never absent from any public ceremonial, and it was at the state entries of kings and queens, princes and princesses, that they were especially called upon to display their talents. [Illustration: Fig. 175.--Court Fool.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: folio (Basle, 1552).] One of the most extraordinary examples of the daring of these tumblers is to be found in the records of the entry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria into Paris, in 1385 (see chapter on Ceremonials); and, indeed, all the chronicles of the fifteenth century are full of anecdotes of their doings. Mathieu de Coucy, who wrote a history of the time of Charles VII., relates some very curious details respecting a show which took place at Milan, and which astonished the whole of Europe:--"The Duke of Milan ordered a rope to be stretched across his palace, about one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, and of equal length. On to this a Portuguese mounted, walked straight along, going backwards and forwards, and dancing to the sound of the tambourine. He also hung from the rope with his head downwards, and went through all sorts of tricks. The ladies who were looking on could not help hiding their eyes in their handkerchiefs, from fear lest they should see him overbalance and fall and kill himself." The chronicler of Charles XII., Jean d'Arton, tells us of a not less remarkable feat, performed on the occasion of the obsequies of Duke Pierre de Bourbon, which were celebrated at Moulins, in the month of October, 1503, in the presence of the king and the court. "Amongst other performances was that of a German tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, a very young man, who had a thick rope stretched across from the highest part of the tower of the Castle of Mâcon to the windows of the steeple of the Church of the Jacobites. The height of this from the ground was twenty-five fathoms, and the distance from the castle to the steeple some two hundred and fifty paces. On two evenings in succession he walked along this rope, and on the second occasion when he started from the tower of the castle his feat was witnessed by the king and upwards of thirty thousand persons. He performed all sorts of graceful tricks, such as dancing grotesque dances to music and hanging to the rope by his feet and by his teeth. Although so strange and marvellous, these feats were nevertheless actually performed, unless human sight had been deceived by magic. A female dancer also performed in a novel way, cutting capers, throwing somersaults, and performing graceful Moorish and other remarkable and peculiar dances." Such was their manner of celebrating a funeral. In the sixteenth century these dancers and tumblers became so numerous that they were to be met with everywhere, in the provinces as well as in the towns. Many of them were Bohemians or Zingari. They travelled in companies, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, and sometimes with some sort of a conveyance containing the accessories of their craft and a travelling theatre. But people began to tire of these sorts of entertainments, the more so as they were required to pay for them, and they naturally preferred the public rejoicings, which cost them nothing. They were particularly fond of illuminations and fireworks, which are of much later origin than the invention of gunpowder; although the Saracens, at the time of the Crusades, used a Greek fire for illuminations, which considerably alarmed the Crusaders when they first witnessed its effects. Regular fireworks appear to have been invented in Italy, where the pyrotechnic art has retained its superiority to this day, and where the inhabitants are as enthusiastic as ever for this sort of amusement, and consider it, in fact, inseparable from every religious, private, or public festival. This Italian invention was first introduced into the Low Countries by the Spaniards, where it found many admirers, and it made its appearance in France with the Italian artists who established themselves in that country in the reigns of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I. Fireworks could not fail to be attractive at the Court of the Valois, to which Catherine de Médicis had introduced the manners and customs of Italy. The French, who up to that time had only been accustomed to the illuminations of St. John's Day and of the first Sunday in Lent, received those fireworks with great enthusiasm, and they soon became a regular part of the programme for public festivals (Fig. 176). [Illustration: Fig. 176.--Fireworks on the Water, with an Imitation of a Naval Combat.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper of the "Pyrotechnie" of Hanzelet le Lorrain: 4to (Pont-à-Mousson, 1630).] We have hitherto only described the sports engaged in for the amusement of the spectators; we have still to describe those in which the actors took greater pleasure than even the spectators themselves. These were specially the games of strength and skill as well as dancing, with a notice of which we shall conclude this chapter. There were, besides, the various games of chance and the games of fun and humour. Most of the bourgeois and the villagers played a variety of games of agility, many of which have descended to our times, and are still to be found at our schools and colleges. Wrestling, running races, the game of bars, high and wide jumping, leap-frog, blind-man's buff, games of ball of all sorts, gymnastics, and all exercises which strengthened the body or added to the suppleness of the limbs, were long in use among the youth of the nobility (Figs. 177 and 178). The Lord of Fleuranges, in his memoirs written at the court of Francis I., recounts numerous exercises to which he devoted himself during his childhood and youth, and which were then looked upon as a necessary part of the education of chivalry. The nobles in this way acquired a taste for physical exercises, and took naturally to combats, tournaments, and hunting, and subsequently their services in the battle-field gave them plenty of opportunities to gratify the taste thus developed in them. These were not, however, sufficient for their insatiable activity; when they could not do anything else, they played at tennis and such games at all hours of the day; and these pastimes had so much attraction for nobles of all ages that they not unfrequently sacrificed their health in consequence of overtaxing their strength. In 1506 the King of Castile, Philippe le Beau, died of pleurisy, from a severe cold which he caught while playing tennis. [Illustration: Fig. 177.--Somersaults.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in "Exercises in Leaping and Vaulting," by A. Tuccaro: 4to (Paris, 1599).] Tennis also became the favourite game amongst the bourgeois in the towns, and tennis-courts were built in all parts, of such spacious proportions and so well adapted for spectators, that they were often converted into theatres. Their game of billiards resembled the modern one only in name, for it was played on a level piece of ground with wooden balls which were struck with hooked sticks and mallets. It was in great repute in the fourteenth century, for in 1396 Marshal de Boucicault, who was considered one of the best players of his time, won at it six hundred francs (or more than twenty-eight thousand francs of present currency). At the beginning of the following century the Duke Louis d'Orleans ordered _billes et billars_ to be bought for the sum of eleven sols six deniers tournois (about fifteen francs of our money), that he might amuse himself with them. There were several games of the same sort, which were not less popular. Skittles; _la Soule_ or _Soulette_, which consisted of a large ball of hay covered over with leather, the possession of which was contested for by two opposing sides of players; Football; open Tennis; Shuttlecock, &c. It was Charles V. who first thought of giving a more serious and useful character to the games of the people, and who, in a celebrated edict forbidding games of chance, encouraged the establishment of companies of archers and bowmen. These companies, to which was subsequently added that of the arquebusiers, outlived political revolutions, and are still extant, especially in the northern provinces of France. [Illustration: Fig. 178.--The Spring-board.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in "Exercises in Leaping and Vaulting," by A. Tuccaro: 4to (Paris, 1599).] At all times and in all countries the games of chance were the most popular, although they were forbidden both by ecclesiastical and royal authority. New laws were continually being enacted against them, and especially against those in which dice were used, though with little avail. "Dice shall not be made in the kingdom," says the law of 1256; and "those who are discovered using them, and frequenting taverns and bad places, will be looked upon as suspicions characters." A law of 1291 repeats, "That games with dice be forbidden." Nevertheless, though these prohibitions were frequently renewed, people continued to disregard them and to lose much money at such games. The law of 1396 is aimed particularly against loaded dice, which must have been contemporary with the origin of dice themselves, for no games ever gave rise to a greater amount of roguery than those of this description. They were, however, publicly sold in spite of all the laws to the contrary; for, in the "Dit du Mercier," the dealer offers his merchandise thus:-- "J'ay dez de plus, j'ay dez de moins, De Paris, de Chartres, de Rains." ("I have heavy dice, I have light dice, From Paris, from Chartres, and from Rains.") It has been said that the game of dice was at first called the _game of God_, because the regulation of lottery was one of God's prerogatives; but this derivation is purely imaginary. What appears more likely is, that dice were first forbidden by the Church, and then by the civil authorities, on account of the fearful oaths which were so apt to be uttered by those players who had a run of ill luck. Nothing was commoner than for people to ruin themselves at this game. The poems of troubadours are full of imprecations against the fatal chance of dice; many troubadours, such as Guillaume Magret and Gaucelm Faydit, lost their fortunes at it, and their lives in consequence. Rutebeuf exclaims, in one of his satires, "Dice rob me of all my clothes, dice kill me, dice watch me, dice track me, dice attack me, and dice defy me." The blasphemies of the gamblers did not always remain unpunished. "Philip Augustus," says Bigord, in his Latin history of this king, "carried his aversion for oaths to such an extent, that if any one, whether knight or of any other rank, let one slip from his lips in the presence of the sovereign, even by mistake, he was ordered to be immediately thrown into the river." Louis XII., who was somewhat less severe, contented himself with having a hole bored with a hot iron through the blasphemer's tongue. [Illustration: Figs. 179 and 180.--French Cards for a Game of Piquet, early Sixteenth Century.--Collection of the National Library of Paris.] The work "On the Manner of playing with Dice," has handed down to us the technical terms used in these games, which varied as much in practice as in name. They sometimes played with three dice, sometimes with six; different games were also in fashion, and in some the cast of the dice alone decided. The games of cards were also most numerous, but it is not our intention to give the origin of them here. It is sufficient to name a few of the most popular ones in France, which were, Flux, Prime, Sequence, Triomphe, Piquet, Trente-et-un, Passe-dix, Condemnade, Lansquenet, Marriage, Gay, or J'ai, Malcontent, Hère, &c. (Figs. 179 and 180). All these games, which were as much forbidden as dice, were played in taverns as well as at court; and, just as there were loaded dice, so were there also false cards, prepared by rogues for cheating. The greater number of the games of cards formerly did not require the least skill on the part of the players, chance alone deciding. The game of _Tables_, however, required skill and calculation, for under this head were comprised all the games which were played on a board, and particularly chess, draughts, and backgammon. The invention of the game of chess has been attributed to the Assyrians, and there can be no doubt but that it came from the East, and reached Gaul about the beginning of the ninth century, although it was not extensively known till about the twelfth. The annals of chivalry continually speak of the barons playing at these games, and especially at chess. Historians also mention chess, and show that it was played with the same zest in the camp of the Saracens as in that of the Crusaders. We must not be surprised if chess shared the prohibition laid upon dice, for those who were ignorant of its ingenious combinations ranked it amongst games of chance. The Council of Paris, in 1212, therefore condemned chess for the same reasons as dice, and it was specially forbidden to church people, who had begun to make it their habitual pastime. The royal edict of 1254 was equally unjust with regard to this game. "We strictly forbid," says Louis IX., "any person to play at dice, tables, or chess." This pious king set himself against these games, which he looked upon as inventions of the devil. After the fatal day of Mansorah, in 1249, the King, who was still in Egypt with the remnants of his army, asked what his brother, the Comte d'Anjou, was doing. "He was told," says Joinville, "that he was playing at tables with his Royal Highness Gaultier de Nemours. The King was highly incensed against his brother, and, though most feeble from the effects of his illness, went to him, and taking the dice and the tables, had them thrown into the sea." Nevertheless Louis IX. received as a present from the _Vieux de la Montagne_, chief of the Ismalians, a chessboard made of gold and rock crystal, the pieces being of precious metals beautifully worked. It has been asserted, but incorrectly, that this chessboard was the one preserved in the Musée de Cluny, after having long formed part of the treasures of the Kings of France. Amongst the games comprised under the name of _tables_, it is sufficient to mention that of draughts, which was formerly played with dice and with the same men as were used for chess; also the game of _honchet_, or _jonchées_, that is, bones or spillikins, games which required pieces or men in the same way as chess, but which required more quickness of hand than of intelligence; and _épingles_, or push-pin, which was played in a similar manner to the _honchets_, and was the great amusement of the small pages in the houses of the nobility. When they had not épingles, honchets, or draughtsmen to play with, they used their fingers instead, and played a game which is still most popular amongst the Italian people, called the _morra_, and which was as much in vogue with the ancient Romans as it is among the modern Italians. It consisted of suddenly raising as many fingers as had been shown by one's adversary, and gave rise to a great amount of amusement among the players and lookers-on. The games played by girls were, of course, different from those in use among boys. The latter played at marbles, _luettes_, peg or humming tops, quoits, _fouquet, merelles_, and a number of other games, many of which are now unknown. The girls, it is almost needless to say, from the earliest times played with dolls. _Briche_, a game in which a brick and a small stick was used, were also a favourite. _Martiaus_, or small quoits, wolf or fox, blind man's buff, hide and seek, quoits, &c., were all girls' games. The greater part of these amusements were enlivened by a chorus, which all the girls sang together, or by dialogues sung or chanted in unison. [Illustration: Fig. 181.--Allegorical Scene of one of the Courts of Love in Provence--In the First Compartment, the God of Love, Cupid, is sitting on the Stump of a Laurel-tree, wounding with his Darts those who do him homage, the Second Compartment represents the Love Vows of Men and Women.--From the Cover of a Looking-glass, carved in Ivory, of the end of the Thirteenth Century.] [Illustration: The Chess-Players. After a miniature of "_The Three Ages of Man_", a ms. of the fifteenth century attributed to Estienne Porchier. (Bibl. of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.) The scene is laid in one of the saloons of the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, the residence of Louis XI; in the player to the right, the features of the king are recognisable.] If children had their games, which for many generations continued comparatively unchanged, so the dames and the young ladies had theirs, consisting of gallantry and politeness, which only disappeared with those harmless assemblies in which the two sexes vied with each other in urbanity, friendly roguishness, and wit. It would require long antiquarian researches to discover the origin and mode of playing many of these pastimes, such as _des oes, des trois ânes, des accords bigarrés, du jardin madame, de la fricade, du feiseau, de la mick_, and a number of others which are named but not described in the records of the times. The game _à l'oreille,_ the invention of which is attributed to the troubadour Guillaume Adhémar, the _jeu des Valentines,_ or the game of lovers, and the numerous games of forfeits, which have come down to us from the Courts of Love of the Middle Ages, we find to be somewhat deprived of their original simplicity in the way they are now played in country-houses in the winter and at village festivals in the summer. But the Courts of Love are no longer in existence gravely to superintend all these diversions (Fig. 181). Amongst the amusements which time has not obliterated, but which, on the contrary, seem destined to be of longer duration than monuments of stone and brass, we must name dancing, which was certainly one of the principal amusements of society, and which has come down to us through all religions, all customs, all people, and all ages, preserving at the same time much of its original character. Dancing appears, at each period of the world's history, to have been alternately religions and profane, lively and solemn, frivolous and severe. Though dancing was as common an amusement formerly as it is now, there was this essential difference between the two periods, namely, that certain people, such as the Romans, were very fond of seeing dancing, but did not join in it themselves. Tiberius drove the dancers out of Rome, and Domitian dismissed certain senators from their seats in the senate who had degraded themselves by dancing; and there seems to be no doubt that the Romans, from the conquest of Julius Caesar, did not themselves patronise the art. There were a number of professional dancers in Gaul, as well as in the other provinces of the Roman Empire, who were hired to dance at feasts, and who endeavoured to do their best to make their art as popular as possible. The lightheartedness of the Gauls, their natural gaiety, their love for violent exercise and for pleasures of all sorts, made them delight in dancing, and indulge in it with great energy; and thus, notwithstanding the repugnance of the Roman aristocracy and the prohibitions and anathemas of councils and synods, dancing has always been one of the favourite pastimes of the Gauls and the French. [Illustration: Fig. 182.--Dancers on Christmas Night punished for their Impiety, and condemned to dance for a whole Year (Legend of the Fifteenth Century).--Fac-simile of a Woodcut by P. Wohlgemuth, in the "Liber Chronicorum Mundi:" folio (Nuremberg, 1493).] Leuce Carin, a writer of doubtful authority, states that in the early history of Christianity the faithful danced, or rather stamped, in measured time during religions ceremonials, gesticulating and distorting themselves. This is, however, a mistake. The only thing approaching to it was the slight trace of the ancient Pagan dances which remained in the feast of the first Sunday in Lent, and which probably belonged to the religious ceremonies of the Druids. At nightfall fires were lighted in public places, and numbers of people danced madly round them. Rioting and disorderly conduct often resulted from this popular feast, and the magistrates were obliged to interfere in order to suppress it. The church, too, did not close her eyes to the abuses which this feast engendered, although episcopal admonitions were not always listened to (Fig. 182). We see, in the records of one of the most recent Councils of Narbonne, that the custom of dancing in the churches and in the cemeteries on certain feasts had not been abolished in some parts of the Languedoc at the end of the sixteenth century. Dancing was at all times forbidden by the Catholic Church on account of its tendency to corrupt the morals, and for centuries ecclesiastical authority was strenuously opposed to it; but, on the other hand, it could not complain of want of encouragement from the civil power. When King Childebert, in 554, forbade all dances in his domains, he was only induced to do so by the influence of the bishops. We have but little information respecting the dances of this period, and it would be impossible accurately to determine as to the justice of their being forbidden. They were certainly no longer those war-dances which the Franks had brought with them, and which antiquarians have mentioned under the name of _Pyrrhichienne_ dances. In any case, war-dances reappeared at the commencement of chivalry; for, when a new knight was elected, all the knights in full armour performed evolutions, either on foot or on horseback, to the sound of military music, and the populace danced round them. It has been said that this was the origin of court ballets, and La Colombière, in his "Théâtre d'Honneur et de Chevalerie," relates that this ancient dance of the knights was kept up by the Spaniards, who called it the _Moresque_. The Middle Ages was the great epoch for dancing, especially in France. There were an endless number of dancing festivals, and, from reading the old poets and romancers, one might imagine that the French had never anything better to do than to dance, and that at all hours of the day and night. A curious argument in favour of the practical utility of dancing is suggested by Jean Tabourot in his "Orchésographie," published at Langres in 1588, under the name of Thoinot Arbeau. He says, "Dancing is practised in order to see whether lovers are healthy and suitable for one another: at the end of a dance the gentlemen are permitted to kiss their mistresses, in order that they may ascertain if they have an agreeable breath. In this matter, besides many other good results which follow from dancing, it becomes necessary for the good governing of society." Such was the doctrine of the Courts of Love, which stoutly took up the defence of dancing against the clergy. In those days, as soon as the two sexes were assembled in sufficient numbers, before or after the feasts, the balls began, and men and women took each other by the hand and commenced the performance in regular steps (Fig. 183). The author of the poem of Provence, called "Flamença," thus allegorically describes these amusements: "Youth and Gaiety opened the ball, accompanied by their sister Bravery; Cowardice, confused, went of her own accord and hid herself." The troubadours mention a great number of dances, without describing them; no doubt they were so familiar that they thought a description of them needless. They often speak of the _danse au virlet_, a kind of round dance, during the performance of which each person in turn sang a verse, the chorus being repeated by all. In the code of the Courts of Love, entitled "Arresta Amorum," that is, the decrees of love, the _pas de Brabant_ is mentioned, in which each gentleman bent his knee before his lady; and also the _danse au chapelet_, at the end of which each dancer kissed his lady. Romances of chivalry frequently mention that knights used to dance with the dames and young ladies without taking off their helmets and coats of mail. Although this costume was hardly fitted for the purpose, we find, in the romance of "Perceforet," that, after a repast, whilst the tables were being removed, everything was prepared for a ball, and that although the knights made no change in their accoutrements, yet the ladies went and made fresh toilettes. "Then," says the old novelist, "the young knights and the young ladies began to play their instruments and to have the dance." From this custom may be traced the origin of the ancient Gallic proverb, "_Après la panse vient la danse_" ("After the feast comes the dance"). Sometimes a minstrel sang songs to the accompaniment of the harp, and the young ladies danced in couples and repeated at intervals the minstrel's songs. Sometimes the torch-dance was performed; in this each performer bore in his hand a long lighted taper, and endeavoured to prevent his neighbours from blowing it out, which each one tried to do if possible (Fig. 184). This dance, which was in use up to the end of the sixteenth century at court, was generally reserved for weddings. [Illustration: Fig. 183.--Peasant Dances at the May Feasts.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Prayer-book of the Fifteenth Century, in the National Library of Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 184.--Dance by Torchlight, a Scene at the Court of Burgundy.--From a Painting on Wood of 1463, belonging to M. H. Casterman, of Tournai (Belgium).] Dancing lost much of its simplicity and harmlessness when masquerades were introduced, these being the first examples of the ballet. These masquerades, which soon after their introduction became passionately indulged in at court under Charles VI., were, at first, only allowed during Carnival, and on particular occasions called _Charivaris_, and they were usually made the pretext for the practice of the most licentious follies. These masquerades had a most unfortunate inauguration by the catastrophe which rendered the madness of Charles VI. incurable, and which is described in history under the name of the _Burning Ballet_. It was on the 29th of January, 1393, that this ballet made famous the festival held in the Royal Palace of St. Paul in Paris, on the occasion of the marriage of one of the maids of honour of Queen Isabel of Bavaria with a gentleman of Vermandois. The bride was a widow, and the second nuptials were deemed a fitting occasion for the Charivaris. [Illustration: Fig. 185.--The Burning Ballet.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of the "Chroniques" of Froissart (Fifteenth Century), in the National Library of Paris.] A gentleman from Normandy, named Hugonin de Grensay, thought he could create a sensation by having a dance of wild men to please the ladies. "He admitted to his plot," says Froissart, "the king and four of the principal nobles of the court. These all had themselves sewn up in close-fitting linen garments covered with resin on which a quantity of tow was glued, and in this guise they appeared in the middle of the ball. The king was alone, but the other four were chained together. They jumped about like madmen, uttered wild cries, and made all sorts of eccentric gestures. No one knew who these hideous objects were, but the Duke of Orleans determined to find out, so he took a candle and imprudently approached too near one of the men. The tow caught fire, and the flames enveloped him and the other three who were chained to him in a moment." "They were burning for nearly an hour like torches," says a chronicler. "The king had the good fortune to escape the peril, because the Duchesse de Berry, his aunt, recognised him, and had the presence of mind to envelop him in her train" (Fig. 185). Such a calamity, one would have thought, might have been sufficient to disgust people with masquerades, but they were none the less in favour at court for many years afterwards; and, two centuries later, the author of the "Orchésographie" thus writes on the subject: "Kings and princes give dances and masquerades for amusement and in order to afford a joyful welcome to foreign nobles; we also practise the same amusements on the celebration of marriages." In no country in the world was dancing practised with more grace and elegance than in France. Foreign dances of every kind were introduced, and, after being remodelled and brought to as great perfection as possible, they were often returned to the countries from which they had been imported under almost a new character. [Illustration: Fig. 186.--Musicians accompanying the Dancing.--Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving in the "Orchésographie" of Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan Tabourot): 4to (Langres, 1588).] In 1548, the dances of the Béarnais, which were much admired at the court of the Comtes de Foix, especially those called the _danse mauresque_ and the _danse des sauvages_, were introduced at the court of France, and excited great merriment. So popular did they become, that with a little modification they soon were considered essentially French. The German dances, which were distinguished by the rapidity of their movements, were also thoroughly established at the court of France. Italian, Milanese, Spanish, and Piedmontese dances were in fashion in France before the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy: and when this king, followed by his youthful nobility, passed over the mountains to march to the conquest of Naples, he found everywhere in the towns that welcomed him, and in which balls and masquerades were given in honour of his visit, the dance _à la mode de France_, which consisted of a sort of medley of the dances of all countries. Some hundreds of these dances have been enumerated in the fifth book of the "Pantagruel" of Rabelais, and in various humorous works of those who succeeded him. They owed their success to the singing with which they were generally accompanied, or to the postures, pantomimes, or drolleries with which they were supplemented for the amusement of the spectators. A few, and amongst others that of the _five steps_ and that of the _three faces_, are mentioned in the "History of the Queen of Navarre." [Illustration: Fig. 187.--The Dance called "La Gaillarde."--Fac-simile of Wood Engravings from the "Orchésographie" of Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan Tabourot): 4to (Langres, 1588).] Dances were divided into two distinct classes--_danses basses_, or common and regular dances, which did not admit of jumping, violent movements, or extraordinary contortions--and the _danses par haut_, which were irregular, and comprised all sorts of antics and buffoonery. The regular French dance was a _basse_ dance, called the _gaillarde_; it was accompanied by the sound of the hautbois and tambourine, and originally it was danced with great form and state. This is the dance which Jean Tabouret has described; it began with the two performers standing opposite to each other, advancing, bowing, and retiring. "These advancings and retirings were done in steps to the time of the music, and continued until the instrumental accompaniment stopped; then the gentleman made his bow to the lady, took her by the hand, thanked her, and led her to her seat." The _tourdion_ was similar to the _gaillarde_, only faster, and was accompanied with more action. Each province of France had its national dance, such as the _bourrée_ of Auvergne, the _trioris_ of Brittany, the _branles_ of Poitou, and the _valses_ of Lorraine, which constituted a very agreeable pastime, and one in which the French excelled all other nations. This art, "so ancient, so honourable, and so profitable," to use the words of Jean Tabourot, was long in esteem in the highest social circles, and the old men liked to display their agility, and the dames and young ladies to find a temperate exercise calculated to contribute to their health as well as to their amusement. The sixteenth century was the great era of dancing in all the courts of Europe; but under the Valois, the art had more charm and prestige at the court of France than anywhere else. The Queen-mother, Catherine, surrounded by a crowd of pretty young ladies, who composed what she called her _flying squadron_, presided at these exciting dances. A certain Balthazar de Beaujoyeux was master of her ballets, and they danced at the Castle of Blois the night before the Duc de Guise was assassinated under the eyes of Henry III., just as they had danced at the Château of the Tuileries the day after St. Bartholomew's Day. [Illustration: Fig. 188.--The Game of Bob Apple, or Swinging Apple.--Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, in the British Museum.] Commerce. State of Commerce after the Fall of the Roman. Empire.--Its Revival under the Frankish Kings.--Its Prosperity under Charlemagne.--Its Decline down to the Time of the Crusaders.--The Levant Trade of the East.--Flourishing State of the Towns of Provence and Languedoc.--Establishment of Fairs.--Fairs of Landit, Champagne, Beaucaire, and Lyons.--Weights and Measures.--Commercial Flanders. Laws of Maritime Commerce.--Consular Laws.--Banks and Bills of Exchange.--French. Settlements on the Coast of Africa.--Consequences of the Discovery of America. "Commerce in the Middle Ages," says M. Charles Grandmaison, "differed but little from that of a more remote period. It was essentially a local and limited traffic, rather inland than maritime, for long and perilous sea voyages only commenced towards the end of the fifteenth century, or about the time when Columbus discovered America." On the fall of the Roman Empire, commerce was rendered insecure, and, indeed, it was almost completely put a stop to by the barbarian invasions, and all facility of communication between different nations, and even between towns of the same country, was interrupted. In those times of social confusion, there were periods of such poverty and distress, that for want of money commerce was reduced to the simple exchange of the positive necessaries of life. When order was a little restored, and society and the minds of people became more composed, we see commerce recovering its position; and France was, perhaps, the first country in Europe in which this happy change took place. Those famous cities of Gaul, which ancient authors describe to us as so rich and so industrious, quickly recovered their former prosperity, and the friendly relations which were established between the kings of the Franks and the Eastern Empire encouraged the Gallic cities in cultivating a commerce, which was at that time the most important and most extensive in the world. Marseilles, the ancient Phoenician colony, once the rival and then the successor to Carthage, was undoubtedly at the head of the commercial cities of France. Next to her came Arles, which supplied ship-builders and seamen to the fleet of Provence; and Narbonne, which admitted into its harbour ships from Spain, Sicily, and Africa, until, in consequence of the Aude having changed its course, it was obliged to relinquish the greater part of its maritime commerce in favour of Montpellier. [Illustration: Fig. 189.--View of Alexandria in Egypt, in the Sixteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Travels of P. Belon, "Observations de Plusieurs Singularitez," &c.: 4to (Paris, 1588).] Commerce maintained frequent communications with the East; it sought its supplies on the coast of Syria, and especially at Alexandria, in Egypt, which was a kind of depôt for goods obtained from the rich countries lying beyond the Red Sea (Figs. 189 and 190). The Frank navigators imported from these countries, groceries, linen, Egyptian paper, pearls, perfumes, and a thousand other rare and choice articles. In exchange they offered chiefly the precious metals in bars rather than coined, and it is probable that at this period they also exported iron, wines, oil, and wax. The agricultural produce and manufactures of Gaul had not sufficiently developed to provide anything more than what was required for the producers themselves. Industry was as yet, if not purely domestic, confined to monasteries and to the houses of the nobility; and even the kings employed women or serf workmen to manufacture the coarse stuffs with which they clothed themselves and their households. We may add, that the bad state of the roads, the little security they offered to travellers, the extortions of all kinds to which foreign merchants were subjected, and above all the iniquitous System of fines and tolls which each landowner thought right to exact, before letting merchandise pass through his domains, all created insuperable obstacles to the development of commerce. [Illustration: Fig. 190.--Transport of Merchandise on the Backs of Camels.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle," of Thevet: folio, 1575.] The Frank kings on several occasions evinced a desire that communications favourable to trade should be re-established in their dominions. We find, for instance, Chilpéric making treaties with Eastern emperors in favour of the merchants of Agde and Marseilles, Queen Brunehaut making viaducts worthy of the Romans, and which still bear her name, and Dagobert opening at St. Denis free fairs--that is to say, free, or nearly so, from all tolls and taxes--to which goods, both agricultural and manufactured, were sent from every corner of Europe and the known world, to be afterwards distributed through the towns and provinces by the enterprise of internal commerce. After the reign of Dagobert, commerce again declined without positively ceasing, for the revolution, which transferred the power of the kings to the mayors of the palace was not of a nature to exhaust the resources of public prosperity; and a charter of 710 proves that the merchants of Saxony, England, Normandy, and even Hungary, still flocked to the fairs of St. Denis. Under the powerful and administrative hand of Charlemagne, the roads being better kept up, and the rivers being made more navigable, commerce became safe and more general; the coasts were protected from piratical incursions; lighthouses were erected at dangerous points, to prevent shipwrecks; and treaties of commerce with foreign nations, including even the most distant, guaranteed the liberty and security of French traders abroad. Under the weak successors of this monarch, notwithstanding their many efforts, commerce was again subjected to all sorts of injustice and extortions, and all its safeguards were rapidly destroyed. The Moors in the south, and the Normans in the north, appeared to desire to destroy everything which came in their way, and already Marseilles, in 838, was taken and pillaged by the Greeks. The constant altercations between the sons of Louis le Débonnaire and their unfortunate father, their jealousies amongst themselves, and their fratricidal wars, increased the measure of public calamity, so that soon, overrun by foreign enemies and destroyed by her own sons, France became a vast field of disorder and desolation. The Church, which alone possessed some social influence, never ceased to use its authority in endeavouring to remedy this miserable state of things; but episcopal edicts, papal anathemas, and decrees of councils, had only a partial effect at this unhappy period. At any moment agricultural and commercial operations were liable to be interrupted, if not completely ruined, by the violence of a wild and rapacious soldiery; at every step the roads, often impassable, were intercepted by toll-bars for some due of a vexatious nature, besides being continually infested by bands of brigands, who carried off the merchandise and murdered those few merchants who were so bold as to attempt to continue their business. It was the Church, occupied as she was with the interests of civilisation, who again assisted commerce to emerge from the state of annihilation into which it had fallen; and the "Peace or Truce of God," established in 1041, endeavoured to stop at least the internal wars of feudalism, and it succeeded, at any rate for a time, in arresting these disorders. This was all that could be done at that period, and the Church accomplished it, by taking the high hand; and with as much unselfishness as energy and courage, she regulated society, which had been abandoned by the civil power from sheer impotence and want of administrative capability. [Illustration: Fig. 191.--Trade on the Seaports of the Levant.--After a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Travels of Marco Polo (Fifteenth Century), Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] At all events, thanks to ecclesiastical foresight, which increased the number of fairs and markets at the gates of abbeys and convents, the first step was made towards the general resuscitation of commerce. Indeed, the Church may be said to have largely contributed to develop the spirit of progress and liberty, whence were to spring societies and nationalities, and, in a word, modern organization. The Eastern commerce furnished the first elements of that trading activity which showed itself on the borders of the Mediterranean, and we find the ancient towns of Provence and Languedoc springing up again by the aide of the republics of Amalfi, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, which had become the rich depôts of all maritime trade. At first, as we have already stated, the wares of India came to Europe through the Greek port of Alexandria, or through Constantinople. The Crusades, which had facilitated the relations with Eastern countries, developed a taste in the West for their indigenous productions, gave a fresh vigour to this foreign commerce, and rendered it more productive by removing the stumbling blocks which had arrested its progress (Fig. 191). The conquest of Palestine by the Crusaders had first opened all the towns and harbours of this wealthy region to Western traders, and many of them were able permanently to establish themselves there, with all sorts of privileges and exemptions from taxes, which were gladly offered to them by the nobles who had transferred feudal power to Mussulman territories. Ocean commerce assumed from this moment proportions hitherto unknown. Notwithstanding the papal bulls and decrees, which forbade Christians from having any connection with infidels, the voice of interest was more listened to than that of the Church (Fig. 192), and traders did not fear to disobey the political and religions orders which forbade them to carry arms and slaves to the enemies of the faith. It was easy to foretell, from the very first, that the military occupation of the Holy Land would not be permanent. In consequence of this, therefore, the nearer the loss of this fine conquest seemed to be, the greater were the efforts made by the maritime towns of the West to re-establish, on a more solid and lasting basis, a commercial alliance with Egypt, the country which they selected to replace Palestine, in a mercantile point of view. Marseilles was the greatest supporter of this intercourse with Egypt; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries she reached a very high position, which she owed to her shipowners and traders. In the fourteenth century, however, the princes of the house of Anjou ruined her like the rest of Provence, in the great and fruitless efforts which they made to recover the kingdom of Naples; and it was not until the reign of Louis XI. that the old Phoenician city recovered its maritime and commercial prosperity (Fig. 193). [Illustration: Fig. 192.--Merchant Vessel in a Storm.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Grand Kalendrier et Compost des Bergers," in folio: printed at Troyes, about 1490, by Nicolas de Rouge.[*] [Footnote *: "Mortal man, living in the world, is compared to a vessel on perilous seas, bearing rich merchandise, by which, if it can come to harbour, the merchant will be rendered rich and happy. The ship from the commencement to the end of its voyage is in great peril of being lost or taken by an enemy, for the seas are always beset with perils. So is the body of man during its sojourn in the world. The merchandise he bears is his soul, his virtues, and his good deeds. The harbour is paradise, and he who reaches that haven is made supremely rich. The sea is the world, full of vices and sins, and in which all, during their passage through life, are in peril and danger of losing body and soul and of being drowned in the infernal sea, from which God in His grace keep us! Amen."] ] [Illustration: Fig. 193.--View and Plan of Marseilles and its Harbour, in the Sixteenth Century.--From a Copper-plate in the Collection of G. Bruin, in folio: "Théâtre des Citez du Monde."] Languedoc, depressed, and for a time nearly ruined in the thirteenth century by the effect of the wars of the Albigenses, was enabled, subsequently, to recover itself. Béziers, Agde, Narbonne, and especially Montpellier, so quickly established important trading connections with all the ports of the Mediterranean, that at the end of the fourteenth century consuls were appointed at each of these towns, in order to protect and direct their transmarine commerce. A traveller of the twelfth century, Benjamin de Tudèle, relates that in these ports, which were afterwards called the stepping stones to the Levant, every language in the world might be heard. Toulouse was soon on a par with the towns of Lower Languedoc, and the Garonne poured into the markets, not only the produce of Guienne, and of the western parts of France, but also those of Flanders, Normandy, and England. We may observe, however, that Bordeaux, although placed in a most advantageous position, at the mouth of the river, only possessed, when under the English dominion, a very limited commerce, principally confined to the export of wines to Great Britain in exchange for corn, oil, &c. La Rochelle, on the same coast, was much more flourishing at this period, owing to the numerous coasters which carried the wines of Aunis and Saintonge, and the salt of Brouage to Flanders, the Netherlands, and the north of Germany. Vitré already had its silk manufactories in the fifteenth century, and Nantes gave promise of her future greatness as a depôt of maritime commerce. It was about this time also that the fisheries became a new industry, in which Bayonne and a few villages on the sea-coast took the lead, some being especially engaged in whaling, and others in the cod and herring fisheries (Fig. 194). Long before this, Normandy had depended on other branches of trade for its commercial prosperity. Its fabrics of woollen stuffs, its arms and cutlery, besides the agricultural productions of its fertile and well-cultivated soil, each furnished material for export on a large scale. The towns of Rouen and Caen were especially manufacturing cities, and were very rich. This was the case with Rouen particularly, which was situated on the Seine, and was at that time an extensive depôt for provisions and other merchandise which was sent down the river for export, or was imported for future internal consumption. Already Paris, the abode of kings, and the metropolis of government, began to foreshadow the immense development which it was destined to undergo, by becoming the centre of commercial affairs, and by daily adding to its labouring and mercantile population (Figs. 195 and 196). It was, however, outside the walls of Paris that commerce, which needed liberty as well as protection, at first progressed most rapidly. The northern provinces had early united manufacturing industry with traffic, and this double source of local prosperity was the origin of their enormous wealth. Ghent and Bruges in the Low Countries, and Beauvais and Arras, were celebrated for their manufacture of cloths, carpets, and serge, and Cambrai for its fine cloths. The artizans and merchants of these industrious cities then established their powerful corporations, whose unwearied energy gave rise to that commercial freedom so favourable to trade. [Illustration: Fig. 194. Whale-Fishing. Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Thevet, in folio: Paris, 1574.] More important than the woollen manufactures--for the greater part of the wool used was brought from England--was the manufacture of flax, inasmuch as it encouraged agriculture, the raw material being produced in France. This first flourished in the north-east of France, and spread slowly to Picardy, to Beauvois, and Brittany. The central countries, with the exception of Bruges, whose cloth manufactories were already celebrated in the fifteenth century, remained essentially agricultural; and their principal towns were merely depôts for imported goods. The institution of fairs, however, rendered, it is true, this commerce of some of the towns as wide-spread as it was productive. In the Middle Ages religious feasts and ceremonials almost always gave rise to fairs, which commerce was not slow in multiplying as much as possible. The merchants naturally came to exhibit their goods where the largest concourse of people afforded the greatest promise of their readily disposing of them. As early as the first dynasty of Merovingian kings, temporary and periodical markets of this kind existed; but, except at St. Denis, articles of local consumption only were brought to them. The reasons for this were, the heavy taxes which were levied by the feudal lords on all merchandise exhibited for sale, and the danger which foreign merchants ran of being plundered on their way, or even at the fair itself. These causes for a long time delayed the progress of an institution which was afterwards destined to become so useful and beneficial to all classes of the community. We have several times mentioned the famous fair of Landit, which is supposed to have been established by Charlemagne, but which no doubt was a sort of revival of the fairs of St. Denis, founded by Dagobert, and which for a time had fallen into disuse in the midst of the general ruin which preceded that emperor's reign. This fair of Landit was renowned over the whole of Europe, and attracted merchants from all countries. It was held in the month of June, and only lasted fifteen days. Goods of all sorts, both of home and foreign manufacture, were sold, but the sale of parchment was the principal object of the fair, to purchase a supply of which the University of Paris regularly went in procession. On account of its special character, this fair was of less general importance than the six others, which from the twelfth century were held at Troyes, Provins, Lagny-sur-Marne, Rheims, and Bar-sur-Aube. These infused so much commercial vitality into the province of Champagne, that the nobles for the most part shook off the prejudice which forbad their entering into any sort of trading association. Fairs multiplied in the centre and in the south of France simultaneously. Those of Puy-en-Velay, now the capital of the Haute-Loire, are looked upon as the most ancient, and they preserved their old reputation and attracted a considerable concourse of people, which was also increased by the pilgrimages then made to Notre-Dame du Puy. These fairs, which were more of a religious than of a commercial character, were then of less importance as regards trade than those held at Beaucaire. This town rose to great repute in the thirteenth century, and, with the Lyons market, became at that time the largest centre of commerce in the southern provinces. Placed at the junction of the Saóne and the Rhône, Lyons owed its commercial development to the proximity of Marseilles and the towns of Italy. Its four annual fairs were always much frequented, and when the kings of France transferred to it the privileges of the fairs of Champagne, and transplanted to within its walls the silk manufactories formerly established at Tours, Lyons really became the second city of France. [Illustration: Fig. 195.--Measurers of Corn in Paris. Fig. 196.--Hay Carriers. Fac-simile of Woodcuts from the "Royal Orders concerning the Jurisdiction of the Company of Merchants and Shrievalty in the City of Paris," in small folio goth.: Jacques Nyverd, 1528.] It may be asserted as an established fact that the gradual extension of the power of the king, produced by the fall of feudalism, was favourable to the extension of commerce. As early as the reign of Louis IX. many laws and regulations prove that the kings were alive to the importance of trade. Among the chief enactments was one which led to the formation of the harbour of Aigues-Mortes on the Mediterranean; another to the publication of the book of "Weights and Measures," by Etienne Boileau, a work in which the ancient statutes of the various trades were arranged and codified; and a third to the enactment made in the very year of this king's death, to guarantee the security of vendors, and, at the same time, to ensure purchasers against fraud. All these bear undoubted witness that an enlightened policy in favour of commerce had already sprung up. Philippe le Bel issued several prohibitory enactments also in the interest of home commerce and local industry, which Louis X. confirmed. Philippe le Long attempted even to outdo the judicious efforts of Louis XI., and tried, though unsuccessfully, to establish a uniformity in the weights and measures throughout the kingdom; a reform, however, which was never accomplished until the revolution of 1789. It is difficult to credit how many different weights and measures were in use at that time, each one varying according to local custom or the choice of the lord of the soil, who probably in some way profited by the confusion which this uncertain state of things must have produced. The fraud and errors to which this led may easily be imagined, particularly in the intercourse between one part of the country and another. The feudal stamp is here thoroughly exhibited; as M. Charles de Grandmaison remarks, "Nothing is fixed, nothing is uniform, everything is special and arbitrary, settled by the lord of the soil by virtue of his right of _justesse_, by which he undertook the regulation and superintendence of the weights and measures in use in his lordship." Measures of length and contents often differed much from one another, although they might be similarly named, and it would require very complicated comparative tables approximately to fix their value. The _pied de roi_ was from ten to twelve inches, and was the least varying measure. The fathom differed much in different parts, and in the attempt to determine the relations between the innumerable measures of contents which we find recorded--a knowledge of which must have been necessary for the commerce of the period--we are stopped by a labyrinth of incomprehensible calculations, which it is impossible to determine with any degree of certainty. The weights were more uniform and less uncertain. The pound was everywhere in use, but it was not everywhere of the same standard (Fig. 201). For instance, at Paris it weighed sixteen ounces, whereas at Lyons it only weighed fourteen; and in weighing silk fifteen ounces to the pound was the rule. At Toulouse and in Upper Languedoc the pound was only thirteen and a half ounces; at Marseilles, thirteen ounces; and at other places it even fell to twelve ounces. There was in Paris a public scale called _poids du roi_; but this scale, though a most important means of revenue, was a great hindrance to retail trade. In spite of these petty and irritating impediments, the commerce of France extended throughout the whole world. [Illustration: Fig. 197.--View of Lubeck and its Harbour (Sixteenth Century).--From a Copper-plate in the Work of P. Bertius, "Commentaria Rerum Germanicarum," in 4to: Amsterdam, 1616.] The compass--known in Italy as early as the twelfth century, but little used until the fourteenth--enabled the mercantile navy to discover new routes, and it was thus that true maritime commerce may be said regularly to have begun. The sailors of the Mediterranean, with the help of this little instrument, dared to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, and to venture on the ocean. From that moment commercial intercourse, which had previously only existed by land, and that with great difficulty, was permanently established between the northern and southern harbours of Europe. Flanders was the central port for merchant vessels, which arrived in great numbers from the Mediterranean, and Bruges became the principal depôt. The Teutonic league, the origin of which dates from the thirteenth century, and which formed the most powerful confederacy recorded in history, also sent innumerable vessels from its harbours of Lubeck (Fig. 197) and Hamburg. These carried the merchandise of the northern countries into Flanders, and this rich province, which excelled in every branch of industry, and especially in those relating to metals and weaving, became the great market of Europe (Fig. 198). The commercial movement, formerly limited to the shores of the Mediterranean, extended to all parts, and gradually became universal. The northern states shared in it, and England, which for a long time kept aloof from a stage on which it was destined to play the first part, began to give indications of its future commercial greatness. The number of transactions increased as the facility for carrying them on became greater. Consumption being extended, production progressively followed, and so commerce went on gaining strength as it widened its sphere. Everything, in fact, seemed to contribute to its expansion. The downfall of the feudal system and the establishment in each country of a central power, more or less strong and respected, enabled it to extend its operations by land with a degree of security hitherto unknown; and, at the same time, international legislation came in to protect maritime trade, which was still exposed to great dangers. The sea, which was open freely to the whole human race, gave robbers comparatively easy means of following their nefarious practices, and with less fear of punishment than they could obtain on the shore of civilised countries. For this reason piracy continued its depredations long after the enactment of severe laws for its suppression. This maritime legislation did not wait for the sixteenth century to come into existence. Maritime law was promulgated more or less in the twelfth century, but the troubles and agitations which weakened and disorganized empires during that period of the Middle Ages, deprived it of its power and efficiency. The _Code des Rhodiens_ dates as far back as 1167; the _Code de la Mer_, which became a sort of recognised text-book, dates from the same period; the _Lois d'Oléron_ is anterior to the twelfth century, and ruled the western coasts of France, being also adopted in Flanders and in England; Venice dated her most ancient law on maritime rights from 1255, and the Statutes of Marseilles date from 1254. [Illustration: Fig. 198.--Execution of the celebrated pirate Stoertebeck and his seventy accomplices, in 1402, at Hamburg.--From a popular Picture of the end of the Sixteenth Century (Hamburg Library).] The period of the establishment of commercial law and justice corresponds with that of the introduction of national and universal codes of law and consular jurisdiction. These may be said to have originated in the sixth century in the laws of the Visigoths, which empowered foreign traders to be judged by delegates from their own countries. The Venetians had consuls in the Greek empire as early as the tenth century, and we may fairly presume that the French had consuls in Palestine during the reign of Charlemagne. In the thirteenth century the towns of Italy had consular agents in France; and Marseilles had them in Savoy, in Arles, and in Genoa. Thus traders of each country were always sure of finding justice, assistance, and protection in all the centres of European commerce. Numerous facilities for barter were added to these advantages. Merchants, who at first travelled with their merchandise, and who afterwards merely sent a factor as their representative, finally consigned it to foreign agents. Communication by correspondence in this way became more general, and paper replaced parchment as being less rare and less expensive. The introduction of Arabic figures, which were more convenient than the Roman numerals for making calculations, the establishment of banks, of which the most ancient was in operation in Venice as early as the twelfth century, the invention of bills of exchange, attributed to the Jews, and generally in use in the thirteenth century, the establishment of insurance against the risks and perils of sea and land, and lastly, the formation of trading companies, or what are now called partnerships, all tended to give expansion and activity to commerce, whereby public and private wealth was increased in spite of obstacles which routine, envy, and ill-will persistently raised against great commercial enterprises. For a long time the French, through indolence or antipathy--for it was more to their liking to be occupied with arms and chivalry than with matters of interest and profit--took but a feeble part in the trade which was carried on so successfully on their own territory. The nobles were ashamed to mix in commerce, considering it unworthy of them, and the bourgeois, for want of liberal feeling and expansiveness in their ideas, were satisfied with appropriating merely local trade. Foreign commerce, even of the most lucrative description, was handed over to foreigners, and especially to Jews, who were often banished from the kingdom and as frequently ransomed, though universally despised and hated. Notwithstanding this, they succeeded in rising to wealth under the stigma of shame and infamy, and the immense gains which they realised by means of usury reconciled them to, and consoled them for, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected. [Illustration: Fig. 199.--Discovery of America, 12th of May, 1492.--Columbus erects the Cross and baptizes the Isle of Guanahani (now Cat Island, one of the Bahamas) by the Christian Name of St. Salvador.--From a Stamp engraved on Copper by Th. de Bry, in the Collection of "Grands Voyages," in folio, 1590.] At a very early period, and especially when the Jews had been absolutely expelled, the advantage of exclusively trading with and securing the rich profits from France had attracted the Italians, who were frequently only Jews in disguise, concealing themselves as to their character under the generic name of Lombards. It was under this name that the French kings gave them on different occasions various privileges, when they frequented the fairs of Champagne and came to establish themselves in the inland and seaport towns. These Italians constituted the great corporation of money-changers in Paris, and hoarded in their coffers all the coin of the kingdom, and in this way caused a perpetual variation in the value of money, by which they themselves benefited. In the sixteenth century the wars of Italy rather changed matters, and we find royal and important concessions increasing in favour of Castilians and other Spaniards, whom the people maliciously called _negroes_, and who had emigrated in order to engage in commerce and manufactures in Saintonge, Normandy, Burgundy, Agenois, and Languedoc. About the time of Louis XI., the French, becoming more alive to their true interests, began to manage their own affairs, following the suggestions and advice of the King, whose democratic instincts prompted him to encourage and favour the bourgeois. This result was also attributable to the state of peace and security which then began to exist in the kingdom, impoverished and distracted as it had been by a hundred years of domestic and foreign warfare. From 1365 to 1382 factories and warehouses were founded by Norman navigators on the western coast of Africa, in Senegal and Guinea. Numerous fleets of merchantmen, of great size for those days, were employed in transporting cloth, grain of all kinds, knives, brandy, salt, and other merchandise, which were bartered for leather, ivory, gum, amber, and gold dust. Considerable profits were realised by the shipowners and merchants, who, like Jacques Coeur, employed ships for the purpose of carrying on these large and lucrative commercial operations. These facts sufficiently testify the condition of France at this period, and prove that this, like other branches of human industry, was arrested in its expansion by the political troubles which followed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Fortunately these social troubles were not universal, and it was just at the period when France was struggling and had become exhausted and impoverished that the Portuguese extended their discoveries on the same coast of Africa, and soon after succeeded in rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and opening a new maritime road to India, a country which was always attractive from the commercial advantages which it offered. Some years after, Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, more daring and more fortunate still, guided by the compass and impelled by his own genius, discovered a new continent, the fourth continent of the world (Fig. 199). This unexpected event, the greatest and most remarkable of the age, necessarily enlarged the field for produce as well as for consumption to an enormous extent, and naturally added, not only to the variety and quantity of exchangeable wares, but also to the production of the precious metals, and brought about a complete revolution in the laws of the whole civilised world. Maritime commerce immediately acquired an extraordinary development, and merchants, forsaking the harbours of the Mediterranean, and even those of the Levant, which then seemed to them scarcely worthy of notice, sent their vessels by thousands upon the ocean in pursuit of the wonderful riches of the New World. The day of caravans and coasting had passed; Venice had lost its splendour; the sway of the Mediterranean was over; the commerce of the world was suddenly transferred from the active and industrious towns of that sea, which had so long monopolized it, to the Western nations, to the Portuguese and Spaniards first, and then to the Dutch and English. France, absorbed in, and almost ruined by civil war, and above all by religious dissensions, only played a subordinate part in this commercial and pacific revolution, although it has been said that the sailors of Dieppe and Honfleur really discovered America before Columbus. Nevertheless the kings of France, Louis XII., Francis I., and Henry II., tried to establish and encourage transatlantic voyages, and to create, in the interest of French commerce, colonies on the coasts of the New World, from Florida and Virginia to Canada. But these colonies had but a precarious and transitory existence; fisheries alone succeeded, and French commerce continued insignificant, circumscribed, and domestic, notwithstanding the increasing requirements of luxury at court. This luxury contented itself with the use of the merchandise which arrived from the Low Countries, Spain, and Italy. National industry did all in its power to surmount this ignominious condition; she specially turned her attention to the manufacture of silks and of stuffs tissued with gold and silver. The only practical attempt of the government in the sixteenth century to protect commerce and manufactures was to forbid the import of foreign merchandise, and to endeavour to oppose the progress of luxury by rigid enactments. Certainly the government of that time little understood the advantages which a country derived from commerce when it forbade the higher classes from engaging in mercantile pursuits under penalty of having their privileges of nobility withdrawn from them. In the face of the examples of Italy, Genoa, Venice, and especially of Florence, where the nobles were all traders or sons of traders, the kings of the line of Valois thought proper to make this enactment. The desire seemed to be to make the merchant class a separate class, stationary, and consisting exclusively of bourgeois, shut up in their counting-houses, and prevented in every way from participating in public life. The merchants became indignant at this banishment, and, in order to employ their leisure, they plunged with all their energy into the sanguinary struggles of Reform and of the League. [Illustration: Fig. 200.--Medal to commemorate the Association of the Merchants of the City of Rouen.] It was not until the reign of Henry IV. that they again confined themselves to their occupations as merchants, when Sully published the political suggestions of his master for renewing commercial prosperity. From this time a new era commenced in the commercial destiny of France. Commerce, fostered and protected by statesmen, sought to extend its operations with greater freedom and power. Companies were formed at Paris, Marseilles, Lyons, and Rouen to carry French merchandise all over the world, and the rules of the mercantile associations, in spite of the routine and jealousies which guided the trade corporations, became the code which afterwards regulated commerce (Fig. 200). [Illustration: Fig. 201.--Standard Weight in Brass of the Fish-market at Mans: Sign of the Syren (End of the Sixteenth Century).] Guilds and Trade Corporations. Uncertain Origin of Corporations.--Ancient Industrial Associations.--The Germanic Guild.--Colleges.--Teutonic Associations.--The Paris Company for the Transit of Merchandise by Water.--Corporations properly so called.--Etienne Boileau's "Book of Trades," or the First Code of Regulations.--The Laws governing Trades.--Public and Private Organization of Trade Corporations and other Communities.--Energy of the Corporations.--Masters, Journeymen, Supernumeraries, and Apprentices.--Religious Festivals and Trade Societies.--Trade Unions. Learned authorities have frequently discussed, without agreeing, on the question of the origin of the Corporations of the Middle Ages. It may be admitted, we think _à priori_, that associations of artisans were as ancient as the trades themselves. It may readily be imagined that the numerous members of the industrial classes, having to maintain and defend their common rights and common interests, would have sought to establish mutual fraternal associations among themselves. The deeper we dive into ancient history the clearer we perceive traces, more or less distinct, of these kinds of associations. To cite only two examples, which may serve to some extent as an historical parallel to the analogous institutions of the present day, we may mention the Roman _Colleges_, which were really leagues of artisans following the same calling; and the Scandinavian guilds, whose object was to assimilate the different branches of industry and trade, either of a city or of some particular district. Indeed, brotherhoods amongst the labouring classes always existed under the German conquerors from the moment when Europe, so long divided into Roman provinces, shook off the yoke of subjection to Rome, although she still adhered to the laws and customs of the nation which had held her in subjection for so many generations. We can, however, only regard the few traces which remain of these brotherhoods as evidence of their having once existed, and not as indicative of their having been in a flourishing state. In the fifth century, the Hermit Ampelius, in his "Legends of the Saints," mentions _Consuls_ or Chiefs of Locksmiths. The Corporation of Goldsmiths is spoken of as existing in the first dynasty of the French kings. Bakers are named collectively in 630 in the laws of Dagobert, which seems to show that they formed a sort of trade union at that remote period. We also see Charlemagne, in several of his statutes, taking steps in order that the number of persons engaged in providing food of different kinds should everywhere be adequate to provide for the necessities of consumption, which would tend to show a general organization of that most important branch of industry. In Lombardy colleges of artisans were established at an early period, and were, no doubt, on the model of the Roman ones. Ravenna, in 943, possessed a College of Fishermen; and ten years later the records of that town mention a _Chief of the Corporation of Traders_, and, in 1001, a _Chief of the Corporation of Butchers_. France at the same time kept up a remembrance of the institutions of Roman Gaul, and the ancient colleges of trades still formed associations and companies in Paris and in the larger towns. In 1061 King Philip I. granted certain privileges to Master Chandlers and Oilmen. The ancient customs of the butchers are mentioned as early as the time of Louis VII., 1162. The same king granted to the wife of Ives Laccobre and her heirs the collectorship of the dues which were payable by tanners, purse-makers, curriers, and shoemakers. Under Philip Augustus similar concessions became more frequent, and it is evident that at that time trade was beginning to take root and to require special and particular administration. This led to regulations being drawn up for each trade, to which Philip Augustus gave his sanction. In 1182 he confirmed the statutes of the butchers, and the furriers and drapers also obtained favourable concessions from him. According to the learned Augustin Thierry, corporations, like civic communities, were engrafted on previously existing guilds, such as on the colleges or corporations of workmen, which were of Roman origin. In the _guild_, which signifies a banquet at common expense, there was a mutual assurance against misfortunes and injuries of all sorts, such as fire and shipwreck, and also against all lawsuits incurred for offences and crimes, even though they were proved against the accused. Each of these associations was placed under the patronage of a god or of a hero, and had its compulsory statutes; each had its chief or president chosen from among the members, and a common treasury supplied by annual contributions. Roman colleges, as we have already stated, were established with a more special purpose, and were more exclusively confined to the peculiar trade to which they belonged; but these, equally with the guilds, possessed a common exchequer, enjoyed equal rights and privileges, elected their own presidents, and celebrated in common their sacrifices, festivals, and banquets. We have, therefore, good reason for agreeing in the opinion of the celebrated historian, who considers that in the establishment of a corporation "the guild should be to a certain degree the motive power, and the Roman college, with its organization, the material which should be used to bring it into existence." [Illustration: Fig. 202.--Craftsmen in the Fourteenth Century--Fac-simile of a Miniature of a Manuscript in the Library of Brussels.] It is certain, however, that during several centuries corporations were either dissolved or hidden from public notice, for they almost entirely disappeared from the historic records during the partial return to barbarism, when the production of objects of daily necessity and the preparation of food were entrusted to slaves under the eye of their master. Not till the twelfth century did they again begin to flourish, and, as might be supposed, it was Italy which gave the signal for the resuscitation of the institutions whose birthplace had been Rome, and which barbarism had allowed to fall into decay. Brotherhoods of artisans were also founded at an early period in the north of Gaul, whence they rapidly spread beyond the Rhine. Under the Emperor Henry I., that is, during the tenth century, the ordinary condition of artisans in Germany was still serfdom; but two centuries later the greater number of trades in most of the large towns of the empire had congregated together in colleges or bodies under the name of unions (_Einnungen_ or _Innungen_) (Fig. 202), as, for example, at Gozlar, at Würzburg, at Brunswick, &c. These colleges, however, were not established without much difficulty and without the energetic resistance of the ruling powers, inasmuch as they often raised their pretensions so high as to wish to substitute their authority for the senatorial law, and thus to grasp the government of the cities. The thirteenth century witnessed obstinate and sanguinary feuds between these two parties, each of which was alternately victorious. Whichever had the upper hand took advantage of the opportunity to carry out the most cruel reprisals against its defeated opponents. The Emperors Frederick II. and Henry VII. tried to put an end to these strifes by abolishing the corporations of workmen, but these powerful associations fearlessly opposed the imperial authority. In France the organization of communities of artisans, an organization which in many ways was connected with the commercial movement, but which must not be confounded with it, did not give rise to any political difficulty. It seems not even to have met with any opposition from the feudal powers, who no doubt found it an easy pretext for levying additional rates and taxes. The most ancient of these corporations was the Parisian _Hanse_, or corporation of the bourgeois for canal navigation, which probably dates its origin back to the college of Parisian _Nautes_, existing before the Roman conquest. This mercantile association held its meetings in the island of Lutetia, on the very spot where the church of Notre-Dame was afterwards built. From the earliest days of monarchy tradesmen constituted entirely the bourgeois of the towns (Fig. 203). Above them were the nobility or clergy, beneath them the artisans. Hence we can understand how the bourgeois, who during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a distinct section of the community, became at last the important commercial body itself. The kings invariably treated them with favour. Louis VI. granted them new rights, Louis VII. confirmed their ancient privileges, and Philip Augustus increased them. The Parisian Hanse succeeded in monopolising all the commerce which was carried on by water on the Seine and the Yonne between Mantes and Auxerre. No merchandise coming up or down the stream in boats could be disembarked in the interior of Paris without becoming, as it were, the property of the corporation, which, through its agents, superintended its measurement and its sale in bulk, and, up to a certain point, its sale by retail. No foreign merchant was permitted to send his goods to Paris without first obtaining _lettres de Hanse_, whereby he had associated with him a bourgeois of the town, who acted as his guarantee, and who shared in his profits. [Illustration: Fig. 203.--Merchants or Tradesmen of the Fourteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Library at Brussels.] There were associations of the same kind in most of the commercial towns situated on the banks of rivers and on the sea-coast, as, for example, at Rouen, Arles, Marseilles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Ratisbon, Augsburg, and Utrecht. Sometimes neighbouring towns, such as the great manufacturing cities of Flanders, agreed together and entered into a leagued bond, which gave them greater power, and constituted an offensive and defensive compact (Fig. 204). A typical example of this last institution is that of the commercial association of the _Hanseatic Towns_ of Germany, which were grouped together to the number of eighty around their four capitals, viz., Lubeck, Cologne, Dantzic, and Brunswick. [Illustration: Fig. 204.--Seal of the United Trades of Ghent (End of the Fifteenth Century).] Although, as we have already seen, previous to the thirteenth century many of the corporations of artisans had been authorised by several of the kings of France to make special laws whereby they might govern themselves, it was really only from the reign of St. Louis that the first general measures of administration and police relating to these communities can be dated. The King appointed Etienne Boileau, a rich bourgeois, provost of the capital in 1261, to set to work to establish order, wise administration, and "good faith" in the commerce of Paris. To this end he ascertained from the verbal testimony of the senior members of each corporation the customs and usages of the various crafts, which for the most part up to that time had not been committed to writing. He arranged and probably amended them in many ways, and thus composed the famous "Book of Trades," which, as M. Depping, the able editor of this valuable compilation, first published in 1837, says, "has the advantage of being to a great extent the genuine production of the corporations themselves, and not a list of rules established and framed by the municipal or judicial authorities." From that time corporations gradually introduced themselves into the order of society. The royal decrees in their favour were multiplied, and the regulations with regard to mechanical trades daily improved, not only in Paris and in the provinces, and also abroad, both in the south and in the north of Europe, especially in Italy, Germany, England, and the Low Countries (Figs. 205 to 213). Etienne Boileau's "Book of Trades" contained the rules of one hundred different trade associations. It must be observed, however, that several of the most important trades, such as the butchers, tanners, glaziers, &c., were omitted, either because they neglected to be registered at the Châtelet, where the inquiry superintended by Boileau was made, or because some private interest induced them to keep aloof from this registration, which probably imposed some sort of fine and a tax upon them. In the following century the number of trade associations considerably increased, and wonderfully so during the reigns of the last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons. The historian of the antiquities of Paris, Henry Sauval, enumerated no fewer than fifteen hundred and fifty-one trade associations in the capital alone in the middle of the seventeenth century. It must be remarked, however, that the societies of artisans were much subdivided owing to the simple fact that each craft could only practise its own special work. Thus, in Boileau's book, we find four different corporations of _patenôtriers_, or makers of chaplets, six of hatters, six of weavers, &c. Besides these societies of artisans, there were in Paris a few privileged corporations, which occupied a more important position, and were known under the name of _Corps des Marchands_. Their number at first frequently varied, but finally it was settled at six, and they were termed _les Six Corps_. They comprised the drapers, which always took precedence of the five others, the grocers, the mercers, the furriers, the hatters, and the goldsmiths. These five for a long time disputed the question of precedence, and finally they decided the matter by lot, as they were not able to agree in any other way. [Illustration: Fig. 205.--Seal of the Corporation of Carpenters of St. Trond (Belgium)--From an Impression preserved in the Archives of that Town (1481).] [Illustration: Fig. 206.--Seal of the Corporation of Shoemakers of St. Trond, from a Map of 1481, preserved in the Archives of that Town.] [Illustration: Fig. 207.--Seal of the Corporation of Wool-weavers of Hasselt (Belgium), from a Parchment Title-deed of June 25, 1574.] [Illustration: Fig. 208.--Seal of the Corporation of Clothworkers of Bruges (1356).--From an Impression preserved in the Archives of that Town.] [Illustration: Fig. 209.--Seal of the Corporation of Fullers of St. Trond (about 1350).--From an Impression preserved in the Archives of that Town.] [Illustration: Fig. 210.--Seal of the Corporation of Joiners of Bruges (1356).--From an Impression preserved in the Archives of that Town.] [Illustration: Fig. 211.--Token of the Corporation of Carpenters of Maestricht.] [Illustration: Fig. 212.--Token of the Corporation of Carpenters of Antwerp.] [Illustration: Fig. 213.--Funeral Token of the Corporation of Carpenters of Maestricht.] Trades. Fac-simile of Engravings on Wood, designed and engraved by J. Amman, in the Sixteenth Century. [Illustration: Fig. 214.--Cloth-worker.] [Illustration: Fig. 215.--Tailor.] [Illustration: Fig. 216.--Hatter.] [Illustration: Fig. 217.--Dyer.] [Illustration: Fig. 218.--Druggist] [Illustration: Fig. 219.--Barber] [Illustration: Fig. 220.--Goldsmith] [Illustration: Fig. 221.--Goldbeater] [Illustration: Fig. 222.--Pin and Needle Maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 223.--Clasp-maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 224.--Wire-worker.] [Illustration: Fig. 225.--Dice-maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 226.--Sword-maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 227.--Armourer.] [Illustration: Fig. 228.--Spur-maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 229.--Shoemaker.] [Illustration: Fig. 230.--Basin-maker.] [Illustration: Fig. 231.--Tinman.] [Illustration: Fig. 232.--Coppersmith.] [Illustration: Fig. 233.--Bell and Cannon Caster.] Apart from the privilege which these six bodies of merchants exclusively enjoyed of being called upon to appear, though at their own expense, in the civic processions and at the public ceremonials, and to carry the canopy over the heads of kings, queens, or princes on their state entry into the capital (Fig. 234), it would be difficult to specify the nature of the privileges which were granted to them, and of which they were so jealous. It is clear, however, that these six bodies were imbued with a kind of aristocratic spirit which made them place trading much above handicraft in their own class, and set a high value on their calling as merchants. Thus contemporary historians tell us that any merchant who compromised the dignity of the company "fell into the class of the lower orders;" that mercers boasted of excluding from their body the upholsterers, "who were but artisans;" that hatters, who were admitted into the _Six Corps_ to replace one of the other trades, became in consequence "merchants instead of artisans, which they had been up to that time." Notwithstanding the statutes so carefully compiled and revised by Etienne Boileau and his successors, and in spite of the numerous arbitrary rules which the sovereigns, the magistrates, and the corporations themselves strenuously endeavoured to frame, order and unity were far from governing the commerce and industry of Paris during the Middle Ages, and what took place in Paris generally repeated itself elsewhere. Serious disputes continually arose between the authorities and those amenable to their jurisdiction, and between the various crafts themselves, notwithstanding the relation which they bore to each other from the similarity of their employments. In fact in this, as in many other matters, social disorder often emanated from the powers whose duty it was in the first instance to have repressed it. Thus, at the time when Philip Augustus extended the boundaries of his capital so as to include the boroughs in it, which until then had been separated from the city, the lay and clerical lords, under whose feudal dominion those districts had hitherto been placed, naturally insisted upon preserving all their rights. So forcibly did they do this that the King was obliged to recognise their claims; and in several boroughs, including the Bourg l'Abbé, the Beau Bourg, the Bourg St. Germain, and the Bourg Auxerrois, &c., there were trade associations completely distinct from and independent of those of ancient Paris. If we simply limit our examination to that of the condition of the trade associations which held their authority immediately from royalty, we still see that the causes of confusion were by no means trifling; for the majority of the high officers of the crown, acting as delegates of the royal authority, were always disputing amongst themselves the right of superintending, protecting, judging, punishing, and, above all, of exacting tribute from the members of the various trades. The King granted to various officers the privilege of arbitrarily disposing of the freedom of each trade for their own profit, and thereby gave them power over all the merchants and craftsmen who were officially connected with them, not only in Paris, but also throughout the whole kingdom. Thus the lord chamberlain had jurisdiction over the drapers, mercers, furriers, shoemakers, tailors, and other dealers in articles of wearing apparel; the barbers were governed by the king's varlet and barber; the head baker was governor over the bakers; and the head butler over the wine merchants. [Illustration: Fig. 234.--Group of Goldsmiths preceding the _Chasse de St. Marcel_ in the Reign of Louis XIII.--From a Copper-plate of the Period (Cabinet of Stamps in the National Library of Paris).] These state officers granted freedoms to artisans, or, in other words, they gave them the right to exercise such and such a craft with assistants or companions, exacting for the performance of this trifling act a very considerable tax. And, as they preferred receiving their revenues without the annoyance of having direct communication with their humble subjects, they appointed deputies, who were authorised to collect them in their names. The most celebrated of these deputies were the _rois des merciers_, who lived on the fat of the land in complete idleness, and who were surrounded by a mercantile court, which appeared in all its splendour at the trade festivals. [Illustration: Fig. 235.--Banner of the Corporation of the United Boot and Shoe Makers of Issoudun.] The great officers of the crown exercised in their own interests, and without a thought for the public advantage, a complete magisterial jurisdiction over all crafts; they adjudicated in disputes arising between masters and men, decided quarrels, visited, either personally or through their deputies, the houses of the merchants, in order to discover frauds or infractions in the rules of the trade, and levied fines accordingly. We must remember that the collectors of court dues had always to contend for the free exercise of their jurisdiction against the provost of Paris, who considered their acquisitions of authority as interfering with his personal prerogatives, and who therefore persistently opposed them on all occasions. For instance, if the head baker ordered an artisan of the same trade to be imprisoned in the Châtelet, the high provost, who was governor of the prison, released him immediately; and, in retaliation, if the high provost punished a baker, the chief baker warmly espoused his subordinate's cause. At other times the artisans, if they were dissatisfied with the deputy appointed by the great officer of the crown, whose dependents they were, would refuse to recognise his authority. In this way constant quarrels and interminable lawsuits occurred, and it is easy to understand the disorder which must have arisen from such a state of things. By degrees, however, and in consequence of the new tendencies of royalty, which were simply directed to the diminution of feudal power, the numerous jurisdictions relating to the various trades gradually returned to the hand of the municipal provostship; and this concentration of power had the best results, as well for the public good as for that of the corporations themselves. Having examined into corporations collectively and also into their general administration, we will now turn to consider their internal organization. It was only after long and difficult struggles that these trade associations succeeded in taking a definite and established position; without, however, succeeding at any time in organizing themselves as one body on the same basis and with the same privileges. Therefore, in pointing out the influential character of these institutions generally, we must omit various matters specially connected with individual associations, which it would be impossible to mention in this brief sketch. In the fourteenth century, the period when the communities of crafts were at the height of their development and power, no association of artisans could legally exist without a license either from the king, the lord, the prince, the abbot, the bailiff, or the mayor of the district in which it proposed to establish itself. [Illustration: Fig. 236.--Banner of the Tilers of Paris, with the Armorial Bearings of the Corporation.] [Illustration: Fig. 237.--Banner of the Nail-makers of Paris, with Armorial Bearings of the Corporation.] [Illustration: Fig. 238.--Banner of the Harness-makers of Paris, with the Armorial Bearings of the Corporation.] [Illustration: Fig. 239.--Banner of the Wheelwrights of Paris, with the Armoral Bearings of the Corporation.] [Illustration: Fig. 240.--Banner of the Tanners of Vie, with the Patron Saint of the Corporation.] [Illustration: Fig. 241.--Banner of the Weavers of Poulon, with the Patron Saint of the Corporation.] These communities had their statutes and privileges; they were distinguished at public ceremonials by their _liveries_ or special dress, as well as by their arms and banners (Figs. 235 to 241). They possessed the right freely to discuss their general interests, and at meetings composed of all their members they might modify their statutes, provided that such changes were confirmed by the King or by the authorities. It was also necessary that these meetings, at which the royal delegates were present, should be duly authorised; and, lastly, so as to render the communication between members more easy, and to facilitate everything which concerned the interests of the craft, artisans of the same trade usually resided in the same quarter of the town, and even in the same street. The names of many streets in Paris and other towns of France testify to this custom, which still partially exists in the towns of Germany and Italy. [Illustration: Fig. 242.--Ceremonial Dress of an Elder and a Juror of the Corporation of Old Shoemakers of Ghent.] The communities of artisans had, to a certain extent, the character and position of private individuals. They had the power in their corporate capacity of holding and administrating property, of defending or bringing actions at law, of accepting inheritances, &c.; they disbursed from a common treasury, which was supplied by legacies, donations, fines, and periodical subscriptions. These communities exercised in addition, through their jurors, a magisterial authority, and even, under some circumstances, a criminal jurisdiction over their members. For a long time they strove to extend this last power or to keep it independent of municipal control and the supreme courts, by which it was curtailed to that of exercising a simple police authority strictly confined to persons or things relating to the craft. They carefully watched for any infractions of the rules of the trade. They acted as arbitrators between master and man, particularly in quarrels when the parties had had recourse to violence. The functions of this kind of domestic magistracy were exercised by officers known under various names, such as _kings, masters, elders, guards, syndics_, and _jurors_, who were besides charged to visit the workshops at any hour they pleased in order to see that the laws concerning the articles of workmanship were observed. They also received the taxes for the benefit of the association; and, lastly, they examined the apprentices and installed masters into their office (Fig. 242). The jurors, or syndics, as they were more usually called, and whose number varied according to the importance of numerical force of the corporation, were generally elected by the majority of votes of their fellow-workmen, though sometimes the choice of these was entirely in the hands of the great officers of state. It was not unfrequent to find women amongst the dignitaries of the arts and crafts; and the professional tribunals, which decided every question relative to the community and its members, were often held by an equal number of masters and associate craftsmen. The jealous, exclusive, and inflexible spirit of caste, which in the Middle Ages is to be seen almost everywhere, formed one of the principal features of industrial associations. The admission of new members was surrounded with conditions calculated to restrict the number of associates and to discourage candidates. The sons of masters alone enjoyed hereditary privileges, in consequence of which they were always allowed to be admitted without being subjected to the tyrannical yoke of the association. [Illustration: Martyrdom of SS. Crispin and Crépinien. From a window in the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts (Fifteenth Century).] Generally the members of a corporation were divided into three distinct classes--the masters, the paid assistants or companions, and the apprentices. Apprenticeship, from which the sons of masters were often exempted, began between the ages of twelve and seventeen years, and lasted from two to five years. In most of the trades the master could only receive one apprentice in his house besides his own son. Tanners, dyers, and goldsmiths were allowed one of their relatives in addition, or a second apprentice if they had no relation willing to learn their trade; and although some commoner trades, such as butchers and bakers, were allowed an unlimited number of apprentices, the custom of restriction had become a sort of general law, with the object of limiting the number of masters and workmen to the requirements of the public. The position of paid assistant or companion was required to be held in many trades for a certain length of time before promotion to mastership could be obtained. [Illustration: Fig. 243.--Bootmaker's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece.--From a Window of the Thirteenth Century, published by Messrs. Cahier and Martin] When apprentices or companions wished to become masters, they were called _aspirants_, and were subjected to successive examinations. They were particularly required to prove their ability by executing what was termed a _chef-d'oeuvre_, which consisted in fabricating a perfect specimen of whatever craft they practised. The execution of the _chef-d'oeuvre_ gave rise to many technical formalities, which were at times most frivolous. The aspirant in certain cases had to pass a technical examination, as, for instance, the barber in forging and polishing lancets; the wool-weaver in making and adjusting the different parts of his loom; and during the period of executing the _chef-d'oeuvre,_ which often extended over several months, the aspirant was deprived of all communication with his fellows. He had to work at the office of the association, which was called the _bureau_, under the eyes of the jurors or syndics, who, often after an angry debate, issued their judgment upon the merits of the work and the capability of the workman (Figs. 243 and 244). [Illustration: Fig. 244.--Carpenter's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece.--From one of the Stalls called _Miséricordes_, in Rouen Cathedral (Fifteenth Century).] On his admission the aspirant had first to take again the oath of allegiance to the King before the provost or civil deputy, although he had already done so on commencing his apprenticeship. He then had to pay a duty or fee, which was divided between the sovereign or lord and the brotherhood, from which fee the sons of masters always obtained a considerable abatement. Often, too, the husbands of the daughters of masters were exempted from paying the duties. A few masters, such as the goldsmiths and the cloth-workers, had besides to pay a sum of money by way of guarantee, which remained in the funds of the craft as long as they carried on the trade. After these forms had been complied with, the masters acquired the exclusive privilege of freely exercising their profession. There were, however, certain exceptions to this rule, for a king on his coronation, a prince or princess of the royal blood at the time of his or her marriage, and, in certain towns, the bishop on his installation, had the right of creating one or more masters in each trade, and these received their licence without going through any of the usual formalities. [Illustration: Fig. 245.--Staircase of the Office of the Goldsmiths of Rouen (Fifteenth Century). The Shield which the Lion holds with his Paw shows the Arms of the Goldsmiths of Rouen. (Present Condition).] A widower or widow might generally continue the craft of the deceased wife or husband who had acquired the freedom, and which thus became the inheritance of the survivor. The condition, however, was that he or she did not contract a second marriage with any one who did not belong to the craft. Masters lost their rights directly they worked for any other master and received wages. Certain freedoms, too, were only available in the towns in which they had been obtained. In more than one craft, when a family holding the freedom became extinct, their premises and tools became the property of the corporation, subject to an indemnity payable to the next of kin. [Illustration: Fig. 246.--Shops under Covered Market (Goldsmith, Dealer in Stuffs, and Shoemaker).--From a Miniature in Aristotle's "Ethics and Politics," translated by Nicholas Oresme (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, Library of Rouen).] At times, and particularly in those trades where the aspirants were not required to produce a _chef-d'oeuvre_, the installation of masters was accompanied with extraordinary ceremonies, which no doubt originally possessed some symbolical meaning, but which, having lost their true signification, became singular, and appeared even ludicrous. Thus with the bakers, after four years' apprenticeship, the candidate on purchasing the freedom from the King, issued from his door, escorted by all the other bakers of the town, bearing a new pot filled with walnuts and wafers. On arriving before the chief of the corporation, he said to him, "Master, I have accomplished my four years; here is my pot filled with walnuts and wafers." The assistants in the ceremony having vouched for the truth of this statement, the candidate broke the pot against the wall, and the chief solemnly pronounced his admission, which was inaugurated by the older masters emptying a number of tankards of wine or beer at the expense of their new brother. The ceremony was also of a jovial character in the case of the millwrights, who only admitted the candidate after he had received a caning on the shoulders from the last-elected brother. [Illustration: Fig. 247.--Fac-simile of the first six Lines on the Copper Tablet on which was engraved, from the year 1470, the Names and Titles of those who were elected Members of the Corporation of Goldsmiths of Ghent.] The statutes of the corporations, which had the force of law on account of being approved and accepted by royal authority, almost always detailed with the greatest precision the conditions of labour. They fixed the hours and days for working, the size of the articles to be made, the quality of the stuffs used in their manufacture, and even the price at which they were to be sold (Fig. 246). Night labour was pretty generally forbidden, as likely to produce only imperfect work. We nevertheless find that carpenters were permitted to make coffins and other funeral articles by night. On the eve of religious feasts the shops were shut earlier than usual, that is to say, at three o'clock, and were not opened on the next day, with the exception of those of pastrycooks, whose assistance was especially required on feast days, and who sold curious varieties of cakes and sweetmeats. Notwithstanding the strictness of the rules and the administrative laws of each trade, which were intended to secure good faith and loyalty between the various members, it is unnecessary to state that they were frequently violated. The fines which were then imposed on delinquents constituted an important source of revenue, not only to the corporations themselves, but also to the town treasury. The penally, however, was not always a pecuniary one, for as late as the fifteenth century we have instances of artisans being condemned to death simply for having adulterated their articles of trade. [Illustration: Fig. 248.--Elder and Jurors of the Tanners of the Town of Ghent in Ceremonial Dress.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century.] This deception was looked upon as of the nature of robbery, which we know to have been for a long time punishable by death. Robbery on the part of merchants found no indulgence nor pardon in those days, and the whole corporation demanded immediate and exemplary justice. According to the statutes, which generally tended to prevent frauds and falsifications, in most crafts the masters were bound to put their trade-mark on their goods, or some particular sign which was to be a guarantee for the purchaser and one means of identifying the culprit in the event of complaints arising on account of the bad quality or bad workmanship of the articles sold. [Illustration: Fig. 249.--Companion Carpenter.--Fragment of a Woodcut of the Fifteenth Century, after a Drawing by Wohlgemüth for the "Chronique de Nuremberg."] Besides taking various steps to maintain professional integrity, the framers of the various statutes, as a safeguard to the public interests, undertook also to inculcate morality and good feeling amongst their members. A youth could not be admitted unless he could prove his legitimacy of birth by his baptismal register; and, to obtain the freedom, he was bound to bear an irreproachable character. Artisans exposed themselves to a reprimand, and even to bodily chastisement, from the corporation, for even associating with, and certainly for working or drinking with those who had been expelled. Licentiousness and misconduct of any kind rendered them liable to be deprived of their mastership. In some trade associations all the members were bound to solemnize the day of the decease of a brother, to assist at his funeral, and to follow him to the grave. In another community the slightest indecent or discourteous word was punishable by a fine. A new master could not establish himself in the same street as his former master, except at a distance, which was determined by the statutes; and, further, no member was allowed to ask for or attract customers when the latter were nearer the shop of his neighbour than of his own. In the Middle Ages religion placed its stamp on every occupation and calling, and corporations were careful to maintain this characteristic feature. Each was under the patronage of some saint, who was considered the special protector of the craft; each possessed a shrine or chapel in some church of the quarter where the trade was located, and some even kept chaplains at their own expense for the celebration of masses which were daily said for the souls of the good deceased members of the craft. These associations, animated by Christian charity, took upon them to invoke the blessings of heaven on all members of the fraternity, and to assist those who were either laid by through sickness or want of work, and to take care of the widows and to help the orphans of the less prosperous craftsmen. They also gave alms to the poor, and presented the broken meat left at their banquets to the hospitals. Under the name of _garçons_, or _compagnons de devoir_ (this surname was at first specially applied to carpenters and masons, who from a very ancient date formed an important association, which was partly secret, and from which Freemasonry traces its origin) (Fig. 250), the companions, notwithstanding that they belonged to the community of their own special craft, also formed distinct corporations among themselves with a view to mutual assistance. They made a point of visiting any foreign workman on his arrival in their town, supplied his first requirements, found him work, and, when work was wanting, the oldest companion gave up his place to him. These associations of companionship, however, soon failed to carry out the noble object for which they were instituted. After a time the meeting together of the fraternity was but a pretext for intemperance and debauchery, and at times their tumultuous processions and indecent masquerades occasioned much disorder in the cities. The facilities which these numerous associations possessed of extending and mutually co-operating with one another also led to coalitions among them for the purpose of securing any advantage which they desired to possess. Sometimes open violence was resorted to to obtain their exorbitant and unjust demands, which greatly excited the industrious classes, and eventually induced the authorities to interfere. Lastly, these brotherhoods gave rise to many violent quarrels, which ended in blows and too often in bloodshed, between workmen of the same craft, who took different views on debateable points. The decrees of parliament, the edicts of sovereigns, and the decisions of councils, as early as at the end of the fifteenth century and throughout the whole of the sixteenth, severely proscribed the doings of these brotherhoods, but these interdictions were never duly and rigidly enforced, and the authorities themselves often tolerated infractions of the law, and thus license was given to every kind of abuse. [Illustration: Fig. 250.--Carpenters.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chroniques de Hainaut," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundy Library, Brussels.] We have frequently mentioned in the course of this volume the political part played by the corporations during the Middle Ages. We know the active and important part taken by trades of all descriptions, in France in the great movement of the formation of communities. The spirit of fraternal association which constituted the strength of the corporations (Fig. 251), and which exhibited itself so conspicuously in every act of their public and private life, resisted during several centuries the individual and collective attacks made on it by craftsmen themselves. These rich and powerful corporations began to decline from the moment they ceased to be united, and they were dissolved by law at the beginning of the revolution of 1789, an act which necessarily dealt a heavy blow to industry and commerce. [Illustration: Fig. 251.--Painting commemorative of the Union of the Merchants of Rouen at the End of the Seventeenth Century.] [Illustration: Fig. 252.--Banner of the Drapers of Caen.] Taxes, Money, and Finance. Taxes under the Roman Rule.--Money Exactions of the Merovingian Kings.--Varieties of Money.--Financial Laws under Charlemagne.--Missi Dominici.--Increase of Taxes owing to the Crusades.--Organization of Finances by Louis IX.--Extortions of Philip le Bel.--Pecuniary Embarrassaient of his Successors.--Charles V. re-establishes Order in Finances.--Disasters of France under Charles VI., Charles VII., and Jacques Coeur.--Changes in Taxation from Louis XI. to Francis I.--The great Financiers.--Florimond Robertet. If we believe Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, the Gauls were groaning in his time under the pressure of taxation, and struggled hard to remove it. Rome lightened their burden; but the fiscal system of the metropolis imperceptibly took root in all the Roman provinces. There was an arbitrary personal tax, called the poll tax, and a land tax which was named _cens_, calculated according to the area of the holding. Besides these, there were taxes on articles of consumption, on salt, on the import and export of all articles of merchandise, on sales by auction; also on marriages, on burials, and on houses. There were also legacy and succession duties, and taxes on slaves, according to their number. Tolls on highways were also created; and the treasury went so far as to tax the hearth. Hence the origin of the name, _feu_, which was afterwards applied to each household or family group assembled in the same house or sitting before the same fire. A number of other taxes sprung up, called _sordides_, from which the nobility and the government functionaries were exempt. This ruinous system of taxation, rendered still more insupportable by the exactions of the proconsuls, and the violence of their subordinates, went on increasing down to the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Middle Ages gave birth to a new order of things. The municipal administration, composed in great part of Gallo-Roman citizens, did not perceptibly deviate from the customs established for five centuries, but each invading nation by degrees introduced new habits and ideas into the countries they subdued. The Germans and Franks, having become masters of part of Gaul, established themselves on the lands which they had divided between them. The great domains, with their revenues which had belonged to the emperors, naturally became the property of the barbarian chiefs, and served to defray the expenses of their houses or their courts. These chiefs, at each general assembly of the _Leudes_, or great vassals, received presents of money, of arms, of horses, and of various objects of home or of foreign manufacture. For a long time these gifts were voluntary. The territorial fief, which was given to those soldlers who had deserved it by their military services, involved from the holders a personal service to the King. They had to attend him on his journeys, to follow him to war, and to defend him under all circumstances. The fief was entirely exempt from taxes. Many misdeeds--even robberies and other crimes, which were ordinarily punishable by death--were pardonable on payment of a proportionate fine, and oaths, in many cases, might be absolved in the same way. Thus a large revenue was received, which was generally divided equally between the State, the procurator fiscal, and the King. [Illustration: Fig. 253.--The Extraction of Metals.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, folio: Basle, 1552.] War, which was almost constant in those turbulent times, furnished the barbarian kings with occasional resources, which were usually much more important than the ordinary supplies from taxation. The first chiefs of the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Franks, sought means of replenishing their treasuries by their victorious arms. Alaric, Totila, and Clovis thus amassed enormous wealth, without troubling themselves to place the government finances on a satisfactory basis. We see, however, a semblance of financial organization in the institutions of Alaric and his successors. Subsequently, the great Théodoric, who had studied the administrative theories of the Byzantine Court, exercised his genius in endeavouring to work out an accurate system of finance, which was adopted in Italy. Gregory of Tours, a writer of the sixteenth century, relates in several passages of his "History of the Franks," that they exhibited the same repugnance to compulsory taxation as the Germans of the time of Tacitus. The _Leudes_ considered that they owed nothing to the treasury, and to force them to submit to taxation was not an easy matter. About the year 465, Childéric I., father of Clovis, lost his crown for wishing all classes to submit to taxation equally. In 673, Childéric II., King of Austrasia, had one of these _Leudes_, named Bodillon, flogged with rods for daring to reproach him with the injustice of certain taxes. He, however, was afterwards assassinated by this same Bodillon, and the _Leudes_ maintained their right of immunity. A century before the _Leudes_ were already quarrelling with royalty on account of the taxes, which they refused to pay, and they sacrificed Queen Brunehaut because she attempted to enrich the treasury with the confiscated property of a few nobles who had rebelled against her authority. The wealth of the Frank kings, which was always very great, was a continual object of envy, and on one occasion Chilpéric I., King of Soissons, having the _Leudes_ in league with him, laid his hands on the wealth amassed by his father, Clotaire I., which was kept in the Palace of Braine. He was, nevertheless, obliged to share his spoil with his brothers and their followers, who came in arms to force him to refund what he had taken. Chilpéric (Fig. 254) was so much in awe of these _Leudes_ that he did not ask them for money. His wife, the much-feared Frédégonde, did not, however, exempt them more than Brunehaut had done; and her judges or ministers, Audon and Mummius, having met with an insurmountable resistance in endeavouring to force taxation on the nobles, nearly lost their lives in consequence. [Illustration: Fig. 254.--Tomb of Chilpéric.--Sculpture of the Eleventh Century, in the Abbey of St. Denis.] The custom of numbering the population, such as was carried on in Rome through the censors, appears to have been observed under the Merovingian kings. At the request of the Bishop of Poitiers, Childebert gave orders to amend the census taken under Sigebert, King of Austrasia. It is a most curious document mentioned by Gregory of Tours. "The ancient division," he says, "had been one so unequal, owing to the subdivision of properties and other changes which time had made in the condition of the taxpayers, that the poor, the orphans, and the helpless classes generally alone bore the real burden of taxation." Florentius, comptroller of the King's household, and Romulfus, count of the palace, remedied this abuse. After a closer examination of the changes which had taken place, they relieved the taxpayers who were too heavily rated and placed the burden on those who could better afford it. This direct taxation continued on this plan until the time of the kings of the second dynasty. The Franks, who had not the privilege of exemption, paid a poll tax and a house tax; about a tenth was charged on the produce of highly cultivated lands, a little more on that of lands of an inferior description, and a certain measure, a _cruche_, of wine on the produce of every half acre of vineyard. There were assessors and royal agents charged with levying such taxes and regulating the farming of them. In spite of this precaution, however, an edict of Clovis II., in the year 615, censures the mode of imposing rates and taxes; it orders that they shall only be levied in the places where they have been authorised, and forbade their being used under any pretext whatever for any other object than that for which they were imposed. [Illustration: Fig. 255.--Signature of St. Eloy (Eligius), Financier and Minister to Dagobert I.; from the Charter of Foundation of the Abbey of Solignac (Mabillon, "Da Re Diplomatica").] Under the Merovingians specie was not in common use, although the precious metals were abundant among the Gauls, as their mines of gold and silver were not yet exhausted. Money was rarely coined, except on great occasions, such as a coronation, the birth of an heir to the throne, the marriage of a prince, or the commemoration of a decisive victory. It is even probable that each time that money was used in large sums the pound or the _sou_ of gold was represented more by ingots of metal than by stamped coin. The third of the _sou_ of gold, which was coined on state occasions, seems to have been used only as a commemorative medal, to be distributed amongst the great officers of state, and this circumstance explains their extreme rarity. The general character of the coinage, whether of gold, silver, or of the baser metals, of the Burgundian, Austrasian, and Frank kings, differs little from what it had been at the time of the last of the Roman emperors, though the _Angel bearing the cross_ gradually replaced the _Renommée victorieuse_ formerly stamped on the coins. Christian monograms and symbols of the Trinity were often intermingled with the initials of the sovereign. It also became common to combine in a monogram letters thought to be sacred or lucky, such as C, M, S, T, &c.; also to introduce the names of places, which, perhaps, have since disappeared, as well as some particular mark or sign special to each mint. Some of these are very difficult to understand, and present a number of problems which have yet to be solved (Figs. 256 to 259). Unfortunately, the names of places on Merovingian coins to the number of about nine hundred, have rarely been studied by coin collectors, expert both as geographers and linguists. We find, for example, one hundred distinct mints, and, up to the present time, have not been able to determine where the greater number of them were situated. [Illustration: Merovingian Gold Coins, Struck by St. Eloy, Moneyer to Dagobert I. (628-638). Fig. 256.--Parisinna Ceve Fit.. Head of Dagobert with double diadem of pearls, hair hanging down the back of the neck. _Rev._, Dagobertvs Rex. Cross; above, omega; under the arms of the cross, Eligi. Fig. 257.--Parissin. Civ. Head of Clovis II., with diadem of pearls, hair braided and hanging down the back of the neck. _Rev._, Chlodovevs Rex. Cross with anchor; under the arms of the cross, Eligi. Fig. 258.--Parisivs Fit. Head of King. _Rev._, Eligivs Mone. Cross; above, omega; under, a ball. Fig. 259.--Mon. Palati. Head of King. _Rev._, Scolare. I. A. Cross with anchor; under the arms of the cross, Eligi. ] From the time that Clovis became a Christian, he loaded the Church with favours, and it soon possessed considerable revenues, and enjoyed many valuable immunities. The sons of Clovis contested these privileges; but the Church resisted for a time, though she was eventually obliged to give way to the iron hand of Charles Martel. In 732 this great military chieftain, after his struggle with Rainfroy, and after his brilliant victories over the Saxons, the Bavarians, the Swiss, and the Saracens, stripped the clergy of their landed possessions, in order to distribute them amongst his _Leudes_, who by this means he secured as his creatures, and who were, therefore, ever willing and eager to serve him in arms. On ascending the throne, King Pepin, who wanted to pacify the Church, endeavoured as far as possible to obliterate the recollection of the wrongs of which his father had been guilty towards her; he ordered the _dîmes_ and the _nones_ (tenth and ninth denier levied on the value of lands) to be placed to the account of the possessors of each ecclesiastical domain, on their under-taking to repair the buildings (churches, châteaux, abbeys, and presbyteries), and to restore to the owners the properties on which they held mortgages. The nobles long resented this, and it required the authority and the example of Charlemagne to soothe the contending parties, and to make Church and State act in harmony. Charlemagne renounced the arbitrary rights established by the Mayors of the Palace, and retained only those which long usage had legitimatised. He registered them clearly in a code called the _Capitulaires_, into which he introduced the ancient laws of the Ripuaires, the Burgundians, and the Franks, arranging them so as to suit the organization and requirements of his vast empire. From that time each freeman subscribed to the military service according to the amount of his possessions. The great vassal, or fiscal judge, was no longer allowed to practise extortion on those citizens appointed to defend the State. Freemen could legally refuse all servile or obligatory work imposed on them by the nobles, and the amount of labour to be performed by the serfs was lessened. Without absolutely abolishing the authority of local customs in matters of finance, or penalties which had been illegally exacted, they were suspended by laws decided at the _Champs de Mai_, by the Counts and by the _Leudes_, in presence of the Emperor. Arbitrary taxes were abolished, as they were no longer required. Food, and any articles of consumption, and military munitions, were exempted from taxation; and the revenues derived from tolls on road gates, on bridges, and on city gates, &c., were applied to the purposes for which they were imposed, namely, to the repair of the roads, the bridges, and the fortified enclosures. The _heriban_, a fine of sixty sols--which in those days would amount to more than 6,000 francs--was imposed on any holder of a fief who refused military service, and each noble was obliged to pay this for every one of his vassals who was absent when summoned to the King's banner. These fines must have produced considerable sums. A special law exempted ecclesiastics from bearing arms, and Charlemagne decreed that their possessions should be sacred and untouched, and everything was done to ensure the payment of the indemnity--_dîme_ and _none_--which was due to them. [Illustration: Fig. 260.--Toll on Markets levied by a Cleric.--From one of the Painted Windows of the Cathedral of Tournay (Fifteenth Century).] Charlemagne also superintended the coining and circulation of money. He directed that the silver sou should exactly contain the twenty-second part by weight of the pound. He also directed that money should only be coined in the Imperial palaces. He forbade the circulation of spurious coin; he ordered base coiners to be severely punished, and imposed heavy fines upon those who refused to accept the coin in legal circulation. The tithe due to the Church (Fig. 260), which was imposed at the National Assembly in 779, and disbursed by the diocesan bishops, gave rise to many complaints and much opposition. This tithe was in addition to that paid to the King, which was of itself sufficiently heavy. The right of claiming the two tithes, however, had a common origin, so that the sovereign defended his own rights in protecting those of the Church. This is set forth in the text of the _Capitulaires_, from the year 794 to 829. "What had originally been only a voluntary and pious offering of a few of the faithful," says the author of the "Histoire Financière de la France," "became thus a perpetual tax upon agriculture, custom rather than law enforcing its payment; and a tithe which was at first limited to the produce of the soil, soon extended itself to cattle and other live stock." Royal delegates (_missi dominici_), who were invested with complex functions, and with very extensive power, travelled through the empire exercising legal jurisdiction over all matters of importance. They assembled all the _placites_, or provincial authorities, and inquired particularly into the collection of the public revenue. During their tours, which took place four times a year, they either personally annulled unjust sentences, or submitted them to the Emperor. They denounced any irregularities on the part of the Counts, punished the negligences of their assessors, and often, in order to replace unworthy judges, they had to resort to a system of election of assessors, chosen from among the people. They verified the returns for the census; superintended the keeping up of the royal domains; corrected frauds in matters of taxation; and punished usurers as much as base coiners, for at that time money was not considered a commercial article, nor was it thought right that a money-lender should be allowed to carry on a trade which required a remuneration proportionate to the risk which he incurred. [Illustration: Fig. 261.--Sale by Town-Crier. _Preco_, the Crier, blowing a trumpet; _Subhastator_, public officer charged with the sale. In the background is seen another sale, by the Bellman.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Work of Josse Damhoudere, "Praxis Rerum Civilium," 4to: Antwerp, 1557.] These _missi dominici_ were too much hated by the great vassals to outlive the introduction of the feudal system. Their royal masters, as they themselves gradually lost a part of their own privileges and power, could not sustain the authority of these officers. Dukes, counts, and barons, having become magistrates, arbitrarily levied new taxes, imposed new fines, and appropriated the King's tributes to such an extent that, towards the end of the tenth century, the laws of Charlemagne had no longer any weight. We then find a number of new taxes levied for the benefit of the nobles, the very names of which have fallen into disuse with the feudal claims which they represented. Among these new taxes were those of _escorte_ and _entrée_, of _mortmain_, of _lods et ventes_, of _relief_, the _champarts_, the _taille_, the _fouage_, and the various fees for wine-pressing, grinding, baking, &c., all of which were payable without prejudice to the tithes due to the King and the Church. However, as the royal tithe was hardly ever paid, the kings were obliged to look to other means for replenishing their treasuries; and coining false money was a common practice. Unfortunately each great vassal vied with the kings in this, and to such an extent, that the enormous quantity of bad money coined during the ninth century completed the public ruin, and made this a sad period of social chaos. The freeman was no longer distinguishable from the villain, nor the villain from the serf. Serfdom was general; men found themselves, as it were, slaves, in possession of land which they laboured at with the sweat of their brow, only to cultivate for the benefit of others. The towns even--with the exception of a few privileged cities, as Florence, Paris, Lyons, Rheims, Metz, Strasburg, Marseilles, Hamburg, Frankfort, and Milan--were under the dominion of some ecclesiastical or lay lord, and only enjoyed liberty of a more or less limited character. Towards the end of the eleventh century, under Philip I., the enthusiasm for Crusades became general, and, as all the nobles joined in the holy mission of freeing the tomb of Jesus Christ from the hands of the infidels, large sums of money were required to defray the costs. New taxes were accordingly imposed; but, as these did not produce enough at once, large sums were raised by the sale of some of the feudal rights. Certain franchises were in this way sold by the nobles to the boroughs, towns, and abbeys, though, in not a few instances, these very privileges had been formerly plundered from the places to which they were now sold. Fines were exacted from any person declining to go to Palestine; and foreign merchants--especially the Jews--were required to subscribe large sums. A number of the nobles holding fiefs were reduced to the lowest expedients with a view to raising money, and even sold their estates at a low price, or mortgaged them to the very Jews whom they taxed so heavily. Every town in which the spirit of Gallo-Roman municipality was preserved took advantage of these circumstances to extend its liberties. Each monarch, too, found this a favourable opportunity to add new fiefs to the crown, and to recall as many great vassals as possible under his dominion. It was at this period that communities arose, and that the first charters of freedom which were obligatory and binding contracts between the King and the people, date their origin. Besides the annual fines due to the King and the feudal lords, and in addition to the general subsidies, such as the quit-rent and the tithes, these communities had to provide for the repair of the walls or ramparts, for the paving of the streets, the cleaning of the pits, the watch on the city gates, and the various expenses of local administration. Louis le Gros endeavoured to make a re-arrangement of the taxes, and to establish them on a definite basis. By his orders a new register of the lands throughout the kingdom was commenced, but various calamities caused this useful measure to be suspended. In 1149, Louis le Jeune, in consequence of a disaster which had befallen the Crusaders, did what none of his predecessors had dared to attempt: he exacted from all his subjects a sol per pound on their income. This tax, which amounted to a twentieth part of income, was paid even by the Church, which, for example's sake, did not take advantage of its immunities. Forty years later, at a council, or _great parliament_, called by Philip Augustus, a new crusade was decided upon; and, under the name of Saladin's tithe, an annual tax was imposed on all property, whether landed or personal, of all who did not take up the cross to go to the Holy Land. The nobility, however, so violently resisted this, that the King was obliged to substitute for it a general tax, which, although it was still more productive, was less offensive in its mode of collection. On returning to France in 1191, Philip Augustus rated and taxed every one--nobility, bourgeois, and clergy--in order to prosecute the great wars in which he was engaged, and to provide for the first paid troops ever known in France. He began by confirming the enormous confiscations of the properties of the Jews, who had been banished from the kingdom, and afterwards sold a temporary permission to some of the richest of them to return. The Jews at that time were the only possessors of available funds, as they were the only people who trafficked, and who lent money on interest. On this account the Government were glad to recall them, so as to have at hand a valuable resource which it could always make use of. As the King could not on his own authority levy taxes upon the vassals of feudal lords, on emergencies he convoked the barons, who discussed financial matters with the King, and, when the sum required was settled, an order of assessment was issued, and the barons undertook the collection of the taxes. The assessment was always fixed higher than was required for the King's wants, and the barons, having paid the King what was due to him, retained the surplus, which they divided amongst themselves. The creation of a public revenue, raised by the contributions of all classes of society, with a definite sum to be kept in reserve, thus dates from the reign of Philip Augustus. The annual income of the State at that time amounted to 36,000 marks, or 72,000 pounds' weight of silver--about sixteen or seventeen million francs of present currency. The treasury, which was kept in the great tower of the temple (Fig. 262), was under the custody of seven bourgeois of Paris, and a king's clerk kept a register of receipts and disbursements. This treasury must have been well filled at the death of Philip Augustus, for that monarch's legacies were very considerable. One of his last wishes deserves to be mentioned: and this was a formal order, which he gave to Louis VIII., to employ a certain sum, left him for that purpose, solely and entirely for the defence of the kingdom. [Illustration: Fig. 262.--The Tower of the Temple, in Paris.--From an Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Cabinet des Estampes, of the National Library.] [Illustration: Gold Coins of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries. Fig. 263.--Mérovée, Son of Chilperic I. Fig. 264.--Dagobert I. Fig. 265.--Clotaire III.] [Illustration: Silver Coins from the Eighth to the Eleventh Centures. Fig 266.--Pepin the Short. Fig. 267.--Charlemagne. Fig. 268.--Henri I.] [Illustration: Gold and Silver Coins of the Thirteenth Century. Fig. 269.--Gold Florin of Louis IX. Fig. 270.--Silver Gros of Tours.--Philip III.] When Louis IX., in 1242, at Taillebourg and at Saintes, had defeated the great vassals who had rebelled against him, he hastened to regulate the taxes by means of a special code which bore the name of the _Établissements_. The taxes thus imposed fell upon the whole population, and even lands belonging to the Church, houses which the nobles did not themselves occupy, rural properties and leased holdings, were all subjected to them. There were, however, two different kinds of rates, one called the _occupation_ rate, and the other the rate of _exploitation_; and they were both collected according to a register, kept in the most regular and systematic manner possible. Ancient custom had maintained a tax exceptionally in the following cases: when a noble dubbed his son a knight, or gave his daughter in marriage, when he had to pay a ransom, and when he set out on a campaign against the enemies of the Church, or for the defence of the country. These taxes were called _l'aide aux quatre cas_. At this period despotism too often overruled custom, and the good King Louis IX., by granting legal power to custom, tried to bring it back to the true principles of justice and humanity. He was, however, none the less jealous of his own personal privileges, especially as regarded coining (Figs. 263 to 270). He insisted that coining should be exclusively carried on in his palace, as in the times of the Carlovingian kings, and he required every coin to be made of a definite standard of weight, which he himself fixed. In this way he secured the exclusive control over the mint. For the various localities, towns, or counties directly under the crown, Louis IX. settled the mode of levying taxes. Men of integrity were elected by the vote of the General Assembly, consisting of the three orders--namely, of the nobility, the clergy, and the _tiers état_--to assess the taxation of each individual; and these assessors themselves were taxed by four of their own number. The custom of levying proprietary subsidies in each small feudal jurisdiction could not be abolished, notwithstanding the King's desire to do so, owing to the power still held by the nobles. Nobles were forbidden to levy a rate under any consideration, without previously holding a meeting of the vassals and their tenants. The tolls on roads, bridges (Fig. 271), fairs, and markets, and the harbour dues were kept up, notwithstanding their obstruction to commerce, with the exception that free passage was given to corn passing from one province to another. The exemptions from taxes which had been dearly bought were removed; and the nobles were bound not to divert the revenue received from tolls for any purposes other than those for which they were legitimately intended. The nobles were also required to guard the roads "from sunrise to sunset," and they were made responsible for robberies committed upon travellers within their domains. Louis IX., by refunding the value of goods which had been stolen through the carelessness of his officers, himself showed an example of the respect due to the law. Those charged with collecting the King's dues, as well as the mayors whose duty it was to take custody of the money contributed, and to receive the taxes on various articles of consumption, worked under the eye of officials appointed by the King, who exercised a financial jurisdiction which developed later into the department or office called the Chamber of Accounts. A tax, somewhat similar to the tithe on funds, was imposed for the benefit of the nobles on property held by corporations or under charter, in order to compensate the treasury for the loss of the succession duties. This tax represented about the fifth part of the value of the estate. To cover the enormous expenses of the two crusades, Louis IX., however, was obliged to levy two new taxes, called _decimes_, from his already overburdened people. It does not, however, appear that this excessive taxation alienated the affection of his subjects. Their minds were entirely taken up with the pilgrimages to the East, and the pious monarch, notwithstanding his fruitless sacrifices and his disastrous expeditions, earned for himself the title of _Prince of Peace and of Justice_. [Illustration: Fig. 271.--Paying Toll on passing a Bridge.--From a Painted Window in the Cathedral of Tournay (Fifteenth Century).] From the time of Louis IX. down to that of Philippe le Bel, who was the most extravagant of kings, and at the same time the most ingenious in raising funds for the State treasury, the financial movement of Europe took root, and eventually became centralised in Italy. In Florence was presented an example of the concentration of the most complete municipal privileges which a great flourishing city could desire. Pisa, Genoa, and Venice attracted a part of the European commerce towards the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Everywhere the Jews and Lombards--already well initiated into the mysterious System of credit, and accustomed to lend money--started banks and pawn establishments, where jewels, diamonds, glittering arms, and paraphernalia of all kinds were deposited by princes and nobles as security for loans (Fig. 272). [Illustration: Fig. 272.--View of the ancient Pont aux Changeurs.--From an Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Cabinet des Estampes, of the National Library.] The tax collectors (_maltôtiers_, a name derived from the Italian _mala tolta_, unjust tax), receivers, or farmers of taxes, paid dearly for exercising their calling, which was always a dishonourable one, and was at times exercised with a great amount of harshness and even of cruelty. The treasury required a certain number of _deniers, oboles_, or _pittes_ (a small coin varying in value in each province) to be paid by these men for each bank operation they effected, and for every pound in value of merchandise they sold, for they and the Jews were permitted to carry on trades of all kinds without being subject to any kind of rates, taxes, work, military service, or municipal dues. Philippe le Bel, owing to his interminable wars against the King of Castille, and against England, Germany, and Flanders, was frequently so embarrassed as to be obliged to resort to extraordinary subsidies in order to carry them on. In 1295, he called upon his subjects for a forced loan, and soon after he shamelessly required them to pay the one-hundredth part of their incomes, and after but a short interval he demanded another fiftieth part. The king assumed the exclusive right to debase the value of the coinage, which caused him to be commonly called the _base coiner_, and no sovereign ever coined a greater quantity of base money. He changed the standard or name of current coin with a view to counterbalance the mischief arising from the illicit coinage of the nobles, and especially to baffle the base traffic of the Jews and Lombards, who occasionally would obtain possession of a great part of the coin, and mutilate each piece before restoring it to circulation; in this way they upset the whole monetary economy of the realm, and secured immense profits to themselves (Figs. 273 to 278). In 1303, the _aide au leur_, which was afterwards called the _aide de l'ost,_ or the army tax, was invented by Philippe le Bel for raising an army without opening his purse. It was levied without distinction upon dukes, counts, barons, ladies, damsels, archbishops, bishops, abbots, chapters, colleges, and, in fact, upon all classes, whether noble or not. Nobles were bound to furnish one knight mounted, equipped, and in full armour, for every five hundred marks of land which they possessed; those who were not nobles had to furnish six foot-soldiers for every hundred households. By another enactment of this king the privilege was granted of paying money instead of complying with these demands for men, and a sum of 100 livres--about 10,000 francs of present currency--was exacted for each armed knight; and two sols--about ten francs per diem--for each soldier which any one failed to furnish. An outcry was raised throughout France at this proceeding, and rebellions broke out in several provinces: in Paris the mob destroyed the house of Stephen Barbette, master of the mint, and insulted the King in his palace. It was necessary to enforce the royal authority with vigour, and, after considerable difficulty, peace was at last restored, and Philip learned, though too late, that in matters of taxation the people should first be consulted. In 1313, for the first time, the bourgeoisie, syndics, or deputies of communities, under the name of _tiers état_--third order of the state--were called to exercise the right of freely voting the assistance or subsidy which it pleased the King to ask of them. After this memorable occasion an edict was issued ordering a levy of six deniers in the pound on every sort of merchandise sold in the kingdom. Paris paid this without hesitation, whereas in the provinces there was much discontented murmuring. But the following year, the King having tried to raise the six deniers voted by the assembly of 1313 to twelve, the clergy, nobility, and _tiers état_ combined to resist the extortions of the government. Philippe le Bel died, after having yielded to the opposition of his indignant subjects, and in his last moments he recommended his son to exercise moderation in taxing and honesty in coining. [Illustration: Gold Coins of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Fig. 273.--Masse d'Or. Philip IV. Fig. 274.--Small Aignel d'Or. Charles IV. Fig. 275.--Large Aignel d'Or. John the Good. Fig. 276.--Franc à Cheval d'Or. Charles V. Fig. 277.--Ecu d'Or. Philip VI. Fig. 278.--Salut d'Or. Charles VI.] On the accession of Louis X., in 1315, war against the Flemish was imminent, although the royal treasury was absolutely empty. The King unfortunately, in spite of his father's advice, attempted systematically to tamper with the coinage, and he also commenced the exaction of fresh taxes, to the great exasperation of his subjects. He was obliged, through fear of a general rebellion, to do away with the tithe established for the support of the army, and to sacrifice the superintendent of finances, Enguerrand de Marigny, to the public indignation which was felt against him. This man, without being allowed to defend himself, was tried by an extraordinary commission of parliament for embezzling the public money, was condemned to death, and was hung on the gibbet of Montfauçon. Not daring to risk a convocation of the States-General of the kingdom, Louis X. ordered the seneschals to convoke the provincial assemblies, and thus obtained a few subsidies, which he promised to refund out of the revenues of his domains. The clergy even allowed themselves to be taxed, and closed their eyes to the misappropriation of the funds, which were supposed to be held in reserve for a new crusade. Taxes giving commercial franchise and of exchange were levied, which were paid by the Jews, Lombards, Tuscans, and other Italians; judiciary offices were sold by auction; the trading class purchased letters of nobility, as they had already done under Philippe le Bel; and, more than this, the enfranchisement of serfs, which had commenced in 1298, was continued on the payment of a tax, which varied according to the means of each individual. In consequence of this system, personal servitude was almost entirely abolished under Philippe de Long, brother of Louis X. Each province, under the reign of this rapacious and necessitous monarch, demanded some concession from the crown, and almost always obtained it at a money value. Normandy and Burgundy, which were dreaded more than any other province on account of their turbulence, received remarkable concessions. The base coin was withdrawn from circulation, and Louis X. attempted to forbid the right of coinage to those who broke the wise laws of St. Louis. The idea of bills of exchange arose at this period. Thanks to the peace concluded with Flanders, on which occasion that country paid into the hands of the sovereign thirty thousand florins in gold for arrears of taxes, and, above all, owing to the rules of economy and order, from which Philip V., surnamed the Long, never deviated, the attitude of France became completely altered. We find the King initiating reform by reducing the expenses of his household. He convened round his person a great council, which met monthly to examine and discuss matters of public interest; he allowed only one national treasury for the reception of the State revenues; he required the treasurers to make a half-yearly statement of their accounts, and a daily journal of receipts and disbursements; he forbad clerks of the treasury to make entries either of receipts or expenditure, however trifling, without the authority and supervision of accountants, whom he also compelled to assist at the checking of sums received or paid by the money-changers (Fig. 279). The farming of the crown lands, the King's taxes, the stamp registration, and the gaol duties were sold by auction, subject to certain regulations with regard to guarantee. The bailiffs and seneschals sent in their accounts to Paris annually, they were not allowed to absent themselves without the King's permission, and they were formally forbidden, under pain of confiscation, or even a severer penalty, to speculate with the public money. The operations of the treasury were at this period always involved in the greatest mystery. [Illustration: Fig. 279.--Hotel of the Chamber of Accounts in the Courtyard of the Palace in Paris. From a Woodcut of the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, in folio: Basle, 1552.] [Illustration: Fig. 280.--Measuring Salt.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Ordonnances de la Prevosté des Marchands de Paris," in folio: 1500.] [Illustration: Fig. 281.--Toll under the Bridges of Paris.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Ordonnances de la Prevosté des Marchands de Paris," in folio: 1500.] The establishment of a central mint for the whole kingdom, the expulsion of the money-dealers, who were mostly of Italian origin, and the confiscation of their goods if it was discovered that they had acted falsely, signalised the accession of Charles le Bel in 1332. This beginning was welcomed as most auspicious, but before long the export duties, especially on grain, wine, hay, cattle, leather, and salt, became a source of legitimate complaint (Figs. 280 and 281). Philip VI., surnamed _de Valois_, a more astute politician than his predecessor, felt the necessity of gaining the affections of the people by sparing their private fortunes. In order to establish the public revenue on a firm basis, he assembled, in 1330, the States-General, composed of barons, prelates, and deputies from the principal towns, and then, hoping to awe the financial agents, he authorised the arrest of the overseer, Pierre de Montigny, whose property was confiscated and sold, producing to the treasury the enormous sum of 1,200,000 livres, or upwards of 100,000,000 francs of present currency. The long and terrible war which the King was forced to carry on against the English, and which ended in the treaty of Bretigny in 1361, gave rise to the introduction of taxation of extreme severity. The dues on ecclesiastical properties were renewed and maintained for several years; all beverages sold in towns were taxed, and from four to six deniers in the pound were levied upon the value of all merchandise sold in any part of the kingdom. The salt tax, which Philippe le Bel had established, and which his successor, Louis X., immediately abolished at the unanimous wish of the people, was again levied by Philip VI., and this king, having caused the salt produced in his domains to be sold, "gave great offence to all classes of the community." It was on account of this that Edward III., King of England, facetiously called him the author of the _Salic_ law. Philippe de Valois, when he first ascended the throne, coined his money according to the standard weight of St. Louis, but in a short time he more or less alloyed it. This he did secretly, in order to be able to withdraw the pieces of full weight from circulation and to replace them with others having less pure metal in them, and whose weight was made up by an extra amount of alloy. In this dishonest way a considerable sum was added to the coffers of the state. King John, on succeeding his father in 1350, found the treasury empty and the resources of the kingdom exhausted. He was nevertheless obliged to provide means to continue the war against the English, who continually harassed the French on their own territory. The tax on merchandise not being sufficient for this war, the payment of public debts contracted by the government was suspended, and the State was thus obliged to admit its insolvency. The mint taxes, called _seigneuriage_, were pushed to the utmost limits, and the King levied them on the new coin, which he increased at will by largely alloying the gold with base metals. The duties on exported and imported goods were increased, notwithstanding the complaints that commerce was declining. These financial expedients would not have been tolerated by the people had not the King taken the précaution to have them approved by the States-General of the provincial states, which he annually assembled. In 1355 the States-General were convoked, and the King, who had to maintain thirty thousand soldiers, asked them to provide for this annual expenditure, estimated at 5,000,000 _livres parisis_, about 300,000,000 francs of present currency. The States-General, animated by a generous feeling of patriotism, "ordered a tax of eight deniers in the pound on the sale and transfer of all goods and articles of merchandise, with the exception of inheritances, which was to be payable by the vendors, of whatever rank they might be, whether ecclesiastics, nobles, or others, and also a salt tax to be levied throughout the whole kingdom of France." The King promised as long as this assistance lasted to levy no other subsidy and to coin good and sterling money--i.e., _deniers_ of fine gold, _white_, or silver coin, coin of _billon_, or mixed metal, and _deniers_ and _mailles_ of copper. The assembly appointed travelling agents and three inspectors or superintendents, who had under them two receivers and a considerable number of sub-collectors, whose duties were defined with scrupulous minuteness. The King at this time renounced the right of seizin, his dues over property, inherited or conveyed by sale, exchange, gift, or will, his right of demanding war levies by proclamation, and of issuing forced loans, the despotic character of which offended everybody. The following year, the tax of eight deniers having been found insufficient and expensive in its collection, the assembly substituted for it a property and income tax, varying according to the property and income of each individual. [Illustration: Fig. 282.--The Courtiers amassing Riches at the Expense of the Poor.--From a Miniature in the 'Tresor of Brunetto Latini, Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.] The finances were, notwithstanding these additions, in a low and unsatisfactory condition, which became worse and worse from the fatal day of Poitiers, when King John fell into the hands of the English. The States-General were summoned by the Dauphin, and, seeing the desperate condition in which the country was placed, all classes freely opened their purses. The nobility, who had already given their blood, gave the produce of all their feudal dues besides. The church paid a tenth and a half, and the bourgeois showed the most noble unselfishness, and rose as one man to find means to resist the common enemy. The ransom of the King had been fixed at three millions of _écus d'or,_ nearly a thousand million francs, payable in six years, and the peace of Bretigny was concluded by the cession of a third of the territory of France. There was, however, cause for congratulation in this result, for "France was reduced to its utmost extremity," says a chronicler, "and had not something led to a reaction, she must have perished irretrievably." King John, grateful for the love and devotion shown to him by his subjects under these trying circumstances, returned from captivity with the solemn intention of lightening the burdens which pressed upon them, and in consequence be began by spontaneously reducing the enormous wages which the tax-gatherers had hitherto received, and by abolishing the tolls on highways. He also sold to the Jews, at a very high price, the right of remaining in the kingdom and of exercising any trade in it, and by this means he obtained a large sum of money. He solemnly promised never again to debase the coin, and he endeavoured to make an equitable division of the taxes. Unfortunately it was impossible to do without a public revenue, and it was necessary that the royal ransom should be paid off within six years. The people, from whom taxes might be always extorted at pleasure, paid a good share of this, for the fifth of the three millions of _écus d'or_ was realised from the tax on salt, the thirteenth part from the duty on the sale of fermented liquors, and twelve deniers per pound from the tax on the value of all provisions sold and resold within the kingdom. Commerce was subjected to a new tax called _imposition foraine_, a measure most detrimental to the trade and manufactures of the country, which were continually struggling under the pitiless oppression of the treasury. Royal despotism was not always able to shelter itself under the sanction of the general and provincial councils, and a few provinces, which forcibly protested against this excise duty, were treated on the same footing as foreign states with relation to the transit of merchandise from them. Other provinces compounded for this tax, and in this way, owing to the different arrangements in different places, a complicated system of exemptions and prohibitions existed which although most prejudicial to all industry, remained in force to a great extent until 1789. When Charles V.--surnamed the Wise--ascended the throne in 1364, France, ruined by the disasters of the war, by the weight of taxation, by the reduction in her commerce, and by the want of internal security, exhibited everywhere a picture of misery and desolation; in addition to which, famine and various epidemics were constantly breaking out in various parts of the kingdom. Besides this, the country was incessantly overrun by gangs of plunderers, who called themselves _écorcheurs, routiers, tardvenus_, &c., and who were more dreaded by the country people even than the English had been. Charles V., who was celebrated for his justice and for his economical and provident habits, was alone capable of establishing order in the midst of such general confusion. Supported by the vote of the Assembly held at Compiègne in 1367, he remitted a moiety of the salt tax and diminished the number of the treasury agents, reduced their wages, and curtailed their privileges. He inquired into all cases of embezzlement, so as to put a stop to fraud; and he insisted that the accounts of the public expenditure in its several departments should be annually audited. He protected commerce, facilitated exchanges, and reduced, as far as possible, the rates and taxes on woven articles and manufactured goods. He permitted Jews to hold funded property, and invited foreign merchants to trade with the country. For the first time he required all gold and silver articles to be stamped, and called in all the old gold and silver coins, in order that by a new and uniform issue the value of money might no longer be fictitious or variable. For more than a century coins had so often changed in name, value, and standard weight, that in an edict of King John we read, "It was difficult for a man when paying money in the ordinary course to know what he was about from one day to another." The recommencement of hostilities between England and France in 1370 unfortunately interrupted the progressive and regular course of these financial improvements. The States-General, to whom the King was obliged to appeal for assistance in order to carry on the war, decided that salt should be taxed one sol per pound, wine by wholesale a thirteenth of its value, and by retail a fourth; that a _fouage_, or hearth tax, of six francs should be established in towns, and of two francs in the country,[*] and that a duty should be levied in walled towns on the entrance of all wine. The produce of the salt tax was devoted to the special use of the King. Each district farmed its excise and its salt tax, under the superintendence of clerks appointed by the King, who regulated the assessment and the fines, and who adjudicated in the first instance in all cases of dispute. Tax-gatherers were chosen by the inhabitants of each locality, but the chief officers of finance, four in number, were appointed by the King. This administrative organization, created on a sound basis, marked the establishment of a complete financial system. The Assembly, which thus transferred the administration of all matters of taxation from the people at large to the King, did not consist of a combination of the three estates, but simply of persons of position--namely, prelates, nobles, and bourgeois of Paris, in addition to the leading magistrates of the kingdom. [Footnote *: This is the origin of the saying "smoke farthing."] The following extract from the accounts of the 15th November, 1372, is interesting, inasmuch as it represents the actual budget of France under Charles V.:-- Article 18. Assigned for the payment of men at arms ...... 50,000 francs. " 19. For payment of men at arms and crossbowmen newly formed .............................. 42,000 " " " For sea purposes ............................. 8,000 " " 20. For the King's palace ........................ 6,000 " " " To place in the King's coffers................ 5,000 " " 21. It pleases the King that the receiver-general should have monthly for matters that daily arise in the chamber ...................... 10,000 " " " For the payment of debts ..................... 10,000 " Total ..................... 131,000 " [Illustration: Settlement of Accounts by the Brothers of Cherité-Dieu of the Recovery of Roles A miniature from the "_Livre des Comptes_" of the Society (Fifteenth Century).] Thus, for the year, 131,000 francs in _écus d'or_ representing in present money about 12,000,000 francs, were appropriated to the expenses of the State, out of which the sum of 5,000 francs, equal to 275,000 francs of present money, was devoted to what we may call the _Civil List_. On the death of Charles V., in 1380, his eldest son Charles, who was a minor, was put under the guardianship of his uncles, and one of these, the Duke d'Anjou, assumed the regency by force. He seized upon the royal treasury, which was concealed in the Castle of Melun, and also upon all the savings of the deceased king; and, instead of applying them to alleviate the general burden of taxation, he levied a duty for the first time on the common food of the people. Immediately there arose a general outcry of indignation, and a formidable expression of resistance was made in Paris and in the large towns. Mob orators loudly proclaimed the public rights thus trampled upon by the regent and the King's uncles; the expression of the feelings of the masses began to take the shape of open revolt, when the council of the regency made an appearance of giving way, and the new taxes were suppressed, or, at all events, partially abandoned. The success of the insurrectionary movement, however, caused increased concessions to be demanded by the people. The Jews and tax-collectors were attacked. Some of the latter were hung or assassinated, and their registers torn up; and many of the former were ill-treated and banished, notwithstanding the price they had paid for living in the kingdom. The assembly of the States, which was summoned by the King's uncles to meet in Paris, sided with the people, and, in consequence, the regent and his brother pretended to acknowledge the justice of the claims which were made upon them in the name of the people, and, on their withdrawing the taxes, order was for a time restored. No sooner, however, was this the case than, in spite of the solemn promises made by the council of regency, the taxes were suddenly reimposed, and the right of farming them was sold to persons who exacted them in the most brutal manner. A sanguinary revolt, called that of the _Maillotins_, burst forth in Paris; and the capital remained for some time in the power of the people, or rather of the bourgeois, who led the mob on to act for them (1381-1382). The towns of Rouen, Rheims, Troyes, Orleans, and Blois, many places in Beauvoise, in Champagne, and in Normandy, followed the example of the Parisians, and it is impossible to say to what a length the revolt would have reached had it not been for the victory over the Flemish at Rosebecque. This victory enabled the King's uncles to re-enter Paris in 1383, and to re-establish the royal authority, at the same time making the _Maillotins_ and their accomplices pay dearly for their conduct. The excise duties, the hearth tax, the salt tax, and various other imposts which had been abolished or suspended, were re-established; the taxes on wine, beer, and other fermented liquors was lowered; bread was taxed twelve deniers per pound, and the duty on salt was fixed at the excessive rate of twenty francs in gold--about 1,200 francs of present money--per hogshead of sixty hundredweight. Certain concessions and compromises were made exceptionally in favour of Artois, Dauphiné, Poitou, and Saintonge, in consideration of the voluntary contributions which those provinces had made. [Illustration: Fig. 283.--Assassination of the Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, on the Bridge of Montereau, in 1419.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chronicles" of Monstrelet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] Emboldened by the success of their exacting and arbitrary rule, the Dukes of Anjou, Burgundy, and Berry, under pretext of requiring money for war expenses, again increased the taxes from the year 1385 to 1388; and the salt tax was raised to forty golden francs, about 24,000 francs of present money, per hogshead. The ecclesiastics paid a half décime to the King, and several décimes to the Pope, but these did not prevent a forced loan being ordered. Happily, Charles VI. about this period attained his majority, and assumed his position as king; and his uncle, the Duke of Bourbon, who was called to the direction of affairs, re-established comparative order in financial matters; but soon after the King's brother, the Duke of Orleans, seized the reins of government, and, jointly with his sister-in-law, Isabel of Bavaria, increased the taxation far beyond that imposed by the Duke d'Anjou. The Duke of Burgundy, called John the Fearless, in order to gratify his personal hatred to his cousin, Louis of Orleans, made himself the instrument of the strong popular feeling by assassinating that prince as he was returning from an entertainment. The tragical death of the Duke of Orleans no more alleviated the ills of France than did that of the Duke of Burgundy sixteen years later--for he in his turn was the victim of a conspiracy, and was assassinated on the bridge of Montereau in the presence of the Dauphin (Fig. 283). The marriage of Isabel of France with the young king Richard of England, the ransom of the Christian prisoners in the East, the money required by the Emperor of Constantinople to stop the invasions of the Turks into Europe, the pay of the French army, which was now permanent, each necessarily required fresh subsidies, and money had to be raised in some way or other from the French people. Distress was at its height, and though the people were groaning under oppression, they continued to pay not only the increased taxes on provisions and merchandise, and an additional general tax, but to submit to the most outrageous confiscations and robbery of the public money from the public treasuries. The State Assemblies held at Auxerre and Paris in 1412 and 1413, denounced the extravagance and maladministration of the treasurers, the generals, the excisemen, the receivers of royal dues, and of all those who took part in the direction of the finances; though they nevertheless voted the taxes, and promulgated most severe regulations with respect to their collection. To meet emergencies, which were now becoming chronic, extraordinary taxes were established, the non-payment of which involved the immediate imprisonment of the defaulter; and the debasement of the coinage, and the alienation of certain parts of the kingdom, were authorised in the name of the King, who had been insane for more than fifteen years. The incessant revolts of the bourgeois, the reappearance of the English on the soil of France, the ambitious rivalry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria leagued with the Duke of Burgundy against the Dauphin, who had been made regent, at last, in 1420, brought about the humiliating treaty of Troyes, by which Henry V., king of England, was to become king of France on the death of Charles VI. This treaty of Troyes became the cause of, and the pretext for, a vast amount of extortion being practised upon the unfortunate inhabitants of the conquered country. Henry V., who had already made several exactions from Normandy before he had obtained by force the throne of France, did not spare the other provinces, and, whilst proclaiming his good intentions towards his future subjects, he added a new general impost, in the shape of a forced loan, to the taxes which already weighed so heavily on the people. He also issued a new coinage, maintained many of the taxes, especially those on salt and on liquors, even after he had announced his intention of abolishing them. At the same time the Dauphin Charles, surnamed _Roi de Bourges_, because he had retired with his court and retinue into the centre of the kingdom (1422), was sadly in want of money. He alienated the State revenues, he levied excise duties and subsidies in the provinces which remained faithful to his cause, and he borrowed largely from those members of the Church and the nobility who manifested a generous pity for the sad destiny of the King and the monarchy. Many persons, however, instead of sacrificing themselves for their king and country, made conditions with him, taking advantage of his position. The heir to the throne was obliged in many points to give way, either to a noble whose services he bargained for, or to a town or an abbey whose aid he sought. At times he bought over influential bodies, such as universities and other corporation, by granting exemptions from, or privileges in, matters of taxation, &c. So much was this the case that it may be said that Charles VII. treated by private contract for the recovery of the inheritances of his fathers. The towns of Paris and Rouen, as well as the provinces of Brittany, Languedoc, Normandy, and Guyenne, only returned to their allegiance to the King on conditions more or less advantageous to themselves. Burgundy, Picardy, and Flanders--which were removed from the kingdom of Charles VII. at the treaty of peace of Arras in 1435--cordially adopted the financial system inaugurated by the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. [Illustration: Fig. 284.--The House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, now converted into the Hôtel de Ville.] Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom by a good and wise policy as much as by arms. He, doubtless, had cause to be thankful for the valeur and devotion of his officers, but he principally owed the success of his cause to one man, namely, his treasurer, the famous Jacques Coeur, who possessed the faculty of always supplying money to his master, and at the same time of enriching himself (Fig. 284). Thus it was that Charles VII., whose finances had been restored by the genius of Jacques Coeur, was at last able to re-enter his capital triumphantly, to emancipate Guyenne, Normandy, and the banks of the Loire from the English yoke, to reattach to the crown a portion of its former possessions, or to open the way for their early return, to remove bold usurpers from high places in the State, and to bring about a real alleviation of those evils which his subjects had so courageously borne. He suppressed the fraud and extortion carried on under the name of justice, put a stop to the sale of offices, abolished a number of rates illegally levied, required that the receivers' accounts should be sent in biennially, and whilst regulating the taxation, he devoted its proceeds entirely to the maintenance and pay of the army. From that time taxation, once feudal and arbitrary, became a fixed royal due, which was the surest means of preventing the pillage and the excesses of the soldiery to which the country people had been subjected for many years. Important triumphs of freedom were thus obtained over the tyrannical supremacy of the great vassals; but in the midst of all this improvement we cannot but regret that the assessors, who, from the time of their creation by St. Louis, had been elected by the towns or the corporations, now became the nominees of the crown. [Illustration: Fig. 285.--_Amende honorable_ of Jacques Coeur before Charles VII.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the "Chroniques" of Monstrelet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the National Library of Paris.] Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, taxed his subjects but little: "Therefore," says Philippe de Commines, "they became very wealthy, and lived in much comfort." But Louis XI did not imitate him. His first care was to reinstate that great merchant, that clever financier, Jacques Coeur, to whom, as much as to Joan of Arc, the kingdom owed its freedom, and whom Charles VII., for the most contemptible reasons, had had the weakness to allow to be judicially condemned Louis XI. would have been very glad to entrust the care of his finances to another Jacques Coeur; for being sadly in want of money, he ran through his father's earnings, and, to refill his coffers, he increased taxation, imposed a duty on the importation of wines, and levied a tax on those holding offices, &c. A revolution broke out in consequence, which was only quenched in the blood of the insurgents. In this manner he continued, by force of arms, to increase and strengthen his own regal power at the expense of feudalism. He soon found himself opposed by the _Ligue du Bien Public_, formed by the great vassals ostensibly to get rid of the pecuniary burden which oppressed the people, but really with the secret intention of restoring feudalism and lessening the King's power. He was not powerful enough openly to resist this, and appeared to give way by allowing the leagued nobles immense privileges, and himself consenting to the control of a sort of council of "thirty-six notables appointed to superintend matters of finance." Far from acknowledging himself vanquished, however, he immediately set to work to cause division among his enemies, so as to be able to overcome them. He accordingly showed favour towards the bourgeois, whom he had already flattered, by granting new privileges, and abolishing or reducing certain vexatious taxes of which they complained. The thirty-six notables appointed to control his financial management reformed nothing. They were timid and docile under the cunning eye of the King, and practically assisted him in his designs; for in a very few years the taxes were increased from 1,800,000 écus--about 45,000,000 francs of present money--to 3,600,000 écus--about 95,000,000 francs. Towards the end of the reign they exceeded 4,700,000 écus--130,000,000 francs of present money. Louis XI. wasted nothing on luxury and pleasure; he lived parsimoniously, but he maintained 110,000 men under arms, and was ready to make the greatest sacrifices whenever there was a necessity for augmenting the territory of the kingdom, or for establishing national unity. At his death, on the 25th of August, 1483, he left a kingdom considerably increased in area, but financialty almost ruined. When Anne de Beaujeu, eldest sister of the King, who was a minor, assumed the reins of government as regent, an immediate demand was made for reparation of the evils to which the finance ministers had subjected the unfortunate people. The treasurer-general Olivier le Dain, and the attorney-general Jean Doyat, were almost immediately sacrificed to popular resentment, six thousand Swiss were subsidised, the pensions granted during the previous reign were cancelled, and a fourth part of the taxes was removed. Public opinion being thus satisfied, the States-General assembled. The bourgeois here showed great practical good sense, especially in matters of finance; they proved clearly that the assessment was illegal, and that the accounts were fictitious, inasmuch as the latter only showed 1,650,000 livres of subsidies, whereas they amounted to three times as much. It was satisfactorily established that the excise, the salt tax, and the revenues of the public lands amply sufficed for the wants of the country and the crown. The young King Charles was only allowed 1,200,000 livres for his private purse for two years, and 300,000 livres for the expenses of the festivities of his coronation. On the Assembly being dissolved, the Queen Regent found ample means of pleasing the bourgeois and the people generally by breaking through the engagements she had entered into in the King's name, by remitting taxation, and finally by force of arms destroying the power of the last remaining vassals of the crown. [Illustration: Fig. 286.--The Mint.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Translation of the Latin Work of Francis Patricius, "De l'Institution et Administration de la Chose Politique:" folio, 1520.] [Illustration: Fig. 287.--The receiver of Taxes.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in Damhoudere's "Praxis Rerum Civilium."] Charles VIII., during a reign of fourteen years, continued to waste the public money. His disastrous expedition for the conquest of the kingdom of Naples forced him to borrow at the rate of forty-two per cent. A short time previous to his death he acknowledged his errors, but continued to spend money, without consideration or restraint, in all kinds of extravagances, but especially in buildings. During his reign the annual expenditure almost invariably doubled the revenue. In 1492 it reached 7,300,000 francs, about 244,000,000 francs of present money. The deficit was made up each year by a general tax, "which was paid neither by the nobles nor the Church, but was obtained entirely from the people" (letters from the ambassadors of Venice). When the Duke of Orleans ascended the throne as Louis XII., the people were again treated with some consideration. Having chosen George d'Amboise as premier and Florimond Robertet as first secretary of the treasury, he resolutely pursued a course of strict economy; he refused to demand of his subjects the usual tax for celebrating the joyous accession, the taxes fell by successive reductions to the sum of 2,600,000 livres, about 76,000,000 francs of present money, the salt tax was entirely abolished, and the question as to what should be the standard measure of this important article was legislated upon. The tax-gatherers were forced to reside in their respective districts, and to submit their registers to the royal commissioners before beginning to collect the tax. By strict discipline pillage by soldiers was put a stop to (Fig. 288). Notwithstanding the resources obtained by the King through mortgaging a part of the royal domains, and in spite of the excellent administration of Robertet, who almost always managed to pay the public deficit without any additional tax, it was necessary in 1513, after several disastrous expeditions to Italy, to borrow, on the security of the royal domains, 400,000 livres, 10,000,000 francs of present money, and to raise from the excise and from other dues and taxes the sum of 3,300,000 livres, about 80,000,000 francs of present money. This caused the nation some distress, but it was only temporary, and was not much felt, for commerce, both domestic and foreign, much extended at the same time, and the sale of collectorships, of titles of nobility, of places in parliament, and of nominations to numerous judicial offices, brought in considerable sums to the treasury. The higher classes surnamed the king _Le Roitelet_, because he was sickly and of small stature, parsimonious and economical. The people called him their "father and master," and he has always been styled the father of the people ever since. [Illustration: Fig. 288.--A Village pillaged by Soldiers.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in Hamelmann's "Oldenburgisches Chronicon." in folio, 1599.] In an administrative and financial point of view, the reign of Francis I. was not at all a period of revival or of progress. The commencement of a sounder System of finance is rather to be dated from that of Charles V.; and good financial organization is associated with the names of Jacques Coeur, Philip the Good, Charles XI., and Florimond Robertet. As an example of this, it may be stated that financiers of that time established taxes on registration of all kinds, also on stamps, and on sales, which did not before exist in France, and which were borrowed from the Roman emperors. We must also give them the credit of having first commenced a public debt, under the name of _rentes perpetuelles_, which at that time realised eight per cent. During this brilliant and yet disastrous reign the additional taxes were enormous, and the sale of offices produced such a large revenue that the post of parliamentary counsel realised the sum of 2,000 golden écus, or nearly a million francs of present currency. It was necessary to obtain money at any price, and from any one who would lend it. The ecclesiastics, the nobility, the bourgeois, all gave up their plate and their jewels to furnish the mint, which continued to coin money of every description, and, in consequence of the discovery of America, and the working of the gold and silver mines in that country, the precious metals poured into the hands of the money-changers. The country, however, was none the more prosperous, and the people often were in want of even the commonest necessaries of life. The King and the court swallowed up everything, and consumed all the resources of the country on their luxury and their wars. The towns, the monasteries, and the corporations, were bound to furnish a certain number of troops, either infantry or cavalry. By the establishment of a lottery and a bank of deposit, by the monopoly of the mines and by the taxes on imports, exports, and manufactured articles, enormous sums were realised to the treasury, which, as it was being continually drained, required to be as continually replenished. Francis I. exhausted every source of credit by his luxury, his caprices, and his wars. Jean de Beaune, Baron de Semblançay, the old minister of finance, died a victim to false accusations of having misappropriated the public funds. Robertet, who was in office with him, and William Bochetel, who succeeded him, were more fortunate: they so managed the treasury business that, without meeting with any legal difficulty, they were enabled to centralise the responsibility in themselves instead of having it distributed over sixteen branches in all parts of the kingdom, a system which has continued to our day. In those days the office of superintendent of finance was usually only a short and rapid road to the gibbet of Montfaucon. [Illustrations: Gold and Silver Coins of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Fig. 289.--Royal d'Or. Charles VII Fig. 290.--Écu d'Argent à la Couronne. Louis XI. Fig. 291.--Écu d'Or à la Couronne. Charles VIII. Fig. 292.--Écu d'Or au Porc-épic. Louis XII. Fig. 293.--Teston d'Argent. Francis I. Fig. 294.--Teston d'Argent au Croissant. Henry II. ] [Illustration: Fig. 295.--Silver Franc. Henry IV.] Law and the Administration of Justice. The Family the Origin of Government.--Origin of Supreme Power amongst the Franks.--The Legislation of Barbarism humanised by Christianity.--Right of Justice inherent to the Bight of Property.--The Laws under Charlemagne.--Judicial Forms.--Witnesses.--Duels, &c.-- Organization of Royal Justice under St. Louis.--The Châtelet and the Provost of Paris.--Jurisdiction of Parliament, its Duties and its Responsibilities.--The Bailiwicks. Struggles between Parliament and the Châtelet.--Codification of the Customs and Usages.--Official Cupidity.--Comparison between the Parliament and the Châtelet. Amongst the ancient Celtic and German population, before any Greek or Roman innovations had become engrafted on to their customs, everything, even political power as well as the rightful possession of lands, appears to have been dependent on families. Julius Cæsar, in his "Commentaries," tells us that "each year the magistrates and princes assigned portions of land to families as well as to associations of individuals having a common object whenever they thought proper, and to any extent they chose, though in the following year the same authorities compelled them to go and establish themselves elsewhere." We again find families (_familiæ_) and associations of men (_cognationes hominum_) spoken of by Cæsar, in the barbaric laws, and referred to in the histories of the Middle Ages under the names of _genealogiæ, faramanni, faræ_, &c.; but the extent of the relationship (_parentela_) included under the general appellation of _families_ varied amongst the Franks, Lombards, Visigoths, and Bavarians. Generally, amongst all the people of German origin, the relationship only extended to the seventh degree; amongst the Celts it was determined merely by a common ancestry, with endless subdivisions of the tribe into distinct families. Amongst the Germans, from whom modern Europe has its origin, we find only three primary groups; namely, first, the family proper, comprising the father, mother, and children, and the collateral relatives of all degrees; secondly, the vassals (_ministeriales_) or servants of the free class; and, thirdly, the servants (_mansionarii, coloni, liti, servi_) of the servile class attached to the family proper (Fig. 296). Domestic authority was represented by the _mund_, or head of the family, also called _rex_ (the king), who exercised a special power over the persons and goods of his dependents, a guardianship, in fact, with certain rights and prerogatives, and a sort of civil and political responsibility attached to it. Thus the head of the family, who was responsible for his wife and for those of his children who lived with him, was also responsible for his slaves and domestic animals. To such a pitch did these primitive people carry their desire that justice should be done in all cases of infringement of the law, that the head was held legally responsible for any injury which might be done by the bow or the sword of any of his dependents, without it being necessary that he should himself have handled either of these weapons. Long before the commencement of the Merovingian era, the family, whose sphere of action had at first been an isolated and individual one, became incorporated into one great national association, which held official meetings at stated periods on the _Malberg_ (Parliament hill). These assemblies alone possessed supreme power in its full signification. The titles given to certain chiefs of _rex_ (king), _dux_ (duke), _graff_ (count), _brenn_ (general of the army), only defined the subdivisions of that power, and were applied, the last exclusively, to those engaged in war, and the others to those possessing judicial and administrative functions. The duty of dispensing justice was specially assigned to the counts, who had to ascertain the cause of quarrels between parties and to inflict penalties. There was a count in each district and in each important town; there were, besides, several counts attached to the sovereign, under the title of counts of the palace (_comites palatii_), an honourable position, which was much sought after and much coveted on account of its pecuniary and other contingent advantages. The counts of the palace deliberated with the sovereign on all matters and all questions of State, and at the same time they were his companions in hunting, feasting, and religious exercises; they acted as arbitrators in questions of inheritance of the crown; during the minority of princes they exercised the same authority as that which the constitution gave to sovereigns who were of full age; they confirmed the nominations of the principal functionaries and even those of the bishops; they gave their advice on the occasion of a proposed alliance between one nation and another, on matters connected with treaties of peace or of commerce, on military expeditions, or on exchanges of territory, as well as in reference to the marriage of a prince, and they incurred no responsibility beyond that naturally attached to persons in so distinguished a position among a semi-barbarous community. At first the legates (_legati_), and afterwards the King's ambassadors (_missi dominici_), the bishops and the dukes or commanders of the army were usually selected from the higher court officials, such as the counts of the palace, whereas the _ministeriales_, forming the second class of the royal officials, filled inferior though very honourable and lucrative posts of an administrative and magisterial character. [Illustration: Fig. 296.--The Familles and the Barbarians.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] Under the Merovingians the legal principle of power was closely bound up with the possession of landed property. The subdivision of that power, however, closely followed this union, and the constant ruin of some of the nobles rapidly increased the power of others, who absorbed to themselves the lost authority of their more unfortunate brethren, so much so that the Frank kings perceived that society would soon escape their rule unless they speedily found a remedy for this state of things. It was then that the _lois Salique_ and _Ripuaire_ appeared, which were subjected to successive revisions and gradual or sudden modifications, necessitated by political changes or by the increasing exigencies of the prelates and nobles. But, far from lessening the supremacy of the King, the national customs which were collected in a code extended the limits of the royal authority and facilitated its exercise. In 596, Childebert, in concert with his _leudes_, decided that in future the crime of rape should be punished with death, and that the judge of the district (_pagus_) in which it had been committed should kill the ravisher, and leave his body on the public road. He also enacted that the homicide should have the same fate. "It is just," to quote the words of the law, "that he who knows how to kill should learn how to die." Robbery, attested by seven witnesses, also involved capital punishment, and a judge convicted of having let a noble escape, underwent the same punishment that would have been inflicted on the criminal. The punishment, however, differed according to the station of the delinquent. Thus, for the non-observance of Sunday, a Salian paid a fine of fifteen sols, a Roman seven and a half sols, a slave three sols, or "his back paid the penalty for him." At this early period some important changes in the barbaric code had been made: the sentence of death when once given had to be carried out, and no arrangements between the interested parties could avert it. A crime could no longer be condoned by the payment of money; robbery even, which was still leniently regarded at that time, and beyond the Rhine even honoured, was pitilessly punished by death. We therefore cannot have more striking testimony than this of the abridgment of the privileges of the Frankish aristocracy, and of the progress which the sovereign power was making towards absolute and uncontrolled authority over cases of life and death. By almost imperceptible steps Roman legislation became more humane and perfect, Christianity engrafted itself into barbarism, licentiousness was considered a crime, crime became an offence against the King and society, and it was in one sense by the King's hand that the criminals received punishment. From the time of the baptism of Clovis, the Church had much to do with the re-arrangement of the penal code; for instance, marriage with a sister-in-law, a mother-in-law, an aunt, or a niece, was forbidden; the travelling shows, nocturnal dances, public orgies, formerly permitted at feasts, were forbidden as being profane. In the time of Clotaire, the prelates sat as members of the supreme council, which was strictly speaking the highest court of the land, having the power of reversing the decisions of the judges of the lower courts. It pronounced sentence in conjunction with the King, and from these decisions there was no appeal. The nation had no longer a voice in the election of the magistrates, for the assemblies of _Malberg_ did not meet except on extraordinary occasions, and all government and judicial business was removed to the supreme and often capricious arbitration of the King and his council. As long as the mayors of the palace of Austrasia, and of that of Burgundy, were only temporarily appointed, royal authority never wavered, and the sovereign remained supreme judge over his subjects. Suddenly, however, after the execution of Brunehaut, who was sacrificed to the hatred of the feudal lords, the mayoralty of the palace became a life appointment, and, in consequence, the person holding the office became possessed almost of supreme power, and the rightful sovereigns from that time practically became subject to the authority of the future usurpers of the crown. The edict of 615, to which the ecclesiastical and State nobility were parties, was in its laws and customs completely at variance with former edicts. In resuming their places in the French constitution, the Merovingian kings, who had been deprived both of influence and authority, were compelled by the Germanic institutions to return to the passive position which their predecessors had held in the forests of Germany, but they no longer had, like the latter, the prestige of military authority to enable them to keep the position of judges or arbitrators. The canons of the Council of Paris, which were confirmed by an edict of the King bearing date the 15th of the calends of November, 615, upset the political and legal system so firmly established in Europe since the fifth century. The royal power was shorn of some of its most valuable prerogatives, one of which was that of selecting the bishops; lay judges were forbidden to bring an ecclesiastic before the tribunals; and the treasury was prohibited from seizing intestate estates, with a view to increasing the rates and taxes; and it was decreed that Jews should not be employed in collecting the public taxes. By these canons the judges and other officers of State were made responsible, the benefices which had been withdrawn from the _leudes_ were restored, the King was forbidden from granting written orders (_præcepta_) for carrying off rich widows, young virgins, and nuns; and the penalty of death was ordered to be enforced against those who disobeyed the canons of the council. Thence sprung two new species of legislation, one ecclesiastical, the other civil, between which royalty, more and more curtailed of its authority, was compelled for many centuries to struggle. Amongst the Germanic nations the right of justice was inherent to landed property from the earliest times, and this right had reference to things as well as to persons. It was the patronage (_patrocinium_) of the proprietor, and this patronage eventually gave origin to feudal jurisdictions and to lordly and customary rights in each domain. We may infer from this that under the two first dynasties laws were made by individuals, and that each lord, so to speak, made his own. The right of jurisdiction seems to have been so inherent to the right of property, that a landed proprietor could always put an end to feuds and personal quarrels, could temporarily bring any lawsuit to a close, and, by issuing his _ban_, stop the course of the law in his own immediate neighbourhood--at least, within a given circumference of his residence. This was often done during any family festival, or any civil or religious public ceremony. On these occasions, whoever infringed the _ban_ of the master, was liable to be brought before his _court_, and to have to pay a fine. The lord who was too poor to create a court of sufficient power and importance obtained assistance from his lord paramount or relinquished the right of justice to him; whence originated the saying, "The fief is one thing, and justice another." The law of the Visigoths speaks of nobles holding local courts, similar to those of the official judge, count, or bishop. King Dagobert required the public and the private judges to act together. In the law of Lombardy landlords are mentioned who, in virtue of the double title of nobles and judges, assumed the right of protecting fugitive slaves taking shelter in their domains. By an article of the Salie law, the noble is made to answer for his vassal before the court of the count. We must hence conclude that the landlord's judgment was exercised indiscriminately on the serfs, the colons, and the vassals, and a statute of 855 places under his authority even the freemen who resided with other persons. From these various sources we discover a curious fact, which has hitherto remained unnoticed by historians--namely, that there existed an intermediate legislation between the official court of the count and his subordinates and the private courts, which was a kind of court of arbitration exercised by the neighbours (_vicini_) without the assistance of the judges of the county, and this was invested with a sort of authority which rendered its decisions binding. [Illustration: Fig. 297.--The Emperor Charlemagne holding in one hand the Globe and in the other the Sword.--After a Miniature in the Registers of the University of Paris (Archives of the Minister of Public Instruction of the University). The Motto, _In scelus exurgo, sceleris discrimina purgo, _ is written on a Scroll round the Sword.] Private courts, however, were limited in their power. They were neither absolutely independent, nor supreme and without appeal. All conducted their business much in the same way as the high, middle, and lower courts of the Middle Ages; and above all these authorities towered the King's jurisdiction. The usurpation of ecclesiastical bishops and abbots--who, having become temporal lords, assumed a domestic jurisdiction--was curtailed by the authority of the counts, and they were even more obliged to give way before that of the _missi dominici_, or the official delegates of the monarch. Charles the Bald, notwithstanding his enormous concessions to feudalism and to the Church, never gave up his right of final appeal. During the whole of the Merovingian epoch, the _mahl_ (_mallus_), the general and regular assembly of the nation, was held in the month of March. Persons of every class met there clad in armour; political, commercial, and judicial interests were discussed under the presidency of the monarch; but this did not prevent other special assemblies of the King's court (_curia regalis_) being held on urgent occasions. This court formed a parliament (_parlamentum_), which at first was exclusively military, but from the time of Clovis was composed of Franks, Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, as well as of feudal lords and ecclesiastics. As, by degrees, the feudal System became organized, the convocation of national assemblies became more necessary, and the administration of justice more complicated. Charlemagne decided that two _mahls_ should be held annually, one in the month of May, the other in the autumn, and, in addition, that in each county two annual _plaids_ should meet independently of any special _mahls_ and _plaids_ which it should please him to convoke. In 788, the emperor found it necessary to call three general _plaids_, and, besides these, he was pleased to summon his great vassals, both clerical and lay, to the four principal feasts of the year. It may be asserted that the idea of royalty being the central authority in matters of common law dates from the reign of Charlemagne (Fig. 297). The authority of royalty based on law took such deep root from that time forth, that it maintained itself erect, notwithstanding the weakness of the successors of the great Charles, and the repeated infractions of it by the Church and the great vassals of the crown (Fig. 298). [Illustration: Fig. 298.--Carlovingian King in his Palace personifying Wisdom appealing to the whole Human Race.--After a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ninth Century in the Burgundian Library of Brussels, from a Drawing by Count Horace de Vielcastel.] The authoritative and responsible action of a tribunal which represented society (Fig. 299) thus took the place of the unchecked animosity of private feuds and family quarrels, which were often avenged by the use of the gibbet, a monument to be found erected at almost every corner. Not unfrequently, in those early times, the unchecked passions of a chief of a party would be the only reason for inflicting a penalty; often such a person would constitute himself sole judge, and, without the advice of any one, he would pass sentence, and even, with his own sword or any other available instrument, he would act as his own executioner. The tribunal thus formed denounced duelling, the pitiless warfare between man and man, and between family and family, and its first care was to protect, not each individual man's life, which was impossible in those days of blind barbarism, but at least his dwelling. Imperceptibly, the sanctuary of a man's house extended, first to towns of refuge, and then to certain public places, such as the church, the _mahlum_, or place of national assemblies, the market, the tavern, &c. It was next required that the accused, whether guilty or not, should remain unharmed from the time of the crime being committed until the day on which judgment was passed. [Illustration: Fig. 299.--The Court of the Nobles.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in an old Poetical Romance of Chivalry, Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] This right of revenge, besides being thus circumscribed as to locality, was also subject to certain rules as to time. Sunday and the principal feasts of the year, such as Advent, Christmas week, and from that time to the Epiphany, from the Ascension to the Day of Pentecost, certain vigils, &c., were all occasions upon which the right of revenge could not be exercised. "The power of the King," says a clever and learned writer, "partook to a certain degree of that of God and of the Saints; it was his province to calm human passions; by the moral power of his seal and his hand he extended peace over all the great lines of communication, through the forests, along the principal rivers, the highways and the byways, &c. The _Trêve du Dieu_ in 1035, was the logical application of these humane principles." We must not suppose that justice in those days was dispensed without formalities, and that there were no regular intervals between the various steps to be gone through before final judgment was given, and in consequence of which some guarantee was afforded that the decisions arrived at were carefully considered. No one was tried without having been previously summoned to appear before the tribunal. Under the Carlovingians, as in previous times, the periods when judicial courts were held were regulated by the moon. Preference was given to the day on which it entered the first quarter, or during the full moon; the summonses were returnable by moons or quarter moons--that is, every seventh day. The summons was issued four times, after which, if the accused did not appear, he lost the right of counterplea, or was nonsuited. The Salic law allowed but two summonses before a count, which had to be issued at an interval of forty nights the one from the other. The third, which summoned the accused before the King, was issued fourteen nights later, and if he had not put in an appearance before sunset on the fourteenth day, he was placed _hors de sa parole_, his goods were confiscated, and he forfeited the privilege of any kind of refuge. Among the Visigoths justice was equally absolute from the count to the tithe-gatherer. Each magistrate had his tribunal and his special jurisdiction. These judges called to their assistance assessors or colleagues, either _rachimbourgs_, who were selected from freemen; or provosts, or _échevins_ (_scabini_), whose appointment was of an official and permanent character. The scabins created by Charlemagne were the first elected magistrates. They numbered seven for each bench. They alone prepared the cases and arranged as to the sentence. The count or his delegate alone presided at the tribunal, and pronounced the judgment. Every vassal enjoyed the right of appeal to the sovereign, who, with his court, alone decided the quarrels between ecclesiastics and nobles, and between private individuals who were specially under the royal protection. Criminal business was specially referred to the sovereign, the _missi_, or the Count Palatine. Final appeal lay with the Count Palatine in all cases in which the public peace was endangered, such as in revolts or in armed encounters. As early as the time of the invasion, the Franks, Bavarians, and Visigoths, when investigating cases, began by an inquiry, and, previously to having recourse to trials before a judge, they examined witnesses on oath. Then, he who swore to the matter was believed, and acquitted accordingly. This system was no doubt flattering to human veracity, but, unfortunately, it gave rise to abuses; which it was thought would be avoided by calling the family and friends of the accused to take an oath, and it was then administered by requiring them to place their hands on the crucifix, on some relics, or on the consecrated Host. These witnesses, who were called _conjuratores_, came to attest before the judges not the fact itself, but the veracity of the person who invoked their testimony. [Illustration: Fig. 300.--The Judicial Duel. The Plaintiff opening his Case before the Judge.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Cérémonies des Gages des Batailles," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century in the National Library of Paris.] The number and respectability of the _conjuratores_ varied according to the importance of the case in dispute. Gregory of Tours relates, that King Gontran being suspicious as to the legitimacy of the child who afterwards became Clotaire II., his mother, Frédégonde, called in the impartial testimony of certain nobles. These, to the number of three hundred, with three bishops at their head (_tribus episcopis et trecentis viris optimis_), swore, or, as we say, made an affidavit, and the queen was declared innocent. The laws of the Burgundians and of the Anglians were more severe than those of the Germanic race, for they granted to the disputants trial by combat. After having employed the ordeal of red-hot iron, and of scalding water, the Franks adopted the judicial duel (Fig. 300). This was imposed first upon the disputing parties, then on the witnesses, and sometimes even on the judges themselves. Dating from the reign of the Emperor Otho the Great in 967, the judicial duel, which had been at first restricted to the most serious cases, was had recourse to in almost all suits that were brought before the courts. Neither women, old men, children, nor infirm persons were exempted. When a person could not himself fight he had to provide a champion, whose sole business was to take in hand the quarrels of others. [Illustration: Fig. 301.--Judicial Duel.--Combat of a Knight with a Dog.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Romance of "Macaire," of the Thirteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal of Paris).] Ecclesiastics were obliged, in the same maimer, to fight by deputy. The champion or substitute required, of course, to be paid beforehand. If the legend of the Dog of Montargis is to be believed, the judicial duel seems to have been resorted to even against an animal (Fig. 301). In the twelfth century Europe was divided, so to speak, into two vast judicial zones: the one, Southern, Gallo-Roman, and Visigoth; the other, Northern and Western, half Germanic and half Scandinavian, Anglian, or Saxon. Christianity established common ties between these different legislations, and imperceptibly softened their native coarseness, although they retained the elements of their pagan and barbaric origin. Sentences were not as yet given in writing: they were entrusted to the memory of the judges who had issued them; and when a question or dispute arose between the interested parties as to the terms of the decision which had been pronounced, an inquiry was held, and the court issued a second decision, called a _recordatum_. As long as the King's court was a movable one, the King carried about with him the original text of the law in rolls (_rotuli_). It was in consequence of the seizure of a number of these by the English, during the reign of Philip Augustus in 1194, that the idea was suggested of preserving the text of all the laws as state archives, and of opening authentic registers of decisions in civil and criminal cases. As early as the time of Charles the Bald, the inconvenience was felt of the high court of the count being movable from place to place, and having no special locality where instructions might be given as to modes of procedure, for the hearing of witnesses, and for keeping the accused in custody, &c. A former statute provided for this probable difficulty, but there seems to be no proof that previous to the twelfth century any fixed courts of justice had been established. The Kings, and likewise the counts, held courts in the open air at the entrance to the palace (Fig. 302), or in some other public place--under a large tree, for instance, as St. Louis did in the wood of Vincennes. M. Desmaze, in his valuable researches on the history of the Parliament of Paris, says--"In 1191, Philip Augustus, before starting for Palestine, established bailiwicks, which held their assizes once a month; during their sitting they heard all those who had complaints to make, and gave summary judgment. The bailiff's assize was held at stated periods from time to time, and at a fixed place; it was composed of five judges, the King deciding the number and quality of the persons who were to take part in the deliberations of the court for each session. The royal court only sat when it pleased the King to order it; it accompanied the King wherever he went, so that it had no settled place of residence." Louis IX. ordered that the courts of the nobles should be consolidated with the King's court, and succeeded in carrying out this reform. The bailiffs who were the direct delegates of the sovereign power, assumed an authority before which even the feudal lord was obliged to bend, because this authority was supported by the people, who were at that time organized in corporations, and these corporations were again bound together in communes. Under the bailiffs a system was developed, the principles of which more nearly resembled the Roman legislation than the right of custom, which it nevertheless respected, and the judicial trial by duel completely disappeared. Inquiries and appeals were much resorted to in all kinds of proceedings, and Louis IX. succeeded in controlling the power of ecclesiastical courts, which had been much abused in reference to excommunication. He also suppressed the arbitrary and ruinous confiscations which the nobles had unjustly made on their vassals. [Illustration: Fig. 302.--The Palace as it was in the Sixteenth Century.--After an Engraving of that Period, National Library of Paris (Cabinet des Estampes).] The edict of 1276 very clearly established the jurisdiction of parliaments and bailiwicks; it defined the important duties of the bailiffs, and at the same time specified the mode in which proceedings should be taken; it also regulated the duties of counsel, _maîtres des requêtes_, auditors, and advocates. To the bailiwicks already in existence Louis IX. added the four great assizes of Vermandois, of Sens, of Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier, and of Mâcon, "to act as courts of final appeal from the judgment of the nobles." Philippe le Bel went still further, for, in 1287, he invited "all those who possess temporal authority in the kingdom of France to appoint, for the purpose of exercising civil jurisdiction, a bailiff, a provost, and some serjeants, who were to be laymen, and not ecclesiastics, and if there should be ecclesiastics in the said offices, to remove them." He ordered, besides, that all those who had cases pending before the court of the King and the secular judges of the kingdom should be furnished with lay attorneys; though the chapters, as well as the abbeys and convents, were allowed to be represented by canons. M. Desmaze adds, "This really amounted to excluding ecclesiastics from judicial offices, not only from the courts of the King, but also from those of the nobles, and from every place in which any temporal jurisdiction existed." At the time of his accession, Hugh Capet was Count of Paris, and as such was invested with judicial powers, which he resigned in 987, on the understanding that his county of Paris, after the decease of the male heirs of his brother Eudes, should return to the crown. In 1032, a new magistrate was created, called the Provost of Paris, whose duty it was to give assistance to the bourgeois in arresting persons for debt. This functionary combined in his own person the financial and political chief of the capital, he was also the head of the nobility of the county, he was independent of the governor, and was placed above the bailiffs and seneschals. He was the senior of the urban magistracy and police, leader of the municipal troops, and, in a word, the prefect (_præfectus urbis_), as he was called under the Emperor Aurelian, or the first magistrate of Lutetia, as he was still called under Clotaire in 663. Assessors were associated with the provost, and together they formed a tribunal, which was afterwards known as the Châtelet (Fig. 303), because they assembled in that fortress, the building of which is attributed to Julius Caesar. The functions of this tribunal did not differ much from those of the royal _châtellenies:_ its jurisdiction embraced quarrels between individuals, assaults, revolts, disputes between the universities and the students, and improper conduct generally (_ribaudailles_), in consequence of which the provost acquired the popular surname of _Roi des Ribauds_. At first his judgment was final, but very soon those under his jurisdiction were allowed to appeal to Parliament, and that court was obliged to have certain cases sent back for judgment from the Châtelet. This was, however, done only in a few very important instances, notwithstanding frequent appeals being made to its supreme arbitration. [Illustration: Fig. 303.--The Great Châtelet of Paris.--Principal Front opposite the Pont-au-Change.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper by Mérian, in the "Topographia Galliae" of Zeller.] In addition to the courts of the counts and bailiffs established in certain of the large towns, aldermanic or magisterial courts existed, which rather resembled the Châtelet of Paris. Thus the _capiloulat_ of Toulouse, the senior alderman of Metz, and the burgomaster of Strasburg and Brussels, possessed in each of these towns a tribunal, which judged without appeal, and united the several functions of a civil, criminal, and simple police court. Several places in the north of France had provosts who held courts whose duties were various, but who were principally charged with the maintenance of public order, and with suppressing disputes and conflicts arising from the privileges granted to the trade corporations, whose importance, especially in Flanders, had much increased since the twelfth century. "On his return from abroad, Louis IX. took his seat upon the bench, and administered justice, by the side of the good provost of Paris." This provost was no other than the learned Estienne Boileau, out of respect to whom the provostship was declared a _charge de magistrature_. The increase of business which fell to the provost's office, especially after the boundaries of Paris were extended by Philip Augustus, caused him to be released from the duty of collecting the public taxes. He was authorised to furnish himself with competent assistants, who were employed with matters of minor detail, and he was allowed the assistance of _juges auditeurs_. "We order that they shall be eight in number," says an edict of Philippe le Bel, of February, 1324, "four of them being ecclesiastics and four laymen, and that they shall assemble at the Châtelet two days in the week, to take into consideration the suits and causes in concert with our provost...." In 1343, the provost's court was composed of one King's attorney, one civil commissioner, two King's counsel, eight councillors, and one criminal commissioner, whose sittings took place daily at the Châtelet. From the year 1340 this tribunal had to adjudicate in reference to all the affairs of the university, and from the 6th of October, 1380, to all those of the salt-fish market, which were no less numerous, so that its importance increased considerably. Unfortunately, numerous abuses were introduced into this municipal jurisdiction. In 1313 and 1320, the officers of the Châtelet were suspended, on account of the extortions which they were guilty of, and the King ordered an inquiry to be made into the matter. The provost and two councillors of the Parliament sat upon it, and Philip de Valois, adopting its decisions, prescribed fresh statutes, which were naturally framed in such a way as to show the distrust in which the Châtelet was then held. To these the officers of the Châtelet promised on oath to submit. The ignorance and immorality of the lay officers, who had been substituted for the clerical, caused much disturbance. Parliament authorised two of its principal members to examine the officers of the Châtelet. Twenty years later, on the receipt of fresh complaints, Parliament decided that three qualified councillors, chosen from its own body, should proceed with the King's attorney to the Châtelet, so as to reform the abuses and informalities of that court. [Illustration: Fig. 304.--The King's Court, or Grand Council.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (formerly in the possession of Charles V), in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.] In the time of Philippe le Bel there existed in reality but one Parliament, and that was the _King's Court_. Its action was at once political, administrative, financial, and judicial, and was necessarily, therefore, of a most complicated character. Philippe le Bel made it exclusively a judicial court, defined the territorial limit of its power, and gave it as a judicial body privileges tending to strengthen its independence and to raise its dignity. He assigned political functions to the Great Council (_Conseil d'Etat_); financial matters to the chamber of accounts; and the hearing of cases of heresy, wills, legacies, and dowries to the prelates. But in opposition to the wise edict of 1295, he determined that Jews should be excluded from Parliament, and prelates from the palace of justice; by which latter proceeding he was depriving justice of the abilities of the most worthy representatives of the Gallican Church. But Philippe le Bel and his successors, while incessantly quarrelling either with the aristocracy or with the clergy, wanted the great judicial bodies which issued the edicts, and the urban or municipal magistrates--which, being subject to re-election, were principally recruited from among the bourgeois--to be a common centre of opposition to any attempt at usurpation of power, whether on the part of the Church, the nobility, or the crown. The Great Days of Troyes (_dies magni Trecenses_), the assizes of the ancient counts of Champagne, and the exchequer of Normandy, were also organized by Philipe le Bel; and, further, he authorised the maintenance of a Parliament at Toulouse, a court which he solemnly opened in person on the 10th of January, 1302. In times of war the Parliament of Paris sat once a year, in times of peace twice. There were, according to circumstances, during the year two, three, or four sittings of the exchequer of Normandy, and two of the Great Days of Troyes, tribunals which were annexed to the Parliament of Paris, and generally presided over by one of its delegates, and sometimes even by the supreme head of that high court. At the King's council (Fig. 304) it was decided whether a case should be reserved for the Parliament of Paris, or passed on either to the exchequer or to the Great Days of Troyes. As that advanced reformer, Philippe le Bel, died before the institutions he had established had taken root, for many years, even down to the time of Louis XI., a continual conflict for supremacy was waged between the Parliament of Paris and the various courts of the kingdom--between the counts and the Parliament, and between the latter and the King, which, without lessening the dignity of the crown, gradually tended to increase the influence which the judges possessed. Immediately on the accession of Louis le Hutin, in 1314, a reaction commenced--the higher clergy re-entered Parliament; but Philippe le Long took care that the laity should be in a majority, and did not allow that in his council of State the titled councillors should be more numerous than the lawyers. The latter succeeded in completely carrying the day on account of the services they rendered, and the influence which their knowledge of the laws of the country gave them. As for centuries the sword had ruled the gown, so, since the emancipation of the bourgeois, the lawyers had become masters of the administrative and judicial world; and, notwithstanding the fact that they were still kept in a somewhat inferior position to the peers and barons, their opinion alone predominated, and their decision frequently at once settled the most important questions. An edict issued at Val Notre-Dame on the 11th of March, 1344, increased the number of members of Parliament, which from that time consisted of three presidents, fifteen clerical councillors, fifteen lay councillors, twenty-four clergymen and sixteen laymen of the Court of Inquiry, and five clergymen and sixteen laymen of the Court of Petitions. The King filled up the vacant seats on the recommendation of the Chancellor and of the Parliament. The reporters were enjoined to write the decisions and sentences which were given by the court "in large letters, and far apart, so that they might be more easily read." The duties of police in the courts, the keeping of the doors, and the internal arrangements generally for those attending the courts and the Parliament, were entrusted to the ushers, "who divided among themselves the gratuities which were given them by virtue of their office." Before an advocate was admitted to plead he was required to take oath and to be inscribed on the register. The Parliament as then established was somewhat similar in its character to that of the old national representative government under the Germans and Franks. For centuries it protected the King against the undue interference of the spiritual power, it defended the people against despotism, but it often lacked independence and political wisdom, and it was not always remarkable for its correct appreciation of men and things. This tribunal, although supreme over all public affairs, sometimes wavered before the threats of a minister or of a court favourite, succumbed to the influence of intrigues, and adapted itself to the prejudices of the times. We see it, in moments of error and of blindness, both condemning eminent statesmen and leading citizens, such as Jacques Coeur and Robertet, and handing over to the executioner distinguished men of learning and science in advance of the times in which they lived, because they were falsely accused of witchcraft, and also doing the same towards unfortunate maniacs who fancied they had dealings with the devil. [Illustration: Fig. 305.--Trial of the Constable de Bourbon before the Peers of France (1523).--From an Engraving in "La Monarchie Françoise" of Montfauçon.] In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries all the members of Parliament formed part of the council of State, which was divided into the Smaller Council and the Greater Council. The Greater Council only assembled in cases of urgency and for extraordinary and very important purposes, the Smaller Council assembled every month, and its decisions were registered. From this arose the custom of making a similar registration in Parliament, confirming the decisions after they had been formally arrived at. The most ancient edict placed on the register of the Parliament of Paris dates from the year 1334, and is of a very important character. It concerns a question of royal authority, and decides that in spiritual matters the right of supremacy does not belong more to the Pope than to the King. Consequently Philippe de Valois ordered "his friends and vassals who shall attend the next Parliament and the keepers of the accounts, that for the perpetual record of so memorable a decision, it shall be registered in the Chambers of Parliament and kept for reference in the Treasury of the Charters." From that time "cases of complaint and other matters relating to benefices have no longer been discussed before the ecclesiastical judges, but before Parliament or some other secular court." During the captivity of King John in England, royal authority having considerably declined, the powers of Parliament and other bodies of the magistracy so increased, that under Charles VI. the Parliament of Paris was bold enough to assert that a royal edict should not become law until it had been registered in Parliament. This bold and certainly novel proceeding the kings nevertheless did not altogether oppose, as they foresaw that the time would come when it might afford them the means of repudiating a treaty extorted from them under difficult circumstances (Fig. 306). The close connection which existed between the various Parliaments and their political functions--for they had occasion incessantly to interfere between the acts of the government and the respective pretensions of the provinces or of the three orders--naturally increased the importance of this supreme magistracy. More than once the kings had cause to repent having rendered it so powerful, and this was the case especially with the Parliament of Paris. In this difficulty it is interesting to note how the kings acted. They imperceptibly curtailed the various powers of the other courts of justice, they circumscribed the power of the Parliament of Paris, and proportionately enlarged the jurisdiction of the great bailiwicks, as also that of the Châtelet. The provost of Paris was an auxiliary as well as a support to the royal power, which nevertheless held him in its grasp. The Châtelet was also a centre of action and of strength, which counteracted in certain cases parliamentary opposition. Thence arose the most implacable rivalries and dissensions between these various parties. [Illustration: Fig. 306.--Promulgation of an Edict.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in "Anciennetés des Juifs," (French Translation from Josephus), Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, executed for the Duke of Burgundy (Library of the Arsenal of Paris.)] It is curious to notice with what ingenuity and how readily Parliament took advantage of the most trifling circumstances or of charges based upon the very slightest grounds to summon the officers of the Châtelet before its bar on suspicion of prevarication or of outrages against religion, morals, or the laws. Often were these officers and the provost himself summoned to appear and make _amende honourable_ before the assembly, notwithstanding which they retained their offices. More than once an officer of the Châtelet was condemned to death and executed, but the King always annulled that part of the sentence which had reference to the confiscation of the goods of the condemned, thus proving that in reality the condemnation had been unjust, although for grave reasons the royal authority had been unable to save the victim from the avenging power of Parliament. Hugues Aubriot, the provost, was thus condemned to imprisonment for life on the most trivial grounds, and he would have undergone capital punishment if Charles V. had abandoned him at the time of his trial. During the English occupation, in the disastrous reign of Charles VI., the Châtelet of Paris, which took part with the people, gave proof of extraordinary energy and of great force of character. The blood of many of its members was shed on the scaffold, and this circumstance must ever remain a reproach to the judges and to those who executed their cruel sentences, and a lasting crown of glory to the martyrs themselves. An edict of King John, issued after his return from London in 1363, a short time before his death, clearly defined the duties of Parliament. They were to try cases which concerned peers of France, and such prelates, chapters, barons, corporations, and councils as had the privilege of appealing to the supreme court; and to hear cases relating to estates, and appeals from the provost of Paris, the bailiffs, seneschals, and other judges (Fig. 307). It disregarded minor matters, but took cognizance of all judicial debates which concerned religion, the King, or the State. We must remark here that advocates were only allowed to speak twice in the same cause, and that they were subjected to fine, or at least to remonstrance, if they were tedious or indulged in needless repetition in their replies, and especially if they did not keep carefully to the facts of the case. After pleading they were permitted to give a summary in writing of "the principal points of importance as well as their clients' grounds of defence." Charles V. confirmed these orders and regulations with respect to advocates, and added others which were no less important, among which we find a provision for giving "legal assistance to poor and destitute persons who go to law." These regulations of Charles also limited the time in which officers of justice were to get through their business under a certain penalty; they also proclaimed that the King should no longer hear minor causes, and that, whatever might be the rules of the court, they forbad the presidents from deferring their judgment or from retarding the regular course of justice. Charles VI., before he became insane, contributed no less than his father to the establishment on a better footing of the supreme court of the kingdom, as well as that of the Châtelet and the bailiwicks. [Illustration: Fig. 307.--Bailiwick.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] In the fifteenth century, the Parliament of Paris was so organized as not to require material change till 1789. There were noble, clerical, and lay councillors, honorary members, and _maîtres de requête_, only four of whom sat; a first president, who was supreme head of the Parliament, a master of the great chamber of pleas, and three presidents of the chamber, all of whom were nominated for life. There were fifteen masters (_maistres_) or clerical councillors, and fifteen who were laymen, and these were annually approved by the King on the opening of the session. An attorney-general, several advocates-general, and deputies, who formed a committee or college, constituted the active part of this court, round which were grouped consulting advocates (_consiliarii_), pleading advocates (_proponentes_), advocates who were mere listeners (_audientes_), ushers and serjeants, whose chief, on his appointment, became a member of the nobility. The official costume of the first president resembled that of the ancient barons and knights. He wore a scarlet gown lined with ermine, and a black silk cap ornamented with tassels. In winter he wore a scarlet mantle lined with ermine over his gown, on which his crest was worked on a shield. This mantle was fastened to the left shoulder by three gold cords, in order to leave the sword-side free, because the ancient knights and barons always sat in court wearing their swords. Amongst the archives of the mayoralty of London, we find in the "account of the entry of Henry V., King of England, into Paris" (on the 1st of December, 1420), that "the first president was in royal dress (_estoit en habit roial_), the first usher preceding him, and wearing a fur cap; the church dignitaries wore blue robes and hoods, and all the others in the procession scarlet robes and hoods." This imposing dress, in perfect harmony with the dignity of the office of those who wore them, degenerated towards the fifteenth century. So much was this the case, that an order of Francis I. forbad the judges from wearing pink "slashed hose" or other "rakish garments." In the early times of monarchy, the judicial functions were performed gratuitously; but it was the custom to give presents to the judges, consisting of sweetmeats, spices, sugar-plums, and preserves, until at a subsequent period, 1498, when, as the judges "preferred money to sweetmeats," says the Chancellor Etienne Pasquier, the money value of the spices, &c., was fixed by law and made compulsory. In the bills of expenses preserved among the national archives, we find that the first president of the Parliament of Paris received a thousand _livres parisis_ annually, representing upwards of one hundred thousand francs at the present rate of money; the three presidents of the chamber five hundred livres, equal to fifty thousand francs; and the other nobles of the said Parliament five _sols parisis_, or six sols three deniers--about twenty-five francs--per day for the days only on which they sat. They received, besides, two mantles annually. The prelates, princes, and barons who were chosen by the King received no salaries--_ils ne prennent nuls guaiges_ (law of 27th January, 1367). The seneschals and high bailiffs, like the presidents of the chambers, received five hundred livres--fifty thousand francs. They and the bailiffs of inferior rank were expressly forbidden from receiving money or fees from the parties in any suit, but they were allowed to accept on one day refreshment and bottles of wine. The salaries were paid monthly; but this was not always done regularly; sometimes the King was to blame for this, and sometimes it was owing to the ill-nature of the chiefs of finance, or of the receivers and payers. When the blame rested with the King, the Parliament humbly remonstrated or closed the court. When, on the contrary, an officer of finance did not pay the salaries, Parliament sent him the bailiff's usher, and put him under certain penalties until he had done so. The question of salaries was frequently arising. On the 9th of February, 1369, "the court having been requested to serve without any remuneration for one Parliament, on the understanding that the King would make up for it another time, the nobles of the court replied, after private deliberation, that they were ready to do the King's pleasure, but could not do so properly without receiving their salaries" (Register of the Parliament of Paris). At the commencement of the fifteenth century, the scale of remuneration was not increased. In 1411 it was raised for the whole Parliament to twenty-five thousand livres, which, calculated according to the present rate, amounted to nearly a million francs. In consequence of financial difficulties and the general distress, the unpleasant question in reference to claims for payment of salaries was renewed, with threats that the course of justice would be interrupted if they were not paid or not promised. On the 2nd of October, 1419, two councillors and one usher were sent to the house of one of the chiefs of finance, with orders to demand payment of the salaries of the court. In October, 1430, the government owed the magistrates two years of arrears. After useless appeals to the Regent, and to the Bishop of Thérouanne, the then Chancellor of France, the Parliament sent two of its members to the King at Rouen, who obtained, after much difficulty, "one month's pay, on the understanding that the Parliament should hold its sittings in the month of April." In the month of July, 1431, there was another deputation to the King, "in order to lay before him the necessities of the court, and that it had for some time been prorogued, and was still prorogued, on account of the non-payment of salaries." After two months of repeated remonstrance, the deputies only bringing back promises, the court assumed a menacing aspect; and on the 11th of January, 1437, it pointed out to the chancellor the evil which would arise if Parliament ceased to hold its sittings; and this time the chancellor announced that the salaries would be paid, though six months passed without any resuit or any practical step being taken in the matter. This state of affairs grew worse until the year 1443, when the King was obliged to plead with the Parliament in the character of an insolvent debtor, and, in order to obtain remission of part of his debt to the members, to guarantee to them a part of the salt duties. Charles VII, after having reconquered his states, hastened to restore order. He first occupied himself with the System of justice, the Parliament, the Châtelet, and the bailiwicks; and in April, 1453, in concert with the princes, the prelates, the council of State, the judges, and others in authority, he framed a general law, in one hundred and twenty-five articles, which was considered as the great charter of Parliament (Fig. 308). According to the terms of these articles, "the councillors are to sit after dinner, to get through the minor causes. Prisoners are to be examined without delay, and to hold no communication with any one, unless by special permission. The cases are to be carefully gone through in their proper order; for courts are instructed to do justice as promptly for the poor as for the rich, as it is a greater hardship for the poor to be kept waiting than the rich." The fees of attorneys were taxed and reduced in amount. Those of advocates were reduced "to such moderation and fairness, that there should be no cause for complaint." The judgments by commissary were forbidden. The bailiffs and seneschals were directed to reside within their districts. The councillors were ordered to abstain from all communication with the parties in private, and consultations between themselves were to be held in secret. The judgments given in lawsuits were inscribed in a register, and submitted every two months to the presidents, who, if necessary, called the reporters to account for any neglect of duty. The reporter was ordered to draw attention to any point of difficulty arising in a suit, and the execution of sentences or judgments was entrusted to the ushers of the court. In 1454 the King, in consequence of a difficulty in paying the regular instalments of the usual salaries of the Parliament, created "after-dinner fees" (_des gages d'après dînées_) of five sols parisis--more than ten francs of our money--per day, payable to those councillors who should hold a second hearing. Matters did not improve much, however; nothing seemed to proceed satisfactorily, and members of Parliament, deprived of their salaries, were compelled to contract a loan, in order to commence proceedings against the treasury for the non-payment of the amount due to them. In 1493, the annual salaries of Parliament were raised to the sum of 40,630 livres, equal to about 1,100,000 francs. [Illustration: Fig. 308.--Supreme Court, presided over by the King, who is in the act of issuing a Decree which is being registered by the Usher.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Camareu of the "Information des Rois," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] The first president received 4 livres, 22 solis parisis--about 140 francs--per day; a clerical councillor 25 sols parisis--about 40 francs--and a lay councillor 20 sols--about 32 francs. This was an increase of a fifth on the preceding year. Charles VIII., in thus improving the remuneration of the members of the first court of the kingdom, reminded them of their duties, which had been too long neglected; he told them "that of all the cardinal virtues justice was the most noble and most important;" and he pointed out to them the line of conduct they were to pursue. The councillors were to be present daily in their respective chambers, from St. Martin's day to Easter, before seven o'clock in the morning; and from Easter to the closing of Parliament, immediately after six o'clock, without intermission, under penalty of punishment. Strict silence was enforced upon them during the debates; and they were forbidden to occupy themselves with anything which did not concern the case under discussion. Amidst a mass of other points upon which directions are given, we notice the following: the necessity of keeping secret the matters in course of deliberation; the prohibition to councillors from receiving, either directly or indirectly, anything in the shape of a douceur from the parties in any suit; and the forbidding all attorneys from receiving any bribe or claiming more than the actual expenses of a journey and other just charges. The great charter of the Parliament, promulgated in April, 1453, was thus amended, confirmed, and completed, by this code of Charles VIII., with a wisdom which cannot be too highly extolled. The magistrature of the supreme courts had been less favoured during the preceding reign. Louis XI., that cautious and crafty reformer, after having forbidden ecclesiastical judges to examine cases referring to the revenues of vacant benefices, remodelled the secular courts, but he ruthlessly destroyed anything which offended him personally. For this reason, as he himself said, he limited the power of the Parliaments of Paris and Toulouse, by establishing, to their prejudice, several other courts of justice, and by favouring the Châtelet, where he was sure always to find those who would act with him against the aristocracy. The Parliament would not give way willingly, nor without the most determined opposition. It was obliged, however, at last to succumb, and to pass certain edicts which were most repugnant to it. On the death of Louis XI., however, it took its revenge, and called those who had been his favourites and principal agents to answer a criminal charge, for no other reason than that they had exposed themselves to the resentment of the supreme court. The Châtelet, in its judicial functions, was inferior to the Parliament, nevertheless it acquired, through its provost, who represented the bourgeois of Paris, considerable importance in the eyes of the supreme court. In fact, for two centuries the provost held the privilege of ruling the capital, both politically and financially, of commanding the citizen militia, and of being chief magistrate of the city. In the court of audiences, a canopy was erected, under which he sat, a distinction which no other magistrate enjoyed, and which appears to have been exclusively granted to him because he sat in the place of _Monsieur Saint Loys_ (Saint Louis), _dispensing justice to the good people of the City of Paris_. When the provost was installed, he was solemnly escorted, wearing his cap, to the great chamber of Parliament, accompanied by four councillors. [Illustration: Fig. 309.--The Court of a Baron.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] After the ceremony of installation he gave his horse to the president, who had come to receive him. His dress consisted of a short robe, with mantle, collar turned down, sword, and hat with feathers; he also carried a staff of office, profusely ornamented with silver. Thus attired he attended Parliament, and assisted at the levees of the sovereign, where he took up his position on the lowest step of the throne, below the great Chamberlain. Every day, excepting at the vintage time, he was required to be present at the Châtelet, either personally or by deputy, punctually at nine in the morning. There he received the list of the prisoners who had been arrested the day before; after that he visited the prisons, settled business of various kinds, and then inspected the town. His jurisdiction extended to several courts, which were presided over by eight deputies or judges appointed by him, and who were created officers of the Châtelet by Louis XII. in 1498. Subsequently, these received their appointments direct from the King. Two auditing judges, one king's attorney, one registrar, and some bailiffs, completed the provost's staff. [Illustration: Fig. 310.--Sergeants-at-Arms of the Fourteenth Century, carved in Stone.--From the Church of St. Catherine du Val des Ecoliers, in Paris.] The bailiffs at the Châtelet were divided into five classes: the _king's sergeant-at-arms,_ the _sergeants de la douzaine_, the _sergeants of the mace_, or _foot sergeants,_ the _sergeants fieffés_, and the _mounted sergeants_. The establishment of these officers dated from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and they were originally appointed by the provost, but afterwards by the King himself. The King's sergeants-at-arms (Fig. 310) formed his body-guard; they were not under the jurisdiction of the high constable, but of the ordinary judges, which proves that they were in civil employ. The sergeants _de la douzaine_ were twelve in number, as their name implies, all of whom were in the service of the provost; the foot sergeants, who were civilians, were gradually increased to the number of two hundred and twenty as early as the middle of the fifteenth century. They acted only in the interior of the capital, and guarded the city, the suburbs, and the surrounding districts, whereas the mounted sergeants had "to watch over the safety of the rural parishes, and to act throughout the whole extent of the provost's jurisdiction, and of that of the viscount of Paris." In the midst of the changes of the Middle Ages, especially after the communes became free, all those kings who felt the importance of a strict system of justice, particularly St. Louis, Philippe le Bel, and Charles VIII., had seen the necessity of compiling a record of local customs. An edict of 1453 orders that "the custom shall be registered in writing, so as to be examined by the members of the great council of the Parliament." Nevertheless, this important work was never properly carried out, and to Louis XII. is due the honour of introducing a customary or usage law, and at the same time of correcting the various modes of procedure, upon which customs and usages had been based, and which had become singularly antiquated since the edict of 1302. No monarch showed more favour to Parliament than Louis XII. During his reign of seventeen years we never find complaints from the magistracy for not having been paid punctually. But in contrast with this, on the accession of Francis I., the court complained of not having been paid its first quarter's salary. From that moment claims were perpetually being made; there were continually delays, or absolute refusals; the members were expecting "remuneration for their services, in order absolutely to enable them to support their families and households." We can thus judge of the state of the various minor courts, which, being less powerful than the supreme tribunals, and especially than that of Paris, were quite unable to get their murmurings even listened to by the proper authorities. This sad state of things continued, and, in fact, grew worse, until the assembly of the League, when Mayenne, the chief of the leaguers, in order to gratify the Parliament, promised to double the salaries, although he was unable to fulfil his promise. [Illustration: Fig. 311.--Inferior Court in the Great Bailiwick. Adoption of Orphan Children.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Refuge et Garand des Pupilles, Orphelins:" Antwerp, J. Bellère, 1557.] Towards the end of the sixteenth century the highest French tribunal was represented by nine superior courts--namely, the Parliament of Bordeaux, created on the 9th of June, 1642; the Parliament of Brittany, which replaced the ancient _Grands-Jours,_ in March, 1553, and sat alternately at Nantes and at Rennes; the Parliament of the Dauphiné, established at Grenoble in 1451 to replace the Delphinal Council; the Parliament of Burgundy, established at Dijon in 1477, which took the place of the _Grands-Jours_ at Beaune; the movable Parliament of Dombes, created in 1528, and consisting at the same time of a court of excise and a chamber of accounts; the Parliament of Normandy, established by Louis XII. in April, 1504, intended to replace the Exchequer of Rouen, and the ancient ducal council of the province; the Parliament of Provence, founded at Aix in July, 1501; the Parliament of Toulouse, created in 1301; and the Parliament of Paris, which took precedence of all the others, both on account of its origin, its antiquity, the extent of its jurisdiction, the number of its prerogatives, and the importance of its decrees. In 1551, Henry II. created, besides these, an inferior court in each bailiwick, the duties of which were to hear, on appeal, all matters in which sums of less than two hundred livres were involved (Fig. 311). There existed, besides, a branch of the _Grands-Jours,_ occasionally sitting at Poitiers, Bayeux, and at some other central towns, in order to suppress the excesses which at times arose from religious dissensions and political controversy. The Parliament of Paris--or _Great French Parliament_, as it was called by Philip V. and Charles V., in edicts of the 17th of November, 1318, and of the 8th of October, 1371--was divided into four principal chambers: the Grand Chamber, the Chamber of Inquiry, the Criminal Chamber, and the Chamber of Appeal. It was composed of ordinary councillors, both clerical and lay; of honorary councillors, some of whom were ecclesiastics, and others members of the nobility; of masters of inquiry; and of a considerable number of officers of all ranks (Figs. 312 to 314). It had at times as many as twenty-four presidents, one hundred and eighty-two councillors, four knights of honour, four masters of records; a public prosecutor's office was also attached, consisting of the king's counsel, an attorney-general and deputies, thus forming an assembly of from fifteen to twenty persons, called a _college_. Amongst the inferior officers we may mention twenty-six ushers, four receivers-general of trust money, three commissioners for the receipt of goods which had been seized under distress, one treasurer and paymaster, three controllers, one physician, two surgeons, two apothecaries, one matron, one receiver of fines, one inspector of estates, several keepers of refreshment establishments, who resided within the precincts of the palace, sixty or eighty notaries, four or five hundred advocates, two hundred attorneys, besides registers and deputy registers. Down to the reign of Charles VI. (1380--1422) members of Parliament held their appointment by commissions granted by the King, and renewed eaeh session. From Charles VI. to Francis I. these appointments became royal charges; but from that time, owing to the office being so often prostituted for reward, it got more and more into disrepute. [Illustration: Fig. 312.--Judge.--From a Drawing in "Proverbes, Adages, &c.," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Imperial Library of Paris.] Louis XI. made the office of member of the Parliament of Paris a permanent one, and Francis I. continued this privilege. In 1580 the supreme magistracy poured 140,000,000 francs, which now would be worth fifteen or twenty times as much, into the State treasury, so as to enable members to sit permanently _sur les fleurs de lis_, and to obtain hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits of many others. [Illustration: Fig. 313.--Lawyer.--From the "Danse des Morts" of Basle, engraved by Mérian: in 4to, Frankfort, 1596.] [Illustration: Fig. 314.--Barrister.--From a Woodout in the "Danse Macabre:" Guyot's edition, 1490.] [Illustration: Fig. 315.--Assembly of the Provostship of the Merchants of Paris.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in "Ordonnances Royaux de la Jurisdiction de la Prevoté des Marchands et Eschevinage de la Ville de Paris:" in small folio, goth. edition of Paris, Jacques Nyverd, 1528.] The Châtelet, on the contrary, was less involved in intrigue, less occupied with politics, and was daily engaged in adjudicating in cases of litigation, and thus it rendered innumerable services in promoting the public welfare, and maintained, and even increased, the respect which it had enjoyed from the commencement of its existence. In 1498, Louis XII. required that the provost should possess the title of doctor _in utroque jure_, and that his officers, whom he made to hold their appointments for life, should be chosen from amongst the most distinguished counsellors at law. This excellent arrangement bore its fruits. As early as 1510, the "Usages of the City, Provosty, and Viscounty of Paris," were published _in extenso_, and were then received with much ceremony at a solemn audience held on the 8th of March in the episcopal palace, and were deposited among the archives of the Châtelet (Fig. 315). The Parliament held a very different line of policy from that adopted by the Châtelet, which only took a political part in the religious troubles of Protestantism and the League with a view to serve and defend the cause of the people. In spite of its fits of personal animosity, and its rebellious freaks, Parliament remained almost invariably attached to the side of the King and the court. It always leaned to the absolute maintenance of things as they were, instead of following progress and changes which time necessitated. It was for severe measures, for intimidation more than for gentleness and toleration, and it yielded sooner or later to the injunctions and admonitions of the King, although, at the same time, it often disapproved the acts which it was asked to sanction. [Illustration: Fig. 316.--Seal of King Chilpéric, found in his Tomb at Tournay in 1654.] Secret Tribunals. The Old Man of the Mountain and his Followers in Syria.--The Castle of Alamond, Paradise of Assassins.--Charlemagne the Founder of Secret Tribunals amongst the Saxons.--The Holy Vehme.--Organization of the Tribunal of the _Terre Rouge_, and Modes adopted in its Procedures.--Condemnations and Execution of Sentences.--The Truth respecting the Free Judges of Westphalia.--Duration and Fall of the Vehmic Tribunal.--Council of Ten in Venice; its Code and Secret Decisions.--End of the Council of Ten. During the Middle Ages, human life was generally held in small respect; various judicial institutions--if not altogether secret, at least more or less enveloped in mystery--were remarkable for being founded on the monstrous right of issuing the most severe sentences with closed doors, and of executing these sentences with inflexible rigour on individuals who had not been allowed the slightest chance of defending themselves. While passing judgment in secret, they often openly dealt blows as unexpected and terrible as they were fatal. Therefore, the most innocent and the most daring trembled at the very name of the _Free Judges of the Terre-Rouge,_ an institution which adopted Westphalia as the special, or rather as the central, region of its authority; the _Council of Ten_ exercised their power in Venice and the states of the republic; and the _Assassins_ of Syria, in the time of St. Louis, made more than one invasion into Christian Europe. We must nevertheless acknowledge that, terrible as these mysterious institutions were, the general credulity, the gross ignorance of the masses, and the love of the marvellous, helped not a little to render them even more outrageous and alarming than they really were. Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian traveller of the thirteenth century, says, "We will speak of the Old Man of the Mountain. This prince was named Alaodin. He had a lovely garden full of all manner of trees and fruits, in a beautiful valley, surrounded by high hills; and all round these plantations were various palaces and pavilions, decorated with works of art in gold, with paintings, and with furniture of silk. Therein were to be seen rivulets of wine, as well as milk, honey, and gentle streams of limpid water. He had placed therein damsels of transcendent beauty and endowed with great charms, who were taught to sing and to play all manner of instruments; they were dressed in silk and gold, and continually walked in these gardens and palaces. The reasons for which the Old Man had these palaces built were the following. Mahomet having said that those who should obey his will should go to paradise, and there find all kinds of luxuries, this prince wished it to be believed that he was the prophet and companion of Mahomet, and that he had the power of sending whom he chose to paradise. No one could succeed in entering the garden, because an impregnable castle had been built at the entrance of the valley, and it could only be approached by a covered and secret way. The Old Man had in his court some young men from ten to twenty years of age, chosen from those inhabitants of the hills who seemed to him capable of bearing arms, and who were bold and courageous. From time to time he administered a certain drink to ten or twelve of these young men, which sent them to sleep, and when they were in deep stupor, he had them carried into the garden. When they awoke, they saw all we have described: they were surrounded by the young damsels, who sang, played instruments together, caressed them, played all sorts of games, and presented them with the most exquisite wines and meats (Fig. 317). So that these young men, satiated with such pleasures, did not doubt that they were in paradise, and would willingly have never gone out of it again. "At the end of four or five days, the Old Man sent them to sleep again, and had them removed from the garden in the same way in which they had been brought in. He then called them before him, and asked them where they had been. 'By your grace, lord,' they answered, 'we have been in paradise.' And then they related, in the presence of everybody, what they had seen there. This tale excited the astonishment of all those who heard it, and the desire that they might be equally fortunate. The Old Man would then formally announce to those who were present, as follows: 'Thus saith the law of our prophet, He causes all who fight for their Lord to enter into paradise; if you obey me you shall enjoy that happiness.' By such words and plans this prince had so accustomed them to believe in him, that he whom he ordered to die for his service considered himself lucky. All the nobles or other enemies of the Old Man of the Mountain were put to death by the assassins in his service; for none of them feared death, provided he complied with the orders and wishes of his lord. However powerful a man might be, therefore, if he was an enemy of the Old Man's, he was sure to meet with an untimely end." [Illustration: Fig. 317.--The Castle of Alamond and its Enchantments.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in "Marco Polo's Travels," Manuscript of the Fifteenth. Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] In his story, which we translate literally from the original, written in ancient French, the venerable traveller attributes the origin of this singular system of exercising power over the minds of persons to a prince who in reality did but keep up a tradition of his family; for the Alaodin herein mentioned is no other than a successor of the famous Hassan, son of Ali, who, in the middle of the eleventh century, took advantage of the wars which devastated Asia to create himself a kingdom, comprising the three provinces of Turkistan, Djebel, and Syria. Hassan had embraced the doctrine of the Ishmaelian sect, who pretended to explain allegorically all the precepts of the Mahometan religion, and who did away with public worship, and originated a creed which was altogether philosophical. He made himself the chief exponent of this doctrine, which, by its very simplicity, was sure to attract to him many people of simple and sincere minds. Attacked by the troops of the Sultan Sindgar, he defended himself vigorously and not unsuccessfully; but, fearing lest he should fall in an unequal and protracted struggle against an adversary more powerful than himself, he had recourse to cunning so as to obtain peace. He entranced, or fascinated probably, by means analogous to those related by Marco Polo, a slave, who had the daring, during Sindgar's sleep, to stick a sharp dagger in the ground by the side of the Sultan's head. On waking, Sindgar was much alarmed. A few days after, Hassan wrote to him, "If one had not good intentions towards the Sultan, one might have driven the dagger, which was stuck in the earth by his head, into his bosom." The Sultan Sindgar then made peace with the chief of the Ishmaelians, whose dynasty lasted for one hundred and seventy years. The Castle of Alamond, built on the confines of Persia, on the top of a high mountain surrounded with trees, after having been the usual residence of Hassan, became that of his successors. As in the native language the same word means both _prince_ and _old man_, the Crusaders who had heard the word pronounced confounded the two, and gave the name of _Old Man of the Mountain_ to the Ishmaelian prince at that time inhabiting the Castle of Alamond, a name which has remained famous in history since the period when the Sire de Joinville published his "Mémoires." Ancient authors call the subjects of Hassan, _Haschichini, Heississini, Assissini, Assassini_, various forms of the same expression, which, in fact, has passed into French with a signification which recalls the sanguinary exploits of the Ishmaelians. In seeking for the etymology of this name, one must suppose that Haschichini is the Latin transformation of the Arabic word Hachychy, the name of the sect of which we are speaking, because the ecstacies during which they believed themselves removed to paradise were produced by means of _haschisch_ or _haschischa_. We know that this inebriating preparation, extracted from hemp, really produces the most strange and delicious hallucinations on those who use it. All travellers who have visited the East agree in saying that its effects are very superior to those of opium. We evidently must attribute to some ecstatic vision the supposed existence of the enchanted gardens, which Marco Polo described from popular tales, and which, of course, never existed but in the imagination of the young men, who were either mentally excited after fasting and prayer, or intoxicated by the haschischa, and consequently for a time lulled in dreams of celestial bliss which they imagined awaited them under the guidance of Hassan and his descendants. [Illustration: Fig. 318.--The Old Man of the Mountain giving Orders to his Followers.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Travels of Marco Polo," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal of Paris).] The Haschischini, whom certain contemporary historians describe to us as infatuated by the hope of some future boundless felicity, owe their melancholy celebrity solely to the blind obedience with which they executed the orders of their chiefs, and to the coolness with which they sought the favourable moment for fulfilling their sanguinary missions (Fig. 318). The Old Man of the Mountain (the master of daggers, _magister cultellorum_, as he is also called by the chronicler Jacques de Vintry), was almost continually at war with the Mussulman princes who reigned from the banks of the Nile to the borders of the Caspian Sea. He continually opposed them with the steel of his fanatical emissaries; at times, also, making a traffic and merchandise of murder, he treated for a money payment with the sultans or emirs, who were desirous of ridding themselves of an enemy. The Ishmaelians thus put to death a number of princes and Mahometan nobles; but, at the time of the Crusades, religious zeal having incited them against the Christians, they found more than one notable victim in the ranks of the Crusaders. Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, was assassinated by them; the great Salah-Eddin (Saladin) himself narrowly escaped them; Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus were pointed out to the assassins by the Old Man, who subsequently, on hearing of the immense preparations which Louis IX. was making for the Holy War, had the daring to send two of his followers to France, and even into Paris, with orders to kill that monarch in the midst of his court. This king, after having again escaped, during his sojourn in Palestine, from the murderous attempts of the savage messengers of the Prince of Alamond, succeeded, by his courage, his firmness, and his virtues, in inspiring these fanatics with so much respect, that their chief, looking upon him as protected by heaven, asked for his friendship, and offered him presents, amongst which was a magnificent set of chessmen, in crystal, ornamented with gold and amber. The successors of Hassan, simultaneously attacked by the Moguls under Houlayon, and by the Egyptians commanded by the Sultan Bibars, were conquered and dispossessed of their States towards the middle of the thirteenth century; but, long after, the Ishmaelians, either because their chiefs sought to recover their power, or because they had placed their daggers at the disposal of some foreign foe, continued notorious in history. At last the sect became extinct, or, at least, retired into obscurity, and renounced its murderous profession, which had for so long made its members such objects of terror. We have thus seen how a legion of fanatics in the East made themselves the blind and formidable tools of a religious and political chieftain, who was no less ambitious than revengeful. If we now turn our attention to Germany, we shall here find, almost at the same period, a local institution which, although very different from the sanguinary court of the Old Man of the Mountain, was of an equally terrible and mysterious character. We must not, however, look at it from the same point of view, for, having been founded with the object of furthering and defending the establishment of a regular social state, which had been approved and sanctioned by the sovereigns, and recognised by the Church, it at times rendered great service to the cause of justice and humanity at a period when might usurped right, and when the excesses and the crimes of shameless evil-doers, and of petty tyrants, entrenched in their impregnable strongholds, were but too often made lawful from the simple fact that there was no power to oppose them. The secret tribunal of Westphalia, which held its sittings and passed sentence in private, and which carried out its decrees on the spot, and whose rules, laws, and actions were enveloped in deep mystery, must unquestionably be looked upon as one of the most remarkable institutions of the Middle Ages. [Illustration: Figs. 319 and 320.--Hermensul or Irmensul and Crodon, Idols of the Ancient Saxons.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Annales Circuli Westphaliæ," by Herman Stangefol: in 4to, 1656.--The Idol Hermensul appears to have presided over Executive Justice, the attributes of which it holds in its hands.] It would be difficult to state exactly at what period this formidable institution was established. A few writers, and amongst these Sebastian Munster, wish us to believe that it was founded by Charlemagne himself. They affirm that this monarch, having subjugated the Saxons to his sway, and having forced them to be baptized, created a secret tribunal, the duties of which were to watch over them, in order that they might not return to the errors of Paganism. However, the Saxons were incorrigible, and, although Christians, they still carried on the worship of their idols (Figs. 319 and 320); and, for this reason, it is said by these authorities that the laws of the tribunal of Westphalia were founded by Charlemagne. It is well known that from the ninth to the thirteenth century, all that part of Germany between the Rhine and the Weser suffered under the most complete anarchy. In consequence of this, and of the increase of crime which remained unpunished, energetic men established a rigorous jurisdiction, which, to a certain extent, suppressed these barbarous disorders, and gave some assurance to social intercourse; but the very mystery which gave weight to the institution was the cause of its origin being unknown. It is only mentioned, and then cursorily, in historical documents towards the early part of the fifteenth century. This court of judicature received the name of _Femgericht_, or _Vehmgericht_, which means Vehmic tribunal. The origin of the word _Fem_, _Vehm_, or _Fam_, which has given rise to many scientific discussions, still remains in doubt. The most generally accepted opinion is, that it is derived from a Latin expression--_vemi_ (_vae mihi_), "woe is me!" The special dominion over which the Vehmic tribunal reigned supreme was Westphalia, and the country which was subjected to its laws was designated as the _Terre Rouge_. There was no assembly of this tribunal beyond the limits of this Terre Rouge, but it would be quite impossible to define these limits with any accuracy. However, the free judges, assuming the right of suppressing certain crimes committed beyond their territory, on more than one occasion summoned persons living in various parts of Germany, and even in provinces far from Westphalia, to appear before them. We do not know all the localities wherein the Vehmic tribunal sat; but the most celebrated of them, and the one which served as a model for all the rest, held its sittings under a lime-tree, in front of the castle-gate of Dortmund (Fig. 321). There the chapters-general of the association usually assembled; and, on certain occasions, several thousands of the free judges were to be seen there. Each tribunal was composed of an unlimited number of free judges, under the presidency of a free count, who was charged with the higher administration of Vehmic justice. A _free county_ generally comprised several free tribunals, or _friestuhle_. The free count, who was chosen by the prince of the territory in which the tribunal sat, had two courts, one secret, the other public. The public assizes, which took place at least three times a year, were announced fourteen days beforehand, and any person living within the _county_, and who was summoned before the free count, was bound to appear, and to answer all questions which might be put to him. It was required that the free judges (who are generally mentioned as _femnoten_--that is to say, _sages_--and who are, besides, denoted by writers of the time by the most honourable epithets: such as, "serious men," "very pious," "of very pure morals," "lovers of justice," &c.) should be persons who had been born in lawful wedlock, and on German soil; they were not allowed to belong to any religions order, or to have ever themselves been summoned before the Vehmic tribunal. They were nominated by the free counts, but subject to the approval of their sovereigns. They were not allowed to sit as judges before having been initiated into the mysteries of the tribunals. [Illustration: Fig. 321.--View of the Town of Dortmund in the Sixteenth Century.--From an Engraving on Copper in P. Bertius's "Theatrum Geographicum."] The initiation of a free judge was accompanied by extraordinary formalities. The candidate appeared bareheaded; he knelt down, and, placing two fingers of his right hand on his naked sword and on a rope, he took oath to adhere to the laws and customs of the holy tribunal, to devote his five senses to it, and not to allow himself to be allured therefrom either by silver, gold, or even precious stones; to forward the interests of the tribunal "above everything illumined by the sun, and all that the rain reaches;" and to defend them "against everything which is between heaven and earth." The candidate was then given the sign by which members of the association recognised each other. This sign has remained unknown; and nothing, even in the deeds of the Vehmic archives, leads one even to guess what it was, and every hypothesis on this subject must be looked upon as uncertain or erroneous. By one of the fundamental statutes of the Terre Rouge, a member convicted of betraying the secrets of the order was condemned to the most cruel punishment; but we have every reason for asserting that this sentence was never carried out, or even issued against a free judge. [Illustration: Fig. 322.--The Landgrave of Thuringia and his Wife.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Collection of the Minnesinger, Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century.] In one case alone during the fourteenth century, was an accusation of this sort made, and that proved to be groundless. It would have been considered the height of treason to have given a relation, or a friend, the slightest hint that he was being pursued, or that he had been condemned by the Holy Vehme, in order that he might seek refuge by flight. And in consequence of this, there was a general mistrust of any one belonging to the tribunal, so much so that "a brother," says a German writer, "often feared his brother, and hospitality was no longer possible." The functions of free judges consisted in going about the country seeking out crimes, denouncing them, and inflicting immediate punishment on any evil-doer caught in the act (Figs. 323 and 324). The free judges might assemble provided there were at least seven in number to constitute a tribunal; but we hear of as many as three hundred assisting at a meeting. [Illustration: Figs. 323 and 324.--Free Judges.--Fac-simile of two Woodcuts in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, 1552.] It has been erroneously stated that the sittings of the Vehmic tribunals were held at night in the depths of forests, or in subterranean places; but it appears that all criminal business was first heard in public, and could only be subjected to a secret judgment when the accused had failed either publicly to justify himself or to appear in person. When three free judges caught a malefactor in the very act, they could seize him, judge him, and inflict the penalty on the spot. In other cases, when a tribunal considered that it should pursue an individual, it summoned him to appear before it. The summons had to be written, without erasures, on a large sheet of vellum, and to bear at least seven seals--that of the free count, and those of six free judges; and these seals generally represented either a man in full armour holding a sword, or a simple sword blade, or other analagous emblems (Figs. 325 to 327). Two free judges delivered the summons personally where a member of the association was concerned; but if the summons affected an individual who was not of the Vehmic order, a sworn messenger bore it, and placed it in the very hands of the person, or slipped it into his house. The time given for putting in an appearance was originally six weeks and three days at least, but at a later period this time was shortened. The writ of summons was repeated three times, and each time bore a greater number of seals of free judges, so as to verify the legality of the instrument. The accused, whether guilty or not, was liable to a fine for not answering the first summons, unless he could prove that it was impossible for him to have done so. If he failed to appear on the third summons, he was finally condemned _en corps et en honneur_. [Illustration: Fig. 325.--Seal of Herman Loseckin, Free Count of Medebach, in 1410.] [Illustration: Fig. 326.--Seal of the Free Count, Hans Vollmar von Twern, at Freyenhagen, in 1476-1499.] [Illustration: Fig. 327.--Seal of Johann Croppe, Free Count of Kogelnberg, in 1413.] We have but imperfect information as to the formalities in use in the Vehmic tribunals. But we know that the sittings were invested with a certain solemnity and pomp. A naked sword--emblematical of justice, and recalling our Saviour's cross in the shape of its handle--and a rope--emblematical of the punishment deserved by the guilty--were placed on the table before the president. The judges were bareheaded, with bare hands, and each wore a cloak over his shoulder, and carried no arms of any sort. [Illustration: Fig. 328.--The Duke of Saxony and the Marquis of Brandenburg.--From the "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Tabula veteris Geographiae," in folio. Engraved by Wieriex, after Gérard de Jode.] The plaintiff and the defendant were each allowed to produce thirty witnesses. The defendant could either defend himself, or entrust his case to an advocate whom he brought with him. At first, any free judge being defendant in a suit, enjoyed the privilege of justifying himself on oath; but it having been discovered that this privilege was abused, all persons, of whatever station, were compelled to be confronted with the other side. The witnesses, who were subpoened by either accuser or accused, had to give their evidence according to the truth, dispassionately and voluntarily. In the event of the accused not succeeding in bringing sufficient testimony to clear himself, the prosecutor claimed a verdict in his favour from the free count presiding at the tribunal, who appointed one of the free judges to declare it. In case the free judge did not feel satisfied as to the guilt, he could, by making oath, temporarily divest himself of his office, which devolved upon a second, a third, or even a fourth free judge. If four free judges were unable to decide, the matter was referred to another sitting; for judgment had to be pronounced by the appointed free judge at the sitting. The various penalties for different crimes were left to the decision of the tribunal. The rules are silent on the subject, and simply state that the culprits will be punished "according to the authority of the secret bench." The _royale, i.e._ capital punishment, was strictly applied in all serious cases, and the manner of execution most in use was hanging (Figs. 329, 330). A person accused who did not appear after the third summons, was out-lawed by a terrible sentence, which deprived him of all rights, of common peace, and forbad him the company of all Christians; by the wording of this sentence, his wife was looked upon as a widow, his children as orphans; his neck was abandoned to the birds of the air, and his body to the beasts of the field, "but his soul was recommended to God." At the expiration of one year and a day, if the culprit had not appeared, or had not established his common rights, all his goods were confiscated, and appropriated by the King or Emperor. When the condemnation referred to a prince, a town, or a corporation (for the accusations of the tribunal frequently were issued against groups of individuals), it caused the loss of all honour, authority, and privileges. The free count, in pronouncing the sentence, threw the rope, which was before him, on to the ground; the free judges spat upon it, and the name of the culprit was inscribed on the book of blood. The sentence was kept secret; the prosecutor alone was informed of it by a written notice, which was sealed with seven seals. When the condemned was present, the execution took place immediately, and, according to the custom of the Middle Ages, its carrying out was deputed to the youngest of the free judges. The members of the Vehmic association enjoyed the privilege of being hung seven feet higher than those who were not associates. The Vehmic judgments were, however, liable to be appealed against: the accused might, at the sitting, appeal either to what was termed the imperial chamber, a general chapter of the association, which assembled at Dortmund, or (and this was the more frequent custom) to the emperor, or ruler of the country, whether he were king, prince, duke, or bishop, provided that these authorities belonged to the association. The revision of the judgment could only be entrusted to members of the tribunal, who, in their turn, could only act in Westphalia. The condemned might also appeal to the lieutenant-general of the emperor, or to the grand master of the Holy Vehme, a title which, from the remotest times, was given to the Archbishop of Cologne. There are even instances of appeals having been made to the councils and to the Popes, although the Vehmic association never had any communication or intercourse with the court of Rome. We must not forget a very curious privilege which, in certain cases, was left to the culprit as a last resource; he might appeal to the emperor, and solicit an order which required the execution of the sentence to be applied after a delay _of one hundred years, six weeks, and one day_. [Illustration: Figs. 329 and 330.--Execution of the Sentences of the Secret Tribunal.--Fac-simile of Woodcuts in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] The chapter-general of the association was generally summoned once a year by the emperor or his lieutenant, and assembled either at Dortmund or Arensberg, in order to receive the returns of causes judged by the various Vehmic tribunals; to hear the changes which had taken place among the members of the order; to receive the free judges; to hear appeals; and, lastly, to decide upon reforms to be introduced into the rules. These reforms usually had reference to the connection of imperial authority with the members of the secret jurisdiction, and were generally suggested by the emperors, who were jealous of the increasing power of the association. From what we have shown, on the authority of authentic documents, we understand how untrue is the tradition, or rather the popular idea, that the _Secret Tribunal_ was an assembly of bloodthirsty judges, secretly perpetrating acts of mere cruelty, without any but arbitrary laws. It is clear, on the contrary, that it was a regular institution, having, it is true, a most mysterious and complex organization, but simply acting in virtue of legal prescriptions, which were rigorously laid down, and arranged in a sort of code which did honour to the wisdom of those who had created it. It was towards the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries that the Vehmic jurisdiction reached its highest degree of power; its name was only pronounced in a whisper and with trembling; its orders were received with immediate submission, and its chastisements always fell upon the guilty and those who resisted its authority. There cannot be a doubt but that the Westphalian tribunal prevented many great crimes and public misfortunes by putting a wholesome check on the nobles, who were ever ready to place themselves above all human authority; and by punishing, with pitiless severity, the audacity of bandits, who would otherwise have been encouraged to commit the most daring acts with almost the certainty of escaping with impunity. But the Holy Vehme, blinded by the terror it inspired, was not long without displaying the most extravagant assumption of power, and digressing from the strict path to which its action should have been confined. It summoned before its tribunals princes, who openly denied its authority, and cities, which did not condescend to answer to its behests. In the fifteenth century, the free judges were composed of men who could not be called of unimpeachable integrity; many persons of doubtful morals having been raised to the dignity by party influence and by money. The partiality and the spirit of revenge which at times prompted their judgments, were complained of; they were accused of being open to corruption; and this accusation appears to have been but too well founded. It is known that, according to a feudal practice established in the Vehmic system, every new free judge was obliged to make a present to the free count who had admitted him into the order; and the free counts did not hesitate to make this an important source of revenue to themselves by admitting, according to an historian, "many people as _judges_ who, in reality, deserved to be _judged_." [Illustration: Fig. 331.--View of Cologne in the Sixteenth Century.--From a Copper-plate in the "Theatrum Geographicum" of P. Bertius. The three large stars represent, it is supposed, the Three Persons of the Trinity, and the seven small ones the Electors of the Empire.] [Illustration: Fig. 332.--German Knights (Fifteenth Century).--From a Plate in the "Life of the Emperor Maximilian," engraved by Burgmayer, from Drawings by Albert Durer.] Owing to the most flagrant and most insolent abuses of power, the ancient authority of the institution became gradually more and more shaken. On one occasion, for instance, in answer to a summons issued by the Imperial Tribunal against some free judges, the tribunal of the Terre-Rouge had the daring to summon the Emperor Frederick III. before it to answer for this want of respect. On another occasion, a certain free count, jealous of one of his associates, hung him with his own hands while out on a hunting excursion, alleging that his rank of free judge authorised him to execute summary justice. From that time there was a perpetual cry of horror and indignation against a judicial institution which thus interpreted its duties, and before long the State undertook the suppression of these secret tribunals. The first idea of this was formed by the electors of the empire at the diet of Trèves in 1512. The Archbishop of Cologne succeeded, however, in parrying the blow, by convoking the chapter-general of the order, on the plea of the necessity of reform. But, besides being essentially corrupt, the Holy Vehme had really run its course, and it gradually became effete as, by degrees, a better organized and more defined social and political state succeeded to the confused anarchy of the Middle Ages, and as the princes and free towns adopted the custom of dispensing justice either in person or through regular tribunals. Its proceedings, becoming more and more summary and rigorous, daily gave rise to feelings of greater and greater abhorrence. The common saying over all Germany was, "They first hang you, and afterwards inquire into your innocence." On all sides opposition arose against the jurisdiction of the free judges. Princes, bishops, cities, and citizens, agreed instinctively to counteract this worn-out and degenerate institution. The struggle was long and tedious. During the last convulsions of the expiring Holy Vehme, there was more than one sanguinary episode, both on the side of the free judges themselves, as well as on that of their adversaries. Occasionally the secret tribunal broke out into fresh signs of life, and proclaimed its existence by some terrible execution; and at times, also, its members paid dearly for their acts. On one occasion, in 1570, fourteen free judges, whom Kaspar Schwitz, Count of Oettingen, caused to be seized, were already tied up in bags, and about to be drowned, when the mob, pitying their fate, asked for and obtained their reprieve. The death-blow to the Vehmic tribunal was struck by its own hand. It condenmed summarily, and executed without regular procedure, an inhabitant of Munster, who used to scandalize the town by his profligacy. He was arrested at night, led to a small wood, where the free judges awaited him, and condemned to death without being allowed an advocate; and, after being refused a respite even of a few hours, that he might make his peace with heaven, he was confessed by a monk, and his head was severed from his body by the executioner on the spot. [Illustration: Fig. 333.--Interior Court of the Palace of the Doges of Venice: Buildings in which are the Cells and _the Leads_.--From Cesare Vecellio.] Dating from this tragical event, which excited universal indignation, the authority of the free judges gradually declined, and, at last, the institution became almost defunct, and merely confined itself to occasionally adjudicating in simple civil matters. We must not omit to mention the Council of Ten of Venice when speaking on the subject of arbitrary executions and of tyrannical and implacable justice. In some respects it was more notorious than the Vehmic tribunal, exercising as it did a no less mysterious power, and inspiring equal terror, though in other countries. This secret tribunal was created after a revolt which burst on the republic of Venice on the 15th of June, 1310. At first it was only instituted for two months, but, after various successive prorogations, it was confirmed for five years, on the 31st of January, 1311. In 1316 it was again appointed for five years; on the 2nd of May, 1327, for ten years more; and at last was established permanently. In the fifteenth century the authority of the Council of Ten was consolidated and rendered more energetic by the creation of the Inquisitors of State. These were three in number, elected by the Council of Ten; and the citizens on whom the votes fell could not refuse the functions which were thus spontaneously, and often unexpectedly, assigned to them. The authority of Inquisitors of State was declared to be "unlimited." In order to show the power and mode of action of this terrible tribunal, it is perhaps better to make a few extracts from the code of rules which it established for itself in June, 1454. This document--several manuscript copies of which are to be found in the public libraries of Paris--says, "The inquisitors may proceed against any person whomsoever, no rank giving the right of exemption from their jurisdiction. They may pronounce any sentence, even that of death; only their final sentences must be passed unanimously. They shall have complete charge of the prisons and _the leads_ (Fig. 333). They may draw at sight from the treasury of the Council of Ten, without having to give any account of the use made of the funds placed in their hands. "The proceedings of the tribunal shall always be secret; its members shall wear no distinctive badge. No open arrests shall be made. The chief of the bailiffs (_sbirri_) shall avoid making domiciliary arrests, but he shall try to seize the culprit unawares, away from his home, and so securely get him under _the leads_ of the Palace of the Doges. When the tribunal shall deem the death of any person necessary, the execution shall never be public; the condemned shall be drowned at night in the Orfano Canal. "The tribunal shall authorise the generals commanding in Cyprus or in Candia, in the event of its being for the welfare of the Republic, to cause any patrician or other influential person in either of those Venetian provinces to disappear, or to be assassinated secretly, if such a measure should conscientiously appear to them indispensable; but they shall be answerable before God for it. [Illustration: Fig. 334.--Member of the Brotherhood of Death, whose duty it was to accompany those sentenced to death.--From Cesare Vecellio.] "If any workman shall practise in a foreign land any art or craft to the detriment of the Republic, he shall be ordered to return to his country; and should he not obey, all his nearest relatives shall be imprisoned, in order that his affection for them may bring him to obedience. Should he still persist in his disobedience, secret measures shall be taken to put him to death, wherever he may be. "If a Venetian noble reveal to the tribunal propositions which have been made to him by some foreign ambassador, the agent, excepting it should be the ambassador himself, shall be immediately carried off and drowned. "If a patrician having committed any misdeed shall take refuge under the protection of a foreign ambassador, he shall be put to death forthwith. "If any noble in full senate take upon himself to question the authority of the Council of Ten, and persist in attacking it, he shall be allowed to speak without interruption; immediately afterwards he shall be arrested, and instructions as to his trial shall be given, so that he may be judged by the ordinary tribunals; and, if this does not succeed in preventing his proceedings, he shall be put to death secretly. "In case of a complaint against one of the heads of the Council of Ten, the instructions shall be made secretly, and, in case of sentence of death, poison shall be the agent selected. "Should any dissatisfied noble speak ill of the Government, he shall first be forbidden to appear in the councils and public places for two years. Should he not obey, or should he repeat the offence after the two years, he shall be drowned as incorrigible...." &c. One can easily understand that in order to carry out these laws the most careful measures were taken to organize a system of espionage. The nobles were subjected to a rigorous supervision; the privacy of letters was not respected; an ambassador was never lost sight of, and his smallest acts were narrowly watched. Any one who dared to throw obstacles in the way of the spies employed by the Council of Ten, was put on the rack, and "made afterwards to receive the punishment which the State inquisitors might consider befitting." Whole pages of the secret statutes bear witness that lying and fraud formed the basis of all the diplomatic relations of the Venetian Government. Nevertheless the Council of Ten, which was solely instituted with the view of watching over the safety of the Republic, could not inter-meddle in civil cases, and its members were forbidden to hold any sort of communication with foreigners. [Illustration: Figs. 335 and 336.--Chiefs of Sbirri, in the Secret Service of the Council of Ten.--From Cesare Vecellio.] The list of names of Venetian nobles and distinguished persons who became victims to the suspicions tyranny of the Council of Ten, and of the State inquisitors, would be very long and of little interest. We may mention a few, however. We find that in 1385, Peter Justiniani, and, in 1388, Stephen Monalesco, were punished for holding secret transactions with the Lord of Padua; in 1413, John Nogarola, for having tried to set fire to Verona; in 1471, Borromeo Memo, for having uttered defamatory speeches against the Podestat of Padua. Not only was this Borromeo Memo punished, but three witnesses of the crime which was imputed to him were condemned to a year's imprisonment and three years' banishment, for not having denounced the deed "between evening and morning." In 1457 we find the Council of Ten attacking the Doge himself, by requiring the abdication of Francis Foscari. A century earlier it had caused the Doge, Marino Faliero, who was convicted of having taken part in a plot to destroy the influence of the nobility, to be executed on the very staircase of the ducal palace, where allegiance to the Republic was usually sworn. [Illustration: Fig. 337.--Doge of Venice. Costume before the Sixteenth Century. From Cesare Vecellio.] [Illustration: Fig. 338.--Doge of Venice in Ceremonial Costume of the Sixteenth Century. From Cesare Vecellio.] Like the Holy Vehme, the Council of Ten compromised its authority by the abuse of power. In 1540, unknown to the Senate, and in spite of the well-prescribed limit of its authority, it concluded a treaty with the Turkish Sultan, Soliman II. The Senate at first concealed its indignation at this abuse of power, but, in 1582, it took measures so as considerably to restrain the powers of the Council of Ten, which, from that date, only existed in name. [Illustration: Fig. 339.--Seal of the Free Count Heinrich Beckmann, of Medebach. (1520--1533).] Punishments. Refinements of Penal Cruelty.--Tortures for different Purposes.--Water, Screw-boards, and the Rack.--The Executioner.--Female Executioners.--Tortures.--Amende Honorable.--Torture of Fire, Real and Feigned.--Auto-da-fé.--Red-hot Brazier or Basin.--Beheading.--Quartering.--Wheel.--Garotte.--Hanging.--The Whip.--The Pillory.--The Arquebuse.--Tickling.--Flaying.--Drowning.--Imprisonment.--Regulations of Prisons.--The Iron Cage.--The Leads of Venice. "It is very sad," says the learned M. de Villegille, "to observe the infinite variety of tortures which have existed since the beginning of the world. It is, in fact, difficult to realise the amount of ingenuity exercised by men in inventing new tortures, in order to give themselves the satisfaction of seeing their fellow-creatures agonizing in the most awful sufferings." In entering upon the subject of ancient modes of punishment, we must first speak of the torture, which, according to the received phrase, might be either _previous_ or _preparatory: previous_, when it consisted of a torture which the condemned had to endure previous to capital punishment; and _preparatory_, when it was applied in order to elicit from the culprit an avowal of his crime, or of that of his accomplices. It was also called _ordinary_, or _extraordinary_, according to the duration or violence with which it was inflicted. In some cases the torture lasted five or six consecutive hours; in others, it rarely exceeded an hour. Hippolyte de Marsillis, the learned and venerable jurisconsult of Bologna, who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, mentions fourteen ways of inflicting torture. The compression of the limbs by special instruments, or by ropes only; injection of water, vinegar, or oil, into the body of the accused; application of hot pitch, and starvation, were the processes most in use. Other means, which were more or less applied according to the fancy of the magistrate and the tormentor or executioner, were remarkable for their singular atrocities. For instance, placing hot eggs under the arm-pits; introducing dice between the skin and flesh; tying lighted candles to the fingers, so that they might be consumed simultaneously with the wax; letting water trickle drop by drop from a great height on the stomach; and also the custom, which was, according to writers on criminal matters, an indescribable torture, of watering the feet with salt water and allowing goats to lick them. However, every country had special customs as to the manner of applying torture. In France, too, the torture varied according to the provinces, or rather according to the parliaments. For instance, in Brittany the culprit, tied in an iron chair, was gradually brought near a blazing furnace. In Normandy, one thumb was squeezed in a screw in the ordinary, and both thumbs in the extraordinary torture. At Autun, after high boots made of spongy leather had been placed on the culprit's feet, he was tied on to a table near a large fire, and a quantity of boiling water was poured on the boots, which penetrated the leather, ate away the flesh, and even dissolved the bones of the victim. At Orleans, for the ordinary torture the accused was stripped half naked, and his hands were tightly tied behind his back, with a ring fixed between them. Then by means of a rope fastened to this ring, they raised the poor man, who had a weight of one hundred and eighty pounds attached to his feet, a certain height from the ground. For the extraordinary torture, which then took the name of _estrapade_, they raised the victim, with two hundred and fifty pounds attached to his feet, to the ceiling by means of a capstan; he was then allowed to fall several times successively by jerks to the level of the ground, by which means his arms and legs were completely dislocated (Fig. 340). At Avignon, the ordinary torture consisted in hanging the accused by the wrists, with a heavy iron ball at each foot; for the extraordinary torture, which was then much in use in Italy under the name of _veglia_, the body was stretched horizontally by means of ropes passing through rings riveted into the wall, and attached to the four limbs, the only support given to the culprit being the point of a stake cut in a diamond shape, which just touched the end of the back-bone. A doctor and a surgeon were always present, feeling the pulse at the temples of the patient, so as to be able to judge of the moment when he could not any longer bear the pain. [Illustration: Fig. 340.--The Estrapade, or Question Extraordinary.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Work of J. Millaeus, "Praxis Criminis Persequendi." folio, Paris, 1541.] [Illustration: Fig. 341.--The Water Torture.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Praxis Rerum Criminalium:" in 4to, Antwerp, 1556.] At that moment he was untied, hot fomentations were used to revive him, restoratives were administered, and, as soon as he had recovered a little strength, he was again put to the torture, which went on thus for six consecutive hours. In Paris, for a long time, the _water torture_ was in use; this was the most easily borne, and the least dangerous. A person undergoing it was tied to a board which was supported horizontally on two trestles. By means of a horn, acting as a funnel, and whilst his nose was being pinched, so as to force him to swallow, they slowly poured four _coquemars_ (about nine pints) of water into his mouth; this was for the ordinary torture. For the extraordinary, double that quantity was poured in (Fig. 341). When the torture was ended, the victim was untied, "and taken to be warmed in the kitchen," says the old text. At a later period, the _brodequins_ were preferred. For this torture, the victim was placed in a sitting posture on a massive bench, with strong narrow boards fixed inside and outside of each leg, which were tightly bound together with strong rope; wedges were then driven in between the centre boards with a mallet; four wedges in the ordinary and eight in the extraordinary torture. Not unfrequently during the latter operation the bones of the legs were literally burst. The _brodequins_ which were often used for ordinary torture were stockings of parchment, into which it was easy enough to get the feet when it was wet, but which, on being held near the fire, shrunk so considerably that it caused insufferable agony to the wearer. Whatever manner of torture was applied, the accused, before undergoing it, was forced to remain eight or ten hours without eating. Damhoudère, in his famous technical work, called "Practique et Enchiridion des Causes Criminelles" (1544), also recommends that the hair should be carefully shaved from the bodies of persons about to undergo examination by torture, for fear of their concealing some countercharm which would render them insensible to bodily pain. The same author also recommends, as a rule, when there are several persons "to be placed on the rack" for the same deed, to begin with those from whom it would be most probable that confession would be first extorted. Thus, for instance, when a man and a woman were to suffer one after the other, he recommended that the woman be first tortured, as being the weaker of the two; when a father and son were concerned, the son should be tortured in presence of the father, "who naturally fears more for his son than for himself." We thereby see that the judges were adepts in the art of adding moral to physical tortures. The barbarous custom of punishment by torture was on several occasions condemned by the Church. As early as 866, we find, from Pope Nicholas V.'s letter to the Bulgarians, that their custom of torturing the accused was considered contrary to divine as well as to human law: "For," says he, "a confession should be voluntary, and not forced. By means of the torture, an innocent man may suffer to the utmost without making any avowal; and, in such a case, what a crime for the judge! Or the person may be subdued by pain, and may acknowledge himself guilty, although he be not so, which throws an equally great sin upon the judge." [Illustration: Fig. 342.--Type of Executioner in the Decapitation of John the Baptist (Thirteenth Century).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Psalm-book of St. Louis. Manuscript preserved in the Musée des Souverains.] After having endured the _previous_ torture, the different phases of which were carried out by special tormentors or executioners, the condemned was at last handed over to the _maistre des haultes oeuvres_--that is to say, the _executioner_--whose special mission was that of sending culprits to another world (Fig. 342). [Illustration: Fig. 343.--Swiss Grand Provost (Fifteenth Century).--From a Painting in the "Danse des Morts" of Basle, engraved by Mérian.] The executioner did not hold the same position in all countries. For whereas in France, Italy, and Spain, a certain amount of odium was attached to this terrible craft, in Germany, on the contrary, successfully carrying out a certain number of capital sentences was rewarded by titles and the privileges of nobility (Fig. 343). At Reutlingen, in Suabia, the last of the councillors admitted into the tribunal had to carry out the sentence with his own hand. In Franconia, this painful duty fell upon the councillor who had last taken a wife. In France, the executioner, otherwise called the _King's Sworn Tormentor,_ was the lowest of the officers of justice. His letters of appointment, which he received from the King, had, nevertheless, to be registered in Parliament; but, after having put the seal on them, it is said that the chancellor threw them under the table, in token of contempt. The executioner was generally forbidden to live within the precincts of the city, unless it was on the grounds where the pillory was situated; and, in some cases, so that he might not be mistaken amongst the people, he was forced to wear a particular coat, either of red or yellow. On the other hand, his duties ensured him certain privileges. In Paris, he possessed the right of _havage_, which consisted in taking all that he could hold in his hand from every load of grain which was brought into market; however, in order that the grain might be preserved from ignominious contact, he levied his tax with a wooden spoon. He enjoyed many similar rights over most articles of consumption, independently of benefiting by several taxes or fines, such as the toll on the Petit-Pont, the tax on foreign traders, on boats arriving with fish, on dealers in herrings, watercress, &c.; and the fine of five sous which was levied on stray pigs (see previous chapter), &c. And, lastly, besides the personal property of the condemned, he received the rents from the shops and stalls surrounding the pillory, in which the retail fish trade was carried on. It appears that, in consequence of the receipts from these various duties forming a considerable source of revenue, the prestige of wealth by degrees dissipated the unfavourable impressions traditionally attached to the duties of executioner. At least, we have authority for supposing this, when, for instance, in 1418, we see the Paris executioner, who was then captain of the bourgeois militia, coming in that capacity to touch the hand of the Duke of Burgundy, on the occasion of his solemn entry into Paris with Queen Isabel of Bavaria. We may add that popular belief generally ascribed to the executioner a certain practical knowledge of medicine, which was supposed inherent in the profession itself; and the acquaintance with certain methods of cure unknown to doctors, was attributed to him; people went to buy from him the fat of culprits who had been hung, which was supposed to be a marvellous panacea. We may also remark that, in our day, the proficiency of the executioner in setting dislocated limbs is still proverbial in many countries. [Illustration: Fig. 344.--Amende Honorable before the Tribunal.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Praxis Rerum Criminalium:" in 4to, Antwerp, 1556.] More than once during the thirteenth century the duties of the executioner were performed by women, but only in those cases in which their own sex was concerned; for it is expressly stated in an order of St. Louis, that persons convicted of blasphemy shall be beaten with birch rods, "the men by men, and the women by women only, without the presence of men." This, however, was not long tolerated, for we know that a period soon arrived when women were exempted from a duty so little adapted to their physical weakness and moral sensitiveness. The learned writer on criminal cases, Josse Damhoudère, whom we have already mentioned, and whom we shall take as our special guide in the enumeration of the various tortures, specifies thirteen ways in which the executioner "carries out his executions," and places them in the following order:--"Fire"--"the sword"--"mechanical force"--"quartering"--"the wheel"--"the fork"--"the gibbet"--"drawing"--"spiking"--"cutting off the ears"--"dismembering"--"flogging or beating"--and the "pillory." [Illustration: Fig. 345.--The Punishment by Fire.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] But before entering upon the details of this revolting subject, we must state that, whatever punishment was inflicted upon a culprit, it was very rare that its execution had not been preceded by the _amende honorable_, which, in certain cases, constituted a distinct punishment, but which generally was but the prelude to the torture itself. The _amende honorable_ which was called _simple_ or _short_, took place without the assistance of the executioner in the council chamber, where the condemned, bareheaded and kneeling, had to state that "he had falsely said or done something against the authority of the King or the honour of some person" (Fig. 344). For the _amende honorable in figuris_--that is to say, in public--the condemned, in his shirt, barefooted, the rope round his neck, followed by the executioner, and holding in his hand a wax taper, with a weight, which was definitely specified in the sentence which had been passed upon him, but which was generally of two or four pounds, prostrated himself at the door of a church, where in a loud voice he had to confess his sin, and to beg the pardon of God and man. When a criminal had been condemned to be burnt, a stake was erected on the spot specially designed for the execution, and round it a pile was prepared, composed of alternate layers of straw and wood, and rising to about the height of a man. Care was taken to leave a free space round the stake for the victim, and also a passage by which to lead him to it. Having been stripped of his clothes, and dressed in a shirt smeared with sulphur, he had to walk to the centre of the pile through a narrow opening, and was then tightly bound to the stake with ropes and chains. After this, faggots and straw were thrown into the empty space through which he had passed to the stake, until he was entirely covered by them; the pile was then fired on all sides at once (Fig. 345). Sometimes, the sentence was that the culprit should only be delivered to the flames after having been previously strangled. In this case, the dead corpse was then immediately placed where the victim would otherwise have been placed alive, and the punishment lost much of its horror. It often happened that the executioner, in order to shorten the sufferings of the condemned, whilst he prepared the pile, placed a large and pointed iron bar amongst the faggots and opposite the stake breast high, so that, directly the fire was lighted, the bar was quickly pushed against the victim, giving a mortal blow to the unfortunate wretch, who would otherwise have been slowly devoured by the flames. If, according to the wording of the sentence, the ashes of the criminal were to be scattered to the winds, as soon as it was possible to approach the centre of the burning pile, a few ashes were taken in a shovel and sprinkled in the air. They were not satisfied with burning the living, they also delivered to the flames the bodies of those who had died a natural death before their execution could be carried out, as if an anticipated death should not be allowed to save them from the punishment which they had deserved. It also happened in certain cases, where a person's guilt was only proved after his decease, that his body was disinterred, and carried to the stake to be burnt. The punishment by fire was always inflicted in cases of heresy, or blasphemy. The Spanish Inquisition made such a constant and cruel use of it, that the expression _auto-da-fé_ (act of faith), strangely perverted from its original meaning, was the only one employed to denote the punishment itself. In France, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, fifty-nine Templars were burned at the same time for the crimes of heresy and witchcraft. And three years later, on the 18th March, 1314, Jacques Molay, and a few other dignitaries of the Order of the Templars, also perished in the flames at the extremity of the island of Notre Dame, on the very spot where the equestrian statue of Henry IV. now stands. Every one is acquainted with the fact that judges were found iniquitous enough to condemn Joan of Arc to death by fire as a witch and a heretic. Her execution, which took place in the market-place of Rouen, is remarkable from a circumstance which is little known, and which had never taken place on any other occasion. When it was supposed that the fire which surrounded the young heroine on all sides had reached her and no doubt suffocated her, although sufficient time had not elapsed for it to consume her body, a part of the blazing wood was withdrawn, "in order to remove any doubts from the people," and when the crowd had satisfied themselves by seeing her in the middle of the pile, "chained to the post and quite dead, the executioner replaced the fire...." It should be stated in reference to this point, that Joan having been accused of witchcraft, there was a general belief among the people that the flames would be harmless to her, and that she would be seen emerging from her pile unscathed. The sentence of punishment by fire did not absolutely imply death at the stake, for there was a punishment of this description which was specially reserved for base coiners, and which consisted in hurling the criminals into a cauldron of scalding water or oil. We must include in the category of punishment by fire certain penalties, which were, so to speak, but the preliminaries of a more severe punishment, such as the sulphur-fire, in which the hands of parricides, or of criminals accused of high treason, were burned. We must also add various punishments which, if they did not involve death, were none the less cruel, such as the red-hot brazier, _bassin ardent_, which was passed backwards and forwards before the eyes of the culprit, until they were destroyed by the scorching heat; and the process of branding various marks on the flesh, as an ineffaceable stigma, the use of which has been continued to the present day. In certain countries decapitation was performed with an axe; but in France, it was carried out usually by means of a two-handed sword or glave of justice, which was furnished to the executioner for that purpose (Fig. 346). We find it recorded that in 1476, sixty sous parisis were paid to the executioner of Paris "for having bought a large _espée à feuille_," used for beheading the condemned, and "for having the old sword done up, which was damaged, and had become notched whilst carrying out the sentence of justice upon Messire Louis de Luxembourg." [Illustration: Fig. 346.--Beheading.--Fac-simile of a Miniature on Wood in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] Originally, decapitation was indiscriminately inflicted on all criminals condemned to death; at a later period, however, it became the particular privilege of the nobility, who submitted to it without any feeling of degradation. The victim--unless the sentence prescribed that he should be blindfolded as an ignominious aggravation of the penalty--was allowed to choose whether he would have his eyes covered or not. He knelt down on the scaffold, placed his head on the block, and gave himself up to the executioner (Fig. 347). The skill of the executioner was generally such that the head was almost invariably severed from the body at the first blow. Nevertheless, skill and practice at times failed, for cases are on record where as many as eleven blows were dealt, and at times it happened that the sword broke. It was no doubt the desire to avoid this mischance that led to the invention of the mechanical instrument, now known under the name of the _guillotine_, which is merely an improvement on a complicated machine which was much more ancient than is generally supposed. As early as the sixteenth century the modern guillotine already existed in Scotland under the name of the _Maiden_, and English historians relate that Lord Morton, regent of Scotland during the minority of James VI., had it constructed after a model of a similar machine, which had long been in use at Halifax, in Yorkshire. They add, and popular tradition also has invented an analogous tale in France, that this Lord Morton, who was the inventor or the first to introduce this kind of punishment, was himself the first to experience it. The guillotine is, besides, very accurately described in the "Chronicles of Jean d'Auton," in an account of an execution which took place at Genoa at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Two German engravings, executed about 1550 by Pencz and Aldegrever, also represent an instrument of death almost identical with the guillotine; and the same instrument is to be found on a bas-relief of that period, which is still existing in one of the halls of the Tribunal of Luneburg, in Hanover. [Illustration: Decapitation of Guillaume de Pommiers. [Illustration: Fig. 347.--Public Executions.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Latin Work of J. Millaeus, "Praxis Criminis Persequendi:" small folio, Parisis, Simon de Colines, 1541.] And his Confessor, at Bordeaux in 1377, by order of the King of England's Lieutenant. _Froissart's Chronicles._ No. 2644, Bibl. nat'le de Paris.] Possibly the invention of such a machine was prompted by the desire to curtail the physical sufferings of the victim, instead of prolonging them, as under the ancient system. It is, however, difficult to believe that the mediæval judges were actuated by any humane feelings, when we find that, in order to reconcile a respect for _propriety_ with a due compliance with the ends of justice, the punishment of burying alive was resorted to for women, who could not with decency be hung up to the gibbets. In 1460, a woman named Perette, accused of theft and of receiving stolen goods, was condemned by the Provost of Paris to be "buried alive before the gallows," and the sentence was literally carried out. _Quartering_ may in truth be considered the most horrible penalty invented by judicial cruelty. This punishment really dates from the remotest ages, but it was scarcely ever inflicted in more modern times, except on regicides, who were looked upon as having committed the worst of crimes. In almost all cases, the victim had previously to undergo various accessory tortures: sometimes his right hand was cut off, and the mutilated stump was burnt in a cauldron of sulphur; sometimes his arms, thighs, or breasts were lacerated with red-hot pincers, and hot oil, pitch, or molten lead was poured into the wounds. [Illustration: Fig. 348.--Demons applying the Torture of the Wheel.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Grand Kalendrier ou Compost des Bergers:" small folio, Troyes, Nicholas le Rouge, 1529.] After these horrible preliminaries, a rope was attached to each of the limbs of the criminal, one being bound round each leg from the foot to the knee, and round each arm from the wrist to the elbow. These ropes were then fastened to four bars, to each of which a strong horse was harnessed, as if for towing a barge. These horses were first made to give short jerks; and when the agony had elicited heart-rending cries from the unfortunate man, who felt his limbs being dislocated without being broken, the four horses were all suddenly urged on with the whip in different directions, and thus all the limbs were strained at one moment. If the tendons and ligaments still resisted the combined efforts of the four horses, the executioner assisted, and made several cuts with a hatchet on each joint. When at last--for this horrible torture often lasted several hours--each horse had drawn out a limb, they were collected and placed near the hideous trunk, which often still showed signs of life, and the whole were burned together. Sometimes the sentence was, that the body should be hung to the gibbet, and that the limbs should be displayed on the gates of the town, or sent to four principal towns in the extremities of the kingdom. When this was done, "an inscription was placed on each of the limbs, which stated the reason of its being thus exposed." The _wheel_ is the name applied to a torture of very ancient origin, but which was applied during the Middle Ages to quite a different torture from that used in olden times. The modern instrument might indeed have been called the cross, for it only served for the public exhibition of the body of the criminal whose limbs had been previously broken alive. This torture, which does not date earlier than the days of Francis I., is thus described:--The victim was first tied on his back to two joists forming a St. Andrew's cross, each of his limbs being stretched out on its arms. Two places were hollowed out under each limb, about a foot apart, in order that the joints alone might touch the wood. The executioner then dealt a heavy blow over each hollow with a square iron bar, about two inches broad and rounded at the handle, thus breaking each limb in two places. To the eight blows required for this, the executioner generally added two or three on the chest, which were called _coups de grâce_, and which ended this horrible execution. It was only after death that the broken body was placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot. Sometimes, however, the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a rope round the neck. Strangling, thus carried out, was called _garotting_. This method is still in use in Spain, and is specially reserved for the nobility. The victim is seated on a scaffold, his head leaning against a beam and his neck grasped by an iron collar, which the executioner suddenly tightens from behind by means of a screw. For several centuries, and down to the Revolution, hanging was the most common mode of execution in France; consequently, in every town, and almost in every village, there was a permanent gibbet, which, owing to the custom of leaving the bodies to hang till they crumbled into dust, was very rarely without having some corpses or skeletons attached to it. These gibbets, which were called _fourches patibulaires_ or _justices_, because they represented the authority of the law, were generally composed of pillars of stone, joined at their summit by wooden traverses, to which the bodies of criminals were tied by ropes or chains. The gallows, the pillars of which varied in number according to the will of the authorities, were always placed by the side of frequented roads, and on an eminence. [Illustration: Fig. 349.--The Gibbet of Montfaucon.--From an Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.] According to prescribed rule, the gallows of Paris, which played such an important part in the political as well as the criminal history of that city, were erected on a height north of the town, near the high road leading into Germany. Montfaucon, originally the name of the hill, soon became that of the gallows itself. This celebrated place of execution consisted of a heavy mass of masonry, composed of ten or twelve layers of rough stones, and formed an enclosure of forty feet by twenty-five or thirty. At the upper part there was a platform, which was reached by a stone staircase, the entrance to which was closed by a massive door (Fig. 349). On three sides of this platform rested sixteen square pillars, about thirty feet high, made of blocks of stone a foot thick. These pillars were joined to one another by double bars of wood, which were fastened into them, and bore iron chains three feet and a half long, to which the criminals were suspended. Underneath, half-way between these and the platform, other bars were placed for the same purpose. Long and solid ladders riveted to the pillars enabled the executioner and his assistants to lead up criminals, or to carry up corpses destined to be hung there. Lastly, the centre of the structure was occupied by a deep pit, the hideous receptacle of the decaying remains of the criminals. One can easily imagine the strange and melancholy aspect of this monumental gibbet if one thinks of the number of corpses continually attached to it, and which were feasted upon by thousands of crows. On one occasion only it was necessary to replace _fifty-two_ chains, which were useless; and the accounts of the city of Paris prove that the expense of executions was more heavy than that of the maintenance of the gibbet, a fact easy to be understood if one recalls to mind the frequency of capital sentences during the Middle Ages. Montfaucon was used not only for executions, but also for exposing corpses which were brought there from various places of execution in every part of the country. The mutilated remains of criminals who had been boiled, quartered, or beheaded, were also hung there, enclosed in sacks of leather or wickerwork. They often remained hanging for a considerable time, as in the case of Pierre des Essarts, who had been beheaded in 1413, and whose remains were handed over to his family for Christian burial after having hung on Montfaucon for three years. The criminal condemned to be hanged was generally taken to the place of execution sitting or standing in a waggon, with his back to the horses, his confessor by his side, and the executioner behind him. He bore three ropes round his neck; two the size of the little finger, and called _tortouses_, each of which had a slip-knot; the third, called the _jet_, was only used to pull the victim off the ladder, and so to launch him into eternity (Fig. 350). When the cart arrived at the foot of the gallows, the executioner first ascended the ladder backwards, drawing the culprit after him by means of the ropes, and forcing him to keep pace with him; on arriving at the top, he quickly fastened the two _tortouses_ to the arm of the gibbet, and by a jerk of his knee he turned the culprit off the ladder, still holding the _jet_ in his own hand. He then placed his feet on the tied hands of the condemned, and suspending himself by his hands to the gibbet, he finished off his victim by repeated jerks, thus ensuring complete strangulation. When the words "shall be hung until death doth ensue" are to be found in a sentence, it must not be supposed that they were used merely as a form, for in certain cases the judge ordered that the sentence should be only carried out as far as would prove to the culprit the awful sensation of hanging. In such cases, the victim was simply suspended by ropes passing under the arm-pits, a kind of exhibition which was not free from danger when it was too prolonged, for the weight of the body so tightened the rope round the chest that the circulation might be stopped. Many culprits, after hanging thus an hour, when brought down, were dead, or only survived this painful process a short time. [Illustration: Fig. 350.--Hanging to Music. (A Minstrel condemned to the Gallows obtained permission that one of his companions should accompany him to his execution, and play his favourite instrument on the ladder of the Gallows.)--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in Michault's "Doctrinal du Temps Présent:" small folio, goth., Bruges, about 1490.] We have seen elsewhere (chapter on _Privileges and Rights, Feudal and Municipal_) that, when the criminal passed before the convent of the _Filles-Dieu_, the nuns of that establishment were bound to bring him out a glass of wine and three pieces of bread, and this was called _le dernier morceau des patients._ It was hardly ever refused, and an immense crowd assisted at this sad meal. After this the procession went forward, and on arriving near the gallows, another halt was made at the foot of a stone cross, in order that the culprit might receive the religions exhortations of his confessor. The moment the execution was over, the confessor and the officers of justice returned to the Châtelet, where a repast provided by the town awaited them. [Illustration: Fig. 351.--View of the Pillory in the Market-place of Paris in the Sixteenth Century, after a Drawing by an unknown Artist of 1670.] Sometimes the criminals, in consequence of a peculiar wording of the sentence, were taken to Montfaucon, whether dead or alive, on a ladder fastened behind a cart. This was an aggravation of the penalty, which was called _traîner sur la claie_. The penalty of the lash was inflicted in two ways: first, under the _custode_, that is to say within the prison, and by the hand of the gaoler himself, in which case it was simply a correction; and secondly, in public, when its administration became ignominious as well as painful. In the latter case the criminal was paraded about the town, stripped to the waist, and at each crossway he received a certain number of blows on the shoulders, given by the public executioner with a cane or a knotted rope. When it was only required to stamp a culprit with infamy he was put into the _pillory_, which was generally a kind of scaffold furnished with chains and iron collars, and bearing on its front the arms of the feudal lord. In Paris, this name was given to a round isolated tower built in the centre of the market. The tower was sixty feet high, and had large openings in its thick walls, and a horizontal wheel was provided, which was capable of turning on a pivot. This wheel was pierced with several holes, made so as to hold the hands and head of the culprit, who, on passing and repassing before the eyes of the crowd, came in full view, and was subjected to their hootings (Fig. 351). The pillories were always situated in the most frequented places, such as markets, crossways, &c. Notwithstanding the long and dreadful enumeration we have just made of mediæval punishments, we are far from having exhausted the subject; for we have not spoken of several more or less atrocious punishments, which were in use at various times and in various countries; such as the _Pain of the Cross_, specially employed against the Jews; the _Arquebusade_, which was well adapted for carrying out prompt justice on soldiers; the _Chatouillement_, which resulted in death after the most intense tortures; the _Pal_ (Fig. 352), _flaying alive_, and, lastly, _drowning_, a kind of death frequently employed in France. Hence the common expression, _gens de sac et de corde_, which was derived from the sack into which persons were tied who were condemned to die by immersion.... But we will now turn away from these horrible scenes, and consider the several methods of penal sequestration and prison arrangements. It is unnecessary to state that in barbarous times the cruel and pitiless feeling which induced legislators to increase the horrors of tortures, also contributed to the aggravation of the fate of prisoners. Each administrator of the law had his private gaol, which was entirely under his will and control (Fig. 353). Law or custom did not prescribe any fixed rules for the internal government of prisons. There can be little doubt, however, that these prisons were as small as they were unhealthy, if we may judge from that in the Rue de la Tannerie, which was the property of the provost, the merchants, and the aldermen of Paris in 1383. Although this dungeon was only eleven feet long by seven feet wide, from ten to twenty prisoners were often immured in it at the same time. [Illustration: Fig. 352.--Empalement.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] Paris alone contained twenty-five or thirty special prisons, without counting the _vade in pace_ of the various religious communities. The most important were the Grand Châtelet, the Petit Châtelet, the Bastille, the Conciergerie, and the For-l'Evêque, the ancient seat of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Nearly all these places of confinement contained subterranean cells, which were almost entirely deprived of air and light. As examples of these may be mentioned the _Chartres basses_ of the Petit Châtelet, where, under the reign of Charles VI., it was proved that no man could pass an entire day without being suffocated; and the fearful cells excavated thirty feet below the surface of the earth, in the gaol of the Abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, the roof of which was so low that a man of middle height could not stand up in them, and where the straw of the prisoners' beds floated upon the stagnant water which had oozed through the walls. [Illustration: Fig. 353.--The Provost's Prison.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Praxis Rerum Civilium."] The Grand Châtelet was one of the most ancient prisons of Paris, and probably the one which held the greatest number of prisoners. By a curious and arbitrary custom, prisoners were compelled to pay a gaol fee on entering and going out of this prison, which varied according to their rank, and which was established by a law of the year 1425. We learn from this enactment the names by which the various places of confinement composing this spacious municipal prison were known. A prisoner who was confined in the _Beauvoir, La Mate_ or _La Salle_, had the right of "having a bed brought from his own house," and only had to pay the _droit de place_ to the gaoler; any one who was placed in the _Boucherie_, in the _Beaumont_, or in the _Griseche_, "which are closed prisons," had to pay four deniers "_pour place_;" any one who was confined in the _Beauvais_, "lies on mats or on layers of rushes or straw" (_gist sur nates ou sur couche de feurre ou de paille_); if he preferred, he might be placed _au Puis_, in the _Gourdaine_, in the _Bercueil_, or in the _Oubliette_, where he did not pay more than in the _Fosse_. For this, no doubt, the smallest charge was made. Sometimes, however, the prisoner was left between two doors ("_entre deux huis_"), and he then paid much less than he would in the _Barbarie_ or in the _Gloriette_. The exact meaning of these curious names is no longer intelligible to us, notwithstanding the terror which they formerly created, but their very strangeness gives us reason to suppose that the prison system was at that time subjected to the most odious refinement of the basest cruelty. From various reliable sources we learn that there was a place in the Grand Châtelet, called the _Chausse d'Hypocras_, in which the prisoners had their feet continually in water, and where they could neither stand up nor lie down; and a cell, called _Fin d'aise_, which was a horrible receptacle of filth, vermin, and reptiles; as to the _Fosse_, no staircase being attached to it, the prisoners were lowered down into it by means of a rope and pulley. By the law of 1425, the gaoler was not permitted to put more than _two or three_ persons in the same bed. He was bound to give "bread and water" to the poor prisoners who had no means of subsistence; and, lastly, he was enjoined "to keep the large stone basin, which was on the pavement, full of water, so that prisoners might get it whenever they wished." In order to defray his expenses, he levied on the prisoners various charges for attendance and for bedding, and he was authorised to detain in prison any person who failed to pay him. The power of compelling payment of these charges continued even after a judge's order for the release of a prisoner had been issued. [Illustration: Fig. 354.--The Bastille.--From an ancient Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.] The subterranean cells of the Bastille (Fig. 354) did not differ much from those of the Châtelet. There were several, the bottoms of which were formed like a sugar-loaf upside down, thus neither allowing the prisoner to stand up, nor even to adopt a tolerable position sitting or lying down. It was in these that King Louis XI., who seemed to have a partiality for filthy dungeons, placed the two young sons of the Duke de Nemours (beheaded in 1477), ordering, besides, that they should be taken out twice a week and beaten with birch rods, and, as a supreme measure of atrocity, he had one of their teeth extracted every three months. It was Louis XI., too, who, in 1476, ordered the famous _iron cage_, to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, was incarcerated for fourteen years. The Château de Loches also possessed one of these cages, which received the name of _Cage de Balue_, because the Cardinal Jean de la Balue was imprisoned in it. Philippe de Commines, in his "Mémoires," declares that he himself had a taste of it for eight months. Before the invention of cages, Louis XI. ordered very heavy chains to be made, which were fastened to the feet of the prisoners, and attached to large iron balls, called, according to Commines, the King's little daughters (_les fillettes du roy_). [Illustration: Fig. 355.--Movable Iron Cage.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, in folio, Basle, 1552.] The prison known by the name of The Leads of Venice is of so notorious a character that its mere mention is sufficient, without its being necessary for us to describe it. To the subject of voluntary seclusions, to which certain pious persons submitted themselves as acts of extreme religious devotion, it will only be necessary to allude here, and to remark that there are examples of this confinement having been ordered by legal authority. In 1485, Renée de Vermandois, the widow of a squire, had been condemned to be burnt for adultery and for murdering her husband; but, on letters of remission from the King, Parliament commuted the sentence pronounced by the Provost of Paris, and ordered that Renée de Vermandois should be "shut up within the walls of the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents, in a small house, built at her expense, that she might therein do penance and end her days." In conformity with this sentence, the culprit having been conducted with much pomp to the cell which had been prepared for her, the door was locked by means of two keys, one of which remained in the hands of the churchwarden (_marguillier_) of the Church of the Innocents, and the other was deposited at the office of the Parliament. The prisoner received her food from public charity, and it is said that she became an object of veneration and respect by the whole town. [Illustration: Fig. 356.--Cat-o'-nine-tails.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster.] Jews. Dispersion of the Jews.--Jewish Quarters in the Mediæval Towns.--The _Ghetto_ of Rome.--Ancient Prague.--The _Giudecca_ of Venice.--Condition of the Jews.--Animosity of the People against them--Severity and vexatious Treatment of the Sovereigns.--The Jews of Lincoln.--The Jews of Blois.--Mission of the _Pastoureaux_.--Extermination of the Jews.--The Price at which the Jews purchased Indulgences.--Marks set upon them.--Wealth, Knowledge, Industry, and Financial Aptitude of the Jews.--Regulations respecting Usury as practised by the Jews.--Attachment of the Jews to their Religion. A painful and gloomy history commences for the Jewish race from the day when the Romans seized upon Jerusalem and expelled its unfortunate inhabitants, a race so essentially homogeneous, strong, patient, and religious, and dating its origin from the remotest period of the patriarchal ages. The Jews, proud of the title of "the People of God," were scattered, proscribed, and received universal reprobation (Fig. 357), notwithstanding that their annals, collected under divine inspiration by Moses and the sacred writers, had furnished a glorious prologue to the annals of all modern nations, and had given to the world the holy and divine history of Christ, who, by establishing the Gospel, was to become the regenerator of the whole human family. Their Temple is destroyed, and the crowd which had once pressed beneath its portico as the flock of the living God has become a miserable tribe, restless and unquiet in the present, but full of hope as regards the future. The Jewish _nation_ exists nowhere, nevertheless, the Jewish _people_ are to be found everywhere. They are wanderers upon the face of the earth, continually pursued, threatened, and persecuted. It would seem as if the existence of the offspring of Israel is perpetuated simply to present to Christian eyes a clear and awful warning of the Divine vengeance, a special, and at the same time an overwhelming example of the vicissitudes which God alone can determine in the life of a people. [Illustration: Fig. 357.--Expulsion of the Jews in the Reign of the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 135): "How Heraclius turned the Jews out of Jerusalem."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Histoire des Empereurs," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.] M. Depping, an historian of this race so long accursed, after having been for centuries blessed and favoured by God, says, "A Jewish community in an European town during the Middle Ages resembled a colony on an island or on a distant coast. Isolated from the rest of the population, it generally occupied a district or street which was separated from the town or borough. The Jews, like a troop of lepers, were thrust away and huddled together into the most uncomfortable and most unhealthy quarter of the city, as miserable as it vas disgusting. There, in ill-constructed houses, this poor and numerous population was amassed; in some cases high walls enclosed the small and dark narrow streets of the quarter occupied by this branded race, which prevented its extension, though, at the same time, it often protected the inhabitants from the fury of the populace." In order to form a just appreciation of what the Jewish quarters were like in the mediæval towns, one must visit the _Ghetto_ of Rome or ancient Prague. The latter place especially has, in all respects, preserved its antique appearance. We must picture to ourselves a large enclosure of wretched houses, irregularly built, divided by small streets with no attempt at uniformity. The principal thoroughfare is lined with stalls, in which are sold not only old clothes, furniture, and utensils, but also new and glittering articles. The inhabitants of this enclosure can, without crossing its limits, procure everything necessary to material life. This quarter contains the old synagogue, a square building begrimed with the dirt of ages, and so covered with dirt and moss that the stone of which it is built is scarcely visible. The building, which is as mournful as a prison, has only narrow loopholes by way of windows, and a door so low that one must stoop to enter it. A dark passage leads to the interior, into which air and light can scarcely penetrate. A few lamps contend with the darkness, and lighted fires serve to modify a little the icy temperature of this cellar. Here and there pillars seem to support a roof which is too high and too darkened for the eye of the visitor to distinguish. On the sides are dark and damp recesses, where women assist at the celebration of worship, which is always carried on, according to ancient custom, with much wailing and strange gestures of the body. The book of the law which is in use is no less venerable than the edifice in which it is contained. It appears that this synagogue has never undergone the slightest repairs or changes for many centuries. The successive generations who have prayed in this ancient temple rest under thousands of sepulchral stones, in a cemetery which is of the same date as the synagogue, and is about a league in circumference. Paris has never possessed, properly speaking, a regular _Jewish quarter_; it is true that the Israelites settled down in the neighbourhood of the markets, and in certain narrow streets, which at some period or other took the name of _Juiverie_ or _Vieille Juiverie (Old Jewry_); but they were never distinct from the rest of the population; they only had a separate cemetery, at the bottom or rather on the slope of the hill of Sainte-Geneviève. On the other hand, most of the towns of France and of Europe had their _Jewry_. In certain countries, the colonies of Jews enjoyed a share of immunities and protections, thus rendering their life a little less precarious, and their occupations of a rather more settled character. In Spain and in Portugal, the Jews, in consequence of their having been on several occasions useful to the kings of those two countries, were allowed to carry on their trade, and to engage in money speculations, outside their own quarters; a few were elevated to positions of responsibility, and some were even tolerated at court. In the southern towns of France, which they enriched by commerce and taxes, and where they formed considerable communities, the Jews enjoyed the protection of the nobles. We find them in Languedoc and Provence buying and selling property like Christians, a privilege which was not permitted to them elsewhere: this is proved by charters of contracts made during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which bear the signature of certain Jews in Hebrew characters. On Papal lands, at Avignon, at Carpentras, and at Cavaillon, they had _bailes_, or consuls of their nation. The Jews of Rousillon during the Spanish rule (fifteenth century) were governed by two syndics and a scribe, elected by the community. The latter levied the taxes due to the King of Aragon. In Burgundy they cultivated the vines, which was rather singular, for the Jews generally preferred towns where they could form groups more compact, and more capable of mutual assistance. The name of _Sabath_, given to a vineyard in the neighbourhood of Mâcon, still points out the position of their synagogue. The hamlet of _Mouys_, a dependency of the communes of Prissey, owes its name to a rich Israelite, Moses, who had received that land as an indemnity for money lent to the Count Gerfroy de Mâcon, which the latter had been unable to repay. In Vienna, where the Israelites had a special quarter, still called _the Jews'_ [Illustration: Fig. 358.--Jews taking the Blood from Christian Children, for their Mystic Rites.--From a Pen-and-ink Drawing, illuminated, in the Book of the Cabala of Abraham the Jew (Library of the Arsenal, Paris).] _Square_, a special judge named by the duke was set over them. Exempted from the city rates, they paid a special poil tax, and they contributed, but on the same footing as Christian vassals, to extraordinary rates, war taxes, and travelling expenses of the nobles, &c. This community even became so rich that it eventually held mortgages on the greater part of the houses of the town. In Venice also, the Jews had their quarter--the _Giudecca_--which is still one of the darkest in the town; but they did not much care about such trifling inconveniences, as the republic allowed them to bank, that is, to lend money at interest; and although they were driven out on several occasions, they always found means to return and recommence their operations. When they were authorised to establish themselves in the towns of the Adriatic, their presence did not fail to annoy the Christian merchants, whose rivals they were; but neither in Venice nor in the Italian republics had they to fear court intrigues, nor the hatred of corporations of trades, which were so powerful in France and in Germany. It was in the north of Europe that the animosity against the Jews was greatest. The Christian population continually threatened the Jewish quarters, which public opinion pointed to as haunts and sinks of iniquity. The Jews were believed to be much more amenable to the doctrines of the Talmud than to the laws of Moses. However secret they may have kept their learning, a portion of its tenets transpired, which was supposed to inculcate the right to pillage and murder Christians; and it is to the vague knowledge of these odious prescriptions of the Talmud that we must attribute the readiness with which the most atrocious accusations against the Jews were always welcomed. Besides this, the public mind in those days of bigotry was naturally filled with a deep antipathy against the Jewish deicides. When monks and priests came annually in Holy week to relate from the pulpit to their hearers the revolting details of the Passion, resentment was kindled in the hearts of the Christians against the descendants of the judges and executioners of the Saviour. And when, on going out of the churches, excited by the sermons they had just heard, the faithful saw in pictures, in the cemeteries, and elsewhere, representations of the mystery of the death of our Saviour, in which the Jews played so odious a part, there was scarcely a spectator who did not feel an increased hatred against the condemned race. Hence it was that in many towns, even when the authorities did not compel them to do so, the Israelites found it prudent to shut themselves up in their own quarter, and even in their own houses, during the whole of Passion week; for, in consequence of the public feeling roused during those days of mourning and penance, a false rumour was quite sufficient to give the people a pretext for offering violence to the Jews. In fact, from the earliest days of Christianity, a certain number of accusations were always being made, sometimes in one country, sometimes in another, against the Israelites, which always ended in bringing down the same misfortunes on their heads. The most common, and most easily credited report, was that which attributed to them the murder of some Christian child, said to be sacrificed in Passion week in token of their hatred of Christ; and in the event of this terrible accusation being once uttered, and maintained by popular opinion, it never failed to spread with remarkable swiftness. In such cases, popular fury, not being on all occasions satisfied with the tardiness of judicial forms, vented itself upon the first Jews who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of their enemies. As soon as the disturbance was heard the Jewish quarter was closed; fathers and mothers barricaded themselves in with their children, concealed whatever riches they possessed, and listened tremblingly to the clamour of the multitude which was about to besiege them. [Illustration: Fig. 359.--Secret Meeting of the Jews at the Rabbi's House.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the "Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine," Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, in the National Library of Paris.] In 1255, in Lincoln, the report was suddenly spread that a child of the name of Hughes had been enticed into the Jewish quarter, and there scourged, crucified, and pierced with lances, in the presence of all the Israelites of the district, who were convoked and assembled to take part in this horrible barbarity. The King and Queen of England, on their return from a journey to Scotland, arrived in Lincoln at the very time when the inhabitants were so much agitated by this mysterious announcement. The people called for vengeance. An order was issued to the bailiffs and officers of the King to deliver the murderer into the hands of justice, and the quarter in which the Jews had shut themselves up, so as to avoid the public animosity, was immediately invaded by armed men. The rabbi, in whose house the child was supposed to have been tortured, was seized, and at once condemned to be tied to the tail of a horse, and dragged through the streets of the town. After this, his mangled body, which was only half dead, was hung (Fig. 359). Many of the Jews ran away and hid themselves in all parts of the kingdom, and those who had the misfortune to be caught were thrown into chains and led to London. Orders were given in the provinces to imprison all the Israelites who were accused or even suspected of having taken any part, whether actively or indirectly, in the murder of the Lincoln child; and suspicion made rapid strides in those days. In a short space of time, eighteen Israelites in London shared the fate of the rabbi of their community in Lincoln. Some Dominican monks, who were charitable and courageous enough to interfere in favour of the wretched prisoners, brought down odium on their own heads, and were accused of having allowed themselves to be corrupted by the money of the Jews. Seventy-one prisoners were retained in the dungeons of London, and seemed inevitably fated to die, when the king's brother, Richard, came to their aid, by asserting his right over all the Jews of the kingdom--a right which the King had pledged to him for a loan of 5,000 silver marks. The unfortunate prisoners were therefore saved, thanks to Richard's desire to protect his securities. History does not tell what their liberty cost them; but we must hope that a sense of justice alone guided the English prince, and that the Jews found other means besides money by which to show their gratitude. There is scarcely a country in Europe which cannot recount similar tales. In 1171, we find the murder of a child at Orleans, or Blois, causing capital punishment to be inflicted on several Jews. Imputations of this horrible character were continually renewed during the Middle Ages, and were of very ancient origin; for we hear of them in the times of Honorius and Theodosius the younger; we find them reproduced with equal vehemence in 1475 at Trent, where a furious mob was excited against the Jews, who were accused of having destroyed a child twenty-nine months old named Simon. The tale of the martyrdom of this child was circulated widely, and woodcut representations of it were freely distributed, which necessarily increased, especially in Germany, the horror which was aroused in the minds of Christians against the accursed nation (Fig. 361). [Illustration: Fig. 360.--The Infant Richard crucified by the Jews, at Pontoise.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut, with Figures by Wohlgemuth, in the "Liber Chronicarum Mundi:" large folio, Nuremberg, 1493.] [Illustration: Fig. 361.--Martyrdom of Simon at Trent.--Fac-simile, reduced, of a Woodcut of Wohlgemuth, in the "Liber Chronicarum Mundi:" large folio, Nuremberg, 1493.] The Jews gave cause for other accusations calculated to keep up this hatred; such as the desecration of the consecrated host, the mutilation of the crucifix. Tradition informs us of a miracle which took place in Paris in 1290, in the Rue des Jardins, when a Jew dared to mutilate and boil a consecrated host. This miracle was commemorated by the erection of a chapel on the spot, which was afterwards replaced by the church and convent of the Billettes. In 1370, the people of Brussels were startled in consequence of the statements of a Jewess, who accused her co-religionists of having made her carry a pyx full of stolen hosts to the Jews of Cologne, for the purpose of submitting them to the most horrible profanations. The woman added, that the Jews having pierced these hosts with sticks and knives, such a quantity of blood poured from them that the culprits were struck with terror, and concealed themselves in their quarter. The Jews were all imprisoned, tortured, and burnt alive (Fig. 362). In order to perpetuate the memory of the miracle of the bleeding hosts, an annual procession took place, which was the origin of the great kermesse, or annual fair. In the event of any unforeseen misfortune, or any great catastrophe occurring amongst Christians, the odium was frequently cast on the Jews. If the Crusaders met with reverses in Asia, fanatics formed themselves into bands, who, under the name of _Pastoureaux_, spread over the country, killing and robbing not only the Jews, but many Christians also. In the event of any general sickness, and especially during the prevalence of epidemics, the Jews were accused of having poisoned the water of fountains and pits, and the people massacred them in consequence. Thousands perished in this way when the black plague made ravages in Europe in the fourteenth century. The sovereigns, who were tardy in suppressing these sanguinary proceedings, never thought of indemnifying the Jewish families which so unjustly suffered. [Illustration: Fig. 362.--The Jews of Cologne burnt alive.--From a Woodcut in the "Liber Chronicarum Mundi:" large folio, Nuremberg, 1493.] In fact, it was then most religiously believed that, by despising and holding the Jewish nation under the yoke, banished as it was from Judæa for the murder of Jesus Christ, the will of the Almighty was being carried out, so much so that the greater number of kings and princes looked upon themselves as absolute masters over the Jews who lived under their protection. All feudal lords spoke with scorn of _their Jews_; they allowed them to establish themselves on their lands, but on the condition that as they became the subjects and property of their lord, the latter should draw his best income from them. We have shown by an instance borrowed from the history of England that the Jews were often mortgaged by the kings like land. This was not all, for the Jews who inhabited Great Britain during the reign of Henry III., in the middle of the thirteenth century, were not only obliged to acknowledge, by voluntarily contributing large sums of money, the service the King's brother had rendered them in clearing them from the imputation of having had any participation in the murder of the child Richard, but the loan on mortgage, for which they were the material and passive security, became the cause of odious extortions from them. The King had pledged them to the Earl of Cornwall for 5,000 marks, but they themselves had to repay the royal loan by means of enormous taxes. When they had succeeded in cancelling the King's debt to his brother, that necessitous monarch again mortgaged them, but on this occasion to his son Edward. Soon after, the son having rebelled against his father, the latter took back his Jews, and having assembled six elders from each of their communities, he told them that he required 20,000 silver marks, and ordered them to pay him that sum at two stated periods. The payments were rigorously exacted; those who were behind-hand were imprisoned, and the debtor who was in arrear for the second payment was sued for the whole sum. On the King's death his successor continued the same system of tyranny against the Jews. In 1279 they were charged with having issued counterfeit coin, and on this vague or imaginary accusation two hundred and eighty men and women were put to death in London alone. In the counties there were also numerous executions, and many innocent persons were thrown into dungeons; and, at last, in 1290 King Edward, who wished to enrich himself by taking possession of their properties, banished the Jews from his kingdom. A short time before this, the English people had offered to pay an annual fine to the King on condition of his expelling the Jews from the country; but the Jews outbid them, and thus obtained the repeal of the edict of banishment. However, on this last occasion there was no mercy shown, and the Jews, sixteen thousand in number, were expelled from England, and the King seized upon their goods. At the same period Philippe le Bel of France gave the example of this system of persecuting the Jews, but, instead of confiscating all their goods, he was satisfied with taking one-fifth; his subjects, therefore, almost accused him of generosity. [Illustration: Fig. 363.--Jewish Conspiracy in France.--From a Miniature in the "Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine" (Imperial Library, Paris).] The Jews often took the precaution of purchasing certain rights and franchises from their sovereign or from the feudal lord under whose sway they lived; but generally these were one-sided bargains, for not being protected by common rights, and only forming a very small part of the population, they could nowhere depend upon promises or privileges which had been made to them, even though they had purchased them with their own money. To the uncertainty and annoyance of a life which was continually being threatened, was added a number of vexatious and personal insults, even in ordinary times, and when they enjoyed a kind of normal tolerance. They were almost everywhere obliged to wear a visible mark on their dress, such as a patch of gaudy colour attached to the shoulder or chest, in order to prevent their being mistaken for Christians. By this or some other means they were continually subject to insults from the people, and only succeeded in ridding themselves of it by paying the most enormous fines. Nothing was spared to humiliate and insult them. At Toulouse they were forced to send a representative to the cathedral on every Good Friday, that he might there publicly receive a box on the ears. At Béziers, during Passion week, the mob assumed the right of attacking the Jews' houses with stones. The Jews bought off this right in 1160 by paying a certain sum to the Vicomte de Béziers, and by promising an annual poll-tax to him and to his successors. A Jew, passing on the road of Etampes, beneath the tower of Montlhéry, had to pay an obole; if he had in his possession a Hebrew book, he paid four deniers; and, if he carried his lamp with him, two oboles. At Châteauneuf-sur-Loire a Jew on passing had to pay twelve deniers and a Jewess six. It has been said that there were various ancient rates levied upon Jews, in which they were treated like cattle, but this requires authentication. During the Carnival in Rome they were forced to run in the lists, amidst the jeers of the populace. This public outrage was stopped at a subsequent period by a tax of 300 écus, which a deputation from the Ghetto presented on their knees to the magistrates of the city, at the same time thanking them for their protection. When Pope Martin IV. arrived at the Council of Constance, in 1417, the Jewish community, which was as numerous as it was powerful in that old city, came in great state to present him with the book of the law (Fig. 364). The holy father received the Jews kindly, and prayed God to open their eyes and bring them back into the bosom of his church. We know, too, how charitable the popes were to the Jews. In the face of the distressing position they occupied, it may be asked what powerful motive induced the Jews to live amongst nations who almost invariably treated them as enemies, and to remain at the mercy of sovereigns whose sole object was to oppress, plunder, and subject them to all kinds of vexations? To understand this it is sufficient to remember that, in their peculiar aptness for earning and hoarding money, they found, or at least hoped to find, a means of compensation whereby they might be led to forget the servitude to which they were subjected. There existed amongst them, and especially in the southern countries, some very learned men, who devoted themselves principally to medicine; and in order to avoid having to struggle against insuperable prejudice, they were careful to disguise their nationality and religion in the exercise of that art. [Illustration: Fig. 364.--The Jewish Procession going to meet the Pope at the Council of Constance, in 1417.--After a Miniature in the Manuscript Chronicle of Ulrie de Reichental, in the Library of the Mansion-house of Basle, in Switzerland.] They pretended, in order not to arouse the suspicion of their patients, to be practitioners from Lombardy or Spain, or even from Arabia; whether they were really clever, or only made a pretence of being so, in an art which was then very much a compound of quackery and imposture, it is difficult to say, but they acquired wealth as well as renown in its practice. But there was another science, to the study of which they applied themselves with the utmost ardour and perseverance, and for which they possessed in a marvellous degree the necessary qualities to insure success, and that science was the science of finance. In matters having reference to the recovering of arrears of taxes, to contracts for the sale of goods and produce of industry, to turning a royalty to account, to making hazardous commercial enterprises lucrative, or to the accumulating of large sums of money for the use of sovereigns or poor nobles, the Jews were always at hand, and might invariably be reckoned upon. They created capital, for they always had funds to dispose of, even in the midst of the most terrible public calamities, and, when all other means were exhausted, when all expedients for filling empty purses had been resorted to without success, the Jews were called in. Often, in consequence of the envy which they excited from being known to possess hoards of gold, they were exposed to many dangers, which they nevertheless faced, buoying themselves up with the insatiable love of gain. Few Christians in the Middle Ages were given to speculation, and they were especially ignorant of financial matters, as demanding interest on loans was almost always looked upon as usury, and, consequently, such dealings were stigmatized as disgraceful. The Jews were far from sharing these high-minded scruples, and they took advantage of the ignorance of Christians by devoting themselves as much as possible to enterprises and speculations, which were at all times the distinguishing occupation of their race. For this reason we find the Jews, who were engaged in the export trade from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, doing a most excellent business, even in the commercial towns of the Mediterranean. We can, to a certain extent, in speaking of the intercourse of the Jews with the Christians of the Middle Ages, apply what Lady Montague remarked as late as 1717, when comparing the Jews of Turkey with the Mussulmans: "The former," she says, "have monopolized all the commerce of the empire, thanks to the close ties which exist amongst them, and to the laziness and want of industry of the Turks. No bargain is made without their connivance. They are the physicians and stewards of all the nobility. It is easy to conceive the unity which this gives to a nation which never despises the smallest profits. They have found means of rendering themselves so useful, that they are certain of protection at court, whoever the ruling minister may be. Many of them are enormously rich, but they are careful to make but little outward display, although living in the greatest possible luxury." [Illustration: Fig. 365.--Costume of an Italian Jew of the Fourteenth Century.--From a Painting by Sano di Pietro, preserved in the Academy of the Fine Arts, at Sienna.] [Illustration: The Jews' Passover. Fac-simile of a miniature from a missel of fifteenth century ornamented with paintings of the School of Van Eyck. Bibl. de l'Arsenal, Th. lat., no 199.] The condition of the Jews in the East was never so precarious nor so difficult as it was in the West. From the Councils of Paris, in 615, down to the end of the fifteenth century, the nobles and the civil and ecclesiastical authorities excluded the Jews from administrative positions; but it continually happened that a positive want of money, against which the Jews were ever ready to provide, caused a repeal or modification of these arbitrary measures. Moreover, Christians did not feel any scruple in parting with their most valued treasures, and giving them as pledges to the Jews for a loan of money when they were in need of it. This plan of lending on pledge, or usury, belonged specially to the Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages, and was both the cause of their prosperity and of their misfortune. Of their prosperity, because they cleverly contrived to become possessors of all the coin; and of their misfortune, because their usurious demands became so detrimental to the public welfare, and were often exacted with such unscrupulous severity, that people not unfrequently became exasperated, and acts of violence were committed, which as often fell upon the innocent as upon the guilty. The greater number of the acts of banishment were those for which no other motive was assigned, or, at all events, no other pretext was made, than the usury practised by these strangers in the provinces and in the towns in which they were permitted to reside. When the Christians heard that these rapacious guests had harshly pressed and entirely stripped certain poor debtors, when they learned that the debtors, ruined by usury, were still kept prisoners in the house of their pitiless creditors, general indignation often manifested itself by personal attacks. This feeling was frequently shared by the authorities themselves, who, instead of dispensing equal justice to the strangers and to the citizens, according to the spirit of the law, often decided with partiality, and even with resentment, and in some cases abandoned the Jews to the fury of the people. The people's feelings of hatred against the sordid avarice of the Jews was continually kept up by ballads which were sung, and legends which were related, in the public streets of the cities and in the cottages of the villages--ballads and legends in which usurers were depicted in hideous colours (Fig. 366). The most celebrated of these popular compositions was evidently that which must have furnished the idea to Shakespeare of the _Merchant of Venice_, for in this old English drama mention is made of a bargain struck between a Jew and a Christian, who borrows money of him, on condition that, if he cannot refund it on a certain day, the lender shall have the right of cutting a pound of flesh from his body. All the evil which the people said and thought of the Jews during the Middle Ages seems concentrated in the Shylock of the English poet. The rate of interest for loans was, nevertheless, everywhere settled by law, and at all times. This rate varied according to the scarcity of gold, and was always high enough to give a very ample profit to the lenders, although they too often required a very much higher rate. In truth, the small security offered by those borrowing, and the arbitrary manner in which debts were at times cancelled, increased the risks of the lender and the normal difficulties of obtaining a loan. We find everywhere, in all ancient legislations, a mass of rules on the rate of pecuniary interest to be allowed to the Jews. [Illustration: Fig. 366.--Legend of the Jew calling the Devil from a Vessel of Blood.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in Boaistuau's "Histoires Prodigieuses:" in 4to, Paris, Annet Briere, 1560.] In some countries, especially in England, precautionary measures were taken for regulating the compacts entered into between Christians and Jews. One of the departments of the Exchequer received the register of these compacts, which thus acquired a legal value. However, it was not unfrequent for the kings of England to grant, of their own free will, letters of release to persons owing money to Jews; and these letters, which were often equivalent to the cancelling of the entire debt, were even at times actually purchased from the sovereign. Mention of sums received by the royal treasury for the liberation of debtors, or for enabling them to recover their mortgaged lands without payment, may still be found in the registers of the Exchequer of London; at the same time, Jews, on the other hand, also paid the King large sums, in order that he might allow justice to take its course against powerful debtors who were in arrear, and who could not be induced to pay. We thus see that if the Jews practised usury, the Christians, and especially kings and powerful nobles, defrauded the Jews in every way, and were too often disposed to sell to them the smallest concessions at a great price. Indeed, Christians often went so far as to persecute them, in order to obtain the greatest possible amount from them; and the Jews of the Middle Ages put up with anything provided they could enrich themselves. [Illustration: Fig. 367.--View and Plan of Jerusalem.--Fac-simile of a Woodout in the "Liber Chronicarum Mundi" large folio, Nuremberg, 1493.] It must not be supposed, however, that, great as were their capabilities, the Jews exclusively devoted themselves to financial matters. When they were permitted to trade they were well satisfied to become artisans or agriculturists. In Spain they proved themselves most industrious, and that kingdom suffered a great loss in consequence of their being expelled from it. In whatever country they established themselves, the Jews carried on most of the mechanical and manual industries with cleverness and success; but they could not hope to become landed proprietors in countries where they were in such bad odour, and where the possession of land, far from offering them any security, could not fail to excite the envy of their enemies. If, as is the case, Oriental people are of a serious turn of mind, it is easy to understand that the Jews should have been still more so, since they were always objects of hatred and abhorrence. We find a touching allegory in the Talmud. Each time that a human being is created God orders his angels to bring a soul before his throne, and orders this soul to go and inhabit the body which is about to be born on earth. The soul is grieved, and supplicates the Supreme Being to spare it that painful trial, in which it only sees sorrow and affliction. This allegory may be suitably applied to a people who have only to expect contempt, mistrust, and hatred, everywhere. The Israelites, therefore, clung enthusiastically to the hope of the advent of a Messiah who should bring back to them the happy days of the land of promise, and they looked upon their absence from Palestine as only a passing exile. "But," the Christians said to them, "this Messiah has long since come." "Alas!" they answered, "if He had appeared on earth should we still be miserable?" Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres, preached three sermons to undeceive the Jews, by endeavouring to prove to them that their Messiah was no other than Jesus Christ; but he preached to the winds, for the Jews remained obstinately attached to their illusion that the Messiah was yet to come. In any case, the Jews, who mixed up the mysteries and absurdities of the Talmud with the ancient laws and numerous rules of the religion of their ancestors, found in the practice of their national customs, and in the celebration of their mysterious ceremonies, the sweetest emotions, especially when they could devote themselves to them in the peaceful retirement of the Ghetto; for, in all the countries in which they lived scattered and isolated amongst Christians, they were careful to conceal their worship and to conduct their ceremonial as secretly as possible. The clergy, in striving to convert the Jews, repeatedly had conferences with the rabbis of a controversial character, which often led to quarrels, and aggravated the lot of the Jewish community. If Catholic proselystism succeeded in completely detaching a few individuals or a few families from the Israelitish creed, these ardent converts rekindled the horror of the people against their former co-religionists by revealing some of the precepts of the Talmud. Sometimes the conversion of whole masses of Jews was effected, but this happened much less through conviction on their part than through the fear of exile, plunder, or execution. These pretended conversions, however, did not always protect them from danger. In Spain the Inquisition kept a close watch on converted Jews, and, if they were not true to their new faith, severe punishment was inflicted upon them. In 1506, the inhabitants of Abrantès, a town of Portugal, massacred all the baptized Jews. Manoël, a king of Portugal, forbad the converts from selling their goods and leaving his dominions. The Church excluded them from ecclesiastical dignities, and, when they succeeded in obtaining civil employments, they were received with distrust. In France the Parliaments tried, with a show of justice, to prevent converted Jews from being reproached for their former condition; but Louis XII., during his pressing wants, did not scruple to exact a special tax from them. And, in 1611, we again find that they were unjustly denounced, and under the form of a _Remonstrance to the King and the Parliament of Provence, on account of the great family alliances of the new converts_, an appeal was made for the most cruel reprisals against this unfortunate race, "which deserved only to be banished and their goods confiscated." [Illustration: Fig. 368.--Jewish Ceremony before the Ark.--Fac-simile of a woodcut printed at Troyes.] Gipsies, Tramps, Beggars, and Cours des Miracles. First Appearance of Gipsies in the West.--Gipsies in Paris.--Manners and Customs of these Wandering Tribes.--Tricks of Captain Charles.--Gipsies expelled by Royal Edict.--Language of Gipsies.--The Kingdom of Slang.--The Great Coesre, Chief of the Vagrants; his Vassals and Subjects.--Divisions of the Slang People; its Decay and the Causes thereof.--Cours des Miracles.--The Camp of Rognes.--Cunning Language, or Slang.--Foreign Rogues, Thieves, and Pickpockets. In the year 1417 the inhabitants of the countries situated near the mouth of the Elbe were disturbed by the arrival of strangers, whose manners and appearance were far from pre-possessing. These strange travellers took a course thence towards the Teutonic Hanse, starting from Luneburg: they subsequently proceeded to Hamburg, and then, going from east to west along the Baltic, they visited the free towns of Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald. These new visitors, known in Europe under the names of _Zingari, Cigani, Gipsies, Gitanos, Egyptians_, or _Bohemians_, but who, in their own language, called themselves _Romi_, or _gens mariés_, numbered about three hundred men and women, besides the children, who were very numerous. They divided themselves into seven bands, all of which followed the same track. Very dirty, excessively ugly, and remarkable for their dark complexions, these people had for their leaders a duke and a count, as they were called, who were superbly dressed, and to whom they acknowledged allegiance. Some of them rode on horseback, whilst others went on foot. The women and children travelled on beasts of burden and in waggons (Fig. 369). If we are to believe their own story, their wandering life was caused by their return to Paganism after having been previously converted to the Christian faith, and, as a punishment for their sin, they were to continue their adventurous course for a period of seven years. They showed letters of recommendation from various princes, among others from Sigismund, King of the Romans, and these letters, whether authentic or false, procured for them a welcome wherever they went. They encamped in the fields at night, because the habit they indulged in of stealing everything for which they had a fancy, caused them to fear being disturbed in the towns. It was not long, however, before many of them were arrested and put to death for theft, when the rest speedily decamped. [Illustration: Fig. 369.--Gipsies on the March.--Fifteenth Century Piece of old Tapestry in the Château d'Effiat, contributed by M.A. Jubinal.] In the course of the following year we find them at Meissen, in Saxony, whence they were driven out on account of the robberies and disturbances they committed; and then in Switzerland, where they passed through the countries of the Grisons, the cantons of Appenzell, and Zurich, stopping in Argovie. Chroniclers who mention them at that time speak of their chief, Michel, as Duke of Egypt, and relate that these strangers, calling themselves Egyptians, pretended that they were driven from their country by the Sultan of Turkey, and condemned to wander for seven years in want and misery. These chroniclers add that they were very honest people, who scrupulously followed all the practices of the Christian religion; that they were poorly clad, but that they had gold and silver in abundance; that they lived well, and paid for everything they had; and that, at the end of seven years, they went away to return home, as they said. However, whether because a considerable number remained on the road, or because they had been reinforced by others of the same tribe during the year, a troop of fifty men, accompanied by a number of hideous women and filthy children, made their appearance in the neighbourhood of Augsburg. These vagabonds gave out that they were exiles from Lower Egypt, and pretended to know the art of predicting coming events. It was soon found out that they were much less versed in divination and in the occult sciences than in the arts of plundering, roguery, and cheating. In the following year a similar horde, calling themselves Saracens, appeared at Sisteron, in Provence; and on the 18th. of July, 1422, a chronicler of Bologna mentions the arrival in that town of a troop of foreigners, commanded by a certain André, Duke of Egypt, and composed of at least one hundred persons, including women and children. They encamped inside and outside the gate _di Galiera_, with the exception of the duke, who lodged at the inn _del Re_. During the fifteen days which they spent at Bologna a number of the people of the town went to see them, and especially to see "the wife of the duke," who, it was said, knew how to foretell future events, and to tell what was to happen to people, what their fortunes would be, the number of their children, if they were good or bad, and many other things (Fig. 370). Few men, however, left the house of the so-called Duke of Egypt without having their purses stolen, and but few women escaped without having the skirts of their dresses cut. The Egyptian women walked about the town in groups of six or seven, and whilst some were talking to the townspeople, telling them their fortunes, or bartering in shops, one of their number would lay her hands on anything which was within reach. So many robberies were committed in this way, that the magistrates of the town and the ecclesiastical authorities forbad the inhabitants from visiting the Egyptians' camp, or from having any intercourse with them, under penalty of excommunication and of a fine of fifty livres. Besides this, by a strange application of the laws of retaliation, those who had been robbed by these foreigners were permitted to rob them to the extent of the value of the things stolen. In consequence of this, the Bolognians entered a stable in which several of the Egyptians' horses were kept, and took out one of the finest of them. In order to recover him the Egyptians agreed to restore what they had taken, and the restitution was made. But perceiving that they could no longer do any good for themselves in this province, they struck their tents and started for Rome, to which city they said they were bound to go, not only in order to accomplish a pilgrimage imposed upon them by the Sultan, who had expelled them from their own land, but especially to obtain letters of absolution from the Holy Father. [Illustration: Fig. 370.--Gipsies Fortune-telling.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] In 1422 the band left Italy, and we find them at Basle and in Suabia. Then, besides the imperial passports, of which they had up to that time alone boasted, they pretended to have in their possession bulls which they stated that they had obtained from the Pope. They also modified their original tale, and stated that they were descendants of the Egyptians who refused hospitality to the Holy Virgin and to St. Joseph during their flight into Egypt: they also declared that, in consequence of this crime, God had doomed their race to perpetual misery and exile. Five years later we find them in the neighbourhood of Paris. "The Sunday after the middle of August," says "The Journal of a Bourgeois of Paris," "there came to Paris twelve so-called pilgrims, that is to say, a duke, a count, and ten men, all on horseback; they said that they were very good Christians, and that they came from Lower Egypt; ... and on the 29th of August, the anniversary of the beheading of St. John, the rest of the band made their appearance. These, however, were not allowed to enter Paris, but, by order of the provost, were lodged in the Chapel of St. Denis. They did not number more than one hundred and twenty, including women and children. They stated that, when they left their own country, they numbered from a thousand to twelve hundred, but that the rest had died on the road..... Whilst they were at the chapel never was such a concourse of people collected, even at the blessing of the fair of Landit, as went from Paris, St. Denis, and elsewhere, to see these strangers. Almost all of them had their ears pierced, and in each one or two silver rings, which in their country, they said, was a mark of nobility. The men were very swarthy, with curly hair; the women were very ugly, and extremely dark, with long black hair, like a horse's tail; their only garment being an old rug tied round the shoulder by a strip of cloth or a bit of rope (Fig. 371). Amongst them were several fortune-tellers, who, by looking into people's hands, told them what had happened or what was to happen to them, and by this means often did a good deal to sow discord in families. What was worse, either by magic, by Satanic agency, or by sleight of hand, they managed to empty people's purses whilst talking to them.... So, at least, every one said. At last accounts respecting them reached the ears of the Bishop of Paris. He went to them with a Franciscan friar, called Le Petit Jacobin, who, by the bishop's order, delivered an earnest address to them, and excommunicated all those who had anything to do with them, or who had their fortunes told. He further advised the gipsies to go away, and, on the festival of Notre-Dame, they departed for Pontoise." [Illustration: Fig. 371.--A Gipsy Family.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] Here, again, the gipsies somewhat varied their story. They said that they were originally Christians; but that, in consequence of an invasion by the Saracens, they had been forced to renounce their religion; that, at a subsequent period, powerful monarchs had come to free them from the yoke of the infidels, and had decreed that, as a punishment to them for having renounced the Christian faith, they should not be allowed to return to their country before they had obtained permission from the Pope. They stated that the Holy Father, to whom they had gone to confess their sins, had then ordered them to wander about the world for seven years, without sleeping in beds, at the same time giving direction to every bishop and every priest whom they met to offer them ten livres; a direction which the abbots and bishops were in no hurry to obey. These strange pilgrims stated that they had been only five years on the road when they arrived in Paris. Enough has been said to show that, although the object of their long pilgrimage was ostensibly a pious one, the Egyptians or gipsies were not very slow in giving to the people whom they visited a true estimate of their questionable honesty, and we do not think it would be particularly interesting to follow step by step the track of this odious band, which from this period made its appearance sometimes in one country and sometimes in another, not only in the north but in the south, and especially in the centre of Europe. Suffice it to say that their quarrels with the authorities, or the inhabitants of the countries which had the misfortune to be periodically visited by them, have left numerous traces in history. On the 7th of November, 1453, from sixty to eighty gipsies, coming from Courtisolles, arrived at the entrance of the town of Cheppe, near Châlons-sur-Marne. The strangers, many of whom carried "javelins, darts, and other implements of war," having asked for hospitality, the mayor of the town informed them "that it was not long since some of the same company, or others very like them, had been lodged in the town, and had been guilty of various acts of theft." The gipsies persisted in their demands, the indignation of the people was aroused, and they were soon obliged to resume their journey. During their unwilling retreat, they were pursued by many of the inhabitants of the town, one of whom killed a gipsy named Martin de la Barre: the murderer, however, obtained the King's pardon. In 1532, at Pleinpalais, a suburb of Geneva, some rascals from among a band of gipsies, consisting of upwards of three hundred in number, fell upon several of the officers who were stationed to prevent their entering the town. The citizens hurried up to the scene of disturbance. The gipsies retired to the monastery of the Augustin friars, in which they fortified themselves: the bourgeois besieged them, and would have committed summary justice on them, but the authorities interfered, and some twenty of the vagrants were arrested, but they sued for mercy, and were discharged. [Illustration: Fig. 372.--Gipsy Encampment.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate by Callot.] In 1632, the inhabitants of Viarme, in the Department of Lot-et-Garonne, made an onslaught upon a troop of gipsies who wanted to take up their quarters in that town. The whole of them were killed, with the exception of their chief, who was taken prisoner and brought before the Parliament of Bordeaux, and ordered to be hung. Twenty-one years before this, the mayor and magistrates of Bordeaux gave orders to the soldiers of the watch to arrest a gipsy chief, who, having shut himself up in the tower of Veyrines, at Merignac, ransacked the surrounding country. On the 21st of July, 1622, the same magistrates ordered the gipsies to leave the parish of Eysines within twenty-four hours, under penalty of the lash. It was not often that the gipsies used violence or openly resisted authority; they more frequently had recourse to artifice and cunning in order to attain their end. A certain Captain Charles acquired a great reputation amongst them for the clever trickeries which he continually conceived, and which his troop undertook to carry out. A chronicler of the time says, that by means of certain herbs which he gave to a half-starved horse, he made him into a fat and sleek animal; the horse was then sold at one of the neighbouring fairs or markets, but the purchaser detected the fraud within a week, for the horse soon became thin again, and usually sickened and died. Tallemant des Réaux relates that, on one occasion, Captain Charles and his attendants took up their quarters in a village, the curé of which being rich and parsimonious, was much disliked by his parishioners. The curé never left his house, and the gipsies could not, therefore, get an opportunity to rob him. In this difficulty, they pretended that one of them had committed a crime, and had been condemned to be hung a quarter of a league from the village, where they betook themselves with all their goods. The man, at the foot of the gibbet, asked for a confessor, and they went to fetch the curé. He, at first, refused to go, but his parishioners compelled him. During his absence some gipsies entered his house, took five hundred écus from his strong box, and quickly rejoined the troop. As soon as the rascal saw them returning, he said that he appealed to the king of _la petite Egypte_, upon which the captain exclaimed, "Ah! the traitor! I expected he would appeal." Immediately they packed up, secured the prisoner, and were far enough away from the scene before the curé re-entered his house. Tallemant relates another good trick. Near Roye, in Picardy, a gipsy who had stolen a sheep offered it to a butcher for one hundred sous (about sixty francs of our money), but the butcher declined to give more than four livres for it. The butcher then went away; whereupon the gipsy pulled the sheep from a sack into which he had put it, and substituted for it a child belonging to his tribe. He then ran after the butcher, and said, "Give me five livres, and you shall have the sack into the bargain." The butcher paid him the money, and went away. When he got home he opened the sack, and was much astonished when he saw a little boy jump out of it, who, in an instant, caught up the sack and ran off. "Never was a poor man so thoroughly hoaxed as this butcher," says Tallemant des Réaux. The gipsies had thousands of other tricks in stock as good as the ones we have just related, in proof of which we have but to refer to the testimony of one of their own tribe, who, under the name of Pechon de Ruby, published, towards the close of the sixteenth century, "La Vie Généreuse des Mattois, Guex, Bohémiens, et Cagoux." "When they want to leave a place where they have been stopping, they set out in an opposite direction to that in which they are going, and after travelling about half a league they take their right course. They possess the best and most accurate maps, in which are laid down not only all the towns, villages, and rivers, but also the houses of the gentry and others; and they fix upon places of rendezvous every ten days, at twenty leagues from the point from whence they set out.... The captain hands over to each of the chiefs three or four families to take charge of, and these small bands take different cross-roads towards the place of rendezvous. Those who are well armed and mounted he sends off with a good almanac, on which are marked all the fairs, and they continually change their dress and their horses. When they take up their quarters in any village they steal very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the neighbouring parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner. If they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and make a rapid flight from the place. They coin counterfeit money, and put it into circulation. They play at all sorts of games; they buy all sorts of horses; whether sound or unsound, provided they can manage to pay for them in their own base coin. When they buy food they pay for it in good money the first time, as they are held in such distrust; but, when they are about to leave a neighbourhood, they again buy something, for which they tender false coin, receiving the change in good money. In harvest time all doors are shut against them; nevertheless they contrive, by means of picklocks and other instruments, to effect an entrance into houses, when they steal linen, cloaks, silver, and any other movable article which they can lay their hands on. They give a strict account of everything to their captain, who takes his share of all they get, except of what they earn by fortune-telling. They are very clever at making a good bargain; when they know of a rich merchant being in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communications with him, and swindle him, ... after which they change their clothes, have their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft material lest they should be heard, and gallop away." [Illustration: Fig. 373.--The Gipsy who used to wash his Hands in Molten Lead.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Histoires Merveilleuses" of Pierre Boaistuau: in 4to, 1560.] In the "Histoire Générale des Larrons" we read that the vagabonds called gipsies sometimes played tricks with goblets, sometimes danced on the tight-rope, turned double-somersaults, and performed other feats (Fig. 373), which proves that these adventurers adopted all kinds of methods of gaining a livelihood, highway robbery not excepted. We must not, therefore, be surprised if in almost all countries very severe police measures were taken against this dangerous race, though we must admit that these measures sometimes partook of a barbarous character. After having forbidden them, with a threat of six years at the galleys, to sojourn in Spain, Charles V. ordered them to leave Flanders under penalty of death. In 1545, a gipsy who had infringed the sentence of banishment was condemned by the Court of Utrecht to be flogged till the blood appeared, to have his nostrils slit, his hair removed, his beard shaved off, and to be banished for life. "We can form some idea," says the German historian Grellman, "of the miserable condition of the gipsies from the following facts: many of them, and especially the women, have been burned by their own request, in order to end their miserable state of existence; and we can give the case of a gipsy who, having been arrested, flogged, and conducted to the frontier, with the threat that if he reappeared in the country he would be hanged, resolutely returned after three successive and similar threats, at three different places, and implored that the capital sentence might be carried out, in order that he might be released from a life of such misery. These unfortunate people," continues the historian, "were not even looked upon as human beings, for, during a hunting party, consisting of members of a small German court, the huntsmen had no scruple whatever in killing a gipsy woman who was suckling her child, just as they would have done any wild beast which came in their way." M. Francisque Michel says, "Amongst the questions which arise from a consideration of the existence of this remarkable people, is one which, although neglected, is nevertheless of considerable interest, namely, how, with a strange language, unlike any used in Europe, the gipsies could make themselves understood by the people amongst whom they made their appearance for the first time: newly arrived in the west, they could have none of those interpreters who are only to be found amongst a long-established people, and who have political and commercial intercourse with other nations. Where, then, did the gipsies obtain interpreters? The answer seems to us to be clear. Receiving into their ranks all those whom crime, the fear of punishment, an uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming life, continually threw in their path, they made use of them either to find their way into countries of which they were ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise have been impracticable. Themselves adepts in all sorts of bad practices, they were not slow to form an alliance with profligate characters who sometimes worked in concert with them, and sometimes alone, and who always framed the model for their own organization from that of the gipsies." [Illustration: Fig. 374.--Orphans, _Callots_, and the Family of the Grand Coesre.--From painted Hangings and Tapestry from the Town of Rheims, executed during the Fifteenth Century.] This alliance--governed by statutes, the honour of compiling which has been given to a certain Ragot, who styled himself captain--was composed of _matois_, or sharpers; of _mercelots_, or hawkers, who were very little better than the former; of _gueux_, or dishonest beggars, and of a host of other swindlers, constituting the order or hierarchy of the _Argot_, or Slang people. Their chief was called the _Grand Coesre_, "a vagabond broken to all the tricks of his trade," says M. Francisque Michel, and who frequently ended his days on the rack or the gibbet. History has furnished us with the story of a "miserable cripple" who used to sit in a wooden bowl, and who, after having been Grand Coesre for three years, was broken alive on the wheel at Bordeaux for his crimes. He was called _Roi de Tunes_ (Tunis), and was drawn about by two large dogs. One of his successors, the Grand Coesre surnamed Anacréon, who suffered from the same infirmity, namely, that of a cripple, rode about Paris on a donkey begging. He generally held his court on the Port-au-Foin, where he sat on his throne dressed in a mantle made of a thousand pieces. The Grand Coesre had a lieutenant in each province called _cagou_, whose business it was to initiate apprentices in the secrets of the craft, and who looked after, in different localities, those whom the chief had entrusted to his care. He gave an account of the property he received in thus exercising his stewardship, and of the money as well as of the clothing which he took from the _Argotiers_ who refused to recognise his authority. As a remuneration for their duties, the cagoux were exempt from all tribute to their chief; they received their share of the property taken from persons whom they had ordered to be robbed, and they were free to beg in any way they pleased. After the cagoux came the _archisuppôts_, who, being recruited from the lowest dregs of the clergy and others who had been in a better position, were, so to speak, the teachers of the law. To them was intrusted the duty of instructing the less experienced rogues, and of determining the language of Slang; and, as a reward for their good and loyal services, they had the right of begging without paying any fees to their chiefs. [Illustration: Fig. 375.--The Blind and the Poor Sick of St. John.--From painted Hangings and Tapestry in the Town of Rheims, executed during the Fifteenth Century.] The Grand Coesre levied a tax of twenty-four sous per annum upon the young rogues, who went about the streets pretending to shed tears (Fig. 374), as "helpless orphans," in order to excite public sympathy. The _marcandiers_ had to pay an écu; they were tramps clothed in a tolerably good doublet, who passed themselves off as merchants ruined by war, by fire, or by having been robbed on the highway. The _malingreux_ had to pay forty sous; they were covered with sores, most of which were self-inflicted, or they pretended to have swellings of some kind, and stated that they were about to undertake a pilgrimage to St. Méen, in Brittany, in order to be cured. The _piètres_, or lame rogues, paid half an écu, and walked with crutches. The _sabouleux_, who were commonly called the _poor sick of St. John_, were in the habit of frequenting fairs and markets, or the vicinity of churches; there, smeared with blood and appearing as if foaming at the mouth by means of a piece of soap they had placed in it, they struggled on the ground as if in a fit, and in this way realised a considerable amount of alms. These consequently paid the largest fees to the Coesre (Fig. 375). [Illustration: Fig. 376.--The _Ruffes_ and the _Millards_.--From painted Hangings and Tapestry of Rheims, executed about the Fifteenth Century.] Besides these, there were the _callots_, who were either affected with a scurfy disease or pretended to be so, and who were contributors to the civil list of their chief to the amount of sevens sous; as also the _coquillards_, or pretended pilgrims of St. James or St. Michael; and the _hubins_, who, according to the forged certificate which they carried with them, were going to, or returning from, St. Hubert, after having been bitten by a mad dog. The _polissons_ paid two écus to the Coesre, but they earned a considerable amount, especially in winter; for benevolent people, touched with their destitution and half-nakedness, gave them sometimes a doublet, sometimes a shirt, or some other article of clothing, which of course they immediately sold. The _francs mitoux_, who were never taxed above five sous, were sickly members of the fraternity, or at all events pretended to be such; they tied their arms above the elbow so as to stop the pulse, and fell down apparently fainting on the public footpaths. We must also mention the _ruffés_ and the _millards_, who went into the country in groups begging (Fig. 376). The _capons_ were cut-purses, who hardly ever left the towns, and who laid hands on everything within their reach. The _courtauds de boutanche_ pretended to be workmen, and were to be met with everywhere with the tools of their craft on their back, though they never used them. The _convertis_ pretended to have been impressed by the exhortations of some excellent preacher, and made a public profession of faith; they afterwards stationed themselves at church doors, as recently converted Catholics, and in this way received liberal contributions. Lastly, we must mention the _drilles_, the _narquois_, or the people of the _petite flambe_, who for the most part were old pensioners, and who begged in the streets from house to house, with their swords at their sides (Fig. 377). These, who at times lived a racketing and luxurious life, at last rebelled against the Grand Coesre, and would no longer be reckoned among his subjects--a step which gave a considerable shock to the Argotic monarchy. [Illustration: Fig. 377.--The _Drille_ or _Narquois_.--From painted Hangings from the Town of Rheims (Fifteenth Century).] [Illustration: Fig. 378.--Perspective View of Paris in 1607.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate by Léonard Gaultier. (Collection of M. Guénebault, Paris.)] There was another cause which greatly contributed to diminish the power as well as the prestige of this eccentric sovereign, and this was, that the cut-purses, the night-prowlers and wood-thieves, not finding sufficient means of livelihood in their own department, and seeing that the Argotiers, on the contrary, were always in a more luxurious position, tried to amalgamate robbery with mendicity, which raised an outcry amongst these sections of their community. The archisuppôts and the cagoux at first declined such an alliance, but eventually they were obliged to admit all, with the exception of the wood-thieves, who were altogether excluded. In the seventeenth century, therefore, in order to become a thorough Argotier, it was necessary not only to solicit alms like any mere beggar, but also to possess the dexterity of the cut-purse and the thief. These arts were to be learned in the places which served as the habitual rendezvous of the very dregs of society, and which were generally known as the _Cours des Miracles_. These houses, or rather resorts, had been so called, if we are to believe a writer of the early part of the seventeenth century, "Because rogues ... and others, who have all day been cripples, maimed, dropsical, and beset with every sort of bodily ailment, come home at night, carrying under their arms a sirloin of beef, a joint of veal, or a leg of mutton, not forgetting to hang a bottle of wine to their belt, and, on entering the court, they throw aside their crutches, resume their healthy and lusty appearance, and, in imitation of the ancient Bacchanalian revelries, dance all kinds of dances with their trophies in their hands, whilst the host is preparing their suppers. Can there be a greater _miracle_ than is to be seen in this court, where the maimed walk upright?" [Illustration: Fig. 379.--_Cour des Miracles_ of Paris. Talebot the Hunchback, a celebrated Scamp during the Seventeenth Century.--From an old Engraving in the Collection of Engravings in the National Library of Paris.] In Paris there were several _Cours des Miracles_, but the most celebrated was that which, from the time of Sauval, the singular historian of the "Antiquities of Paris," to the middle of the seventeenth century, preserved this generic name _par excellence_, and which exists to this day (Fig. 379). He says, "It is a place of considerable size, and is in an unhealthy, muddy, and irregular blind alley. Formerly it was situated on the outskirts of Paris, now it is in one of the worst built, dirtiest, and most out-of-the-way quarters of the town, between the Rue Montorgueil, the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Sauveur. To get there one must wander through narrow, close, and by-streets; and in order to enter it, one must descend a somewhat winding and rugged declivity. In this place I found a mud house, half buried, very shaky from old age and rottenness, and only eight mètres square; but in which, nevertheless, some fifty families are living, who have the charge of a large number of children, many of whom are stolen or illegitimate.... I was assured that upwards of five hundred large families occupy that and other houses adjoining.... Large as this court is, it was formerly even bigger.... Here, without any care for the future, every one enjoys the present; and eats in the evening what he has earned during the day with so much trouble, and often with so many blows; for it is one of the fundamental rules of the Cour des Miracles never to lay by anything for the morrow. Every one who lives there indulges in the utmost licentiousness; both religion and law are utterly ignored.... It is true that outwardly they appear to acknowledge a God; for they have set up in a niche an image of God the Father, which they have stolen from some church, and before which they come daily to offer up certain prayers; but this is only because they superstitiously imagine that by this means they are released from the necessity of performing the duties of Christians to their pastor and their parish, and are even absolved from the sin of entering a church for the purpose of robbery and purse-cutting." Paris, the capital of the kingdom of rogues, was not the only town which possessed a Cour des Miracles, for we find here and there, especially at Lyons and Bordeaux, some traces of these privileged resorts of rogues and thieves, which then flourished under the sceptre of the Grand Coesre. Sauval states, on the testimony of people worthy of credit, that at Sainte-Anne d'Auray, the most holy place of pilgrimage in Brittany, under the superintendence of the order of reformed Carmelite friars, there was a large field called the _Rogue's Field_. This was covered with mud huts; and here the Grand Coesre resorted annually on the principal solemn festivals, with his officers and subjects, in order "to hold his council of state," that is to say, in order to settle and arrange respecting robbery. At these _state_ meetings, which were not always held at Sainte-Anne d'Auray, all the subjects of the Grand Coesre were present, and paid homage to their lord and master. Some came and paid him the tribute which was required of them by the statutes of the craft; others rendered him an account of what they had done, and what they had earned during the year. When they had executed their work badly, he ordered them to be punished, either corporally or pecuniarily, according to the gravity of their offences. When he had not himself properly governed his people, he was dethroned, and a successor was appointed by acclamation. [Illustration: Fig. 380.--Beggar playing the Fiddle, and his Wife accompanying him with the Bones.--From an old Engraving of the Seventeenth Century.] At these assemblies, as well as in the Cours des Miracles, French was not spoken, but a strange and artificial language was used called _jargon_, _langue matoise, narquois_, &c. This language, which is still in use under the name of _argot_, or slang, had for the most part been borrowed from the jargon or slang of the lower orders. To a considerable extent, according to the learned philologist of this mysterious language, M. Francisque Michel, it was composed of French words lengthened or abbreviated; of proverbial expressions; of words expressing the symbols of things instead of the things themselves; of terms either intentionally or unintentionally altered from their true meaning; and of words which resembled other words in sound, but which had not the same signification. Thus, for mouth, they said _pantière_, from _pain_ (bread), which they put into it; the arms were _lyans_ (binders); an ox was a _cornant_ (horned); a purse, a _fouille_, or _fouillouse_; a cock, a _horloge_, or timepiece; the legs, _des quilles_ (nine-pins); a sou, a _rond_, or round thing; the eyes, _des luisants_ (sparklers), &c. In jargon several words were also taken from the ancient language of the gipsies, which testifies to the part which these vagabonds played in the formation of the Argotic community. For example, a shirt was called _lime_; a chambermaid, _limogère;_ sheets, _limans_--words all derived from the gipsy word _lima_, a shirt: they called an écu, a _rusquin_ or _rougesme_, from _rujia_, the common word for money; a rich man, _rupin_; a house, _turne_; a knife, _chourin_, from _rup, turna_, and _chori_, which, in the gipsy tongue, mean respectively silver, castle, and knife. From what we have related about rogues and the Cours des Miracles, one might perhaps be tempted to suppose that France was specially privileged; but it was not so, for Italy was far worse in this respect. The rogues were called by the Italians _bianti_, or _ceretani_, and were subdivided into more than forty classes, the various characteristics of which have been described by a certain Rafael Frianoro. It is not necessary to state that the analogue of more than one of these classes is to be found in the short description we have given of the Argotic kingdom in France. We will therefore only mention those which were more especially Italian. It must not be forgotten that in the southern countries, where religions superstition was more marked than elsewhere, the numerous family of rogues had no difficulty in practising every description of imposture, inasmuch as they trusted to the various manifestations of religions feeling to effect their purposes. Thus the _affrati_, in order to obtain more alms and offerings, went about in the garb of monks and priests, even saying mass, and pretending that it was the first time they had exercised their sacred office. So the _morghigeri_ walked behind a donkey, carrying a bell and a lamp, with their string of beads in their hands, and asking how they were to pay for the bell, which they were always "just going to buy." The _felsi_ pretended that they were divinely inspired and endowed with the gift of second sight, and announced that there were hidden treasures in certain houses under the guardianship of evil spirits. They asserted that these treasures could not be discovered without danger, except by means of fastings and offerings, which they and their brethren could alone make, in consideration of which they entered into a bargain, and received a certain sum of money from the owners. The _accatosi_ deserve mention on account of the cleverness with which they contrived to assume the appearance of captives recently escaped from slavery. Shaking the chains with which they said they had been bound, jabbering unintelligible words, telling heart-rending tales of their sufferings and privations, and showing the marks of blows which they had received, they went on their knees, begging for money that they might buy off their brethren or their friends, whom they said they had left in the hands of the Saracens or the Turks, We must mention, also, the _allacrimanti_, or weepers, who owed their name to the facility which they possessed of shedding tears at will; and the _testatori_, who, pretending to be seriously ill and about to die, extorted money from all those to whom they promised to leave their fortunes, though, of course, they had not a son to leave behind them. We must not forget the _protobianti_ (master rogues), who made no scruple of exciting compassion from their own comrades (Fig. 381), nor the _vergognosi_, who, notwithstanding their poverty, wished to be thought rich, and considered that assistance was due to them from the mere fact of their being noble. We must here conclude, for it would occupy too much time to go through the list of these Italian vagabonds. As for the German (Figs. 382 and 383), Spanish, and English rogues, we may simply remark that no type exists among them which is not to be met with amongst the Argotiers of France or the Bianti of Italy. In giving a description, therefore, of the mendicity practised in these two countries during the Middle Ages, we are sure to be representing what it was in other parts of Europe. [Illustration: Fig. 381.--Italian Beggar.--From an Engraving by Callot.] [Illustration: Figs. 382 and 383.--German Beggars.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.] The history of regular robbers and highwaymen during this long period is more difficult to describe; it contains only disconnected anecdotes of a more or less interesting character. It is probable, moreover, that robbers did not always commit their depredations singly, and that they early understood the advantages of associating together. The _Tafurs_, or _Halegrins_, whom we notice as followers of Godefroy de Bouillon at the time of the Crusades, towards the end of the eleventh century, were terribly bad characters, and are actually accused by contemporary writers of violating tombs, and of living on human flesh. On this account they were looked upon with the utmost horror by the infidels, who dreaded more their savage ferocity than the valour of the Crusaders. The latter even, who had these hordes of Tafurs under their command, were not without considerable mistrust of them, and when, during their march through Hungary, under the protection of the cross, these miscreants committed depredations, Godefroy de Bouillion was obliged to ask pardon for them from the king of that country. An ancient poet has handed down to us a story in verse setting forth the exploits of Eustace the monk, who, after having thrown aside his frock, embraced the life of a robber, and only abandoned it to become Admiral of France under Philip Augustus. He was killed before Sandwich, in 1217. We have satisfactory proof that as early as the thirteenth century sharpers were very expert masters of their trade, for the ingenious and amusing tricks of which they were guilty are quite equal to the most skilled of those now recorded in our police reports. In the two following centuries the science of the _pince_ and of the _croc_ (pincers and hook), as it was then called, alone made progress, and Pathelin (a character in comedy, and an incomparable type of craft and dishonesty) never lacked disciples any more than Villon did imitators. We know that this charming poet, who was at the same time a most expert thief, narrowly escaped hanging on two occasions. His contemporaries attributed to him a poem of twelve hundred verses, entitled "Les Repues Franches," in which are described the methods in use among his companions for procuring wine, bread, meat, and fish, without having to pay for them. They form a series of interesting stories, the moral of which is to be gathered from the following lines:-- "C'est bien, disné, quand on eschappe Sans desbourcer pas ung denier, Et dire adieu an tavernier, En torchant son nez à la nappe." The meaning of this doggrel, which is somewhat broad, may be rendered--"He dines well who escapes without paying a penny, and who bids farewell to the innkeeper by wiping his nose on the tablecloth." Side by side with this poem of Yillon we ought to cite one of a later period--"La Légende de Maître Faifeu," versified by Charles Boudigné. This Faifeu was a kind of Villon of Anjou, who excelled in all kinds of rascality, and who might possibly have taught it even to the gipsies themselves. The character of Panurge, in the "Pantagruel," is no other than the type of Faifeu, immortalised by the genius of Rabelais. We must also mention one of the pamphlets of Guillaume Bouchet, written towards the end of the sixteenth century, which gives a very amusing account of thieves of every description, and also "L'Histoire Générale des Larrons," in which are related numerous wonderful tales of murders, robberies, and other atrocities, which made our admiring ancestors well acquainted with the heroes of the Grève and of Montfaucon. It must not be supposed that in those days the life of a robber who pursued his occupation with any degree of industry and skill was unattended with danger, for the most harmless cut-purses were hung without mercy whenever they were caught; the fear, however, of this fate did not prevent the _Enfants de la Matte_ from performing wonders. Brantôme relates that King Charles IX. had the curiosity to wish to "know how the cut-purses performed their arts with so much skill and dexterity," and begged Captain La Chambre to introduce to him, on the occasion of a banquet and a ball, the cleverest cut-purses, giving them full liberty to exhibit their skill. The captain went to the Cours des Miracles and fetched ten of the most expert of these thieves, whom he presented to the King. Charles, "after the dinner and the ball had taken place, wished to see all the plunder, and found that they had absolutely earned three thousand écus, either in money from purses, or in precious stones, pearls, or other jewels; some of the guests even lost their cloaks, at which the King thought he should die of laughter." The King allowed them to keep what they had thus earned at the expense of his guests; but he forbad them "to continue this sort of life," under penalty of being hung, and he had them enrolled in the army, in order to recompense them for their clever feats. We may safely assert that they made but indifferent soldiers. [Illustration: Fig. 384.--The Exhibitor of strange Animals (Twelfth Century Manuscript, Royal Library of Brussels).] Ceremonials. Origin of Modern Ceremonial.--Uncertainty of French Ceremonial up to the End of the Sixteenth Century.--Consecration of the Kings of France.--Coronation of the Emperors of Germany.--Consecration of the Doges of Venice.--Marriage of the Doge with the Sea.--State Entries of Sovereigns.--An Account of the Entry of Isabel of Bavaria into Paris.--Seats of Justice.--Visits of Ceremony between Persons of rank.--Mourning.--Social Courtesies.--Popular Demonstrations and National Commemorations.--New Year's Day.--Local Festivals.--_Vins d'Honneur._--Processions of Trades. Although society during the Middle Ages was, as a whole, closely cemented together, being animated by the same sentiments and imbued with the same spirit, it was divided, as we have already stated, into three great classes, namely, the clergy, the nobility, and the _liers-état._ These classes, each of which formed a distinct body within the State, carried on an existence peculiar to itself, and presented in its collective capacity a separate individuality. Hence there was a distinct ceremonial for each class. We will not attempt to give in detail the innumerable laws of these three kinds of ceremonial; our attention will be directed solely to their most characteristic customs, and to their most remarkable and interesting aspects taken as a whole. We must altogether lay aside matters relating specially to ceremonies of a purely religions character, as they are connected more or less with the traditions and customs of the Church, and belong to quite a distinct order of things. "When the Germans, and especially the Franks," says the learned paleographer Vallet de Viriville, "had succeeded in establishing their own rule in place of that of the Romans, these almost savage nations, and the barbarian chiefs who were at their head under the title of kings, necessarily borrowed more or less the refined practices relating to ceremonial possessed by the people whom they had conquered. The elevation of the elected chief or king on the shield and the solemn taking of arms in the midst of the tribe seem to be the only traces of public ceremonies which we can discover among the Grermans. The marvellous display and the imposing splendour of the political hierarchy of the Roman Empire, especially in its outward arrangements, must have astonished the minds of these uncultivated people. Thus we find the Frank kings becoming immediately after a victory the simple and clumsy imitators of the civilisation which they had broken up." Clovis on returning to Tours in 507, after having defeated Alaric, received the titles of _Patrician_ and _Consul_ from the Emperor Anastasius, and bedecked himself with the purple, the chlamys, and the diadem. The same principle of imitation was afterwards exhibited in the internal and external court ceremonial, in proportion as it became developed in the royal person. Charlemagne, who aimed at everything which could adorn and add strength to a new monarchy, established a regular method for the general and special administration of his empire, as also for the internal arrangement and discipline of his palace. We have already referred to this twofold organization (_vide_ chapters on Private Life and on Food), but we may here remark that, notwithstanding these ancient tendencies to the creation of a fixed ceremonial, the trifling rules which made etiquette a science and a law, were introduced by degrees, and have only very recently been established amongst us. In 1385, when King Charles VI. married the notorious Isabel of Bavaria, then scarcely fourteen years of age, he desired to arrange for her a magnificent entry into Paris, the pomp and brilliancy of which should be consistent with the rank and illustrious descent of his young bride. He therefore begged the old Queen Blanche, widow of Philippe de Valois, to preside over the ceremony, and to have it conducted according to the custom of olden times. She was consequently obliged, in the absence of any fixed rules on the subject, to consult the official records,--that is to say, the "Chronique du Monastère de Saint-Denis." The first embodiment of rules relating to these matters in use among the nobility, which had appeared in France under the title of "Honneurs de la Cour," only goes back to the end of the fifteenth century. It appears, however, that even then this was not generally admitted among the nobility as the basis of ceremonial, for in 1548 we find that nothing had been definitely settled. This is evident from the fact that when King Henri III. desired to know the rank and order of precedence of the princes of the royal blood, both dukes and counts--as also that of the other princes, the barons, the nobles of the kingdom, the constables, the marshals of France and the admirals, and what position they had held on great public occasions during the reigns of his predecessors--he commissioned Jean du Tillet, the civil registrar of the Parliament of Paris, to search among the royal archives for the various authentic documents which might throw light on this question, and serve as a precedent for the future. In fact, it was Henri III. who, in 1585, created the office of Grand Master of the Ceremonies of France, entrusting it to Guillaume Pot, a noble of Rhodes, which office for many generations remained hereditary in his family. [Illustration: Fig. 385.--Herald (Fourteenth Century).--From a Miniature in the "Chroniques de Saint-Denis" (Imperial Library of Paris).] Nevertheless the question of ceremonial, and especially that of precedence, had already more than once occupied the attention of sovereigns, not only within their own states, but also in relation to diplomatic matters. The meetings of councils, at which the ambassadors of all the Christian Powers, with the delegates of the Catholic Church, were assembled, did not fail to bring this subject up for decision. Pope Julius II. in 1504 instructed Pierre de Crassis, his Master of the Ceremonies, to publish a decree, determining the rank to be taken by the various sovereigns of Europe or by their representatives; but we should add that this Papal decree never received the sanction of the parties interested, and that the question of precedence, even at the most unimportant public ceremonies, was during the whole of the Middle Ages a perpetual source of litigation in courts of law, and of quarrels which too often ended in bloodshed. It is right that we should place at the head of political ceremonies those having reference to the coronation of sovereigns, which were not only political, but owed their supreme importance and dignity to the necessary intervention of ecclesiastical authority. We will therefore first speak of the consecration and coronation of the kings of France. Pépin le Bref, son of Charles Martel and founder of the second dynasty, was the first of the French kings who was consecrated by the religions rite of anointing. But its mode of administration for a long period underwent numerous changes, before becoming established by a definite law. Thus Pépin, after having been first consecrated in 752 in the Cathedral of Boissons, by the Archbishop of Mayence, was again consecrated with his two sons Charlemagne and Carloman, in 753, in the Abbey of St. Denis, by Pope Stephen III. Charlemagne was twice anointed by the Sovereign Pontiff, first as King of Lombardy, and then as Emperor. Louis le Débonnaire, his immediate successor, was consecrated at Rheims by Pope Stephen IV. in 816. In 877 Louis le Bègue received unction and the sceptre, at Compiègne, at the hands of the Archbishop of Rheims. Charles le Simple in 893, and Robert I. in 922, were consecrated and crowned at Rheims; but the coronation of Raoul, in 923, was celebrated in the Abbey of St. Médard de Soissons, and that of Louis d'Outremer, in 936, at Laon. From the accession of King Lothaire to that of Louis VI. (called Le Gros), the consecration of the kings of France sometimes took place in the metropolitan church of Rheims, and sometimes in other churches, but more frequently in the former. Louis VI. having been consecrated in the Cathedral of Orleans, the clergy of Rheims appealed against this supposed infraction of custom and their own special privileges. A long discussion took place, in which were brought forward the titles which the Church of Rheims possessed subsequently to the reign of Clovis to the exclusive honour of having kings consecrated in it; and King Louis le Jeune, son of Louis le Gros, who was himself consecrated at Rheims, promulgated a special decree on this question, in anticipation of the consecration of his son, Philippe Auguste. This decree finally settled the rights of this ancient church, and at the same time defined the order which was to be observed in future at the ceremony of consecration. From that date, down to the end of the reign of the Bourbons of the elder line, kings were invariably consecrated, according to legal rite, in the metropolitan church of Rheims, with the exception of Henry IV., who was crowned at Chartres by the bishop of that town, on account of the civil wars which then divided his kingdom, and caused the gates of Rheims to be closed against him. [Illustration: Fig. 386.--Coronation of Charlemagne.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chroniques de Saint-Denis," Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] The consecration of the kings of France always took place on a Sunday. On the previous day, at the conclusion of evening prayers, the custody of the cathedral devolved upon certain royal officers, assisted by the ordinary officials. During the evening the monarch came to the church for devotion, and "according to his religions feelings, to pass part of the night in prayer," an act which was called _la veillée des armes_. A large platform, surmounted by a throne, was erected between the chancel and the great nave. Upon this assembled, besides the King and his officers of State, twelve ecclesiastical peers, together with those prelates whom the King might be pleased to invite, and six lay peers, with other officers or nobles. At daybreak, the King sent a deputation of barons to the Abbey of St. Remi for the holy vial, which was a small glass vessel called _ampoule_, from the Latin word _ampulla_, containing the holy oil to be used at the royal anointing. According to tradition, this vial was brought from heaven by a dove at the time of the consecration of Clovis. Four of the nobles remained as hostages at the abbey during the time that the Abbot of St. Remi, followed by his monks and escorted by the barons, went in procession to the cathedral to place the sacred vessel upon the altar. The abbot of St. Denis in France had in a similar manner to bring from Rheims with great pomp, and deposit by the side of the holy vial, the royal insignia, which were kept in the treasury of his monastery, and had been there since the reign of Charlemagne. They consisted of the crown, the sword sheathed, the golden spurs, the gilt sceptre, the rod adorned with an ivory handle in the form of a hand, the sandals of blue silk, embroidered with fleur de lis, the chasuble or _dalmatique_, and the _surcot_, or royal mantle, in the shape of a cape without a hood. The King, immediately on rising from his bed, entered the cathedral, and forthwith took oath to maintain the Catholio faith and the privileges of the Church, and to dispense good and impartial justice to his subjects. He then walked to the foot of the altar, and divested himself of part of his dress, having his head bare, and wearing a tunic with openings on the chest, on the shoulders, at the elbows, and in the middle of the back; these openings were closed by means of silver aigulets. The Archbishop of Rheims then drew the sword from the scabbard and handed it to the King, who passed it to the principal officer in attendance. The prelate then proceeded with the religious part of the ceremony of consecration, and taking a drop of the miraculous oil out of the holy vial by means of a gold needle, he mixed it with the holy oil from his own church. This being done, and sitting in the posture of consecration, he anointed the King, who was kneeling before him, in five different parts of the body, namely, on the forehead, on the breast, on the back, on the shoulders, and on the joints of the arms. After this the King rose up, and with the assistance of his officers, put on his royal robes. The Archbishop handed to him successively the ring, the sceptre, and the rod of justice, and lastly placed the crown on his head. At this moment the twelve peers formed themselves into a group, the lay peers being in the first rank, immediately around the sovereign, and raising their hands to the crown, they held it for a moment, and then they conducted the King to the throne. The consecrating prelate, putting down his mitre, then knelt at the feet of the monarch and took the oath of allegiance, his example being followed by the other peers and their vassals who were in attendance. At the same time, the cry of "_Vive le Roi_!" uttered by the archbishop, was repeated three times outside the cathedral by the heralds-at-arms, who shouted it to the assembled multitude. The latter replied, "_Noel! Noel! Noel!_" and scrambled for the small pieces of money thrown to them by the officers, who at the same time cried out, "_Largesse, largesse aux manants_!" Every part of this ceremony was accompanied by benedictions and prayers, the form of which was read out of the consecration service as ordered by the bishop, and the proceedings terminated by the return of the civil and religious procession which had composed the _cortège_. When the sovereign was married, his wife participated with him in the honours of the consecration, the symbolical investiture, and the coronation; but she only partook of the homage rendered to the King to a limited degree, which was meant to imply that the Queen had a less extended authority and a less exalted rank. [Illustration: Fig. 387.--Dalmatica and Sandals of Charlemagne, Insignia of the Kings of France at their Coronation, preserved in the Treasury of the Abbey of St. Denis.] The ceremonies which accompanied the accessions of the emperors of Germany (Fig. 388) are equally interesting, and were settled by a decree which the Emperor Charles IX. promulgated in 1356, at the Diet of Nuremberg. According to the terms of this decree--which is still preserved among the archives of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and which is known as the _bulle d'or_, or golden bull, from the fact of its bearing a seal of pure gold--on the death of an emperor, the Archbishop of Mayence summoned, for an appointed day, the Prince Electors of the Empire, who, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, remained seven in number, "in honour," says the bull, "of the seven candlesticks mentioned in the Apocalypse." These Electors--who occupied the same position near the Emperor that the twelve peers did in relation to the King of France--were the Archbishops of Mayence, of Trèves, and of Cologne, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. On the appointed day, the mass of the Holy Spirit was duly solemnized in the Church of St. Bartholomew of Frankfort, a town in which not only the election of the Emperor, but also his coronation, almost always took place, though one might have supposed that Aix-la-Chapelle would have been selected for such ceremonies. The Electors attended, and after the service was concluded, they retired to the sacristy of the church, accompanied by their officers and secretaries, They had thirty days for deliberation, but beyond that period they were not allowed "to eat bread or drink water" until they had agreed, at least by a majority, to give _a temporal chief to the Christian people, that is to say, a King of the Romans, who should in due time be promoted to be Emperor_, The newly-elected prince was, in fact, at first simply _King of the Romans_, and this title was often borne by persons who were merely nominated for the office by the voice of the Electors, or by political combinations. In order to be promoted to the full measure of power and authority, the King of the Romans had to receive both religions consecration and the crown. The ceremonies adopted at this solemnity were very analogous to those used at the consecrations of the kings of France, as well as to those of installation of all Christian princes. The service was celebrated by the Archbishop of Cologne, who placed the crown on the head of the sovereign-elect, whom he consecrated Emperor. The symbols of his authority were handed to him by the Electors, and then he was proclaimed, "_Cæsar, most sacred, ever august Majesty, Emperor, of the Holy Roman Empire of the nation of Germany_." [Illustration: Fig. 388.--Costume of Emperors at their Coronation since the Time of Charlemagne.--From an Engraving in a Work entitled "Insignia Sacre Majistatis Cæsarum Principum." Frankfort, 1579, in folio.] The imperial _cortége_ then came out from the Church of St. Bartholomew, and went through the town, halting at the town-hall (called the _Roemer_, in commemoration of the noble name of Rome), where a splendid banquet, prepared in the _Kaysersaal_ (hall of the Caesars), awaited the principal performers in this august ceremony. At the moment that the Emperor set foot on the threshold of the Roemer, the Elector of Saxony, Chief Marshal of the Empire, on horseback, galloped at full speed towards a heap of oats which was piled up in the middle of the square. Holding in one hand a silver measure, and in the other a scraper of the same metal, each of which weighed six marks, he filled the measure with oats, levelled it with the scraper, and handed it over to the hereditary marshal. The rest of the heap was noisily scrambled for by the people who had been witnesses of this allegorical performance. Then the Count Palatine, as chief seneschal, proceeded to perform his part in the ceremony, which consisted of placing before the Emperor, who was sitting at table, four silver dishes, each weighing three marks. The King of Bohemia, as chief butler, handed to the monarch wine and water in a silver cup weighing twelve marks; and then the Margrave of Magdeburg presented to him a silver basin of the same weight for washing his hands. The other three Electors, or arch-chancellors, provided at their own expense the silver baton, weighing twelve marks, suspended to which one of them carried the seals of the empire. Lastly, the Emperor, and with him the Empress if he was married, the princes, and the Electors, sat down to a banquet at separate tables, and were waited upon by their respective officers. On another table or stage were placed the Imperial insignia. The ceremony was concluded outside by public rejoicings: fountains were set to play; wine, beer, and other beverages were distributed; gigantic bonfires were made, at which whole oxen were roasted; refreshment tables were set out in the open air, at which any one might sit down and partake, and, in a word, every bounty as well as every amusement was provided. In this way for centuries public fêtes were celebrated on these occasions. [Illustration: Fig. 389.--Imperial Procession.--From an Engraving of the "Solemn Entry of Charles V. and Clement VII. into Bologna," by L. de Cranach, from a Fresco by Brusasorci, of Verona.] The doges of Venice, as well as the emperors of Germany, and some other heads of states, differed from other Christian sovereigns in this respect, that, instead of holding their high office by hereditary or divine right, they were installed therein by election. At Venice, a conclave, consisting of forty electors, appointed by a much more numerous body of men of high position, elected the Doge, or president of _the most serene Republic_. From the day when Laurent Tiepolo, immediately after his election in 1268, was spontaneously carried in triumph by the Venetian sailors, it became the custom for a similar ovation to take place in honour of any newly-elected doge. In order to do this, the workmen of the harbour had the new Doge seated in a splendid palanquin, and carried him on their shoulders in great pomp round the Piazza San Marco. But another still more characteristic ceremony distinguished this magisterial election. On Ascension Day, the Doge, entering a magnificent galley, called the _Bucentaur_, which was elegantly equipped, and resplendent with gold and precious stuffs, crossed the Grand Canal, went outside the town, and proceeded in the midst of a nautical _cortége_, escorted by bands of music, to the distance of about a league from the town on the Adriatic Gulf. Then the Patriarch of Venice gave his blessing to the sea, and the Doge, taking the helm, threw a gold ring into the water, saying, "O sea! I espouse thee in the name, and in token, of our true and perpetual sovereignty." Immediately the waters were strewed with flowers, and the shouts of joy, and the clapping of hands of the crowd, were intermingled with the strains of instruments of music of all sorts, whilst the glorious sky of Venice smiled on the poetic scene. The greater part of the principal ceremonies of the Middle Ages acquired, from various accessory and local circumstances, a character of grandeur well fitted to impress the minds of the populace. On these memorable occasions the exhibition of some historical memorial, of certain traditional symbols, of certain relics, &c., brought to the recollection the most celebrated events in national history--events already possessing the prestige of antiquity as well as the veneration of the people. Thus, as a memorial of the consecration of the kings of Hungary, the actual crown of holy King Stephen was used; at the consecration of the kings of England, the actual chair of Edward the Confessor was used; at the consecration of the emperors of Germany, the imperial insignia actually used by Charlemagne formed part of the display; at the consecration of the kings of France at a certain period, the hand of justice of St. Louis, which has been before alluded to, was produced. [Illustration: Fig. 390.--Standards of the Church and the Empire.--Reduced from an Engraving of the "Entry of Charles V. and Clement VII. into Bologna," by Lucas de Cranach, from a Fresco by Brusasorci, of Verona.] After their consecration by the Church and by the spiritual power, the sovereigns had simply to take actual possession of their dominions, and, so to speak, of their subjects. This positive act of sovereignty was often accompanied by another class of ceremonies, called _joyous entry_, or _public entry._ These entries, of which numerous accounts have been handed down to us by historians, and which for the most part were very varied in character, naturally took place in the capital city. We will limit ourselves to transcribing the account given by the ancient chronicler, Juvenal des Ursins, of the entry into Paris of Queen Isabel of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI., which was a curious specimen of the public fêtes of this kind. [Illustration: Fig. 391.--Grand Procession of the Doge, Venice (Sixteenth Century).--Reduced from one of fourteen Engravings representing this Ceremony, designed and engraved by J. Amman.] "In the year 1389, the King was desirous that the Queen should make a public entry into Paris, and this he made known to the inhabitants, in order that they should make preparations for it. And there were at each cross roads divers _histoires_ (historical representations, pictures, or tableaux vivants), and fountains sending forth water, wine, and milk. The people of Paris in great numbers went out to meet the Queen, with the Provost of the Merchants, crying '_Noel!_' The bridge by which she passed was covered with blue taffeta, embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lys. A man of light weight, dressed in the guise of an angel, came down, by means of some well-constructed machinery, from one of the towers of Notre-Dame, to the said bridge through an opening in the said blue taffeta, at the moment when the Queen was passing, and placed a beautiful crown on her head. After he had done this, he withdrew through the said opening by the same means, and thus appeared as if he were returning to the skies of his own accord. Before the Grand Chastelet there was a splendid court adorned with azure tapestry, which was intended to be a representation of the _lit-de-justice,_ and it was very large and richly decorated. In the middle of it was a very large pure white artificial stag, its horns gilt, and its neck encircled with a crown of gold. It was so ingeniously constructed that its eyes, horns, mouth, and all its limbs, were put in motion by a man who was secreted within its body. Hanging to its neck were the King's arms--that is to say, three gold fleur-de-lys on an azure shield.... Near the stag there was a large sword, beautiful and bright, unsheathed; and when the Queen passed, the stag was made to take the sword in the right fore-foot, to hold it out straight, and to brandish it. It was reported to the King that the said preparations were made, and he said to Savoisy, who was one of those nearest to him, 'Savoisy, I earnestly entreat thee to mount a good horse, and I will ride behind thee, and we will so dress ourselves that no one will know us, and let us go and see the entry of my wife.' And, although Savoisy did all he could to dissuade him, the King insisted, and ordered that it should be done. So Savoisy did what the King had ordered, and disguised himself as well as he could, and mounted on a powerful horse with the King behind him. They went through the town, and managed so as to reach the Chastelet at the time the Queen was passing. There was a great crowd, and Savoisy placed himself as near as he could, and there were sergeants on all sides with thick birch wands, who, in order to prevent the crowd from pressing upon and injuring the court where the stag was, hit away with their wands as hard as they could. Savoisy struggled continually to get nearer and nearer, and the sergeants, who neither knew the King nor Savoisy, struck away at them, and the King received several very hard and well-directed blows on the shoulders. In the evening, in the presence of the ladies, the matter was talked over, and they began to joke about it, and even the King himself laughed at the blows he had received. The Queen on her entry was seated on a litter, and very magnificently dressed, as were also the ladies and maids of honour. It was indeed a splendid sight; and if any one wished to describe the dresses of the ladies, of the knights and squires, and of those who escorted the Queen, it would take a long time to do so. After supper, singing and dancing commenced, which continued until daylight. The next day there were tournaments and other sports" (Fig. 392). [Illustration: Entry of Charles the Seventh into Paris A miniature from _Monstrelet the Chronicles_ in the Bibl. nat. de Paris, no 20,861 Costumes of the Sixteenth century.] [Illustration: Fig. 392.--Tournaments in honour of the Entry of Queen Isabel into Paris--From a Miniature in the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (National Library of Paris).] [Illustration: Fig. 393.--Seat of Justice, held by King Philippe de Valois, on the 8th April, 1332, for the Trial of Robert, Comte d'Artois.--From a Pen-and-ink Sketch in an Original Manuscript (Arch. of the Empire)] In the course of this simple and graphic description mention has been made of the _lit de justice_ (seat of justice). All judicial or legislative assemblies at which the King considered it his duty to be present were thus designated; when the King came there simply as a looker-on, they were more commonly called _plaidoyers_, and, in this case, no change was made in the ordinary arrangements; but when the King presided they were called _conseils_, and then a special ceremonial was required. In fact, by _lit de justice_ (Fig. 393), or _cour des pairs_, we understand a court consisting of the high officers of the crown, and of the great executive of the State, whose duty it was to determine whether any peer of France should be tried on a criminal charge; gravely to deliberate on any political matter of special interest; or to register, in the name of the absolute sovereignty of the King, any edict of importance. We know the prominent, and, we may say, even the fatal, part played by these solemnities, which were being continually re-enacted, and on every sort of pretext, during the latter days of monarchy. These courts were always held with impressive pomp. The sovereign usually summoned to them the princes of the blood royal and the officers of his household; the members of the Parliament took their seats in scarlet robes, the presidents being habited in their caps and their mantles, and the registrars of the court also wearing their official dress. The High Chancellor, the First Chamberlain, and the Provost of Paris, sat at the King's feet. The Chancellor of France, the presidents and councillors of the Parliament, occupied the bar, and the ushers of the court were in a kneeling posture. Having thus mentioned the assemblies of persons of distinction, the interviews of sovereigns (Fig. 394), and the reception of ambassadors--without describing them in detail, which would involve more space than we have at our command--we will enter upon the subject of the special ceremonial adopted by the nobility, taking as our guide the standard book called "Honneurs de la Cour," compiled at the end of the fifteenth century by the celebrated Aliénor de Poitiers. In addition to her own observations, she gives those of her mother, Isabelle de Souza, who herself had but continued the work of another noble lady, Jeanne d'Harcourt--married in 1391 to the Count William de Namur--who was considered the best authority to be found in the kingdom of France. This collection of the customs of the court forms a kind of family diary embracing three generations, and extending back over more than a century. Notwithstanding the curious and interesting character of this book, and the authority which it possesses on this subject, we cannot, much to our regret, do more than borrow a few passages from it; but these, carefully selected, will no doubt suffice to give some idea of the manners and customs of the nobility during the fifteenth century, and to illustrate the laws of etiquette of which it was the recognised code. One of the early chapters of the work sets forth this fundamental law of French ceremonial, namely, that, "according to the traditions or customs of France, women, however exalted their position, be they even king's daughters, rank with their husbands." We find on the occasion of the marriage of King Charles VII. with Mary of Anjou, in 1413, although probably there had never been assembled together so many princes and ladies of rank, that at the banquet the ladies alone dined with the Queen, "and no gentlemen sat with them." We may remark, whilst on this subject, that before the reign of Francis I. it was not customary for the two sexes to be associated together in the ordinary intercourse of court life; and we have elsewhere remarked (see chapter on Private Life) that this departure from ancient custom exerted a considerable influence, not only on manners, but also on public affairs. [Illustration: Fig. 394.--Interview of King Charles V. with the Emperor Charles IV. in Paris in 1378.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Description of this Interview, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris.] The authoress of the "Honneurs de la Cour" specially mentions the respect which Queen Mary of Anjou paid to the Duchess of Burgundy when she was at Châlons in Champagne in 1445: "The Duchess came with all her retinue, on horseback and in carriages, into the courtyard of the mansion where the King and Queen were, and there alighted, her first maid of honour acting as her train-bearer. M. de Bourbon gave her his right hand, and the gentlemen went on in front. In this manner she was conducted to the hall which served as the ante-chamber to the Queen's apartment. There she stopped, and sent in M. de Crequi to ask the Queen if it was her pleasure that she should enter.... When the Duchess came to the door she took the train of her dress from the lady who bore it and let it trail on the ground, and as she entered she knelt and then adyanced to the middle of the room. There she made the same obeisance, and moved straight towards the Queen, who was standing close to the foot of her throne. When the Duchess had performed a further act of homage, the Queen advanced two or three steps, and the Duchess fell on her knees; the Queen then put her hand on her shoulder, embraced her, kissed her, and commanded her to rise." The Duchess then went up to Margaret of Scotland, wife of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., "who was four or five feet from the Queen," and paid her the same honours as she had done to the Queen, although the Dauphine appeared to wish to prevent her from absolutely kneeling to her. After this she turned towards the Queen of Sicily (Isabelle de Lorraine, wife of René of Anjou, brother-in-law of the King), "who was two or three feet from the Dauphine," and merely bowed to her, and the same to another Princess, Madame de Calabre, who was still more distantly connected with the blood royal. Then the Queen, and after her the Dauphine, kissed the three maids of honour of the Duchess and the wives of the gentlemen. The Duchess did the same to the ladies who accompanied the Queen and the Dauphine, "but of those of the Queen of Sicily the Duchess kissed none, inasmuch as the Queen had not kissed hers. And the Duchess would not walk behind the Queen, for she said that the Duke of Burgundy was nearer the crown of France than was the King of Sicily, and also that she was daughter of the King of Portugal, who was greater than the King of Sicily." Further on, from the details given of a similar reception, we learn that etiquette was not at that time regulated by the laws of politeness as now understood, inasmuch as the voluntary respect paid by men to the gentle sex was influenced much by social rank. Thus, at the time of a visit of Louis XI., then Dauphin, to the court of Brussels, to which place he went to seek refuge against the anger of his father, the Duchesses of Burgundy, of Charolais, and of Clèves, his near relatives, exhibited towards him all the tokens of submission and inferiority which he might have received from a vassal. The Dauphin, it is true, wished to avoid this homage, and a disussion on the subject of "more than a quarter of an hour ensued;" at last he took the Duchess of Burgundy by the arm and led her away, in order to cut short the ceremonies "about which Madame made so much to do." This, however, did not prevent the princesses, on their withdrawing, from kneeling to the ground in order to show their respect for the son of the King of France. [Illustration: Fig. 395.--The Entry of Louis XI. into Paris.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chroniques" of Monstrelet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] We have already seen that the Duchess of Burgundy, when about to appear before the Queen, took her train from her train-bearer in order that she might carry it herself. In this she was only conforming to a general principle, which was, that in the presence of a superior, a person, however high his rank, should not himself receive honours whilst at the same time paying them to another. Thus a duke and a duchess amidst their court had all the things which were used at their table covered--hence the modern expression, _mettre le couvert_ (to lay the cloth)--even the wash-hand basin and the _cadenas_, a kind of case in which the cups, knives, and other table articles were kept; but when they were entertaining a king all these marks of superiority were removed, as a matter of etiquette, from the table at which they sat, and were passed on as an act of respect to the sovereign present. The book of Dame Aliénor, in a series of articles to which we shall merely allude, speaks at great length and enters into detail respecting the interior arrangements of the rooms in which princes and other noble children were born. The formalities gone through on these occasions were as curious as they were complicated; and Dame Aliénor regretted to see them falling into disuse, "owing to which," she says, "we fear that the possessions of the great houses of the nobility are getting too large, as every one admits, and chicanery or concealment of birth, so as to make away with too many children, is on the increase." Mourning is the next subject which we shall notice. The King never wore black for mourning, not even for his father, but scarlet or violet. The Queen wore white, and did not leave her apartments for a whole year. Hence the name of _château, hôtel,_ or _tour de la Reine Blanche_, which many of the buildings of the Middle Ages still bear, from the fact that widowed queens inhabited them during the first year of their widowhood. On occasions of mourning, the various reception rooms of a house were hung with black. In deep mourning, such as that for a husband or a father, a lady wore neither gloves, jewels, nor silk. The head was covered with a low black head-dress, with trailing lappets, called _chaperons, barbettes, couvre-chefs_, and _tourets_. A duchess and the wife of a knight or a banneret, on going into mourning, stayed in their apartments for six weeks; the former, during the whole of this time, when in deep mourning, remained lying down all day on a bed covered with a white sheet; whereas the latter, at the end of nine days, got up, and until the six weeks were over, remained sitting in front of the bed on a black sheet. Ladies did not attend the funerals of their husbands, though it was usual for them to be present at those of their fathers and mothers. For an elder brother, they wore the same mourning as for a father, but they did not lie down as above described. [Illustration: Fig. 396.--"How the King-at-Arms presents the Sword to the Duke of Bourbon."--From a Miniature in "Tournois du Roi René," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] In their everyday intercourse with one another, kings, princes, dukes, and duchesses called one another _monsieur_ and _madame_, adding the Christian name or that of the estate. A superior speaking or writing to an inferior, might prefix to his or her title of relationship _beau_ or _belle_; for instance, _mon bel oncle, ma belle cousine_. People in a lower sphere of life, on being introduced to one another, did not say, "Monsieur Jean, ma belle tante"--"Mr. John, allow me to introduce you to my aunt"--but simply, "Jean, ma tante." The head of a house had his seat under a canopy or _dosseret_ (Fig. 396), which he only relinquished to his sovereign, when he had the honour of entertaining him. "Such," says Aliénor, in conclusion, "are the points of etiquette which are observed in Germany, in France, in Naples, in Italy, and in all other civilised countries and kingdoms." We may here remark, that etiquette, after having originated in France, spread throughout all Christian nations, and when it had become naturalised, as it were, amongst the latter, it acquired a settled position, which it retained more firmly than it did in France. In this latter country, it was only from the seventeenth century, and particularly under Louis XIV., that court etiquette really became a science, and almost a species of religions observance, whose minutiae were attended to as much as if they were sacramental rites, though they were not unfrequently of the most childish character, and whose pomp and precision often caused the most insufferable annoyance. But notwithstanding the perpetual changes of times and customs, the French nation has always been distinguished for nobility and dignity, tempered with good sense and elegance. If we now direct our attention to the _tiers état_, that class which, to quote a celebrated expression, "was destined to become everything, after having for a long time been looked upon as nothing," we shall notice that there, too, custom and tradition had much to do with ceremonies of all kinds. The presence of the middle classes not only gave, as it were, a stamp of grandeur to fêtes of an aristocratic and religions character, but, in addition, the people themselves had a number of ceremonies of every description, in which etiquette was not one whit less strict than in those of the court. The variety of civic and popular ceremonies is so great, that it would require a large volume, illustrated with numerous engravings, to explain fully their characteristic features. The simple enumeration of the various public fêtes, each of which was necessarily accompanied by a distinct ceremonial, would take up much time were we to attempt to give it even in the shortest manner. [Illustration: Fig. 397.--Entry of the Roi de l'Epinette at Lille, in the Sixteenth Century.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Library of Rouen.] Besides the numerous ceremonies which were purely religious, namely, the procession of the _Fête-Dieu_, in Rogation week, and the fêtes which were both of a superstitions and burlesque character, such as _des Fous, de l'Ane, des Innocents_, and others of the same kind, so much in vogue during the Middle Ages, and which we shall describe more in detail hereafter, we should like to mention the military or gymnastic fêtes. Amongst these were what were called the processions of the _Confrères de l'Arquebuse_, the _Archers_, the _Papegaut_, the _roi de l'Epinette_, at Lille (Fig. 397), and the _Forestier_ at Bruges. There were also what may be termed the fêtes peculiar to certain places, such as those of _Béhors_, of the _Champs Galat_ at Epinal, of the _Laboureurs_ at Montélimar, of _Guy l'an neuf_ at Anjou. Also of the fêtes of _May_, of the _sheaf_, of the _spring_, of the _roses_, of the _fires of St. John_, &c. Then there were the historical or commemorative fêtes, such as those of the _Géant Reuss_ at Dunkerque, of the _Gayant_ at Douai, &c.; also of _Guet de Saint-Maxime_ at Riez in Provence, the processions of _Jeanne d'Arc_ at Orleans, of _Jeanne Hachette_ at Beauvais; and lastly, the numerous fêtes of public corporations, such as the _Écoliers_, the _Nations_, the _Universités_; also the _Lendit_, the _Saint-Charlemagne_, the _Baillée des roses au Parlement_; the literary fêtes of the _Pays et Chambres de rhetorique_ of Picardy and Flanders, of the _Clémence Isaure_ at Toulouse, and of the _Capitole_ at Rome, &c.; the fêtes of the _Serments, Métiers_, and _Devoirs_ of the working men's corporation; and lastly, the _Fêtes Patronales_, called also _Assemblées, Ducasses, Folies, Foires, Kermesses, Pardons_, &c. From this simple enumeration, it can easily be understood what a useless task we should impose upon ourselves were we merely to enter upon so wide and difficult a subject. Apart from the infinite variety of details resulting from the local circumstances under which these ceremonies had been instituted, which were everywhere celebrated at fixed periods, a kind of general principle regulated and directed their arrangement. Nearly all these fêtes and public rejoicings, which to a certain extent constituted the common basis of popular ceremonial, bore much analogy to one another. There are, however, certain peculiarities less known and more striking than the rest, which deserve to be mentioned, and we shall then conclude this part of our subject. [Illustration: Fig. 398.--Representation of a Ballet before Henri III. and his Court, in the Gallery of the Louvre.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper of the "Ballet de la Royne," by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx (folio, Paris, Mamert Patisson, 1582.)] Those rites, ceremonies, and customs, which are the most commonly observed, and which most persistently keep their place amongst us, are far from being of modern origin. Thus, the custom of jovially celebrating the commencement of the new year, or of devoting certain particular days to festivity, is still universally followed in every country in the world. The practice of sending presents on _New Year's Day_ is to be found among civilised nations in the East as well as in our own country. In the Middle Ages the intimate friends of princes, and especially of the kings of France, received Christmas gifts, for which they considered themselves bound to make an ample return. In England these interchanges of generosity also take place on Christmas Day. In Russia, on Easter Day, the people, on meeting in the street, salute one another by saying "Christ is risen." These practices, as well as many others, have no doubt been handed down to us from the early ages of Christianity. The same may be said of a vast number of customs of a more or less local character, which have been observed in various countries for centuries. In former times, at Ochsenbach, in Wurtemberg, during the carnival, women held a feast at which they were waited upon by men, and, after it was over, they formed themselves into a sort of court of plenary indulgence, from which the men were uniformly excluded, and sat in judgment on one another. At Ramerupt, a small town in Champagne, every year, on the 1st of May, twenty of the citizens repaired to the adjoining hamlet of St. Remy, hunting as they went along. They were called _the fools of Rameru_, and it was said that the greatest fool led the band. The inhabitants of St. Remy were bound to receive them gratuitously, and to supply them, as well as their horses and dogs, with what they required, to have a mass said for them, to put up with all the absurd vagaries of the captain and his troop, and to supply them with a _fine and handsome horned ram,_ which was led back in triumph. On their return into Ramerupt they set up shouts at the door of the curé, the procurator fiscal, and the collector of taxes, and, after the invention of gunpowder, fireworks were let off. They then went to the market-place, where they danced round the ram, which was decorated with ribbons. No doubt this was a relic of the feasts of ancient heathenism. A more curious ceremony still, whose origin, we think, may be traced to the Dionysian feasts of heathenism, has continued to be observed to this day at Béziers. It bears the names of the _Feast of Pepézuch_, the _Triumph of Béziers,_ or the _Feast of Caritats_ or _Charités_. At the bottom of the Rue Française at Béziers, a statue is to be seen which, notwithstanding the mutilations to which it has been subjected, still distinctly bears traces of being an ancient work of the most refined period of art. This statue represents Pepézuch, a citizen of Béziers, who, according to somewhat questionable tradition, valiantly defended the town against the Goths, or, as some say, against the English; its origin, therefore, cannot be later than the thirteenth century. On Ascension Day, the day of the Feast of Pepézuch, an immense procession went about the town. Three remarkable machines were particularly noticeable; the first was an enormous wooden camel made to walk by mechanism, and to move its limbs and jaws; the second was a galley on wheels fully manned; the third consisted of a cart on which a travelling theatre was erected. The consuls and other civic authorities, the corporations of trades having the pastors walking in front of them, the farriers on horseback, all bearing their respective insignia and banners, formed the procession. A double column, composed of a division of young men and young women holding white hoops decorated with ribbons and many-coloured streamers, was preceded by a young girl crowned with flowers, half veiled, and carrying a basket. This brilliant procession marched to the sound of music, and, at certain distances, the youthful couples of the two sexes halted, in order to perform, with the assistance of their hoops, various figures, which were called the _Danse des Treilles_. The machines also stopped from time to time at various places. The camel was especially made to enter the Church of St. Aphrodise, because it was said that the apostle had first come on a camel to preach the Gospel in that country, and there to receive the palm of martyrdom. On arriving before the statue of Pepézuch the young people decorated it with garlands. When the square of the town was reached, the theatre was stopped like the ancient car of Thespis, and the actors treated the people to a few comical drolleries in imitation of Aristophanes. From the galley the youths flung sugar-plums and sweetmeats, which the spectators returned in equal profusion. The procession closed with a number of men, crowned with green leaves, carrying on their heads loaves of bread, which, with other provisions contained in the galley, were distributed amongst the poor of the town. In Germany and in France it was the custom at the public entries of kings, princes, and persons of rank, to offer them the wines made in the district and commonly sold in the town. At Langres, for instance, these wines were put into four pewter vessels called _cimaises_, which are still to be seen. They were called the _lion, monkey, sheep_, and _pig_ wines, symbolical names, which expressed the different degrees or phases of drunkenness which they were supposed to be capable of producing: the lion, courage; the monkey, cunning; the sheep, good temper; the pig, bestiality. We will now conclude by borrowing, from the excellent work of M. Alfred Michiels on Dutch and Flemish painting, the abridged description of a procession of corporations of trades, which took place at Antwerp in 1520, on the Sunday after Ascension Day. "All the corporations of trades were present, every member being dressed in his best suit." In front of each guild a banner floated; and immediately behind an enormous lighted wax-taper was carried. March music was played on long silver trumpets, flutes, and drums. The goldsmiths, painters, masons, silk embroiderers, sculptors, carpenters, boatmen, fishermen, butchers, curriers, drapers, bakers, tailors, and men of every other trade marched two abreast. Then came crossbowmen, arquebusiers, archers, &c., some on foot and some on horseback. After them came the various monastic orders; and then followed a crowd of bourgeois magnificently dressed. A numerous company of widows, dressed in white from head to foot, particularly attracted attention; they constituted a sort of sisterhood, observing certain rules, and gaining their livelihood by various descriptions of manual work. The cathedral canons and the other priests walked in the procession in their gorgeous silk vestments sparkling with gold. Twenty persons carried on their shoulders a huge figure of the Virgin, with the infant Saviour in her arms, splendidly decorated. At the end of the procession were chariots and ships on wheels. There were various groups in the procession representing scenes from the Old and New Testament, such as the _Salutation of the Angels_, the _Visitation of the Magi_, who appeared riding on camels, the _Flight into Egypt_, and other well-known historical incidents. The last machine represented a dragon being led by St. Margaret with a magnificent bridle, and was followed by St. George and several brilliantly attired knights. [Illustration: Fig. 399.--Sandal and Buskin of Charlemagne.--From the Abbey of St. Denis.] Costumes. Influence of Ancient Costume.--Costume in the Fifth Century.--Hair.--Costumes in the Time of Charlemagne.--Origin of Modern National Dress.--Head-dresses and Beards: Time of St. Louis.--Progress of Dress: Trousers, Hose, Shoes, Coats, Surcoats, Capes.--Changes in the Fashions of Shoes and Hoods.--_Livrée_,--Cloaks and Capes.--Edicts against Extravagant Fashions.--Female Dress: Gowns, Bonnets, Head-dresses, &c.--Disappearance of Ancient Dress.--Tight-fitting Gowns.--General Character of Dress under Francis I.--Uniformity of Dress. Long garments alone were worn by the ancients, and up to the period when the barbarous tribes of the North made their appearance, or rather, until the invasion of the Roman Empire by these wandering nations, male and female dress differed but little. The Greeks made scarcely any change in their mode of dress for centuries; but the Romans, on becoming masters of the world, partially adopted the dress and arms of the people they had conquered, where they considered them an improvement on their own, although the original style of dress was but little altered (Figs. 400 and 401). Roman attire consisted of two garments--the under garment, or _tunic_, and the outer garment, or _cloak_; the latter was known under the various names of _chlamys, toga_, and _pallium_, but, notwithstanding these several appellations, there was scarcely any appreciable distinction between them. The simple tunic with sleeves, which answered to our shirt, was like the modern blouse in shape, and was called by various names. The _chiridota_ was a tunic with long and large sleeves, of Asiatic origin; the _manuleata_ was a tunic with long and tight sleeves coming to the wrists; the _talaris_ was a tunic reaching to the feet; the _palmata_ was a state tunic, embroidered with palms, which ornamentation was often found in other parts of dress. The _lacerna_, _loena_, _cucullus_, _chlamys_, _sagum_, _paludamentum_, were upper garments, more or less coarse, either full or scant, and usually short, and were analogous to our cloaks, mantles, &c., and were made both with and without hoods. There were many varieties of the tunic and cloak invented by female ingenuity, as well as of other articles of dress, which formed elegant accessories to the toilet, but there was no essential alteration in the national costume, nor was there any change in the shape of the numerous descriptions of shoes. The barbarian invasions brought about a revolution in the dress as well as in the social state of the people, and it is from the time of these invasions that we may date, properly speaking, the history of modern dress; for the Roman costume, which was in use at the same time as that of the Franks, the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, &c., was subjected to various changes down to the ninth century. These modifications increased afterwards to such an extent that, towards the fourteenth century, the original type had altogether disappeared. [Illustration: Figs. 400 and 401.--Gallo-Roman Costumes.--From Bas-reliefs discovered in Paris in 1711 underneath the Choir of Notre-Dame.] It was quite natural that men living in a temperate climate, and bearing arms only when in the service of the State, should be satisfied with garments which they could wear without wrapping themselves up too closely. The northern nations, on the contrary, had early learned to protect themselves against the severity of the climate in which they lived. Thus the garments known by them as _braies_, and by the Parthians as _sarabara_, doubtless gave origin to those which have been respectively called by us _chausses, haut-de-chausses, trousses, grègues, culottes, pantalons_, &c. These wandering people had other reasons for preferring the short and close-fitting garments to those which were long and full, and these were their innate pugnacity, which forced them ever to be under arms, their habit of dwelling in forests and thickets, their love of the chase, and their custom of wearing armour. The ancient Greeks and Romans always went bareheaded in the towns; but in the country, in order to protect themselves from the direct rays of the sun, they wore hats much resembling our round hats, made of felt, plaited rushes, or straw. Other European nations of the same period also went bareheaded, or wore caps made of skins of animals, having no regularity of style, and with the shape of which we are but little acquainted. Shoes, and head-dresses of a definite style, belong to a much more modern period, as also do the many varieties of female dress, which have been known at all times and in all countries under the general name of _robes_. The girdle was only used occasionally, and its adoption depended on circumstances; the women used it in the same way as the men, for in those days it was never attached to the dress. The great difference in modern female costume consists in the fact of the girdle being part of the dress, thus giving a long or short waist, according to the requirements of fashion. In the same manner, a complete revolution took place in men's dress according as loose or tight, long or short sleeves were introduced. We shall commence our historical sketch from the fifth century, at which period we can trace the blending of the Roman with the barbaric costume--namely, the combination of the long, shapeless garment with that which was worn by the Germans, and which was accompanied by tight-fitting braies. Thus, in the recumbent statue which adorned the tomb of Clovis, in the Church of the Abbey of St. Geneviève, the King is represented as wearing the _tunic_ and the _toga_, but, in addition, Gallo-Roman civilization had actually given him tight-fitting braies, somewhat similar to what we now call pantaloons. Besides this, his tunic is fastened by a belt; which, however, was not a novelty in his time, for the women then wore long dresses, fastened at the waist by a girdle. There is nothing very remarkable about his shoes, since we find that the shoe, or closed sandal, was worn from the remotest periods by nearly all nations (Figs. 402 and 403). [Illustration: Fig. 402.--Costume of King Clovis (Sixth Century).--From a Statue on his Tomb, formerly in the Abbey of St. Geneviève.] [Illustration: Fig. 403.--Costume of King Childebert (Seventh Century).--From a Statue formerly placed in the Refectory of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés.] The cloak claims an equally ancient origin. The principal thing worthy of notice is the amount of ornament with which the Franks enriched their girdles and the borders of their tunics and cloaks. This fashion they borrowed from the Imperial court, which, having been transferred from Rome to Constantinople during the third century, was not slow to adopt the luxury of precious stones and other rich decorations commonly in use amongst Eastern nations. Following the example of Horace de Vielcastel, the learned author of a history of the costumes of France, we may here state that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to define the exact costume during the time of the early Merovingian periods. The first writers who have touched upon this subject have spoken of it very vaguely, or not being contemporaries of the times of which they wrote, could only describe from tradition or hearsay. Those monuments in which early costume is supposed to be represented are almost all of later date, when artists, whether sculptors or painters, were not very exact in their delineations of costume, and even seemed to imagine that no other style could have existed before their time than the one with which they were daily familiar. In order to be as accurate as possible, although, after all, we can only speak hypothetically, we cannot do better than call to mind, on the one hand, what Tacitus says of the Germans, that they "were almost naked, excepting for a short and tight garment round their waists, and a little square cloak which they threw over the right shoulder," and, on the other, to carry ourselves back in imagination to the ancient Roman costume. We may notice, moreover, the curious description given of the Franks by Sidoine Apollinaire, who says, "They tied up their flaxen or light-brown hair above their foreheads, into a kind of tuft, and then made it fall behind the head like a horse's tail. The face was clean shaved, with the exception of two long moustaches. They wore cloth garments, fitting tight to the body and limbs, and a broad belt, to which they hung their swords." But this is a sketch made at a time when the Frankish race was only known among the Gauls through its marauding tribes, whose raids, from time to time, spread terror and dismay throughout the countries which they visited. From the moment when the uncultivated tribes of ancient Germany formally took possession of the territory which they had withdrawn from Roman rule, they showed themselves desirous of adopting the more gentle manners of the conquered nation. "In imitation of their chief," says M. Jules Quicherat, the eminent antiquarian, "more than once the Franks doffed the war coat and the leather Belt, and assumed the toga of Roman dignity. More than once their flaxen hair was shown to advantage by flowing over the imperial mantle, and the gold of the knights, the purple of the senators and patricians, the triumphal crowns, the fasces, and, in short, everything which the Roman Empire invented in order to exhibit its grandeur, assisted in adding to that of our ancestors." [Illustration: Figs. 404 and 405.--Saints in the Costume of the Sixth to the Eighth Centuries.--From Miniatures in old Manuscripts of the Royal Library of Brussels (Designs by Count H. de Vielcastel).] One great and characteristic difference between the Romans and the Franks should, however, be specially mentioned; namely, in the fashion of wearing the hair long, a fashion never adopted by the Romans, and which, during the whole of the first dynasty, was a distinguishing mark of kings and nobles among the Franks. Agathias, the Greek historian, says, "The hair is never cut from the heads of the Frankish kings' sons. From early youth their hair falls gracefully over their shoulders, it is parted on the forehead, and falls equally on both sides; it is with them a matter to which they give special attention." We are told, besides, that they sprinkled it with gold-dust, and plaited it in small bands, which they ornamented with pearls and precious metals. Whilst persons of rank were distinguished by their long and flowing hair, the people wore theirs more or less short, according to the degree of freedom which they possessed, and the serfs had their heads completely shaved. It was customary for the noble and free classes to swear by their hair, and it was considered the height of politeness to pull out a hair and present it to a person. Frédégaire, the chronicler, relates that Clovis thus pulled out a hair in order to do honour to St. Germer, Bishop of Toulouse, and presented it to him; upon this, the courtiers hastened to imitate their sovereign, and the venerable prelate returned home with his hand full of hair, delighted at the flattering reception he had met with at the court of the Frankish king. Durinig the Merovingian period, the greatest insult that could be offered to a freeman was to touch him with a razor or scissors. The degradation of kings and princes was carried out in a public manner by shaving their heads and sending them into a monastery; on their regaining their rights and their authority, their hair was always allowed to grow again. We may also conclude that great importance was attached to the preservation of the hair even under the kings of the second dynasty, for Charlemagne, in his Capitulaires, orders the hair to be removed as a punishment in certain crimes. The Franks, faithful to their ancient custom of wearing the hair long, gradually gave up shaving the face. At first, they only left a small tuft on the chin, but by degrees they allowed this to increase, and in the sixth and seventh centuries freemen adopted the usual form of beard. Amongst the clergy, the custom prevailed of shaving the crown of the head, in the same way as that adopted by certain monastic orders in the present day. Priests for a long time wore beards, but ceased to do so on their becoming fashionable amongst the laity (Figs. 406, 407). Painters and sculptors therefore commit a serious error in representing the prelates and monks of those times with large beards. As far as the monumental relics of those remote times allow us to judge, the dress as worn by Clovis underwent but trifing modifications during the first dvnasty; but during the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne considerable changes were effected, which resulted from the intercourse, either of a friendly or hostile nature, between the Franks and the southern nations. About this time, silk stuffs were introduced into the kingdom, and the upper classes, in order to distinguish themselves from the lower, had their garments trimmed round with costly furs (see chapter on Commerce). [Illustration: Fig. 406 and 407.--Costume of the Prelates from the Eighth to the Tenth Centuries--After Miniatures in the "Missal of St. Gregory," in the National Library of Paris.] We have before stated (see chapter on Private Life) that Charlemagne, who always was very simple in his tastes, strenuously set his face against these novel introductions of luxury, which he looked upon as tending to do harm. "Of what use are these cloaks?" he said; "in bed they cannot cover us, on horseback they can neither protect us from the rain nor the wind, and when we are sitting they can neither preserve our legs from the cold nor the damp." He himself generally wore a large tunic made of otters' skins. On one occasion his courtiers went out hunting with him, clothed in splendid garments of southern fashion, which became much torn by the briars, and begrimed with the blood of the animals they had killed. "Oh, ye foolish men!" he said to them the next day as he showed them his own tunic, which a servant had just returned to him in perfect condition, after having simply dried it before the fire and rubbed it with his hands. "Whose garments are the more valuable and the more useful? mine, for which I have only paid a sou (about twenty-two francs of present money), or yours, which have cost so much?" From that time, whenever this great king entered on a campaign, the officers of his household, even the most rich and powerful, did not dare to show themselves in any clothes but those made of leather, wool, or cloth; for had they, on such occasions, made their appearance dressed in silk and ornaments, he would have sharply reproved them and have treated them as cowards, or as effeminate, and consequently unfit for the work in which he was about to engage. Nevertheless, this monarch, who so severely proscribed luxury in daily life, made the most magnificent display on the occasions of political or religious festivals, when the imperial dignity with which he was invested required to be set forth by pompous ceremonial and richness of attire. During the reign of the other Carlovingian kings, in the midst of political troubles, of internal wars, and of social disturbances, they had neither time nor inclination for inventing new fashions. Monuments of the latter part of the ninth century prove, indeed, that the national dress had hardly undergone any change since the time of Charlemagne, and that the influence of Roman tradition, especially on festive occasions, was still felt in the dress of the nobles (Figs. 408 to 411). In a miniature of the large MS. Bible given by the canons of Saint-Martin of Tours in 869 to Charles the Bald (National Library of Paris), we find the King sitting on his throne surrounded by the dignitaries of his court, and by soldiers all dressed after the Roman fashion. The monarch wears a cloak which seems to be made of cloth of gold, and is attached to the shoulder by a strap or ribbon sliding through a clasp; this cloak is embroidered in red, on a gold ground; the tunic is of reddish brown, and the shoes are light red, worked with gold thread. In the same manuscript there is another painting, representing four women listening to the discourse of a prophet. From this we discover that the female costume of the time consisted of two tunics, the under one being longer but less capacious than the other, the sleeves of the former coming down tight to the wrists, and being plaited in many folds, whilst those of the latter open out, and only reach to the elbow. The lower part, the neck, and the borders of the sleeves are trimmed with ornamented bands, the waist is encircled by a girdle just above the hips, and a long veil, finely worked, and fastened on the head, covers the shoulders and hangs down to the feet, completely hiding the hair, so that long plaits falling in front were evidently not then in fashion. The under dress of these four women--who all wear black shoes, which were probably made of morocco leather--are of various colours, whereas the gowns or outer tunics are white. [Illustration: Fig. 408.--Costume of a Scholar of the Carlovingian Period (St. Matthew writing his Gospel under the Inspiration of Christ).--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ninth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels (drawn by Count H. de Vielcastel).] Notwithstanding that under the Carlovingian dynasty it was always considered a shame and a dishonour to have the head shaved, it must not be supposed that the upper classes continued to wear the long Merovingian style of hair. After the reign of Charlemagne, it was the fashion to shave the hair from above the forehead, the parting being thus widened, and the hair was so arranged that it should not fall lower than the middle of the neck. Under Charles the Bald, whose surname proves that he was not partial to long hair, this custom fell into disuse or was abandoned, and men had the greater part of their heads shaved, and only kept a sort of cap of hair growing on the top of the head. It is at this period that we first find the _cowl_ worn. This kind of common head-dress, made from the furs of animals or from woollen stuffs, continued to be worn for many centuries, and indeed almost to the present day. It was originally only a kind of cap, light and very small; but it gradually became extended in size, and successively covered the ears, the neck, and lastly even the shoulders. No great change was made in the dress of the two sexes during the tenth century. "Nothing was more simple than the head-dress of women," says M. Jules Quicherat; "nothing was less studied than their mode of wearing their hair; nothing was more simple, and yet finer, than their linen. The elegant appearance of their garments recalls that of the Greek and Roman, women. Their dresses were at times so tight as to display all the elegance of their form, whilst at others they were made so high as completely to cover the neck; the latter were called _cottes-hardies_. The _cotte-hardie_, which has at all times been part of the dress of French women, and which was frequently worn also by men, was a long tunic reaching to the heels, fastened in at the waist and closed at the wrists. Queens, princesses, and ladies of the nobility wore in addition a long cloak lined with ermine, or a tunic with or without sleeves; often, too, their dress consisted of two tunics, and of a veil or drapery, which was thrown over the head and fell down before and behind, thus entirely surrounding the neck." [Illustration: Fig. 409.--Costume of a Scholar. Fig. 410.--Costume of a Bishop or Abbot. Fac-similes of Miniatures in a Manuscript of the Ninth Century ("Biblia Sacra"), in the Royal Library of Brussels.] We cannot find that any very decided change was made in dress before the end of the eleventh century. The ordinary dress made of thick cloths and of coarse woollen stuffs was very strong and durable, and not easily spoiled; and it was usual, as we still find in some provinces which adhere to old customs, for clothes, especially those worn on festive occasions and at ceremonials, to be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, to the third or fourth generation. The Normans, who came from Scandinavia towards the end of the tenth century, A.D. 970, with their short clothes and coats of mail, at first adopted the dress of the French, and continued to do so in all its various changes. In the following century, having found the Saxons and Britons in England clad in the garb of their ancestors, slightly modified by the Roman style of apparel, they began to make great changes in their manner of dressing themselves. They more and more discarded Roman fashions, and assumed similar costumes to those made in France at the same period. [Illustration: Fig. 411.--Costume of Charles the Simple (Tenth Century).--From a Miniature in the "Rois de France," by Du Tillet, Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] Before proceeding further in our history of mediæval dress, we must forestall a remark which will not fail to be made by the reader, and this is, that we seem to occupy ourselves exclusively with the dress of kings, queens, and other people of note. But we must reply, that though we are able to form tolerably accurate notions relative to the dress of the upper classes during these remote periods, we do not possess any reliable information relative to that of the lower orders, and that the written documents, as well as the sculptures and paintings, are almost useless on this point. Nevertheless, we may suppose that the dress of the men in the lowest ranks of society has always been short and tight, consisting of _braies_, or tight drawers, mostly made of leather, of tight tunics, of _sayons_ or doublets, and of capes or cloaks of coarse brown woollen. The tunic was confined at the waist by a belt, to which the knife, the purse, and sometimes the working tools were suspended. The head-dress of the people was generally a simple cap made of thick, coarse woollen cloth or felt, and often of sheep's skin. During the twelfth century, a person's rank or social position was determined by the head-dress. The cap was made of velvet for persons of rank, and of common cloth for the poor. The _cornette_, which was always an appendage to the cap, was made of cloth, with which the cap might be fastened or adjusted on the head. The _mortier_, or round cap, dates from the earliest centuries, and was altered both in shape and material according to the various changes of fashion; but lawyers of high position continued to wear it almost in its original shape, and it became like a professional badge for judges and advocates. In the miniatures of that time we find Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, who died in 1127, represented with a cap with a point at the top, to which a long streamer is attached, and a peak turned up in front. A cap very similar, but without the streamer, and with the point turned towards the left, is to be seen in a portrait of Geoffroy le Bel, Comte de Maine, in 1150. About the same period, Agnès de Baudement is represented with a sort of cap made of linen or stuff, with lappets hanging down over the shoulders; she is dressed in a robe fastened round the waist, and having long bands attached to the sleeves near the wrists. Queen Ingeburge, second wife of Philip Augustus, also wore the tight gown, fastened at the collar by a round buckle, and two bands of stuff forming a kind of necklace; she also used the long cloak, and the closed shoes, which had then begun to be made pointed. Robert, Comte de Dreux, who lived at the same period, is also dressed almost precisely like the Queen, notwithstanding the difference of sex and rank; his robe, however, only descends to the instep, and his belt has no hangings in front. The Queen is represented with her hair long and flowing, but the count has his cut short. [Illustration: Fig. 412.--Costume of King Louis le Jeune--Miniature of the "Rois de France," by Du Tillet (Sixteenth Century), in the National Library of Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 413.--Royal Costume.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.] Women, in addition to their head-dress, often wore a broad band, which was tied under the chin, and gave the appearance of a kind of frame for the face. Both sexes wore coloured bands on their shoes, which were tied round the ankles like those of sandals, and showed the shape of the foot. The beard, which was worn in full at the beginning of the twelfth century, was by degrees modified both as to shape and length. At first it was cut in a point, and only covered the end of the chin, but the next fashion was to wear it so as to join the moustaches. Generally, under Louis le Jeune (Fig. 412), moustaches went out of fashion. We next find beards worn only by country people, who, according to contemporary historians, desired to preserve a "remembrance of their participation in the Crusades." At the end of this century, all chins were shaved. The Crusades also gave rise to the general use of the purse, which was suspended to the belt by a cord of silk or cotton, and sometimes by a metal chain. At the time of the Holy War, it had become an emblem characteristic of pilgrims, who, before starting for Palestine, received from the hands of the priest the cross, the pilgrim's staff, and the purse. We now come to the time of Louis IX. (Figs. 414 to 418), of that good king who, according to the testimony of his historians, generally dressed with the greatest simplicity, but who, notwithstanding his usual modesty and economy, did not hesitate on great occasions to submit to the pomp required by the regal position which he held. "Sometimes," says the Sire de Joinville, "he went into his garden dressed in a camel's-hair coat, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey without sleeves, a black silk cloak without a hood, and a hat trimmed with peacocks' feathers. At other times he was dressed in a coat of blue silk, a surcoat and mantle of scarlet satin, and a cotton cap." The surcoat (_sur-cotte_) was at first a garment worn only by females, but it was soon adopted by both sexes: it was originally a large wrapper with sleeves, and was thrown over the upper part of the robe (_cotte_), hence its name, _sur-cotte._ Very soon it was made without sleeves--doubtless, as M. Quicherat remarks, that the under garment, which was made of more costly material, might be seen; and then, with the same object, and in order that the due motion of the limbs might not be interfered with, the surcoat was raised higher above the hips, and the arm-holes were made very large. [Illustration: Fig. 414.--Costume of a Princess dressed in a Cloak lined with Fur.--From a Miniature of the Thirteenth Century.] [Illustration: Fig. 415.--Costume of William Malgeneste, the King's Huntsman, as represented on his Tomb, formerly in the Abbey of Long-Pont.] At the consecration of Louis IX., in 1226, the nobles wore the cap (_mortier_) trimmed with fur; the bishops wore the cope and the mitre, and carried the crosier. Louis IX., at the age of thirteen, is represented, in a picture executed in 1262 (Sainte-Chapelle, Paris), with his hair short, and wearing a red velvet cap, a tunic, and over this a cloak open at the chest, having long sleeves, which are slit up for the arms to go through; this cloak, or surcoat, is trimmed with ermine in front, and has the appearance of what we should now call a fur shawl. The young King has long hose, and shoes similar in shape to high slippers. In the same painting Queen Margaret, his wife, wears a gown with tight bodice opened out on the hips, and having long and narrow sleeves; she also has a cloak embroidered with fleurs-de-lis, the long sleeves of which are slit up and bordered with ermine; a kind of hood, much larger than her head, and over this a veil, which passes under the chin without touching the face; the shoes are long, and seem to enclose the feet very tightly. [Illustration: Fig. 416.--Costumes of the Thirteenth Century: Tristan and the beautiful Yseult.--From a Miniature in the Romance of "Tristan," Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).] From this period gowns with tight bodices were generally adopted; the women wore over them a tight jacket, reaching to a little below the hips, often trimmed with fur when the gown was richly ornamented, and itself richly ornamented when the gown was plain. They also began to plait the hair, which fell down by the side of the face to the neck, and they profusely decorated it with pearls or gold or silver ornaments. Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, is represented with a pointed cap, on the turned-up borders of which the hair clusters in thick curls on each side of the face; on the chest is a frill turned down in two points; the gown, fastened in front by a row of buttons, has long and tight sleeves, with a small slit at the wrists closed by a button; lastly, the Queen wears, over all, a sort of second robe in the shape of a cloak, the sleeves of which are widely slit in the middle. At the end of the thirteenth century luxury was at its height at the court of France: gold and silver, pearls and precious stones were lavished on dress. At the marriage of Philip III., son of St. Louis, the gentlemen were dressed in scarlet; the ladies in cloth of gold, embroidered and trimmed with gold and silver lace. Massive belts of gold were also worn, and chaplets sparkling with the same costly metal. Moreover, this magnificence and display (see chapter on Private Life) was not confined to the court, for we find that it extended to the bourgeois class, since Philippe le Bel, by his edict of 1294, endeavoured to limit this extravagance, which in the eyes of the world had an especial tendency to obliterate, or at least to conceal, all distinctions of birth, rank, and condition. Wealth strove hard at that time to be the sole standard of dress. As we approach the fourteenth century--an epoch of the Middle Ages at which, after many changes of fashion, and many struggles against the ancient Roman and German traditions, modern national costume seems at last to have assumed a settled and normal character--we think it right to recapitulate somewhat, with a view to set forth the nature of the various elements which were at work from time to time in forming the fashions in dress. In order to give more weight to our remarks, we will extract, almost word for word, a few pages from the learned and excellent work which M. Jules Quicherat has published on this subject. "Towards the year 1280," he says, "the dress of a man--not of a man as the word was then used, which meant _serf_, but of one to whom the exercise of human prerogatives was permitted, that is to say, of an ecclesiastic, a bourgeois, or a noble--was composed of six indispensable portions: the _braies_, or breeches, the stockings, the shoes, the coat, the surcoat, or _cotte-hardie,_ and the _chaperon_, or head-dress. To these articles those who wished to dress more elegantly added, on the body, a shirt; on the shoulders, a mantle; and on the head, a hat, or _fronteau_. [Illustration: Fig. 417.--Costumes of the Common People in the Fourteenth Century: Italian Gardener and Woodman.--From two Engravings in the Bonnart Collection.] "The _braies_, or _brayes_, were a kind of drawers, generally knitted, sometimes made of woollen stuff or silk, and sometimes even of undressed leather. .... Our ancestors derived this part of their dress from the ancient Gauls; only the Gallic braies came down to the ankle, whereas those of the thirteenth century only reached to the calf. They were fastened above the hips by means of a belt called the _braier_. "By _chausses_ was meant what we now call long stockings or hose. The stockings were of the same colour and material as the braies, and were kept up by the lower part of the braies being pulled over them, and tied with a string. "The shoes were made of various kinds of leather, the quality of which depended on the way in which they were tanned, and were either of common leather, or of leather which was similar to that we know as morocco, and was called _cordouan_ or _cordua_ (hence the derivation of the word _cordouannier_, which has now become _cordonnier_). Shoes were generally made pointed; this fashion of the _poulaines_, or Polish points, was followed throughout the whole of Europe for nearly three hundred years, and, when first introduced, the Church was so scandalized by it that it was almost placed in the catalogue of heresies. Subsequently, the taste respecting the exaggerated length of the points was somewhat modified, but it had become so inveterate that the tendency for pointed shoes returning to their former absurd extremes was constantly showing itself. The pointed shoes became gradually longer during the struggles which were carried on in the reign of Philippe le Bel between Church and State. "Besides the shoes, there were also the _estiviaux_, thus named from. _estiva_ (summer thing), because, being generally made of velvet, brocade, or other costly material, they could only be worn in dry weather. "The coat (_cotte_) corresponded with the tunic of the ancients, it was a blouse with tight sleeves. These sleeves were the only part of it which were exposed, the rest being completely covered by the surcoats, or _cotte-hardie,_ a name the origin of which is obscure. In shape the surcoat somewhat resembled a sack, in which, at a later period, large slits were made in the arms, as well as over the hips and on the chest, through which appeared the rich furs and satins with which it was lined.... The ordinary material of the surcoat for the rich was cloth, either scarlet, blue, or reddish brown, or two or more of these colours mixed together; and for the poor, linsey-woolsey or fustian. The nobles, princes, or barons, when holding a court, wore surcoats of a colour to match their arms, which were embroidered upon them, but the lesser nobles who frequented the houses of the great spoke of themselves as in the robes of such and such a noble, because he whose patronage they courted was obliged to provide them with surcoats and mantles. These were of their patron's favourite colour, and were called the livery (_livrée_), on account of their distribution (_livraison_), which took place twice a year. The word has remained in use ever since, but with a different signification; it is, however, so nearly akin to the original meaning that its affinity is evident." [Illustration: Fig. 418.--Costume of English Servants in the Fourteenth Century.--From Manuscripts in the British Museum.] [Illustration: Fig. 419.--Costume of Philip the Good, with Hood and "Cockade."--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period.] An interesting anecdote relative to this custom is to be found in the chronicles of Matthew Paris. When St. Louis, to the dismay of all his vassals, and of his inferior servants, had decided to take up the cross, he succeeded in associating the nobles of his court with him in his vow by a kind of pious fraud. Having had a certain number of mantles prepared for Christmas-day, he had a small white cross embroidered on each above the right shoulder, and ordered them to be distributed among the nobles on the morning of the feast when they were about to go to mass, which was celebrated some time before sunrise. Each courtier received the mantle given by the King at the door of his room, and put it on in the dark without noticing the white cross; but, when the day broke, to his great surprise, he saw the emblem worn by his neighbour, without knowing that he himself wore it also. "They were surprised and amused," says the English historian, "at finding that the King had thus piously entrapped them.... As it would have been unbecoming, shameful, and even unworthy of them to have removed these crosses, they laughed heartily, and said that the good King, on starting as a pilgrim-hunter, had found a new method of catching men." "The chaperon," adds M. Quicherat, "was the national head-dress of the ancient French, as the _cucullus_, which was its model, was that of the Gauls. We can imagine its appearance by its resemblance to the domino now worn at masked balls. The shape was much varied during the reign of Philippe le Bel, either by the diminution of the cape or by the lengthening of the hood, which was always sufficiently long to fall on the shoulders. In the first of these changes, the chaperon no longer being tied round the neck, required to be held on the head by something more solid. For this reason it was set on a pad or roll, which changed it into a regular cap. The material was so stitched as to make it take certain folds, which were arranged as puffs, as ruffs, or in the shape of a cock's comb; this last fashion, called _cockade_, was especially in vogue (Fig. 419)--hence the origin of the French epithet _coquard_, which would be now expressed by the word _dandy_. "Hats were of various shapes. They were made of different kinds of felt, or of otter or goat's skin, or of wool or cotton. The expression _chapeau de fleurs_ (hat of flowers), which continually occurs in ancient works, did not mean any form of hat, but simply a coronet of forget-me-nots or roses, which was an indispensable part of dress for balls or festivities down to the reign of Philippe de Valois (1347). Frontlets (_fronteaux_), a species of fillet made of silk, covered with gold and precious stones, superseded the _chapeau de fleurs_, inasmuch as they had the advantage of not fading. They also possessed the merit of being much more costly, and were thus the means of establishing in a still more marked manner distinctions in the social positions of the wearers. [Illustration: Fig. 420.--Costumes of a rich Bourgeoise, of a Peasant-woman, and of a Lady of the Nobility, of the Fourteenth Century.--From various painted Windows in the Churches of Moulins (Bourbonnais).] [Illustration: Saint Catherine Surrounded by the Doctors of Alexandria. A miniature from the _Breviary_ of the cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling. Bibl. of Saint-Marc, Venice. (From a copy belonging to M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.)] "There were two kinds of mantles; one was open in front, and fell over the back, and a strap which crossed the chest held it fixed on the shoulders; the other, enveloping the body like a bell, was slit up on the right side, and was thrown back over the left arm; it was made with a fur collar, cut in the shape of a tippet. This last has been handed down to us, and is worn by our judges under the name of _toge_ and _épitoge_. "It is a very common mistake to suppose that the shirt is an article of dress of modern invention; on the contrary, it is one of great antiquity, and its coming into general use is the only thing new about it. "Lastly, we have to mention the _chape_, which was always regarded as a necessary article of dress. The _chape_ was the only protection against bad weather at a period when umbrellas and covered carriages were unknown. It was sometimes called _chape de pluie_, on account of the use to which it was applied, and it consisted of a large cape with sleeves, and was completely waterproof. It was borne behind a master by his servant, who, on account of this service was called a _porte-chape._ It is needless to say that the common people carried it themselves, either slung over their backs, or folded under the arm." If we now turn to female attire, we shall find represented in it all the component parts of male dress, and almost all of them under the same names. It must be remarked, however, that the women's coats and surcoats often trailed on the ground; that the hat--which was generally called a _couvre-chef,_ and consisted of a frame of wirework covered over with stuff which was embroidered or trimmed with lace--was not of a conical shape; and, lastly, that the _chaperon_, which was always made with a tippet, or _chausse_, never turned over so as to form a cap. We may add that the use of the couvre-chef did not continue beyond the middle of the fourteenth century, at which time women adopted the custom of wearing any kind of head-dress they chose, the hair being kept back by a silken net, or _crépine_, attached either to a frontlet, or to a metal fillet, or confined by a veil of very light material, called a _mollequin_ (Fig. 420). With the aid of our learned guide we have now reached a period (end of the thirteenth century) well adapted for this general study of the dress of our ancestors, inasmuch as soon afterwards men's dress at least, and especially that of young courtiers, became most ridiculously and even indecently exaggerated. To such an extent was this the case, that serious calamities having befallen the French nation about this time, and its fashions having exercised a considerable influence over the whole continent of Europe, contemporary historians do not hesitate to regard these public misfortunes as a providential chastisement inflicted on France for its disgraceful extravagance in dress. [Illustration: Fig. 421.--Costumes of a young Nobleman and of a Bourgeois in the Fourteenth Century.--From a painted Window in the Church of Saint-Ouen at Rouen, and from a Window at Moulins (Bourbonnais).] "We must believe that God has permitted this as a just judgment on us for our sins," say the monks who edited the "Grande Chronique de St. Denis," in 1346, at the time of the unfortunate battle of Cressy, "although it does not belong to us to judge. But what we see we testify to; for pride was very great in France, and especially amongst the nobles and others, that is to say, pride of nobility, and covetousness. There was also much impropriety in dress, and this extended throughout the whole of France. Some had their clothes so short and so tight that it required the help of two persons to dress and undress them, and whilst they were being undressed they appeared as if they were being skinned. Others wore dresses plaited over their loins like women; some had chaperons cut out in points all round; some had tippets of one cloth, others of another; and some had their head-dresses and sleeves reaching to the ground, looking more like mountebanks than anything else. Considering all this, it is not surprising if God employed the King of England as a scourge to correct the excesses of the French people." And this is not the only testimony to the ridiculous and extravagant tastes of this unfortunate period. One writer speaks with indignation of the _goats' beards_ (with two points), which seemed to put the last finishing touch of ridicule on the already grotesque appearance of even the most serious people of that period. Another exclaims against the extravagant luxury of jewels, of gold and silver, and against the wearing of feathers, which latter then appeared for the first time as accessories to both male and female attire. Some censure, and not without reason, the absurd fashion of converting the ancient leather girdle, meant to support the waist, into a kind of heavy padded band, studded with gilded ornaments and precious stones, and apparently invented expressly to encumber the person wearing it. Other contemporary writers, and amongst these Pope Urban V. and King Charles V. (Fig. 422), inveigh against the _poulaines_, which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in fashion when they were made as a kind of appendix to the foot, measuring at least double its length, and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. The Pope anathematized this deformity as "a mockery of God and the holy Church," and the King forbad craftsmen to make them, and his subjects to wear them. All this is as nothing in comparison with the profuse extravagance displayed in furs, which was most outrageous and ruinous, and of which we could not form an idea were it not for the items in certain royal documents, from which we gather that, in order to trim two complete suits for King John, no fewer than six hundred and seventy martens' skins were used. It is also stated that the Duke of Berry, the youngest son of that monarch, purchased nearly ten thousand of these same skins from a distant country in the north, in order to trim only five mantles and as many surcoats. We read also that a robe made for the Duke of Orleans, grandson of the same king, required two thousand seven hundred and ninety ermines' skins. It is unnecessary to state, that in consequence of this large consumption, skins could only be purchased at the most extravagant prices; for example, fifty skins cost about one hundred francs (or about six thousand of present currency), showing to what an enormous expense those persons were put who desired to keep pace with the luxury of the times (Fig. 424). [Illustration: Fig. 422.--Costume of Charles V., King of France.--From a Statue formerly in the Church of the Célestins, Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 423.--Costume of Jeanne de Bourbon, Wife of Charles V.--From a Statue formerly in the Church of the Célestins, Paris.] We have already seen that Charles V. used his influence, which was unfortunately very limited, in trying to restrain the extravagance of fashion. This monarch did more than decree laws against indelicate or unseemly and ridiculous dress; he himself never wore anything but the long and ample costume, which was most becoming, and which had been adopted in the preceding century. His example, it is true, was little followed, but it nevertheless had this happy resuit, that the advocates of short and tight dresses, as if suddenly seized with instinctive modesty, adopted an upper garment, the object of which seemed to be to conceal the absurd fashions which they had not the courage to rid themselves of. This heavy and ungraceful tunic, called a _housse_, consisted of two broad bands of a more or less costly material, which, starting from the neck, fell behind and before, thus almost entirely concealing the front and back of the person, and only allowing the under garments to be seen through the slits which naturally opened on each side of it. A fact worthy of remark is, that whilst male attire, through a depravity of taste, had extended to the utmost limit of extravagance, women's dress, on the contrary, owing to a strenuous effort towards a dignified and elegant simplicity, became of such a character that it combined all the most approved fashions of female costume which had been in use in former periods. The statue of Queen Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V., formerly placed with that of her husband in the Church of the Célestins at Paris, gives the most faithful representation of this charming costume, to which our artists continually have recourse when they wish to depict any poetical scenes of the French Middle Ages (Fig. 423). [Illustration: Fig. 424.--Costumes of Bourgeois or Merchant, of a Nobleman, and of a Lady of the Court or rich Bourgeoise, with the Head-dress (_escoffion_) of the Fifteenth Century.--From a Painted Window of the Period, at Moulins (Bourbonnais), and from a Painting on Wood of the same Period, in the Musee de Cluny.] This costume, without positively differing in style from that of the thirteenth century, inasmuch as it was composed of similar elements, was nevertheless to be distinguished by a degree of elegance which hitherto had been unknown. The coat, or under garment, which formerly only showed itself through awkwardly-contrived openings, now displayed the harmonious outlines of the figure to advantage, thanks to the large openings in the overcoat. The surcoat, kept back on the shoulders by two narrow bands, became a sort of wide and trailing skirt, which majestically draped the lower part of the body; and, lastly, the external corset was invented, which was a kind of short mantle, falling down before and behind without concealing any of the fine outlines of the bust. This new article of apparel, which was kept in its place in the middle of the chest by a steel busk encased in some rich lace-work, was generally made of fur in winter and of silk in summer. If we consult the numerous miniatures in manuscripts of this period, in which the gracefulness of the costume was heightened by the colours employed, we shall understand what variety and what richness of effect could be displayed without departing from the most rigid simplicity. One word more in reference to female head-dress. The fashion of wearing false hair continued in great favour during the middle of the fourteenth century, and it gave rise to all sorts of ingenious combinations; which, however, always admitted of the hair being parted from the forehead to the back of the head in two equal masses, and of being plaited or waved over the ears. Nets were again adopted, and head-dresses which, whilst permitting a display of masses of false hair, hid the horsehair or padded puffs. And, lastly, the _escoffion_ appeared--a heavy roll, which, being placed on a cap also padded, produced the most clumsy, outrageons, and ungraceful shapes (Fig. 424). At the beginning of the fifteenth century men's dress was still very short. It consisted of a kind of tight waistcoat, fastened by tags, and of very close-fitting breeches, which displayed the outlines of the figure. In order to appear wide at the shoulders artificial pads were worn, called _mahoitres_. The hair was allowed to fall on the forehead in locks, which covered the eyebrows and eyes. The sleeves were slashed, the shoes armed with long metal points, and the conical hat, with turned-up rim, was ornamented with gold chains and various jewels. The ladies, during the reign of Charles VI., still wore long trains to their dresses, which they carried tucked up under their arms, unless they had pages or waiting-maids (see chapter on Ceremonials). The tendency, however, was to shorten these inconvenient trains, as well as the long hanging and embroidered or fringed sleeves. On the other hand, ladies' dresses on becoming shorter were trimmed in the most costly manner. Their head-dresses consisted of very large rolls, surmounted by a high conical bonnet called a _hennin_, the introduction of which into France was attributed to Queen Isabel of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI. It was at this period that they began to uncover the neck and to wear necklaces. [Illustration: Fig. 425.--Italian Costumes of the Fifteenth Century: Notary and Sbirro.--From two Engravings in the Bonnart Collection.] [Illustration: Fig. 426.--Costumes of a Mechanic's Wife and a rich Bourgeois in the latter part of the Fifteenth Century.--From Windows in the Cathedral of Moulins (Bourbonnais).] Under Louis XI. this costume, already followed and adopted by the greatest slaves of fashion, became more general. "In this year (1487)," says the chronicler Monstrelet, "ladies ceased to wear trains, substituting for them trimmings of grebe, of martens' fur, of velvet, and of other materials, of about eighteen inches in width; some wore on the top of their heads rolls nearly two feet high, shaped like a round cap, which closed in above. Others wore them lower, with veils hanging from the top, and reaching down to the feet. Others wore unusually wide silk bands, with very elegant buckles equally wide, and magnificent gold necklaces of various patterns. "About this time, too, men took to wearing shorter clothes than ever, having them made to fit tightly to the body, after the manner of dressing monkeys, which was very shameful and immodest; and the sleeves of their coats and doublets were slit open so as to show their fine white shirts. They wore their hair so long that it concealed their face and even their eyes, and on their heads they wore cloth caps nearly a foot or more high. They also carried, according to fancy, very splendid gold chains. Knights and squires, and even the varlets, wore silk or velvet doublets; and almost every one, especially at court, wore poulaines nine inches or more in length. They also wore under their doublets large pads (_mahoitres_), in order to appear as if they had broad shoulders." Under Charles VIII. the mantle, trimmed with fur, was open in front, its false sleeves being slit up above in order to allow the arms of the under coat to pass through. The cap was turned up; the breeches or long hose were made tight-fitting. The shoes with poulaines were superseded by a kind of large padded shoe of black leather, round or square at the toes, and gored over the foot with coloured material, a fashion imported from Italy, and which was as much exaggerated in France as the poulaine had formerly been. The women continued to wear conical caps (_hennins_) of great height, covered with immense veils; their gowns were made with tight-fitting bodies, which thus displayed the outlines of the figure (Figs. 427 and 428). Under Louis XII., Queen Anne invented a low head-dress--or rather it was invented for her--consisting of strips of velvet or of black or violet silk over other bands of white linen, which encircled the face and fell down over the back and shoulders; the large sleeves of the dresses had a kind of turned-over borders, with trimmings of enormous width. Men adopted short tunics, plaited and tight at the waist. The upper part of the garments of both men and women was cut in the form of a square over the chest and shoulders, as most figures are represented in the pictures of Raphael and contemporary painters. [Illustration: Italian Lacework, in Gold Thread. The cypher and arms of Henry III. (16th century.)] [Illustration: Fig. 427.--Costume of Charlotte of Savoy, second Wife of Louis XI.--From a Picture of the Period formerly in the Castle of Bourbon-l'Archambault, M. de Quedeville's Collection, in Paris. The Arms of Louis XI. and Charlotte are painted behind the picture.] [Illustration: Fig. 428.--Costume of Mary of Burgundy, Daughter of Charles the Bold, Wife of Maximilian of Austria (end of the Fifteenth Century). From an old Engraving in the Collection of the Imperial Library, Paris.] The introduction of Italian fashions, which in reality did not much differ from those which had been already adopted, but which exhibited better taste and a greater amount of elegance, dates from the famous expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy (Figs. 429 and 430). Full and gathered or puffed sleeves, which gave considerable gracefulness to the upper part of the body, succeeded to the _mahoitres_, which had been discarded since the time of Louis XI. A short and ornamental mantle, a broad-brimmed hat covered with feathers, and trunk hose, the ample dimensions of which earned for them the name of _trousses_, formed the male attire at the end of the fifteenth century. Women wore the bodies of their dresses closely fitting to the figure, embroidered, trimmed with lace, and covered with gilt ornaments; the sleeves were very large and open, and for the most part they still adhered to the heavy and ungraceful head-dress of Queen Anne of Brittany. The principal characteristic of female dress at the time was its fulness; men's, on the contrary, with the exception of the mantle or the upper garment, was usually tight and very scanty. We find that a distinct separation between ancient and modern dress took place as early as the sixteenth century; in fact, our present fashions may be said to have taken their origin from about that time. It was during this century that men adopted clothes closely fitting to the body; overcoats with tight sleeves, felt hats with more or less wide brims, and closed shoes and boots. The women also wore their dresses closely fitting to the figure, with tight sleeves, low-crowned hats, and richly-trimmed petticoats. These garments, which differ altogether from those of antiquity, constitute, as it were, the common type from which have since arisen the endless varieties of male and female dress; and there is no doubt that fashion will thus be continually changing backwards and forwards from time to time, sometimes returning to its original model, and sometimes departing from it. [Illustration: Figs. 429 and 430.--Costumes of Young Nobles of the Court of Charles VIII., before and after the Expedition into Italy.--From Miniatures in two Manuscripts of the Period in the National Library of Paris.] During the sixteenth century, ladies wore the skirts of their dresses, which were tight at the waist and open in front, very wide, displaying the lower part of a very rich under petticoat, which reached to the ground, completely concealing the feet. This, like the sleeves with puffs, which fell in circles to the wrists, was altogether an Italian fashion. Frequently the hair was turned over in rolls, and adorned with precious stones, and was surmounted by a small cap, coquettishly placed either on one side or on the top of the head, and ornamented with gold chains, jewels, and feathers. The body of the dress was always long, and pointed in front. Men wore their coats cut somewhat after the same shape: their trunk hose were tight, but round the waist they were puffed out. They wore a cloak, which only reached as far as the hips, and was always much ornamented; they carried a smooth or ribbed cap on one side of the head, and a small upright collar adorned the coat. This collar was replaced, after the first half of the sixteenth century, by the high, starched ruff, which was kept out by wires; ladies wore it still larger, when it had somewhat the appearance of an open fan at the back of the neck. If we take a retrospective glance at the numerous changes of costume which we have endeavoured to describe in this hurried sketch, we shall find that amongst European nations, during the Middle Ages, there was but one common standard of fashion, which varied from time to time according to the particular custom of each country, and according to the peculiarities of each race. In Italy, for instance, dress always maintained a certain character of grandeur, ever recalling the fact that the influence of antiquity was not quite lost. In Germany and Switzerland, garments had generally a heavy and massive appearance; in Holland, still more so (Figs. 436 and 437). England uniformly studied a kind of instinctive elegance and propriety. It is a curious fact that Spain invariably partook of the heaviness peculiar to Germany, either because the Gothic element still prevailed there, or that the Walloon fashions had a special attraction to her owing to associations and general usage. France was then, as it is now, fickle and capricious, fantastical and wavering, but not from indifference, but because she was always ready to borrow from every quarter anything which pleased her. She, however, never failed to put her own stamp on whatever she adopted, thus making any fashion essentially French, even though she had only just borrowed it from Spain, England, Germany, or Italy. In all these countries we have seen, and still see, entire provinces adhering to some ancient costume, causing them to differ altogether in character from the rest of the nation. This is simply owing to the fact that the fashions have become obsolete in the neighbouring places, for every local costume faithfully and rigorously preserved by any community at a distance from the centre of political action or government, must have been originally brought there by the nobles of the country. Thus the head-dress of Anne of Brittany is still that of the peasant-women of Penhoét and of Labrevack, and the _hennin_ of Isabel of Bavaria is still the head-dress of Normandy. [Illustration: Fig. 431.--Costumes of a Nobleman or a very rich Bourgeois, of a Bourgeois or Merchant, and of a Noble Lady or rich Bourgeoise, of the Time of Louis XII.--From Miniatures in Manuscripts of the Period, in the Imperial Library of Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 432.--Costume of a rich Bourgeoise, and of a Noble, or Person of Distinction, of the Time of Francis I.--From a Window in the Church of St. Ouen at Rouen, by Gaignières (National Library of Paris).] Although the subject has reached the limits we have by the very nature of this work assigned to it, we think it well to overstep them somewhat, in order briefly to indicate the last connecting link between modern fashions and those of former periods. [Illustration: Figs. 433 and 434.--Costumes of the Ladies and Damsels of the Court of Catherine de Medicis.--After Cesare Vecellio.] Under Francis I., the costumes adopted from Italy remained almost stationary (Fig. 432). Under Henri II. (Figs. 433 and 434), and especially after the death of that prince, the taste for frivolities made immense progress, and the style of dress in ordinary use seemed day by day to lose the few traces of dignity which it had previously possessed. Catherine de Medicis had introduced into France the fashion of ruffs, and at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Marie de Medicis that of small collars. Dresses tight at the waist began to be made very full round the hips, by means of large padded rolls, and these were still more enlarged, under the name of _vertugadins_ (corrupted from _vertu-gardiens),_ by a monstrous arrangement of padded whalebone and steel, which subsequently became the ridiculous _paniers_, which were worn almost down to the commencement of the present century; and the fashion seems likely to come into vogue again. [Illustration: Fig. 435.--Costume of a Gentleman of the French Court, of the End of the Sixteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Livre de Poésies," Manuscript dedicated to Henry IV.] Under the last of the Valois, men's dress was short, the jacket was pointed and trimmed round with small peaks, the velvet cap was trimmed with aigrettes; the beard was pointed, a pearl hung from the left ear, and a small cloak or mantle was carried on the shoulder, which only reached to the waist. The use of gloves made of scented leather became universal. Ladies wore their dresses long, very full, and very costly, little or no change being made in these respects during the reign of Henry IV. At this period, the men's high hose were made longer and fuller, especially in Spain and the Low Countries, and the fashion of large soft boots, made of doeskin or of black morocco, became universal, on account of their being so comfortable. We may remark that the costume of the bourgeois was for a long time almost unchanged, even in the towns. Never having adopted either the tight-fitting hose or the balloon trousers, they wore an easy jerkin, a large cloak, and a felt hat, which the English made conical and with a broad brim. Towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, the high hose which were worn by the northern nations, profusely trimmed, was transformed into the _culotte_, which was full and open at the knees. A division was thus suddenly made between the lower and the upper part of the hose, as if the garment which covered the lower limbs had been cut in two, and garters were then necessarily invented. The felt hat became over almost the whole of Europe a cap, taking the exact form of the head, and having a wide, flat brim turned up on one side. High heels were added to boots and shoes, which up to that time had been flat and with single soles.... Two centuries later, a terrible social agitation took place all over Europe, after which male attire became mean, ungraceful, plain and more paltry than ever; whereas female dress, the fashions of which were perpetually changing from day to day, became graceful and elegant, though too often approaching to the extravagant and absurd. [Illustration: Figs. 436 and 437.--Costumes of the German Bourgeoisie in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century.--Drawings attributed to Holbein.] 
34903	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 34903-h.htm or 34903-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34903/34903-h/34903-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34903/34903-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). A list of corrected printer's errors and inconsistencies can be found at the end of the text. The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks Edited by W. R. Lethaby DRESS DESIGN [Illustration: A Long-trained Muslin Dress. About 1800.] DRESS DESIGN An Account of Costume for Artists & Dressmakers by TALBOT HUGHES Illustrated by the Author from Old Examples · Together with 35 Pages of Half-Tone Illustrations London Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd. Bath, Melbourne, Toronto, and New York Reprinted 1920 GENERAL PREFACE TO THE SERIES In issuing this volume of a series of Handbooks on the Artistic Crafts, it will be well to state what are our general aims. In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books of workshop practice, from the points of view of experts who have critically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting aside vain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmanship, and to set up a standard of quality in the crafts which are more especially associated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a mere matter of _appearance_. Such "ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in production. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design from craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper finish and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from design--inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of the tool. In the third place, we would have this series put artistic craftsmanship before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who would gain a livelihood. Although within the bounds of academic art, the competition, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent. can fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic craftsmen, there is every probability that nearly every one who would pass through a sufficient period of apprenticeship to workmanship and design would reach a measure of success. In the blending of handwork and thought in such arts as we propose to deal with, happy careers may be found as far removed from the dreary routine of hack labour, as from the terrible uncertainty of academic art. It is desirable in every way that men of good education should be brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of us "in the city," and it is probable that more consideration will be given in this century than in the last to Design and Workmanship. * * * * * The designing and making of Costume is a craft--sometimes artistic--with which we are all more or less concerned. It is also, in its own way, one of the living arts, that is, it is still carried forward experimentally by experts directly attached to the "business." It has not yet been subjected to rules of good taste formulated by Academies and Universities; but when Inigo Jones, the great architect, was asked to make some designs for fancy dress, he based them on the Five Orders of Architecture, and ponderous fancies they were. If we look for the main stem of principle on which modern Costume develops, we seem to find it in the desire for freshness, for the clean, the uncrushed, and the perfectly fitted and draped. Probably a modern lady's ideal would be to wear a dress once, and then burn it. A correlative of the ideal of freshness is the delight in perfect "cut," and the rapidly changing fashions are doubtless conditioned in part by the desire for the new and unsullied. "Novelty" is a guarantee of newness. In such ephemeral productions it would be vain to seek for certain fine types of excellence which were once common when dresses were not so lightly cast aside. So it is necessary that we should understand what the ruling principle is, for it is one which will not be set aside at the bidding of well-meaning reformers. I will only venture to say that it would be desirable to make the attempt to separate in some degree the more constant elements of dress from those which are more variable. It will seem a pity to more than outsiders that a "well-dressed" person need wear so little which deserves to have been made by human hands, and nothing which deserves to be preserved. Fine laces and jewels are allowed to be antique--could not the circle of such things be a little broadened? A properly groomed man carries about on him literally nothing worth looking at. We might surely look for a watch-chain with some delicacy of handiwork--something beyond mechanical reductions of iron cables. Fine buttons might conceivably be made to go with the studs, or be made of crystal, amethyst, and silver or gold. Women might allow of the transfer of fine embroidered applications from one dress to another, or make more use of clasps and the like. I am confident that when it is pointed out, it will be felt as a shortcoming that no part of a fine lady's dress need now be too good to throw away. Although the present volume is cast into the form of a history, it is also intended to be a book of suggestions; and the hope is held that modern dressmakers may refer to it as much as, or more than, those who are interested in dress from the historical point of view. In any case the author's accurate knowledge of the facts, and his many bright sketches--which are often drawn from examples in his own remarkable collection--make the present volume an admirable handbook of English Costume. The more technical "patterns" which are included amongst the illustrations will be found most valuable to all who wish to go deeper than the first glance reveals. W. R. LETHABY. 1913. CONTENTS PAGE GENERAL PREFACE TO THE SERIES xi _Preface_ xiv LIST OF PLATES xxiii INTRODUCTION 33 CHAPTER I Prehistoric Dress--Female 40 Prehistoric Dress--Male 41 CHAPTER II The Development of Costume to the Tenth Century--Female 45 The Development of Costume to the Tenth Century--Male 49 CHAPTER III Tenth to the Fifteenth Century--Female 57 Tenth to the Fifteenth Century--Male 71 CHAPTER IV Fifteenth Century--Female 84 Fifteenth Century--Male 92 CHAPTER V Sixteenth Century. Character of Trimmings 109 Sixteenth Century. Henry VIII--Female 113 Sixteenth Century. Henry VIII--Male 118 Sixteenth Century. The Reigns of Edward VI and Mary--Female 124 Sixteenth Century. The Reigns of Edward VI and Mary--Male 129 Sixteenth Century. Elizabeth--Female 133 Sixteenth Century. Elizabeth--Male 139 CHAPTER VI The Character of Trimmings through the Seventeenth Century 142 James I 142 Charles I 143 The Commonwealth 145 Charles II 145 James II and William and Mary 146 Seventeenth Century. James I--Female 147 Seventeenth Century. James I--Male 150 Seventeenth Century. Charles I--Female 154 Seventeenth Century. Charles I--Male 160 Seventeenth Century. The Commonwealth--Male and Female 168 Seventeenth Century. Charles II--Female 169 Seventeenth Century. Charles II--Male 174 Seventeenth Century. James II--Female 178 Seventeenth Century. James II--Male 180 Seventeenth Century. William and Mary--Female 184 Seventeenth Century. William and Mary--Male 186 CHAPTER VII The Character of Decoration and Trimmings of the Eighteenth Century 190 Eighteenth Century. Anne--Female 193 Eighteenth Century. Anne--Male 198 Eighteenth Century. George I--Female 201 Eighteenth Century. George I--Male 207 Eighteenth Century. George II--Female 211 Eighteenth Century. George II--Male 214 Eighteenth Century. George III to 1800--Female 217 Eighteenth Century. George III to 1800--Male 231 CHAPTER VIII Character of Trimmings of the Nineteenth Century 237 Nineteenth Century. George III--Female 241 Nineteenth Century. George III--Male 246 Nineteenth Century. George IV--Female 248 Nineteenth Century. George IV, 1820-30--Male 254 Nineteenth Century. William IV--Female 258 Nineteenth Century. William IV--Male 263 Nineteenth Century. Victoria--Female 264 Nineteenth Century. Victoria--Male 273 PATTERNS OF VARIOUS REIGNS FROM ANTIQUE COSTUME 276 PATTERNS TO SCALE 283 PATTERNS TO SCALE, DETAILED LIST 353 INDEX 359 LIST OF DESCRIPTIVE LINES TO THE PLATES FRONTISPIECE _Facing Title_ A Long-trained Muslin Dress, about 1800. PLATE I _Facing p. 39_ Boots and Shoes from the Fourteenth to Nineteenth Century. PLATE II " 42 _A._ Elizabethan Robe in Plush, 1585-1605. _B._ Elizabethan Robe in Silk Brocade, 1565-85. _C._ Elizabethan Male Robe in Velvet Brocade, 1580-1615. _D._ Back-piece of Elizabethan Doublet in Embroidered Linen, 1580-1605. PLATE III " 55 _A._ Elizabethan Jump (or Jacket), about 1600. _B._ Portrait of Lady in Embroidered Costume, between 1620 and 1640. PLATE IV " 58 _C._ Youth's Jacket of Linen embroidered in Worsted, 1635-65. _D._ Linen Male Jacket embroidered with Gold and Silk, 1600-40. PLATE V " 71 _A._ Jerkin--Period James I. _B._ Lady's Bodice of Slashed and Vandyked Satin, 1635-50. _C._ Jerkin of Embroidered Linen, 1630-60. _D._ Jerkin of Embroidered Linen, 1580-1635. PLATE VI " 74 _A._ Collar and Cuffs set with Lace, 1600-30. _B._ Embroidered Leather Jerkin, 1620-1640. _C._ Top of Stocking, Embroidered Linen, 1625-50. PLATE VII " 87 _A._ Herald's Coat, Embroidered Velvet and Silk, First Half Seventeenth Century. _B._ Lady's Bodice of Black Velvet, 1630-60. _C._ Black Silk Jerkin, 1640-50. PLATE VIII " 90 _A._ Three Suits--Period Charles II. _B._ " " " " _C._ " " " " PLATE VIIIA " 103 _A._ Suit of Embroidered Silk, 1610-30. _B._ Three Sword-hangers Embroidered in Gold, Charles II. _C._ Braided Suit, 1670-90. PLATE IX " 106 _A._ Lady's Embroidered Silk Jacket, 1605-20. _B._ Lady's Bodice of Silk Brocade, 1680-1700. PLATE X " 119 _A._ Black Velvet Bodice, 1600-25. _B._ Five Embroidered Waistcoats, between 1690 and 1800. PLATE XI " 122 Sixteen Leather Boots and Shoes, between 1535 and 1850. PLATE XII " 135 _A._ Lady's Outdoor Costume, 1785-95. _B._ Costume, Early Eighteenth Century. _C._ Silk Brocade Dress, 1760-80. PLATE XIII " 138 _A._ Silk Coat, 1735-55. _B._ Brocade Silk Coat, 1745-60. _C._ Embroidered Cloth Coat, 1770-90. PLATE XIV " 151 _A._ Embroidered Silk Dress with Pannier, 1765-80. _B._ Brocade Dress and Quilted Petticoat, 1750-65. PLATE XV " 154 _A._ White Cloth Coat, 1775-90. _B._ Silk Dress, 1740-60. _C._ Embroidered Velvet Coat, 1753-75. PLATE XVI " 167 _A._ Silk Brocade Dress, 1740-60. _B._ Silk Brocade Sack-back Dress, 1755-1775. _C._ Dress of Striped Material, 1755-85. PLATE XVII " 170 _A._ Silk Suit, 1765-80. _B._ Quilted Dress, 1700-25. _C._ Silk Embroidered Suit, 1765-80. PLATE XVIII " 183 _A._ Brocade Bodice, 1770-85. _B._ Flowered Silk Dress, 1750-70. _C._ Silk Brocade Bodice, 1780-95. PLATE XIX " 186 _A._ Silk Brocade Dress, 1775-85. _B._ Embroidered Silk Jacket, 1775-90. _C._ Brocade Jacket, 1780-95. PLATE XX " 199 _A._ Gold-embroidered Muslin Dress, 1795-1805. _B._ Nine Aprons, between 1690 and 1750. _C._ Dress of Spotted Stockinette, 1795-1808. PLATE XXI " 202 Twenty-three Boots and Shoes, from 1800 to 1875. PLATE XXII " 215 _A._ Linen Dress, 1795-1808. _B._ Silk Bodice, 1825-30. _C._ " " 1818-25. PLATE XXIII " 218 _A._ Muslin Dress with Tinsel Design, 1798-1810. _B._ Silk Dress, Period George IV. _C._ Satin and Gauze Dress, 1820-30. PLATE XXIV " 231 _A._ Outdoor Silk Jacket, 1798-1808. _B._ Embroidered Muslin Bodice, 1816-1830. _C._ Embroidered Muslin Bodice, 1824-1825. _D._ Satin and Gauze Bodice, 1820-30. PLATE XXV " 234 _A._ Silk Dress, 1800-10. _B._ Cotton Dress, 1800-10. _C._ Embroidered Muslin Dress, 1820-30. _D._ Silk Gauze Dress, 1824-30. PLATE XXVI " 247 _A._ Morning Coat of Chintz, 1825-45. _B._ Cloth Coat, 1808-20. _C._ Cloth Overcoat, 1820-35. PLATE XXVII " 250 Outdoor Silk Dress, 1825-35. PLATE XXVIII " 259 _A._ Silk Pelisse, 1820-30. _B._ Cotton Dress, 1830-40. _C._ Silk Spencer and Cape, 1818-27. PLATE XXIX " 263 _A._ Embroidered Silk Gauze Dress, 1820-30. _B._ Gauze Dress with Appliqued Design, 1825-35. _C._ Printed Linen Outdoor Dress, 1827-1847. PLATE XXX " 266 _A._ Printed Silk Bodice, 1840-50. _B._ Gathered Linen Bodice, 1837-47. _C._ Silk Bodice and Bertha, 1845-55. PLATE XXXI " 270 _A._ Embroidered Muslin Outdoor Dress, 1855-65. _B._ Riding Habit, 1845-75. _C._ Gauze Ball Dress, 1840-55. PLATE XXXII " 279 _A._ Silk Dress, 1860-70. _B._ Gauze Walking Dress, 1850-60. _C._ Silk Dress, 1848-58. PLATE XXXIII " 282 _A._ Silk Dress with Court Train, 1828-1838. _B._ Silk Afternoon Dress, 1872-78. _C._ Silk Coat and Skirt, 1855-56. DRESS DESIGN Plates originally printed in collotype are now produced in half-tone INTRODUCTION The subject of Historical Costume covers such a multitude of detail that a volume on each century could be written, with hundreds of illustrations. Thus it is, most works on costume are expensive and bewildering; but I hope this small practical handbook will be a useful addition to the many beautifully illustrated works which already exist. I have divided the matter into centuries and reigns, as far as possible, in this small work, besides separating male and female attire, thus simplifying reference. A special feature has also been made, of supplying the maker or designer of dress with actual proportions and patterns, gleaned from antique dresses, as far back as they could be obtained; and I am much indebted to the authorities at the Victoria and Albert Museum for the permission given me to examine and measure their unique specimens; also to Mr. Wade, Mr. G. G. Kilburne, Mr. Duffield, Mr. Box Kingham, Mr. Hill, Mr. Breakespeare, and others, for their valuable assistance with interesting specimens. I have used outline drawings in the text, as being more clear for purposes of explanation. The dates given to the illustrations are to be taken as approximate to the time in which the style was worn. Many of the photographs have been arranged from my own costume collection, which has made so much of my research simple, reliable, and pleasant. I am also happy to state that before the final revision of this book I have heard that my collection of historical costumes and accessories will, after a preliminary exhibition at Messrs. Harrod's, be presented to the Victoria and Albert Museum as a gift to the nation by the Directors of that firm. Thus the actual dresses shown in these plates will find a permanent home in London, and become valuable examples to students of costume. The coiffures in the collotype plates are not to be judged as examples, for it would have consumed far too much time to set up these figures more perfectly, but all the bonnets, caps, and accessories given are genuine examples. In a book of this size, one cannot go into the designs of materials, &c., which is a study any earnest student would not neglect, but in this connection I would draw attention to the comparative colour density and proportion of designs chosen for various effects. It has been my endeavour to arrange a greater variety of the forms which make up the characters of each period, and also to give a wider knowledge into the footwear, or details of the footwear, than is usual in most costume books. In a review of the styles I would not press any choice for building new designs, as I believe in close individual research and selection, which may utilise many interesting features from costume settings even in periods which are almost scorned. I believe the purest beauty is found in the simple forms of dress and decoration settings from the 12th to the 15th centuries, schemed to the natural proportions of the figure. The grace of line and movement is often aided by the short train, which can be so happily caught up in many ways; the slight drag of the train always keeps the front clear in outline, besides showing the movement of the limbs. Length of fall in the material was desired, the figure creating its own folds with every turn, but a belt was often placed rather high under the breast. There is little reason with nature of fine form to make dress into sections by a corset waist. A long, lithe, complete curve in outline--much happier unbroken, except by the girdle--is certainly the most artistically useful conception, not breaking the rhythm (as does the harder belt), while it also induces much beauty in lifting and arranging the drapery. The long falling sleeve also has the same qualities, giving a greater fullness of shape, a variety of colour (by a difference of lining), with a winglike motion, besides softening the angle of the elbow. I think the next garment for high esteem is the chasuble-shaped tunic (with or without sleeves). Falling cleanly from the shoulders, it stops at a charming length for the skirt to take up the flow of line. The delightful effect of partly-laced or clasped sides was not missed by the ablest designers. How refined, too, was the character of decoration of the old period! The art of concentrating effects is seen to perfection, retaining the breadth of shape and length unbroken. Jewelled embroidery of fine enrichment was wrought on the borders, neck settings, square corners, the girdle, and the clasps. The preciousness of effect was truly appreciated by the enclosing of the face in the purity of white lawn and zephyr-like veilings; the circlet and the long interlaced plaits and charming nettings were all tastefully schemed. Has woman ever looked more supreme through all the centuries of extravagant styles and distortions? I believe not: but I have come to the conclusion that, at whatever period of seeming insanity of style, the woman of fine taste can overcome all obstacles by her individual choice and "set up," and has really always looked fascinating. There was another form of decoration at this period--the cutting of the edges into a variety of simple or foliated shapes, giving a flutter and enrichment to forms in a simple manner, and this, in conjunction with the increasing richness of materials, was a valuable aid to lighten the effects. It was probably initiated by the heraldic characteristics in vogue. The pricked and slashed details had much the same result in enriching surfaces. Later the fan sleeves of the 18th century were enhanced in a similar way by the curved and scalloped shaping, which was used as late as the Victorian sixties with happy effect on the polonaises. Now, as regards the finest corset dress, the palm must be given to the sack-back dress of the eighteenth century (not in the period of its distortion with hoops), and a full setting showed it to greatest advantage. This type of design lent itself to more variety in beauty of arrangement than any other; the looping, reefing, and tying always set gracefully in accord with the back fall. The easy exchange of the stomacher also gave additional chance of effect, and the beauty of the fan-shaped sleeve, with its lace falls at the elbow, was a delightful creation. How rich and refined this character could be, without the monstrous forms and head-dresses which later invaded it and turned it into ornate absurdity! When we examine the period of Charles I, we find much charming dignity in the adaptations of earlier inventions; the collar settings were noble, indeed perfect, in arrangement, and the bodice decoration and proportions most interesting. For the grace of girlhood no dresses are happier than those of the early 19th century to 1830, and the inventions in trimmings through this period were prolific in beauty and lightness of style. Analysis of the many fashion-plates and original dresses of this period will well repay all interested in beautiful needlecraft and dress design. The arrangement of frills, insertions, gathered effects, applied forms, and tasselled or buttoned additions, will be found full of beauty and novelty, especially in the dresses of white embroidery. Plates XXIII and XXIV (see pp. 218-231) give some happy examples of this time. [Illustration: Plate I.--Boots and Shoes from the 14th to the 19th Centuries. 1. Charles II. 2. James II. 3. William and Mary. 4. George II. 5. George III., 1770. 6. George III., 1760. 7. George III., 1780-1800. 8. 1870-1880. 9. William and Mary. 10. 1680-1700. 11. 1680-1702. 12. 1750-1775. 13. 1580-1625. 14. 1710-1730. 15. Henry VIII. 16. Semi-Clog, 1780-1800. 17. Henry VIII. 18. 1778-1795. 19. Late 15th Century or early 16th Century. 20. 1500-1540. 21. Late 14th Century to middle of 15th Century. 22. 1530-1555. 23. 1535-1555.] A word on the most condemned flow of fashion during the Victorian era. There are many dresses of real charm to be found amongst the mass of heavy styles which must not be overlooked in studying design and style. Even the crinoline dress, when treated with the exquisite silk gauzes, as Fig. 3 in Plates XXXI and XXXIII (see pp. 270-282), was as alluring as any woman could wish, and the original design of the jacket in the latter figure, with its richly embroidered, long-skirted front cut short at the back, arranged itself perfectly on this type of undersetting. There was notable refinement of effect and beauty of proportion in many dresses of the sixties, as exemplified in Fig. A, Plate XXXII (see p. 279), the waist being set rather high, and the very full skirt carried back by the crinoline being held thus with its cross ties. CHAPTER I PREHISTORIC DRESS. FEMALE. The woman's attire would have been chiefly a shortish skirt or wrap of coarse linen, wool, or leather, gathered in front or folded at one hip; grass cloth may also have been in use in most primitive tribes. Probably the upper part of the body was kept bare, except for many ornaments and necklaces, but a bodice or jacket cut in the same simple form as the male shirt, with a heavy belt or girdle, would have been used, and certainly a large shawl, which could be wrapped over the head and round the figure during inclement hours. Dyed or painted patterns on the cloths might well have been also in use, their chief designs being stripes, circles or dots, zigzag lines, diamonds and plaid squares, rope patterns and plaited patterns. The hair would have been loose, plaited, or coiled on top, held by bone pins or circlets of bronze. PREHISTORIC DRESS. MALE. We have little description or illustration to certify the actual dress of the early inhabitants of Britain, but we can draw conclusions with pretty certain assurance, from the knowledge of their mode of living. From their attainments in artistic design and handiwork, it is clear they had arrived at a very high state of savage culture before the Roman invasion; and we have only to study the better types of savage life still in progress, to picture how our own primitive race would be likely to dress under the conditions of climate. The thousands of "finds," which accumulate evidence every year, give us a closer acquaintance with their customs and work. The rest we must imagine from our general knowledge of what they had to contend with in climate, forest, cave, and floods. These early people, it is presumed from certain discoveries, had long known the art of coarsely weaving flax and wool, which must soon have been in general use, from its being healthier and cleaner than the garments of skin. And very probably a coarse linen, with simple dyes of red, blue, yellow, and brown, was in use here when the Romans came. The head-dress consisted of a cap of fur or wool, probably decorated with a feather, over loose and most likely very unkempt hair falling to the shoulders. The Gauls cut their locks from the back of the head, often tying up the remainder in a tuft on the top; no doubt the hair was sometimes plaited or pinned up with wood, bone, or bronze ornaments. Bone pins, teeth, and boar tusks were carried in the ears, as well as studs of bone or stone in the underlip, and even the cheek may have been so decorated, as it was amongst the Esquimaux. The face and body were painted with red and white ochre and a blue stain. The neck was adorned with strings of teeth, stones, amber, jet, bronze, and probably beads of glass or baked clay coloured. Amulets and tokens, armlets and bracelets were all in use. Also the torque, a twisted rod of gold flattened or curled together at the ends, was a mark of dignity. A wristlet of wood, bone, or leather was worn when the bow and arrows were used. The arms were a spear of flint or bronze and a dagger of the same, a hatchet or heavy club, a mace studded with flint or bronze spikes, and the sling, which would have necessitated a leather wallet to carry the stones; fish spears and snags. Also the bolas for felling cattle seems to have been known; in fact nearly all the usual implements appertaining to savage life were in use. [Illustration: Plate II.-- (_a_) Elizabethan Robe in Plush. 1585-1605. (_b_) Elizabethan Robe in Silk Brocade. 1565-85. (_c_) Elizabethan Male Robe in Velvet Brocade. 1580-1615. (_d_) Back-piece of Elizabethan Doublet in Embroidered Linen. 1580-1605. _Measures, see p. 281._ _Sleeve pattern of C, see p. 300._] The first item of male attire was of two skins fastened at the shoulders, and from this we get the early chasuble form (which may be so beautifully treated, even to the present time), girt with a leather thong or strap at the waist. One skin lapped the other, and hardly needed sewing together at the sides, while thus it was easier to throw off; it may also have been tied up between the legs. The fur was worn both inside and out, according to the weather; this large skin wrap would also be worn cross-ways with the right shoulder free, and the simple cloak of various lengths with a hole for the head to pass through was no doubt one of the first discoveries in costume. A loin cloth or skin may have been worn alone, caught up through the legs and fastened at the back of the waist with a heavy belt and set well down the hips. This would hold a number of personal necessities, in the shape of a wallet and dagger. The legs would be wrapped with skins, tied up or crossed by leather or sinew thongs, or with hemp or grass rope. Skins were probably also used on the feet, gathered and tied above the instep and round the ankle. The enumeration of these items will give a pretty definite idea of how the early race would appear in their more or less attired form. In fighting, they cleared for action (as it were) and discarded all clothing, their only protection being a shield of wicker or wood covered with leather; it may have been studded with bronze plates or painted with grotesque characters, as were their own bodies, in true savage style, to strike fear into their enemies; it is even possible feather decorations formed part of their "get up." CHAPTER II THE DEVELOPMENT OF COSTUME TO THE TENTH CENTURY. FEMALE. The female head-dress consisted chiefly of flowing hair banded with a circlet of various shapes, but a development of braiding plaits is found very early, and the hair was probably arranged so before the Roman era. These plaits were generally brought over the shoulder to the front, the hair being parted in the centre, thus making an oval forehead. Various caps began to show originality, and jewels were set in the centre of the forehead on the little crown-like hat, which must have been most becoming. Squares of coloured stuffs were draped over the head and shoulders, sometimes upon white linen squares, and many ladies began to bind the face and head, shutting out the hair, in the 8th century. The kerchief draping is very important to study, because it was the general mode amongst the people. Heavy collars of ornament and strings of beads, hanging even to the waist, are noticeable features of these centuries, also large ear-rings. A full cloak, with a large clasp or brooch, opened in front, or was turned to free one shoulder; there was also a long "drape" thrown round over the opposite shoulder or brought picturesquely over the head. The ecclesiastical form of cloak as described in the male attire was also formed about the 6th century; its graceful line was frequently bordered completely with a band of ornament, and it was clasped just across the breasts. The complete circular cloak, with a hole for the head, is seen very early, decorated with a pinked edge, which may also be noted on some of the short dresses of the middle classes. Aprons are no doubt of the earliest origin. A loose tunic falling to the hips was girded rather high up the body, as in the classic dress, and bands passing both outside or crossing between the breasts and going over the shoulder came from the same source; these were with, or without, short sleeves to the elbow. A long loose robe was the chief attire to the 6th century, belted rather high in the waist, and caught up with a girdle at the hips; these girdles gave a great interest to the early centuries, with the art of arranging the fullness of skirt into its hold. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] From the 6th century the dress became closer fitting, and a short bodice is seen; the neck was cut very low, either square or round in shape, and this style had short tight sleeves or tight sleeves to the wrist. The later tunic of the 9th century marked the beginning of the slit-open upper sleeve, and a greater length of the neck opening, which came to be fastened down the front to the waist. The early skirts (to the 6th century) were hung from the hips, and were often attached to a heavy girdle band, the fullness was gathered mostly at the back and front; other skirts hung from a higher belt and were again caught up in the girdle. A =V=-shaped neck setting was worn by the Franks, from which probably came the shaped front piece that will interest us in the 13th century. The shoes were similar to the male shapes described later, and the same mode of binding the stockings was sometimes imitated. THE DEVELOPMENT OF COSTUME TO THE TENTH CENTURY. MALE. In taking the long period from the Roman occupation to the 10th century, we can discover a real development of style in costume, as with the system of vassalage a distinction of class arose. No doubt the Romans introduced a finer tuition of weaving, needlecraft, decoration, and dyeing; and later the various peoples coming from the Continent, when settled under Alfred in the 9th century, produced a solid style of barbaric splendour. [Illustration: FIG. 2.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.] The male hair dressing, from the rugged mass of hair, soon became well combed and trimmed square across the neck: ear-rings may still have been in use by some nobles till the 11th century, and chaplets were worn upon the hair. The Saxon beard was divided into two points. Small round tight caps of wool, fur, or velvet, and rush or straw hats of a definite shape were in use to the 10th century. Tight caps, with lappets tied under the chin, and hoods appear on the short capes about the 8th century, or probably earlier. The garment was of the simplest form, cut like a plain square loose shirt to the middle of the thigh, and this was put on over the head. The opening to pass the head through was the first part to receive a band of decoration. The sides were sometimes opened to the hips and the front caught between the legs and held at the waist. A garment opened down the front, and another wrapped across to either shoulder is also seen. A belt girt the waist, and the tunic was pulled loosely over it. This also carried the essential requirements in the shape of a pouch, dagger, knife, comb, sword, &c. The neck was ornamented with chains of bronze, gold, beads, and charms, and up to the 8th century a bronze ornamental armlet was worn, besides a wristlet. The men of the ruling class from the 8th century were clothed in a long garment of simple shape, falling to the ankle, richly bordered at the hem and neck. This generally had long tight sleeves, and often over this a shorter tunic, reaching just below the knee, sometimes sleeveless, or with rather full sleeves tightening to the wrist. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] A plain square chasuble shape was in fashion from the 8th century, reaching to the bottom of the calf of the leg, and richer materials began to be used; no belt was passed round this, as it was allowed to fall straight. Loose breeches were worn from very early times, and a loose trouser to the ankle, being tied there or bound crosswise from the boot sometimes right up the thigh. The same binding was done even with the bare legs and later hose: close-fitting short breeches and cloth hose became a feature in the 10th century, and with the latter an ornamental knee-piece or garter below the knee sometimes finished the strappings. The cloak was the "grand garment," heavily banded with ornament and fastened with a large clasp on one shoulder, or at the centre of the breast. Long circular cloaks of varying lengths, put on over the head, were much favoured, and when caught up at the sides on either shoulder gave a fine draped effect. Another cloak of ecclesiastical character, sloping in a curve from the neck and not meeting in front, is seen on many notable figures from the early 8th century, large clasps bridging the width low down on the chest. [Illustration: Plate III.-- (_a_) Elizabethan Jump (or Jacket). About 1600. (_b_) Portrait of a Lady in Embroidered Costume. Between 1620 and 1640.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--TYPES OF SHOES. British, Roman, Norman to 13th century.] No doubt the sandal of various forms was much used for footwear through this period, also a simple low shoe which was held on by the leg-strappings, as, about the 8th century, shoes are seen with loops at the upper edge, these being attachments for the binding, and this was no doubt a method from the prehistoric times. There was also a soft boot reaching to the calf, laced up the front; and, after the 8th century, a rather pointed shoe, open down the instep, laced, tied, or gathered into a buckle about the ankle. CHAPTER III TENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. FEMALE. The head-dress of women now began to show a preference to confine the hair with nets and to close in the face, which continued till the 15th century. The circlet and long plait or plaits and the flowing hair remained till the 14th century. In the 12th century we discover the hair gathered in nets at either side of the head, covering the ears. A low-crowned hat was bound over with a band of lawn or fine material passing underneath the chin, otherwise the plaits were looped up under a circlet which was also worn with the flowing hair. A square effect was aimed at in the 13th century with tight side-plaits bound into a shape or netted hair was strapped to the head as in Fig. 11 (see p. 65). A fall of fine material softened the hard effect, and many ladies of quality bound the face, neck, and head in the wimple of fine linen, sometimes gathering this to the same quaint shape of the netted hair. I give a variety of these settings on page 65. A kerchief of linen coming round the neck was brought up tightly round the face and festooned on the top of the head, while another piece was pinned close to the brows and fell loosely to the shoulders, being often held on by a circlet as well. This character was maintained till the early 14th century, when a style of high peaked hats came into evidence, one shape of which became the most imposing feature of historic costume in the 15th century. It was still but a simple form in the middle of the 14th century, for another shape first gained predominance. Early in this century also may be noted a curious shape like the cap of liberty, usually with a long tail at the back as drawn on page 59. This carried design to the eccentric forms of the pig-tailed hood, and then the rival of the high peaked hat took its place towards the end of the 14th century--a cushioned head-dress, which rose and divided in a hornlike structure. It started as in Fig. 25, and I have illustrated its progress; the veil draping was a great feature, giving plenty of scope for individual fancy. It was, as a rule, richly decorated with gold and jewels, and the hair was completely enclosed in a gold net and a tight-fitting cap to hold this erection. Large drop ear-rings were much worn, and a fine chain of gems encircled the neck or fell to the breast. [Illustration: Plate IV.-- (_c_) Youth's Jacket of Linen Embroidered in Worsted. 1635-65. _Pattern, see p. 299._ (_d_) Linen Male Jacket Embroidered with Gold and Silk. 1600-40.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Tenth to thirteenth century.] [Illustration: FIG. 7. _Henry II._ _John_ _Henry I._ _Richard I._] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--Twelfth to fourteenth century.] In the 10th century a long close-fitting robe was in fashion, sometimes with a deep =V=-shaped neck opening, though usually the neck was cut to a round form. Some sleeves were tighter with a small cuff, but usually the outer garment had a falling sleeve with a square or round end showing the tight undersleeve. The outer sleeve varied much in length, from the elbow or hand dropping even to the ground; it was narrow and widened through the 14th century, when its edge was cut into various patterns as in Fig. 18 (see p. 79). In the 13th century we notice a long sleeve opened at the elbow for the under sleeve to come through, which beautiful style continued to the middle of the 17th century. [Illustration: FIG. 9. _Norman, 12th century_ _Saxon, 12th century_] [Illustration: FIG. 10.--Fourteenth century, 1st half.] [Illustration: FIG. 11.--Fourteenth century, 2nd half.] With the 10th century came the first corselet from the waist to the hip, clasping a loose tunic with an under-dress taking a long pointed train. The manner of tucking the tunic under the corselet when it was worn over it, and so creating festoons, is worthy of notice as interesting in arrangement and design. The 13th century parti-coloured and striped dresses foreshadowed the heraldic fashion, which must be studied for its proportion and treatment of decorative colour-values in counterchange to get the true value of its noble effects. A great feature now appears in the chasuble-shaped front or setting to a closely cut jacket. This ultimately becomes the decorative stomacher through the later periods, and it is very interesting to note its development. In the 13th century this jacket was a fur construction of a long simple form opened at the sides to the hips for the sleeves to come through; it had a straight hem or was rounded at the front points, and a chasuble form of it was treated as in Fig. 13 or in conjunction with a short cape; it was chiefly a decoration of ermine. It grew into a complete jacket, and in the 14th century it was heavily ornamented with gems; and the simple front, from being a feature outside the jacket, was later often enclosed at the sides. The jacket itself is beautiful in form and proportion, and the curved band of design over the hips makes a nice foil to the curved front. This pattern is plainly derived from the effect of the rich girdle that was at first seen through the side openings and few jackets are without it, the usual shaping of the neck with most of these was square. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--Nos. 1 to 7, 14th century. Nos. 8 and 9, 15th century.] In the first quarter of the 14th century the setting of the neck was of a round shape, and after 1350 a raised or curved form is favoured. Later still, and with the hornlike head-dress, a very deep =V= shape, open almost to the belt was the mode, often being filled in with velvet. At the same time some began to take up the fashions of a very high collar and a round-shaped body and sleeves, as in Fig. 24 (see p. 89), with which a wide pointed belt is seen. Some robes were opened in front up to the height of the girdle, though many dresses were worn without girdles after the 12th century. Decorated pockets are sometimes seen in the later period, and an interesting hand-covering or falling cuff came with them. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--Nos. 1 to 3, 14th century. Nos. 4 to 9, 15th century.] The cloak as described in the 10th century still continued till the 12th, as well as the light wrap which may almost be placed with any period, though mostly a feature of the more classic styles. Skirts and underskirts were worn with trains. They were mostly banded with wide borders of ornament up to the 13th century, the fullness being often gathered to the back and front. The chasuble-shaped overdress was worn to the middle of the 14th century, sleeveless, and, laced or sewn tight to the figure from the arm to the hip, or completely down the sides, generally reached just below the knee. The shoes were of much the same character as those of the male examples illustrated, though they hardly reached the same extravagance in length, owing, no doubt, to the feet of woman being hampered by her skirt; but I suspect they even braved high wooden clogs, as we know they did the tall chopins of the 16th century, to heighten their stature. [Illustration: Plate V.-- (_a_) Jerkin. Period James I. (_b_) Lady's Bodice of Slashed and Vandyked Satin. 1635-50. (_c_) Jerkin of Embroidered Linen. 1630-60. (_d_) Jerkin of Embroidered Linen. 1580-1635. _Pattern measurements, see p. 293._] TENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. MALE. From the 10th to the 15th century, we find costume developing rapidly into elaborate and interesting designs. Close relations with the Continent brought new ideas, and rich velvets and brocades interwoven with gold enhanced the gorgeousness of attire, while the introduction of heraldic design brought in a very picturesque element. Hats and head-dresses began to become important features, enlarging to eccentric shapes and proportions, only equalled in the extravagant part of the 18th century. It may be noted that feminine fashion, as it assumes new characters and proportions, affects the style of the male clothes in the same way, as, when a high or pointed head-dress comes in, the male hat also increases its size; the same with curved or angular designs, full or tight sleeves. The hair was worn long and rather squared in shape at the back till the end of the 15th century. A tendency to shut in the face by close hoods tied under the chin is remarked, and this forms a strong feature of the 13th and 14th centuries. Ear-rings were seldom worn after the 10th century; but the neck was generally adorned with heavy chain decorations. Beards assumed a pointed shape in accordance with this development of fashion, and double-pointed beards were revived between 1380 and 1386. Hats of straw with mushroom brims and round tops came into vogue in the 11th century, covered with coloured materials and finished with a spike or button at the top, and the crowns of these took a pointed shape in the 14th century. The usual cap with folded brim had a loose crown, and we find this began to lengthen and fall over to one side in the 11th century, and continued to elongate till, in the 15th century, it often dropped to the knee in a long thin point. In the 14th century it took a fullness of loose folds, with serrated or foliated edges falling to the shoulder as in Fig. 15 (see p. 73). A close helmet-shaped cap is seen in the 12th century, with a falling point from the crown, and the 13th century brought in the higher crowned hat, with a long peaked front, turned up at the back. Feathers were worn at the front, back, or side of hats, and sometimes on the front of the hoods; these increased their dimensions in height and peak, till the straight-up high hat, which was often brimless, came in the 15th century. The early hood or cowl soon began to vary its design, for in the 13th century it was often a part of, or attached to, a chasuble shape falling back and front, or with the long front, stopping at a short cape length behind. A note of interest in the 14th century appears, where the forehead part of the hood is turned up, showing a coloured lining, and at times the fashionable serrated edge surrounding the face is seen. [Illustration: FIG. 14. _13th century_ _14th century_ _15th century_] [Illustration: FIG. 15.--Fourteenth century.] [Illustration: Plate VI.-- (_a_) Collar and Cuffs set with Lace. 1600-30. (_b_) Embroidered Leather Jerkin. 1620-40. (_c_) Top of Stocking. Embroidered Linen. 1625-50.] [Illustration: FIG. 16.--Twelfth to thirteenth century.] The chasuble-shaped garment was a feature often worn over the coat until the end of the 15th century, and was generally worn long with the elongated fashion of the 14th century, and short with the shorter tunics of the 15th century. They are found very wide in the 14th century, and so fall well down over the shoulder, where they are often laced a short distance up, creating an interesting feature. Cloaks were not so much in favour with the heavier cowl and cape, but they were used, fastened by brooches to either shoulder rather at the back, after the 12th century. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--Fourteenth century.] A very tight-fitting suit called Justacorps came into use from the 12th century, and developed a padded round-shaped body towards the end of the 14th century; the closely-cut body was buttoned up to the throat, or was set with a high collar for the first time. The tights came over it, sometimes rather high up the waist, being laced to it. A long tunic was chiefly favoured during the 10th and 11th centuries with short or long cuffless sleeves, and a full bell-shaped falling sleeve showed a close-fitting under one. These tunics were chiefly open at the neck as in the earlier times, though a slight difference to be noted is a =V=-shaped opening in the 14th century, which is developed in the 15th century; they were also split up the sides, even to the hips. Some were very full in shape, and were gathered to either side as in the illustration; others had the body closely fitted and full only in the skirt, but as a rule one finds this latter shape only reaches just below the knee. They were often tucked into the belt in front, showing a rich underskirt. A girdle (besides a belt) was worn on the hips with the longer tunics, as in Fig. 28 (see p. 94), the dagger and pouch being carried in front on the girdle, and not the belt. A small dagger was often slung at the back or front of the neck, as an ornament at the end of the 14th century. [Illustration: FIG. 18.--Fourteenth century.] Tights to the waist were worn with both long and short tunics, and retained the crossed binding up the legs to the 13th century, in the various designs of page 53. Parti-coloured tights came in with the 14th century, carrying out the heraldic character of dress, and this may be found till about 1530. A sandal shoe was much worn up to the 12th century, with strappings to various heights up the leg, this even over the short top-boots, but the usual shoe opened down the front of the instep to the toe, which was rather pointed in shape, and it was curved or square at the ankle. The illustration gives a good variety of the prevalent forms. The stocking-boot is also another characteristic of this earlier time, as well as the commoners' woollen gaiters, worn as in Fig. 30, on the seated figure, which were in use to the middle of the 16th century. [Illustration: FIG. 19.--Twelfth and thirteenth centuries.] In the illustrations which show no shoe on the tights, it will be understood that a sole of leather was sewn on to the under part of the foot. This practice is even seen to-day on the Continent, where the clog is mostly in use. A soft boot, reaching to the calf, was worn till the 15th century, with the top folded or trimmed with fur, the latter being generally laced down the front, even to the instep: the shape of these only varied in the length of the pointed toes as the style developed. The long-pointed shoes began to increase all through the 13th century, and in the 14th century they reached their greatest length, when the points were often tied up to a garter just below the knee. Wooden clogs were much used, and were often considerably raised. Iron circular supports were also in use at the end of this time; these were the foretaste of the eccentric chopins of the 16th century, which were more favoured on the Continent than here. The pointed toes also were made to curl outwards, giving a splay-footed effect, late in the 14th century. [Illustration: FIG. 20.--Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.] CHAPTER IV FIFTEENTH CENTURY. FEMALE. We have now arrived at the height of eccentric fashion in mediæval head-dress. The hornlike creations, studded with jewels, and peaks of wondrous height, both draped with fine muslins and often completely shutting away the hair from sight, had a supporting cap which mostly came over ears and cheeks, and a clutch is seen on the forehead, at times concealed by a jewel. The hair was generally allowed to fall loose under the back drape, or a long plait is sometimes seen at the back with the first-named head-dress. The back drape setting from the brow down the back was well conceived to balance the high spire, but it seems to have been discarded during the reign of Edward V, and light veil falls were worn which often came half over the face. In Henry VII's time the extreme fashion came in the shape of a closely-fitting curved cap, with a fall of material over the back. The ermine-trimmed jacket was still in favour to the middle of the last-named reign, when it was worn low down over the hips. [Illustration: FIG. 21.--Fifteenth century, 1st half.] [Illustration: FIG. 22.--Middle of fifteenth century to sixteenth century.] [Illustration: Plate VII.-- (_a_) Herald's Coat. Embroidered Velvet and Silk. 1st half 17th Century. Measured pattern, page 301. (_b_) Lady's Bodice of Black Velvet. 1630-60. _Measurement, see p. 297._ (_c_) Black Silk Jerkin. 1640-60.] [Illustration: FIG. 23.--Fifteenth century, 1st half.] The chief dress of this period had a =V=-shaped collar-front meeting at the waist, mostly made in black material or fur. It was wide on the shoulder, and seems to have been stiffened to set out; the =V= shape was generally filled in with velvet, and a very wide band encircled the waist; a girdle is occasionally noted. The keys' pocket and other requisites were generally carried on the underskirt during these times. The skirt was full and gathered to the back in a train, the gathers often running into the bodice; a very wide border is prevalent, even to the middle of the thigh. Tight sleeves are usual, and hanging sleeves were worn, mostly set in a very short sleeve, which assume a puff-shape in Henry VII's reign; long cuffs, almost covering the hand, are seen on many sleeves. [Illustration: FIG. 24.--Fifteenth century, 2nd half.] [Illustration: FIG. 25.--Fifteenth century, 2nd half.] [Illustration: Plate VIII.--(_a_) (_b_) (_c_) Three Suits. Period Charles II.] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--End of fifteenth century.] Modes of opening the skirt up to the hips occasionally showed themselves, and even the sides to the hips are seen laced. In the earlier dress, about 1485, the neck setting of dress became very square, and was filled with fine-drawn lawn. The square shape rises in a curved centre before the end of this period, and a close-fitting robe was worn with a girdle, often opened up the sides. The short upper sleeve and full outer sleeve so much in vogue gave place to a divided upper and lower sleeve, laced or tied with ribbon, with puffs of lawn pulled through the openings at shoulder and elbow, and down the back of the forearm. Slashes are now seen in most sleeves, and an Italianesque character pervaded the fashion. High, soft boots and shoes of a similar shape to the male description were worn, and changed when the square-toe shoes came in. Through this period there are many interesting details of costume to study, while gilt tags, finishing laces, and ribbons are to be remarked from this period. FIFTEENTH CENTURY. MALE. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--Fifteenth century.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.--Fifteenth century, 1st half.] [Illustration: FIG. 29.--Middle of fifteenth century.] The chief shapes to mark in this century in male head-dress is the increased height of the tall hats which rise to vie with the female fashions. We still see a round hat with a rolled edge and long fall over one side, besides shorter folds in the crown, both scalloped or foliated at the edge, and this shape may be noted till about 1460. Some of these hats were made without a crown, as in Fig. 28 (see p. 94); the roll was decorated, as a rule, with jewelled studs. A top hat, something like our present shape, appears, but more belled at the top and also a padded, rolled brim. It was made in various rich materials, and often decorated with jewels. The peak-fronted hat still continued to be favoured till about 1480, its chief difference being a crown more eccentric in height. Tall cylinder hats, with folded brims or no brim, and other shapes are illustrated. The variety is so great through this period that it is well to study the vagaries of fashion which I have illustrated in sequence as far as possible; they were mostly used till about the last quarter of this century, when the low-crowned flat hat with turned-up brim began to secure the fashion. This was generally worn tilted on one side and often over a scarlet skull-cap. A large bunch of plumes came in with this hat, set up from the front, curving backwards, and giving a very grand effect: with most of the tall hats the feather was set at the back. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--Fifteenth century.] [Illustration: FIG. 31.--Fifteenth century, 1st half.] [Illustration: FIG. 32.--Fifteenth century, 2nd half.] The notable change in the tunic, which was worn both very short and to the ground, was the arrangement of folds to the back and front, gathered to a =V= shape at the waist. The hanging sleeve began to go out of favour after the middle of the century, but the sleeve or cuff covering the hand was continued till the end of this century. A sleeve, full at the shoulder, is found, and short, round, padded sleeves came in, worn over a close-fitting sleeve. This short sleeve became raised on the shoulder, and was cut or looped up the outer side: a long loose outer sleeve is also seen in conjunction with these short ones. A very short jacket is notable, of a plain square shape, with a plain sleeve on the left arm and a hanging sleeve on the right to the knee. The tight-fitting jerkin, laced down the front, was worn with this as with most other coats. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--End of fifteenth century.] [Illustration: FIG. 34.--Fifteenth century, 2nd half.] [Illustration: Plate VIIIa-- (_a_) Suit of Embroidered Silk. 1610-30. (_b_) Three Sword Hangers Embroidered in Gold. Charles II. (_c_) Braided Suit. 1670-90.] [Illustration: FIG. 35.--Fifteenth-century Shoes and Clogs.] The high collar to the throat had gone out for a collar opened in front. Very short and very long "chasubles" were worn with or without sleeves which were gathered high and full at the shoulders. The sleeves were now sometimes slit open at the back and held with several ties, as linen sleeves are now shown with these. Parti-coloured tights were not so much favoured through this period, but a decorated thigh, or part of the thigh and knee, was a favourite method of enrichment. [Illustration: FIG. 36.] A long coat came in at the later part of this time, with a deep =V=-shaped collar meeting at the waist; it was also cut into a square shape at the shoulders, as in Fig. 43 (see p. 119). A loose bell-shaped sleeve usually went with this, often opened in the front of the upper arm. A short square cape is at times seen in conjunction with this. A low square or round neck shape came in during the last quarter of this century, filled in with a fine gathered lawn and a tight-fitting coat with a pleated skirt and full padded sleeves, or a tight sleeve with a full puff or spherical upper part. [Illustration: FIG. 37. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, second half of 15th century. Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, variety of shapes from 1490 to 1630.] [Illustration: FIG. 38. No. 1. 14th century. 2. 15th century. 3. " " 4. Late 16th cent. 5. 1580-1610. 6. " " 7. 1605-1640. 8. 1600-1625. 9. 1550-1600. 10. 1610-1640. 11. 1590-1620. 12. 1605-1630. 13. 1675-1695. 14. 1670-1690. 15. 1680-1700. 16. 1690-1720. 17. 1680-1700. 18. 1700-1750. 19. 1700-1780. 20. 1700-1760. 21. 1740-1780. 22. 1745-1780. 23. 1770-1800. 24. 1730-1760. 25. 1700-1780. 26. 1830-1860. 27. 1780-1800. 28. 1840-1870. 29. " " ] [Illustration: Plate IX.-- (_a_) Lady's Embroidered Silk Jacket. 1605-30. (_b_) Lady's Bodice of Silk Brocade. 1680-1700.] [Illustration: FIG. 39.--Decorated Leather, 15th and 16th centuries. _Comb case_ _purse_ _Cut leather. 15 cent._ _Leather_ _Pierced leather, 16 cent._ _Bronze studs 15 or 16 cent._ _metal studs_ _Incised lines with metal studs 15 cent._] Shoes and boots were still worn with very long pointed toes till about 1465, when a proclamation was issued for beaks or piked shoes not to pass two inches, and after this time a broad round-toed shoe began to appear. Soft high boots to the top of the thigh, with folded top, belong to this century, as well as the fashionable boot to the calf. The sword or dagger was carried towards the front or side, and a small dagger across the belt at the back. The pouch or purse was also used as a dagger support. CHAPTER V SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHARACTER OF TRIMMINGS. Before the 16th century we find the art of decoration in costume had been confined chiefly to applied ornamental bands at the neck, waist, and borders of skirt and cloak. They had up till this time utilised, with great artistry of design (no doubt partly due to the heraldic study), the patterns of the finely decorated damasks and velvets. The counter colour effects and relative proportions, such as a small-patterned, dull-coloured silk setting off a large full-coloured design was ably considered, as well as the introduction of a nicely-balanced black note or setting, which proved these designers were highly skilled in judgment of style. They also discovered the art of giving enrichment and lightness to the effect by means of the various serrated edgings to the materials, which also gave a flutter to the movement. A preference of lacing for fastening added to the charm of the dress, but the long rows of close buttons were also a feature of the clinging robes, the clasps and brooches, neck-chains, girdle, belt, and wallet being further very important items of enrichment to the effect. On coming to the 16th century we enter what may be termed the slashed and puffed period. The sleeves of Henry VIII's reign are very rich in design and jewel-setting, the design of the sleeve as in Fig. 40 giving a striking effect, the angle of the top sleeve being held out by the stiffness of the under silk one. The neck-setting and festooning of the jewel-chains play an important part in the design on the plain velvet corset bodices. The head-dress is one of the most remarkable, and gave a great chance for individual arrangement in binding the back fall to set at various angles on the shaped cap piece, combining severity with a big loose draping which is extremely picturesque. With Edward VI commences what may be termed the braided period of decoration. This latter came suitably with the stiffer corsage and set up. Mary's reign was not of attractive severity, but the over-robe with the short circular sleeve at the shoulder and high collar was a graceful creation, and was retained by many as late as 1630. There was little to admire in the Elizabethan age as regards design, except the beauty of the materials and the exquisite needlework. The proportions of the dresses were exceedingly ugly, and the pleated farthingale an absurdity. The male dress had much interest and often beauty of setting and decorative effect. The slashed materials gave a broken quality to what would otherwise be a hard effect, and it also cleverly introduced another colour change through the suit. There will be found many examples in these illustrations of the pricked and punctured designs on leather-work which are worth examining for modern treatment. Quilting and pleating were ably combined with the braiding, and we see the clever adaptation of straw patterns sewn on (a feature of the late 16th century), which harmonised with the gold braidings or gold lace, or resembled the same effect. The trimmings of braid were often enriched with precious or ornamental stones and pearls, the stomacher, waist, front band down the skirt, and borders of most garments. The points of slashes were often held by jewelled settings, and the long slashes were caught here and there with the same. Another important item was the black stitchwork on linen, sometimes mingled with gold, so highly prized now for its beauty of design and effect, but beginning probably in the reign of Henry VII. Short coats of this type of the Elizabethan age are marvels of skill, and many caps are still in existence. Fine linen ruffs and collars were often edged with this work, as well as with gold lace. Jackets and caps, both male and female, bearing geometrical and scroll designs in gold, filled in with coloured needlework of flowers, birds, or animals have happily been preserved for our admiration. Sequins appear on work from Henry VIII's time, and were much appreciated by the Elizabethan workers, who no doubt found the trembling glitter added much to the gold-lace settings and delicate veilings: long pear-shaped sequins were favoured for this. Sleeves were often separate, and could be changed at will. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. HENRY VIII. FEMALE. The hair at this period was parted in the centre and gathered into a plait at the back; it was also seen rather full and waved at the sides of the head, and a small circlet was often carried across the brow. A cap of velvet or gold brocade, sometimes with a padded front, curved over the ears to the neck, keeping the shape of the head. Over this again a velvet fall was turned back from the front or shaped as in the illustration, reaching to the shoulder. These falls were also bound into set-out shapes, which gave many picturesque effects. Dress had now taken a new phase, and the set bodice became a lasting feature. At this period the waist was rather short, and the neck, arranged in a low square or round form, generally filled in with gathered lawn. The upper part of the sleeve was often divided from the bodice by ties with lawn puffs, and was made in a full circular form, slashed or puffed and banded, with a tight-fitting sleeve on the forearm. Another type divided the upper and lower part of the arm at the shoulder and elbow, the forearm being effectively tied or laced, and the under lawn sleeve pulled through; small slashings are also seen on these. At times a bell-shaped sleeve was worn, showing a slashed or puffed under one. Many dresses were still cut in one, and were often high-necked; with these usually a girdle or band of drapery was worn, and some skirts opened up the front, showing a rich underskirt. [Illustration: FIG. 40.--Sixteenth century, 2nd quarter.] [Illustration: FIG. 41.--Period Henry VIII.] Full skirts, heavily pleated at the waist, were worn in the earlier part of this reign, banded in varying widths of designs to about the knee; but a new development was in progress--a stiff, bell-shaped dress, set on hoops over a rich underskirt which usually bore a jewelled band down the centre, the upper one being divided in front to display this feature. The bodice with this type becomes longer in the waist, and was made on a stiff corset. Gloves are occasionally seen, serrated at the cuff-end. Shoes of the slashed character and square toes were also worn by the ladies, but many preferred a shoe with a moderately rounded toe. The first mention of a leather umbrella is 1611, but this is a rare instance, as they were not in use till the 18th century here, though they are noted in continental prints during the 17th century. [Illustration: FIG. 42.--Sixteenth-century modes, 1st half Henry VIII.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. HENRY VIII. MALE. The modes at the end of the last century now developed into a heavier character of design. The long hair soon began to be closely cut, and a short beard came into fashion. A flat type of hat was worn, with serrated brim, or tabs which could be turned down at times, and others were kept in place by a lacing cord through holes. There was also a flat "Tam o' Shanter" shape, generally worn well tilted on one side, and amongst the upper classes mostly adorned with feathers. The =V=-shaped collar, or opening to the belt, was still retained on the jerkin, and plain or pleated skirts are seen, also a square close-fitting vest, with a low square neck, filled with gathered lawn, or one with a high neck and short collar, on which a very small ruff appeared for the first time, and at the wrist as well. These were now decorated with long slashes or gathered puffs: heraldic design was still seen on the breast, and even parti-colour was worn, but this character was now treated more by decorating with coloured bands on the tunics or tights. [Illustration: Plate X.-- (_a_) Black Velvet Bodice. 1600-25. (_b_) Five Embroidered Waistcoats. Between 1690 and 1800. _Pattern, see p. 292._] [Illustration: FIG. 43.--Period Henry VIII.] [Illustration: FIG. 44.--Cap shapes. Period Henry VIII.] [Illustration: FIG. 45.--Variety of shapes and slashing. Henry VIII.] Long coats were still worn of the shape described at the end of the 15th century, but a short surcoat was the mode, reaching just below the knee, sleeveless, or with the various hanging sleeves of this period, the fronts usually turned back to form a wide collar, either round or square in shape on the shoulder, or at times falling to a deep square at the back. The sleeves were full in the upper part, tightening to the wrist, sometimes open up to the elbow and laced, or they were pleated into a full round shape at the shoulder. Puffs and slashings increased in these designs, and by 1520 we find the sleeves mostly divided into puffed and slashed forms, which grew to fantastic proportions. Very short, tight breeches or trunks, with a front flap or codpiece, were decorated to match the body design and colour schemes; they increased in length to the knee, or just below, during this reign, and usually finished in a serrated roll. [Illustration: Plate XI.--16 Leather Boots and Shoes. Between 1535 and 1860. 1. 1740-1780. 2. 1535-1550. 3. 1680-1700. 4. 1645-1690. 5. 1665-1685. 6. 1690-1710. 7. 1845-1860. 8. 1790-1820. 9. 1665-1670. 10. 1800-1820. 11. 1820-1840. 12. " 13. 1815-1850. 14. 1760-1780. 15. 1650-1670. 16. 1630-1660.] [Illustration: FIG. 46.--Footwear, 1510-1540.] Shoes were of the square form, some very short in front, held on by a strap across the instep, others with fronts to the instep. The corners were often brought out to a point on each side of the toes, and the mode of decorating with slashing and punctures made them very interesting. The sides of these shoes are very low, from ¾ to 1 inch, and no heels are seen. A big, round shape was also favoured, which increased in width till a proclamation forbade it exceeding 6 inches. Chains were still a decorative feature round the neck, and the belt carried a sword and pouch, or, amongst the working classes, other necessities. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THE REIGNS OF EDWARD VI AND MARY. FEMALE. In the reign of Edward VI, which was so short, as also in that of Mary, there was little time to form a real character. These reigns form developing links to the Elizabethan era, so I have taken them in one chapter. [Illustration: FIG. 47. FIG. 48. FIG. 49. Elizabethan modes.] [Illustration: FIG. 50.--Costumes, 1554-1568.] [Illustration: FIG. 51.--Costumes, 1568-1610.] With Edward VI the same shaped cap is seen as that of Henry VIII, and with Mary's accession, the head-dress is curved to the head in a like manner, but it now became more of a hat form and took a brim curved in on the brow; this was often worn over the little tight curved cap, or showed the hair waved out at the sides, often netted with gold and pearls. A fall of velvet, silk, or veiling was still retained till the very high ruff or collar came in the Elizabethan days. A small-crowned hat, with a brooch and feather in front, and a full gathered crown came in before Elizabeth's time, when we see many eccentric shapes, such as the tall hat with a feather at the side, and the witch-like hats towards the end of her reign. The bodice, which became longer in the first reign, still retained the full belled oversleeve or the full puffed sleeve to the end of Mary's reign, also the same square neck shape with curved-up front, now often filled with silk quilted with pearls up to the neck. High-necked dresses set with a small ruff became general in Mary's reign. We also find a tight sleeve gathered in a circular puff at the shoulder or set in a rolled epaulet. The same shaped skirt of the hooped bell form (sometimes very pleated in Mary's reign) or divided in front to show the underskirt as described under Henry VIII, was worn. The short square shape and the heavy round shoe is seen in Mary's reign, but fashion then preferred a rather pointed oval shoe, well up the instep with higher sides, decorated with characteristic slashing. Gloves are seen in many portraits up to this period, but of a plain make minus embroidery, and a circular fan of feathers was carried. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THE REIGNS OF EDWARD VI AND MARY. MALE. With Edward VI and Mary a more refined and sober type of style set in. The hair was now worn short and combed backwards. The flat hat of the earlier shapes lasted to Elizabeth's reign; becoming smaller in width, with a turned-down, curved brim and a fuller crown encircled with a gold band or set with a feather worn at the right-hand side. A small tight-fitting round hat with a rolled brim and a feather in front is also of this later mode. Through these reigns a small square turned-over collar or a very small ruff set on a high collar came into use, which increased to a larger ruff in Mary's reign. A small ruff was also worn at the wrist, many of these were edged with black-stitch designs. The heavy puffed sleeves became tight and started from a small epaulet or puffed roll; some of these had a small cuff at the wrist or a frill. Braided designs became very elaborate on a close-fitting, padded, and round-shaped jerkin with a short skirt, which appeared in the first reign, and this skirt was often long enough to fasten just under the codpiece. Short trunks at times worn half-way down the thigh were slashed, banded, and puffed for decoration. No parti-colour was now worn or striped effects on tights, except amongst the soldiers in the reign of Mary. Short capes to the length of the trunks of a plain round form sloping from the shoulders, or a square type with a high square collar and loose sleeves, are seen; a tunic also of the earlier character with a =V=-shaped collar and full sleeve comes into this reign, and we note the earlier types of shoes mingling with the newer pointed oval-shaped shoe which now continued for the remainder of this century. [Illustration: FIG. 52.--Costumes, 1554-1580.] [Illustration: FIG. 53.--Costumes, 1570-1605.] In Mary's reign the round-shaped doublet began to protrude from the breast to the waist in a round form with slightly longer skirts or small tabs, while the trunks assumed large circular proportions and were sometimes set on tight knee-breeches. The capes remained about the same. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. ELIZABETH. FEMALE. The costly splendour of attire is well known in Elizabeth's reign, which began with the same form of hair and head-dress as with Mary, the hat being set rather higher on the hair. The ruffs, which were imported already starched from Holland, assumed larger proportions and complications when the methods of starching became known in England about 1564. Stow describes ruffs growing to a quarter of a yard deep; these were no doubt supported by piccalilloes, though they are not actually mentioned till after 1600, but they surely came with the fan-shaped structures of these later days. White, red, blue or purple colours were used in the starching, and yellow in the latter days of this century. The introduction of this curved fanlike collar setting became a grand and complicated feature right into the 17th century. "Make up" became very apparent on the faces at this time, for Bishop Hall censured the fashion in a choice sermon, saying, "Hear this, ye plaster-faced Jezabels! God will one day wash them with fire and brimstone." [Illustration: FIG. 54.--Elizabethan modes.] [Illustration: Plate XII.-- (_a_) Lady's Outdoor Costume. 1785-95. (_b_) Costume. Early 18th Century. (_c_) Silk Brocade Dress. 1760-80.] [Illustration: FIG. 55. 1585-1610 1600-1620 1595-1605 1605-1615 1589-1600] The bodices grew very long and pointed in the waist, the neck setting being mostly treated in the same =V= shape, even open down to the waist point was filled with a decorated stomacher, and a deep oval-shaped neck was seen at the end of the reign. An outer opened sleeve was now favoured, caught in front at the elbow and hanging to the knee over a fairly tight undersleeve with a turned-back lace cuff or ruffle. With this came the high-set fan ruff on its wooden support at the back of the neck, and consequently a higher coiffure. [Illustration: FIG. 56. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 1540-50, and other shoe forms worn in the reign of Elizabeth.] The same character of skirt continued as in the earlier reigns on hoops at the lower part, but they became much fuller and rounder at the hips till about 1590, when the full pleated skirt was supported on a farthingale or hoop which was set with a gathered circle in the same goffered design as the ruffs at the edge. These reached their extreme dimensions at the end of this reign, when the sleeves also assumed a full padded shape and large epaulets also came in. An overdress with a full pleated back (like the Watteau dress) was in fashion from the middle of this reign, and we are lucky to possess some specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum of which I am able to give the dimensions. Small looking-glasses were carried, and were also inset on the round feather fans. Perfumed gloves, elaborately embroidered, were introduced during this reign. Silk stockings were worn by Elizabeth for the first time in 1560, and worsted stockings were made in England in 1564. Corsets of pierced steel are seen in France from the late 16th and 17th century, and may have been in use here, though wood, cane, and whalebone were the chief supports. Shoes became narrow and even pointed, while the heel began to increase to considerable heights. The buskins of Queen Elizabeth now at Oxford are raised to 3 inches in height by the aid of a thick sole, and shoes A and B, Fig. 61, are also reported to have belonged to her. Chopins for heightening the stature were in use on the Continent, but I believe did not appear here; but very thick corked soles and high heels were introduced for this purpose. [Illustration: Plate XIII.-- (_a_) Silk Coat. 1735-55. (_b_) Brocade Silk Coat. 1745-60. (_c_) Embroidered Cloth Coat. 1770-90. _Pattern, see p. 308._] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. ELIZABETH. MALE. In this reign a very neat small-pointed beard was the fashion, the hair being brushed up as high as possible and often fulled out at the sides, and a "chic" appearance was sought after. A stiff belled top-hat with an egret at the right side made its first appearance with a curved brim, also one of a tapered shape with a smallish round brim, and another very small round hat with a curved brim, a clasp and feather being mostly worn on the front of each. The brims of all the hats began to enlarge at the end of the century when the very high crowned wide brimmed hat made its appearance, sometimes with a peaked top, and beaver is first mentioned in their make. Large circular ruffs became all the rage besides the small turned-over collar. The round doublet with protruding front became tighter at the waist, the protuberance taking a punchlike pointed form curving to almost between the legs and sloping sharply up the hips to the back. This was set with a very short tab or tabs on padded breeches tightening to the knee, which usually had very small trunks on the upper part, and large, stuffed trunk hose also appeared. The stockings were brought over these in a roll above the knee. Up to this time tights were made of wool, worsted, fine cloth, frieze, and canvas. The slashings, pleating, and gatherings of the period were of a much neater character, and punched patterns and pricked materials came into use. Close-fitting high boots, generally with serrated tops and thick soles curving into a short heel, are features of this time. The shoe had a long front decorated with slashings (often caught with jewels), and an oval toe which became almost pointed in the last years of this century. A short top-boot rising to the calf was also in use, mostly with a little fur edge at the top, and these were often pricked with patterns. [Illustration: FIG. 57.--Elizabethan modes.] CHAPTER VI THE CHARACTER OF TRIMMINGS THROUGH THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES I. The braiding and small slashing continued of a similar character to the end of the Elizabethan age. The slashing now began to be treated with a larger effect and less elaboration, but pricking and punching were still much used for enriching surfaces. An improved style of design was evident. The female bodice was arranged with a long stomacher, often shaped into curved forms at the point, and this was set with jewels or embroidery, otherwise the bodice was decorated with braiding and jewels as in Elizabeth's reign. The full sleeves were embellished with small slashes (making diamond squares), puffs, or pricked and punched designs. A turned-up cuff or ruff of pointed lace finished the wrist, braided epaulets formed a beautiful feature of the effect, and the front of the underskirt was decorated with a jewelled band or conventional design, as was also the border of the overskirt. Caps of an interesting curved form beautifully embroidered in gold and coloured silks are seen, of which I give patterns; also loose jackets of the same work were in use when not in full dress. CHARLES I. Many beautifully embroidered caps, jerkins, jackets, and shirts are seen at this period in gold and black or coloured silks. Slashings of this reign, though in fashion, had commenced to go out; and those retained were of a large character, mostly from the neck or shoulder to the breast. The favoured sleeves were cut into straps to the elbow or wrist, and were often edged with braid, either side meeting together and lining the forearm, the body being treated in the same way. The open-fronted sleeve was set with buttons and loops or long braided buttonholes with frayed or knotted ends, though these were not generally fastened. The tight undersleeve was often set with gold or silver narrow braids down the front and back seams, and close lines of small braids horizontally round the arm, or vertically when the outer sleeve was treated horizontally, this gave a beautiful counterchanged effect. Many of the ladies' caps of this time had beautiful gold scrolls, with flowers and birds embroidered in coloured silks, also loose jackets of the same were in use. The bodice was banded with braids or lace on the front and seams, and the stomacher was often of fine embroidery; set rosettes or bows were placed at the waist. Other finishing effects of collar or sleeve, and the button and buttonhole decorations were made important features on both male and female sleeves, and even down the front of the outer skirt when it was not treated with lace. Red heels to shoes began to be worn and continued to the end of the 18th century in marked favour. THE COMMONWEALTH. During this short period the character and placing of braiding was the same as in the latter part of last reign; slashing had almost completely gone out, except for the treatment of some ladies' sleeves cut into bands. A very sober effect was assumed in colour schemes, besides a plainer treatment in decoration, and a deep plain collar or a small turn-over one was chiefly worn by the men, while the hat of the Puritan rose to an absurd height, with a wide flat brim. CHARLES II. This may be named the period of ribbon trimmings, though braiding was treated in broad lines on the short jackets and sleeves, and down the sides of the breeches. A preference is shown for gold and silver lace, or amongst the élite purfled silk edges; the new mode being a decoration of groups of ribbon loops placed about the suit or dress. The notable feature with the female dress was the gathering of drapery by means of jewelled clasps, and groups of ribbon loops were also used, as with the male dress. The edges of the materials were sometimes cut into scalloped or classic forms, and a very simple voluminous character was fashion's aim. JAMES II AND WILLIAM AND MARY. With the later type of long-skirted coat which began in Charles II's reign, a heavy style of braiding and buttoning came into vogue, all the seams of the coat besides the pockets and cuffs and fronts being braided, which fashion continued to the end of the century. Many coats began to be embroidered in the later reign, and waistcoats became a special feature for the display of fine needlecraft on the fronts and pockets, while quilting or imitations of it in various needlework designs are often seen. In the female dress a more elaborate interest was again taken in the stomachers and the jewelled claspings, while lengths of soft silk gathered into long puffs often edged the outer skirts or were used in smaller trimmings, and "classical" shapings of the edges of materials and sleeves are often seen, also heavy bands of rich embroidery bordered the underskirt or train. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES I. FEMALE. We find much the same high forms of set-up head-dress continuing in fashion as in the later years of Elizabeth's reign; but the hair began to take a fuller shape, rather round, done up in tight frizzled curls, with the usual decorations of jewels, pearls, or set bows of this period. Hats with high crowns and small straight brims, with an upright set of small plumes, gradually assumed a larger brimmed character--often turned up on one side. The same absurd pleated hoop, with its hanging skirt, continued for some time (worn rather short); but we also see the longer and very full hooped-out skirt, with an overskirt opened in the front. The stomacher front became much enlarged during this reign, many having shaped designs at the point. Most bodices took a very deep curved front at the neck, and large padded sleeves narrowed at the wrist still continued, besides the high fan collar at the back of the neck, and large ruffs were used by many. There also appeared, later in the reign, a stiff round collar, set high in the neck, cut off straight across the front, and the bodice took a very low square-cut neck, with a raised curved shape at the centre of neck. The tighter sleeve was also worn throughout this time, with the overdress and sleeve hanging almost to the ground, which often had a very angular cuff. A little later some sleeves began to be gathered at intervals into puffy forms. The waist also showed signs of shortening. [Illustration: FIG. 58.] [Illustration: FIG. 59.--Costumes. Period, James I.] Shoes with rounded toes and latchets holding large rosettes were chiefly worn, and heels of various heights are seen. Chopins, still worn on the Continent, do not seem to have appeared here. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES I. MALE. The hat was of the high-crowned type, perhaps higher than in the last reign. The brim had broadened, and feathers were placed upwards fantastically at the back and sides of crown. Brims were often fastened up on the right side with a jewel; otherwise a band was buckled in front. The hair was now allowed to fall longer again, and a pointed or square-shaped beard with a brushed-up moustache was the mode. Ruffs both large and small surrounded the neck, and a flat fan-shaped collar was seen in the earlier years. [Illustration: Plate XIV.-- (_a_) Embroidered Silk Dress with Pannier. 1765-80. (_b_) Brocade Dress and Quilted Petticoat. 1750-65. _Pattern of bodice, p. 322._] [Illustration: FIG. 60.--Costumes. Period James I.] The jerkin was close fitting and the length of the waist more normal, with less tendency to being tightened in, and not so deep in the front point, so as to set better over the very full trunks or breeches. The square tabs of the jerkin increased in size, and soon formed large flaps divided into three or four, to the centre of the back. Sleeves were fairly tight and started from slightly larger epaulets, and were usually set at the wrist, either with a small ruff or turned-up lawn cuff, edged with lace. The trunks were padded in a very full shape and were much longer, just above the knee. Also full padded-out breeches tapering to the knee or just above, where a large tie and bow hung at the side, and full square breeches not tied in, are also a feature of these days, usually banded with wide braids at ends and sides. Upright pockets were made on either side towards the front, about two inches from the side seams. They fastened up the front in a pleated fold, many being decorated with punched, pricked, or slashed design of a smallish character. [Illustration: FIG. 61.--Shapes of Shoes from 1590-1650.] Cloaks were worn longer to the knee, retaining the same shapes and braid decoration as in the Elizabethan period, and hanging sleeves were still worn on them, as well as on some of the jerkins. Shoes became fuller and rounder at the toes, mostly with thick welted soles and short heels, or none. They were fastened with a large rosette of gold lace or ribbon on the front, and the latchets were set back to show an open side. The top-boots were close fitting and took squarer toes; the spur flap being rather small. Beautifully embroidered clocks are seen on the tights and stockings of this period. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHARLES I. FEMALE. The hair was now allowed to fall in ringlets round the back and sides, with a few flat curls on the brow, and a bow and pearls were caught in at the sides. Short feathers may also be noted in use. A plait was often coiled at the back after 1630. [Illustration: Plate XV.-- (_a_) White Cloth Coat. 1775-90. (_b_) Silk Dress. 1740-60. (_c_) Embroidered Velvet Coat. 1755-75.] [Illustration: FIG. 62.] [Illustration: FIG. 63. Collar and Bodice types. Period Charles I.] [Illustration: FIG. 64. Collar and Bodice types. Period Charles I to 1660.] In the early part of this reign the ladies were wearing the long corset-bodice, with a richly decorated stomacher which curved outwards to set on the very full skirts; this often finished with a curved or foliated shape at the point. Square starched collars, rounded at the back, sometimes set up at the back of the neck or flat on the shoulder, and ruffs were still seen round the neck with collars as well, but they were seldom met with after 1635. A plainer, deep collar, flat, round, or =V=-shaped at the back, coming well over the shoulders, was caught together by a bow or ornament in front. About 1630 shorter waisted bodices came in, with full, loose sleeves set in epaulets: the neck shape was rounded or square. The bodices were often slashed, and the full sleeves, cut into bands, were sometimes gathered by cross bands from one to three times. Full plain sleeves, opened in the front seam, were also clasped at the elbow in a like manner. Outer short sleeves became a feature, opening in the front, showing the full under one or a tight one; the waist became very short and its tabs larger. A waistband fastened in the stomacher with a bow either side and bows with long gold tags decorated the waist as in the male jerkin. The skirt decorated by a band of ornament down the front was often tied upon the corset-bodice, the front point being left outside. Shoes of the same shape as the male illustrations, with very square toes, were frequent, but an oval toe, rather pointed, is seen in many pictures, with the large lace rosettes in front. Muffs are first noticed in these days, though they were seen much earlier on the Continent. [Illustration: FIG. 65.--Period 1625-1660.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHARLES I. MALE. The hair was worn loose to the shoulders, and a small plait was sometimes arranged on the left side, brought to the front of shoulder. The beard was trimmed to a pointed shape, and smarter curled moustaches were fashionable. Hats were still high in the crown, but rather lower than with James I; the large brims were turned about in various curves, and feathers were worn falling over the brims to the side or back. The jerkin was high in the collar, supporting a large, square, turn-down collar edged with pointed lace to the shoulders, or a small, plain, turn-over collar; ruffs are very rarely seen after 1630. [Illustration: FIG. 66.--Charles I.] [Illustration: FIG. 67.--Period 1625-1660.] [Illustration: FIG. 68.--Period 1625-1660.] A rather short waist grew shorter during this reign, with much larger tabs, or large flaps laced to the body, forming a series of bows with long gilt tags round the waist. The body is usually decorated with long slashes from the shoulders to the breast, or the full length, and a long slashed opening is often seen in the back (presumably to give more play to the sword-thrust). The sleeve is also treated in the same way to the elbow or waist. All sleeves start from a stiff epaulet. Breeches are both very full and fairly tight, the latter edged with a purfling of silk or gold lace as well as the sides, the former shape tied either above or below the knee with a large silk bow with falling ends. They were held up by a number of hooks, fastening to a small flap with eyelets, round the inside of the doublet (see pattern 11, p. 295), and were buttoned down the front, the buttons being half hidden in a pleat. The pockets were placed vertically in the front of the thigh, and were frequently of a decorative character. A short or long circular cloak was worn, and a coat-cloak with opened sleeves is an interesting garment. These coverings were hung in various ways from the shoulders by methods of tying the cords across the body. [Illustration: FIG. 69.--Period 1625-1660.] [Illustration: FIG. 70.--Shoe shapes. Charles I to 1700. NOS. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 23. Charles I. NOS. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 25. Charles II. NOS. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28. James II and William and Mary.] [Illustration: Plate XVI.-- (_a_) Silk Brocade Dress. 1740-60. (_b_) Silk Brocade Sack-back Dress. 1755-75. _Pattern, see p. 334._ (_c_) Dress of Striped Material. 1775-85. _Pattern, see p. 335._] [Illustration: FIG. 71.--Boot shapes. Charles I to 1700. NOS. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Charles I. NOS. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Charles II. NOS. 16, 17, 18. James II and William and Mary.] Shoes became very square at the toes, or blocked as in Fig. 70, No. 6. The fronts were set with large rosettes of silk and silver or gold lace, the heels varied much in height, that mostly favoured being a large, low heel. A quaint fashion of shoe combined with a clog sole was an interesting shape (see illustration of clogs, p. 106). Fairly tight top-boots, coming well above the knee, were often turned down. Other boots with large bell-tops, turned over or pushed down, were covered or filled with a lace or bell-shaped stocking-top. A sash was worn round the waist or across the body over the left shoulder (the length and width of these is given in the description of patterns, p. 279). A broad belt, or sword-hanger, came across the right shoulder. Gloves were beautifully embroidered in gold, pearls, or coloured silks, the gauntlets being from five to eight inches deep. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. THE COMMONWEALTH. MALE AND FEMALE. The same shapes apply to costume during the Commonwealth, though a sterner effect was given by the choice of plain decoration and less colour. A small or a large plain collar, and the disappearance of slashings on the coat, and a longer skirt became noticeable. A very high tapered hat, with stiff circular brim, was worn by the Puritans, and little, close, black hoods were much favoured. A general reaction from gay extravagance set in. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHARLES II. FEMALE. The hair was set out from the head on combs with falling ringlets, and several small flat ringlets were placed on the forehead. The back of the hair was plaited into a knot, and pearl strings were interlaced, or ribbon loops caught in at either side. Toward 1680 the hair was worn tightly curled and fulled out into a round shape with a curl or two falling on the front of the shoulders; small feathers or long feathers were also worn. Hats were of a similar shape to those of the last reign, with a stiffer and narrower curved brim; but the chief head-dress was a large hood faced with another material, which latter was tied under the chin; these mostly formed part of a cape also. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--Period 1650-1685.] [Illustration: Plate XVII.-- (_a_) Silk Suit. 1765-80. (_b_) Quilted Dress. 1700-25. (_c_) Silk-embroidered Suit. 1765-80.] [Illustration: FIG. 73. 1, 2, 3, 4.--Back and Front of two Corset Bodices. Period Charles II. 5, 6.--Two Corsets. Period Charles II. 7, 8.--Two Bodice types. Period Charles I.] The bodice again became much longer and of a pointed shape, but many corset bodices took a round point, and a round neck coming well off the shoulders became general, usually decorated with a plain wide band of lace. Ruffs and collars were no longer seen amongst the upper classes. Very full sleeves and large opened sleeves were tied or clasped over full lawn ones, and at times separated from the shoulders, being caught effectively with jewels. Groups of ribbons were placed at the breast or point of the bodice, and the ends of sleeves or shoulders, besides at the fronts of the outer skirt when divided, also in the gathering of the lawn sleeves. Stomachers were not much worn, but a drape of soft silk was caught here and there round the neck of bodice, and large draperies were clasped to the shoulders. Loose robes and robes shaped to the figure, opening down the front from the neck even to the waist, with a clasp or several holding them together; these were worn over a quilted linen corset laced in front as in the illustration, but the bodice was often formed on a corset. Long gloves and mittens were in use, and small muffs with ribbon loops on the front were carried. High-heeled shoes with very long square toes were affected in imitation of the male shoe, but most ladies now began to wear a very pointed shoe. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--Sleeve treatments. Period Charles II.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHARLES II. MALE. Long hair or wigs of long curls falling on the shoulders, a very narrow moustache and point of beard on the chin came with this reign. Lace collars of a smaller square or rounded shape were in use, but a fall of lace pleated in the centre soon took its place. High-crowned hats with a band and bow in front and a flat, waved, or curved brim, with feathers on either side or all round, were the fashion, the crowns becoming shorter during the reign; the fronts and sometimes the sides of the brim are seen turned up, and so begins to form the three-cornered hat, which remained so long a feature in history. [Illustration: FIG. 75.--Period Charles II.] We find with extravagant shapes a happy return of gay colours. The high-waisted jerkins of the Charles I period were now seen without the skirt (as very short jackets), leaving the lawn shirt to show between this and the breeches, besides which the jackets were nearly always left unbuttoned several inches up, some being cut away in a rounded shape and also having short sleeves. The lower arm was covered with a full lawn sleeve caught at two or even three distances with a loop of ribbons or bows, and finishing with a wide lace frill; a bunch of ribbon loops was also often seen on the right shoulder. A long circular cloak, with turned-back fronts forming a collar in many, still retained the hanging sleeve, and was mostly decorated with bands of heavy braid. A long square coat also came in about 1666, buttoned right down the front, with pockets set very low in the skirt, and large narrow cuffs opened at the back as in Plate VIII (see p. 90). Very full breeches were worn to just about the knee or shorter, with a fringe of ribbon loops, and a row or several rows of the same were arranged at the waist. A short petticoat just showed the under breeches, many of which were turned into a doublet shape by an additional piece looped up loosely from the knee with a silk filling; the ribbon loops at the waist were repeated up the sides of the petticoat. Silk garters were worn with bows on both sides of the leg, or a deep lace fall came from the end of the breeches to the middle of the calf; a lace setting also filled the wide top of the boots, which was worn very low, even to the ankles. These short bell-topped boots were favoured, with high heels and very square toes. Shoes were long and square (or duck-billed) at the toes; and had a high narrow front to the instep, and latchets fastened with a stiffened butterfly bow, besides, at times, a rosette lower down on the front: red heels were in evidence. The sword-band was very wide, and many were decorated with gold embroidery. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--Costume types. Period Charles II.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES II. FEMALE. The hair was still worn full at the sides over a comb, as in the former reign, with curls dropping to the shoulders, but they now began to discard the set-out comb and the little flat curls on the forehead, the hair being of a round shape or parted from the centre and mounted higher and narrower on the head, in the latter part of this reign. The same large hoods and drapes continued in use, and a high goffered head-dress with set-out front began to appear; the same shaped bodice with round low neck showing the shoulders, often set with a stomacher front or jewelled in that form, and smaller decorations of ribbon loops were still favoured. A smaller and shorter sleeve began to appear with a turned-up cuff, and the gathered-in lawn sleeves and ruffles caught here and there with pearls or clasps as before, besides the same light drapery clasped about the breast front. The overskirt was now looped back, the points being held together, giving a wide display of the underskirt, which was heavily banded or had a jewel setting down the front. Other train skirts, also divided in front, were bordered with drawn silk caught at intervals into long puffs. Very small muffs were the fashion. Shoes increased their pointed shape and rather large heels are to be noted, but some shoes assumed a very narrow square toe; they were either tied from small latchets with a bow, or with buckled latchets. Longer gloves were worn, and large full cloaks with hoods or large drapery wraps when required for outdoor wear. [Illustration: FIG. 77.--Costume notes. Period 1670-1690.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES II. MALE. The same long wig was worn as in the last reign, but the curls were more of a set ringlet type, and embroidered caps were worn when these were taken off. The face was now clean shaven until the 19th century. Hats also of the older character were retained, but the turned-up three-cornered shape, filled with short feathers, became more settled in fashion, and they were heavily banded with gold braid or lace on the edge. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--Period 1690-1700.] A smart bow was worn crosswise over the folded lace fall at the neck. The coat was a very long square shape to the knees, the stiff skirt often set out over rather full breeches, which were sometimes "shorts," and just above the knee, the stocking being often brought up above the knee, with a garter just below. The sleeves were short, above or below the elbow, with a turned-up cuff, leaving the full-gathered lawn sleeve with a lace ruffle to show at the wrist. A sash encircled the waist, and often shut in the sword-belt, which hung from the right shoulder. The coat had buttons from the neck to the bottom of the skirt, though the lower buttons were seldom fastened; the sides of the skirt were opened up about 11 inches, and also the back seam to the same height; most seams were heavily decorated with gold, silver braid, or lace, and the pockets were placed rather low down towards the front of the skirt, and were sometimes set vertically. [Illustration: Plate XVIII.-- (_a_) Brocade Bodice. 1770-85. (_b_) Flowered Silk Dress. 1750-70. (_c_) Silk Brocade Bodice. 1780-95.] [Illustration: FIG. 79.--Period 1688-1702.] Long round capes were still worn, without sleeves, and a collar turned down about 4 inches. Shoes of a similar shape to those of the later Charles II type were in use, but the heels became larger and the toes not so long; the top of the front was sometimes shaped and turned down. Heavy boots to the knee, with large curved tops, were also in favour, as in the illustration (Fig. 71). SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. WILLIAM AND MARY. FEMALE. The hair was now mounted high on top and the front parted with two curls, the rest of the hair being bound on top, or a curl was arranged on either shoulder. A goffered frill head-dress, set on a cap, rose very high, and a long fall of lace, or lappets, came down on either side from the cap, or was gathered in like a small hood at the back. Bare shoulders now began to disappear, the bodice shape coming over the shoulder to a =V= shape enclosing a stomacher, which was sometimes tabbed or shaped at the point. Many dresses were made in one length, caught together at the waist with a band; the fronts of these skirts were looped back high up, creating a pannier-like fullness at the hips, and narrow hoops came in to set out the skirts, many of which were heavily embroidered with gold. The Watteau-back dress started in this reign; a very early specimen, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is most probably of this time (Fig. 85, A). The sleeves worn to the elbow increased in width from the shoulder, and were set with large narrow cuffs gathered with a jewel or bow on the front of the arm. Hoods and cloaks of the same character as described for the last reign continued, and light sticks were carried by the ladies. Very pointed shoes were worn, with large high heels, the top of the front flap in some being shaped into points. Black masks were frequently used, some having long lace falls. Rather small muffs were still the fashion, and beautifully decorated short aprons became a feature with the dress. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--1688-1698.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. WILLIAM AND MARY. MALE. Wigs of the same long character continued, and were parted in the centre with a raised effect, and variously shaped caps, with turned-up fold or brim, were worn when the wig was taken off. The beaver or felt hat, turned up three-cornerwise, was now in general use. It is often seen with the brims loose, or sometimes down, especially amongst the lower classes. Both small shapes and large were worn. [Illustration: Plate XIX.-- (_a_) Silk Brocade Dress. 1775-85. (_b_) Embroidered Silk Jacket. 1775-90. _Pattern, see p. 326._ (_c_) Brocade Jacket. 1780-95. _Cap pattern, see p. 331._ _Coat pattern, see p. 348._] [Illustration: FIG. 81.--Period 1680-1690.] Black ties across formal lace cravats, and long lawn cravats, edged with lace, one end of which was sometimes caught up loosely through the large buttonhole of the coat were worn. Waistcoats were left open well down to the waist; some of these were nearly of the same length as the coat, the skirt being often edged with deep gold fringe. The coats were of much the same character as in the time of James II, with buttons all down the front, but now it was the mode to button coats just at the waist, allowing the waistcoat to be shown. The sleeves were generally longer, to the middle of the forearm, and the turned-back cuffs became very large and deep, often towards the end of the reign taking a curved shape. The seams, fronts, and pockets were frequently braided as before. A long square waistcoat of rich brocade or embroidered material, about four inches shorter than the coat, was worn; some of these had tight sleeves, which came to the wrist beneath the outer coat-sleeve; otherwise a gathered lawn sleeve with ruffle was worn. Shoes and boots were practically the same as in the previous reign, with larger high heels and a high square front, with latchets buckled or stiffly tied, and very square toes. Top-boots of the same heavy character continued as in Plate II (see p. 42). Stockings continued to be worn frequently above the knee outside the breeches, with a garter beneath, and beautifully embroidered clocks to the calf. Muffs were carried by many men, and the gauntlets of gloves had a very angular shape. Patches and make-up were used by the dandies, and the sword was now carried through the side pleats on a waist-belt sometimes worn outside the waistcoat. CHAPTER VII THE CHARACTER OF DECORATION AND TRIMMINGS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In the early part to the middle of this century the trimmings were chiefly of gold or silver lace, real lace, and purfled silk, mostly of the same material as the dress: a bow was often worn on the breast, and also in the front of the sleeve cuff. Purfled or ruched trimming generally ran down the front of the dress from the neck to the hem of the skirt in the Second Georgian dress, and gathered borders or decorations of curved forms were in use. The skirts usually had only one flounce till the reign of George III, when the trimmings became more elaborate, and gauze and imitation flowers were festooned upon the skirts, with ribbons and tassels and padded designs standing out in strong relief; some charming gimp trimmings are also seen. The lace ruffles of a fan shape which finished the earlier sleeves till about 1745 were sometimes of lace, interwoven with gold, silver, and coloured silk needlework, and this was no doubt the forerunner of the use of the more solid material itself. The setting of the sleeve finish is interesting to note all through this period, for it was beautifully treated in balancing the effect of the dress. The square cuff with the deep lace fall was big in style, and the later closely-fitted elbow piece, richly gathered, was happily conceived, but no finer setting could have been applied to the sack-back dress than the large fan or double fan with its lace fall. The edges of the early fan-finished sleeves were of curved and scalloped forms, the latter shaping often being seen in the later sleeves. With George III we notice designs in straw work, decorations of imitation flowers in ribbon-work and various materials, and much taste in the choice of colour schemes, while the tassels of this period were delightful creations. The designs of stuffs at the early part of the century were generally of fine strong colour blends, but in the middle period there was much questionable taste displayed in the heavy massing of patterns, but this soon improved with the striped character crossed by running flowers which was quite ideal in type for costume keeping, grace, and lightness, with a beautiful interchange of colour. The quilted silk and satin petticoats are a special feature to note in these times; many simple and effective designs were in use, and they added much glitter to the scheme. Aprons were also beautiful examples of needlework, and were worn with the best of dresses to the middle of the century; the earlier ones generally had a scalloped edging, and many had pockets; gold lace edging or fringe was often used in the time of George II, and they were all finely decorated with needlework in gold, silver, or coloured silks. The white aprons were also of consummate needlecraft, and hanging pockets worn at the sides were also a decorated feature, but these only showed when the dress was worn tucked up. The later style of dress became much simpler, consisting chiefly of gathered flounce settings, fichus, and large mob caps; these were often daintily embroidered with tambour work and large bow and sash settings, making delightful costumes. Bags, muffs, gloves, and shoes were all chosen for the display of needlecraft, while artists and jewellers used all their skill on the fans, patch-boxes, and étuis, and even the dress materials were often painted by hand, while many painted Chinese silks were also utilised. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ANNE. FEMALE. The hair was dressed in a simple manner, with two curls parted from the centre of the forehead, and curved inwards on the brow. A loose ringlet or two were brought on to the left shoulder, the rest being gathered into a back-knot. Feathers or flowers were arranged on top, generally with a pair of lace lappets falling to the back; these also adorned the cap, which still bore the front goffered frills set out as in the last reign, but these were diminished in size and were mostly of one row. We note probably the last stage of this style appearing in a print of Hogarth's, dated 1740. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--Bodice types. Period 1690-1720.] [Illustration: FIG. 83.--Costume type. 1695-1710.] Hoods and capes or cloaks, and long black fichus or wraps, were the chief coverings, as the head-dress did not allow of hats being worn, but with the small frilled caps a little straw hat, or a low-crowned felt with a largish brim, are seen, and a small lace frill round the neck began to appear. Bodices with a low curved neck often had a short skirt or shaped pieces, as well as a shaped short sleeve over a gathered lawn one, while many wore long sleeves to the wrist, and a waistbelt is sometimes noted. There was also the sleeve spreading in width to the elbow, with a turned-up square cuff. The front of the bodice may be remarked with bands fastening across, and this became a feature in many dresses later in this century, otherwise it set closely over the shoulders to a =V= shape at the waist, and was filled with a stomacher of fine needlework, bows, or the ends of the lawn fichu laced or caught in by a big bow. A full, loose gown, with the fullness pleated to back and front, came in, the front being held by a bow and the back allowed to fall loose or crossed with a large bow at the back of waist, as in the museum specimen, Fig. 85. This became the more elaborate sack-back dress. [Illustration: FIG. 84.--Period 1700-1725.] The skirts began to be set out in a bell form, and trains were in much favour; the overskirts were parted in front, and many looped up to the back in a similar manner to the last reign. Small aprons of fine embroidery were worn with the best of dresses, and embroidered pockets are seen when the skirts were thrown back. Petticoats of fine quilting became much appreciated, and tall sticks were carried by ladies. Pointed shoes with high heels and latchets tied or buckled, the top of the fronts being mostly cut into four points, or they had a square finish. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ANNE. MALE. The wigs of the full ringlet style were still the fashion, but a simpler character is noticeable, the hair being combed back off the forehead and allowed to fall in looser waves. But many began to set a mode of smaller "coiffure," with their own hair caught in curls by a bow at the back, and curls over each ear. Powder came into use with the smart set, and a big bow and bag to finish the back of wig appeared, giving a smarter appearance to the white hair. [Illustration: Plate XX.-- (_a_) Gold-embroidered Muslin Dress. 1795-1805. (_b_) Nine Aprons. Between 1690 and 1850. (_c_) Dress of Spotted Stockinette. 1795-1808.] [Illustration: FIG. 85.--Bodice types. 1700-1725.] The hat, sometimes of white felt, was the same three-cornered type, edged with feathers and banded with broad gold braids or silver lace. The neckwear was a bind of lawn, with a long fall finished with lace. The coat remained long to the knees, but took a greater fullness in the side pleats of the skirt. Large buttons and buttonholes, 3 inches long, are seen, with the same on the cuff, which was worn very large, often 9 inches broad, and mostly of a curved outline, and of another coloured brocade; a tight undersleeve is also seen with these. The coat was sometimes heavily decorated with needlework or braids of gold down the front, pockets, seams, and cuffs. The pocket was wide and set higher in the skirt, and the back opening of coat was decorated by several horizontal braids to the two side pleats. A long, full-skirted waistcoat, of rich materials or needlework, was at times braided and fringed at the skirt with gold, the pockets covered with a large flap, and five buttons fastened it or were placed as decorations just below it. The front buttons were often reduced to four at the waist, as it was still fashionable to show the lawn shirt. Breeches were of the same cut as in the former reign, with five or six side buttons at the knee, and stockings with embroidered clocks were worn rolled over outside the breeches as before. Shoes were square at the toes and not quite so long, while the heels were still rather heavy, and red was the mode. They had a high square top at the front instep, and buckles fastened the latchets. Muffs were often carried by the dandies, and walking-sticks, with tassel and loop, were slung on the arm; besides a sword, which, passing through the side pleats and out at the back, helped to set out the coat, which was often stiffened in the skirts. Gloves, with short gauntlets very angular or curved in shape, were trimmed with gold fringe; the backs were also richly embroidered with gold or silver. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE I. FEMALE. [Illustration: FIG. 86.--1725-1750.] [Illustration: Plate XXI.--23 Boots and Shoes. From 1800-75. 1. 1800-1820. 2. " 3. 1810-1828. 5. 1820-1830. 8. " 9. 1820-1830. 10. " 13. 1830-1855. 16. " 16A. " 7. 1850-1865. 14. " 15. " 4. " 6. " 17. " 12. " 21. 1860-1875. 11. " 18. " 20. " 19. " 22. " ] [Illustration: FIG. 87.--Period 1725-1750.] [Illustration: FIG. 88.--Modes, 1750-1770.] [Illustration: FIG. 89.--Various Styles in Cut Back of Bodice.] The hair was very simply gathered from the forehead and taken up to a knot of curls at the back. Occasionally a group of curls was allowed to fall behind, or a curl was arranged to fall on one shoulder, and waved curls of the Queen Anne type were still seen on many people. Caps, with long dropping points in front, sometimes tied under the chin or with long lappets at the back, were the chief favourites, also a small frilled cap. Shallow-crowned straw hats with various widths of brim; hoods and capes, both short and long, are seen, besides light silks draped from the hair to the waist, feathers, flowers, and ribbons being worn in the head-dress. Richly embroidered aprons were worn with the finest dresses. The sack-back dress was very full, and started right across the shoulders in two double box-pleats, which were kept trim by being sewn flat for two to four inches down. Sleeves to the elbow were rather full, and gathered at the shoulders, with a square cuff often decorated with a bow in front, and a fan of lace, sometimes in several rows, fell from beneath. Sleeves finishing in a shaped edge are occasionally seen. The skirts were made for the very round hoop setting, and were gathered in flat pleats on either hip. A wide pleat or two came from the shoulders down the front sometimes as a continuation of the sack-back. These pleats, meeting at the waist, formed a =V= shape, which was filled by an embroidered stomacher, or made of the same material, crossed by bands, bows, or rows of lace. The flat front pleat was occasionally embroidered, and gradually widened to the bottom of the skirt. Very pointed toes to the shoes, and high heels, with tied or buckled latchets, are seen, the tops of the front often being shaped into four points. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE I. MALE. Long, full wigs are still seen amongst older men, but several new shapes appear as illustrated (Fig. 90), and the black bow and bag became very large; a black ribbon attached to it, with a bow in front, came round the neck. We also see the ends of the wig made into a long, tight pigtail. Hats were of the same three-cornered shape, rather fuller in size, and the feathered edging was still favoured. A hat of the type of Fig. 105 was also worn; and the loose cap with a tassel was put on when the wig was removed (see Fig. 104). [Illustration: FIG. 90.--Wig types, 1st half 18th century.] [Illustration: FIG. 91.--List of Dated Shoes and Boots. No. 1. 1700-1750. 2. 1700-1780. 3. 1700-1780. 4. 1700-1750. 5. 1700-1760. 6. 1720-1780. 7. 1690-1720. 8. 1700-1750. 9. 1700-1740. 10. 1740-1760. 11. 1702-1720. 12. 1730-1750. 13. 1760-1800. 14. 1730-1760. 15. 1740-1770. 16. 1770-1780. 17. 1740-1780. 18. 1786-1796. 19. 1774-1784. 20. 1775-1790. 21. Sole of shoe No. 22. 22. 1776-1800. 23. 1780-1790.] The neck had the same lawn bind with a long lace ruffle, and the coat the same full cut as in the last reign, and the large rounded cuff was still in favour, but many varieties of size were now worn. A vertical pocket is seen occasionally on cloth coats, also a cape and turned-down collar are noted, while several appear with a very small upright collar. Buttons were still worn on some coats, right down the front; but on many coats the buttons stopped level with the pocket. A short-skirted coat came in amongst the dandies towards the end of the reign, and was stiffened out on the skirts; these mostly had a tighter sleeve and cuff. The same decorations continued in use. Waistcoats were much the same, and were cut to the length of the coats, or about four inches shorter; they were buttoned higher, the lace often falling outside. Breeches were the same in cut, fastened with six buttons and a buckle at the side of the knee. The stockings, usually decorated with clocks, were still worn rolled outside the knee amongst smart people. The stiff high boots or gaiters generally had a full curved piece at the top, and short gaiters to the calf are also to be noticed. The shoes were square-toed or of a roundish form, with a short or rather high square front, and heels of various heights. Patches and make-up were used by the fops, and swords and sticks carried, the latter being very high, to 46 inches. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE II. FEMALE. The hair was treated in much the same manner as with George I up to the end of this reign--gathered back from the forehead to a bunch of curls at the back. The small hats and caps, often worn together, continued of the same character; the dresses also remained similar in cut. The sack-back dress was supreme in the fifties, when it was set with panniers, together with the hoops, but the latter were not so much worn towards the end of this reign, except for the "grand dress." Quilted petticoats were much worn, but flounces are not a feature on the skirts till the latter part of this period. The simpler dress was of various lengths, and was at times worn quite short up to 1740. The corset bodice was still in use, with lawn sleeves: square cuffs and lace ruffles held the lead throughout this time, but the fan-shaped sleeve finish to the elbow, in the same material as the dress, began to appear about 1750, generally with a waved or scalloped edge. Pointed toes and high-heeled shoes continued, with either tied or buckled latchets, and long gloves and mittens were in use. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--Three hoops and four pannier forms. Types 1725-1760. 1750-1780. 1740-1770. 1700. 1720-50. 1735-65. 1780-90.] [Illustration: FIG. 93. _Quilted designs on Petticoats, 18th century._] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE II. MALE. Wigs with double points at the back, short curled or of long pigtailed shapes, some with side curls, others curled all round the front, were worn. Large bows and bags, or no bows, finished the back hair, and the bow to the front of the neck was in use from the early part of this reign. Long coats, as in the last reign, and short coats with stiffened skirts were used; many with braided seams and fronts, also a braided opening at the back. Large round cuffs and big square ones, caped coats, and coats with turn-down collars were all in the mode, and the "maccaroni" fashions started about 1760, with absurdities in small hats, clubbed wigs, and very short coats. High sticks and crook sticks, canes and swords continued in use. [Illustration: Plate XXII.-- (_a_) Linen Dress. 1795-1808. _Pattern of Bodice, see p. 316._ (_b_) Silk Bodice. 1825-30. (_c_) Silk Bodice. 1818-25.] [Illustration: FIG. 94.--Wig types, second half 18th century. 1740-1765. 1765-1795.] The pocket flaps were of a curved form, with a rounded centre still, and many of the shoes had a high square front, high heels, and square toes: according to the caricature prints of Boitard, the fashionable hats were smaller in 1730, and much larger ten years later; very full skirts at the former date, and smaller and less stiffened at the latter. Stockings were often still worn outside the knee. Shoes reached an extreme high square front at the latter date, and gloves with curved or square cuffs are to be noted. [Illustration: FIG. 95.--First Half Eighteenth Century.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE III TO 1800. FEMALE. This long reign, like that of Queen Victoria, embraces several changes of style. Up till about 1785 white powder was still used for the hair, reaching its fullest extravagance in the middle of the seventies, set with pearls, bandeaus, caps, lace, flowers and feathers, and about 1776 the top was widened considerably. The front hair, gathered from the forehead, was pressed in a forward curve over a high pad, with one to three curls at the sides and one at the shoulders, the back hair being arranged in a loose loop, curled on the top and set with a large bow at the back; a small round hat with very small low crown (usually decorated with flowers and silks gathered into puffs, or ribbons and small feathers) was tilted right on the front. About 1780 large mob caps with a big bow on the front came in, and were generally worn together with the tall-crowned hat or the large-brimmed hat in favour at this time. A cape with smallish hood worn in the earlier reigns was supplanted about 1777 by the calash, a huge hood set out with whalebone which came to cover the full head-dresses. The heavier caped or hooded cloak, sometimes with side opening for the arms, and usually trimmed with fur, still remained in use to 1800. [Illustration: FIG. 96.--Costume notes, 1770-1780.] [Illustration: Plate XXIII.-- (_a_) Muslin Dress with Tinsel Design. 1798-1810. (_b_) Silk Dress. Period George IV. (_c_) Satin and Gauze Dress. 1820-30.] [Illustration: FIG. 97.--Head Dress. Period 1780-1795.] [Illustration: FIG. 98.--Hats and Caps during period 1780-1795.] [Illustration: FIG. 99.--Hats during period 1790-1800.] The bodice retained the same shape as in the former reign, rather longer in the points back and front, with a large fan finish to the sleeve, double or single; this became supplanted by a much-gathered elbow-piece, sometimes eight inches deep, gathered in four rows. Small drawn gathers started round the waist of the skirt, for the side panniers and hoops were being less worn, except for the "smart gown," but bunching, reefing, and looping took their place in effect, and quilted petticoats remained while this character of dress lasted. The later sack-back dress was sewn tighter to the body, and usually started in a narrower set at the back, while the full pleat from the shoulder down the front went out, and the neck was more displayed by lower bodice fronts, which continued to be set with bows, jewels, lace, or embroidery. Sack-back jackets were often worn in the seventies; when the sack began to disappear, it took the form of overlapped seams on the bodice. The decorated side pockets are noted in prints showing tuck-up dresses to 1775. The jacket bodice of the same form described in the preceding reign was perhaps more in evidence till 1780, not so long in the skirt as in the earlier reigns, but after this date it took a longer skirt, which was often pleated at the back, with a very low neck and short waist. [Illustration: FIG. 100.--Period 1780-1795.] About 1780 we find a change of style appearing in a shorter waist, with less pointed setting, having often a rounded point or square tabs, and even a shaped finish to the corset front, which was sometimes used like a waistcoat effect under the cut-away dresses seen after 1770 (see Fig. 99, p. 221). A general tendency to imitate male attire is apparent, and the front of the bodice was set with lapels and straps buttoned across (though I have noted this latter character in the early part of this century), and long coats with this character were much worn, with two or three capes. The sleeves are sometimes set over a tight undersleeve, in fact the longer sleeve to the wrist became fashionable. With this change a short gathered skirt is seen on some bodices, and the full gathered skirt was bunched out at the back on a bustle, of which I give an illustration (p. 212), the low neck being filled with a large lawn fichu; a wide belt was generally worn, or a wide sash and bow at the back or side is seen with the lighter dresses, these being simple in style, just gathered at the waist, with short full sleeves set with a frill, and another frill was also arranged round the neck. [Illustration: FIG. 101.] About 1790 the mode again began to change to a classic style, still higher in the waist, with a short tight sleeve, at times puffed in the upper part, or an outer and under sleeve, as per illustration A, Plate XXII (see p. 215). The fronts of this type of bodice were mostly buttoned or pinned up to the shoulders over a tight underfront, the skirt opening about 18 inches at the sides, thus saving a fastening at the back. I have illustrated some very interestingly cut jackets of this period from my collection, as A, Plate XXIV (see p. 231); the sleeves were very long and were ruckled on the arm, as likewise were the long gloves or mittens of this time. A long scarf or drape was carried with this style, and a round helmet-like hat in straw or a turban was adopted. High sticks were still carried by ladies till the nineties, and umbrellas or parasols; the former came into vogue about 1770, the latter about six years later. Muffs of beautifully embroidered silk and satin were set with purfled trimmings, gold and silver lace, or bows and ribbons; otherwise they were of furs or feathers. They remained rather small up to 1780, when a very large shape set in, which continued till the end of the reign; the quantity of beautiful fans of this century must be so well known as to need no description. The highest artistry was concentrated on them. [Illustration: FIG. 102.--Period 1790-1800.] [Illustration: FIG. 103.--Costume notes, 1790-1800.] [Illustration: FIG. 104.--Lounge Caps worn during removal of Wig.] Shoes at the beginning of this reign were set on very high spindle heels; the toe-front became rounded, the instep-front a pointed shape, and wide latchets were buckled till about 1785, but fashion discarded them earlier; for about 1780 the shoes became very small at the heel, and pointed again at the toe. When the latchets went out, the pointed instep remained for a time, but a low round front appeared, and the heel practically vanished just before 1800. These later shoes were decorated on the front by needlework or incised leather openwork underlaid with another colour. The soles at this time were extremely quaint in shape, and the shoes were tied sandal fashion up the ankle. [Illustration: Plate XXIV.-- (_a_) Outdoor Silk Jacket. 1798-1808. (_b_) Embroidered Muslin Bodice. 1816-30. (_c_) Embroidered Muslin Bodice. 1824-25. (_d_) Satin and Gauze Bodice. 1820-30.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE III TO 1800. MALE. The wigs, which were rather high in the front of the crown in the earlier part, began to cast off the most eccentric forms, and became just curled, rather full at the sides, and tied with a bow at the back: dull pink powder became a favoured hue from about 1780; most people began to return to their own hair, and one might see many without long hair in the nineties. The last type of dressing the hair in imitation of the wig form was a long, tightly braided pigtail at the back, with one or even two side curls over the ear, and side whiskers were allowed to fill up to them; thus when the short hair set the fashion, side whiskers came in. Hats were still worn of the three-cornered shape, but the favourites became a front cockade hat and a hat with a rounded crown and rather wide brim, sometimes turned up on one side; a short type of top-hat was also often seen, and later became the fashion. The same lawn and lace cravat developed into more of a plain white stock, with a frilled shirt-front. The coat was worn much tighter in the arms and was smartly cut, with the fronts running away into a narrow tailed skirt. The pockets often began to take a plain square form, with or without buttons; the buttons on the front of the coat stopped at the waist--many cuffs are seen without them; and the side pleats, set more to the back, were pressed and narrower. Both the plain and turn-over collars were set up high in the neck, large cut-steel buttons were introduced in the early seventies, and many fancy china buttons, besides the gilt silver and paste ones were in use. A new type of coat made its appearance with a high turn-over collar and large lapels, and a sudden cut-in of the coat-front high in the waist, giving a very long-tailed effect to the skirt. A cuff shape with these was mostly made in one with the sleeve and buttoned at the side towards the back, and when the cuff was additional, it seldom had buttons, as formerly. A greatcoat with one, two, or three capes was a picturesque garment, and a leather-covered bottle was often carried when riding a distance, of which I have an example in my collection. [Illustration: FIG. 105.] Waistcoats, which had become much shorter, were now giving place to a type with a straight-across front and turned-back lapels at the neck; these large lapels were mostly worn outside over the coat lapel. The waistcoats were often double-breasted with an embroidered design down the front between the double row of buttons, and the straight pockets of these had no flaps; they shortened at the waist in character with the lapelled coat, but were worn lower than the cut-in shape of the coat, showing about 3 inches when the coat was fastened. Breeches became very tight, and trousers begin to appear after 1790. Striped stockings and suits were much in favour. Top-boots with rather long brown tops were worn, or high boots with a curved top, with a gold tassel set in front, were seen. The shoes with latchets and buckles had a low front on the instep, and from about 1780 took a rather pointed oval toe shape; the heels were mostly worn shorter. Swords were not so much in use except on great occasions, but sword-sticks were carried, and heavy club-sticks were fashionable before 1800. Patches were little used after the seventies, but the snuff-box was still indispensable. The double long purse with central rings and tassels at the ends was carried, of knitted silk or of leather, the former with steel beads and coloured silks worked together after 1780: small bag purses were also in use, usually set in gilt mounts and made in the same methods with a tassel below. [Illustration: Plate XXV.-- (_a_) Silk Dress. 1800-10. (_b_) Cotton Dress. 1800-10. (_c_) Embroidered Muslin Dress. 1820-30 (_Pattern, see p._ 339). (_d_) Silk Gauze Dress. 1824-30.] [Illustration: FIG. 106.] CHAPTER VIII CHARACTER OF TRIMMINGS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. During the later part of the 18th century, a great deal of tinsel drawn work was done on fine muslin, and became beautifully treated in delicate design on the hem and down the front of many of the high-waisted dresses as in Fig. A, Plate XXIII (see p. 218). Later on towards the twenties we see a great deal of effective coarse work in heavy gold tinsel, and at the same time to the forties a number of dresses were ably enriched with fine gold thread. The white embroidery in the earlier trimmings of this period, of which I give examples in Plate XXIV (see p. 231), was remarkable for its wealth of fancy; the chief beauty of these dresses was the delightful treatment of gathered effects, and with the reign of George IV we note the gradual return of the longer pointed bodice, with the growth of very full sleeves, also the increase in the size and fuller set-out of the skirts over the stiff flounced drill petticoats. The =V=-shaped Bertha setting to neck and shoulders began to establish itself, and became a great feature through the thirties and forties; the first signs of it appear about 1814. Varieties of materials were used to great advantage in designing, and drawn tulle trimmings were happily introduced to soften hard shapes and colours. The shoulder fullness also began to be neatly drawn in and held by straps, which gave a charming character to many bodices. From 1816 choice work in piped shapes, often of flower forms decorated with pearls or beads, was set on fine net, as seen in Plates XXIII and XXIX (see pp. 218, 263). The attraction to the thirties was the happy effects gained by the bow and flower looping on the flounces, and these ripened in fancy and variety through the forties. Braiding was adopted in the thirties with a rather charming treatment of tassels down the front of the dress; the polonaises of this time were also effective and simple, caught here and there with posies of flowers, and we find this fashion again revived in the sixties. With the reign of George IV we notice an increasing choice of strong coloured effects, which culminated in the mid-Victorian era in raw colour and violent shot silks, velvets, and heavy fringes, but one may see that many of these dresses of bright pure tone looked exceedingly refined and were quite stately. A remarkable dress is Fig. A, Plate XXXII (see p. 279), which is of very strong bright blue; its only enrichment being a curved line of folded silk. All these dresses from 1800 were delightfully embellished with embroidered fichus, light scarves of frail gauze, crêpe, or Norwich silk, and in the Victorian times capes and =V=-shaped shawls; fascinating lace ruffles and tuck-in fronts to the bodice necks, of frills and bands of embroidery, broke the severity or bareness of many dresses. An endless variety of fascinating caps and lace head-lappets was pinned or caught into the hair at the wearer's fancy; besides the bows, flowers, and jewels (especially pearls) which have always played an important part in the coiffure from early times, the chatelaines and bags, fobs, fans, and lace or silk handkerchiefs all give the artist a note of extra colour when desired. The cruel period of taste really came with the seventies, though one can trace many quaint and interesting cuts in the bodices and skirts of this time; but the "grand dress" of complicated drapings, heavily fringed or braided, was a "set piece" which, let us hope, will never appear again. The long stocking-purse which began to appear in the late 17th century was up to 1820 sometimes carried tucked through the belt; it was set with a pair of metal rings and tassels of steel or gilt beads. Small and large circular and bag-shaped purses were also in use; all these were made in coloured silk threads enriched with steel, gilt, or coloured beads, the latter shapes being set in chased metal mounts, the circular ones generally having a fringe and the bag shape a small tassel or heavy drop. These shapes can also be seen in coloured leathers with a leather tassel, besides the plain money-bag with a draw-string. NINETEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE III. FEMALE. The hair up to 1808 was gathered into a knot of curls at the back of the head, rather high up, with a small curl at the sides in front of the ear. Later the knot was set more on the top, and the side curls were made more of a feature, several being arranged at the sides. Numerous varieties of large and small brimmed hats, bonnets, and turbans are seen, and several masculine top-hats and cockade hats may be noted late in this reign. The usual feather decorations and large ribbons or flowers were in use, and a handkerchief was sometimes bound over the top of the straw hat and tied under the chin. [Illustration: FIG. 107.--Costume notes, 1811-1812.] [Illustration: FIG. 108.--Costume notes, 1814-1816.] The classic high-waisted dress continued till 1808, and was often beautifully decorated with white embroidery and gold or tinsel, as in A, Plates XX and XXIII (see pp. 199, 218), and the frontispiece is a lovely white example. There were several interesting drapings, one being a cord hanging from the back of the shoulder to loop up the train of the dress, as in A, Plate XXII (see p. 215). The simple tunic shapes are better described by the illustrations: more originality was essayed in design after the last-mentioned date. A high Vandyked lace collar and fan setting to the shoulders appeared, and many interesting dresses of a plain cut, mostly in velvet and silks, were worn about 1810-12. A gathered sleeve drawn tight at intervals was often seen up to 1816, when embroidered ruffles and frills decorated most of the necks and skirts, and a braided type of character, rather military in effect with beautifully piped edgings, came in from about 1817. Spencer bodices were an additional interest at this period, and a short puff sleeve was generally banded or caught with bows; these being often worn over a fairly loose long sleeve gathered by a wristband. Dresses were worn shorter from about 1810. Charming lace and embroidered fichus crossed the shoulders, and long scarf-capes were thrown round the neck and were often tied round behind, as in the 18th century; long capes with points and tassels in front fell to the knees, and a simple pelisse with cape became a pleasing feature. Bags were always carried, of which there is a variety of shapes in the plates; long gloves or mittens were generally worn. Parasols of a flat shape, or others with round or pagoda shaped tops are seen, many being edged with a deep fringe. Long purses were often tucked through the waistband. [Illustration: FIG. 109.] The pointed shoe, tied sandal fashion up the leg, and with no heel, remained through this reign, but a round-toed low shoe, tied on in the same manner, began to supersede it about 1810. NINETEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE III. MALE. Wigs had practically gone out, except for a few of the latter type of the 18th century amongst elderly people. The hair was now worn short, and left rather full on the front, with short side-whiskers. Plain black or white stocks tied with a front bow, and a starched or unstarched collar with a frilled or gathered shirt-front were in use. A tie-pin or stud was also seen in the centre of the stock or frilling. The same hats as in the latter part of the 18th century continued for a time, but the top-hat had established its favour, and assumed various shapes throughout this reign. [Illustration: Plate XXVI.-- (_a_) Morning Coat of Chintz. 1825-45. _Pattern, see p. 313._ (_b_) Cloth Coat. 1808-20. _Pattern, see p. 307._ (_c_) Cloth Overcoat. 1820-35. _Pattern similar to p. 311._] The coats were set with very high turn-over collars and a wide-shaped lapel, and the lapel of the waistcoat was still brought outside. As these lapels on the coats became smaller and changed into a roll collar, they were cut into points at the breast, as seen in the illustrations. The front of the coat cut away in a short square, rather high in the waist, which thus formed a long-tailed skirt; the fronts were made double-breasted, and were often fastened high up the lapel. The hip-pleats had gone round more to the back into a closely pressed fold, about three inches from the back-opening. Sleeves were gathered rather full in the shoulders, becoming very tight on the forearm, and were finished in a cuff, or buttoned cuff-shape. We also see that a short square coat without tails was worn over the longer one. Overcoats (or long-skirted coats) with a cape or capes, up to four, were worn all through this reign, both double and single breasted, sometimes with turn-up cuffs; but this mode was not frequently used, as a sewn-on cuff or cuff made in the sleeve was now worn, and began to take a curved shape well over the hand, with three buttons to fasten it on the outer sides. Short double-breasted waistcoats continued much the same, but a round-shaped lapel appeared on many. Very tight-fitting breeches were worn of the same 18th-century cut, and trousers began to gain favour; a fob of seals, &c., was always worn, coming from under the waistcoat. Soft high boots with turn-down tops, and boots with longish brown tops set low on the leg. The top-boot with the pointed or oval-shaped front and tassel still held sway, and an oval-toed low shoe with or without small latchets was in use. NINETEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE IV. FEMALE. The hair at this period was worn in plaits or curls gathered on top, and during the latter years was arranged into stiff loops set with a high comb; a group of curls was drawn to the sides of the face, the hair being mostly parted from the centre. Plumes were much used for head-dresses, and caps with gathered puffs and pointed frills. A high-crowned straw poke bonnet, tilted upwards, was still in form; but the prevailing mode was a silk bonnet, with the brim curved in at the front, the sides being drawn together under the chin with a bow. The prevailing decoration was a group of feathers thrown forward or ribbon loops, and after this a large round hat, with a full gathered crown, arrived about 1827, or straw shapes, such as Fig. A, Plate XXVIII (see p. 259). [Illustration: FIG. 110.] Dresses gradually assumed a longer waist, and a short pointed bodice made its appearance here and there from about 1822, when short stays began to return, and pointed belt corselets were frequent, though the waistband or sash was chiefly used. Short puffed sleeves of charming character and workmanship were sometimes set in a gauze sleeve, as in Fig. C, Plate XXIII (see p. 218). Spencers and pelisses had long sleeves coming from these short ones; they were rather full, and were caught at the wrist with a band. The upper sleeve gradually disappeared as the full-topped sleeves began to develop in size, about 1824; this fullness was often broken up into gathered parts, a tight cuff-piece usually finished at the wrist. The high set-up collars and neck-frills gave way to the flat capes about 1827, though the small ruffs were worn round the top of the high-necked capes to 1830. The gathered shoulder began about 1823, and soon became a marked feature; pointed or scalloped frills and trimmings came into favour from 1825, Fig. B, Plate XXIII (see p. 218), and about 1827 the sloped appearance in the bodice began to be noticed as the sleeves were set lower. The shoulders in ball dresses were shown, and a gathered Bertha of silk or lace was arranged round the neck of bodice, Fig. D, Plate XXIV (see p. 231), or this form was made in the pattern as in Fig. C, Plate XXII (see p. 215). The =V=-shaped piece from the centre of waist or breast began to spread over the shoulders, where it was opened, as in Fig. B, Plate XXII (see p. 215). This =V= shape was often open down to the waist, where it was filled in with a centre-piece of embroidery. Skirts were gradually set out fuller, with stiff-flounced petticoats; they had various simple or richly decorated borders and fronts, or several small flounces, or one deep one often with the edges cut into divers shapes. [Illustration: Plate XXVII.--Outdoor Silk Dress. 1825-35.] [Illustration: FIG. 111.] I have striven to give good examples of the marked styles in the various dated illustrations, as well as the court train to dress, Fig. A, Plate XXXIII (see p. 282), which also comes into this time. Shoes were rather round at the toes till near the end of the reign, when they took a square shape; a tiny rosette or bow was placed at the front of instep, and they were held by narrow ribbons, crossed and tied round the ankle. Boots lacing at the inside, with seam down the front, often had a toe-cap as in Fig. 5, Plate XXI (see p. 202); no heels were worn. Light gauze scarves were usually carried, and very small fans besides the larger feather ones. Bags or sachets of the forms illustrated were painted or embroidered in ribbonwork, chenille, tulle, and coloured silks. A few specimens of parasols are also given, and gloves and mittens were of the same character as in the latter part of the last reign. The patterns given of some of the dresses shown in the plates will be useful as to the measurements of the increase in skirt-width and sleeves; one may also note the very pointed set-out of the breast, sometimes made with two gores, which only occurs in this reign. Muffs were usually of a large size, and a bow with long ends was often worn on the front. NINETEENTH CENTURY. GEORGE IV. 1820-30. MALE. The mode in beaver hats was most varied; high straight crowns with small brims, others tapering at the top with larger curled brims, or crowns enlarging at the top with almost straight small brims; a top-hat of straw is shown on page 309. A short-crowned hat was also worn. The hair was combed towards the front at either side, and the face shaven, with the exception of short side-whiskers. A very high stock of black satin or linen surrounded the throat, with or without the points of collar showing, and a frilled shirt, often stiffly goffered. Coats were very tight-fitting and mostly double-breasted, with long swallow-tailed skirts, or long full skirts; the waist was rather short, and the effect of coat-front round-breasted with a high turned-over collar finished in large lapels, which were often treated with velvets. The favourite colours for overcoats were greys, buffs, greens, and blues, and the edges were neatly finished with fine cord. The sleeves, rather full in the shoulder, became tight on the lower arm, coming to a curved shape well over the hand, and buttoned up the side. The pockets were frequently set at an angle, as in illustration, and a short round cape, or two, was seen on many overcoats. A short type of coat is seen about 1827, with a single roll collar. [Illustration: FIG. 112.--Period 1820-1840.] Waistcoats mostly had a round-shaped lapel, and were often double-breasted and very shaped at the waist, which was set fairly high; a long opening allowed the frilled shirt-front full display. There were also waistcoats having no lapels, no pockets, or no cover-flap; the points of front were very small, being buttoned to the end, or, with the double-breasted shape, they were straight across. Breeches were not so much worn as trousers of cloth, nankeen, drill, and fine white corduroy; these were usually fastened under the boots with a strap, others were looser and often worn short, well above the ankle. A very full type in the upper part peg-tops, was in fashion about 1820-25 amongst the dandies, and for evening dress, very close-fitting breeches to the knee, or just above the ankle, the latter being opened and buttoned up to the calf. Pince-nez were favoured, with a heavy black ribbon, generally worn tucked in the lapels of the waistcoat; and a fob of gold seals, &c., hung from the braces, below waistcoat pocket. [Illustration: FIG. 113.--1830-1840.] Shoes and short Wellington boots were chiefly worn, the former being low in the heel and very short in the tongue, which was almost covered by small latchets, either buckled or tied, the shape of the toe being rather round. The Hessian boots with curved front and tassel at the top were still worn. NINETEENTH CENTURY. WILLIAM IV. FEMALE. The hair still retained the high loops on top and the bunch of curls at the sides, poised by a back comb and set with flowers or feathers; there was also a great variety of fancy capes with pointed frills, some with long tie ends, and these are seen with most dresses, and were worn in conjunction with the hats. The favourite hat was a big, flat, circular form, generally tilted at one side, and decorated with bows, flowers, and feathers; a flat tam-o'-shanter shape was often worn with the riding-dress, sometimes with a large peak-shape in front, and straps under the chin. The large poke-bonnet also kept the front as flat and round as possible, with a high crown tilted upward in order to set over the hair loops. [Illustration: Plate XXVIII.-- (_a_) Silk Pelisse. 1820-30. (_b_) Cotton Dress. 1830-40. (_Pattern, see p._ 343). (_c_) Silk Spencer and Cape. 1818-27 (_Pattern, see p._ 324).] [Illustration: FIG. 114.--1828-1836.] The bodice began with a very pointed front and very low neck off the shoulders, tuck-ins of fine embroidery, and capes or _fichus_ of the same, covered the shoulders, often three deep. The pointed bodice only lasted for a few years, when the waistband again became the favourite. The sleeves were very large at the shoulders, diminishing at the wrist, but soon took a big round form, sometimes tightly pleated into quarters before 1835. We then get the huge sleeve gathered at the wrist, and often falling below it; this again tightened on the forearm, and we note a tendency to tighter sleeves coming in before 1837, neatly gathered well down the shoulder. The evening-dress sleeve was a large puff, set out by stiffening to a flat wide effect. Very wide epaulet collars were seen on most dresses, meeting in a =V= shape at the waist, with a filling of lace in the front, and many bodices were elaborately gathered, and some of the sleeves were also gathered into puffs all down the arm. [Illustration: FIG. 115.--1830-1840.] The skirts were set out very full over stiff flounced petticoats, and were worn rather short; as a rule they were trimmed with one or two flounces, which were handsomely decorated, and a short polonaise is occasionally seen. There were many interesting trimmings of gauze, flowers, and bows; while silk-flowered gauze over dresses made some charming effects. Heavy mantles and capes or pelisses began to be braided, and rather strong colours were in general taste. The hand-bags were of a curved form and generally bore heavy tassels. Very small fans and round fans were attractive, and bouquet-holders of gilt, with pearl handles, became the thing to carry. Shoes were of the low sandal type, fastened by crossed elastic, with very square toes, and a tiny rosette or bow on the front; boots to the ankle were now in fashion, mostly lacing at the inside, and having a long toe-cap, sometimes with a small rosette at the top of this or a tassel at front of the top of the boot. [Illustration: Plate XXIX.-- (_a_) Embroidered Silk Gauze Dress. 1820-30. (_b_) Gauze Dress with Appliqued Design. 1825-35. (_c_) Printed Linen Outdoor Dress. 1827-47 (_Pattern, see p. 342_).] NINETEENTH CENTURY. WILLIAM IV. MALE. The hair was worn rather full in curls at the sides or on top, parted at the left side, besides being occasionally parted at the centre. Side whiskers, curved forward, still continued, and a short trimmed beard was now worn round under the chin by many, moustaches also made their first appearance at the end of this reign. Top-hats were high and straight, but many still adhered to the tapered crown and larger brim. The same plain stocks of black satin continued, with or without a front bow, and a soft pleated or frilled shirt-front. The coats were similar to the last reign: the chief differences being an increase in the length of the waist, wider tails, and large lapels of a similar cut: velvet collars and cuffs were much worn, and the waist was still made tight. A coat with a square skirt as in Fig. 116 is seen for the first time, and the swallow-tailed coat was worn not quite so long. A lower opening to the waistcoat was generally seen in evening attire, which sometimes had but four small buttons, while more of the single-breasted type were in use, with and without lapels. Very tight trousers to the ankle buttoned up to the calf continued, or plain trousers were held by straps under the boot; twill, corduroy, or nankeen were both strapped or free at the ankle and rather short. Knee-breeches were still worn by many for evening dress, and long Italian capes with overcapes and high turn-over collars were fashionable, besides the very full-skirted greatcoat. Boots and shoes were square at the toes and rather long and narrow, the shoes having a bow or buckle. Short Wellington boots continued much in use, also spats. Fobs of gold seals, &c., were worn, and eye-glasses attached to a black ribbon is a noticeable feature. NINETEENTH CENTURY. VICTORIA. FEMALE. The hair was parted in the centre and tightened in a top setting of plaits, with side curls over the ears. This mode was retained by many till the fifties, but the top plaits began to be set lower at the back, and the same flat parted hair was brought in a curved shape to the front of the ears, often in a small plait, allowing the ear to show, or in a plaited knot at either side; about 1850 it was waved, parted, and simply curved from the forehead over the ears in a fuller manner, sometimes being turned under to increase the side fullness, while the back hair was arranged lower down the neck. In the sixties the hair was waved and caught behind in ringlets or was bunched into the hideous chignons, which are seen till about 1880. [Illustration: FIG. 116.--1840-1860.] The variety of caps and hats is too alarming to deal with, and baffles comprehensible description, so it is best for the student to dip into the hundreds of illustrations through this period in the _Ladies' Magazine_, _Punch_, the _Illustrated London News_, or the _Ladies' Treasury_ for the later styles. The straw bonnet with a straighter poke front was favoured till 1850, when the front became considerably reduced in size and fitted closely round the face. The larger brimmed bonnets had a little frill by the ears, and the tight-brimmed bonnet often had the frill all round with a flower also tucked in effectively to the wearer's taste, and we see this favoured till the seventies. In the fifties a large flat Leghorn hat with a small crown was in evidence, the brim dipping back and front, decorated with feathers or bows, and a three-cornered French hat with feathers set in the brim came in with revival of the 18th-century style about 1860. A small bowler hat and a very small "pork-pie" hat appears in the late sixties, and a tiny-shaped bonnet of a curved form during the seventies. [Illustration: Plate XXX.-- (_a_) Printed Silk Bodice. 1840-50. (_Pattern, see p. 320._) (_b_) Gathered Linen Bodice. 1837-47. (_c_) Silk Bodice and Bertha. 1845-55.] [Illustration: FIG. 117.--1845-1855.] At the beginning of this long reign we find the pointed bodice with a normal length of waist has really come to stay, though many dresses retain the waistband till the fifties, and there is such a confusion of styles at that time, it is difficult to arrange a sequence. From the 18th century fashions became more complicated in the greater variety of design, each overlapping the other, and several distinct forms of character come and go during this long reign. I do not envy the person who undertakes the chronology of our present period. At the commencement in 1837 the huge sleeves gathered at the wrist were still in evidence, especially as a gauze oversleeve to evening attire, and they continued thus to the fifties, but very large sleeves were really dying out and the usual reaction was setting in; the full-shouldered sleeve had turned a somersault and was neatly gathered tight from the shoulder to the elbow, the fullness falling on the forearm, and this was gathered into a tight setting or wristband. The =V=-shaped front to the bodice was kept in many dresses by a collar or two tapering from the shoulders to the waist, the fullness of the breast often being tightly gathered at the shoulders, besides a few inches in the front point of the bodice. A very plain tight-fitting sleeve became fashionable, and on most of these we find a small upper sleeve or a double one as shown in A, Plate XXX (see p. 266); this was sometimes opened at the outer side. These sleeves continued till about 1852. In 1853 a bell-shaped sleeve is noticed in ordinary dress, and this continued in various sizes till 1875, reaching its fuller shape about 1864. These types of sleeves were usually worn over a tight one or a full lawn sleeve gathered at the wrist; most bodices with this sleeve were closely fitted and high in the neck, the waist often being cut into small tabs. We also notice for a few years in the early fifties the deeper part of the bell curved to the front of the arm, giving a very ugly appearance. A close-fitting jacket also came into evidence till about 1865 with tight sleeves and cuffs, sometimes with a little turn-down collar and a longer skirt as in Fig. C, Plate XXXIII (see p. 282). This particularly fine embroidered specimen, in imitation of the 18th-century style, is interestingly cut away short at the back to allow for better setting on the crinoline. There is another type of sleeve seen about 1848, of a plain, full, square cut; these became varied in shape, being opened up the side and generally trimmed with wide braids. This clumsy character is seen up to 1878, the later ones being fuller in cut. Zouave jackets were occasionally worn in the forties and later in the early sixties, when the wide corselet belt was again favoured. Skirts at the beginning of the reign were fully set out on drill petticoats, stiff flounces, and even whalebone, so it was hardly "a great effect" when the crinoline appeared about 1855, though a furious attack was made against it at first; this undersetting developed to its fullest extent between 1857 and 1864, and many dresses in the early sixties were also worn short, showing the high boots of this period. At first the crinoline was slightly held back from the front by ties, and again in the sixties it was often kept with a straight front, the fullness being held to the back, till the appearance of the bustle brought in another shape. The skirts were now pulled in tight to the front of the figure and bunched up at the back, with a train or shaped flounced pieces overlapping each other caught up under the bustle, as in Fig. B, Plate XXXIII (see p. 282). [Illustration: Plate XXXI.-- (_a_) Embroidered Muslin Outdoor Dress, 1855-65. (_b_) Riding Habit. 1845-75. (_c_) Gauze Ball Dress. 1840-55.] [Illustration: FIG. 118.--Dress improvers, 1865-1875.] Mantles of a cumbersome type and shot-silk capes with long pointed fronts were worn, often heavily fringed, the former also being mostly decorated with braided designs. Large Paisley shawls were much used all through this reign, besides the cape and hood with its fine tassels which became very fashionable in the sixties. Gloves and mittens are seen both long and short, the latter often beautifully embroidered on the back in the French style. Hand-bags were often carried, of which examples are given in the plates of a variety of shapes; the favourite materials for their make were velvets and silks decorated with bullion, sequins, braids, needlework, and beads, and these bags were richly set in gilt, silver, or steel mounts. Parasols were still heavily fringed, and were of the usual shapes. A very small one was carried in the carriages, and are even seen on the ladies' driving whips. Shoes continued in the same heelless sandal character to the sixties for evening wear, but from the forties most outdoor shoes had a heel and large rosettes. With the seventies came round toes with a low round front and bow, and high shaped heels came to stay till the present day. Boots of white satin, kid, or coloured silks were chiefly worn till the seventies, reaching just above the ankle, laced up the inner side, but many wore elastic sides from the fifties; the toes of these were rather square, and a toe-cap and front seam was made in many of this type. In the forties a tight rosette was sometimes placed low down towards the toes, and later, a huge bow was sewn on the front. High boots buttoned towards the side and very much shaped, with pointed round toes and high heels were sometimes laced and finished with a pair of tassels. Spats were always fashionable through this period. NINETEENTH CENTURY. VICTORIA. MALE. The same modes of doing the hair remained till the sixties, parted at one side and worn rather long and waved, with the side whiskers or beard all round the chin. The side whiskers were allowed to grow long between fifty-five and seventy, and full beards also became fashionable, while the hair was parted in the centre from front to back and flattened on the forehead. The favourite top-hat still reigned supreme, many of which retained the tapered top and large curled brim till about 1855, and a bell shape was frequently seen in the fifties, but the real straight chimney shape was seen throughout till the eighties, with a rather narrow brim, and often of white or fawn-coloured cloth. The bowler hat increased in appreciation, being of a short type, with smallish brim. A short flat felt hat, with rather straight brim, also came into favour from the fifties; little round caps and caps with ear-flaps, for travelling, &c., were also in general use. The frock-coat kept the rather tight sleeves and tight waist, and full square skirt, with back pockets, also a deep lapel, sometimes with a velvet collar, and small cuffs; a breast-pocket was often placed on the left side, and in the fifties the type of morning coat with rounded-off fronts at the skirt appeared, also a small collar and lapel. Square-cut jackets and tweed suits similar to our present shapes, but heavier in cut and with braided edges, were much in use. Velvet or fur-trimmed overcoats, and heavy travelling-coats, also capes and Inverness capes, were all in vogue. Waistcoats became buttoned higher in the neck, and the stock-collar was supplanted in the sixties by a turn-down collar, and small tie or loose bow; many still affected the black stock and pointed collar to the seventies, when a high round collar began to appear. Coloured and fancy waistcoats were much worn till the eighties, and evening dress was similar to the present cut, with slight differences in the length of lapels and waistcoat front. The trousers were made with the front flap till they were buttoned down the front about 1845, and side pockets became general. Braids may be noted down the sides in the fifties, and are seen now and then all through the reign, while large plaids and stripes were highly esteemed. Short Wellington boots were chiefly preferred up to the sixties, and trouser-straps and spats were fashionable all through the reign. The heavier lace-up boot came in during the fifties, and a very shaped type of fashion appeared in the sixties. Having now completed the general survey of Costume, the following pages are given up to the cut and measurements of various antique garments. PATTERNS OF VARIOUS REIGNS FROM ANTIQUE COSTUME WITH NOTES AND MEASUREMENTS I have striven to gather as many representative patterns of dress types and accessories as possible, and also give many measurements from the various examples, when I have been unable to obtain a complete pattern. The character of cut and proportion is the essential point in the study of dress design, and the intimate knowledge of periods. When seeing a collection of patterns, one is astonished at the great variety in cut used to arrive at the different bodice types. Several patterns of single pieces are given, as it aids one to find the fellow-part; for example, the photo of a back given in Fig. C, Plate III (see p. 55), will go with the front cut on page 290; even though these two pieces did not belong to the same body, the cut is seen from which to design the missing part. Often a small piece is wanting for the top of the shoulder, which can easily be supplied to fill the sleeve measurement. The types of trimmings in the different centuries will soon be acquired by a careful student, and the proportions of patterns will be valued for gaining the character. I believe with this collection one could get the true effects of any style of dress seen in the period prints. The drawings are mostly scaled for the half, and the measurement, in inches, will be found by dots on the top of the collotypes, and by a marked line on the pattern pages. One must note, with the 18th-century dress, the sleeve cuffs can be changed, so I give, on page 300, a full-size measurement of the elbow-cuff seen in Fig. A, Plate XVI (see p. 167), and a deeper one of this style is seen on Fig. C, Plate XII (see p. 135), gathered seven times at the elbow. The plain square type was pleated in the front as given on page 300, and a variety of this character is shown on Fig. B, Plate XV (see p. 154). Though many patterns may be found remarkable in proportions, an allowance is often to be made for the undersetting, as well as for the thick, straight corsets worn to the end of the 18th century. I give several specimens of quilting on petticoats of the 18th century, which will probably be found useful to artists; the measurement is also given of their circumference, which attained similar proportions to those set on the Victorian crinolines, going 3 to 4 yards round: four 18th century ones measured 100, 114, 116, 120 inches, and they are often 1 inch longer at the sides, to allow for setting over the panniers; a pattern is given on pages 213 and 332. The embroidered pockets on page 300 were worn in pairs at the sides on the petticoats, and only showed when the dress was looped up. The extra lawn sleeves, given on page 287, show how precious the superfine linen was held, with its superb gathered work, lace ruffles, and often fine embroidery; these pieces could be looked after with special care in the laundry, and could be tacked, pinned, or buttoned on when required. The 16th and 17th century collars were mostly attached to the chemise or shirt, as is seen in many of the old prints. On page 289 I give examples of shape of the various stomachers, which will be found useful for getting the characteristic proportions. The scarves worn round the body of the 17th century cavaliers were from 2 feet 3 inches wide to 3 feet 6 inches, and from 8 feet 6 inches to 7 feet in length. [Illustration: Plate XXXII.-- (_a_) Silk Dress. 1860-70. _Pattern, see p. 346._ (_b_) Gauze Walking Dress. 1850-60. (_c_) Silk Dress. 1848-58. _Pattern, see p. 344._] The stocking top, Fig. C, Plate VI (see p. 74), is probably of similar proportions to the woollen one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, on which the bell-top circumference is 36 inches, and the full length of stocking 38 inches. On page 285 a cap of three pieces is given; their real design is at present unknown, but I trust the Museum authorities may soon discover their placing, for many of these pieces are in existence, and this set in my collection is impressed with a beautiful pattern. The bodice, Fig A, Plate X (see p. 119), should have been set on a stiff-fronted corset to give it the straight style, as it is charmingly proportioned and clean in outline. I have also measured a short circular cloak of the early 17th century, which is 34 inches in diameter, with a square collar 10 inches deep; and another cape of the late 16th century, 40 inches in diameter. On page 290 will be found the smaller tabs which are placed round the jerkin, with a deep front point, as in Fig. A, Plate VIII_a_ (see p. 103); the collar of this type often rises 2¾ inches in the front to 3 inches at the back, in order to carry the stiff ruff or deep turned-down collar. Tabs of the smallest dimensions, in the earlier Elizabeth and James character, generally have six pieces from front to the middle of the back, which are from 2 to 3 inches deep. The epaulets are made in small stiff tabs, caught together in two places only, and so have plenty of give in the shoulder movements; they run to 2¼ inches at the widest part, and do not continue right under the arm. Fig. D, Plate V (see p. 71), has the middle seam of the back open from the waist to within 2 inches of the collar, which is noticeable on many of the later Charles I coats. Long aprons are conspicuous through the 17th century, and one measured was 42 inches wide, gathered to 15 inches at the waist; they were decorated with three bands of embroidered insertion down the front, with a 3-inch plain border, edged with small lace; this is typical in character of design, as is also the same style of linen cape seen on a figure, page 159. A similar one, lent by Sir Robert Filmer, is at the Victoria and Albert Museum; also a cap, of which I give a pattern, A, page 285. The smaller type of embroidered aprons of the late 17th and 18th centuries measure 40 inches wide, 19½ inches deep, with the centre dipping to 17¾ inches; another shape is 26 inches wide, 18 inches in centre, and 13½ inches on sides. The bodice, with deep skirt, Fig. B, Plate XVIII (see p. 183), is a type seen all through the 18th century, both longer and shorter in the skirt. The pattern of the 17th-century breeches is interesting as regards the cut, the upper part being kept plain, otherwise the gathered fullness would have disturbed the set of the jerkin tabs; the band of these breeches has six hooks either side to back, which fasten to eyes on an under flap sewn on body of jerkin. The epaulet on this pattern is only a ¾-inch piece, braided with two narrow braids, and the bows on tabs are of ribbon, 1½ inches wide. The three patterns of capes given on pages 349, 350 will be found useful, as they are simple and very typical of the Victorian times, long shawls being otherwise much used. The fullness of the Elizabethan overdress seen on B, Plate II (see p. 42), is 66 inches to the back seam, and the Fig. C, on the same plate, is 47 inches. The "jump," or jacket, Fig. A, Plate III (see p. 55), is 100 inches round, the fullness of the sleeve 13 inches, and the length of back 32 inches. An over-tunic of the early 17th century is interesting to examine, though it is a specimen of German costume. [Illustration: Plate XXXIII.-- (_a_) Silk Dress with Court Train. 1828-38. (_b_) Silk Afternoon Dress. 1872-78. (_c_) Silk Coat and Skirt. 1855-65. _Pattern, see p. 320._] PATTERNS TO SCALE _For Detailed List, see page 353._ [Illustration: PATTERN 1. _Made in satin on wood_ _Piccadilloes 1580-1630_ _Side view open_ _Gather to a ring at mark_ _Gather to a ring at mark_ _A pair belonging above_ _3 Caps 16-17th c._ _12 in. ties_ _1600-1650 17th c._ _Others measure_ 16×14 14×9 13×9 _Cap 16-17th c._ _Cap of pierced embroidery, late 17th & early 18th cent._] [Illustration: PATTERN 2. _17th c. Stock, Chas. II._ _18th c._ _Stiff gorget for carrying Collar_ _Stock_ _Cap, embroidered, 1st half 18th c._ _Collar and caps, 17 century_] [Illustration: PATTERN 3. _Ruff, 1590-1610_ _24 in. round_ _15 round_ _20 in. round_ _18 century_ 14 _1st half of 17th c._ 10 _Caps and Extra Sleeves of Fine Linen 17 century_] [Illustration: PATTERN 4. _Embroidered linen jacket, front and sleeve, 16th century_ _Embroidered linen bodice Front, Chas. I._] [Illustration: PATTERN 5. _Elizabethan jerkin of punched leather._ _Gold embroidered stomacher, about 1600-30_ 1660-1689 1690-1730 1680-1730] [Illustration: PATTERN 6. _Set of tabs for male jerkin, 17 cent._ _Back_ _Front_ _Side_ _Pattern type from worked pieces Elizabethan reign 1570-1605_] [Illustration: PATTERN 7. _Circular Cape, 17 cent._ _Collar_ _Join top and gather at dots._ _Cap, 1580-1630._] [Illustration: PATTERN 8. _Bodice_ _Fig. 1 Plate 10_] [Illustration: PATTERN 9. _Corset, 1620-60_ _Cut of bodice, Fig. B, Plate 5_ _Corset, 1665-85_ _Corset, 1685-1705_] [Illustration: PATTERN 10. _26 buttons_ _Sleeve seam_ _Start epaulette_ _Finish_ _Scale_ _Collar_ _Similar type to Fig. C, Plate 7_ _Jerkin of white quilted satin_ _See page opposite for Breeches of same, 1620-1640. Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington._] [Illustration: PATTERN 11. _Breeches, 1615-60_ _ties_ _pocket_ _pocket_ _Fulled_ _Hooks to fasten to jerkin_] [Illustration: PATTERN 12. _sleeve_ _35 buttons_ _Neck Band_ _Buttons ¾ in._ _Open_ _12 buttons_ _Full cape coat, V. & A. Museum, about 1640-68_] [Illustration: PATTERN 13. _Back of bodice, Fig. B, Plate 7._ _13½ Front to back of epaulette_ _Male cap, early 18 century_] [Illustration: PATTERN 14. _2 collars, time Chas. II._] [Illustration: PATTERN 15. _Jacket. Fig. C, Plate 4_ _Top sleeve_ _Open to mark_ _Open_ _Open_] [Illustration: PATTERN 16. _Sleeve cuffs, 18 cent._ _Early type_ _Late type_ _1690-1750, 2 pockets_ _Hanging sleeve of Fig. C, Plate 2_ _Open_ _Embroidered bodice fronts, early 18 century_] [Illustration: PATTERN 17. _Quilted linen corsage, 1660-1715_ _Open_ _Herald's coat, Fig. A, Plate 7. Victoria & Albert Museum_ _Open_ _Open_] [Illustration: PATTERN 18. _Front of embroidered linen sleeved waistcoat, 1690-1720_ _Victoria and Albert Museum_] [Illustration: PATTERN 19. _Inner vest_ _Sleeve waistcoat, early 18th cent._ _Sleeve to lace on_ _Open to mark_] [Illustration: PATTERN 20. _Breeches, 1660-1720_ _Button_ _Pleat_ _Pocket_ _Open for pocket_ _Fullness_ _Open_ _Pocket_] [Illustration: PATTERN 21. _Breeches, 18th century_ _Waist_ _Gather_ _Open_ _Top_ _Knee strap_ _Waist_ _Loose flap_ _Pocket_ _Pocket_] [Illustration: PATTERN 22. _Fly knee_ _Breeches, 18th century_] [Illustration: PATTERN 23. _Coat, Fig. B, Plate 26_ _Dart_ _Open to waist_ _Collar_] [Illustration: PATTERN 24. _Coat, Fig. B, Plate 13_ _Joined under pleat_ _Pocket_ _Pocket_ _Small pocket_ _open_ _caught_ _open_ _Open_ _Side tab_ _Corderoy trousers 1815._] [Illustration: PATTERN 25. _Fig. A, Plate 15 Coat, 1775-90_ _Cuff_ _Band to draw up_ _Open_ _Double_ _Under collar_ _Turnover collar_ _Pocket_ _Pleat_ _Open_ _Open_ _15 in. tie_ _Leather Breeches, 1800-30_ _Straw hat, 1816-30_] [Illustration: PATTERN 26. _Join_ _Fold_ _Under collar_ _Turnover collar_ _Pleat_ _Open to waist_ _Coat, 1784-94 Directoire type See_ FIG. 106] [Illustration: PATTERN 27. _Collar_ _Breast pocket, left only_ _Coat, 1830-1845 Similar type to Fig. C, Plate 26._] [Illustration: PATTERN 28. _Pocket_ _Slightly gather_ _Pocket_ _Top_ _Foot strap_ _Strap inside_ _Open_ _Foot Strap_ _Buff linen trousers, 1810-1840_] [Illustration: PATTERN 29. _Turnover collar_ _Collar tab_ _Pocket flap_ _Pocket_ _Pleat_ _Joined on waistcoat inside_ _Open to mark_ _Coat, Fig. A, Plate 26_] [Illustration: PATTERN 30. _Bodice, 1816-22_ _Trimming stretched to curl over_ _Sleeve straps_ _Collar_ _Waist_ _Gathered in strap_ _Piped straps and seams_] [Illustration: PATTERN 31. _Bell sleeved Bodice, 1848-58_ _Trimmed narrow velvet braid_ _Open_ _Open_] [Illustration: PATTERN 32. _Bodice of linen dress, Fig A, Plate 22_ _Buttons for front_ _Cord for looping train, 90 inches_ _Outside sleeve_] [Illustration: PATTERN 33. _Bodice, 1860-70_ _Bodice, 1850-60 type_ _Sleeve for net covering_ _Gathered sleeve_ _Bodice, 1816-25_] [Illustration: PATTERN 34. _Jacket bodice, Fig. A, Plate 24_] [Illustration: PATTERN 35. _Bodice, 1845-55 similar type Fig. A, Plate 30_ _Epaulette_ _Band round waist_ _Front_] [Illustration: PATTERN 36. _Sleeveless overjacket, early 18 century embroidered_ _Wrist strap_ _Tie on_ _Gather_ _Gather_ _Strap_ _Gather_ _Spencer, 1827-37, piped trimming_] [Illustration: PATTERN 37. _Bodice, 1812-18_ _Top_ _Silk to line_ _Under lining_] [Illustration: PATTERN 38. _Corset pattern, 18 century_ _Bodice of Fig. A, Plate 14_] [Illustration: PATTERN 39. _Similar type of Bodice to Fig. B, Plate 14. Bodice with type of pleated back, 1720-50_ _Box pleats_ _Pleated back_ _Lining for front_ _Lining for back_ _Laced_] [Illustration: PATTERN 40. _Tab gathered in centre trimming on epaulette_ _Cape_ _Epaulette band_ _Waist band_ _Collar_ _Pattern, Fig. C, Plate 28_ _Thickly kilted skirt to bodice, 26 ins._ _Bodice, Fig. A, Plate 18_] [Illustration: PATTERN 41. _Zouave jacket, late 18 century_ _Gather_ _Bodice, 1818-28_] [Illustration: PATTERN 42. _Silk jacket, Fig. B, Plate 19_ _Gathered_ _Pleat_] [Illustration: PATTERN 43. _Bodice, Fig. C, Plate 18_] [Illustration: PATTERN 44. _Bodice, Fig. A, Plate 30_ _Wrist_ _Bertha_ _Gather_ _Gather_] [Illustration: PATTERN 45. _Cased_ _Pleat_ _Pleats_ _Open_ _Open_ _Open to mark_ _Pocket_ _Coat, Fig. C, Plate 33_] [Illustration: PATTERN 46. _Waist_ _S. lining_ _Puff sleeve_ _Gather_ _Gather_] [Illustration: PATTERN 47. _Dress, 1805-1818_ _Pleated_ _Pleat_ _Apron front_ _Gathered_ _Mob Cap, 1780-1800_ _Gathered in band_ _Trimmed double lace frill round front_ _Width of insertion_ _Cap with comb, 1790-1800_ _Puff comb_] [Illustration: PATTERN 48. _Pleated_ _Pleated_ _Pleated_ _Side plaquet_ _Quilted petticoat, 1740-70_ _Waist band_] [Illustration: PATTERN 49. _Pleats_ _Pleat to notch_ _Made in lining_ _Petticoat, Fig. B, Plate 16_ _Top_] [Illustration: PATTERN 50. _Dress, Fig. B, Plate 16_ _Pleat_ _Under corset_ _Lining back_] [Illustration: PATTERN 51. _Dress, Fig. C, Plate 16_ _Neck_ _Lining_ _Box pleats_ _Small pleats_ _S pleats_ _Small pleats_ _S. pleats_ _Pleat_] [Illustration: PATTERN 52. _Pleat_ _Pleat_ _Pleat_ _Pleat_ _Pleat_ _Pleat_ _White linen dress, 1795-1805_ _Front_ _Sleeve_ _Gather_ _Button_ _Outside sleeve_ _Caught up thus_] [Illustration: PATTERN 53. _Gathered_ _Open to mark_ _Gathered_ _Striped cotton dress, 1805-15_ _Gathered_ _Collar_ _Front_ _Wrist_ _3 sleeve frills_ _Open_ _Gather_] [Illustration: PATTERN 54. _Pattern of under robe, 1818-30_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Waist_ _Sleeve_ _S. placquets_] [Illustration: PATTERN 55. _Waist band_ _Neck band_ _Gathered_ _Cuff_ _Top_ _Gathered_ _Pattern of Fig C, Plate 25_] [Illustration: _Muslin dress, 1822-32_ _Cuff_ _Yoke_ PATTERN 56.] [Illustration: PATTERN 57. _Gather_ _Gather_ _Satin dress, 1837-45_ _Gather_ _Gather_ _Top_] [Illustration: PATTERN 58. _Top gathered to a Fold round sleeve_ _Gathered_ _Dress, Fig. C, Plate 29_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Gather_ _Cape_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Waist_ _Waist_ _Gather_ _Gather_] [Illustration: PATTERN 59. _Dress, Fig. B, Plate 28_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Gathered_ _Band front of waist_ _Waist_] [Illustration: PATTERN 60. _Gather_ _Gather_ _Dress, Fig. C, Plate 32._ _Trimming over shoulder_ _Top_ _Gather_ _Gather_ _Tight pleats_ _Waist_] [Illustration: PATTERN 61. _Lady's coat, 1856-70_] [Illustration: PATTERN 62. _Blue silk dress, 1860-70_ _Fig. A, Plate 32_ _Scale 6 inches_ _Gather_ _Gather_ _Pleat_] [Illustration: PATTERN 63. _Reefed polonaise, pinked edge, 1860-70_ _Scale inches_ _Gather_ _Plain_ _Gather_ _Plain_ _Pleat_ _Gather_ _Puff sleeve lining_ _Reefed up_ _Ties_ _Puff sleeve_] [Illustration: PATTERN 64. _Lady's jacket, Fig. C, Plate 19_ _Gathered_ _Pleated_] [Illustration: PATTERN 65. _Fullness for arm_ _An interesting cape of shot silk, 1840-50_] [Illustration: PATTERN 66. _Cut in one_ _Front_ _Cape collar_ _2 pieces_ _Black velvet cape, 1830-40_ _Victorian cape, 1860-75_ _Same cut from 40 ins._] [Illustration: PATTERN 67. _Sleeve, 16 century_ _Collar_ _Cut of Doublet and slashed sleeve, 1620-40_ _Sleeve, 1620-40._ _Epaulette_ _Cut of boy's stays, coat, vest, 1700-60_] [Illustration: PATTERN 68. _Male Robe 1600-25_ _Black felt Puritan hat, 1640-60_ _V. and A. Museum_ _Black velvet hat, 1600-20_] DETAILED LIST OF SCALED PATTERNS Pattern 1, page 285:-- Piccadillo, 1580-1630. Three caps, 16-17 century. Cap of three pieces, 16-17 c. Triangular cap, 16-17 c. Long cap, 17 c. Cap, late 17 c., early 18 c. Pattern 2, page 286:-- 4 collars, 17 c. Gorget of linen, 17 c. 2 stocks, 17 and 18 c. 3 male caps and 1 female, 17 and 18 c. Pattern 3, page 287:-- Ruff, 17 c. 4 extra linen sleeves, 17 and one 18 c. 2 caps, female, 17 c. Pattern 4, page 288:-- Front of linen jacket, 16 c. Front of linen bodice, Charles I. Pattern 5, page 289:-- Elizabethan jerkin. 4 stomachers, 17 and 18 c. Pattern 6, page 290:-- Set of tabs for male jerkin, 17 c. Pattern type, sleeve and bodice front, 1570-1605. Pattern 7, page 291:-- Circular cape, 17 c. Cap, female, 1580-1630. Pattern 8, page 292:-- Bodice, Fig. 1, Plate X, James I. Pattern 9, page 293:-- 3 corsets and bodice of, Fig. 2, Plate V, 17 c. Pattern 10, page 294:-- Jerkin of white quilted satin, 17 c. Pattern 11, page 295:-- Breeches of same suit. Pattern 12, page 296:-- Cape-coat, 17 c. Pattern 13, page 297:-- Back of bodice, Plate VII, 17 c. Shaped cap, male, 17 and 18 c. Pattern 14, page 298:-- 2 collars, Charles II. Pattern 15, page 299:-- Jacket, Fig. _C_, Plate IV, 17 c. Pattern 16, page 300:-- 2 sleeve-cuffs, 18 c. 2 embroidered pockets, 17 and 18 c. Hanging sleeve, Fig. _C_, Plate II, 16-17 c. Embroidered bodice fronts, 17-18 c. Pattern 17, page 301:-- Quilted linen corsage, 1660-1715. Herald's coat, Fig. _A_, Plate VII, 16-17 c. Pattern 18, page 302:-- Sleeved waistcoat, 1690-1720. Pattern 19, page 303:-- Sleeved waistcoat and vest, early 18 c. Pattern 20, page 304:-- Breeches, 1660-1720. Pattern 21, page 305:-- Breeches, 18 c. Pattern 22, page 306:-- Breeches, 18 c. Pattern 23, page 307:-- Coat, Fig. _B_, Plate XXVI, 19 c. Pattern 24, page 308:-- Coat, Fig. _B_, Plate XIII, 18 c. Corderoy trousers, from 1815. Pattern 25, page 309:-- Coat, late 18 c., Fig. _A_, Plate XV. Leather breeches, late 18-19 c. Straw hat, 1816-30. Pattern 26, page 310:-- Coat, 1784-94. Pattern 27, page 311:-- Coat, 1830-45. Pattern 28, page 312:-- Buff linen trousers, 1810-40. Pattern 29, page 313:-- Morning coat, Fig. _A_, Plate XXVI, 19 c. Pattern 30, page 314:-- Bodice, 1816-22. Pattern 31, page 315:-- Bell-sleeved bodice, 1848-58. Pattern 32, page 316:-- Bodice of linen dress, Fig. _A_, Plate XXII, about 1800. Pattern 33, page 317:-- Bodice, 1860-70. Bodice, 1850-60. Bodice, 1816-25. Pattern 34, page 318:-- Jacket bodice, Fig. _A_, Plate XXIV, about 1800. Pattern 35, page 319:-- Bodice, similar type, Fig. _A_, Plate XXX, 1845-55. Pattern 36, page 320:-- Sleeveless over jacket, early 18 c. Spencer, 1827-37. Pattern 37, page 321:-- Bodice, 1812-18. Pattern 38, page 322:-- Corset pattern, 18 c. Bodice of Fig. _A_, Plate XIV, 18 c. Pattern 39, page 323:-- Bodice with type of pleated sack back, 1720-50. Pattern 40, page 324:-- Bodice, Fig. _C_, Plate XXVIII, 19 c. Bodice, Fig. _A_, Plate XVIII, 18 c. Pattern 41, page 325:-- Zouave jacket, late 18 c. Bodice, 1818-28. Pattern 42, page 326:-- Silk jacket, Fig. _B_, Plate XIX, 18 c. Pattern 43, page 327:-- Bodice, Fig. _C_, Plate XVIII, 18 c. Pattern 44, page 328:-- Bodice, Fig. _A_, Plate XXX, 19 c. Pattern 45, page 329:-- Lady's coat, Fig. _C_, Plate XXXIII. Pattern 46, Page 330:-- Polonaise dress, 1835-45. Pattern 47, page 331:-- Dress, 1805-18. Mob cap, 1780-1800. Cap with comb top, 1790-1800. Pattern 48, page 332:-- Quilted petticoat, 18 c. Pattern 49, page 333:-- Petticoat, Fig. _B_, Plate XVI, 18 c. Pattern 50, page 334:-- Dress, Fig. _B_, Plate XVI. Pattern 51, page 335:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XVI. Pattern 52, page 336:-- White linen dress, 1795-1800. Pattern 53, page 337:-- Striped cotton dress, 1805-15. Pattern 54, page 338:-- Pattern of under robe, 1818-30. Pattern 55, page 339:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XXV. Pattern 56, page 340:-- Muslin dress, 1822-32. Pattern 57, page 341:-- Satin dress, 1837-47. Pattern 58, page 342:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XXIX. Pattern 59, page 343:-- Dress, Fig. _B_, Plate XXVIII. Pattern 60, page 344:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XXXII. Pattern 61, page 345:-- Lady's coat, 1856-70. Pattern 62, page 346:-- Silk dress, Fig. _A_, Plate XXXII, 1860-70. Pattern 63, page 347:-- Reefed polonaise, 1860-70. Pattern 64, page 348:-- Lady's jacket, Fig. _C_, Plate XIX, 18 c. Pattern 65, page 349:-- Cape, 1840-50. Pattern 66, page 350:-- Cape, 1860-75. Cape, 1830-40. Pattern 67, page 351:-- Upper sleeve and collar, 16 c. Bodice with slashed sleeve, 1620-40. Boy's stays, coat, and vest, 1700-60. Pattern 68, page 352:-- Male robe, 1600-25. Puritan hat, 1640-60. Black velvet hat, 1600-20. INDEX Aprons-- 17 century, 186, 280 18 c., 192, 198, 206 Bags, 193, 262, 272 Bertha, 238, 252 Bouquet Holder, 262 Breeches-- Mediæval, 54 16 c., 122, 132 17 c., 152, 164, 281 19 c., 248, 256, 264 Bustle, 226 Calash, 217 Capes-- 16 c., 132, 279 17 c., 184 19 c., 244, 262, 264, 274, 281 Chain Ornaments-- to 15 c., 62, 72 16 c., 110, 124 Cloaks-- to 15 c., 54, 70 17 c., 152, 164, 176, 180, 279 18 c., 222 Collars-- 16 c., 112, 128, 129, 139, 278 17 c., 145, 158, 160, 172, 174 19 c., 244, 246 Corsets-- to 15 c., 62, 66 16 c., 110, 116, 138 17 c., 158, 169, 172 18 c., 211, 278 19 c., 250 Crinolines, 270, 278 Decorative Styles-- Black-stitch work, 122, 129 Braided, 110, 111, 132, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 182, 188, 200, 238, 244, 272 Button, 110, 143, 144, 146, 182, 210 Laced, 70, 88, 92, 110, 116 Piped, 238, 244 Pleated, 111, 140 Pricked, 111, 140, 142, 152 Punched, 111, 140, 142, 152 Puffed, 88, 92, 110, 116, 118, 122, 129, 142, 146, 150, 180, 260 Purfled, 145, 164, 190 Ribbon, 145, 172, 176, 178, 191, 253 Serrated or shaped edging, 71, 96, 110, 146, 191, 214, 252 Slashing, 92, 111, 112, 113, 116, 118, 122, 140, 142, 145, 152, 158, 164 Straw-work, 111, 191 Tassel, 238 Tinsel, 237 Tulle, 238 Doublets, 132, 139 Dress-- Prehistoric, female, 40; male, 41 to 10 c., female, 45, 46, 48; male, 52, 54 10 to 15 c., female, 62, 66, 68, 70; male, 76, 78, 80 15 c., female, 84, 88, 92; male, 92, 100, 104, 108 16 c., 278, 279, 281. Henry VIII, female, 113, 116; male, 118, 122. Ed. VI and Mary, female, 124, 128; male, 129, 132. Eliz., female, 133, 136, 138; male, 139, 281 17 c., James I, female, 147, 150; male, 152, 154. Chas. I, female, 158; male, 160, 164, 168. Commonwealth, female and male, 168, 169. Chas. II, female, 169, 172; male, 174, 176. James II, female, 178, 180; male, 182. William and Mary, female, 184, 185; male, 186, 188. Anne, female, 196; male, 200. George I, female, 206; male, 210 18 c., George II, female, 221; male, 214. George III to 1800, female, 217, 222, 224, 226, 230; male, 232, 234 19 c., George III (_continued_), female, 244, 247; male, 247. George IV, female, 250; male, 254. William IV, female, 260; male, 263. Victorian, female, 268; male, 274. Note also page 39 Drill petticoat, 238 Ear-rings, 62-72 Epaulets-- 16 c., 128, 129, 136 17 c., 143, 152, 280, 281 19 c., 250 Fans-- 16 c., 129, 138 18 c., 193, 230 19 c., 240, 253, 262 Farthingale, 111, 136 Foot-wear-- to the end of 14 c., 44, 48, 56, 70, 80, 82, 92 15 c., 108 16 c., Henry VIII, 16, 122; Ed. VI and Mary, 128, 132; Elizabeth, 138, 140 17 c., James I, 150, 154; Chas. I, 158, 164; Commonwealth, 168; Chas, II, 172, 176; James II, 180, 184; William and Mary, 186, 188 18 c., 193; Anne, 198, 201; George I, 207, 210; George II, 214, 216; George III to 1800, 230, 234 19 c., George III, 246, 248; George IV, 253, 258; William IV, 262, 264; Victoria, 272, 275 Girdles-- to 15 c., 68, 78, 92 16 c., 116 Gloves-- 16 c., 116, 129, 138 17 c., 168, 172 18 c., 193, 201, 214, 226 Head-dress-- Prehistoric, female, 40; male, 42 to 10 c., female, 45; male, 49 10 to 15 c., female, 57; male, 71 15 c., female, 84; male, 92 16 c., Henry VIII, female, 113; male, 118. Ed. VI and Mary, female, 124; male, 129. Eliz., female, 133; male, 138 17 c., James I, female, 147; male, 150. Chas. I, female, 154; male, 160. Commonwealth, 168. Chas. II, female, 169; male, 174. James II, female, 178; male, 180. William and Mary, female, 184; male, 186 18 c., Anne, female, 193; male, 198. George I, female, 201; male, 207. George II, female, 211; male, 214. George III, female, 217, 241; male, 231, 246. George IV, female, 248; male, 254. William IV, female, 258; male, 263. Victoria, female, 264; male, 273 Heraldic fashion, 66, 71, 109, 132 Hoop skirts-- 16 c., 116, 128, 136 17 c., 147, 185 18 c., 222 Jackets-- to 15 c., 66, 68, 88, 100 16 c., 112, 182 17 c., 143 18 c., 224, 226 19 c., 270 Lapets, 184, 193, 206, 239 Maccaroni fashion, 214 Mantles, 262, 271 Masks, 186 Muffs, 160, 172, 180, 186, 189, 193, 201, 230, 253 Neck-wear, 174, 182, 186, 200, 207, 232, 246, 250, 254, 263, 275 Overcoats, 232, 254, 274 Panniers, 211, 222 Parasols, 230, 234, 244, 272 Patterns scaled, 276 Pelisses, 244, 250, 262 Plates (collotypes), frontispiece, 39, 42, 55, 58, 71, 74, 87, 90, 103, 106, 119, 122, 135, 138, 151, 154, 167, 170, 183, 186, 199, 202, 215, 218, 231, 234, 247, 250, 259, 263, 266, 270, 279, 282 Pockets, 192, 224 Polonaise, 238, 262 Purses, 236, 240, 246 Quilting, 111, 128, 146, 172, 192, 198, 211, 222, 278 Ruffs, 112, 118, 128, 129, 133, 136, 139, 143, 147, 158, 160, 172, 250, 280 Sack-back (or Watteau) dress, 136, 185, 191, 196, 206, 211, 222 Sashes, 168, 182, 279 Sequins, 112 Shawls, 272 Spats, 273 Spencers, 244, 250 Sticks, 181, 188, 201, 211, 214, 226, 234 Stockings, 138, 140, 154, 168, 182, 184, 189, 201, 210, 216, 234, 270 Stomachers, 66, 112, 136, 142, 144, 146, 147, 154, 158, 172, 178, 184, 196, 207, 278 Printed by SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE & CO. LTD. Colchester, London & Eton, England * * * * * DRESSMAKING SIMPLE DRESSMAKING. By ETHEL R. HAMBRIDGE, _Art Teachers' Certificate, etc._ In foolscap 4to, cloth, 200 pp., with 750 plates and black-and-white diagrams. 7_s._ 6_d._ net. This book deals exhaustively with the various stitches and fastenings used in Dressmaking and their applications, Pressing, Making-up Processes, Taking Measurements, Cutting-out; and also contains some notes on Fitting. Simplicity and completeness have been the dual purpose of the Author, and her systematic treatment of the subject, aided by her remarkable gift of lucid explanation, and her unique practical experience, has produced a valuable contribution to the literature of Domestic Science. DRESS CUTTING AND MAKING. For the Classroom, Workroom, and Home. By EMILY WALLBANK, _Head of the Needlework and Dressmaking Department, National Training School of Cookery_, and MARIAN WALLBANK. In foolscap 4to, cloth, 271 pp., with 265 diagrams and illustrations. 6_s._ net. The object of this work will be realized in some degree if it helps the practical reader so to mobilize her knowledge of underlying causes that she is able to produce any desired effect in the cut and fashion of a garment. SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED 1 AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C. 4. EMBROIDERY AN EMBROIDERY PATTERN BOOK. By MARY E. WARING. With a Foreword by Professor W. R. Lethaby, _Royal College of Art_. In cloth gilt, 170 pp., 2 coloured plates, with 84 full-page black-and-white diagrams. 8_s._ 6_d._ net. "Designing of this sort is no mystery that requires 'genius'; it is of the same kind as planting a garden border.... Most embroideresses, who will begin by adapting the elements given in this Pattern Book, and gain interest and confidence in so doing, will go forward insensibly to varying the elements themselves, and to taking flowers and animals direct from Nature. This ... is the work of a highly competent designer of embroidery, and I heartily recommend it."--W. R. LETHABY in the Foreword. EMBROIDERY & DESIGN. By JOAN H. DREW. In foolscap 4to, cloth, about 115 pp., with 82 black-and-white illustrations and designs. 5_s._ net. The writer endeavours to arouse in her readers a desire for better designs, and greater individuality and thought in the home embroidery of to-day. The difference between decorative and undecorative work is clearly explained with the aid of many illustrations, and these are of the right size for tracing and working. SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED ART THE ART OF PAINTING IN PASTEL. By J. LITTLEJOHNS, R.B.A., and L. RICHMOND, R.A. With a frontispiece and foreword by FRANK BRANGWYN, R.A. With 40 beautiful full-page coloured plates and 15 other illustrations. In demy 4to, cloth gilt. 15_s._ net. Extract from _The Connoisseur_: "The beautiful volume may quicken public interest in the method. The 40 plates in colour afford a fine series of examples of the resources of the medium and the best methods of exploiting them." DRAWING AND DESIGN. A School Course in Composition. By SAMUEL CLEGG, _Headmaster of the County Secondary School, Long Eaton, Derbyshire_, with a foreword by WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN, _Professor of Civic Art, Sheffield University_. 10 in. by 7½ in. 12_s._ 6_d._ net. A feature of the book is the inclusion of plates printed by scholars from wood-blocks of their own making and designing. It also contains good sections on lettering and pen and ink drawing, as well as on pencil work, colour work, etc. SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED FROM THE ARTISTIC CRAFTS SERIES HAND-LOOM WEAVING. By LUTHER HOOPER. 125 Drawings by the Author and NOEL ROOKE. Coloured and collotype reproduction. Small Crown 8vo, 368 pp. 8_s._ 6_d._ net. Extract from _The Morning Post_: "... Every phase and process in weaving is described with so clear and careful an exactitude, that, helped as the text is by the Author's sketches and diagrams, the reader should have no difficulty in conquering with its aid the rudiments of the craft." EMBROIDERY & TAPESTRY WEAVING. By Mrs. A. H. CHRISTIE. _Fourth Edition._ 178 diagrams and illustrations by the Author, 16 pp. of collotype reproductions. Small Crown 8vo, 320 pp. 10_s._ 6_d._ net. Extract from The _Pall Mall Gazette_: "Mrs. Christie has performed her task to admiration, ... and her lucid explanations of various kinds of stitches ... should be of value to all workers at embroidery or tapestry weaving and to novices anxious to learn." SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED FROM THE ARTISTIC CRAFTS SERIES MANUSCRIPT WRITING & LETTERING. By AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERT. Showing the historical development and practical application to modern handwriting of several manuscript styles derived from ancient Roman letters. Fully illustrated. Foolscap 4to. 6_s._ net. Extract from _The Times_: "This book supplies and supplies generously a need which has become urgent.... For purposes purely practical, no teacher of plain handwriting need know more than this book tells him; nor should be content to know less." HERALDRY FOR CRAFTSMEN AND DESIGNERS. By W. H. ST. JOHN HOPE, Litt.D., D.C.L. Small Crown 8vo, 496 pp., 300 diagrams and designs, 24 collotype reproductions, and 8 coloured plates, 10_s._ 6_d._ net. Extract from _The Athenæum_: "A series which includes three such books as Mr. Douglas Cockerell's 'Bookbinding,' Mr. Edward Johnston's 'Writing,' and this ranks almost as a national possession.... No artist can see this book without wanting to buy it, if it were only for the beauty of the objects selected for illustration." SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED FROM THE ARTISTIC CRAFTS SERIES WRITING AND ILLUMINATING & LETTERING. By EDWARD JOHNSTON. _Tenth Edition._ 227 illustrations and diagrams by the Author and NOEL ROOKE, 8 pp. of examples in red and black, 24 pp. of collotype reproductions, 512 pp. Small Crown 8vo. 8_s._ 6_d._ net. Extract from _The Athenæum_: "... This book belongs to that extremely rare class in which every line bears the impress of complete mastery of the subject. We congratulate Mr. Johnston on having produced a work at once original and complete." BOOKBINDING AND THE CARE OF BOOKS. By DOUGLAS COCKERELL. _Fourth Edition._ 122 drawings by NOEL ROOKE, 8 pages collotype reproductions. Small Crown 8vo, 352 pp. 7_s._ 6_d._ net. Extract from _The Times_: "... A capital proof of the reasoned thoroughness in workmanship, which is the first article in the creed of those who ... are attempting to carry into practice the industrial teaching of Ruskin and William Morris." SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LIMITED * * * * * Transcriber's note: The following printer's errors were corrected in the text: PLATE XI " 122 Sixteen Leather Boots and Shoes, between 1535 and 1850. Original had "1630" instead of "1535" PLATE XXI " 202 Twenty-three Boots and Shoes, from 1800 to 1875. Original had "Twenty-two" _C._ Braided Suit, 1670-90. Original had "1695-90" _C._ Dress of Spotted, 1795-1808. Original had "Stockingette" _A._ Morning Coat of Chintz, 1825-45. Original had "Chintze" The bodice, Fig A, Plate X (see p. 119), Original had "see p. 292" _Sleeve_ Original had "Sleev" PATTERN 53. Original had "PATTEEN" Pattern 55, page 339:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XXV. Original had "G" Pattern 58, page 342:-- Dress, Fig. _C_, Plate XXIX. Original had "G" The following inconsistencies are retained as printed: Plate VII, c. Black Silk Jerkin. Illustration caption has 1640-60, list of illustrations has 1640-50. Plate IX, a. Lady's Embroidered Silk Jacket. Illustration caption has 1605-30, list of illustrations has 1605-20. Plate XV, c. Embroidered Velvet Coat. Illustration caption has 1755-75, list of illustrations has 1753-75. Plate XX, b. Nine Aprons. Illustration caption has 1850, list of illustrations has 1750. The scarves worn round the body of the 17th century cavaliers were from 2 feet 3 inches wide to 3 feet 6 inches, and from 8 feet 6 inches to 7 feet in length. Second range is inconsistent as printed. Plate XXXIII, c. Silk Coat and Skirt. Illustration caption has 1855-65, list of illustrations has 1855-56. 
20585	----	EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY Founded 1906 by J. M. Dent (d. 1926) Edited by Ernest Rhys (d. 1946) ESSAYS & BELLES-LETTRES SARTOR RESARTUS _and_ ON HEROES BY THOMAS CARLYLE · INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR W. H. HUDSON THOMAS CARLYLE, born in 1795 at Ecclefechan, the son of a stonemason. Educated at Edinburgh University. Schoolmaster for a short time, but decided on a literary career, visiting Paris and London. Retired in 1828 to Dumfriesshire to write. In 1834 moved to Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and died there in 1881. SARTOR RESARTUS ON HEROES HERO WORSHIP THOMAS CARLYLE LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC. _All rights reserved Made in Great Britain at The Temple Press Letchworth for J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Aldine House Bedford St. London First published in this edition 1908 Last reprinted 1948_ INTRODUCTION One of the most vital and pregnant books in our modern literature, "Sartor Resartus" is also, in structure and form, one of the most daringly original. It defies exact classification. It is not a philosophic treatise. It is not an autobiography. It is not a romance. Yet in a sense it is all these combined. Its underlying purpose is to expound in broad outline certain ideas which lay at the root of Carlyle's whole reading of life. But he does not elect to set these forth in regular methodic fashion, after the manner of one writing a systematic essay. He presents his philosophy in dramatic form and in a picturesque human setting. He invents a certain Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, an erudite German professor of "Allerley-Wissenschaft," or Things in General, in the University of Weissnichtwo, of whose colossal work, "Die Kleider, Ihr Werden und Wirken" (On Clothes: Their Origin and Influence), he represents himself as being only the student and interpreter. With infinite humour he explains how this prodigious volume came into his hands; how he was struck with amazement by its encyclopædic learning, and the depth and suggestiveness of its thought; and how he determined that it was his special mission to introduce its ideas to the British public. But how was this to be done? As a mere bald abstract of the original would never do, the would-be apostle was for a time in despair. But at length the happy thought occurred to him of combining a condensed statement of the main principles of the new philosophy with some account of the philosopher's life and character. Thus the work took the form of a "Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh," and as such it was offered to the world. Here, of course, we reach the explanation of its fantastic title--"Sartor Resartus," or the Tailor Patched: the tailor being the great German "Clothes-philosopher," and the patching being done by Carlyle as his English editor. As a piece of literary mystification, Teufelsdröckh and his treatise enjoyed a measure of the success which nearly twenty years before had been scored by Dietrich Knickerbocker and his "History of New York." The question of the professor's existence was solemnly discussed in at least one important review; Carlyle was gravely taken to task for attempting to mislead the public; a certain interested reader actually wrote to inquire where the original German work was to be obtained. All this seems to us surprising; the more so as we are now able to understand the purposes which Carlyle had in view in devising his dramatic scheme. In the first place, by associating the clothes-philosophy with the personality of its alleged author (himself one of Carlyle's splendidly living pieces of characterisation), and by presenting it as the product and expression of his spiritual experiences, he made the mystical creed intensely human. Stated in the abstract, it would have been a mere blank _-ism_; developed in its intimate relations with Teufelsdröckh's character and career, it is filled with the hot life-blood of natural thought and feeling. Secondly, by fathering his own philosophy upon a German professor Carlyle indicates his own indebtedness to German idealism, the ultimate source of much of his own teaching. Yet, deep as that indebtedness was, and anxious as he might be to acknowledge it, he was as a humourist keenly alive to certain glaring defects of the great German writers; to their frequent tendency to lose themselves among the mere minutiæ of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and the important; to their habit of rising at times into the clouds rather than above the clouds, and of there disporting themselves in regions "close-bordering on the impalpable inane;" to their too conspicuous want of order, system, perspective. The dramatic machinery of "Sartor Resartus" is therefore turned to a third service. It is made the vehicle of much good-humoured satire upon these and similar characteristics of Teutonic scholarship and speculation; as in the many amusing criticisms which are passed upon Teufelsdröckh's volume as a sort of "mad banquet wherein all courses have been confounded;" in the burlesque parade of the professor's "omniverous reading" (_e.g._, Book I, Chap. V); and in the whole amazing episode of the "six considerable paper bags," out of the chaotic contents of which the distracted editor in search of "biographic documents" has to make what he can. Nor is this quite all. Teufelsdröckh is further utilised as the mouthpiece of some of Carlyle's more extravagant speculations and of such ideas as he wished to throw out as it were tentatively, and without himself being necessarily held responsible for them. There is thus much point as well as humour in those sudden turns of the argument, when, after some exceptionally wild outburst on his _eidolon's_ part, Carlyle sedately reproves him for the fantastic character or dangerous tendency of his opinions. It is in connection with the dramatic scheme of the book that the third element, that of autobiography, enters into its texture, for the story of Teufelsdröckh is very largely a transfigured version of the story of Carlyle himself. In saying this, I am not of course thinking mainly of Carlyle's outer life. This, indeed, is in places freely drawn upon, as the outer lives of Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoi are drawn upon in "David Copperfield," "The Mill on the Floss," "Anna Karénina." Entepfuhl is only another name for Ecclefechan; the picture of little Diogenes eating his supper out-of-doors on fine summer evenings, and meanwhile watching the sun sink behind the western hills, is clearly a loving transcript from memory; even the idyllic episode of Blumine may be safely traced back to a romance of Carlyle's youth. But to investigate the connection at these and other points between the mere externals of the two careers is a matter of little more than curious interest. It is because it incorporates and reproduces so much of Carlyle's inner history that the story of Teufelsdröckh is really important. Spiritually considered, the whole narrative is, in fact, a "symbolic myth," in which the writer's personal trials and conflicts are depicted with little change save in setting and accessories. Like Teufelsdröckh, Carlyle while still a young man had broken away from the old religious creed in which he had been bred; like Teufelsdröckh, he had thereupon passed into the "howling desert of infidelity;" like Teufelsdröckh, he had known all the agonies and anguish of a long period of blank scepticism and insurgent despair, during which, turn whither he would, life responded with nothing but negations to every question and appeal. And as to Teufelsdröckh in the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer in Paris, so to Carlyle in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, there had come a moment of sudden and marvellous illumination, a mystical crisis from which he had emerged a different man. The parallelism is so obvious and so close as to leave no room for doubt that the story of Teufelsdröckh is substantially a piece of spiritual autobiography. This admitted, the question arises whether Carlyle had any purpose, beyond that of self-expression, in thus utilising his own experiences for the human setting of his philosophy. It seems evident that he had. As he conceived them, these experiences possessed far more than a merely personal interest and meaning. He wrote of himself because he saw in himself a type of his restless and much-troubled epoch; because he knew that in a broad sense his history was the history of thousands of other young men in the generation to which he belonged. The age which followed upon the vast upheaval of the Revolution was one of widespread turmoil and perplexity. Men felt themselves to be wandering aimlessly "between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." The old order had collapsed in shapeless ruin; but the promised Utopia had not been realised to take its place. In many directions the forces of reaction were at work. Religion, striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it the mood of disillusion and despair. The spirit of doubt and denial was felt as a paralysing power in every department of life and thought, and the shadow of unbelief lay heavy on many hearts. It was for the men of this "sad time" that Carlyle wrote Teufelsdröckh's story; and he wrote it not merely to depict the far-reaching consequences of their pessimism but also to make plain to them their true path out of it. He desired to exhibit to his age the real nature of the strange malady from which it was suffering in order that he might thereupon proclaim the remedy. What, then, is the moral significance of Carlyle's "symbolic myth"? What are the supreme lessons which he uses it to convey? We must begin by understanding his diagnosis. For him, all the evils of the time could ultimately be traced back to their common source in what may be briefly described as its want of real religion. Of churches and creeds there were plenty; of living faith little or nothing was left. Men had lost all vital sense of God in the world; and because of this, they had taken up a fatally wrong attitude to life. They looked at it wholly from the mechanical point of view, and judged it by merely utilitarian standards. The "body-politic" was no longer inspired by any "soul-politic." Men, individually and in the mass, cared only for material prosperity, sought only outward success, made the pursuit of happiness the end and aim of their being. The divine meaning of virtue, the infinite nature of duty, had been forgotten, and morality had been turned into a sort of ledger-philosophy, based upon calculations of profit and loss. It was thus that Carlyle read the signs of the times. In such circumstances what was needed? Nothing less than a spiritual rebirth. Men must abandon their wrong attitude to life, and take up the right attitude. Everything hinged on that. And that they might take up this right attitude it was necessary first that they should be convinced of life's essential spirituality, and cease in consequence to seek its meaning and test its value on the plane of merely material things. Carlyle thus throws passionate emphasis upon religion as the only saving power. But it must be noted that he does not suggest a return to any of the dogmatic creeds of the past. Though once the expression of a living faith, these were now for him mere lifeless formulas. Nor has he any new dogmatic creed to offer in their place. That mystical crisis which had broken the spell of the Everlasting No was in a strict sense--he uses the word himself--a conversion. But it was not a conversion in the theological sense, for it did not involve the acceptance of any specific articles of faith. It was simply a complete change of front; the protest of his whole nature, in a suddenly aroused mood of indignation and defiance, against the "spirit which denies;" the assertion of his manhood against the cowardice which had so long kept him trembling and whimpering before the facts of existence. But from that change of front came presently the vivid apprehension of certain great truths which his former mood had thus far concealed from him; and in these truths he found the secret of that right attitude to life in the discovery of which lay men's only hope of salvation from the unrest and melancholy of their time. From this point of view the burden of Carlyle's message to his generation will be readily understood. Men were going wrong because they started with the thought of self, and made satisfaction of self the law of their lives; because, in consequence, they regarded happiness as the chief object of pursuit and the one thing worth striving for; because, under the influence of the current rationalism, they tried to escape from their spiritual perplexities through logic and speculation. They had, therefore, to set themselves right upon all these matters. They had to learn that not self-satisfaction but self-renunciation is the key to life and its true law; that we have no prescriptive claim to happiness and no business to quarrel with the universe if it withholds it from us; that the way out of pessimism lies, not through reason, but through honest work, steady adherence to the simple duty which each day brings, fidelity to the right as we know it. Such, in broad statement, is the substance of Carlyle's religious convictions and moral teaching. Like Kant he takes his stand on the principles of ethical idealism. God is to be sought, not through speculation, or syllogism, or the learning of the schools, but through the moral nature. It is the soul in action that alone finds God. And the finding of God means, not happiness as the world conceives it, but blessedness, or the inward peace which passes understanding. The connection between the transfigured autobiography which serves to introduce the directly didactic element of the book and that element itself, will now be clear. Stripped of its whimsicalities of phraseology and its humorous extravagances, Carlyle's philosophy stands revealed as essentially idealistic in character. Spirit is the only reality. Visible things are but the manifestations, emblems, or clothings of spirit. The material universe itself is only the vesture or symbol of God; man is a spirit, though he wears the wrappings of the flesh; and in everything that man creates for himself he merely attempts to give body or expression to thought. The science of Carlyle's time was busy proclaiming that, since the universe is governed by natural laws, miracles are impossible and the supernatural is a myth. Carlyle replies that the natural laws are themselves only the manifestation of Spiritual Force, and that thus miracle is everywhere and all nature supernatural. We, who are the creatures of time and space, can indeed apprehend the Absolute only when He weaves about Him the visible garments of time and space. Thus God reveals Himself to sense through symbols. But it is as we regard these symbols in one or other of two possible ways that we class ourselves with the foolish man or with the wise. The foolish man sees only the symbol, thinks it exists for itself, takes it for the ultimate fact, and therefore rests in it. The wise man sees the symbol, knows that it is only a symbol, and penetrates into it for the ultimate fact or spiritual reality which it symbolises. Remote as such a doctrine may at first sight seem to be from the questions with which men are commonly concerned, it has none the less many important practical bearings. Since "all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes," civilisation and everything belonging to it--our languages, literatures and arts, our governments, social machinery and institutions, our philosophies, creeds and rituals--are but so many vestments woven for itself by the shaping spirit of man. Indispensable these vestments are; for without them society would collapse in anarchy, and humanity sink to the level of the brute. Yet here again we must emphasise the difference, already noted, between the foolish man and the wise. The foolish man once more assumes that the vestments exist for themselves, as ultimate facts, and that they have a value of their own. He, therefore, confuses the life with its clothing; is even willing to sacrifice the life for the sake of the clothing. The wise man, while he, too, recognises the necessity of the vestments, and indeed insists upon it, knows that they have no independent importance, that they derive all their potency and value from the inner reality which they were fashioned to represent and embody, but which they often misrepresent and obscure. He therefore never confuses the life with the clothing, and well understands how often the clothing has to be sacrificed for the sake of the life. Thus, while the utility of clothes has to be recognised to the full, it is still of the essence of wisdom to press hard upon the vital distinction between the outer wrappings of man's life and that inner reality which they more or less adequately enfold. The use which Carlyle makes of this doctrine in his interpretation of the religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his own day, will be anticipated. All dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he teaches, are but religious vestments--symbols expressing man's deepest sense of the divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst of his soul for God. It is in response to the imperative necessities of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be outgrown. When this happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the "superannuation of symbols." Men wake to the fact that the creeds and formulas which have come down to them from the past are no longer living for them, no longer what they need for the embodiment of their spiritual life. Two mistakes are now possible, and these are, indeed, commonly made together. On the one hand, men may try to ignore the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought, and to cling to the outgrown symbols as things having in themselves some mysterious sanctity and power. On the other hand, they may recklessly endeavour to cast aside the reality symbolised along with the discredited symbol itself. Given such a condition of things, and we shall find religion degenerating into formalism and the worship of the dead letter, and, side by side with this, the impatient rejection of all religion, and the spread of a crude and debasing materialism. Religious symbols, then, must be renewed. But their renewal can come only from within. Form, to have any real value, must grow out of life and be fed by it. The revolutionary quality in the philosophy of "Sartor Resartus" cannot, of course, be overlooked. Everything that man has woven for himself must in time become merely "old clothes"; the work of his thought, like that of his hands, is perishable; his very highest symbols have no permanence or finality. Carlyle cuts down to the essential reality beneath all shows and forms and emblems: witness his amazing vision of a naked House of Lords. Under his penetrating gaze the "earthly hulls and garnitures" of existence melt away. Men's habit is to rest in symbols. But to rest in symbols is fatal, since they are at best but the "adventitious wrappages" of life. Clothes "have made men of us"--true; but now, so great has their influence become that "they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us." Hence "the beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes ... till they become transparent." The logical tendency of such teaching may seem to be towards utter nihilism. But that tendency is checked and qualified by the strong conservative element which is everywhere prominent in Carlyle's thought. Upon the absolute need of "clothes" the stress is again and again thrown. They "have made men of us." By symbols alone man lives and works. By symbols alone can he make life and work effective. Thus even the world's "old clothes"--its discarded forms and creeds--should be treated with the reverence due to whatever has once played a part in human development. Thus, moreover, we must be on our guard against the impetuosity of the revolutionary spirit and all rash rupture with the past. To cast old clothes aside before new clothes are ready--this does not mean progress, but sansculottism, or a lapse into nakedness and anarchy. * * * * * The lectures "On Heroes and Hero-Worship," here printed with "Sartor Resartus," contain little more than an amplification, through a series of brilliant character-studies, of those fundamental ideas of history which had already figured among Teufelsdröckh's social speculations. Simple in statement and clear in doctrine, this second work needs no formal introduction. It may, however, be of service just to indicate one or two points at which, apart from its set theses, it expresses or implies certain underlying principles of all Carlyle's thought. In the first place, his philosophy of history rests entirely on "the great man theory." "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in the world," is for him "at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here." This conception, of course, brings him into sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was already gaining ground when "Heroes and Hero-Worship" was written, and which since then has become even more popular under the powerful influence of the modern doctrine of evolution. A scientific historian, like Buckle or Taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought, all movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his habit is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the individual; the greatest man is treated as in a large measure the product and expression of the "spirit of the time." For Carlyle, individuality is everything. While, as he is bound to admit, "no one works save under conditions," external circumstances and influences count little. The Great Man is supreme. He is not the creature of his age, but its creator; not its servant, but its master. "The History of the World is but the Biography of Great Men." Anti-scientific in his reading of history, Carlyle is also anti-democratic in the practical lessons he deduces from it. He teaches that our right relations with the Hero are discipular relations; that we should honestly acknowledge his superiority, look up to him, reverence him. Thus on the personal side he challenges that tendency to "level down" which he believed to be one alarming result of the fast-spreading spirit of the new democracy. But more than this. He insists that the one hope for our distracted world of to-day lies in the strength and wisdom of the few, not in the organised unwisdom of the many. The masses of the people can never be safely trusted to solve for themselves the intricate problems of their own welfare. They need to be guided, disciplined, at times even driven, by those great leaders of men, who see more deeply than they see into the reality of things, and know much better than they can ever know what is good for them, and how that good is to be attained. Political machinery, in which the modern world had come to put so much faith, is only another delusion of a mechanical age. The burden of history is for him always the need of the Able Man. "I say, Find me the true _Könning_, King, Able Man, and he _has_ a divine right over me." Carlyle thus throws down the gauntlet at once to the scientific and to the democratic movements of his time. His pronounced antagonism to the modern spirit in these two most important manifestations must be kept steadily in mind in our study of him. Finally, we have to remember that in the whole tone and temper of his teaching Carlyle is fundamentally the Puritan. The dogmas of Puritanism he had indeed outgrown; but he never outgrew its ethics. His thought was dominated and pervaded to the end, as Froude rightly says, by the spirit of the creed he had dismissed. By reference to this one fact we may account for much of his strength, and also for most of his limitations in outlook and sympathy. Those limitations the reader will not fail to notice for himself. But whatever allowance has to be made for them, the strength remains. It is, perhaps, the secret of Carlyle's imperishable greatness as a stimulating and uplifting power that, beyond any other modern writer, he makes us feel with him the supreme claims of the moral life, the meaning of our own responsibilities, the essential spirituality of things, the indestructible reality of religion. If he had thus a special message for his own generation, that message has surely not lost any of its value for ours. "Put Carlyle in your pocket," says Dr. Hal to Paul Kelver on his starting out in life. "He is not all the voices, but he is the best maker of men I know." And as a maker of men, Carlyle's appeal to us is as great as ever. WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON. _Life of Schiller_ (_Lond. Mag._, 1823-4), 1825, 1845. (Supplement published in the People's Edition, 1873). _Wilhelm Meister Apprenticeship_, 1824. _Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry_ (from the French of Legendre), 1824. _German Romance_, 1827. _Sartor Resartus_ (_Fraser's Mag._, 1833-4), 1835 (Boston), 1838. _French Revolution_, 1837, 1839. _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, 1839, 1840, 1847, 1857. (In these were reprinted Articles from _Edinburgh Review_, _Foreign Review_, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, _Fraser's Magazine_, _Westminster Review_, _New Monthly Magazine_, _London and Westminster Review_, _Keepsake Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, _Times_). _Chartism_, 1840. _Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History_, 1841. _Past and Present_, 1843. _Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations_, 1845. _Thirty-five Unpublished Letters of Oliver Cromwell_, 1847 (Fraser). _Original Discourses on the Negro Question_ (Fraser, 1849), 1853. _Latter-day Pamphlets_, 1850. _Life of John Sterling_, 1851. _History of Friedrich II. of Prussia_, 1858-65. _Inaugural Address at Edinburgh_, 1866. _Shooting Niagara: and After?_ 1867 (from "Macmillan"). _The Early Kings of Norway; also an Essay on the Portraits of John Knox_, 1875. There were also contributions to Brewster's _Edinburgh Encyclopædia_, vols. xiv., xv., and xvi.; to _New Edinburgh Review_, 1821, 1822; _Fraser's Magazine_, 1830, 1831; _The Times_, 19 June, 1844 ("Mazzini"); 28 November, 1876; 5 May, 1877; _Examiner_, 1848; _Spectator_, 1848. First Collected Edition of Works, 1857-58 (16 vols.). _Reminiscences_, ed. by Froude in 1881, but superseded by C. E. Norton's edition of 1887. Norton has also edited two volumes of _Letters_ (1888), and Carlyle's correspondence with Emerson (1883) and with Goethe (1887). Other volumes of correspondence are _New Letters_ (1904), _Carlyle Intime_ (1907), _Love Letters_ (1909), _Letters to Mill, Sterling, and Browning_ (1923), all ed. by Alexander Carlyle. See also _Last Words of Carlyle_, 1892. The fullest _Life_ is that by D. A. Wilson. The first of six volumes appeared in 1923, and by 1934 only one remained to be published. CONTENTS SARTOR RESARTUS BOOK I CHAP. PAGE I. PRELIMINARY 1 II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 5 III. REMINISCENCES 9 IV. CHARACTERISTICS 20 V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 25 VI. APRONS 31 VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 34 VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 37 IX. ADAMITISM 43 X. PURE REASON 47 XI. PROSPECTIVE 52 BOOK II I. GENESIS 61 II. IDYLLIC 68 III. PEDAGOGY 76 IV. GETTING UNDER WAY 90 V. ROMANCE 101 VI. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRÖCKH 112 VII. THE EVERLASTING NO 121 VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 128 IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA 138 X. PAUSE 149 BOOK III I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 156 II. CHURCH-CLOTHES 161 III. SYMBOLS 163 IV. HELOTAGE 170 V. THE PHOENIX 174 VI. OLD CLOTHES 179 VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS 183 VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 191 IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE 201 X. THE DANDIACAL BODY 204 XI. TAILORS 216 XII. FAREWELL 219 APPENDIX--TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 225 SUMMARY 231 ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY LECTURE I THE HERO AS DIVINITY. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology 239 LECTURE II THE HERO AS PROPHET. Mahomet: Islam 277 LECTURE III THE HERO AS POET. Dante; Shakspeare 311 LECTURE IV THE HERO AS PRIEST. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism 346 LECTURE V THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns 383 LECTURE VI THE HERO AS KING. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism 422 INDEX 469 SARTOR RESARTUS BOOK FIRST CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five-thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, _How the apples were got in_, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichâts. How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling, broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a _Clothed Animal_; whereas he is by nature a _Naked Animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his _Höret ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen_; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it,-- 'By geometric scale Doth take the size of pots of ale;' still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, 'Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all English culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from Professor Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo; treating expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. '_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdröckh, J.U.D. etc._ _Stillschweigen und Co^{gnie}._ _Weissnichtwo_, 1831. 'Here,' says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, 'comes a Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance.' * * * * 'A work,' concludes the wellnigh enthusiastic Reviewer, 'interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and Philanthropy (_derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but must and will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdröckh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honour.' Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase: _Möchte es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im Brittischen Boden gedeihen_! CHAPTER II EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES If for a speculative man, 'whose seedfield,' in the sublime words of the Poet, 'is Time,' no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdröckh's Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an 'extensive Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdröckh the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytising creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose: How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need thereof: how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the Author of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was to publish Article after Article on this remarkable Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand connected with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant? If, indeed, all party-divisions in the State could have been abolished, Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except _Fraser's Magazine_? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdröckh without something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying 'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdröckh 'were undoubtedly welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, or any other of those patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory of British Literature'; might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdröckh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated;--for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to those same 'patriotic _Libraries_,' the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our _Sartor Resartus_, which is properly a 'Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh,' hourly advancing. * * * * * Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let him hear. [1] With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler: and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--O. Y. On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdröckh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connexion of ours with Teufelsdröckh, Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_; Teufelsdröckh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favour with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels _No cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise. CHAPTER III REMINISCENCES To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. Professor Teufelsdröckh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special contribution to the _Isis_ could never be more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_,[2] and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was _Zur Grünen Gans_, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed this toast: _Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufels Namen_ (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and ----'s)! One full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _Wo steckt doch der Schalk?_ added they, looking round: but Teufelsdröckh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. [2] Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer. In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? Thy little figure, there as, in loose, ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 'think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear logically-founded Transcendentalism of thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof! * * * * * How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdröckh was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him the _Ewige Jude_, Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering Jew. To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing; which Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction; but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their daily _Allgemeine Zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdröckh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in German Universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they may have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft_, or as we should say in English, 'Professor of Things in General,' he had never delivered any Course; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, imagined they had done enough, if 'in times like ours,' as the half-official Program expressed it, 'when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be held, and Public Classes for the 'Science of Things in General,' they doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only established the Professorship, nowise endowed it; so that Teufelsdröckh, 'recommended by the highest Names,' had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the Want of the Age (_Zeitbedürfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation and Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent University; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government consider that occasion did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. As for Teufelsdröckh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grüne Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdröckh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scrutinise him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three men in Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four _Orte_, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, _Airts_: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another came to view in the _Schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_, and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdröckh; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_), were for the most part visible there. "I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid Pavement is a picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a Tomorrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." "_Ach, mein Lieber!_" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous covelet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.--All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein Werther_, sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars." We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent, and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blücher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdröckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdröckh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes), which Teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdröckh, and Teufelsdröckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was 'the very Spirit of Love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemüth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdröckh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched-up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on _Clothes_. Additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the colour of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and suchlike to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, to his opinions, namely, on the 'Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the present gladly return. CHAPTER IV CHARACTERISTICS It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdröckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with our public. Of good society Teufelsdröckh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks-out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: 'a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he himself expresses it, 'cannot hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet together.' To Teufelsdröckh the highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock; 'each is an implement,' he says, 'in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a smithy before smith's fingers.' Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdröckh maintains, that 'within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,'--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; shears down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr Lingard_, from your Oriental _Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese Tables_, and Laplace's _Mécanique Céleste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ and the _Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendour from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdröckh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire! Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdröckh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable 'Extra-harangues'; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant, ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdröckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour. CHAPTER V THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 'As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_,' observes our Professor, 'so could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois_, properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavours, an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. 'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why _I_ am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same _Spirit of Clothes_ I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province.' Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance-over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Compilers of some _Library_ of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, 'at present the glory of British Literature'? If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with 'Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,'--very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound glances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment. But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis Vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. 'Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilised countries. 'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years. 'He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of _Movable Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or _Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. 'But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 'Man is a Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.' Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians, who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. 'Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdröckh in his abrupt way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it.' CHAPTER VI APRONS One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on _Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, 'whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country'; what though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop'; what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following? 'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nürnberg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (_Teufelsschmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c. Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote? 'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in England.'--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdröckh continues: 'If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed-on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep alive!'--Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. Farther down we meet with this: 'The Journalists are now the true Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, in that language, under the title of _Satan's Invisible World Displayed_; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermöchte nicht aufzutreiben_).' Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature! CHAPTER VII MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and everyway interesting have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On Ancient Armour_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's _Zeitkürzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to: 'Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue. 'Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 'Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_' (a perhaps untranslateable article); 'also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat (_ohne Gesäss_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap them. 'Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmäntel_). 'As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.' Our Professor, whether he hath humour himself or not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen 'was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her?' We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his _devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection: 'By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despréaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.'--Has Teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest? 'The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and make it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck: and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.' With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. CHAPTER VIII THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, Teufelsdröckh, discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their _Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdröckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.' He says in so many words, 'Society is founded upon Cloth'; and again, 'Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no more.' By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim: Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation: 'With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am _I_; the thing that can say "I" (_das Wesen das sich_ ICH _nennt_)? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,--the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another. 'Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum._ Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake! Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. 'Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar, wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. _The whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _Nature abhors a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, _Nothing can act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, are from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted! Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER: have not all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting NOW? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time; there _is_ no Space and no Time: WE are--we know not what;--light-sparkles floating in the æther of Deity! 'So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the "phantasy of our Dream"; or what the Earth-Spirit in _Faust_ names it, _the living visible Garment of God_: "In Being's floods, in Action's storm, I walk and work, above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean; A seizing and giving The fire of Living: 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? 'It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I--good Heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive? 'Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. 'For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, "a forked straddling animal with bandy legs"; yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.' CHAPTER IX ADAMITISM Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm? Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdröckh, what benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to thyself and mankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbour after neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys; half-buried under shawls and broad-brims, and overalls and mud-boots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that 'Horse I ride'; and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best: here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy. Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdröckh forgotten what he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 'condition miserable indeed'? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick natural fell'? Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdröckh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man. For example: 'You see two individuals,' he writes, 'one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, "Be hanged and anatomised"; Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing can act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no _clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. 'Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is a Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that _he wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. 'Often in my atrabiliar-moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.' Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret! Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdröckh, with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw: 'What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott!_ How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilised Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls.' Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum!_ And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; 'a forked Radish with a head fantastically carved'? And why might he not, did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a Bed of Justice? 'Solace of those afflicted with the like!' Unhappy Teufelsdröckh, had man ever such a 'physical or psychical infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded-on by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) incurably infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the maddest? 'It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable Teufelsdröckh, 'in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * * * * * 'O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but as "turkeys driven with a stick and red clout, to the market": or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!' CHAPTER X PURE REASON It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and 'bladders with dried peas.' To linger among such speculations, longer than mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about 'Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen,' and the Kings being thrown: 'dissect them with scalpels,' says Teufelsdröckh; 'the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable difference? From Clothes.' Much also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere 'Hail fellow well met,' and Chaos were come again: all which to any one that has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, _Society in a state of nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final: 'Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?' Nevertheless, it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdröckh; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdröckh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods. 'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true SHEKINAH is Man": where else is the GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?' In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view. Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, 'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright'? Under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough: 'The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. "The Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station himself in the middle": how true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. 'Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love; since all was created by God? 'Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!' For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. 'Wonder,' says he, 'is the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_.' That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. 'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time.' In such wise does Teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of 'Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the street populous with mere justice-loving men': that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates: 'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship) were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole _Mécanique Céleste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. 'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattlestall,--he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?--_Armer Teufel!_ Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? "Explain" me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.' CHAPTER XI PROSPECTIVE The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth? Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole: 'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead? 'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which grows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. 'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it _rot_? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.' Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? 'All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic not of want only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;--the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye? 'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a Body. 'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mäntel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn them.' Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues: 'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.' Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy (_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character (_Gemüth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known and seen; 'till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically read.' 'Nay,' adds he, 'were the speculative scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped-out an answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavour lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, 'do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdröckh's Biography? The great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that "Man is properly the _only_ object that interests man": thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but Biography or Auto-Biography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished individuals. 'By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed),' continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdröckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, 'by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdröckh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? 'To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds? 'No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial Planet!' And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with 'fullest insight,' we find--Six considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdröckh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connexion, without recognisable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of 'P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, 'On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie washbills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant. So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilise and discompose it! As we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdröckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piercing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up. Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own. BOOK SECOND CHAPTER I GENESIS In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. 'In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, 'dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only (_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, "_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!" before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. "_Das nenn' ich mir einen König_, There is what I call a King," would Andreas exclaim: "but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes." 'Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as Andreas said, "the womankind will not drill (_wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren_)": nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood Büsching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true housemother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-coloured from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling-in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a _Bauergut_ (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. 'Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_), it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without further parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein unschätzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfältigst benützt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zurückgefordert._ "Good Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlour-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red-coloured Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was decipherable; other document or indication none whatever. 'To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavour: thus has that same mysterious Individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDRÖCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General.' Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, 'produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. Who this Reverend Personage,' he says, 'that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me; he too was not thou. 'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, 'wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual.' 'The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (_Pränumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdröckh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit (_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 'For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says, _Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?_' * * * * * 'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions! 'Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut-out for him than whimpering.' * * * * * Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdröckh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride? CHAPTER II IDYLLIC 'Happy season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided, a soft swathing of Love, and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: "Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?" Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.' In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing 'in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out-post from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how 'the brave old Linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered-up from the central _Agora_ and _Campus Martius_ of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. 'Glorious summer twilights,' cries Teufelsdröckh, 'when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard (of Prismatic Colours); and the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would not tell of them!' Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that 'brave old Linden'? Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following? 'In all the sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden Trieb_): the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Coöperation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.' Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that relates it: 'My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine the architectural, how much less the moral significance!' More graceful is the following little picture: 'On fine evenings I was wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set-up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their gilding.' With 'the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry' we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a 'certain deeper sympathy with animated Nature': but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this: 'Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching-in again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, trotting-off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discoloured-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower world?' It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other, crushed-down perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. 'With which opinion,' cries Teufelsdröckh, 'I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. 'Nevertheless,' continues he, 'I too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note-down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address myself.'--Thou rogue! Is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he continues: 'If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number: 'Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gay austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses and "much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth; from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography; to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. 'In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world!_ 'Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught _you_ the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighbourly Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall? 'But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and simultaneously poured-down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nürnberg Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particoloured Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. 'Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly Firmament; waited-on by the four golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols,--did the Child sit and learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World; what matters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. 'Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there. * * * * * 'For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good Activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favourable beyond the most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more could I have wished? On the other side, however, things went not so well. My Active Power (_Thatkraft_) was unfavourably hemmed-in; of which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. 'In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my upbringing! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. Andreas too attended Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears,--as, I trust, he has received; but my Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation Religious. How indestructibly the Good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of Evil! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son that only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?' To which last question we must answer: Beware, O Teufelsdröckh, of spiritual pride! CHAPTER III PEDAGOGY Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop; but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would trouble Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how when, to use his own words, 'he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to handle it. Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and everyway excellent 'Passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdröckh is oftenest a man without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European; above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavour. Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of his History, Teufelsdröckh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he 'cannot remember ever to have learned'; so perhaps had it by nature. He says generally: 'Of the insignificant portion of my Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper pocket-money I laid-out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows of things: History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic.' That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? 'It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the midday when Cæsar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six-thousand years of age.' In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of TIME, and its relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes? Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 'With my first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, 'my evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and _Schuldthurm_ (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome! 'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 'They were Boys,' he says, 'mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits, that though 'perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was 'incredibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles': 'if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, 'it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent 'Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdröckh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. 'He wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestüm_) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankin.' In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to its _breadth_? We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 'mechanically' taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself 'went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things'; and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are, and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. 'My Teachers,' says he, 'were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nürnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. 'Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing, and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?' In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to have died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. 'The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent-up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!' Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred, or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. 'Thus was I doubly orphaned,' says he; 'bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no other_; in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of Tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous.' * * * * * In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdröckh has become a University man; though, how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In _Sagittarius_, however, Teufelsdröckh begins to show himself even more than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in 'dead vocables,' and set down, as he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for 'the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.' Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdröckh waxed into manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdröckh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _Sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall-in with such matter as this: 'The University where I was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well; which name, however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. 'It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary; walled-in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. 'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all! Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely-complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary! 'This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent of being Gulled. 'How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, like a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers! They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called Educating, now when I look back on it, filled me with a certain mute admiration. 'Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better coming, nay come? As in long-drawn Systole and long-drawn Diastole, must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber-through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed.' That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, Teufelsdröckh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. 'The hungry young,' he says, 'looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. Among eleven-hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps than had been known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid : I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favourite employment to read character in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.' Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdröckh gives us long details of his 'fever-paroxysms of Doubt'; his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith; and how 'in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.' To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapour than of clear flame? From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdröckh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humour, to be addressing himself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present rather the following small thread of Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these University years. 'Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality (_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter of Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my first practical knowledge of the English and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. "How has our head on the outside a polished Hat," would Towgood exclaim, "and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables."--"Man, indeed," I would answer, "has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis-education, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frisch zu, Bruder!_ Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _Frisch zu!_" 'Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras.' So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has dived-under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does any reader 'in the interior parts of England' know of such a man? CHAPTER IV GETTING UNDER WAY 'Thus, nevertheless,' writes our autobiographer, apparently as quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. 'How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth, but rapidly enough overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. 'With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfürst_), or Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!' By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under way'? 'Not what I Have,' continues he, 'but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its nature original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 'Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (_Brodzwecke_), pre-appointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (_fast wär ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut.' We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, 'breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdröckh having thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, _No Object and no Rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck-halter' sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen Rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby 'an _Auscultator_ of respectability,' what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. 'My fellow Auscultators,' he says, 'were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdröckh, may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? 'Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been appointed to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as 'a man of genius': against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly protests. 'As if,' says he, 'the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.' How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that 'the prompt nature of Hunger being well known,' we are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, 'does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, 'that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' Which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that 'there is always life for a living one,' we must profess ourselves unable to explain. Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 'The (_Inkblot_), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdröckh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: '_Herr Teufelsdröckh wird von der Frau Gräfinn, auf Donnerstag, zum_ ÆSTHETISCHEN THEE _schönstens eingeladen._' Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid _Æsthetic Tea!_ How Teufelsdröckh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Gräfinn dates from the _Zähdarm House_, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. 'The Zähdarms,' says he, 'lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the _Gnädigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdröckh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 'With his _Excellenz_ (the Count),' continues he, 'I have more than once had the honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (_die auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On some points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.' That to Teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things besides 'the Outrooting of Journalism' might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. 'The Universe,' he says, 'was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only possible by battle.' 'I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he elsewhere, 'by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Mädchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_Bübchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they; and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.' In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that Teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. 'It continues ever true,' says he, 'that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdröckh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, 'to work,--in the right direction,' and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust, To eat into itself for lack Of something else to hew and hack! But on the whole, that same 'excellent Passivity,' as it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterises our Professor; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. 'So far hitherto,' he says, 'as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Härte_), my Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhoch_), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!' Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdröckh too admits, is 'to unite yourself with some one and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)'? Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion with the Zähdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the death of the 'not uncholeric' old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. 'By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, 'I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven';--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English reader: HIC JACET PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, ZAEHDARMI COMES, EX IMPERII CONCILIO, VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI EQUES. QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES PLUMBO CONFECIT: VARII CIBI CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, IN STERCUS PALAM CONVERTIT. NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM OPERA SEQUUNTUR. SI MONUMENTUM QUÆRIS, FIMETUM ADSPICE. PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_]. CHAPTER V ROMANCE 'For long years,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For what?--_Beym Himmel!_ For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what might, I resolved to try.' Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdröckh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdröckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 'If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (_Persönlichkeit_) is ever holy to us: a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all _Thees_ in bonds of Love: but it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns-out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case of the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of Fantasy, flames-forth that _fire_-development of the universal Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically denominate LOVE. 'In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free! 'As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdröckh, evidently meaning himself, 'in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls (_Holden_)--_Ach Gott!_ how could he hope it; should he not have died under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought. 'Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso he went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "Thou too mayest love and be loved"; and so kindle him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!' Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humour enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a reverberating furnace of Fantasy': have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze-up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving 'the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_,' flit nigher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocketwise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendour, each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love; till the whole were safely burnt-out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting the thin walls of your 'reverberating furnace,' so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were Madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the 'crater of an extinct volcano!' From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the 'First Love which is infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdröckh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed; which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of purchasing. Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how Teufelsdröckh, in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendour and colour, his Firework blazes-off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real name Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Specially, by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. 'It was appointed,' says our Philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough.' We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's Cousin; highborn, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not-too-gracious bounty of monied relatives. But how came 'the Wanderer' into her circle? Was it by the humid vehicle of _Æsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnädige Frau, who, as ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature. 'Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, 'what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write, but must have paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings.' But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed-in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in Æsthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of 'harps and pure voices making the stillness live.' Scarcely, it would seem, is the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself. 'Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks: so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock him, and see whether there were Humour in him? 'Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 'Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague colourings of Rumour, from the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever think of him; O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, gathered favour for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into neighbourhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 'Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Dämon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect; wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic hues.' It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one 'Philistine'; who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism (_Philistriositäten_); little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, 'persuaded into silence,' seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. 'Of which dialectic marauder,' writes our hero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her, she answered with attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush! 'The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gaily in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapour; and the poor claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as the light grew more aërial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness; and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises sink in the still Eternity. 'To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper: It is good for us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn.' Poor Teufelsdröckh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the Queen of Hearts would see a 'man of genius' also sigh for her; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. 'Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he elsewhere; 'yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (_Zeitbühne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no better red wine than he had before.' Alas! witness also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for prize of a 'high-souled Brunette,' as if the earth held but one and not several of these! He says that, in Town, they met again: 'day after day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness; him what Graceful (_Holde_) would ever love? Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And now, O now! "She looks on thee," cried he: "she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? The Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers!" Thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. 'In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine! And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was there so much as a fault, a "caprice," he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a Morning-Star; did not her presence bring with it airs from Heaven? As from Æolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the distance; Life bloomed-up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and could not discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison melt away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress? _Ach Gott!_ His whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had he named it Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought.' Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped; for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere 'Children of Time,' can abide by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, 'how in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdröckh likely to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish 'absolved Auscultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known 'religion of young hearts' keep the human kitchen warm? Pshaw! thy divine Blumine when she 'resigned herself to wed some richer,' shows more philosophy, though but 'a woman of genius,' than thou, a pretended man. Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be organised? Besides, of what profit were it? We view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless air-navigator, plunging amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdröckh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdröckh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at the final scene: 'One morning, he found his Morning-Star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet no more.' The thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. '"Farewell, then, Madam!" said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes: in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time, and for the last!' Thus was Teufelsdröckh made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why, then--'thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss.' CHAPTER VI SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRÖCKH We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict his demeanour. To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdröckh, precipitated through 'a shivered Universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow-out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? Nowise so does Teufelsdröckh deport him. He quietly lifts his _Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon wound-up'; and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe! Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass phial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs-to again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdröckh, as we remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. 'One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a gleam of Tophet passed-over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, 'whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it.' But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdröckh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the Journals: only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,--might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within; that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in _Capricornus_ and _Aquarius_ is no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: 'A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of Life-breath: for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little Dwelling place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufelsdröckh, as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity, towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither? Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy: 'Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along straight passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength. 'To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and the future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that suit better: "Whoso can look on Death will start at no shadows." 'From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards; for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother, and divine. And as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. 'The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postillions wore wedding-favours: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near: _Du Himmel!_ It was Herr Towgood and--Blumine! With slight unrecognising salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, _I remained alone, behind them, with the Night_.' Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _Clothes-Volume_, where it stands with quite other intent: 'Some time before Small-pox was extirpated,' says the Professor, 'there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the _Sorrows of Werter_, was there man found who would say: Come let us make a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek.' Too true! We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with more haste than progress. Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connexions, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatisirender_), living by the grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and high-ways, had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised Fact unparalleled in Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavour. For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, where they can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to emit. Teufelsdröckh, vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact with public History itself. For example, those conversations and relations with illustrious Persons, as Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? The Editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a different duty. If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind, the Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the answer is more distinct than favourable. 'A nameless Unrest,' says he, 'urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary lying solace. Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I; the ground burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone! Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for itself: towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great Cities, to great Events: but found there no healing. In strange countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same: how could your Wanderer escape from--_his own Shadow_? Nevertheless still Forward! I felt as if in great haste; to do I saw not what. From the depths of my own heart, it called to me, Forwards! The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded to me, Forwards! _Ach Gott_, I was even, once for all, a Son of Time.' From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School was still active enough? He says elsewhere: 'The _Enchiridion of Epictetus_ I had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' Thou foolish Teufelsdröckh! How could it else? Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: _The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought_, though it were the noblest? 'How I lived?' writes he once: 'Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? While thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild-eggs in the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris _Estrapades_ and Vienna _Malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. That I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,--by suicide. In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.' Poor Teufelsdröckh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew,--save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by footprints), write his _Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh_; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _Sorrows of Werter_, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape 'from his own Shadow'! Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron publishes his _Sorrows of Lord George_, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his _Sorrows of Napoleon_ Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.--Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof! CHAPTER VII THE EVERLASTING NO Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the 'Son of Time,' in any case, stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an 'excellent Passivity'; but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. He himself says once, with more justice than originality: 'Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope.' What, then, was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For, as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is _not_ synonymous with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, 'that, for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury': to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way: 'Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and _see_ing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from Dr. Graham's Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that _he_ was "the chief of sinners"; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? I know not: only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things _he_ has provided for his Elect!' Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild-beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. 'But what boots it (_was thut's_)?' cries he: 'it is but the common lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siècle de Louis Quinze_, and not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_), thou hadst no other outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him?' Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 'One circumstance I note,' says he: 'after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance to her. "Truth"! I cried, "though the Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy." In conduct it was the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _This thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me: living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there.' Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured! 'The painfullest feeling,' writes he, 'is that of your own Feebleness (_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, _Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one, _Know what thou canst work-at_. 'But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first, last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God'? A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a Teufelsdröckh threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for example: 'How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust!' Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough? 'From Suicide a certain aftershine (_Nachschein_) of Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the other World, or other No-World, by pistol-shot,--how were it? On which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage.' 'So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, 'so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy whom _he_ finds in Battle's splendour), and thought that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil: nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured. 'Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked myself: "What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!" And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. 'Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: "Behold, thou are fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's)"; to which my whole Me now made answer: "_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!" 'It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a Man.' CHAPTER VIII CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE Though, after this 'Baphometic Fire-baptism' of his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, 'Indignation and Defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdröckh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many 'Saints' Wells,' and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to 'eat his own heart'; and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state? 'Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set before your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches thee. 'Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou go to Schönbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon: thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised almighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; only like a little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body itself forth from the great mystic Deep. 'Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon-up to the extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges may belong; and thirdly----Books. In which third truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor: but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.--Fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand years: but canst thou not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?' No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows: 'Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps: ay, there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of sight, like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest level,--intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? König Ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled! The greensward is torn-up and trampled-down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedgerows, and pleasant dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Sculls.--Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure; and next year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life for the Living! 'What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls. From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!"--In that fiction of the English Smollet, it is true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!' Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and pertinently enough note what is passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on; towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, favourable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough: in these so boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable things, might not Teufelsdröckh acquire! 'I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, 'including those of Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics, Topographics came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted-out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself only. 'Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting, and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pinechasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated-down (_ausgemergelt_) into Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the World well lost; oftener than once a hundred-thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me. 'For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not forgotten. For----' ----But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the 'White Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdröckh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an 'Ideologist.' 'He himself,' says the Professor, 'was among the completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists: in the Idea (_in der Idee_) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carrière ouverte aux talens_ (The Tools to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.' More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdröckh's appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 'a light-blue Spanish cloak' hanging round him, as his 'most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper garment'; and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 'Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp? 'Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, "Be so obliging as retire, Friend (_Er ziehe sich zurück, Freund_), and with promptitude!" This logic even the Hyperborean understands; fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return. 'Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more _Mind_, though all but no Body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. 'With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trimberg: "God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below."' * * * * * But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of Teufelsdröckh under so much outward shifting? Does Legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdröckh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. 'At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer, 'I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed into these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!' Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdröckh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a second youth. 'This,' says our Professor, 'was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive must necessarily pass.' CHAPTER IX THE EVERLASTING YEA 'Temptations in the Wilderness!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, _Work thou in Welldoing_, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, _Eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper? 'To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished, or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!--Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!' He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to him: 'Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient men (_tüchtigen Männer_) thou hast known in this generation? An out-flush of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even exemplars.' So that, for Teufelsdröckh also, there has been a 'glorious revolution': these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some purifying 'Temptation in the Wilderness,' before his Apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was 'that high moment in the _Rue de l'Enfer_,' then, properly the turning-point of the battle; when the Fiend said, _Worship me or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _Apage Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. 'How paint to the sensual eye,' asks he once, 'what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?' We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavour to combine for their own behoof. He says: 'The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant.'--And again: 'Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-tödtung_), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.' Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his Locality, during this same 'healing sleep'; that his Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on 'the high table-land'; and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected! However, in Teufelsdröckh, there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire: 'Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the Four azure winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 'Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not thou the "Living Garment of God"? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? 'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's! 'With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow man; with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tired, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that "_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;" by strange, steep ways had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the "_Divine Depth of Sorrow_" lie disclosed to me.' The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. 'A vain interminable controversy,' writes he, 'touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes-out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic _Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in jointstock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_. 'But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. 'So true is it, what I then say, that _the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, _Unity_ itself divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write: "It is only with Renunciation (_Entsagen_) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." 'I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_.' '_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere: 'there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach-forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.' And again: 'Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that "_Worship of Sorrow_"? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.' Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 'perennial continuance of Inspiration;' on Prophecy; that there are 'true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:' with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. 'Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus apostrophises the Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and--thyself away. 'Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? To the "_Worship of Sorrow_" ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.' 'Neither,' observes he elsewhere, 'shall ye tear-out one another's eyes, struggling over "Plenary Inspiration," and suchlike: try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty.' Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage: 'To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, 'which is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: "Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from _my_ share: which, by the Heavens, thou shall not; nay I will fight thee rather."--Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a "feast of shells," for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all such cases, rather say: "Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!"--If Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, "to a certain extent, Applied Christianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! 'But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that "Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action." On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: "_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer. 'May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your "America is here or nowhere"? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see! 'But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World. 'I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.' CHAPTER X PAUSE Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdröckh through the various successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as Conversion. 'Blame not the word,' says he; 'rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in our modern Era, though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew nothing of Conversion; instead of an _Ecce Homo_, they had only some _Choice of Hercules_. It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists.' It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdröckh commences: we are henceforth to see him 'work in well-doing,' with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself: 'Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do something: this let him _do_.--Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, furnishable with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that _Sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a _Fiat_. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to spend and be spent? 'By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a handicraft,' adds Teufelsdröckh, 'have I thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am _I_?), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seed-field of Opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 'Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, 'but this and the other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working Institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now stretching-out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? Some one's doing, it without doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?' Does Teufelsdröckh here glance at that 'SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY (_Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft_),' of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inexpressible Paper-bags? 'An Institution,' hints he, 'not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the Society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France; and contributions, both of money and of meditation, pour-in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdröckh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable _Eigenthums-conservirende_ ('Owndom-conserving') _Gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again hints: 'At a time when the divine Commandment, _Thou shalt not steal_, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoléon, and all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has all-but faded away from the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, _Thou shalt steal_, is everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that _we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent_, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep-down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written _Program_ in the Public Journals, with its high _Prize-Questions_ and so liberal _Prizes_, could have proceeded,--let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the _Concurrenz_ (Competition).' We ask: Has this same 'perhaps not ill-written _Program_,' or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic? If so, what are those _Prize-Questions_; what are the terms of Competition, and when and where? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags! Or is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdröckh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us? * * * * * Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralysing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labour of love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdröckh, in whom underground humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification! What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing-forth the same! Our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdröckh, would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German Hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being all-but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the following: 'What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how your Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdröckh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the blame. But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags for the present. Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdröckh, so far, if 'not what he did, yet what he became:' the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external Life element, Teufelsdröckh reaches his University Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapour, may hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain 'pools and plashes,' we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained-down again into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the _Philosophy of Clothes_, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. If now, before reopening the great _Clothes-Volume_, we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the _Clothes-Philosophy_, let not our discouragement become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of conjecture. So much we already calculate: Through many a little loop-hole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdröckh; his strange mystic, almost magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas on TIME, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may his somewhat peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one _Garment_, a 'Living Garment,' woven and ever a-weaving in the 'Loom of Time;' is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole _Clothes-Philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in? Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom-forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built? Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdröckh's Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows of things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. The 'Passivity' given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in any public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, and a life of Meditation. The whole energy of his existence is directed, through long years, on one task: that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. But is not this same looking through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the first preliminary to a _Philosophy of Clothes_? Do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher purport of such a Philosophy; and what shape it must assume with such a man, in such an era? Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottoes through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdröckh, he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. BOOK THIRD CHAPTER I INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdröckh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World; recognising in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true Platonic Mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such, more or less complete, rending and burning of Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdröckh's Philosophy of Clothes. Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to dig-out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of the Professor's can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications stand-out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about _Perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at: 'Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came Splendours and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him. 'The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to "drink beer and dance with the girls." Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than Ætna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine.--"So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in," groaned he, "with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!" 'Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdröckh, 'is one of the Arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, and in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he! 'Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns; and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love.' * * * * * George Fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the _Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdröckh himself is no Quaker; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which that 'Incident' is here brought forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdröckh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the community, by way of testifying against the 'Mammon-god,' and escaping from what he calls 'Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For neither would Teufelsdröckh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of levelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realised. Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle step-forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old Distinctions be re-established? Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof? CHAPTER II CHURCH-CLOTHES Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire: 'By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the _Vestures_, under which men have at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious Principle; that is to say, invested The Divine Idea of the World with a sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving WORD. 'These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when "two or three are gathered together," that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with "cloven tongues of fire"), and seeks to be embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: "It is certain my Belief gains quite _infinitely_ the moment I can convince another mind thereof"! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost ME! 'Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first spun and woven by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light of heart (_getrosten Muthes_). 'But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially recognised as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;--then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civilised or even to rational men. 'Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life,--some generation-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. 'All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second Volume, _On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume, as treating practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work _on Clothes_, and is already in a state of forwardness.' And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does Teufelsdröckh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes! CHAPTER III SYMBOLS Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations on _Symbols_. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of 'Fantasy being the organ of the God-like;' and how 'Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth.' Let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks: 'The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our Professor, 'who shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity. 'Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (_Schaam_) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing-Press with its Newspapers: _du Himmel!_ what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose?' 'Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands-out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. 'For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recognised as such or not recognised: the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a "Gospel of Freedom," which he, the "Messias of Nature," preaches, as he can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real.' 'Man,' says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, 'Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass; but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one huge Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism smothers him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanise them to grind the other way? 'Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. In which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by calculated or calculable "Motives"? What make ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillese Hymns, and Reigns of Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been _in Love_? Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time, and the medicating virtue of Nature.' 'Yes, Friends,' elsewhere observes the Professor, 'not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; our Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five-hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an Implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike? 'Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round which the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself? Intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and generally all national or other Sectarian Costumes and Customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there glimmers something of a Divine Idea; as through military Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, of Right. Nay, the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. 'Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to Sense; let but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the Time-Figure (_Zeitbild_)! Then is it fit that men unite there; and worship together before such Symbol; and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 'Of this latter sort are all true works of Art: in them (if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _Iliads_, and the like, have, in three-thousand years, attained quite new significance. But nobler than all in this kind, are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men; for what other Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. 'Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognise a present God, and worship the same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious Symbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could worse or better body-forth the Godlike: some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought not yet reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character: whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. 'But, on the whole, as time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces or even desecrates them; and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer _our_ Epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, their decline.' 'Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but a piece of gilt-wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, "of little price." A right Conjuror might I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held.' 'Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it. 'When, as the last English Coronation[3] was preparing,' concludes this wonderful Professor, 'I read in their Newspapers that the "Champion of England," he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far that he could now "mount his horse with little assistance," I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation?' [3] That of George IV.--ED. CHAPTER IV HELOTAGE At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonourable enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag _Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdröckh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place here. Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; something like a fixed-idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _Institute_ of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. First, then, remark that Teufelsdröckh, as a speculative Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zähdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed: 'Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. 'A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. 'Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.' And again: 'It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and a-thirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?' Quite in an opposite strain is the following: 'The old Spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted-down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing-armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most thickly-peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let Governments think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep alive?' 'And yet,' writes he farther on, 'there must be something wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!' 'True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor elsewhere: 'too crowded indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living Valour; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare? Where are they?--Preserving their Game!' CHAPTER V THE PHOENIX Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these Writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that Teufelsdröckh is one of those who consider Society, properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! He says expressly: 'For the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote-at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanise as you may, beyond two days.' 'Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, 'where there is no longer any Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but only of a common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and cries "Mine!" and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us alone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and sleep! 'Thus, too,' continues he, 'does an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Over-work; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honour from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the CHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!' We might ask, are there many 'observant eyes,' belonging to practical men in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that such wonders are visible? Teufelsdröckh contends that the aspect of a 'deceased or expiring Society' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 'What, for example,' says he, 'is the universally-arrogated Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? For some half century, it has been the thing you name "Independence." Suspicion of "Servility," of reverence for Superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?' But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of Nature? 'The Soul Politic having departed,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'what can follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence! Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and chanting loud pæans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. 'Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have given the quadrupeds water,' adds he; 'the water, namely, of Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet time.' Thus, if Professor Teufelsdröckh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless 'Armament of Mechanisers' and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! 'The world,' says he, 'as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once _divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watchcoat for the defence of the Body only!'--This, we think, is but Job's-news to the humane reader. 'Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdröckh, 'who can hinder it; who is there that can clutch into the wheel-spokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best.' Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdröckh individually had yielded to this same 'Inevitable and Inexorable' heartily enough; and now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a 'huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the uneven _sic-vos-non-vobis_ pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,'--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that 'Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo,' he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. 'Society,' says he, 'is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there is Society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows.' Indeed, we already heard him speak of 'Religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures';--Teufelsdröckh himself being one of the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint-Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said: _L'âge d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans le passé, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us.'--But listen again: 'When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. 'For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle-Pageants, to the extent of three-hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we too find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?' Thus is Teufelsdröckh content that old sick Society should be deliberately burnt (alas! with quite other fuel than spicewood); in the faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future, which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country. CHAPTER VI OLD CLOTHES As mentioned above, Teufelsdröckh, though a sansculottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapour, as from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head: 'Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I discern no special connexion with wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbour's schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with, than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. 'For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledgehammer, art thou not ALIVE; is not this thy brother ALIVE? "There is but one temple in the world," says Novalis, "and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body." 'On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it. 'The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty, or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the "straddling animal with bandy legs" which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment with equal fervour, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others. 'Did not King _Toomtabard_, or, in other words, John Baliol, reign long over Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the "Toom Tabard" (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honours! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth. 'Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilised Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in "the Prison men call Life." Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: "Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!" Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. O, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!' * * * * * To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of 'Devotion': probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdröckh might be in that happy middle state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 'pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the 'Ghosts of Life' rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdröckh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject. For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English 'ink-sea,' that this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe! CHAPTER VII ORGANIC FILAMENTS For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdröckh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done 'within two centuries,' there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. 'In the living subject,' says he, 'change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start-up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-Element come tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.' Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general: 'In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor; 'thou _art_ my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. 'Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: "Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imaginable Glass-bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time: there has a Hole fallen-out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, which must be darned-up again!" 'Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe. 'If now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?--Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton! it was Tubalcain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine. 'Yes, truly; if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. As palpable life-streams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main-currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal _Communion of Saints_, wide as the World itself, and as the History of the World. 'Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and roll onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance: for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an English Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower: the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.' Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles: 'Remark, not without surprise,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'how all high Titles of Honour come hitherto from fighting. Your _Herzog_ (Duke, _Dux_) is Leader of Armies; your Earl (_Jarl_) is Strong Man; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting-titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? 'The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity, is that of King. _König_ (King), anciently _Könning_, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be fitly entitled King.' 'Well, also,' says he elsewhere, 'was it written by Theologians: a King rules by divine right. He carries in him an authority from God, or man will never give it him. Can I choose my own King? I can choose my own King Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him: but he who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as conceivable.' * * * * * The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of Teufelsdröckh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous conflict of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable Film dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim longdrawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. And then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his own! It is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration. Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the Elective Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: 'Satisfy yourselves,' he says, 'by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether FREEDOM, heavenborn and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto.' Is Teufelsdröckh acquainted with the British Constitution, even slightly?--He says, under another figure: 'But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, To rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than the Representative Machine will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name of Free, "when you have but knit-up my chains into ornamental festoons."'--Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of such an assertion as this: 'The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!' Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as was our hest, for 'organic filaments,' we ask, may not this, touching 'Hero-worship,' be of the number? It seems of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes: 'True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of Reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the Higher does he feel himself exalted. 'Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even in this: that man had forever cast away Fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial Reverence, which is the higher and highest? 'Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox _Hero-worship_. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest time may stand secure.' Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what Teufelsdröckh is looking at? He exclaims, 'Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. 'But if such things,' continues he, 'were done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green? If, in the most parched season of Man's History, in the most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was at best but a scientific _Hortus Siccus_, bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for when Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? Know that there is in man a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.' Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage: 'There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Prophecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou listen, and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?' Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit-up this ravelled sleeve: 'But there is no Religion?' reiterates the Professor. 'Fool! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine Church-_Homiletic_ lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay fractions even of a _Liturgy_ could I point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the God-like had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the Common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and name him--Goethe. 'But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred _Miserere_; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together.' CHAPTER VIII NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; 'Cloth-webs and Cob-webs,' of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed. Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. 'Courage, then!' may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours: 'Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus quietly begins the Professor; 'far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical "_Open sesame!_" every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or shut Turnpike? '"But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. 'Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of meaning. '"But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?" Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be "without variableness or shadow of turning," does indeed never change; that Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be? 'They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived-down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. 'Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou namest "Mechanism of the Heavens," and "System of the World"; this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane? 'System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (_un_miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a Minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Æons of Æons. 'We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick-out, by dextrous combination, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream. * * * * * 'Custom,' continues the Professor, 'doth make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental? 'Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two-hundred, or two-million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realised. 'Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. * * * * * 'But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,--lie all embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavour to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. 'Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Any_where_, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap-on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Any_when_, straightway to be _Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time! 'Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and Tomorrow both _are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God: that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting NOW. 'And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with God!--Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, _is_ even now and forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. 'That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagines or imaginings,--seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith? Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practises on us. 'Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. 'Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning-out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilising Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done. 'Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou hast eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover: The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? O, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 'Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade-away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and æons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beautified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand-million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 'O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. 'So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. "We _are such stuff_ As Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep!"' CHAPTER IX CIRCUMSPECTIVE Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have many British Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen-Hulls of Man; through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space themselves! And now does the Spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in _Faust_,-- ''Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by'; or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, Shakspeare,-- 'And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind'; begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen to be inevitable? Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us! Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all? Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout; the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labour, each according to ability. New labourers will arrive; new Bridges will be built; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable even for the halt? Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer by our side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. To these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some word of encouragement be said. Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance Teufelsdröckh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work? Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it? In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdröckh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the Clothes-screen, as through a magical _Pierre-Pertuis_, thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,--then art thou profited beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor; nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes; and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worthships) are properly a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In which case, must it not also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the Vestures which _it_ has to fashion, and consecrate and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and spun? But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulterior or Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never so remotely on that promised Volume of the _Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft_ (Newbirth of Society),--we humbly suggest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the very threshold of his Science; nothing even of those 'architectural ideas,' which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth: we mean, Dandies and Tailors. In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following chapters. CHAPTER X THE DANDIACAL BODY First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor of unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdröckh would call a 'Divine Idea of Cloth' is born with him; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his Idea an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We called him a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_, to the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character? And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen of him preserved in spirits? Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor Teufelsdröckh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. It is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which: * * * * * 'In these distracted times,' writes he, 'when the Religious Principle, driven-out of most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organisation,--into how many strange shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. 'Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that country, one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject, is that of the _Dandies_; concerning which, what little information I have been able to procure may fitly stand here. 'It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally without sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided (_schweben_). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough: also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, _Self-worship_; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and others, strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. 'For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken _Lingua-franca_, or English-French); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. 'They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is named _Almack's_, a word of uncertain etymology. They worship principally by night; and have their Highpriests and Highpriestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call _Fashionable Novels_: however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others not. 'Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured myself some samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. In vain that I summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_), and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsufferable, Jews-harping and scrannel-piping there; to which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _Delirium Tremens_, and a melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a general breaking-up of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly forbore. Was there some miracle at work here; like those Fire-balls, and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, have also more than once scared-back the Alien? Be this as it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest I could give of a Sect too singular to be omitted. 'Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another _Fashionable Novel_. But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. Round one of those Book-packages, which the _Stillschweigen'sche Buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets (_Maculatur blätter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mohamedan reverence even for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name _Magazine_, appears something like a Dissertation on this very subject of _Fashionable Novels_! It sets out, indeed, chiefly from a Secular point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _Pelham_, who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the Religious physiognomy and physiology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby I have endeavoured to profit. Nay, in one passage selected from the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what appears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the German world; therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally from the Original: 'ARTICLES OF FAITH. '"1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. '"2. The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly rolled. '"3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. '"4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. '"5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings. '"6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. '"7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips." 'All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. 'In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also in the main Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has published Books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. The members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various places of establishment: in England they are generally called the _Drudge_ Sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the _White Negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, the _Ragged-Beggar_ Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them entitled _Hallanshakers_, or the _Stook of Duds_ Sect; any individual communicant is named _Stook of Duds_ (that is, Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as _Bogtrotters_, _Redshanks_, _Ribbonmen_, _Cottiers_, _Peep-of-Day Boys_, _Babes of the Wood_, _Rockites_, _Poor-Slaves_; which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what seems indubitable, that the original Sect is that of the _Poor-Slaves_; whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. 'The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution: we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience; which Vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to conjecture. 'Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed be found in the present Volume; for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Language it did not seem describable. Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, like a University-cap, with what view is unknown. 'The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, or Russian origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut-up in private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. 'In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters); a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed, with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _Point_, into the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the victual _Potatoes-and-Point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and _Potheen_, which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as the English _Blue-Ruin_, and the Scotch _Whisky_, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely consumed. 'An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of _The late John Bernard_, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the so-precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall look into. 'First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the original: _Poor-Slave Household_ '"The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments; the one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken Board, which was scooped-out in the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with." The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. 'But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Penman himself has his abode: _Dandiacal Household_ '"A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-coloured curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A wardrobe of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small size monopolise the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bathroom. Folding-doors in the background.--Enter the Author," our Theogonist in person, "obsequiously preceded by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron." * * * * * 'Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principals of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of English national Existence; striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses. 'In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytising Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion of Drudges_, as there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet affects to look-down on Drudgism: but perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant. 'To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day part England between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandyising Christians, will form one body: the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover-in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening: they are hollow Cones that boil-up from the infinite Deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the two Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged! 'Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the "Machinery of Society"), with batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive: one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state; till your whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there bottled-up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thunderpeal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon.--Or better still, I might liken'-- Oh! enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdröckh or ourselves sin the more. We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting-out Religion: but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _Dandiacal Body_! Or was there something of intended satire; is the Professor and Seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we should have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a Teufelsdröckh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean while, if satire were actually intended, the case is little better. There are not wanting men who will answer: Does your Professor take us for simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. CHAPTER XI TAILORS Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been sufficiently drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily quite coincides with that of Teufelsdröckh himself, as expressed in the concluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. Let him speak his own last words, in his own way: * * * * * 'Upwards of a century,' says he, 'must elapse, and still the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering Humanity be closed. 'If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call any one a _Schneider_ (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood-winked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet _schneider-mässig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity: we introduce a _Tailor's-Melancholy_, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I know not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his _Schneider mit dem Panier_? Why of Shakspeare, in his _Taming of the Shrew_, and elsewhere? Does it not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a "Good morning, gentlemen both!" Did not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted-on as an indisputable fact. 'Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, whether it is disputable or not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to perform? Can he not arrest for debt? Is he not in most countries a tax-paying animal? 'To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which conviction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated towards a higher Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light: that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that "he snatched the Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings": but which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that snatches? For, looking away from individual cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic Dominion,--is not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organised into Polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating Mankind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?--What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: "Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods for men; brought them down to us; and raised us up to them?" 'And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will recognise that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God. 'As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone! 'Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one was "Breeches-Maker to his Majesty"; and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors become forever venerable. 'Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion may here find its conclusion.' CHAPTER XII FAREWELL So have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdröckh had kneaded for his fellow mortals, to pick-out the choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the Editor desire? If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter? Of Professor Teufelsdröckh it seems impossible to take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude and disapproval. Who will not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? Regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his mad humours British Criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our Literary men! As it might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over Teufelsdröckh's German, lost much of his own English purity? Even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the greater, and like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the 'Time-prince,' or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome. Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone, Literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colours, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdröckh desperation enough for this. A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that Teufelsdröckh is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytise. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: 'How were Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.' And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: 'It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Gowl, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.' But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality? Should not these unite; since even an authentic Spectre is not visible to Two?--In which case were this enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous Pitchpan, which our Teufelsdröckh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the Night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's bosom!--We say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who knows what mad Hopes this man may harbour? Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonises ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdröckh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor Teufelsdröckh, be it known is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago, the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favour us with another copious Epistle; wherein much is said about the 'Population-Institute'; much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph: '_Ew. Wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the public Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay, could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 'It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdröckh was not known, at the _Gans_ or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: _Es geht an_ (It is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew. Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable; nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the _Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.-- 'To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening said merely: "Here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them make a false application." Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time! 'Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by Authority; where much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_ itself, is thought to be reposited.' * * * * * Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. So that Teufelsdröckh's public History were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also! Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdröckh is actually in London! Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-_well!_ Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a state of quarrel? APPENDIX TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the title '_Testimonies of Authors_,' some straggle of real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence;--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (_Author's Note of 1868._) TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER _Taster to Bookseller._--"The Author of _Teufelsdröckh_ is a person of talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it would take with the public seems doubtful. For a _jeu d'esprit_ of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy; and reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was learning to be lively. _Is_ the work a translation?" _Bookseller to Editor._--"Allow me to say that such a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your _MS._ to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar: I now inclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_MS._ (_penes nos_), _London, 17th September 1831_. II. CRITIC OF THE SUN "_Fraser's Magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. "_Sartor Resartus_ is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigour. But what does the writer mean by 'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally intelligible? We quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the _Sartor Resartus_; which may be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way. Indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning: 'The fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' Here is a"--....--_Sun Newspaper_, _1st April 1834_. III. NORTH-AMERICAN REVIEWER ... "After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no such persons as Professor Teufelsdröckh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the 'present Editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the Philosophy of Clothes; and that the _Sartor Resartus_ is the only treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed Editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in plain English, a _hum_. "Without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant character. The whole German press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have been printed, seems to be under the control of _Stillschweigen and Co._,--Silence and Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are making so great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London? How happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present Editor' upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of _Weissnichtwo_,--'Know-not-where,'--at which place the work is supposed to have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes, maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. We suspect that the city of _Know-not-where_ might be called, with at least as much propriety, _Nobody-knows-where_, and is to be found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of _Entepfuhl_--'Duck-pond,' where the supposed Author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of _Hinterschlag_, where he had his education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. The names of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdröckh? The supposed bearer of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and through all manner of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find the 'name Teufelsdröckh, except as appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor Heuschrecke--'Grasshopper,' though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy work than a 'fair business transaction.' The same may be said of _Blumine_--'Flower-Goddess'--the heroine of the fable; and so of the rest. "In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended German original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of Clothes, or dress. _Clothes, their Origin and Influence_, is the title of the supposed German treatise of Professor Teufelsdröckh, and the rather odd name of _Sartor Resartus_--the Tailor Patched,--which the present Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, which Teufelsdröckh is supposed to have professed at the university of Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and in the form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men and maidens--_virginibus puerisque_,--and calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they will,--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humour. If the last improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should have found their way to England, the author, we think, would stand some chance of being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to say. In the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, from the tenour of which we should be disposed to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. "The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigour, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the German language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a great familiarity with German literature, and we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite character."--_North-American Review_, _No. 89_, _October 1835_. IV. NEW ENGLAND EDITORS "The Editors have been induced, by the express desire of many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets[4] in which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer date. [4] _Fraser's_ (London) _Magazine_, 1833-4. "The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will have a sudden and general popularity. They will not undertake, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which the Author delights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is his humour to advance the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all? But we will venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, and cover a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, no book has been published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The Author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendour, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. "But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age,--we had almost said, of the hour,--in which we live; exhibiting in the most just and novel light the present aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gaiety the Writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue."--_Preface to Sartor Resartus_: _Boston_, 1836, 1837. SUNT, FUERUNT VEL FUERE. LONDON, _30th June 1838_. SUMMARY BOOK I CHAP. I. _Preliminary_ No Philosophy of Clothes yet, notwithstanding all our Science. Strangely forgotten that Man is by nature a _naked_ animal. The English mind all-too practically absorbed for any such inquiry. Not so, deep-thinking Germany. Advantage of Speculation having free course. Editor receives from Professor Teufelsdröckh his new Work on Clothes (p. 1). CHAP. II. _Editorial Difficulties_ How to make known Teufelsdröckh and his Book to English readers; especially _such_ a book? Editor receives from the Hofrath Heuschrecke a letter promising Biographic Documents. Negotiations with Oliver Yorke. _Sartor Resartus_ conceived. Editor's assurances and advice to his British reader (p. 5). CHAP. III. _Reminiscences_ Teufelsdröckh at Weissnichtwo. Professor of Things in General at the University there: Outward aspect and character; memorable coffee-house utterances; domicile and watch-tower: Sights thence of City-life by day and by night; with reflections thereon. Old 'Liza and her ways. Character of Hofrath Heuschrecke, and his relation to Teufelsdröckh (p. 9). CHAP. IV. _Characteristics_ Teufelsdröckh and his Work on Clothes: Strange freedom of speech: transcendentalism; force of insight and expression; multifarious learning: Style poetic, uncouth: Comprehensiveness of his humour and moral feeling. How the Editor once saw him laugh. Different kinds of Laughter and their significance (p. 20). CHAP. V. _The World in Clothes_ Futile cause-and-effect Philosophies. Teufelsdröckh's Orbis Vestitus. Clothes first invented for the sake of Ornament. Picture of our progenitor, the Aboriginal Savage. Wonders of growth and progress in mankind's history. Man defined as a Tool-using Animal (p. 25). CHAP. VI. _Aprons_ Divers Aprons in the world with divers uses. The Military and Police Establishment Society's working Apron. The Episcopal Apron with its corner tucked in. The Laystall. Journalists now our only Kings and Clergy (p. 31). CHAP. VII. _Miscellaneous-Historical_ How Men and Fashions come and go. German Costume in the fifteenth century. By what strange chances do we live in History! The costume of Bolivar's Cavalry (p. 34). CHAP. VIII. _The World out of Clothes_ Teufelsdröckh's Theorem, "Society founded upon Cloth"; his Method, Intuition quickened by Experience.--The mysterious question, Who am I? Philosophic systems, all at fault: A deeper meditation has always taught, here and there an individual, that all visible things are appearances only; but also emblems and revelations of God. Teufelsdröckh first comes upon the question of Clothes: Baseness to which Clothing may bring us (p. 37). CHAP. IX. _Adamatism_ The universal utility of Clothes, and their higher mystic virtue, illustrated. Conception of Mankind stripped naked; and immediate consequent dissolution of civilised Society (p. 43). CHAP. X. _Pure Reason_ A Naked World possible, nay actually exists, under the clothed one. Man, in the eye of Pure Reason, a visible God's Presence. The beginning of all wisdom, to look fixedly on Clothes till they become transparent. Wonder, the basis of Worship: Perennial in man. Modern Sciolists who cannot wonder: Teufelsdröckh's contempt for, and advice to them (p. 47). CHAP. XI. _Prospective_ Nature not an Aggregate, but a Whole. All visible things are emblems, Clothes; and exist for a time only. The grand scope of the Philosophy of Clothes.--Biographic Documents arrive. Letter from Heuschrecke on the importance of Biography. Heterogeneous character of the documents: Editor sorely perplexed; but desperately grapples with his work (p. 52). BOOK II CHAP. I. _Genesis_ Old Andreas Futteral and Gretchen his wife: their quiet home. Advent of a mysterious stranger, who deposits with them a young infant, the future Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. After-yearnings of the youth for his unknown Father. Sovereign power of Names and Naming. Diogenes a flourishing Infant (p. 61). CHAP. II. _Idyllic_ Happy Childhood! Entepfuhl: Sights, hearings and experiences of the boy Teufelsdröckh; their manifold teaching. Education; what it can do, what cannot. Obedience our universal duty and destiny. Gneschen sees the good Gretchen pray (p. 68). CHAP. III. _Pedagogy_ Teufelsdröckh's School. His Education. How the ever-flowing Kuhbach speaks of Time and Eternity. The Hinterschlag Gymnasium; rude Boys; and pedant Professors. The need of true Teachers, and their due recognition. Father Andreas dies: and Teufelsdröckh learns the secret of his birth: His reflections thereon. The Nameless University. Statistics of Imposture much wanted. Bitter fruits of Rationalism: Teufelsdröckh's religious difficulties. The young Englishman Herr Towgood. Modern Friendship (p. 76). CHAP. IV. _Getting under Way_ The grand thaumaturgic Art of Thought. Difficulty in fitting Capability to Opportunity, or of getting underway. The advantage of Hunger and Bread-Studies. Teufelsdröckh has to enact the stern mono-drama of _No object and no rest_. Sufferings as Auscultator. Given up as a man of genius, Zähdarm House. Intolerable presumption of young men. Irony and its consequences. Teufelsdröckh's Epitaph on Count Zähdarm (p. 90). CHAP. V. _Romance_ Teufelsdröckh gives up his Profession. The heavenly mystery of Love. Teufelsdröckh's feeling of worship towards women. First and only love. Blumine. Happy hearts and free tongues. The infinite nature of Fantasy. Love's joyful progress; sudden dissolution; and final catastrophe (p. 101). CHAP. VI. _Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh_ Teufelsdröckh's demeanour thereupon. Turns pilgrim. A last wistful look on native Entepfuhl: Sunset amongst primitive Mountains. Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four. Thoughts on View-hunting. Wanderings and Sorrowings (p. 112). CHAP. VII. _The Everlasting No_ Loss of Hope, and of Belief. Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, Teufelsdröckh in his darkness and despair still clings to Truth and follows Duty. Inexpressible pains and fears of Unbelief. Fever-crisis: Protest against the Everlasting No: Baphometic Fire-baptism (p. 121). CHAP. VIII. _Centre of Indifference_ Teufelsdröckh turns now outwardly to the _Not-me_; and finds wholesomer food. Ancient Cities: Mystery of their origin and growth: Invisible inheritances and possessions. Power and virtue of a true Book. Wagram Battlefield: War. Great Scenes beheld by the Pilgrim: Great Events, and Great Men. Napoleon, a divine missionary, preaching _La carrière ouverte aux talens_. Teufelsdröckh at the North Cape: Modern means of self-defence. Gunpowder and duelling. The Pilgrim, despising his miseries, reaches the Centre of Indifference (p. 128). CHAP. IX. _The Everlasting Yea_ Temptations in the Wilderness: Victory over the Tempter. Annihilation of Self. Belief in God, and love to Man. The origin of Evil, a problem ever requiring to be solved anew: Teufelsdröckh's solution. Love of Happiness a vain whim: A Higher in man than Love of Happiness. The Everlasting Yea. Worship of Sorrow. Voltaire: his task now finished. Conviction worthless, impossible, without Conduct. The true Ideal, the Actual: Up and work! (p. 138). CHAP. X. _Pause_ Conversion; a spiritual attainment peculiar to the modern Era. Teufelsdröckh accepts Authorship as his divine calling. The scope of the command _Thou shalt not steal_.--Editor begins to suspect the authenticity of the Biographical documents; and abandons them for the great Clothes volume. Result of the preceding ten Chapters: Insight into the character of Teufelsdröckh: His fundamental beliefs, and how he was forced to seek and find them (p. 149). BOOK III CHAP. I. _Incident in Modern History_ Story of George Fox the Quaker; and his perennial suit of Leather. A man God-possessed, witnessing for spiritual freedom and manhood (p. 156). CHAP. II. _Church-Clothes_ Church-Clothes defined; the Forms under which the Religious principle is temporarily embodied. Outward Religion originates by Society: Society becomes possible by Religion. The condition of Church-Clothes in our time (p. 161). CHAP. III. _Symbols_ The benignant efficacies of Silence and Secrecy. Symbols; revelations of the Infinite in the Finite: Man everywhere encompassed by them; lives and works by them. Theory of Motive-millwrights, a false account of human nature. Symbols of an extrinsic value; as Banners, Standards: Of intrinsic value; as Works of Art, Lives and Deaths of Heroic men. Religious Symbols; Christianity. Symbols hallowed by Time; but finally defaced and desecrated. Many superannuated Symbols in our time, needing removal (p. 163). CHAP. IV. _Helotage_ Heuschrecke's Malthusian Tract, and Teufelsdröckh's marginal notes thereon. The true workman, for daily bread, or spiritual bread, to be honoured; and no other. The real privation of the Poor not poverty or toil, but ignorance. Over-population: With a world like ours and wide as ours, can there be too many men? Emigration (p. 170). CHAP. V. _The Phoenix_ Teufelsdröckh considers Society as _dead_; its soul (Religion) gone, its body (existing Institutions) going. Utilitarianism, needing little farther preaching, is now in full activity of Destruction.--Teufelsdröckh would yield to the Inevitable, accounting that the best: Assurance of a fairer Living Society, arising, Phoenix-like, out of the ruins of the old dead one. Before that Phoenix death-birth is accomplished, long time, struggle, and suffering must intervene (p. 174). CHAP. VI. _Old Clothes_ Courtesy due from all men to all men: The Body of Man a Revelation in the Flesh. Teufelsdröckh's respect for Old Clothes, as the 'Ghosts of Life.' Walk in Monmouth Street, and meditations there (p. 179). CHAP. VII. _Organic Filaments_ Destruction and Creation ever proceed together; and organic filaments of the Future are even now spinning. Wonderful connection of each man with all men; and of each generation with all generations, before and after: Mankind is One. Sequence and progress of all human work, whether of creation or destruction, from age to age.--Titles, hitherto derived from Fighting, must give way to others. Kings will remain and their title. Political Freedom, not to be attained by any mechanical contrivance. Hero-worship, perennial amongst men; the cornerstone of polities in the Future. Organic filaments of the New Religion: Newspapers and Literature. Let the faithful soul take courage! (p. 183). CHAP. VIII. _Natural Supernaturalism_ Deep significance of Miracles. Littleness of human Science: Divine incomprehensibility of Nature. Custom blinds us to the miraculousness of daily-recurring miracles; so do Names. Space and Time, appearances only; forms of human Thought: A glimpse of Immortality. How Space hides from us the wondrousness of our commonest powers; and Time, the divinely miraculous course of human history (p. 191). CHAP. IX. _Circumspective_ Recapitulation. Editor congratulates the few British readers who have accompanied Teufelsdröckh through all his speculations. The true use of the _Sartor Resartus_, to exhibit the Wonder of daily life and common things; and to show that all Forms are but Clothes, and temporary. Practical inferences enough will follow (p. 201). CHAP. X. _The Dandiacal Body_ The Dandy defined. The Dandiacal Sect a new modification of the primeval superstition Self-worship: How to be distinguished. Their Sacred Books (Fashionable Novels) unreadable. Dandyism's Articles of Faith.--Brotherhood of Poor-Slaves: vowed to perpetual Poverty; worshippers of Earth; distinguished by peculiar costume and diet. Picture of a Poor-Slave Household; and of a Dandiacal. Teufelsdröckh fears these two Sects may spread, till they part all England between them, and then frightfully collide (p. 204). CHAP. XI. _Tailors_ Injustice done to Tailors, actual and metaphorical. Their rights and great services will one day be duly recognised (p. 216). CHAP. XII. _Farewell_ Teufelsdröckh's strange manner of speech, but resolute, truthful character: His purpose seemingly to proselytise, to unite the wakeful earnest in these dark times. Letter from Hofrath Heuschrecke announcing that Teufelsdröckh has disappeared from Weissnichtwo. Editor guesses he will appear again, Friendly Farewell (p. 219). ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY LECTURE I THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY [_Tuesday, 5th May 1840_] We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic; deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these. Too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to in this place! One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;--in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighbourhood for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely-distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we see _them_ well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history. How happy, could I but, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the divine relation (for I may well call it such) which in all times unites a Great Man to other men; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it! At all events, I must make the attempt. It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough _without_ asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his _religion_; or it may be, his mere scepticism and _no-religion_: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it Heathenism,--plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognised element therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one;--doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;--their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series, Odin the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a most extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary form of Heroism. Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, falsehoods and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity,--for truly it is not easy to understand that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe: all this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually hold by, and live at home in. This is strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence over the depths of darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such things were and are in man; in all men; in us too. Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the Pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did believe it,--merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of the name of sane, to believe it! It will be often our duty to protest against this sort of hypothesis about men's doings and history; and I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other _isms_ by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this. It seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith even in savage men. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things. We shall not see into the true heart of anything, or if we look merely at the quackeries of it; if we do not reject the quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, with which our and all men's sole duty is to have done with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaism itself to have a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical Mr Turner's _Account of his Embassy_ to that country, and see. They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, belief that there is a _Greatest_ Man; that _he_ is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds! This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the 'discoverability' is the only error here. The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,--of understanding him to be always the eldest born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods for!--We shall begin to have a chance of understanding Paganism, when we first admit that to its followers it was, at one time, earnestly true. Let us consider it very certain that men did believe in Paganism; men with open eyes, sound senses, men made altogether like ourselves; that we, had we been there, should have believed in it. Ask now, What Paganism could have been? Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attributes such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, say these theorists; a shadowing-forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what such poetic minds had known and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human nature, still everywhere observably at work, though in less important things, That what a man feels intensely, he struggles to speak-out of him, to see represented before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind of life and historical reality in it. Now doubtless there is such a law, and it is one of the deepest in human nature; neither need we doubt that it did operate fundamentally in this business. The hypothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly to this agency, I call a little more respectable; but I cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. Think, would _we_ believe, and take with us as our life-guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport? Not sport but earnest is what we should require. It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive! I find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are on the way towards truth in this matter, they have not reached it either. Pagan Religion is indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what men felt and knew about the Universe; and all Religions are Symbols of that, altering always as that alters: but it seems to me a radical perversion, and even _in_version, of the business, to put that forward as the origin and moving cause, when it was rather the result and termination. To get beautiful allegories, a perfect poetic symbol, was not the want of men; but to know what they were to believe about this Universe, what course they were to steer in it; what, in this mysterious Life of theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and to forbear doing. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just and serious one: but consider whether Bunyan's Allegory could have _preceded_ the Faith it symbolises! The Faith had to be already there, standing believed by everybody;--of which the Allegory could _then_ become a shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say a _sportful_ shadow, a mere play of the Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact and scientific certainty which it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory is the product of the certainty, not the producer of it; not in Bunyan's, nor in any other case. For Paganism, therefore, we have still to inquire, Whence came that scientific certainty, the parent of such a bewildered heap of allegories, errors and confusions? How was it, what was it? Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend 'explaining,' in this place, or in any place, such a phenomenon as that far-distant distracted cloudy imbroglio of Paganism,--more like a cloudfield than a distant continent of firm land and facts! It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought to understand that this seeming cloudfield was once a reality; that not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and deception was the origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories; men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor way true and sane! You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike, his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato's. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name Universe, Nature, or the like,--and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, _preter_natural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;--that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what _is_ it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our _want_ of insight. It is by _not_ thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere _words_. We call that fire of the black thundercloud 'electricity,' and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but _what_ is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will _think_ of it. That great mystery of TIME, were there no other: the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which _are_, and then _are not_: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,--for we have no word to speak about it. This Universe, ah me--what could the wild man know of it; what can we yet know? That it is a Force, and thousandfold Complexity of Forces; a Force which is _not we_. That is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from _us_. Force, Force, everywhere Force; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. 'There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?' Nay surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force, which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it? God's creation, the religious people answer; it is the Almighty God's! Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,--ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence. But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,---this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face to face. 'All was Godlike or God:'--Jean Paul still finds it so; the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays: but there then were no hearsays. Canopus shining-down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no _speech_ for any feeling, it may seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing-out on him from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner Splendour to him. Cannot we understand how these men _worshipped_ Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. To these primeval men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God. And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that way now: but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a 'poetic nature,' that we recognise how every object has a divine beauty in it; how every object still verily is 'a window through which we may look into Infinitude itself'? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what he does,--in their own fashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit: better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse and camel did,--namely, nothing! But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an emblem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, among the Hebrews: "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even so: this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself "I,"--ah, what words have we for such things?--is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in _man_. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? 'There is but one Temple in the Universe,' says the devout Novalis, 'and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!' This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. _We_ are the miracle of miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished-off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature;--they, without being mad, could _worship_ Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above, admire without limit: this, in the full use of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they could do. I consider Hero-worship to be the grand modifying element in that ancient system of thought. What I called the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre of a root; but Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown. And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more might that of a Hero! Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Religion I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions,--all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of Man,--is not that the germ of Christianity itself? The greatest of all Heroes is One--whom we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on earth. Or coming into lower, less _un_speakable provinces, is not all Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a _Hero_archy (Government of Heroes),--or a Hierarchy, for it is 'sacred' enough withal! The Duke means _Dux_, Leader; King is _Kön-ning_, _Kan-ning_, Man that _knows_ or _cans_. Society everywhere is some representation, not _in_supportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes;--reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not _in_supportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold;--and several of them, alas, always are _forged_ notes. We can do with some forged false notes; with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of them forged! No: there have to come revolutions then; cries of Democracy, Liberty, and Equality, and I know not what:--the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for _them_, people take to crying in their despair that there is no gold, that there never was any!--'Gold,' Hero-worship, _is_ nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till man himself ceases. I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally ceased. This, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. Show our critics a great man, a Luther for example, they begin to what they call 'account' for him; not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him,--and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was the 'creature of the Time,' they say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing--but what we the little critic could have done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth? Alas, we have known Times _call_ loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; Providence had not sent him; the Time, _calling_ its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called. For if we will think of it, no Time need have gone to ruin, could it have _found_ a man great enough, a man wise and good enough: wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, valour to lead it on the right road thither; these are the salvation of any Time. But I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling-down into ever worse distress towards final ruin;--all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own. The dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him forth. They did want him greatly; but as to calling him forth--!--Those are critics of small vision, I think, who cry: "See, is it not the sticks that made the fire?" No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the last consummation of unbelief. In all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the Great Man to have been the indispensable saviour of his epoch;--the lightning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. The History of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men. Such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief and universal spiritual paralysis; but happily they cannot always completely succeed. In all times it is possible for a man to arise great enough to feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. And what is notable, in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for Great Men; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and perverted it may be. Hero-worship endures for ever while man endures. Boswell venerates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving French believe in their Voltaire; and burst-out round him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they 'stifle him under roses.' It has always seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire. Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, then we may find here in Voltaireism one of the lowest! He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. _Persiflage_ was the character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney comes up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;--in short that _he_ too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel withal that, if _persiflage_ be the great thing, there never was such a _persifleur_. He is the realised ideal of every one of them; the thing they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the most French. _He_ is properly their god,--such god as they are fit for. Accordingly all persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they not worship him? People of quality disguise themselves as tavern-waiters. The Maître de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his Postillion, "_Va bon train_; thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his carriage is 'the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets.' The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic. There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler. Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder of Christianity to the withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times and places, the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever be so. We all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down submissive before great men: nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary ages, will get down so far; _no_ farther. It is an eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to build themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other, worships Heroes; that we all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great Men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down whatsoever;--the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless. * * * * * So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century: eight-hundred years ago the Norwegians were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well. In that strange island Iceland,--burst-up, the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summer-time; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean; with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;--where of all places we least looked for Literature or written memorials, the record of these things was written down. On the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst-up from the sea, not been discovered by the Northmen! The old Norse Poets were many of them natives of Iceland. Sæmund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse critics call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of uncertain etymology, is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this Sæmund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the _Younger_ or Prose _Edda_. By these and the numerous other _Sagas_, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North to this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even yet; and see that old Norse system of Belief, as it were, face to face. Let us forget that it is erroneous Religion; let us look at it as old Thought, and try if we cannot sympathise with it somewhat. The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion. The dark hostile powers of Nature they figure to themselves as '_Jötuns_,' Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest; these are Jötuns. The friendly powers again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; Jötunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jötuns. Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation of it! The power of _Fire_, or _Flame_, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle _Demon_, of the brood of the Jötuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. What _is_ Flame?--_Frost_ the old Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jötun, the Giant _Thrym_, _Hrym_: or _Rime_, the old word now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. _Rime_ was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jötun or Devil; the monstrous Jötun _Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat 'combing their manes,'--which Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet _Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir 'looks at the rocks' with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance of it. Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was his wrath; the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud chariot over the mountain-tops,--that is the peal: wrathful he 'blows in his red beard,'--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begin. Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun--beautifulest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell-of is one of whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds trace: the God _Wünsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who could give us all that we _wished_! Is not this the sincerest yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? The _rudest_ ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. Higher considerations have to teach us that the God _Wish_ is not the true God. Of the other Gods or Jötuns I will mention only for etymology's sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jötun _Aegir_, a very dangerous Jötun;--and now to this day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of back-water, or eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it _Eager_; they cry out, "Have a care, there is the _Eager_ coming!" Curious; that word surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! The _oldest_ Nottingham bargemen had believed in the God Aegir. Indeed, our English blood too in good part is Danish, Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one,--as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely with Danes proper,--from the incessant invasions there were: and this, of course, in a greater proportion along the east coast; and greatest of all, as I find, in the North Country. From the Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the common people is still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are 'Normans,' Northmen,--if that be any great beauty!-- Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse System something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods 'brewing ale' to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jötun; sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jötun country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterises that Norse System; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made by 'warm wind,' and much confused work, out of the conflict of Frost and Fire,--determined on constructing a world with him. His blood made the sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones; of his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods'-dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, enormous;--to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not giant-like, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the Shakspeares, the Goethes!--Spiritually as well as bodily these men are our progenitors. I like, too, that representation they have of the Tree Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit three _Nornas_, Fates,--the Past, Present, Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well. Its 'boughs,' with their buddings and disleafings,--events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,--stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion rustling through it;--or stormtost, the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; 'the infinite conjugation of the verb _To do_.' Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all,--how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila the Moesogoth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,--I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great. The '_Machine_ of the Universe,'--alas, do but think of that in contrast! * * * * * Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of Nature; different enough from what we believe of Nature. Whence it specially came, one would not like to be compelled to say very minutely! One thing we may say: It came from the thoughts of Norse men;--from the thought, above all, of the _first_ Norse man who had an original power of thinking. The First Norse 'man of genius,' as we should call him! Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;--till the great Thinker came, the _original_ man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night; _is_ it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honour such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!--Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation,--till its full stature is reached, and _such_ System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another. For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth _im_measurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!--We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world!-- One other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a little, the confusion of these Norse Eddas. They are not one coherent System of Thought; but properly the _summation_ of several successive systems. All this of the old Norse Belief which is flung-out for us, in one level of distance in the Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does not at all stand so in the reality. It stands rather at all manner of distances and depths, of successive generations since the Belief first began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed to the Scandinavian System of Thought; in ever-new elaboration and addition, it is the combined work of them all. What history it had, how it changed from shape to shape, by one thinker's contribution after another, till it got to the full final shape we see it under in the _Edda_, no man will now ever know: _its_ Councils of Trebisond, Councils of Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo in the dark night! Only that it had such a history we can all know. Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought-of was a contribution, accession, a change or revolution made. Alas, the grandest 'revolution' of all, the one made by the man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest! Of Odin what history? Strange rather to reflect that he _had_ a history! That this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us; with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one as we: and did such a work! But the work, much of it, has perished; the worker, all to the name. "_Wednes_day," men will say to-morrow; Odin's day! Of Odin there exists no history; no document of it; no guess about it worth repeating. Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business style, writes down, in his _Heimskringla_, how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened for room. How he led these _Asen_ (Asiatics) of his out of Asia; settled them in the North parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented Letters, Poetry and so forth,--and came by and by to be worshipped as Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very curious Northman of that same century, is still more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every individual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere. Torfæus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, assigns by calculation a _date_ for it: Odin, he says, came into Europe about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far, very far beyond the Year 70! Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever into unknown thousands of years. Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man Odin ever existed. He proves it by etymology. The word _Wuotan_, which is the original form of _Odin_, a word spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin _vadere_, with the English _wade_ and suchlike,--means primarily _Movement_, Source of Movement, Power; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man. The word signifies Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, German and all Teutonic Nations; the adjectives formed from it all signify _divine_, _supreme_, or something pertaining to the chief god. Like enough! We must bow to Grimm in matters etymological. Let us consider it fixed that _Wuotan_ means _Wading_, force of _Movement_. And now still, what hinders it from being the name of a Heroic Man and _Mover_, as well as of a god? As for the adjectives, and words formed from it,--did not the Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope, get into the habit of saying 'a Lope flower,' a 'Lope _dama_,' if the flower or woman were of surpassing beauty? Had this lasted, _Lope_ would have grown, in Spain, to be an adjective signifying _godlike_ also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his _Essay on Language_, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed precisely in that way: some very green thing chiefly notable for its greenness, got the appellative name _Green_, and then the next thing remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, was named the _green_ tree,--as we still say 'the _steam coach_,' 'four-horse coach,' or the like. All primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this way; were at first substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a man for etymologies like that! Surely there was a First Teacher and Captain; surely there must have been an Odin, palpable to the sense at one time; no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh and blood! The voice of all tradition, history or echo of history, agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, to assure us of this. How the man Odin came to be considered a _god_, the chief god?--that surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatise upon. I have said, his people knew no _limits_ to their admiration of him; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart's-love of some greatest man expanding till it _transcended_ all bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought! Or what if this man Odin,--since a great deep soul, with the afflatus and mysterious tide of vision and impulse rushing on him he knows not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror and wonder to himself,--should have felt that perhaps _he_ was divine; that _he_ was some effluence of the 'Wuotan,' '_Movement_,' Supreme Power and Divinity, of whom to his rapt vision all Nature was the awful Flame-image; that some effluence of _Wuotan_ dwelt here in him! He was not necessarily false; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not _what_ he is,--alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least measure--Himself! What others take him for, and what he guesses that he may be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to determine one another. With all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild soul full of noble ardours and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be? "Wuotan?" All men answered, "Wuotan!"-- And then consider what mere Time will do in such cases; how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead. What an enormous _camera-obscura_ magnifier is Tradition! How a thing grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in the human Heart, is there to encourage it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or document, no book, no Arundel-marble; only here and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why, in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow _mythic_, the contemporaries who had once seen him, being all dead. And in three-hundred years, and three-thousand years--!--To attempt _theorising_ on such matters would profit little: they are matters which refuse to be _theoremed_ and diagramed; which Logic ought to know that she _cannot_ speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of that enormous camera-obscura image; to discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something. This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse mind, dark but living, waiting only for light; this is to me the centre of the whole. How such light will then shine out, and with wondrous thousandfold expansion spread itself, in forms and colours, depends not on _it_, so much as on the National Mind recipient of it. The colours and forms of your light will be those of the _cut-glass_ it has to shine through.--Curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is modelled by the nature of the man! I said, The earnest man, speaking to his brother men, must always have stated what seemed to him a _fact_, a real Appearance of Nature. But the way in which such Appearance or fact shaped itself,--what sort of _fact_ it became for him,--was and is modified by his own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the Phantasy of Himself; this world is the multiplex 'Image of his own Dream.' Who knows to what unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan Fables owe their shape! The number _Twelve_, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number,--this was enough to determine the _Signs of the Zodiac_, the number of Odin's _Sons_, and innumerable other Twelves. Any vague rumour of number had a tendency to settle itself into Twelve. So with regard to every other matter. And quite unconsciously too,--with no notion of building-up 'Allegories'! But the fresh clear glance of those First Ages would be prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, and wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in the _Cestus of Venus_ an everlasting æsthetic truth as to the nature of all Beauty; curious:--but he is careful not to insinuate that the old Greek Mythists had any notion of lecturing about the 'Philosophy of Criticism'!----On the whole we must leave those boundless regions. Cannot we conceive that Odin was a reality? Error indeed, error enough: but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory aforethought,--we will not believe that our Fathers believed in these. * * * * * Odin's _Runes_ are a significant feature of him. Runes, and the miracles of 'magic' he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandinavian Alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, as well as 'magic,' among that people! It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King; how he made the Spanish Soldier who was guarding him scratch _Dios_ on his thumb-nail, that he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought Letters among his people, he might work magic enough! Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen: not a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it. Transport yourselves into the early childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning to think, to be! Wonder, hope; infinite radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the hearts of these strong men! Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain and Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker and Inventor,--as the truly Great Man ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, and man's Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero, as I say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have made of him! To them, as yet without names for it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; _Wuotan_, the greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself. Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great thought in the wild deep heart of him! The rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that obscure element. But he was as a _light_ kindled in it; a light of Intellect, rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet; a Hero, as I say: and he had to shine there, and make his obscure element a little lighter,--as is still the task of us all. We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom that race had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst-up into _boundless_ admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great things; the fruit of him is found growing, from deep thousands of years, over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said, is it not still Odin's Day? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into England too, these are still leaves from that root! He was the Chief God to all the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern Norseman;--in such way did _they_ admire their Pattern Norseman; that was the fortune he had in the world. Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there is this huge Shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole History of his People. For this Odin once admitted to be God, we can understand well that the whole Scandinavian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it might before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What this Odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and carried forward. His way of thought became their way of thought:--such, under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscura shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this man Odin? The gigantic image of _his_ natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded and confused in that manner! Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great man lives in vain. The History of the world is but the Biography of great men. To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of Heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself. If I could show in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here in our world,--it would be the chief use of this discoursing at present. We do not now call our great men Gods, nor admire _without_ limit; ah, no, _with_ limit enough! But if we have no great men, or do not admire at all,--that were a still worse case. This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us. A rude childlike way of recognising the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a giant of a man this child would grow to!--It was a truth, and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our own Fathers, calling out of the depths of ages to us, in whose veins their blood still runs: "This then, this is what _we_ made of the world: this is all the image and notion we could form to ourselves of this great mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise it not. You are raised high above it, to large free scope of vision; but you too are not yet at the top. No, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a partial, imperfect one: that matter is a thing no man will ever, in time or out of time, comprehend; after thousands of years of ever-new expansion, man will find himself but struggling to comprehend again a part of it: the thing is larger than man, not to be comprehended by him; an Infinite thing!" * * * * * The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old Northmen were looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism: recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of _Thou shalt_ and _Thou shalt not_. With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _Edda_, I will remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that most probably they must have been of much newer date; most probably, even from the first, were comparatively idle for the old Norsemen, and as it were a kind of Poetic sport. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory enough will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. The Norse Faith, I can well suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while it lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about itself, still less to sing. Among those shadowy _Edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, in their musical Mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: of the _Valkyrs_ and the _Hall of Odin_; of an inflexible _Destiny_; and that the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_. The _Valkyrs_ are Choosers of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was a fundamental point for the Norse believer;--as indeed it is for all earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which his whole system of thought is woven. The _Valkyrs_; and then that these _Choosers_ lead the brave to a heavenly _Hall of Odin_; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. _Valour_ is still _value_. The first duty of a man is still that of subduing _Fear_. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but specious: his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin's creed, if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man--trusting imperturbably in the appointment and _choice_ of the upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of a man he is. It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of the old Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die, had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails set and slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might blaze-up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean! Wild bloody valour; yet valour of its kind; better, I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an indomitable rugged energy! Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things;--progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them;--to Hrolf's of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour. Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was the _strongest_ kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the title _Wood-cutter_; Forest-felling Kings. Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk mainly of the latter,--misleading certain critics not a little; for no nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough come out of that! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller,--the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in every kind; for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valour that; showing itself against the untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer Nature for us. In the same direction have not we their descendants since carried it far? May such valour last forever with us! That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice and heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the infinite importance of Valour, how man thereby became a god; and that his People, feeling a response to it in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and thought it a message out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it them: this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, from which all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. Grow,--how strangely! I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was _alive_; consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! The living doctrine grows, grows;--like a Banyan-tree; the first _seed_ is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called 'the enormous shadow of this man's likeness'? Critics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of the Creation and suchlike, with those of the Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla, 'licking the rime from the rocks,' has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into frosty countries. Probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest times. Thought does not die, but only is changed. The first man that began to think in this Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And then the second man, and the third man:--nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men _his_ way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness over sections of the History of the World. * * * * * Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this Norse Mythology I have not room to speak; nor does it concern us much. Some wild Prophecies we have, as the _Völuspa_ in the _Elder Edda_; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline sort. But they were comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who as it were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds; and it is _their_ songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbolising, as our modern Painters paint, when it was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This is everywhere to be well kept in mind. Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give one no notion of it;--any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us: no; rough as the North Rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in the middle of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor 'draws down his brows' in a veritable Norse rage; 'grasps his hammer till the _knuckles grow white_.' Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity. Balder 'the white God' dies; the beautiful, benignant; he is the Sungod. They try all Nature for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends Hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof: the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pass here; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far towards the North." Hermoder rides on; leaps Hell-gate, Hela's gate: does see Balder, and speak with him: Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela will not, for Odin or any God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They shall forever remain there. He sends his ring to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her _thimble_ to Frigga, as a remembrance--Ah me!-- For indeed Valour is the fountain of Pity too;--of Truth, and all that is great and good in man. The robust homely vigour of the Norse heart attaches one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right honest strength, says Uhland, who has written a fine _Essay_ on Thor, that the Old Norse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That it is not frightened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal! The Norse heart _loves_ this Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is Summer-heat; the god of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant's friend; his true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, _Manual Labour_. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the Jötuns, harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening and damaging them. There is a great broad humour in some of these things. Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jötun-land, to seek Hymir's Caldron, that the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his grey beard all full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; Thor, after much rough tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; the 'handles of it reach down to his heels.' The Norse Skald has a kind of loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag genius,--needing only to be tamed-down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now, that old Norse work,--Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack the Giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here yet. How strangely things grow, and die, and do not die! There are twigs of that great world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously traceable. This poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. _Hynde Etin_, and still more decisively _Red Etin of Ireland_, in the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from Norseland; _Etin_ is evidently a _Jötun_. Nay, Shakspeare's _Hamlet_ is a twig too of this same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that. Hamlet, _Amleth_, I find, is really a mythic personage; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a Norse mythus! Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it a Danish history; Shakspeare, out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig of the world-tree that has _grown_, I think;--by nature or accident that one has grown! In fact, these old Norse songs have a _truth_ in them, an inward perennial truth and greatness,--as, indeed, all must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,--a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,--the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,--the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be: 'We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the _Outer_ Garden, central seat of Jötun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and Loke. After various adventures they entered upon Giant-land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned-out that the noise had been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this that they took for a house was merely his _Glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the Glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a glove;--I remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove! Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the Giant's face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before: but the Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand? Thor's third stroke was with both his hands (the 'knuckles white' I suppose), and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked, There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they have dropt?--At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to 'strain your neck bending back to see the top of it,' Skrymir went his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going on. To Thor, for his part, they handed a drinking-horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, they told him; could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent-up the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her. And now, on their quitting Utgard, the Chief Jötun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to drink was the _Sea_: you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _Midgard-snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, Duration; with her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,--look at these _three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" Thor looked at his attendant Jötun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its skyhigh gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jötunheim!"-- This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimerstithy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag grin of true humour is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is capable of that. It is the grim humour of our own Ben Jonson, rare old Ben; runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it, under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods. That is also a very striking conception, that of the _Ragnarök_, Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Völuspa_ Song; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jötuns, the divine Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel; World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive; and ruin, 'twilight' sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among men. Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; may still see into it. And now, connected with this, let us glance at the _last_ mythus of the appearance of Thor; and end there. I fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of Christianity,--set forth reproachfully by some Conservative Pagan. King Olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing Christianity; surely I should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his Pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral of the North has now stood for many centuries, dedicated gratefully to his memory as _Saint_ Olaf. The mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort along the shore of Norway, from haven to haven; dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers address him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful shore; but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus: "Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you, and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jötuns, before he could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care!" said the stranger, drawing-down his brows;--and when they looked again, he was nowhere to be found.--This is the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world! Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, without unveracity on the part of any one? It is the way most Gods have come to appear among men: thus, if in Pindar's time 'Neptune was seen once at the Nemean Games,' what was this Neptune too but a 'stranger of noble grave aspect,' _fit_ to be 'seen'! There is something pathetic, tragic for me in this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole Norse world has vanished; and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that pass away the highest things. All things that have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish, we have our sad farewell to give them. That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive _Consecration of Valour_ (so we may define it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valour is not a _bad_ thing! We will take it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is there no use in _knowing_ something about this old Paganism of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and combined with higher things, it is in _us_ yet, that old Faith withal! To know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the Past--with our own possessions in the Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something _true_, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other _side_ of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the _sum_ of all these; not any one of them by itself, constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three: for they by their union first constitute the True Religion." LECTURE II THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM [_Friday, 8th May 1840_] From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men! The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one God-inspired, as a prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship; the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, whom his fellowmen will take for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there standing beside them a god, the maker of this world? Perhaps not: it was usually some man they remembered, or _had_ seen. But neither can this any more be. The Great Man is not recognised henceforth as a god any more. It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how to account of him and receive him! The most significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. Ever, to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he comes from the hand of nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff; that only by the world's reception of them, and the shapes they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. The worship of Odin astonishes us--to fall prostrate before the Great Man, into _deliquium_ of love and wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that he was a denizen of the skies, a god! This was imperfect enough: but to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did, was that what we can call perfect? The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth; a man of 'genius' as we call it: the Soul of a Man actually sent down from the skies with a God's-message to us--this we waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: _such_ reception of a Great Man I do not call very perfect either! Looking into the heart of the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning _deliquium_ of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!--It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well. We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet, but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what _he_ meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypotheses about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred-and-eighty millions of men these twelve-hundred years. These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here. Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow _truly_ the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred-and-eighty millions; it will fall straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, _be_ verily in communion with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious--ah, me!--a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged bank-note; they get it passed out of _their_ worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts-up in fire-flame, French Revolutions and suchlike, proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged notes are forged. But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say _sincerity_, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah, no, that is a very poor matter indeed;--a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of _in_sincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares-in upon him; undeniable, there, there!--I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it. Such a man is what we call an _original_ man: he comes to us at first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, God;--in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man's words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things;--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following hearsays; _it_ glares-in upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a kind of 'revelation;'--what we must call such for want of some other name? It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. God has made many revelations: but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The 'inspiration of the Almighty giveth _him_ understanding:' we must listen before all to him. This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive him so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of Life cast-up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there 'the man according to God's own heart'? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's own heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle _be_ a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put-up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate Mahomet's faults even as faults: but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling there. We will leave all this behind us; and assuring ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be. * * * * * These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are called the French of the East, we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his way;--and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. In words too, as in action. They are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had 'Poetic contests' among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes:--the wild people gathered to hear that. One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities; what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous workers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,--recognised them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works are still in a sense symbols of God. Do we not, as I urged, still account it a merit to recognise a certain inexhaustible significance, 'poetic beauty' as we name it, in all natural objects whatsoever? A man is a poet, and honoured, for doing that, and speaking or singing it,--a kind of diluted worship. They had many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and noblemindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed that our own _Book of Job_ was written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem,--man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ everywhere; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual; the Horse,--'hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?'--he '_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation: oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.-- To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some one might _see_ it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;--still more so in these hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object, that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; 'twenty-seven cubits high;' with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_ night,--to glitter again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the _Keblah_ of all Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of innumerable praying men are turned towards _it_, five times, this day and all days: one of the notablest centres in the Habitation of Men. It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah Stone and Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca took its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much decayed now. It has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its very bread, have to be imported. But so many pilgrims needed lodgings: and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where men see themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can accomplish other objects which depend on meeting together. Mecca became the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed the chief staple and warehouse of whatever Commerce there was between the Indian and Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one time a population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and Western products; importers for their own behoof of provisions and corn. The government was a kind of irregular aristocratic republic, not without a touch of theocracy. Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut-asunder by deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration;--held mainly by the _inward_ indissoluble bond of a common blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world: a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there. * * * * * It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense: he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old. A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favourite son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he. At his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet was brought-up in the best Arab way. Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on trading journeys and suchlike; in his eighteenth year one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in war. But perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is one we find noted as of some years' earlier date: a journey to the Fairs of Syria. The young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign world,--with one foreign element of endless moment to him: the Christian Religion. I know not what to make of that 'Sergius, the Nestorian Monk,' whom Abu Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could have taught one still so young. Probably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. Mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mahomet never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumour of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,--alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His companions named him '_Al Amin_, The Faithful.' A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. They noted that _he_ always meant something. A man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only sort of speech _worth_ speaking! Through life we find him to have been regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;--a good laugh in him withal: there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes;--I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was in anger: like the '_horse-shoe_ vein' in Scott's _Redgauntlet_. It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light: of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone. It goes greatly against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was done. He was forty before he talked of any mission from Heaven. All his irregularities, real and supposed, date from after his fiftieth year, when the good Kadijah died. All his 'ambition,' seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an honest life; his 'fame,' the mere good opinion of neighbours that knew him, had been sufficient hitherto. Not till he was already getting old, the prurient heat of his life all burnt out, and _peace_ growing to be the chief thing this world could give him, did he start on the 'career of ambition;' and, belying all his past character and existence, set-up as a wretched empty charlatan to acquire what he could now no longer enjoy! For my share, I have no faith whatever in that. Ah no: this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, with his beaming black eyes and open social deep soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition. A silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot _but_ be in earnest; whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere. While others walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the reality of things. The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared-in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact, "Here am I!" Such _sincerity_, as we named it, has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature's own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to nothing else;--all else is wind in comparison. From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What _is_ this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer! It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which we too have to ask, and answer. This wild man felt it to be of _infinite_ moment; all other things of no moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry, there was no answer in these. A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through the shows of things into _things_. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: all these are good, or are not good. There is something behind and beyond all these, which all these must correspond with, be the image of, or they are--_Idolatries_: 'bits of black wood pretending to be God;' to the earnest soul a mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so gilded, waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing for this man. Though all men walk by them, what good is it? The great Reality stands glaring there upon _him_. He there has to answer it, or perish miserably. Now, even now, or else through all Eternity never! Answer it; _thou_ must find an answer.--Ambition? What could all Arabia do for this man; with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all crowns in the Earth;--what could they all do for him? It was not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would _they_ in a few brief years be? To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into your hand,--will that be one's salvation? I decidedly think, not. We will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us. Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab custom; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and useful. Communing with his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself silent; open to the 'small still voices:' it was a right natural custom! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, who with his household was with him or near him this year, That by the unspeakable special favour of Heaven he had now found it all out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was One God in and over all; and we must leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God is great; and that there is nothing else great! He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendour. '_Allah akbar_, God is great;'--and then also '_Islam_,' That we must _submit_ to God. That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to us. For this world, and for the other! The thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God.--'If this be _Islam_,' says Goethe, 'do we not all live in _Islam_?' Yes, all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,--Necessity will make him submit,--but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it _had_ verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;--that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable. I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations; he is victorious while he coöperates with that great central Law, not victorious otherwise:--and surely his first chance of coöperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with his whole soul that it _is_; that it is good, and alone good! This is the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;--for Islam is definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not been, neither had it been. Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God. We are to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know that we know nothing; that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems; that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, It is good and wise, God is great! "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth. Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling, splendour as of life and Heaven, in the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it revelation and the angel Gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call it? It is the 'inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us understanding.' To _know_; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,--of which the best Logics can but babble on the surface. 'Is not Belief the true god-announcing Miracle?' says Novalis.--That Mahomet's whole soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if it were important and the only important thing, was very natural. That Providence had unspeakably honoured _him_ by revealing it, saving him from death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the same to all creatures: this is what was meant by 'Mahomet is the Prophet of God;' this too is not without its true meaning.-- The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: Yes, it was _true_ this that he said. One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest. 'It is certain,' says Novalis, 'my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.' It is a boundless favour.--He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did her?"--"No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that!"--Seid, his Slave, also believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts. He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood-up and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started-up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke-up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious thing! As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at Bagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: he said, If the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon the Assassin; but if it did, then they must slay him straightway, that so they two in the same hour might appear before God, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one! Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two men of influence had joined him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. Naturally, he gave offence to everybody: Who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood! Abu Thaleb the good Uncle spoke with him: Could he not be silent about all that; believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking of it? Mahomet answered: If the Sun stood on his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he could not obey! No: there was something in this Truth he had got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had made. It would speak itself there, so long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all Koreish and all men and things. It must do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so; and, they say, 'burst into tears.' Burst into tears: he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got was no soft, but a stern and great one. He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than once it seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was not to end so. In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they now call Medina, or '_Medinat al Nabi_, the City of the Prophet,' from that circumstance. It lay some 200 miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The whole East dates its era from this Flight, _Hegira_ as they name it: the Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one: his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless for him. It is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. But now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it,--the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder: well, let steel try it then! Ten years more this Mahomet had: all of fighting, of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know. Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a _minority of one_. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That _he_ take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one. Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons was not by preaching. I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call _truest_, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last. Here however, in reference to much that there is in Mahomet and his success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom: your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat,--the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds _it_ in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest,--has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it _be_ genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbour to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world? The _body_ of them all is imperfection, an element of light _in_ darkness: to us they have to come embodied in mere Logic, in some merely _scientific_ Theorem of the Universe; which _cannot_ be complete; which cannot but be found, one day, incomplete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. The body of all Truth dies; and yet in all, I say, there is a soul which never dies; which in new and ever-nobler embodiment lives immortal as man himself! It is the way with Nature. The genuine essence of Truth never dies. That it be genuine, a voice from the great Deep of Nature, there is the point at Nature's judgment-seat. What _we_ call pure or impure, is not with her the final question. Not how much chaff is in you; but whether you have any wheat. Pure? I might say to many a man: Yes, you are pure; pure enough; but you are chaff,--insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality; you never were in contact with the great heart of the Universe at all; you are properly neither pure nor impure; you _are_ nothing, Nature has no business with you. Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christianity; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about _Homoiousion_ and _Homoousion_, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! The truth of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in it: not dead, chopping barren logic merely! Out of all that rubbish of Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, rumours and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with their idle wire-drawings, this wild man of the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his great flashing natural eyesight, had seen into the kernel of the matter. Idolatry is nothing: these Wooden Idols of yours, 'ye rub them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them,'--these are wood, I tell you! They can do nothing for you; they are an impotent blasphemous pretence; a horror and abomination, if ye knew them. God alone is; God alone has power; He made us, He can kill us and keep us alive: '_Allah akbar_, God is great.' Understand that His will is the best for you; that howsoever sore to flesh-and-blood, you will find it the wisest, best: you are bound to take it so; in this world and in the next, you have no other thing that you can do! And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their fiery hearts laid hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to them, I say it was well worthy of being believed. In one form or the other, I say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed by all men. Man does hereby become the high-priest of this Temple of a World. He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; coöperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: I know, to this day, no better definition of Duty than that same. All that is _right_ includes itself in this of coöperating with the real Tendency of the World; you succeed by this (the World's Tendency will succeed), you are good, and in the right course there. _Homoiousion_, _Homoousion_, vain logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out, and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all these vain jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was a Reality, direct from the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was _fire_. * * * * * It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name _Koran_, or _Reading_, 'Thing to be read.' This is the Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is not that a miracle? The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted everywhere as the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone-upon in speculation and life: the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light of their life. They have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each day. There, for twelve-hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors that had read it seventy-thousand times! Very curious: if one sought for 'discrepancies of national taste,' here surely were the most eminent instance of that! We also can read the Koran; our Translation of it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair one. I must say, it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite;--insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. It is true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it than we. Mahomet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written-down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pellmell into a chest: and they published it, without any discoverable order as to time or otherwise;--merely trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a _book_ at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; _written_, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was. So much for national discrepancies, and the standard of taste. Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how the Arabs might so love it. When once you get this confused coil of a Koran fairly off your hands, and have it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it begins to disclose itself; and in this there is a merit quite other than the literary one. If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. One would say the primary character of the Koran is that of its _genuineness_, of its being a _bonâ-fide_ book. Prideaux, I know, and others have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter after chapter got-up to excuse and varnish the author's successive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss all that. I do not assert Mahomet's continual sincerity: who is continually sincere? But I confess I can make nothing of the critic, in these times, who would accuse him of deceit _prepense_; of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps at all;--still more, of living in a mere element of conscious deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger and juggler would have done! Every candid eye, I think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pellmell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;--they are not _shaped_ at all, these thoughts of his; flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We said 'stupid:' yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech. The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in! A headlong haste; for very magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articulated into words. The successive utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by the various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now well uttered, now worse: this is the Koran. For we are to consider Mahomet, through these three-and-twenty years, as the centre of a world wholly in conflict. Battles with the Koreish and Heathen, quarrels among his own people, backslidings of his own wild heart; all this kept him in a perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest no more. In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from Heaven; _any_ making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable for him there, would seem the inspiration of a Gabriel. Forger and juggler? No, no! This great fiery heart, seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts, was not a juggler's. His life was a Fact to him; this God's Universe an awful Fact and Reality. He has faults enough. The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart, practising for a mess of pottage such blasphemous swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, continual high-treason against his Maker and Self, we will not and cannot take him. Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men. It is, after all, the first and last merit in a book; gives rise to merits of all kinds,--nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever to the old stories of the Prophets as they went current in the Arab memory: how Prophet after Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet Moses, Christian and other real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe and to that, warning men of their sin; and been received by them even as he Mahomet was,--which is a great solace to him. These things he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times; again and ever again with wearisome iteration; has never done repeating them. A brave Samuel Johnson, in his forlorn garret, might con-over the Biographies of Authors in that way! This is the great staple of the Koran. But curiously, through all this, comes ever and anon some glance as of the real thinker and seer. He has actually an eye for the world, this Mahomet: with a certain directness and rugged vigour, he brings home still, to our heart, the thing his own heart has been opened to. I make but little of his praises of Allah, which many praise; they are borrowed I suppose mainly from the Hebrew, at least they are far surpassed there. But the eye that flashes direct into the heart of things, and _sees_ the truth of them; this is to me a highly interesting object. Great Nature's own gift; which she bestows on all; but which only one in the thousand does not cast sorrowfully away: it is what I call sincerity of vision; the test of a sincere heart. Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? 'I am a Public Preacher;' appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly 'a sign to you,' if your eyes were open! This Earth, God made it for you: 'appointed paths in it;' you can live in it, go to and fro on it.--The clouds in the dry country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful: Great clouds, he says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they come from! They hang there, the great black monsters; pour-down their rain deluges 'to revive a dead earth,' and grass springs, and tall leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a sign?' Your cattle too,--Allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them, very strange creatures; they come ranking home at evening-time, 'and,' adds he, 'and are a credit to you!' Ships also,--he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they spread-out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! Miracles? cries he; what miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves there? God made _you_, 'shaped you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, 'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again are not. 'Ye have compassion on one another:' this struck me much: Allah might have made you having no compassion on one another,--how had it been then! This is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored intellect: eyesight, heart; a strong wild man,--might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous. He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and tactual Manifestation of God's power and presence,--a shadow hung-out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more. The Mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, they shall dissipate themselves 'like clouds;' melt into the Blue as clouds do, and not be! He figures the Earth, in the Arab fashion, Sale tells us, as an immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the mountains are set on that to _steady_ it. At the Last Day they shall disappear 'like clouds;' the whole Earth shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapour vanish in the Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. The universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a Splendour, and a Terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and reality, in all things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. What a modern talks-of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough,--saleable, curious, good for propelling steamships! With our Sciences and Cyclopædias, we are apt to forget the _divineness_, in these laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, I think, were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;--a thistle in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the dead _timber_; it is not the growing tree and forest,--which gives ever-new timber, among other things! Man cannot _know_ either, unless he can _worship_ in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, otherwise. Much has been said and written about the sensuality of Mahomet's Religion; more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practised, unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not 'succeed by being an easy religion.' As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense,--sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his 'honour of a soldier,' different from drill-regulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the _allurements_ that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns-up all lower considerations. Not happiness, but something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with their 'point of honour' and the like. Not by flattering our appetites; no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers. Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than _hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of a man he _was_, let him be _called_ what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself. His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling-up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made him _worse_; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, everyway sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, 'The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He answered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the War of Tabûc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the body;--the old gray-haired man melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she.--"You see a friend weeping over his friend."--He went out for the last time into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the Day of Judgment."--You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries,--the veritable Son of our common Mother. Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, 'the respect due unto thee.' In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each called-for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The War of Tabûc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that occasion: pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was hot; 'but Hell will be hotter!' Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns-up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at that Great Day. They will be weighed-out to you; ye shall not have short weight!--Everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye; he _sees_ it: his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the greatness of it. 'Assuredly,' he says: that word, in the Koran, is written-down sometimes as a sentence by itself: 'Assuredly.' No _Dilettantism_ in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been _open_ to Truth;--'living in a vain show.' Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but _is_ himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer than the truths of such a man. He is the insincere man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places: inoffensive, says nothing harsh to anybody; most _cleanly_,--just as carbonic acid is, which is death and poison. We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always of the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to good in them; that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what is just and true. The sublime forgiveness of Christianity, turning of the other cheek when the one has been smitten, is not here: you _are_ to revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond justice. On the other hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight into the essence of man, is a perfect equaliser of men: the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to Islam too, are equal. Mahomet insists not on the propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity of it; he marks-down by law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if you neglect. The tenth part of a man's annual income, whatever that may be, is the _property_ of the poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. Good all this: the natural voice of humanity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this wild Son of Nature speaks _so_. Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; in the one and the other there is enough that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are to recollect that the Arabs already had it so; that Mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. In the Koran there is really very little said about the joys of Paradise; they are intimated rather than insisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure Presence of the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other joys. He says, 'Your salutation shall be, Peace.' _Salam_, Have Peace!--the thing that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one blessing. 'Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts.' All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven enough! In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahomet's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; which it is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I shall make, and therewith leave it to your candour. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In one of his Delineations, in _Meister's Travels_ it is, the hero comes-upon a Society of men with very strange ways, one of which was this: "We require," says the Master, "that each of our people shall restrict himself in one direction," shall go right against his desire in one matter, and _make_ himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we allow him the greater latitude on all other sides." There seems to me a great justness in this. Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. Let a man assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that he could and would shake them off, on cause shown: this is an excellent law. The Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Mahomet's Religion, much in his own Life, bears in that direction; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral improvement on his part, then by a certain healthy manful instinct, which is as good. But there is another thing to be said about the Mahometan Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they are an emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere. That gross sensual Paradise of his; that horrible flaming Hell; the great enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists on: what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual Fact, and Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for us too if we do not all know and feel: the Infinite Nature of Duty? That man's actions here are of _infinite_ moment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, downwards low as Hell, and in his threescore years of Time holds an Eternity fearfully and wonderfully hidden: all this had burnt itself, as in flame-characters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, ever present to him. With bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sincerity, halt, articulating, not able to articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first of all truths. It is venerable under all embodiments. What is the chief end of man here below? Mahomet has answered this question, in a way that might put some of _us_ to shame! He does not, like a Bentham, a Paley, take Right and Wrong, and calculate the profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other; and summing all up by addition and subtraction into a net result, ask you, Whether on the whole the Right does not preponderate considerably? No, it is not _better_ to do the one than the other; the one is to the other as life is to death,--as Heaven is to Hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them; they are incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other is life eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this God's-world to a dead brute Steam-engine, the infinite celestial Soul of Man to a kind of Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on:--If you ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will answer, It is not Mahomet!---- On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God _Wish_, the god of all rude men,--this has been enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and welldoing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily _believed_. These Arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslem do by theirs,--believing it wholly, fronting Time with it, and Eternity with it. This night the watchman on the streets of Cairo when he cries "Who goes?" will hear from the passenger, along with his answer, "There is no God but God." _Allah akbar, Islam_, sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters;--displacing what is worse, nothing that is better or good. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that;--glancing in valour and splendour and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century,--is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. LECTURE III THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE. [_Tuesday, 12th May 1840_] The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of Poet; a character which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages; whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the newest age as the oldest may produce;--and will produce, always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is it other than possible that he may be shaped into a Poet. Hero, Prophet, Poet,--many different names, in different times and places, do we give to Great Men; according to varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! We might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different _sphere_ constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be _all_ sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher;--in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily believe it; they had done things a little harder than these! Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. Shakspeare,--one knows not what _he_ could not have made, in the supreme degree. True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all great men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and far oftenest it is the _latter_ only that are looked to. But it is as with common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a street-porter staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth and small Whitechapel needle,--it cannot be considered that aptitude of Nature alone has been consulted here either!--The Great Man also, to what shall he be bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him! He will read the world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on _this_ matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about the world.-- * * * * * Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _Vates_ means both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls 'the open secret.' "Which is the great secret?" asks one.--"The _open_ secret,"--open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the _vesture_, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery _is_ in all times and in all places; veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realised Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter,--as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together! It could do no good at present, to _speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise! But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _Vates_, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message; he is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it;--I might say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked of _him_, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a _Vates_, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the 'open secret,' are one. With respect to their distinction again: The _Vates_ Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the _Vates_ Poet on what the Germans call the æsthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. 'The lilies of the field,'--dressed finer than earthly princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful _eye_ looking-out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: 'The Beautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher than the Good: the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' The _true_ Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, 'differs from the _false_ as Heaven does from Vauxhall!' So much for the distinction and identity of Poet and Prophet.-- In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets who are accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with. This is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet! A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men; no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets when we _read_ a poem well. The 'imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante,' is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody, out of _Saxo Grammaticus_, the story of _Hamlet_ as Shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has _so_ much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbours. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises _so_ far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very soon forgotten: but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be remembered _forever_;--a day comes when he too is not! Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true Poetry and true Speech not poetical: what is the difference? On this point many things have been written, especially by late German Critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say, for example, that the Poet has an _infinitude_ in him; communicates an _Unendlichkeit_, a certain character of 'infinitude,' to whatsoever he delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in it. For my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being _metrical_, having music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else: If your delineation be authentically _musical_, musical, not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, not.--Musical: how much lies in that! A _musical_ thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the _melody_ that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious; naturally utter themselves in Song. The meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that! Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in it: not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;--the rhythm or _tune_ to which the people there _sing_ what they have to say! Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their own,--though they only _notice_ that of others. Observe too how all passionate language does of itself become musical,--with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies; it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call _musical Thought_. The Poet is he who _thinks_ in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature _being_ everywhere music, if you can only reach it. The _Vates_ Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the _Vates_ Prophet; his function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The Hero taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as Prophet; then next the Hero taken only as Poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him first for a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or suchlike!--It looks so; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the _same_ altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was. I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is he not obeyed, _worshipped_ after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange feeling dwelling in each that they had never heard a man like this; that, on the whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us,--as, by God's blessing, they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling towards this Burns were it! Nay here in these pages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonised_, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, invests these two. They _are_ canonised, though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it! Such, in spite of every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for heroism.--We will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the Poet Shakspeare: what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. * * * * * Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his Book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrowstricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless;--significant of the whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart,--as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god! The eye too, it looks-out as in a kind of _surprise_, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of such a sort? This is Dante: so he looks, this 'voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings us 'his mystic unfathomable song.' The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well enough with this Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper class of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then going; much school-divinity, Aristotelean logic, some Latin classics,--no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things: and Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; the best fruit of education he had contrived to realise from these scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies close to him; but, in such a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what was distant: the small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular _chiaroscuro_ striking on what is far off. This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies; been twice out campaigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account of this; and then of their being parted; of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in Dante's Poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make happy. We will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all gone right with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podestà, or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well accepted among neighbours,--and the world had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there will be ten of them and more) had no _Divina Commedia_ to hear! We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante; and he, struggling like a man led towards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give _him_ the choice of his happiness! He knew not, more than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable. In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some other confused disturbance rose to such a height, that Dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. His property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious civic document. Another curious document, some considerable number of years later, is a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition of apologising and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern pride: "If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never return, _nunquam revertar_." For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron to patron, from place to place; proving in his own bitter words, 'How hard is the path, _Come è duro calle_.' The wretched are not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody humours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones ac histriones_) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he said: "Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse us with at all?" Dante answered bitterly: "No, not strange; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, _Like to Like_;"--given the amuser, the amusee must also be given! Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evident to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no living heart to love him now; for his sore miseries there was no solace here. The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him; that awful reality over which, after all, this Time-world, with its Florences and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt never see: but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether? ETERNITY: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men:--but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he no more doubted of that _Malebolge_ Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its _alti guai_, and that he himself should see it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into 'mystic unfathomable song;' and this his _Divine Comedy_, the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, a proud thought for him at times, That he, here in exile, could do this work; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was great; the greatest a man could do. 'If thou follow thy star, _Se tu segui tua stella_,'--so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his extreme need, still say to himself: "Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a glorious haven!" The labour of writing, we find, and indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he says, This Book, 'which has made me lean for many years.' Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil,--not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died after finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna: _Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris._ The Florentines begged back his body, in a century after; the Ravenna people would not give it. "Here am I Dante laid, shut-out from my native shores." I said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it 'a mystic unfathomable Song;' and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song: we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech! All _old_ Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not _sung_ is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,--to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we want to get at is the _thought_ the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he _could_ speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,--whose speech _is_ Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed;--it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who _can_ speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his _Divine Comedy_ that it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there is a _canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple _terza rima_, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally with a sort of _lilt_. But I add, that it could not be otherwise; for the essence and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes its musical;--go _deep_ enough, there is music everywhere. A true inward symmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all: architectural; which also partakes of the character of music. The three kingdoms, _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, _Paradiso_, look-out on one another like compartments of a great edifice; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern, solemn, awful; Dante's World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the _sincerest_ of all Poems; sincerity, here too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came deep out of the author's heart of hearts; and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say, "_Eccovi l' uom ch' è stato all' Inferno_, See, there is the man that was in Hell!" Ah, yes, he had been in Hell;--in Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. Commedias that come-out _divine_ are not accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain? Born as out of the black whirlwind;--true _effort_, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is Thought. In all ways we are 'to become perfect through _suffering_.'--But, as I say, no work known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had made him 'lean' for many years. Not the general whole only; every compartment of it is worked-out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered forever rhythmically visible there. No light task; a right intense one: but a task which is _done_. Perhaps one would say, _intensity_, with the much that depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great power of vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: _red_ pinnacle, redhot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;--so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than words. It is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is 'as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken.' Or that poor Brunetto Latini, with the _cotto aspetto_, 'face _baked_,' parched brown and lean; and the 'fiery snow,' that falls on them there, a 'fiery snow without wind,' slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how Cavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense '_fue_'! The very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive, almost military. It is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent 'pale rages,' speaks itself in these things. For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless he had, what we may call, _sympathised_ with it,--had sympathy in him to bestow on objects. He must have been _sincere_ about it too; sincere and sympathetic: a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of any object; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of discerning what an object is? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come out here. Is it even of business, a matter to be done? The gifted man is he who _sees_ the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that he discern the true _likeness_, not the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. And how much of _morality_ is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing'! To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the commonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take-away with him. Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too; _della bella persona, che mi fu tolta_; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that _he_ will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these _alti guai_. And the racking winds, in that _aer bruno_, whirl them away again, to wail forever!--Strange to think: Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that of his _Divine Comedy's_ being a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into Hell whom he could not be avenged-upon on earth! I suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not know rigour cannot pity either. His very pity will be cowardly, egoistic,--sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love: like the wail of Æolean harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart;--and then that stern, sore-saddened heart! These longings of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting together in the _Paradiso_; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, separated from him so far:--one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul. For the _intense_ Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;--as indeed, what are they but the _inverse_ or _converse_ of his love? '_A Dio spiacenti ed a' nemici sui_, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God:' lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; '_Non ragionam di lor_, We will not speak of _them_, look only and pass.' Or think of this; 'They have not the _hope_ to die, _Non han speranza di morte_.' One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of Dante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely _die_; 'that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.' Such words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there. I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the _Inferno_ to the two other parts of the Divine _Commedia_. Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feeling. The _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_, especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble thing that _Purgatorio_, 'Mountain of Purification'; an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante works it out. The _tremolar dell' onde_ that 'trembling' of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of dæmons and reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. "Pray for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell my Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her mother loves me no more!" They toil painfully up by that winding steep, 'bent-down like corbels of a building,' some of them,--crushed-together so 'for the sin of pride'; yet nevertheless in years, in ages and æons, they shall have reached the top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! I call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are indispensable to one another. The _Paradiso_, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the _Inferno_; the _Inferno_ without it were untrue. All three make-up the true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's; a man _sent_ to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or third stanza, we find ourselves in the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as among things palpable, indubitable! To Dante they _were_ so; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. At bottom, the one was as _preter_-natural as the other. Has not each man a soul? He will not only be a spirit, but is one. To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he believes it, sees it; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say again, is the saving merit, now as always. Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic representation of his Belief about this Universe:--some Critic in a future age, like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 'Allegory,' perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge worldwide architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns; that these two differ not by _preferability_ of one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity,--all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day, with what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming! Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems; was there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their being emblems? Were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart of man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere confirming them? So is it always in these things. Men do not believe an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who considers this of Dante to have been all got-up as an Allegory, will commit one sore mistake!--Paganism we recognised as a veracious expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the Universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us. But mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism; one great difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of the _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognised virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!-- * * * * * And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also is not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless. On the whole, is it not an utterance, this Mystic Song, at once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto realised for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard Christianism' half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among men, is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, today and forever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if it were predicted that his Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopædias, creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought. Homer yet _is_, veritably present face to face with every open soul of us; and Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands of years; away, vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not. The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his 'uses.' A human soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and sung-forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our existence; feeding through long times the life-_roots_ of all excellent human things whatsoever,--in a way that 'utilities' will not succeed well in calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's effect on the world was small in comparison? Not so: his arena is far more restricted: but also it is far nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less but more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages kindle themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In this way the balance may be made straight again. But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the world by what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his work are measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man _do_ his work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its own fruit; and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it 'fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers,' and all Histories, which are a kind of distilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all;--what matters that? That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was something. If the great Cause of Man, and Man's work in God's Earth, got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no matter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed, and what uproar and blaring he made in this world--he was but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not at all. Let us honour the great empire of _Silence_, once more! The boundless treasury which we do _not_ jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men! It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in these loud times.---- * * * * * As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have: a man was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of producing the other. Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own accord? The 'Tree Igdrasil' buds and withers by its own laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not sufficiently considered: how everything does coöperate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or irrecognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven!-- In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether silently;--received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at that side of matters too. Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other 'faculties' as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_. That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,--everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it,--is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true _beginning_, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must _understand_ the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat lux_, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is _light_ in himself, will he accomplish this. Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakspeare's _morality_, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No _twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror;--that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.' The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _See_. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c, as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 'intellectual nature,' and of his 'moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for the most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep for ever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is _one_; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways. Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathise with it: that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.--But does not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered, too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life!--These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candour will supply. If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human being; 'new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.' This well deserves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a _part of herself_. Such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up withal unconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him;--as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in Shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all; like _roots_, like sap and forces working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater. Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life;--as what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only _desiring_ to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot.' Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. * * * * * We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm Meister_, is! A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shakspeare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, _epic_;--as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The description of the two hosts: the worn-out, jaded English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that deathless valour: "Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" There is a noble Patriotism in it,--far other than the 'indifference' you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that! But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing: you say, "That is _true_, spoken once and forever; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to write for the Globe Play-house: his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were given. _Disjecta membra_ are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man. * * * * * Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may recognise that he too was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine; unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: 'We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism, the 'Universal Church' of the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakspeare a 'Sceptic,' as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such 'indifference' was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such): these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him. But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man, was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the 'Prophet of God:' and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood: and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante may still be young;--while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come! Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Æschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him _not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was _conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality,--as indeed such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him, that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up from the inarticulate deeps. * * * * * Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your Shakspeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakspeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakspeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give-up our Shakspeare! Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English: in America, in New Holland, east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another? This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it: Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone! This King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another: "Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him." The most common-sense politician too, if he pleases, may think of that. Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak-forth melodiously what the heart of it means! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all; yet the noble Italy is actually _one_: Italy produced its Dante; Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically together; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be.--We must here end what we had to say of the _Hero-Poet_. LECTURE IV THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM. [_Friday, 15th May 1840_] Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,--the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The priest too, as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet; in him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must name it. He presides over the worship of the people; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King with many captains: he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through this Earth and its work. The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen Heaven,--the 'open secret of the Universe,'--which so few have an eye for! He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splendour; burning with mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old times; so in these, and in all times. One knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is not this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a character--of whom we had rather not speak in this place. Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same _way_ was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a _Priest_ first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer. Thus, then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a Shakspeare,--we are now to see the reverse process; which also is necessary, which also may be carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious how this should be necessary; yet necessary it is. The mild shining of the Poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy with its fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaïd Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed. Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of _music_; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic _musical_ way, how good were it could we get so much as into the _equable_ way; I mean, if _peaceable_ Priests, reforming from day to day, would always suffice us! But it is not so; even this latter has not yet been realised. Alas, the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,--a business often of enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how a Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we may call it, which once took in the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory in all parts of it to the highly-discursive acute intellect of Dante, one of the greatest in the world,--had in the course of another century become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as Odin's Theorem! To Dante, human Existence, and God's ways with men, were all well represented by those _Malebolges_, _Purgatorios_; to Luther not well. How was this? Why could not Dante's Catholicism continue; but Luther's Protestantism must needs follow? Alas, nothing will _continue_. I do not make much of 'Progress of the Species,' as handled in these times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear much about it. The talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain enough; nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he learns with the mind given him what has been; but with the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed: he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the Universe, and consequently his Theorem of the Universe,--which is an _infinite_ Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the history of Mankind we see it summed-up into great historical amounts,--revolutions, new epochs. Dante's Mountain of Purgatory does _not_ stand 'in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has once sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease to be believed to be there. So with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,--all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these. If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who will _do_ faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage; if he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be _mis_done. Every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther; Shakspeare's noble feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally _exploded_, blasted asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods before matters come to a settlement again. Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law of death! At bottom, it is not so: all death, here too we find, is but of the body, not of the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. Odinism was _Valour_; Christianism was _Humility_, a nobler kind of Valour. No thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but _was_ an honest insight into God's truth on man's part, and _has_ an essential truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting possession for us all. And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge! All generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this present little section of a generation might be saved and right. They all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill-up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march-over and take the place! It is an incredible hypothesis. Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce emphasis; and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, towards sure victory: but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said?--Withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way; but it must be in some wider, wiser way than this. Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the Empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one another, fight not against the enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong hammer smiting down _Jötuns_, shall be welcome. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host.--Let us now look a little at this Luther's fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to his country and time. As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet's characteristics, which indeed belongs to all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the Divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with, but have to denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the chief of all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth noting. We will not enter here into the theological question about Idolatry. Idol is _Eidolon_, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of God; and perhaps one may question whether any the most benighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor image his own hands had made _was_ God; but that God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some way or another. And now in this sense, one may ask, Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by _eidola_, or things seen? Whether _seen_, rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the intellect: this makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense _eidola_, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols:--we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only _more_ idolatrous. Where, then, lies the evil of it? some fatal evil must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It seems to me as if, in the worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of him in words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in Poets: recognition of a certain endless _divine_ beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so mercilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart _be_ honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one word, let him entirely _believe_ in his Fetish,--it will then be, I should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there. But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind _is_ any longer honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is _insincere_ Idolatry. Doubt has eaten-out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half-feels now to have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls are no longer _filled_ with their Fetish; but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "You do not believe," said Coleridge; "you only believe that you believe." It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralysed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep! Men are no longer _sincere_ men. I do not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with unextinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is _Cant_, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of Worship ends with this phasis. I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any other Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons of Sin, made of sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is the work of a Prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically divine!-- At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of 'private judgment,' as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it said.--Now I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that English Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous French Revolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth: instead of _Kings_, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages; it seems made out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy: the hatefulest of things. But I find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against _false_ sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparative for _true_ sovereigns getting place among us! This is worth explaining a little. Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of 'private judgment' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar in the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had not put-out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, if many a poor Hogstraten, Tetzel and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of judgment? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be convinced. His 'private judgment' indicated that, as the advisablest step _he_ could take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men subsist. A true man _believes_ with his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to 'believe that he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way. Protestantism said to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done! At bottom, it was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his whole mind,--he, and all _true_ Followers of Odinism. They, by their private judgment, had 'judged'--_so_. And now, I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth. There is no communion possible among men who believe only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power of sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much less with his fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible;--and there, in the longrun, it is as good as _certain_. For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather altogether lost sight of, in this controversy: That it is not necessary a man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to believe in, and never so _sincerely_ to believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received from another;--and with boundless gratitude to that other! The merit of _originality_ is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the most of men in them, sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on substance; every work issues in a result: the general sum of such work is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of it is _additive_, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth can produce blessedness for men. Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing him to reverence and believe other men's truth! It only disposes, necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him out of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and Serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! The black monster, Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate by his valour; it was he that conquered the world for us!--See, accordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, _being_ verily such? Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became a King. Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty are everlasting in the world:--and there is this in them, that they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your 'private judgment;' no, but by opening them, and by having something to see! Luther's message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new genuine ones. All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all ways, it behoved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did behove to be done. With spurious Popes, and Believers having no private judgment,--quacks pretending to command over dupes,--what can you do? Misery and mischief only. You cannot make an association out of insincere men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level,--at _right_-angles to one another! In all this wild revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing itself: not abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean _sincere man_, why may not every one of us be a Hero? A world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will again be,--cannot help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers for Heroes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were True and Good!--But we must hasten to Luther and his Life. * * * * * Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into the world there on the 10th of November 1483. It was an accident that gave this honour to Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-labourers in a village of that region, named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the tumult of this scene the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great. It leads us back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen Hundred years ago,--of which it is fit that we _say_ nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there! The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever here!-- I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this Earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought-up poor, one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the schoolchildren in those times did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's companion; no man nor no thing would put-on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among things, not among the shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his task to get acquainted with _realities_, and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth nursed-up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step-forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,--a right Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough _Jötuns_ and Giant-monsters! Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled-up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father judging doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little will in it either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age. Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt; were got back again near Erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet. What is this Life of ours?--gone in a moment, burnt-up like a scroll, into the blank Eternity! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships? They lie shrunk together--there! The Earth has opened on them; in a moment they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, determined to devote himself to God and God's service alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt. This was probably the first light-point in the history of Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present, it was still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. He says he was a pious monk, _ich bin ein frommer Mönch gewesen_; faithfully, painfully struggling to work-out the truth of this high act of his; but it was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had rather, as it were, increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice in his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die soon, and far worse than die. One hears with a new interest for poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the man? What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven! He that had known only misery, and mean slavery: the news was too blessed to be credible. It could not become clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man's soul could be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair. It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that; as through life and to death he firmly did. This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that, unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity fit to do their business well: the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable person; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg, Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining more and more esteem with all good men. It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second, and what was going-on at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God's Highpriest on Earth; and he found it--what we know! Many thoughts it must have given the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other vesture, is _false_: but what is it to Luther? A mean man he, how shall he reform a world? That was far from his thoughts. A humble, solitary man, why should he at all meddle with the world? It was the task of quite higher men than he. His business was to guide his own footsteps wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, not in his. It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault it! Conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them! A modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul alive. But the Roman Highpriesthood did come athwart him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck-at, struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them! This is worth attending to in Luther's history. Perhaps no man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with contention. We cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade; that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety. Notoriety: what would that do for him? The goal of his march through this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it forever! We will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist now: Get first into the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you. The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo Tenth,--who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was anything,--arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there. Luther's flock bought Indulgences: in the confessional of his Church, people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned. Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that was his own and no other man's, had to step-forth against Indulgences, and declare aloud that _they_ were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by _them_. It was the beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how it went; forward from this first public challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October 1517, through remonstrance and argument;--spreading ever wider, rising ever higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther's heart's-desire was to have this grief and other griefs amended; his thought was still far other than that of introducing separation in the Church, or revolting against the Pope, Father of Christendom.--The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the noise of him: in a space of some three years, having tried various softer methods, he thought good to end it by _fire_. He dooms the Monk's writings to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to Rome,--probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended with Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss: he came to that Constance Council, with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man: they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon 'three-feet wide, six-feet high, seven-feet long;' _burnt_ the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire. That was _not_ well done! I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, if also one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled. These words of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability would allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and save men's souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and fire? You will burn me and them, for answer to the God's-message they strove to bring you? _You_ are not God's vicegerent; you are another's than his, I think I take your Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn _it_. You will do what you see good next: this is what I do.--It was on the 10th of December 1520, three years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, 'with a great concourse of people,' took this indignant step of burning the Pope's fire-decree 'at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.' Wittenberg looked on 'with shoutings;' the whole world was looking on. The Pope should not have provoked that 'shout'! It was the shout of the awakening of nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at length got more than it could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough: and here once more was a man found who durst tell all men that God's world stood not on semblances but on realities; that Life was a truth, and not a lie! At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood; you put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not God, I tell you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of yours that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It _is_ nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God's Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God's Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God's Truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and are not so strong!-- The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands-up for God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, "Were there as many Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!" they cried to him,--as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: "Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!" Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? "Confute me," he concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do ought against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!"--It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?-- * * * * * Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation; which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but after all what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas's stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but I think it was not Hercules's blame; it was some other's blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply could not help coming. To all Popes and Popes' advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is: Once for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk-by from Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,--we dare not! The thing is _untrue_; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with _it_ we can have no farther trade!--Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false Simulacra that forced him to protest, they are responsible. Luther did what every man that God has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?--No!--At what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behoved to be done. Union, organisation spiritual and material, a far nobler than, any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one! And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old _was_ true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding, or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of 'No Popery' is foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very curious: to count-up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning, drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is _dead_; Popeism is more alive than it, will be alive after it!--Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves Protestant are dead; but _Protestantism_ has not died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive _but_ Protestantism? The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life! Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,--_which_ also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for _minutes_ you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an hour where it is,--look in half a century where your Popehood is! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope's revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.--And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till this happen, Till all the soul of good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical New. While a good work remains capable of being done by the Romish form; or, what is inclusive of all, while a _pious life_ remains capable of being led by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can.-- * * * * * Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a man that has stirred-up some vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept-away in it! Such is the usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise. Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of _silence_, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable in these circumstances. Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed Preacher, 'will not preach without a cassock.' Well, answers Luther, what harm will a cassock do the man? 'Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them!' His conduct in the matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the Peasants' War, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks-forth what is the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's Written Works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He flashes-out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humour too, nay tender affection, nobleness, and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to _work_ an Epic Poem, not write one. I call him a great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that. Richter says of Luther's words, 'his words are half-battles.' They may be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valour. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valour. His defiance of the 'Devils' in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this turns-up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started-up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists not on this Earth or under it.--Fearless enough! 'The Devil is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,' of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, 'Duke George is not equal to one Devil,'--far short of a Devil! 'If I had business at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke-Georges for nine days running.' What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into!-- At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this of mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a _stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that downpressed mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine? It is the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall into. Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. It is a noble valour which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred-up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze. In Luther's _Table-Talk_, a posthumous Book of anecdotes and sayings collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the Books proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the man, and what sort of nature he had. His behaviour at the deathbed of his little Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live;--follows, in awe-struck thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. Awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,--for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know: His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for Luther too that is all; _Islam_ is all. Once, he looks-out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in the middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it,--dumb, gaunt, huge:--who supports all that? "None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot see.--Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,--the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!--In the garden at Wittenburg one evening at sunset, a little bird was perched for the night: That little bird, says Luther, above it are the stars and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: the Maker of it has given it too a home!--Neither are mirthful turns wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild unutterability he spoke-forth from him in the tones of his flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other; I could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room. Luther's face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach's best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also were appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers that God alone can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one thing: that God would release him from his labour, and let him depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man who cite this in _dis_credit of him!--I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain,--so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven. The most interesting phasis which the Reformation anywhere assumes, especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther's own country Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical contention: which indeed has jangled more and more, down to Voltaireism itself,--through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onward to French-Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National Church among the Scotch; which came forth as a real business of the heart; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. In some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few words for Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more important as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith that became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver Cromwell's. History will have something to say about this, for some time to come! We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in this world; that _strength_, well understood, is the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem here; one of Nature's own Poems; such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there were straggling settlers in America before, some material as of a body was there; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven-out of their country, not able well to live in Holland, determine on settling in the New World. Black untamed forests are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Starchamber hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch there too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail. In Neal's _History of the Puritans_[5] is an account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children, and _go_ with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was there also as well as here.--Hah! These men, I think, had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews; it has fire-arms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains;--it is one of the strongest things under the sun at present! [5] Neal (London, 1755), i. 490. In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch: we may say it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! 'Bravery' enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors; _whose_ exploits we have not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;--whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man! Well; this is what I mean by a whole 'nation of heroes;' a _believing_ nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again seen, under wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till then.--Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not _been_, in this world, as a practised fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case? Or are we made of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such!---- But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price;--as life is. The people began to _live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we call the '_Glorious_ Revolution,' a _Habeas-Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenants, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, _bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal three-times-three! It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three-hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable' Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot-at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologise for Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two-hundred-and-fifty years or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumours and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself. For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St Andrew's Castle,--when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak;--which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is _his_ duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand-up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word;--burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptised withal. He 'burst into tears.' Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St Andrew's was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves,--some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is 'a _pented bredd_,'--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox, and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_; worship it he would not. He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped!--This Knox cannot live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other. Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said Morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional opposition-party in Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go or no one. The hapless Queen;--but the still more hapless Country, if _she_ were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities: "Who are you," said she once, "that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?"--"Madam, a subject born within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the 'subject' have truth to speak, it is not the 'subject's' footing that will fail him here.-- We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate the _un_essential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do not 'tolerate' Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant. A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, for teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humour! I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had what we call an ill-temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only 'a subject born within the same:' this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no pulling-down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sum-total of _Dis_order. Order is _Truth_,--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His _History_, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him everyway! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts-up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He has his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him,--"They? what are they?" But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence. This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man!--He had a sore fight of an existence: wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?" they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, 'pointed upwards with his finger,' and so died. Honour to him! His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the spirit of it never. One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words he strove to make the Government of Scotland a _Theocracy_. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realised; and the Petition, _Thy Kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church's property; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses, education, schools, worship;--and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" This was Knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavoured after, to realise it. If we think this scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realise it; that it remained after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, and is a 'devout imagination' still. But how shall we blame _him_ for struggling to realise it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God's Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, and namable in all times, a revealed 'Will of God') towards which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where they are not found introduced. There will never be wanting Regent Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, "A devout imagination!" We will praise the Hero-priest, rather, who does what is in _him_ to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a God's Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not become too godlike! LECTURE V THE HERO AS A MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS. [_Tuesday, 19th May 1840_] Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in this world. The Hero as _Man of Letters_, again, of which class we are to speak today, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of _Writing_, or of Ready-writing which we call _Printing_, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is, in various respects, a very singular phenomenon. He is new, I say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world yet. Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a Great Soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endeavouring to speak-forth the inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find place and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for doing that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain in the marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living,--is a rather curious spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him as such, some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle non-descript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown in, that he might live thereby; _this_ perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of things!--Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. What he teachers, the whole world will do and make. The world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant feature of the world's general position. Looking well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we ourselves live and work. There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. If _Hero_ be taken to mean genuine, then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a function for us which is ever honourable, ever the highest; and was once well known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such a way as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. I say _inspired_; for what we call 'originality,' 'sincerity,' 'genius,' the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that. The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine and Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial: his being is in that; he declares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself abroad. His life, as we said before, is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself: all men's life is,--but the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in most times; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Letters, like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can. Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity for doing; which all manner of Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do. Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty years ago at Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject: '_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_, On the Nature of the Literary Man.' Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher, declares first: That all things which we see or work with in this Earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous Appearance: that under all there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the 'Divine Idea of the World;' this is the Reality which 'lies at the bottom of all Appearance.' To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognisable in the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among the superficialities, practicalities and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them. But the Man of Letters is sent hither specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this same Divine Idea: in every new generation it will manifest itself in a new dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such is Fichte's phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way of naming what I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to name; what there is at present no name for: The unspeakable Divine Significance, full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being of every man, of every thing,--the Presence of the God who made every man and thing. Mahomet taught this in his dialect; Odin in his: it is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to teach. Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continually unfolding the Godlike to men: Men of Letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still present in their life; that all 'Appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for the 'Divine Idea of the World,' for 'that which lies at the bottom of Appearance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest:--guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the _true_ Literary Man, what we here call the _Hero_ as Man of Letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or living partially in it, struggles not, as for the one good, to live wholly in it,--he is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no Literary Man; he is, says Fichte, a 'Bungler, _Stümper_.' Or at best, if he belong to the prosaic provinces, he may be a 'Hodman;' Fichte even calls him elsewhere a 'Nonentity,' and has in short no mercy for him, no wish that _he_ should continue happy among us! This is Fichte's notion of the Man of Letters. It means, in its own form, precisely what we here mean. In this point of view, I consider that, for the last hundred years, by far the notablest of all Literary Men is Fichte's countryman, Goethe. To that man too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call a life in the Divine Idea of the World; vision of the inward divine mystery: and strangely, out of his Books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and temple of a God. Illuminated all, not in fierce impure fire-splendour as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance;--really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic times; to my mind, by far the greatest, though one of the quietest, among all the great things that have come to pass in them. Our chosen specimen of the Hero as Literary Man would be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant plan for me here to discourse of his heroism: for I consider him to be a true Hero; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps still more in what he did not say and did not do; to me a noble spectacle: a great heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping silence as an ancient Hero, in the guise of a most modern, high-bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters! We have had no such spectacle; no man capable of affording such, for the last hundred-and-fifty years. But at present, such is the general state of knowledge about Goethe, it were worse than useless to attempt speaking of him in this case. Speak as I might, Goethe, to the great majority of you would remain problematic, vague; no impression but a false one could be realised. Him we must leave to future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circumstances, will suit us better here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century; the conditions of their life far more resemble what those of ours still are in England, than what Goethe's in Germany were. Alas, these men did not conquer like him; they fought bravely, and fell. They were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it. They lived under galling conditions; struggling as under mountains of impediment, and could not unfold themselves into clearness, or victorious interpretation of that 'Divine Idea.' It is rather the _Tombs_ of three Literary Heroes that I have to show you. There are the monumental heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie buried. Very mournful, but also great and full of interest for us. We will linger by them for a while. Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the disorganised condition of society: how ill many arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganisation;--a sort of _heart_, from which, and to which, all other confusion circulates in the world! Considering what Book-writers do in the world, and what the world does with Book-writers, I should say, It is the most anomalous thing the world at present has to show.--We should get into a sea far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The worst element in the life of these three Literary Heroes was, that they found their business and position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a path through the impassable! Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilised world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. They felt that this was the most important thing; that without this there was no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful to behold! But now with the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total change has come over that business. The Writer of a Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the last importance that _he_ do his work right, whoever do it wrong;--that the _eye_ report not falsely, for then all the other members are astray! Well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; to no other man of any. Whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an accident in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the misguidance! Certainly the art of writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's _Runes_ were the first form of the work of a Hero; _Books_, written words, are still miraculous _Runes_, of the latest form! In Books lies the _soul_ of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,--they are precious, great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives; can be called-up again into life. No magic _Rune_ is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men. Do not Books still accomplish _miracles_ as _Runes_ were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So 'Celia' felt, so 'Clifford' acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any _Rune_ in the wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What built St Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew BOOK,--the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the Present in time and place; all times and all places with this our actual Here and Now. All things were altered for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and all else. To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose while there were yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single Book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty-thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. And now for any other teacher who had something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed now that the King took notice of this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the various schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it _Universitas_, or School of all Sciences: the University of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. The model of all subsequent Universities; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities. It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!--Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,--witness our present meeting here! There _is_, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to Universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the University which would completely take-in that great new fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing,--teach us to _read_. We learn to _read_, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we go to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection of Books. But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books. The Church is the working recognised Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing or _Printing_, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books!--He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England? I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these _are_ the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Books? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts,--is not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the nature of worship? There are many, in all countries, who, in this confused time, have no other method of worship. He who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the _handwriting_, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal _from the altar_. Perhaps there is no worship more authentic. Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an 'apocalypse of Nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret.' It may well enough be named, in Fichte's style; a 'continuous revelation' of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Common. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness: all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery of a French sceptic,--his mockery of the False, a love and worship of the True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral-music of a Milton! They are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes of a Burns,--skylark, starting from the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there! For all true singing is of the nature of worship; as indeed all true _working_ may be said to be,--whereof such _singing_ is but the record, and fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a real 'Church Liturgy' and 'Body of Homilies,' strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our Church too. Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to _do_ as a nation. But does not, though the name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, _out_ of Parliament altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a _Fourth Estate_ more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,--very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal every-day extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually _there_. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organised; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant.-- On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them;--from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew BOOK, what have they not done, what are they not doing!--For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that produces a Book? It is the _Thought_ of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One;--a huge immeasurable Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to _think_ of the making of that brick.--The thing we called 'bits of paper with traces of black ink,' is the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest. All this, of the importance and supreme importance of the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the _Senatus Academicus_ and much else, has been admitted for a good while; and recognised often enough, in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will have to give place to the Practical. If Men of Letters _are_ so incalculably influential, actually performing such work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters will not always wander like unrecognised unregulated Ishmaelites among us! Whatsoever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power will castoff its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth one day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a function which is done by quite another: there can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the _making_ of it right,--what a business, for long times to come! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, encumbered with all manner of complexities. If you asked me what were the best possible organisation for the Men of Letters in modern society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their position and of the world's position,--I should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty! It is not one man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring-out even an approximate solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst? I answer: This which we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there is yet a long way. One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliamentary grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted! To give our Men of Letters stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men poor,--to show whether they are genuine or not! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to _beg_, were instituted in the Christian Church; a most natural and even necessary development of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degradation. We may say, that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go barefoot, in coarse woollen cloak with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the world, was no beautiful business;--nor an honourable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honoured of some! Begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for being poor? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any kind is _not_ the goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart,--to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made-out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows but, in that same 'best possible organisation' as yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an important element? What if our Men of Letters, Men setting-up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still _then_, as they now are, a kind of 'involuntary monastic order;' bound still to this same ugly Poverty,--till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for them! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther. Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled,--how is the Burns to be recognised that merits these? He must pass through the ordeal, and prove himself. _This_ ordeal; this wild welter of a chaos which is called Literary Life; this too is a kind of ordeal! There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and must constitute, what is called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the _worst_ regulation. The _best_, alas, is far from us! And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk. For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which he who runs may read,--and draw inferences from. "Literature will take care of itself," answered Mr Pitt, when applied-to for some help for Burns. "Yes," adds Mr Southey, "it will take care of itself; _and of you too_, if you do not look to it!" The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body; they can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. But it deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its _light_ on high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as heretofore! Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best world man can make it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic Literary Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some good arrangement for that would be as the _punctum saliens_ of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary Class; indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe that it is possible; that it will have to be possible. By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites endless curiosity even in the dim state: this namely, that they do attempt to make their Men of Letters their Governors! It would be rash to say, one understood how this was done, or with what degree of success it was done. All such things must be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree of success is precious; the very attempt how precious! There does seem to be, all over China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there are for every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves in the lower school are promoted into favourable stations in the higher, that they may still more distinguish themselves,--forward and forward: it appears to be out of these that the Official Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. These are they whom they _try_ first, whether they can govern or not. And surely with the best hope: for they are the men that have already shown intellect. Try them: they have not governed or administered as yet; perhaps they cannot; but there is no doubt they _have_ some Understanding, without which no man can! Neither is Understanding a _tool_, as we are too apt to figure; 'it is a _hand_ which can handle any tool.' Try these men: they are of all others the best worth trying.--Surely there is no kind of government, constitution, revolution, social apparatus or arrangement, that I know of in this world, so promising to one's scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the top of affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. For the man of true intellect, as I assert and believe always, is the noblehearted man withal, the true, just, humane and valiant man. Get _him_ for governor, all is got; fail to get him, though you had Constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in every village, there is nothing yet got!-- These things look strange, truly; and are not such as we commonly speculate upon. But we are fallen into strange times; these things will require to be speculated upon; to be rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. These and many others. On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and 'the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes,' the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves!--I will now quit this of the organisation of Men of Letters. * * * * * Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Literary Heroes of ours was not the want of organisation for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one; out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the Literary Man, and for all men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man of Letters had to travel without highway, companionless, through an inorganic chaos,--and to leave his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial contribution towards _pushing_ some highway through it: this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralysed, he might have put up with, might have considered to be but the common lot of Heroes. His fatal misery was the _spiritual paralysis_, so we may name it, of the Age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half-paralysed! The Eighteenth was a _Sceptical_ Century; in which little word there is a whole Pandora's Box of miseries. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt; all sorts of _in_fidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of Heroism more difficult for a man. That was not an age of Faith,--an age of Heroes! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were come forever. The 'age of miracles' had been, or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. An effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could not now dwell;--in one word, a godless world! How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this time,--compared not with the Christian Shakspeares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, with any species of believing men! The living TREE Igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted as Hela, has died-out into the clanking of a World-MACHINE. 'Tree' and 'Machine': contrast these two things. I, for my share, declare the world to be no machine! I say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion 'motives,' self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all!--The old Norse Heathen had a truer notion of God's-world than these poor Machine-Sceptics: the old Heathen Norse were _sincere_ men. But for these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half-truth and hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most men, meant plausibility; to be measured by the number of votes you could get. They had lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausibilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended virtue, What! am not I sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. For the common man, unless happily he stood _below_ his century and belonged to another prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work himself half-loose; and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero! Scepticism is the name we give to all this; as the chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concerning which so much were to be said! It would take many Discourses, not a small fraction of one Discourse, to state what one feels about that Eighteenth Century and its ways. As indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call Scepticism, is precisely the black malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and discoursing since man's life began has directed itself: the battle of Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! Neither is it in the way of crimination that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new better and wider ways,--an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will understand that destruction of old _forms_ is not destruction of everlasting _substances_; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning. The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of Bentham's theory of man and man's life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one than Mahomet's. I am bound to say, now when it is once uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion. Not that one would mean offence against the man Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. Bentham himself, and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. It is a determinate _being_ what all the world, in a cowardly, half-and-half manner, was tending to be. Let us have the crisis; we shall either have death or the cure. I call this gross, steam-engine Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. It was a laying down of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well then, this world is a dead iron machine, the god of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger; let us see what, by checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, can be made of it!" Benthamism has something complete, manful, in such fearless committal of itself to what it finds true; you may call it Heroic, though a Heroism with its _eyes_ put out! It is the culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man's whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an _eyeless_ Heroism: the Human Species, like a hapless blinded Samson grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of its Mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. Of Bentham I meant to say no harm. But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart, that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all Godhood should vanish out of men's conception of this Universe seems to me precisely the most brutal error,--I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it a Heathen error,--that men could fall into. It is not true; it is false at the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will think _wrong_ about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he can form. One might call it the most lamentable of delusions,--not forgetting Witchcraft itself! Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil: but this worships a dead iron Devil; no God, not even a Devil!--Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops thereby out of life. There remains everywhere in life a despicable _caput-mortuum_; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a man act heroically? The 'Doctrine of Motives' will teach him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love of Pleasure, fear of Pain; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man's life. Atheism, in brief;--which does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is become spiritually a paralytic man; this god-like Universe a dead mechanical steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and I know not what; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris'-Bull of his own contriving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying! Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;--indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All manner of doubt, inquiry, [Greek: skepsis] as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is _getting_ to know and believe. Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden _roots_. But now if, even on common things, we require that a man keep his doubts _silent_, and not babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations or denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, impossible to speak of in words at all! That a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which means at best only the manner of _telling_ us your thought, your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should _overturn_ the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves, and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned-up into the air,--and no growth, only death and misery going on! For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; It is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest, and meanest of all ages. The world's heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases in all departments of the world's work; dextrous Similitude of Acting begins. The world's wages are pocketed, the world's work is not done. Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in. Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth! Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue, benevolence,--the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them! Few men were without quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down to the House, all wrapt and bandaged; he 'has crawled out in great bodily suffering,' and so on;--_forgets_, says Walpole, that he is acting the sick man; in the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, half hero, half quack, all along. For indeed the world is full of dupes; and you have to gain the _world's_ suffrage! How the duties of the world will be done in that case, what quantities of error, which means failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need not compute. It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, that the whole tribe of social pestilences, French Revolutions, Chartisms, and what not, have derived their being, their chief necessity to be. This must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take the _spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look, to know! For such a man, the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Products, is already past: a new century is already come. The old unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not _true_; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--Yes, hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an exception,--such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the world will once more become _sincere_; a believing world: with _many_ Heroes in it, a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then! Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us forevermore! It were well for _us_ to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in the 'duty of staying at home'! And, on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of 'worlds' being 'saved' in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the _world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to!--In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.-- Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth in life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, and would forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. No intimation; not even any French Revolution,--which we define to be a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in hellfire! How different was the Luther's Pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from the Johnson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible! Mahomet's Formulas were of 'wood waxed and oiled,' and could be _burnt_ out of one's way: poor Johnson's were far more difficult to burn.--The strong man will ever find _work_, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly is the highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, the Tombs of three fallen Heroes! They fell for us too; making a way for us. There are the mountains which they hurled abroad in their confused War of the Giants; under which, their strength and life spent, they now lie buried. * * * * * I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or incidentally; what I suppose is known to most of you; what need not be spoken or written a second time. They concern us here as the singular _Prophets_ of that singular age; for such they virtually were; and the aspect they and their world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us into reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine Men more or less; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to be genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a degree that eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of their contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. By Nature herself, a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities,--clouds, froth and all inanity gave-way under them: there was no footing for them but on firm earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not footing there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men. As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been,--Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his 'element,' of his 'time,' or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it better!--Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favourablest outward circumstances, Johnson's life could have been other than a painful one. The world might have had more of profitable _work_ out of him, or less; but his _effort_ against the world's work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots-in on him dull incurable misery: the Nessus'-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner _he_ had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of 'fourpence-halfpenny a day.' Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn-out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life, this pitching-away of the shoes. An original man;--not a secondhand, borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate! On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, if you will, but honestly on that;--on the reality and substance which Nature gives _us_, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us!-- And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a better proof of what I said the other day, That the sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of _originality_ is not that it be _new_: Johnson believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that _he_ could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonised his Formulas with it, how he managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing 'to be looked at with reverence, with pity, with awe.' That Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still _worshipped_ in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place. It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects 'artificial'? Artificial things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, _true_. What we call 'Formulas' are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a 'Path.' And now see: the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world.---- Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or 'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him. He does not 'engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;' no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; unrecognised, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great Men I ever heard-of have this as the primary material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at secondhand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I recognise the everlasting element of heart-_sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seed-field will _grow_. Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence: 'in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,' see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching. 'A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:' do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great Gospel, 'Clear your mind of Cant!' Have no trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn shoes: 'that will be better for you,' as Mahomet says! I call this, I call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time. Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart:--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are _sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it: all this you will put-up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with _nothing_ in them;--a man is a _male_factor to the world who writes such! _They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his _Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it. One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for Excellence; a _worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem exist always, and a certain worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: that his soul, namely, is a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a _Grand-Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of _Hero_ to do that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for the most part want of such. On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it _well_, like a right-valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. 'To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag.' Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_! * * * * * Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather than strong. He had not 'the talent of Silence,' an invaluable talent; which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in! The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke;' there is no good in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_,--which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming! Rousseau has not depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first characteristic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. A man who cannot _hold his peace_, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man. Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A high but narrow contracted intensity in it: bony brows; deep, straight-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered-looking,--bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism against that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by _intensity_: the face of what is called a Fanatic,--a sadly _contracted_ Hero! We name him here because, with all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero: he is heartily _in earnest_. In earnest, if ever man was; as none of these French Philosophes were. Nay, one would say, of an earnestness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature; and which indeed in the end drove him into the strangest incoherences, almost delirations. There had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in him: his Ideas _possessed_ him like demons; hurried him so about, drove him over steep places!-- The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we easily name by a single word _Egoism_; which is indeed the source and summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into victory over mere Desire; a mean hunger, in many sorts, was still the motive principle of him. I am afraid he was a very vain man; hungry for the praises of men. You remember Genlis's experience of him. She took Jean Jacques to the Theatre; he bargaining for a strict incognito,--"_He_ would not be seen there for the world!" The curtain did happen nevertheless to be drawn aside: the Pit recognised Jean Jacques, but took no great notice of him! He expressed the bitterest indignation; gloomed all evening, spake no other than surly words. The glib Countess remained entirely convinced that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being applauded when seen. How the whole nature of the man is poisoned; nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce moody ways! He could not live with anybody. A man of some rank from the country, who visited him often, and used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and affection for him, comes one day, finds Jean Jacques full of the sourest unintelligible humour. "Monsieur," said Jean Jacques, with flaming eyes, "I know why you come here. You come to see what a poor life I lead; how little is in my poor pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the pot! There is half a pound of meat, one carrot and three onions; that is all: go and tell the whole world that, if you like, Monsieur!"--A man of this sort was far gone. The whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes for light laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these perversions and contortions of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not laughing or theatrical; too real to him! The contortions of a dying gladiator: the crowded amphitheatre looks-on with entertainment; but the gladiator is in agonies and dying. And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passionate appeals to Mothers, with his _Contrat-social_, with his celebrations of Nature, even of savage life in Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, struggle towards Reality; was doing the function of a Prophet to his Time. As _he_ could, and as the Time could! Strangely through all that defacement, degradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has arisen in that man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this Life of ours is _true_; not a Scepticism, Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, then ill and dimly,--as clearly as he could. Nay what are all errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of ribbons aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlements and staggerings to and fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet find? Men are led by strange ways. One should have tolerance for a man, hope of him; leave him to try yet what he will do. While life lasts, hope lasts for every man. Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated still among his countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, like himself, are what I call unhealthy; not the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in Rousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attractiveness: but they are not genuinely poetical. Not white sunlight: something _operatic_; a kind of rosepink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it is universal, among the French since his time. Madame de Staël has something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary 'Literature of Desperation,' it is everywhere abundant. That same _rosepink_ is not the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a Goethe, even at a Walter Scott! He who has once seen into this, has seen the difference of the True from the Sham-True, and will discriminate them ever afterwards. We had to observe in Johnson how much good a Prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganisations, can accomplish for the world. In Rousseau we are called to look rather at the fearful amount of evil which, under such disorganisation, may accompany the good. Historically it is a most pregnant spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris garrets, in the gloomy company of his own Thoughts and Necessities there; driven from post to pillar; fretted, exasperated till the heart of him went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not his friend nor the world's law. It was expedient, if anyway possible, that such a man should _not_ have been set in flat hostility with the world. He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his cage;--but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. The French Revolution found its Evangelist in Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, the preferability of the savage to the civilised, and suchlike, helped well to produce a whole delirium in France generally. True, you may well ask, What could the world, the governors of the world, do with such a man? Difficult to say what the governors of the world could do with him! What he could do with them is unhappily clear enough,--_guillotine_ a great many of them! Enough now of Rousseau. * * * * * It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert Burns. Like a little well in the rocky desert places,--like a sudden splendour of Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall! People knew not what to make of it. They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work; alas, it _let_ itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that! Perhaps no man had such a false reception from his fellow-men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse than Burns's. Among those secondhand acting-figures, _mimes_ for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original man; one of those men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic among men: and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things; did not succeed in any; was involved in continual difficulties. The Steward, Factor as the Scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings, Burns says, 'which threw us all into tears.' The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of whom Robert was one! In this Earth, so wide otherwise, no shelter for _them_. The letters 'threw us all into tears:' figure it. The brave Father, I say always;--a _silent_ Hero and Poet; without whom the son had never been a speaking one! Burns's Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, learnt what good society was; but declares that in no meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor 'seven acres of nursery-ground,'--not that, nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, would prosper with him; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. But he stood to it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man;--swallowing-down how many sore sufferings daily into silence; fighting like an unseen Hero,--nobody publishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness; voting pieces of plate to him! However, he was not lost: nothing is lost. Robert is there; the outcome of him,--and indeed of many generations of such as him. This Burns appears under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognised as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should have tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that there lay something far from common within it. He has gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so over all quarters of our wide Saxon world: wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be understood, by personal inspection of this and the other, that one of the most considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth century was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, here too was a piece of the right Saxon stuff: strong as the Harz-rock, rooted in the depths of the world;--rock, yet with wells of living softness in it! A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength: with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;--like the old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god!-- Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth ('_fond gaillard_,' as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking 'dew-drops from his mane;' as the swift-bounding horse, that _laughs_ at the shaking of the spear.--But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns's, are they not the outcome properly of warm generous affection,--such as is the beginning of all to every man? You would think it strange if I called Burns the most gifted British soul we had in all that century of his: and yet I believe the day is coming when there will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all that he _did_ under such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. Professor Stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much, that his poetry was not any particular faculty; but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech 'led them off their feet.' This is beautiful: but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more than once alluded to, How the waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak! Waiters and ostlers:--they too were men, and here was a man! I have heard much about his speech; but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with him. That it was speech distinguished by always _having something in it_. "He spoke rather little than much," this old man told me; "sat rather silent in those early days, as in the company of persons above him; and always when he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter." I know not why any one should ever speak otherwise!--But if we look at his general force of soul, his healthy _robustness_ everyway, the rugged down-rightness, penetration, generous valour and manfulness that was in him,--where shall we readily find a better-gifted man? Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They differ widely in vesture; yet look at them intrinsically. There is the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;--built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis calls a _fond gaillard_. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true _insight_, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object or other: so do both these men speak. The same raging passions; capable too in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity: these were in both. The types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies; politicised, as few could. Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith; in keeping _silence_ over so much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: this might have bellowed forth Ushers de Brézé and the like; and made itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs! But they said to him reprovingly, his Official Superiors said, and wrote: 'You are to work, not think.' Of your _thinking_-faculty, the greatest in this land, we have no need; you are to gauge beer there; for that only are _you_ wanted. Very notable;--and worth mentioning, though we know what is to be said and answered! As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that _was_ wanted. The fatal man, is he not always the _un_thinking man, the man who cannot think and _see_; but only grope, and hallucinate, and _mis_see the nature of the thing he works with? He missees it, mis_takes_ it as we say; takes it for one thing, and it _is_ another thing,--and leaves him standing like a Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men.--"Why complain of this?" say some: "Strength is mournfully denied its arena; that was true from of old." Doubtless; and the worse for the _arena_, answer I! _Complaining_ profits little; stating of the truth may profit. That a Europe, with its French Revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for gauging beer,--is a thing I, for one, cannot _rejoice_ at!-- Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the _sincerity_ of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The Song he sings is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity,--not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in all great men. Hero-worship,--Odin, Burns? Well; these Men of Letters too were not without a kind of Hero-worship: but what a strange condition has that got into now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, were doing unconscious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshipper. Rousseau had worshippers enough; princes calling on him in his mean garret; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor moonstruck man. For himself a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. He sits at the tables of grandees; and has to copy music for his own living. He cannot even get his music copied. "By dint of dining out," says he, "I run the risk of dying by starvation at home." For his worshippers too a most questionable thing! If doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital wellbeing or illbeing to a generation, can we say that _these_ generations are very first-rate?--And yet our heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means whatever. The world _has_ to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter the manner of that; can either have it as blessed continuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado,--with unspeakable difference of profit for the world! The manner of it is very alterable; the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the sky. Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice. Not whether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him; but whether we believe the word he tells us: there it all lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we shall have to do it. What _name_ or welcome we give him or it, is a point that concerns ourselves mainly. _It_, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high; and must and will have itself obeyed.-- My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history,--his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanour there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. If we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man. So sudden; all common _Lionism_, which ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fère. Burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; he is flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined peasant, his wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from him: next month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, handing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes! Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in which Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unastonished; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation: he feels that _he_ there is the man Robert Burns; that the 'rank is but the guinea-stamp;' that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show _what_ man, not in the least make him a better or other man! Alas, it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a _worse_ man; a wretched inflated wind-bag,--inflated till he _burst_ and become a _dead_ lion; for whom, as some one has said, 'there is no resurrection of the body;' worse than a living dog!--Burns is admirable here. And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion-hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him to live! They gathered round him in his Farm; hindered his industry; no place was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lionism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He falls into discontents, into miseries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate for him; health, character, peace of mind all gone;--solitary enough now. It is tragical to think of! These men came but to _see_ him; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a little amusement: they got their amusement;--and the Hero's life went for it! Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra, there is a kind of 'Light-chafers,' large Fire-flies, which people stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of condition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. Great honour to the Fire-flies! But--!-- LECTURE VI THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM. [_Friday, 22nd May 1840_] We come now to the last form of Heroism; that which we call Kingship. The Commander over men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is practically the summary for us of _all_ the various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to _command_ over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we are to _do_. He is called _Rex_, Regulator, _Roi_: our own name is still better; King, _Könning_, which means _Can_-ning, Ableman. Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, questionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, present themselves here: on the most of which we must resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. As Burke said that perhaps fair _Trial by Jury_ was the Soul of Government, and that all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, went on, in 'order to bring twelve impartial men into a jury-box;'--so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, that the finding of your _Ableman_ and getting him invested with the _symbols of ability_, with dignity, worship (_worth_-ship), royalty, kinghood, or whatever we call it, so that _he_ may actually have room to guide according to his faculty of doing it,--is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world! Hustings-speeches, Parliamentary motions, Reform Bills, French Revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else nothing. Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise _him_ to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the perfect state: an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he _tells us to do_ must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn;--the thing which it will in all ways behove us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubting, to do! Our _doing_ and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal of constitutions. Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously 'measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality' in this poor world of ours. We will esteem him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a wall _perfectly_ perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway _too much_ from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand--! Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. _He_ has forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act on him; he and his wall rush-down into confused welter of ruin!-- This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put the too _Un_able man at the head of affairs! The too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man. You have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural necessity whatever, of putting the Able Man there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. Unable Simulacrum of Ability, _quack_, in a word, must adjust himself with quack, in all manner of administration of human things;--which accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent misery: in the outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable millions stretch-out the hand for their due supply, and it is not there. The 'law of gravitation' acts; Nature's laws do none of them forget to act. The miserable millions burst-forth into Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness; bricks and bricklayers lie as a fatal chaos!-- Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the 'Divine right of Kings,' moulders unread now in the Public Libraries of this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories! At the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind--I will say that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him); and clapt a round piece of metal on the head of, and called King,--there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that _he_ became a kind of God, and a Divinity inspired him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths: this,--what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries? But I will say withal, and that is what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this world; and a God's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look-out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. There is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is! God's law is in that, I say, however the Parchment-laws may run: there is a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the heart of every claim that one man makes upon another. It can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all the relations of life it will concern us; in Loyalty and Royalty, the highest of these. I esteem the modern error, That all goes by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that, in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a 'divine right' in people _called_ Kings. I say, Find me the true _Könning_, King, or Able-man, and he _has_ a divine right over me. That we knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that all men were ready to acknowledge his divine right when found: this is precisely the healing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, seeking after! The true King, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the Pontiff in him,--guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This too is a true saying, That the _King_ is head of the _Church_.--But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a dead century to lie quiet on its bookshelves. * * * * * Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your Ableman to _seek_, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it! That is the world's sad predicament in these times of ours. They are times of Revolution, and have long been. The bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plummet or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters as we see! But the beginning of it was not the French Revolution; that is rather the _end_, we can hope. It were truer to say, the _beginning_ was three centuries farther back: in the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still called itself Christian Church had become a Falsehood, and brazenly went about pretending to pardon men's sins for metallic coined money, and to do much else which in the everlasting truth of Nature it did _not_ now do: here lay the vital malady. The inward being wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. Belief died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The builder _cast away_ his plummet; said to himself, "What is gravitation? Brick lies on brick there!" Alas, does it not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion that there is a God's truth in the business of god-created men; that all is not a kind of grimace, an 'expediency,' diplomacy, one knows not what!-- From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, "You, self-styled _Papa_, you are no Father in God at all; you are--a Chimera, whom I know not how to name in polite language!"--from that onwards to the shout which rose round Camille Desmoulins in the Palais-Royal, "_Aux armes!_" when the people had burst-up against _all_ manner of Chimeras,--I find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so frightful, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the voice of awakened nations; starting confusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life was real; that God's-world was not an expediency and diplomacy! Infernal;--yes, since they would not have it otherwise. Infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial!--Hollowness, insincerity _has_ to cease;--sincerity of some sort has to begin. Cost what it may, reigns of terror, horrors of French Revolution or what else, we have to return to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said: a Truth clad in hell-fire, since they would not but have it so!-- A common theory among considerable parties of men in England and elsewhere used to be, that the French Nation had, in those days, as it were gone _mad_; that the French Revolution was a general act of insanity, a temporary conversion of France and large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam. The Event had risen and raged; but was a madness and nonentity,--gone now happily into the region of Dreams and the Picturesque!--To such comfortable philosophers, the Three Days of July 1830 must have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French Nation risen again, in musketry and death-struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make that same mad French Revolution good! The sons and grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise: they do not disown it; they will have it made good; will have themselves shot, if it be not made good! To philosophers who had made-up their life-system on that 'madness' quietus, no phenomenon could be more alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say, the Prussian Professor and Historian, fell broken-hearted in consequence; sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the Three Days! It was surely not a very heroic death;--little better than Racine's, dying because Louis Fourteenth looked sternly on him once. The world had stood some considerable shocks, in its time; might have been expected to survive the Three Days too, and be found turning on its axis after even them! The Three Days told all mortals that the old French Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this Earth where we all live; that it was verily a Fact, and that the world in general would do well everywhere to regard it as such. Truly, without the French Revolution, one would not know what to make of an age like this at all. We will hail the French Revolution, as shipwrecked mariners might the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all of baseless sea and waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered artificial time; testifying once more that Nature is _preter_natural; if not divine, then diabolic; that Semblance is not reality; that it has to become reality, or the world will take-fire under it,--burn _it_ into what it is, namely Nothing! Plausibility has ended; empty Routine has ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trump of Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused generations before it be learned; peace impossible till it be! The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do _his_ work, in the midst of that. Sentence of Death is written down in Heaven against all that; sentence of Death is now proclaimed on the Earth against it: this he with his eyes may see. And surely, I should say, considering the other side of the matter, what enormous difficulties lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on,--he may easily find other work to do than labouring in the Sansculottic province at this time of day! To me, in these circumstances, that of 'Hero-worship' becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration. Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those workers and fighters in the French Revolution. Not reverence for Great Men; not any hope or belief, or even wish, that Great Men could again appear in the world! Nature, turned into a 'Machine,' was as if effete now; could not any longer produce Great Men:--I can tell her, she may give-up the trade altogether, then; we cannot do without Great Men!--But neither have I any quarrel with that of 'Liberty and Equality;' with the faith that, wise great men being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for _such_ Authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more of it! We have had such _forgeries_, we will now trust nothing. So many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has now become common that no gold any longer exists,--and even that we can do very well without gold!" I find this, among other things, in that universal cry of Liberty and Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then stood. And yet surely it is but the _transition_ from false to true. Considered as the whole truth, it is false altogether;--the product of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only _struggling_ to see. Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty alone; it extends from divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life. 'Bending before men,' if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with than practised, is Hero-worship,--a recognition that there does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every created man, as Novalis said, is a 'revelation in the Flesh.' They were Poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies which make life noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such. And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still possible; nay still inevitable. May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him at every step,--him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order; every man's is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. Is not all work of man in this world a _making of Order_? The carpenter finds rough trees: shapes them, constrains them into square fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder: it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and down-pulling; for the Great Man, _more_ a man than we, it is doubly tragical. Thus too all human things, maddest French Sansculottisms, do and must work towards Order. I say, there is not a _man_ in them, raging in the thickest of the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, towards Order. His very life means that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No chaos but it seeks a _centre_ to revolve round. While man is man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculottism.--Curious: in those days when Hero-worship was the most incredible thing to every one, how it does come-out nevertheless, and assert itself practically, in a way which all have to credit. Divine _right_, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine _might_ withal! While old false Formulas are getting trampled everywhere into destruction, new genuine Substances unexpectedly unfold themselves indestructible. In rebellious ages, when Kingship itself seems dead and abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step-forth again as Kings. The history of these men is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. The old ages are brought back to us; the manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these Two. * * * * * We have had many civil-wars in England; wars of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough, which are not very memorable. But that war of the Puritans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. Trusting to your candour, which will suggest on the other side what I have not room to say, I will call it a section once more of that great universal war which alone makes-up the true History of the World,--the war of Belief against Unbelief! The struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage Iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of _untrue_ Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest; an unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His 'Dreams' and superstitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that kind, and the world _was not_ that. Alas, was not his doom stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged on him? It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the _formed_ world is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity,--praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, Forms which _grow_ round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously _put_ round a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things. There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we call, 'set speeches,' is not he an offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to get away from. But suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine Worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to _form_ itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible,--what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man,--let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! Such mummery is not only not to be accepted,--it is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called 'Idolatry,' worshipping of hollow _shows_; what all earnest men do and will reject. We can partly understand what those poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church, in the manner we have it described; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely it is rather the rigorous formal _Pedant_, intent on his 'College-rules,' than the earnest Prophet, intent on the essence of the matter! Puritanism found _such_ forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;--we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest _soul_ into the earnest _souls_ of men: is not this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever? The nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with _due_ semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all. Given the living _man_, there will be found _clothes_ for him; he will find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that _it_ is both clothes and man--!--We cannot 'fight the French' by three-hundred-thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_ in the inside of them! Semblance, I assert, must actually _not_ divorce itself from Reality. If Semblance do,--why then there must be men found to rebel against Semblance, for it has become a lie! These two Antagonisms at war here, in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They went to fierce battle over England in that age; and fought-out their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for all of us. * * * * * In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and the age they ushered-in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on gibbets,--like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our _Habeas-Corpus_, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become, what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera! This in part and much besides this, was the work of the Puritans. And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after another, taken _down_ from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as canonised. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and so forth: but he betrayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical _Tartufe_; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said of the Valet, so of the Sceptic: He does not know a Hero when he sees him! The Valet expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, body-guards and flourishes of trumpets: the Sceptic of the Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, 'Principles,' or what else he may call them; a style of speech and conduct which has got to seem 'respectable,' which can plead for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages of an enlightened sceptical Eighteenth century! It is, at bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and he expect: the garnitures of some _acknowledged_ royalty, which _then_ they will acknowledge! The King coming to them in the rugged _un_formulistic state shall be no King. For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of disparagement against such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; whom I believe to have been right worthy and useful men. I have read diligently what books and documents about them I could come at;--with the honestest wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! At bottom, I found that it would not do. They are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, _Monarchies of Man_; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavours to get-up some worship of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break-forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? They are become dreadfully dull men! One breaks-down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable Pym, with his 'seventhly and lastly.' You find that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,--heavy as lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these Nobilities standing in their niches of honour: the rugged out-cast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The great savage _Baresark_: he could write no euphemistic _Monarchy of Man_; did not speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on! Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance of the Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans seem to be a very great matter. One might say, it is but a piece of Formulism and Scepticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our English Liberties should have been laid by 'Superstition.' These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible Creeds, Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions; demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to _worship_ in their own way. Liberty to _tax_ themselves: that was the thing they should have demanded! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful Ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing!--Liberty to _tax_ oneself? Not to pay-out money from your pocket except on reason shown? No century, I think, but a rather barren one would have fixed on that as the first right of man! I should say, on the contrary, A just man will generally have better cause than _money_ in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his Government. Ours is a most confused world; in which a good man will be thankful to see any kind of Government maintain itself in a not insupportable manner; and here in England, to this hour, if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which _he_ can see very small reason in, it will not go well with him, I think! He must try some other climate than this. Taxgatherer? Money? He will say: "Take my money, since you _can_, and it is so desirable to you; take it,--and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my work here. _I_ am still here; can still work, after all the money you have taken from me!" But if they come to him, and say, "Acknowledge a Lie; pretend to say you are worshipping God, when you are not doing it: believe not the thing that _you_ find true, but the thing that I find, or pretend to find true!" He will answer: "No; by God's help, no! You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of extremities, accusations and confusions, in defence of that!"-- Really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all just revolts among men. Not _Hunger_ alone produced even the French Revolution: no, but the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading _Falsehood_ which had now embodied itself in Hunger, in universal material Scarcity and Nonentity, and thereby become _indisputably_ false in the eyes of all! We will leave the Eighteenth century with its 'liberty to tax itself.' We will not astonish ourselves that the meaning of such men as the Puritans remained dim to it. To men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a _real_ human soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the Voice of this world's Maker still speaking to _us_,--be intelligible? What it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines relative to 'taxing,' or other the like material interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such a century will needs reject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. Hampdens, Pyms, and Ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid;--which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as _ice_ does: and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic mass of 'madness,' 'hypocrisy,' and much else. * * * * * From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but _figures_ for us, unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without a _conscience_ in it, the essence of all _real_ souls, great or small?--No, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less. Why should we? There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny this man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your _proof_ of Mahomet's Pigeon? No proof!--Let us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of those stories of 'Spectres;' of the white Spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound to believe much;--probably no more than of the other black Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the Officer _saw_ him sell himself before Worcester Fight! But the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humour of Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. The Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been sent for at midnight; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought himself near dying, and "had fancies about the Town-cross." These things are significant. Such an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood! The young Oliver is sent to study Law; falls, or is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. 'He pays-back what money he had won at gambling,' says the story;--he does not think any gain of that kind could be really _his_. It is very interesting, very natural, this 'conversion,' as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful _truth_ of things;--to see that time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver's life at St Ives or Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout man? He has renounced the world and its ways; _its_ prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay can himself preach,--exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what 'hypocrisy,' 'ambition,' 'cant,' or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well _thither_, by walking well through his humble course in _this_ world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? 'Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' It is striking, too, how he comes-out once into public view; he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. I mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law with Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. 'Gain influence'? His influence is the most legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable and determined man. In this way he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that he suddenly became 'ambitious'! I do not interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way! His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God; his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the 'crowning mercy' of Worcester Fight: all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their own 'lovelocks,' frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of God, living _without_ God in the world, need it seem hypocritical. Nor will his participation in the King's death involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a King! But if you once go to war with him, it lies _there_; this and all else lies there. Once at war, you have made wager of battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would not _understand_:--whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose _word_ did not at all represent his thought. We may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the _name_ of Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that he might play-off party against party, and smuggle himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both _discovered_ that he was deceiving them. A man whose _word_ will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For all our fighting," says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" No!-- In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical _eye_ of this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what _is_ fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact answers, if you see into Fact. Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other land. Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to them; which was so blamed: "If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the King." Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting '_for_ the King;' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of _War_; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,--the _infernal_ element in man called forth, to try it by that! _Do_ that therefore; since that is the thing to be done.--The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King of England, requires no magic to explain it!-- Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know a Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? The heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the _vulpine_ intellect. That a true _King_ be sent them is of small use; they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box; in your small-debt _pie-powder_ court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect 'detects' him. For being a man worth any thousand men, the response, your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries, whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneeringly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea. Lamentable this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be remedied in some measure, there is nothing remedied. 'Detect quacks'? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as 'detect'? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and 'detects' in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all _dupes_, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped. The world does exist; the world has truth in it or it would not exist! First recognise what is true, we shall _then_ discern what is false; and properly never till then. 'Know the men that are to be trusted:' alas, this is yet, in these days, very far from us. The sincere alone can recognise sincerity. Not a Hero only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of _Valets_;--the Hero comes almost in vain to it otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but it must come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:--if we are as Valets, and do not know the Hero when we see him, what good are all these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred-and-fifty years he cannot have a vote from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is the _natural property_ of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and quackeries! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes we alter the _figure_ of our Quack; but the substance of him continues. The Valet-World _has_ to be governed by the Sham-Hero, by the King merely _dressed_ in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief, one of two things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by the Unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at every street-corner, there were no remedy in these. Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, _un_formed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with things,--the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_ enveloping him,--wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see. On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion of speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He had _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or uttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough:--he did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and logicising; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, _Vir-tus_, manhood, _hero_-hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or _Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him. One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament, he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish,--they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more? To them it was as the shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,--devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such _prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. 'Hypocrisy'? One begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went about balancing expediences, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a thing at all.--Cromwell's prayers were likely to be 'eloquent,' and much more than that. His was the heart of a man who _could_ pray. But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what. He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too, in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given the Printer precisely what they found on their own notepaper. And withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the world, That to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to the public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift for themselves. But with regard to Cromwell's 'lying,' we will make one remark. This, I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer _un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed; but precisely as dark as he was! This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case. Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not now have worked in their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man among small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "I might have my hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only my little finger." And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to himself_ cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. And we call it 'dissimulation,' all this? What would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning 'corporals' rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much?-- * * * * * But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their 'ambition,' 'falsity,' and such-like. The first is what I might call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and starting point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow, scheming [Greek: Hypokritês], or Play-actor that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall-away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History! Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than Shakspeare; who could _enact_ a brother-man's biography, see with the brother-man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw; in short, _know_ his course and him, as few 'Historians' are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as they are thrown-down before us. But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to this same 'ambition' itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way. Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be 'noticed' by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the downhill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plough the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old, was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendour as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man 'ambitious,' to figure him as the prurient windbag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!" Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious. 'Corsica Boswell' flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;--what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it? Ah yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of _Silence_. The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can _show_, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.--I hope we English will long maintain our _grand talent pour le silence_. Let others that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by _want of money_, and nothing other, one might ask, "Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am _continent_ of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honour'? Alas, yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"-- But, now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. 'Seekest thou great things, seek them not:' this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak-out, to act-out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to _speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness of the man for the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place was _his_; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation, to seek the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were 'the only man in France that could have done any good there'? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they had flung him out, and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather! Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made law on this earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, 'Thy kingdom come,' was at length to be fulfilled! If you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small,--the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of God's Church, true zealous preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt off, God's Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come,--that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years silent waiting, all England stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member of? Cromwell threw down his ploughs and hastened thither. He spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all else,--on and on, till the Cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty. That _he_ stood there as the strongest soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,--what of this? It was possible that the law of Christ's Gospel could now establish itself in the world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a 'devout imagination,' this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being _realised_. Those that were highest in Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not _true_, God's truth? And if _true_, was it not then the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, In its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--History, I think, shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that 'Faith in the Bible' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable fact! Well, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry business. We have had one such Statesman in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why, then, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, 'Given a world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;'--how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places! Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to all men a _palpably_ hopeless one.-- * * * * * But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume and a multitude following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell _was_ sincere at first; a sincere 'Fanatic' at first, but gradually became a 'Hypocrite' as things opened round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite is Hume's theory of it; extensively applied since,--to Mahomet and many others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not much, not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink in this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never befell a great, deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature's own lion-hearted Son! Antæus-like, his strength is got by _touching the Earth_, his Mother; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. He was no dilettante professor of 'perfections,' 'immaculate conducts.' He was a rugged Orson, rending his rough way through actual true _work_,--doubtless with many a _fall_ therein. Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and hourly: it was too well known to him; known to God and him! The Sun was dimmed many a time; but the Sun had not himself grown a Dimness. Cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for death, are those of a Christian heroic man. Broken prayers to God, that He would judge him and this Cause, He since man could not, in justice yet in pity. They are most touching words. He breathed out his wild great soul, its toils and sins all ended now, into the presence of his Maker, in this manner. I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! Hypocrite, mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality; empty barren quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs? The man had made obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray; and now he _was_, there as he stood recognised unblamed, the virtual King of England. Cannot a man do without King's Coaches and Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages; a George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. One would say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. The instant his real work were out in the matter of Kingship,--away with it! Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a _King_ is, in all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in this very War, what becomes of men when they cannot find a Chief Man, and their enemies can. The Scotch Nation was all but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous and of one mind about it, as in this English end of the Island was far from being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among them; poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and suchlike; none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the truth. They had no leader; and the scattered Cavalier party in that country had one: Montrose, the noblest of all the Cavaliers; an accomplished, gallant-hearted, splendid man; what one may call the Hero-Cavalier. Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a King; on the other a King without subjects! The subjects without King can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something. This Montrose, with a handful of Irish or Highland savages, few of them so much as guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild whirlwind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, from the field before him. He was at one period, for a short while, master of all Scotland. One man; but he was a man: a million zealous men, but _without_ the one; they against him were powerless! Perhaps of all the persons in that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable one was verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and decide; to be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty;--a King among them, whether they called him so or not. * * * * * Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified; but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was. England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a wondrous way has given-up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot continue for ever to sit. What _is_ to be done?--It was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament, What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they also should have something to say in it! We will not "For all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land! For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation, whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, _you_ cannot continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? 'Free Parliament,' right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other,--the thing is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper: there are but fifty or three-score of you left there, debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do; not in the way of Formula, but of practicable Fact! How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it,--and Cromwell's patience failed him. But we will take the favourablest hypothesis ever started for the Parliament; the favourablest, though I believe it is not the true one, but too favourable. According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and his Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair _was_ answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic envious despair, to keep-out the army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill,--Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for _them_ an unquestionable thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps out_number_ us; the great numerical majority of England was always indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold _here_. Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill;--ordered them to begone, and talk there no more.--Can we not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were realities in England might see into the necessity of that. The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a _Convocation of the Notables_. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to the true Cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were scornfully called _Barebones's Parliament_, the man's name, it seems, was not _Barebones_, but Barbone,--a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality,--a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavouring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up their power again into the hands of the Lord-General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could. What _will_ he do with it? The Lord-General Cromwell, 'Commander-in Chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;' he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one available Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and England's, there and then. What will he do with it? After deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it!" Protectorship, Instrument of Government,--these are the external forms of the thing; worked-out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the leading Official people, 'Council of Officers and Persons of interest in the Nation:' and as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there _was_ no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby!--I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together made it good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary _articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it!-- Oliver's second Parliament, properly his _first_ regular Parliament, chosen by the rule laid-down in the Instrument of Government, did assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector's _right_, as to 'usurpation,' and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding Speech to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third Parliament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking. You would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to _speak_ the great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about 'births of Providence:' All these changes, so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of _me_ or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_ it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppetshow by wood and wire! These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were 'births of Providence,' God's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, God's Cause triumphant in these Nations; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be _organised_, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing that. "You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had." Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about written laws for _my_ coming here;--and would send the whole matter into Chaos again, because I have no Notary's parchment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. You have had your constitutional Logic; and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in this land. "God be judge between you and me!" These are his final words to them: Take you your constitution-formulas in your hand; and I my _in_formal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and "God be judge between you and me!"-- We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. _Wilfully_ ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon! To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility of him. Try to believe that he means something, search lovingly what that may be: you will find a real _speech_ lying imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for the first time, begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep believing man, are far more _obscure_ than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. 'Heats and Jealousies,' says Lord Clarendon himself: 'heats and jealousies,' mere crabbed whims, theories and crochets; these induced slow sober quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! _Try_ if you can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really _ultra vires_ there. It is Blindness laying-down the Laws of Optics.-- Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came _you_ there? Show us some Notary parchment! Blind pedants:--"Why, surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!" If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?-- Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district, to _coerce_ the Royalists and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall _not_ carry it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I while God leaves me life!--Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this Prime Minister was one that _could not get resigned_. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause _and_ him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could _retire_ nowhither except into his tomb. One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will,--Cromwell 'follows him to the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his republican formula, sullenly goes his way.--And the man's head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman: as indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother!----What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains; his 'place in History,'--place in History forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? _We_ walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not to _men's_ judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well. * * * * * Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself hushed-up into decent composure, and its results made smooth in 1688, there broke-out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to hush-up, known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name of French Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Protestantism; the explosive confused return of Mankind to Reality and Fact, now that they were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We call our English Puritanism the second act: "Well then, the Bible is true; let us go by the Bible!" "In Church," said Luther; "In Church and State," said Cromwell, "let us go by what actually is God's Truth." Men have to return to reality; they cannot live on semblance. The French Revolution, or third act, we may well call the final one; for lower than that savage _Sansculottism_ men cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently to build-up from that. The French explosion, like the English one, got its King,--who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. We have still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King. Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as Cromwell. His enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little England, are but as the high _stilts_ on which the man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I find in him no such _sincerity_ as In Cromwell; only a far inferior sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful Unnamable of this Universe; 'walking with God,' as he called it; and faith and strength in that alone: _latent_ thought and valour, content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven's lightning! Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical _Encyclopédies_. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt, everyway articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwell's. Instead of '_dumb_ Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentous mixture of the Quack withal! Hume's notion of the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like,--where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at all. An element of blamable ambition shows itself, from the first, in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin. 'False as a bulletin' became a proverb in Napoleon's time. He makes what excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to keep up his own men's courage, and so forth. On the whole, there are no excuses. A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in the long-run, _better_ for Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant _next_ day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? The lies are found-out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old cry of wolf!--A Lie is _no_-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make _nothing_ at last, and lose your labour into the bargain. Yet Napoleon _had_ a sincerity; we are to distinguish between what is superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity. Across these outer manoeuvrings and quackeries of his, which were many and most blamable, let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His _savans_, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Egypt were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no God. They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, "Very ingenious, Messieurs: but _who made_ all that?" The Atheistic logic runs-off from him like water; the great Fact stares him in the face: "Who made all that?" So too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward of his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clipt one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! In Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical, the real. "Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with one another? There is no _result_ in it; it comes to nothing that one can _do_. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!" He speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers; he is like a piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid querulousness there. And accordingly was there not what we can call a _faith_ in him, genuine so far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in the French Revolution is an insuppressible Fact, which the whole world, with its old forces and institutions cannot put down; this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it,--a _faith_. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? '_La carrière ouverte aux talens_, The implements to him who can handle them:' this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution, or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, in his first period, was a true Democrat. And yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a true thing at all could not be an anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth of June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by: Napoleon expresses the deepest contempt for persons in authority that they do not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of August he wonders why there is no man to command these poor Swiss; they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democracy, yet hatred of Anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all his great work. Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben, one would say, his inspiration is: 'Triumph to the French Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that pretend to call it a Simulacrum!' Withal, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is; how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle-in that great devouring, self-devouring French Revolution; to _tame_ it, so that its intrinsic purpose can be made good, that it may become _organic_, and be able to live among other organisms and _formed_ things, not as a wasting destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed at, as the true purport of his life; nay what he actually managed to do? Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes; triumph after triumph,--he triumphed so far. There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he _was_ such. The common soldiers used to say on the march: "These babbling _Avocats_, up at Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all wrong? We shall have to go and put our _Petit Caporal_ there!" They went, and put him there; they and France at large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, victory over Europe;--till the poor Lieutenant of _La Fère_, not unnaturally, might seem to himself the greatest of all men that had been in the world for some ages. But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got the upper hand. He apostatised from his old Faith in Facts: took to believing in Semblances; strove to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities which he once saw clearly to be false;--considered that _he_ would found "his Dynasty" and so forth; that the enormous French Revolution meant only that! The man was 'given-up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie;' a fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when he looked at them,--the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. _Self_ and false ambition had now become his god: _self_-deception once yielded to, _all_ other deceptions follow naturally more and more. What a paltry patch-work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow Pope's-_Concordat_, pretending to be a re-establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, "_la vaccine de la religion_:" his ceremonial Coronations, consecrations by the old Italian Chimera in Notre-Dame,--"wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it," as Augereau said, "nothing but the half-million of men who had died to put an end to all that"! Cromwell's Inauguration was by the Sword and Bible; what we must call a genuinely _true_ one. Sword and Bible were borne before him, without any chimera: were not these the _real_ emblems of Puritanism; its true decoration and insignia? It had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended to stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon mistook: he believed too much in the _Dupeability_ of men; saw no fact deeper in men than Hunger and this! He was mistaken. Like a man that should build upon cloud; his house and he fall down in confused wreck, and depart out of the world. Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and _might_ be developed, were the temptation strong enough. 'Lead us not into temptation'! But it is fatal, I say, that it _be_ developed. The thing into which it enters as a cognisable ingredient is doomed to be altogether transitory; and, however huge it may _look_, is in itself small. Napoleon's working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise it made? A flash as of gunpowder wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry heath. For an hour the whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame; but only for an hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old mountains and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there. The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage; this Napoleonism was _unjust_, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest. I am not sure but he had better have lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German Bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make-out to be other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of it,--waiting their day! Which day _came_: Germany rose round him.--What Napoleon _did_ will in the long-run amount to what he did _justly_; what Nature with her laws will sanction. To what of reality was in him; to that and nothing more. The rest was all smoke and waste. _La carrière ouverte aux talens_: that great true Message, which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inarticulate state. He was a great _ébauche_, a rude-draught never completed; as indeed what great man is other? Left in _too_ rude a state, alas! His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St. Helena, are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the most unaffected surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung-out on the rock here, and the World is still moving on its axis. France is great, and all-great; and at bottom, he is France. England itself, he says, is by Nature only an appendage of France; "another Isle of Oleron to France." So it was _by Nature_, by Napoleon-Nature; and yet look how in fact,--HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable that the reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that France was not all-great, that he was not France. 'Strong delusion,' that he should believe the thing to be which _is_ not! The compact, clear-seeing, decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had, has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere of French fanfaronade. The world was not disposed to be trodden-down underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as _he_ liked, for a pedestal to France and him: the world had quite other purposes in view! Napoleon's astonishment is extreme. But alas, what help now? He had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity; no rescue for him. He had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great heart, and die,--this poor Napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted, till it was useless: our last Great Man! * * * * * _Our_ last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search and study of Heroes, are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have named _Hero-worship_. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might have done better. I promised to break-ground on it; I know not whether I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt utterances thrown-out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, patient candour, all-hoping favour and kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in England, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings, I heartily thank you all; and say, Good be with you all! INDEX ABDALLAH, father of Mahomet, 286 Abelard, theology of, 389 Abu Thaleb, uncle of Mahomet, 286, 387, 294 Action the true end of Man, 119, 121 Actual, the, the true Ideal, 148, 149 Adamitism, 43 Afflictions, merciful, 145 Agincourt, Shakspeare's battle of, 341 Alexis, Luther's friend, his sudden death, 359 Ali, young, Mahomet's kinsman and convert, 293 Allegory, the sportful shadow of earnest faith, 243, 267 Ambition, Fate's appendage of, 78; foolish charge of, 447; laudable ambition, 449 Apprenticeships, 92 Aprons, use and significance of, 31 Arabia and the Arabs, 282, 310 Art, all true Works of, symbolic, 163 BALDER, the white Sungod, 255, 271 Baphometic Fire-baptism, 128 Barebone's Parliament, 456 Battle-field, a, 131 Battle, Life-, our, 65; with Folly and Sin, 94, 97 Being, the boundless Phantasmagoria of, 39 Belief and Opinion, 146, 147 Belief, the true god-announcing miracle, 292, 311, 375, 401; war of, 430. _See_ Religion, Scepticism. Benthamism, 309, 400 Bible of Universal History, 134, 146 Biography, meaning and uses of, 56; significance of biographic facts, 152 Blumine, 104; her environment, 105; character and relation to Teufelsdröckh, 106; blissful bonds rent asunder, 109; on her way to England, 116 Bolivar's Cavalry-uniform, 37 Books, miraculous influence of, 130, 149, 388, 392; our modern University, Church and Parliament, 390 Boswell, his reverence for Johnson, 410 Banyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, 244 Burns, Gilbert, 417 Burns, Robert, his birth, and humble heroic parents, 415; rustic dialect of, 416; the most gifted British soul of his century, 417; his resemblance to Mirabeau, 418; his sincerity, 419; his visit to Edinburgh, 420; Lion-hunters the ruin and death of, 421 CAABAH, the, with its Black Stone and Sacred Well, 284, 285 Canopus, the worship of, 247 Charles I. fatally incapable of being dealt with, 439 Childhood, happy season of, 68; early influences and sports, 69 China, literary governors of, 397 Christian Faith, a good Mother's simple version of the, 75; Temple of the, now in ruins, 145; Passive-half of, 147 Christian Love, 143, 145 Church. _See_ Books. Church-Clothes, 161; living and dead Churches, 162; the modern Church, and its Newspaper-Pulpits, 189 Circumstances, influence of, 71 Clergy, the, with their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on, 32, 158 Clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the human animal, but an artificial device, 2; analogy between the Costumes of the body and the Customs of the spirit, 25; Decoration the first purpose of Clothes, 28; what Clothes have done for us, and what they threaten to do, 30, 43; fantastic garbs of the Middle Ages, 34; a simple costume, 35; tangible and mystic influences of Clothes, 36, 45; animal and human Clothing contrasted, 41; a Court-Ceremonial _minus_ Clothes, 45; necessity for Clothes, 47; transparent Clothes, 49; all Emblematic things are Clothes, 54, 203; Genesis of the modern Clothes-Philosopher, 61; Character and conditions needed, 153, 156; George Fox's suit of Leather, 159; Church-Clothes, 161; Old-Clothes, 179; practical inferences, 203 Codification, 50 Combination, value of, 101, 221 Commons, British House of, 31 Concealment. _See_ Secrecy. Constitution, our invaluable British, 187 Conversion, 149 Courtesy, due to all men, 179 Courtier, a luckless, 36 Cromwell, 430; his hypochondria, 437, 442; early marriage and conversion, 437; an industrious farmer, 438; his victories and participation in the King's death, 439; practicalness of, 440; his Ironsides, 440; his speeches, 444, 459; his 'ambition' and such-like, 446; a 'Fanatic,' but gradually became a 'Hypocrite,' 452; his dismissal of the Rump Parliament, 456; Protectorship and Parliamentary Futilities, 457; his last days, and closing sorrows, 460 Custom the greatest of Weavers, 194 DANDY, mystic significance of the, 204; dandy worship, 206; sacred books, 208; articles of faith, 209; a dandy household, 213; tragically undermined by growing Drudgery, 214 Dante and his Book, 318; biography in his Book, and Portrait, 319; his birth, education and early career, 319, 320; his love for Beatrice Portinari, 320; unhappy marriage, 320; banishment, 321; uncourtier-like ways of, 321; his _Divina Commedia_ genuinely a song, 322; the Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages, 329; the 'uses' of Dante, 332 David, the Hebrew King, 281 Death, nourishment even in, 81, 127 Della Scala, the court of, 321 Devil, internecine war with the, 9, 90, 128, 139; cannot now so much as believe in him, 127 Dilettantes and Pedants, 52; patrons of Literature, 96 Diodorus Siculus, 284 Diogenes, 159 Divine Right of Kings, 424 Doubt can only be removed by Action, 147. _See_ Unbelief. Drudgery contrasted with Dandyism, 210; 'Communion of Drudges,' and what may come of it, 214 Duelling, a picture of, 136 Duty, no longer a divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, 122, 123; infinite nature of, 147, 309; definition of, 267, 298; sceptical spiritual paralysis, 398 EDDA, the Scandinavian, 253 Editor's first acquaintance with Teufelsdröckh and his Philosophy of Clothes, 4; efforts to make known his discovery to British readers, 7; admitted into the Teufelsdröckh watch-tower, 14, 25; first feels the pressure of his task, 37; his bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, 55; strenuous efforts to evolve some historic order out of such interminable documentary confusion, 59; partial success, 67, 76, 117; mysterious hints, 152, 177; astonishment and hesitation, 163; congratulations, 201; farewell, 219 Education, influence of early, 71; insignificant portion depending on Schools, 77; educational Architects, 79; the inspired Thinker, 171 Eighteenth Century, the sceptical, 398, 404, 433 Eisleben, the birthplace of Luther, 358 Eliot, 433, 434 Elizabethan Era, the, 334 Emblems, all visible things, 54 Emigration, 173 Eternity, looking through Time, 15, 55, 168 Evil, Origin of, 143 Eyes and Spectacles, 51 FACTS, engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key, 153 Faith, the one thing needful, 122 Fantasy, the true Heaven-gate or Hell-gate of man, 109, 165 Fashionable Novels, 208 Fatherhood, 65 Faults, his, not the criterion of any man 281 Feebleness, the true misery, 124 Fichte's theory of literary men, 385 Fire, and vital fire, 53, 129; miraculous nature of, 254 Force, universal presence of, 53 Forms, necessity for, 431 Fortunatus' Wishing-hat, 195, 197 Fox's, George, heavenward aspirations and earthly independence, 159 _Fraser's Magazine_, 6, 227 Frederick the Great, symbolic glimpse of, 61 Friendship, now obsolete, 89; an incredible tradition, 125, 174; how it were possible, 161, 221 Frost. _See_ Fire. Futteral and his Wife, 61 Future, organic filaments of the, 183 GENIUS, the world's treatment of, 94 German speculative thought, 2, 9, 20, 24, 41; historical researches, 26, 56 Gerund-grinding, 80 Ghost, an authentic, 198 Giotto, his portrait of Dante, 319 God, the unslumbering, omnipresent, eternal, 40; God's presence manifested to our eyes and hearts, 49; an absentee God, 122 Goethe's inspired melody, 190; 'characters,' 337; notablest of literary men, 386 Good, growth and propagation of, 75 Graphic, secret of being, 325 Gray's misconception of Norse lore, 270 Great Men, 134. _See_ Man. Grimm the German Antiquary, and Odin, 260 Gullibility, blessings of, 84 Gunpowder, use of, 29, 136 HABIT, how, makes dullards of us all, 42 Hagar, the Well of, 284, 285 Half-men, 139 Hampden, 433, 434 Happiness, the whim of, 144 Hegira, the, 295 Heroes, Universal History of the united biographies of, 139, 266; how 'little critics' account for great men, 250; all Heroes fundamentally of the same stuff, 265, 277, 312, 346, 383, 418; Intellect the primary outfit, 338; Heroism possible to all, 358, 375; no man a hero to a valet-soul, 411, 433, 441 Hero-worship, the corner-stone of all Society, 189; the tap-root of all Religion, 248-252, 277; perennial in man, 252, 317, 357, 428 Heuschrecke and his biographic documents, 7; his loose, zigzag, thin-visaged character, 18; unaccustomed eloquence, and interminable documentary superfluities, 56; bewildered darkness, 223 History, all-inweaving tissue of, 15; by what strange chances do we live in, 36; a perpetual Revelation, 134, 148, 190 Homer's Iliad, 169 Hope, this world emphatically the place of, 122; false shadows of, 140 Horse, his own tailor, 41 Hutchinson and Cromwell, 433, 460 ICELAND, the home of Norse Poets, 253 Ideal, the, exists only in the Actual, 148, 149 Idolatry, 351; criminal only when insincere, 353 Igdrasil, the Life-Tree, 257, 334 Imagination. _See_ Fantasy. Immortality, a glimpse of, 196 Imposture, statistics of, 84 Independence, foolish parade of, 175, 188 Indifference, centre of, 128 Infant intuitions and acquirements, 68; genius and dulness, 71 Inspiration, perennial, 147, 157, 190 Intellect, the summary of man's gifts, 338, 397 Invention, 29, 120 Invisible, the, Nature the visible Garment of, 41; invisible bonds, binding all Men together, 45; the Visible and Invisible, 49, 164 Irish, the, Poor-Slave, 213 Islam, 291 Isolation, 81 JESUS OF NAZARETH, our divinest Symbol, 168, 171 Job, the Book of, 284 Johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypochondria, 405, 406; rude self-help; stands genuinely by the old formulas, 406; his noble unconscious sincerity, 408; twofold Gospel, of Prudence and hatred of Cant, 409; his _Dictionary_, 410; the brave old Samuel, 411, 450 Jötuns, 254, 272 Julius the Second, Pope, 361 KADIJAH, the good, Mahomet's first Wife, 288, 292 King, our true, chosen for us in Heaven, 187; the, a summary of all the various figures of Heroism, 424; indispensable in all movements of men, 453 Kingdom, a man's, 91 Know thyself, and what thou canst work at, 124 Knox's influence on Scotland, 374; the bravest of all Scotchmen, 376; his unassuming career, 377; is sent to the French Galleys, 377; his colloquies with Queen Mary, 378; vein of drollery, 380; a brother to high and to low, 380; his death, 381 Koran, the, 298 Koreish, the, Keepers of the Caabah, 293, 294, 354 Kranach's portrait of Luther, 372 LABOUR, sacredness of, 171 Ladrones Islands, what the natives of, thought regarding Fire, 254 Lamaism, Grand, 242 Land-owning, trade of, 96 Language, the Garment of Thought, 54; dead vocables, 80 Laughter, significance of, 24 Leo X., the elegant Pagan Pope, 363 Liberty and Equality, 357, 428 Lieschen, 17 Life, Human, picture of, 14, 115, 129, 141; life-purpose, 101; speculative mystery of, 125, 181, 198; the most important transaction in, 128; nothingness of; 138, 139 Light the beginning of all Creation, 148 Literary Men, 383; in China, 397 Literature, chaotic condition of, 387; not our heaviest evil, 398 Logic-mortar and wordy Air-Castles, 40; underground workshop of Logic, 50, 166 Louis XV., ungodly age of, 123 Love, what we emphatically name, 102; pyrotechnic phenomena of, 103, 166; not altogether a delirium, 109; how possible, in its highest form, 145, 161, 221 Ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, 36, 136 Luther's birth and parentage, 358; hardship and rigorous necessity; death of his friend Alexis, 359; becomes a monk; his religious despair; finds a Bible, 360; his deliverance from darkness; at Rome, 361; Tetzel, 362; burns the Pope's Bull, 363, 364; at the Diet of Worms, 364; King of the Reformation, 368; 'Duke Georges for nine days running,' 370; his little daughter's deathbed; his solitary Patmos, 371; his Portrait, 372 MAGNA CHARTA, 203 Mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, 286; marries Kadijah, 288; quiet, unambitious life, 288; divine commission, 290; the good Kadijah believes him, 292; Seid, his slave, 293; his Cousin Ali, 293; his offences and sore struggles, 293; flight from Mecca; being driven to take the sword, he uses it, 295; the Koran, 298; a veritable Hero, 305; Seid's death, 306; freedom from cant, 306; the infinite nature of duty, 309 Malthus's over-population panic, 170 Man, by nature _naked_, 2, 42, 46; essentially a tool-using animal, 30; the true Shekinah, 49; a divine Emblem, 54, 165, 167, 180, 199; two men alone honourable, 171. _See_ Thinking Man. Mary, Queen, and Knox, 378 Mayflower, sailing of the, 373 Mecca, its rise, 285; Mahomet's flight from, 294, 295 Metaphors, the stuff of Language, 54 Metaphysics inexpressibly unproductive, 40, 51 Middle Ages, represented by Dante and Shakspeare, 329, 333 Milton, 124 Mirabeau, his ambition, 450 Miracles, significance of, 191, 197 Monmouth Street, and its 'Ou' clo'' Angels of Doom, 181 Montrose, the Hero-Cavalier, 453, 454 Mother's, a, religious influence, 75 Motive-Millwrights, 166 Mountain scenery, 115 Musical, all deep things, 317 Mystery, all-pervading domain of, 51 NAKEDNESS and hypocritical Clothing, 42, 47; a naked Court-Ceremonial, 45; a naked Duke addressing a naked House of Lords, 46 Names, significance and influence of, 65, 195 Napoleon and his Political Evangel, 135; compared with Cromwell, 461; a portentous mixture of Quack and Hero, 462; his instinct for the practical, 463; his democratic _faith_ 463; his hatred of Anarchy, 464; apostatised from his old faith in Facts, and took to believing in Semblances, 464, 465; this Napoleonism was _unjust_, and could not last, 466 Nature, the God-written Apocalypse of,39, 49; not an Aggregate but a Whole, 52, 116, 185, 193; Nature alone antique, 79; sympathy with, 115, 135; the 'Living Garment of God,' 142; Laws of Nature, 192; all one great Miracle, 245, 302, 371; a righteous umpire, 296 Necessity, brightened into Duty, 74 Newspaper Editors, 33; our Mendicant Friars, 189, 190 Nothingness of life, 138, 139 Nottingham bargemen, 255, 256 Novalis, on Man, 248; on Belief, 292; on Shakspeare, 339 OBEDIENCE, the lesson of, 74, 75 Odin, the first Norse 'man of genius,' 258; historic rumours and guesses, 259; how he came to be deified, 261; invented 'runes,' 263; Hero, Prophet, God, 264 Olaf, King, and Thor, 275 Original man the _sincere_ man, 280, 356 Orpheus, 197 Over-population, 170 Own, conservation of a man's, 151 PAGANISM, Scandinavian, 241; not mere Allegory, 243; Nature-worship, 245, 266; Hero-worship, 248; creed of our fathers, 253, 272, 274; Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature, 254; contrasted with Greek Paganism, 256; the first Norse Thinker, 258; main practical Belief; indispensable to be brave, 267; hearty, homely, rugged Mythology, 270; Balder and Thor, 271; Consecration of Valour, 276 Paradise and Fig-leaves, 27; prospective Paradises, 102, 110 Parliaments superseded by Books, 392; Cromwell's Parliaments, 454 Passivity and Activity, 74, 121 Past, the, inextricably linked with the Present, 129; forever extant, 196; the whole, the possession of the Present, 277 Paupers, what to do with, 173 Peace-Era, the much-predicted, 133 Peasant Saint, the, 172 _Pelham_, and the Whole Duty of Dandies, 209 Perseverance, law of, 178 Person, mystery of a, 48, 101, 103, 179 Philosophies, Cause-and-Effect, 26 Phoenix Death-birth, 178, 183, 201 Pitt, Mr., his reply when asked for help to Burns, 396 Plato, the child-man of, 245 Poet, the, and Prophet, 313, 332, 342 Poetry and Prose, distinction of, 315, 323 Popery, 367 Poverty, advantages of, 334 Priest, the true, a kind of Prophet, 346 Printing, consequences of, 392 Private judgment, 354 Progress of the Species, 349 Property, 150 Prose. _See_ Poetry. Proselytising, 6, 221 Protestantism, the root of Modern European History, 364; not dead yet, 367; its living fruit, 373, 425 Purgatory, noble Catholic conception of, 328 Puritanism, founded by Knox, 373; true beginning of America, 373; the one epoch of Scotland, 374; Theocracy, 381; Puritanism in England, 430, 432, 453 Pym, 433, 434 QUACKERY originates nothing, 242, 279; age of, 403; Quacks and Dupes, 441 RADICALISM, Speculative, 10, 20, 47, 188 Ragnarök, 275 Raleigh's, Sir Walter, fine mantle, 36 Ramadhan, the month of, 290 Raphael, the best of Portrait-Painters, 326 Reformer, the true, 347 Religion, dead letter and living spirit of, 87; weaving new vestures, 162, 207; a man's, the chief fact with regard to him, 240; based on Hero-worship, 248; propagating by the sword, 295; cannot succeed by being 'easy,' 304 Reverence, early growth of, 75; indispensability of, 188 Revolution, 423; the French, 423, 461 Richter, 24, 369 Right and Wrong, 309, 329 Rousseau, not a strong man, 411; his Portrait; egoism, 412; his passionate appeals, 413; his books, like himself, unhealthy; the Evangelist of the French Revolution, 414 Runes, 263, 264, 388 SABEANS, the worship of, 247, 283 Sæmund, an early Christian priest, 253, 254 St. Clement Danes, Church of, 407 Saints, living Communion of, 185, 190 Sarcasm, the panoply of, 99 _Sartor Resartus_, genesis of, 7; its purpose, 201 Saturn or Chronos, 98 Savage, the aboriginal, 28 Scarecrow, significance of the, 46 Sceptical goose-cackle, 51 Scepticism, a spiritual paralysis, 398-405, 433 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 341 School education, insignificance of, 78, 80; tin-kettle terrors and incitements, 78; need of Soul-Architects, 80 Science, the Torch of, 1; the Scientific Head, 51 Scotland awakened into life by Knox, 374 Secrecy, benignant efficacies of, 164 Secret, the open, 313 Seid, Mahomet's slave and friend, 293, 306 Self-activity, 20 Self-annihilation, 141 Shakspeare and the Elizabethan Era, 334; his all-sufficing intellect, 335, 338; his Characters, 337; his Dramas, a part of Nature herself, 340; his joyful tranquillity, and overflowing love of laughter, 340; his hearty Patriotism, 342; glimpses of the world that was in him, 342; a heaven-sent Light-Bringer, 343; a King of Saxondom, 345 Shame, divine, mysterious growth of, 30; the soil of all Virtue, 165 Shekinah, Man the true, 247 Silence, 135; the element in which all great things fashion themselves, 164; the great empires of, 333, 449 Simon's, Saint-, aphorism of the golden age, 178; a false application, 223 Sincerity, better than gracefulness, 267; the first characteristic of heroism and originality, 280, 289, 356, 358, 384 Smoke, advantage of consuming one's, 114 Snorro, his description of Odin, 260, 264, 268 Society founded upon Cloth, 38, 45, 47; how Society becomes possible, 162; social Death and New-Birth, 163, 178, 183, 201; as good as extinct, 174 Solitude. _See_ Silence. Sorrow-pangs of Self-deliverance, 115, 120, 121; divine depths of Sorrow, 143; Worship of Sorrow, 146 Southey, and Literature, 396 Space and Time, the Dream-Canvas upon which Life is imaged, 40, 49, 192, 195 Spartan wisdom, 172 Speculative intuition, 38. _See_ German. Speech, great, but not greatest, 164 Sphinx-riddle, the Universe a, 97 Star worship, 247, 283 Stealing, 151, 172 Stupidity, blessings of, 123 Style, varieties of, 54 Suicide, 126 Summary, 231 Sunset, 70, 116 Swallows, migrations and co-operative instincts of, 72 Swineherd, the, 70 Symbols, 163; wondrous agency of, 164; extrinsic and intrinsic, 167; superannuated, 169, 175 TABÛC, the War of, 306 Tailors, symbolic significance of, 217 Temptations in the wilderness, 138 Testimonies of Authors, 227 Tetzel, the Monk, 362, 363 Teufelsdröckh's Philosophy of Clothes, 4; he proposes a toast, 10; his personal aspect, and silent deep-seated Sansculottism, 11; thawed into speech, 13; memorable watch-tower utterances, 14; alone with the Stars, 16; extremely miscellaneous environment, 17; plainness of speech, 21; universal learning, and multiplex literary style, 22; ambiguous-looking morality, 23; one instance of laughter, 24; almost total want of arrangement, 25; feeling of the ludicrous, 36; speculative Radicalism, 47; a singular Character, 58; Genesis properly an Exodus, 62; unprecedented Name, 65; infantine experience, 66; Pedagogy, 76; an almost Hindoo Passivity, 76; schoolboy jostling, 79; heterogeneous University Life, 83; fever-paroxysms of Doubt, 87; first practical knowledge of the English, 88; getting under way, 90; ill success, 94; glimpse of high life, 96; casts himself on the Universe, 101; reverent feeling towards Women, 102; frantically in love, 104; first interview with Blumine, 106; inspired moments, 108; short of practical kitchen-stuff, 111; ideal bliss and actual catastrophe, 112; sorrows and peripatetic stoicism, 113; a parting glimpse of his Beloved on her way to England, 116; how he overran the whole earth, 118; Doubt darkened unto Unbelief, 122; love of Truth, 124; a feeble unit, amidst a threatening Infinitude, 125; Baphometic Fire-baptism, 128; placid indifference, 129; a Hyperborean intruder, 136; Nothingness of life, 138; Temptations in the wilderness, 138; dawning of a better day, 141; the Ideal in the Actual, 148; finds his true Calling, 149; his Biography a symbolic Adumbration, significant to those who can decipher it, 152; a wonder-lover, seeker and worker, 156; in Monmouth Street among the Hebrews, 181; concluding hints, 219; his public History not yet done, perhaps the better part only beginning, 223 Theocracy, a, striven for by all true Reformers, 382, 451 Thinking Man, a, the worst enemy of the Prince of Darkness, 91, 150; true Thought can never die, 185 Thor, and his adventures, 255, 271-274; his last appearance, 275 Thought, miraculous influence of, 258, 266, 393; _musical_ Thought, 316 Thunder. _See_ Thor. Time, the great mystery of, 246 Time-Spirit, life-battle with the, 65, 98; Time, the universal wonder-hider, 197 Titles of Honour, 186 Tolerance, true and false, 368, 379 Tools, influence of, 30; the Pen, most miraculous of tools, 150 Trial by Jury, Burke's opinion of, 422 Turenne, 312 UNBELIEF, era of, 86, 112; Doubt darkening into, 121; escape from, 139 Universities, 83, 389 Utgard, Thor's expedition to, 273, 274 Utilitarianism, 121, 176 VALKYRS, the, 267, 268 Valour, the basis of all virtue, 268, 271; Norse consecration of, 276; Christian Valour, 351 _Vates_, the, 313, 314, 317 View-hunting and diseased Self-consciousness, 117 Voltaire, 146; the Parisian Divinity, 189; Voltaire-worship, 251, 252 WAR, 131 Wisdom, 50 Wish, the Norse god, 255; enlarged into a heaven by Mahomet, 310 Woman's influence, 102 Wonder the basis of Worship, 50; region of, 51 Words, slavery to, 40; Word-mongering and Motive-grinding, 123 Workshop of Life, 149. _See_ Labour. Worms, Luther at, 364 Worship, transcendent wonder, 247. _See_ Hero-worship. YOUNG Men and Maidens, 97 ZEMZEM, the sacred Well, 284 THE END 
53267	----	THE CORSET AND THE CRINOLINE. THE CORSET AND THE CRINOLINE. A BOOK OF MODES AND COSTUMES FROM REMOTE PERIODS TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY W. B. L. WITH 54 FULL-PAGE AND OTHER ENGRAVINGS. "O wha will shoe my fair foot, And wha will glove my han'? And wha will lace my middle jimp Wi' a new-made London ban'?" _Fair Annie of Lochroyan._ LONDON: WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER. WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW. LONDON PRINTED BY JAS. WADE, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN PREFACE. The subject which we have here treated is a sort of figurative battle-field, where fierce contests have for ages been from time to time waged; and, notwithstanding the determined assaults of the attacking hosts, the contention and its cause remain pretty much as they were at the commencement of the war. We in the matter remain strictly neutral, merely performing the part of the public's "own correspondent," making it our duty to gather together such extracts from despatches, both ancient and modern, as may prove interesting or important, to take note of the vicissitudes of war, mark its various phases, and, in fine, to do our best to lay clearly before our readers the historical facts--experiences and arguments--relating to the much-discussed "_Corset question_." As most of our readers are aware, the leading journals especially intended for the perusal of ladies have been for many years the media for the exchange of a vast number of letters and papers touching the use of the Corset. The questions relating to the history of this apparently indispensable article of ladies' attire, its construction, application, and influence on the figure have become so numerous of late that we have thought, by embodying all that we can glean and garner relating to Corsets, their wearers, and the various costumes worn by ladies at different periods, arranging the subject-matter in its due order as to dates, and at the same time availing ourselves of careful illustration when needed, that an interesting volume would result. No one, we apprehend, would be likely to deny that, to enable the fairer portion of the civilised human race to follow the time-honoured custom of presenting to the eye the waist in its most slender proportions, the Corset in some form must be had recourse to. Our information will show how ancient and almost universal its use has been, and there is no reason to anticipate that its aid will ever be dispensed with so long as an elegant and attractive figure is an object worth achieving. Such being the case, it becomes a matter of considerable importance to discover by what means the desirable end can be acquired without injury to the health of those whose forms are being restrained and moulded into proportions generally accepted as graceful, by the use and influence of the Corset. It will be our duty to lay before the reader the strictures of authors, ancient and modern, on this article of dress, and it will be seen that the animadversions of former writers greatly exceed modern censures, both in number and fierceness of condemnation. This difference probably arises from the fact of Corsets of the most unyielding and stubborn character being universally made use of at the time the severest attacks were made upon them; and there can be no reasonable doubt that much which was written in their condemnation had some truth in it, although accompanied by a vast deal of fanciful exaggeration. It would also be not stating the whole of the case if we omitted here to note that modern authors, who launch sweeping anathemas on the very stays by the aid of which their wives and daughters are made presentable in society, almost invariably quote largely from scribes of ancient date, and say little or nothing, of their own knowledge. On the other hand, it will be seen that those writing in praise of the moderate use of Corsets take their facts, experiences, and grounds of argument from the everyday life and general custom of the present period. The Crinoline is too closely associated with the Corset and with the mutable modes affected by ladies, from season to season, to be omitted from any volume which treats of Fashion. The same facts, indeed, may be stated of both the Crinoline and the Corset. Both appear to be equally indispensable to the woman of the present period. To make them serve the purposes of increased cleanliness, comfort, and grace, not only without injury to the health, but with positive and admitted advantage to the _physique_--these are the problems to be solved by those whose business it is to minister to the ever-changing taste and fashion of the day. [Illustration] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE CORSET:--Origin. Use amongst Savage Tribes and Ancient People. Slenderness of Waist esteemed in the East, Ceylon, Circassia, Crim Tartary, Hindustan, Persia, China, Egypt, Palestine Pages 9 to 29 CHAPTER II. The Corset according to Homer, Terentius. The Strophium of Rome, and the Mitra of Greece. The Peplus. A Roman Toilet, Bath, and Promenade. General Luxury. Cleopatra's Jewels. Tight-lacing on the Tiber Pages 30 to 38 CHAPTER III. Frankish Fashions. The Monks and the Corset. Corsets worn by Gentlemen as well as Ladies in the Thirteenth Century. The Kirtle. Small Waists in Scotland. Chaucer on Small Bodies. The Surcoat. Long Trains. Skirts. Snake-toed Shoes. High-heeled Slippers Pages 41 to 59 CHAPTER IV. Bonnets. Headdresses. Costumes in the time of Francis I. Pins in France and England. Masks in France. Puffed Sleeves. Bernaise Dress. Marie Stuart. Long Slender Waists. Henry III. of France "tight-laces." Austrian Joseph prohibits Stays. Catherine de Medici and Elizabeth of England. Severe form of Corset. Lawn Ruffs. Starching. Stuffed Hose. Venice Fashions. Elizabeth's False Hair. Stubs on the Ladies. James I. affects Fashion. Garters and Shoe-roses. Dagger and Rapier Pages 60 to 91 CHAPTER V. Louise de Lorraine. Marie de Medici. Distended Skirts. Hair Powder. Hair _à l'enfant_. Low Dresses. Louis XIV. High Heels. Slender Waists. Siamese Dress. Charles I. Patches. Elaborate Costumes. Puritan Modes. Tight-lacing and Strait-lacing under Cromwell. Augsburg Ladies Pages 92 to 104 CHAPTER VI. Louis XV. À la Watteau. Barbers. Fashions under Queen Anne. Diminutive Waists and Enormous Hoop. The Farthingale. The _Guardian_. Fashions in 1713. Low Dresses. Tight Stays. Short Skirts. A Lady's Maid's Accomplishments. Gay and Ben Jonson on the Bodice and Stays Pages 109 to 123 CHAPTER VII. Stays or Corset. Louis XVI. Dress in 1776. Severe Lacing. Hogarth. French Revolution. Short Waists. Long Trains. Buchan. Jumpers and Garibaldis. Figure-training. Backboards and Stocks. Doctors on Stays. George III. Gentlemen's Stays. The Changes of Fashion. The term CRINOLINE not new. South Sea Islanders. Madame la Sante on Crinoline. Starving and Lacing. Anecdote. Wearing the Corset during sleep. American Belles. Illusion Waists. Medicus favours moderate tight-lacing. Ladies' Letters on tight-lacing Pages 124 to 164 CHAPTER VIII. The Austrian Empress. Viennese Waists. London small-sized Corsets. Correspondence of _The Queen_ and the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_. Lady Morton. Figure-training. Corsets for Young Girls. Early use of well-constructed Corsets. The Boarding-School and the Corset. Letters in praise of tight-lacing. Defence of the Crinoline and the Corset. The Venus de Medici. Fashionably-dressed Statue. Clumsy Figures. Letter from a Tight-lacer. A Young Baronet. A Family Man Pages 165 to 186 CHAPTER IX. No elegance without the Corset. Fashion of 1865. Short Waist and Train of 1867. Tight Corset and Short Waist. A form of French Corset. Proportions of Figure and Waist. The Point of the Waist. Older Writers on Stays. Denunciations against Small Waists and High Heels. Alarming Diseases through High Heels. Female Mortality. Corset Statistics. Modern and Ancient Corset Pages 189 to 201 CHAPTER X. Front-fastening Stays. Thomson's Corset. Stability of front-fastening Corset. De La Garde's Corset. Self-measurement. Viennese _Redresseur_ Corset. Flimsy Corsets. Proper Materials. "Minet Back" Corset. Elastic Corsets. Narrow Bands Injurious. The Corset properly applied produces a graceful figure. The Farthingale Reviewed. Thomson's Zephyrina Crinoline. Costume of the Present Season. The claims of Nature. Similitude between the Tahitian Girl and Venetian Lady Pages 202 to 224 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 1. THE DAWN OF THE CORSET 11 2. CIRCASSIAN LADY 15 3. EGYPTIAN LADY IN FULL SKIRT 18 4. PERSIAN DANCING GIRL 21 5. EGYPTIAN LADY IN NARROW SKIRT 24 6. LADY OF ANCIENT GREECE 32 7. ROMAN LADY OF RANK (REIGN OF HELIOGABALUS) 39 8. THE FIEND OF FASHION, FROM AN ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT 43 9. THE PRINCESS BLANCHE, DAUGHTER OF EDWARD III. 48 10. LADY OF RANK OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 51 11. LADY OF THE COURT OF QUEEN CATHERINE DE MEDICI 55 12. FULL COURT DRESS AS WORN IN FRANCE, 1515 58 13. LADIES OF FASHION IN THE COSTUME OF 1380 61 14. NORMAN HEADDRESS OF THE PRESENT DAY 64 15. LADY OF THE COURT OF CHARLES VIII., 1500 67 16. LADY OF THE COURT OF MAXIMILIAN OF GERMANY AND FRANCIS OF FRANCE 70 17. CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE TIME OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI 71 18. CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (OPEN) 72 19. THE BERNAISE HEADDRESS, AND COSTUME OF MARIE STUART 74 20. CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (CLOSED) 76 21. HENRY III. OF FRANCE AND THE PRINCESS MARGARET OF LORRAINE 77 22. LADY OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 80 23. A VENETIAN LADY OF FASHION, 1560 83 24. QUEEN ELIZABETH 86 25. COURT DRESS DURING THE BOYHOOD OF LOUIS XIII. 93 26. MARIE DE MEDICI 96 27. FANCY COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV. 99 28. SIAMESE DRESS WORN AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 102 29. YOUNG ENGLISH LADY OF FASHION, 1653 105 30. FANCY DRESS WORN IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 108 31. COSTUMES AFTER WATTEAU 111 32. CRINOLINE IN 1713 114 33. LOW BODIES AND CURTAILED CRINOLINE 117 34. COURT DRESS OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 125 35. CLASSIC COSTUME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 128 36. LADY OF FASHION, 1806 131 37. FASHIONABLE DRESS IN 1824 139 38. LADY OF FASHION, 1827 142 39. LADY OF FASHION, 1830 145 40. LADY OF FASHION, 1837 148 41. THE CRINOLINE OF A SOUTH SEA ISLANDER 151 42. THE FASHION OF 1865 188 43. THE FASHION OF 1867 191 44. CORSET, FORMING BOTH CORSET AND STOMACHER (FRONT) 197 45. CORSET, FORMING BOTH CORSET AND STOMACHER (BACK) 200 46. COMMON CHEAP STAY, FASTENED 202 47. COMMON CHEAP STAY, OPEN 203 48. THE GLOVE-FITTING CORSET (THOMSON AND CO.) 204 49. CORSET OF MESSRS. DE LA GARDE, PARIS (FRONT) 205 50. CORSET OF MESSRS. DE LA GARDE, PARIS (BACK) 208 51. THE REDRESSEUR CORSET OF VIENNA (WEISS) 211 52. THE FASHION OF 1868 222 53. THE ZEPHYRINA JUPON (THOMSON AND CO.) 223 54. TAHITIAN DANCING GIRL AND VENETIAN LADY 224 THE CORSET AND THE CRINOLINE. CHAPTER I. The origin of the Corset--The Indian hunting-belt--Reduction of the figure by the ancient inhabitants of Polenqui--Use of the Corset by the natives of the Eastern Archipelago--Improvements in construction brought about by the advance of civilisation--Slenderness of waist esteemed a great beauty in the East--Earth-eating in Java--Figure-training in Ceylon--The beauties of Circassia, their slender waists and Corsets--Elegant princesses of Crim Tartary--Hindoo belles--Hindoo ideas of beauty--Elegance of figure highly esteemed by the Persians--Letter from a Chinese gentleman (Woo-tan-zhin) on slender waists--Researches amongst the antiquities of Egypt--Fashions of the Egyptian ladies--The Corset in use among the Israelitish ladies--The elegance of their costume, bridal dress, &c.--Scriptural references. For the origin of the corset we must travel back into far antiquity. How far it would be difficult to determine. The unreclaimed savage who, bow in hand, threads the mazes of the primeval forests in pursuit of the game he subsists on, fashions for himself, from the skin of some animal which good fortune may have cast in his way, a belt or girdle from which to suspend his rude knife, quiver, or other hunting gear; and experience teaches him that, to answer the purpose efficiently, it should be moderately broad and sufficiently stiff to prevent creasing when secured round the waist. A sharpened bone, or fire-hardened stick, serves to make a row of small holes at each end; a strip of tendon, or a thong of hide, forms a lace with which the extremities are drawn together, thereby giving support to the figure during the fatigues of the chase. The porcupine's quill, the sea-shell, the wild beast's tooth, and the cunningly-dyed root, all help to decorate and ornament the hunting-belt. The well-formed youths and graceful belles of the tribe were not slow in discovering that, when arrayed in all the panoply of forest finery, a belt well drawn in, as shown in the annexed illustration, served to display the figure to much greater advantage than one carelessly or loosely adjusted. Here, then, we find the first indication of the use of the corset as an article of becoming attire. At the very first dawn of civilisation there are distinct evidences of the use of contrivances for the reduction and formation of the female figure. Researches among the ruins of Polenqui, one of the mysterious forest cities of South America, whose history is lost in remote antiquity, have brought to light most singular evidences of the existence of a now forgotten race. Amongst the works of art discovered there is a bas-relief representing a female figure, which, in addition to a profusion of massive ornaments, wears a complicated and elaborate waist-bandage, which, by a system of circular and transverse folding and looping, confines the waist from just below the ribs to the hips as firmly and compactly as the most unyielding corset of the present day. At the period of the discovery of some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, it was found customary for all young females to wear a peculiar kind of corset, formed of spirally-arranged rattan cane, and this, when once put on, was not removed until the celebration of the marriage ceremony. Such races as were slowly advancing in the march of civilisation, after discovery by the early navigators, became more and more accustomed to the use of clothing, to adjust and retain which, waistbands would become essentially requisite. These, when made sufficiently broad to fit without undue friction, and stiff enough to prevent folding together in the act of stooping, sitting, or moving about, at once became in effect corsets, and suggested to the minds of the ingenious a system of cutting and fitting so as more perfectly to adapt them to the figure of the wearer. The modes of fastening, as we shall see, have been various, from the simple sewing together with the lace to the costly buckle and jewelled loop and stud. [Illustration: THE DAWN OF THE CORSET.] Investigation proves to us that the taste for slender waists prevailed even more in the Eastern nations than in those of Europe, and we find that other means besides that of compression have been extensively taken advantage of. Humboldt, in his personal narrative, describes the women of Java, and informs us that the reddish clay called "_ampo_" is eaten by them in order that they may become slim, want of plumpness being a kind of beauty in that country. Though the use of this earth is fatal to health, those desirous of profiting by its reducing qualities persevere in its consumption. Loss of appetite and inability to partake of more than most minute portions of food are not slow in bringing the wished-for consummation about. The inhabitants of Ceylon make a perfect study of the training of the figure to the most slender proportions. Books on the subject are common in that country, and no young lady is considered the perfection of fashionable elegance unless a great number of qualities and graces are possessed; not the least of these is a waist which can be quite or nearly clasped with the two hands; and, as we proceed with our work, it will be seen that this standard for the perfection of waist-measurement has been almost world-wide. From the coral-fringed and palm-decked islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean we have but to travel to the grass-clad Yaila of Crim Tartary and the rock-crowned fastnesses of Circassia, to see the same tastes prevailing, and even more potent means in force for the obtainment of a taper form. Any remarks from us as to the beauty of the ladies of Circassia would be needless, their claim to that enviable endowment being too well established to call for confirmation at our hands, and that no pains are spared in the formation of their figures will be best seen by a quotation from a recent traveller who writes on the subject:-- "What would" (he says) "our ladies think of this fashion on the part of the far-famed beauties of Circassia? The women wear a corset made of 'morocco,' and furnished with two plates of wood placed on the chest, which, by their strong pressure, prevent the expansion of the chest; this corset also confines the bust from the collar-bones to the waist by means of a cord which passes through leather rings. They even wear it during the night, and only take it off when worn out, to put on another quite as small." He then speaks of the daughters of Osman Oglow, and says, "Their figures were tightened in an extraordinary degree, and their _anteries_ were clasped from the throat downwards by silver plates." These plates are not only ornamental, but being firmly sewn to the two busks in front of the corset, and being longest at the top and narrowest at the waist, when clasped, as shown in the accompanying illustration, any change in fit or adjustment is rendered impossible. It will be seen on examination that at each side of the bottom of the corsage is a large round plate or boss of ornamental silver. These serve as clasps for the handsomely-mounted silver waist-belt, and by their size and position serve to contrast with the waist, and make it appear extremely small. That the elegancies of female attire have been deeply studied even among the Tartars of the Crimea will be seen by the following account, written by Madame de Hell, of her visit to Princess Adel Beg, a celebrated Tartar beauty:-- "Admitted into a fairy apartment looking out on a terraced garden, a curtain was suddenly raised at the end of the room, and a woman of striking beauty entered, dressed in rich costume. She advanced to me with an air of remarkable dignity, took both my hands, kissed me on the two cheeks, and sat down beside me, making many demonstrations of friendship. She wore a great deal of rouge; her eyelids were painted black, and met over the nose, giving her countenance a certain sternness, which, nevertheless, did not destroy its pleasing effect. A furred velvet vest fitted tight to her still elegant figure, and altogether her appearance surpassed what I had conceived of her beauty. After some time, when I offered to go, she checked me with a very graceful gesture, and said eagerly, 'Pastoi, pastoi,' which is Russian for 'Stay, stay,' and clapped her hands several times. A young girl entered at the signal, and by her mistress's orders threw open a folding-door, and immediately I was struck dumb with surprise and admiration by a most brilliant apparition. Imagine, reader, the most exquisite sultanas of whom poetry and painting have ever tried to convey an idea, and still your conception will fall far short of the enchanting models I had then before me. There were three of them, all equally graceful and beautiful. They were clad in tunics of crimson brocade, adorned in front with broad gold lace. The tunics were open, and disclosed beneath them cashmere robes with very tight sleeves, terminating in gold fringes. The youngest wore a tunic of azure-blue brocade, with silver ornaments; this was the only difference between her dress and that of her sisters. All three had magnificent black hair escaping in countless tresses from a fez of silver filigree, set like a diadem over their ivory foreheads. They wore gold-embroidered slippers and wide trousers drawn close at the ankle. I had never beheld skins so dazzlingly fair, eyelashes so long, or so delicate a bloom of youth." [Illustration: CIRCASSIAN LADY.] [Illustration: EGYPTIAN LADY IN FULL SKIRT.] The Hindoos subject the figures of their dancing-girls and future belles to a system of very careful training; in all their statues, from those of remote antiquity, to be seen in the great cave temples of Carlee Elanra, and Elephanta, to those of comparatively modern date, the long and slender waist is invariably associated with other attributes of their standard of beauty. "Thurida," the daughter of Brahama, is thus described by a Hindoo writer:-- "This girl" (he informs us) "was of a yellow colour, and had a nose like the flower of resamum; her legs were taper, like the plantain tree; her eyes large, like the principal leaf of the lotus; her eyebrows extended to her ears; her lips were red, and like the young leaves of the mango tree; her face was like the full moon; her voice like the sound of the cuckoo; her arms reached to her knees; her throat was like that of a pigeon; her loins narrow, like those of a lion; her hair hung in curls down to her feet; her teeth were like the seeds of the pomegranate; and walk like that of a drunken elephant or a goose." The Persians entertain much the same notions with regard to the necessity for slenderness of form in the belles of their nation, but differ in other matters from the Hindoos. The following illustration represents a dancing-girl of Persia, and it will be seen that her figure bears no indication of neglect of cultivation. It is somewhat curious that the Chinese, with all their extraordinary ingenuity, have confined their restrictive efforts to the feet of the ladies, leaving their waists unconfined. That their doing so is more the result of long-established custom than absence of admiration for elegantly-proportioned figures will be clearly proved by the following extract from a letter published in _Chambers' Journal_, written by a genuine inhabitant of the Celestial Empire, named Woo-tan-zhin, who paid a visit to England in 1844-45. Thus he describes the ladies of England:-- "Their eyes, having the blue tint of the waters of autumn, are charming beyond description, and their waists are laced as tight and thin as a willow branch. What, perhaps, caught my fancy most was the sight of elegantly-dressed young ladies, with pearl-like necks and tight-laced waists; nothing can possibly be so enchanting as to see ladies that compress themselves into taper forms of the most exquisite shape, the like of which I have never seen before." By many writers it has been urged that the admiration so generally felt for slenderly-proportioned and taper waists results from an artificial taste set up by long custom; but in Woo-tan-zhin's case it was clearly not so, as the small-waisted young ladies of the "outer barbarians" were to him much as some new and undescribed flowers or birds would be to the wondering naturalist who first beheld them. Although researches among the antiquities of Egypt and Thebes fail to bring to our notice an article of dress corresponding with the waist-bandage of Polenqui or the strophium of later times, we find elaborately-ornamented waist-belts in general use, and by their arrangement it will be seen that they were so worn as to show the waist off to the best advantage. The accompanying illustrations represent Egyptian ladies of distinction. The dress in the first, it will be observed, is worn long. A sort of transparent mantle covers and gives an appearance of width to the shoulders, whilst a coloured sash, after binding the waist, is knotted in front, and the ends allowed to fall freely over the front of the dress, much as we have seen it worn in our own time; and it is most remarkable that, although there is no evidence to show the use of crinoline by the ladies of old Egypt, the lower border of the skirt, in some instances, appears distended as in the prior illustration; whilst in others, as shown in the second engraving, the dress is made to fit the lower portion of the figure closely, barely affording scope for the movement of the legs in walking. How often these arrangements of dress have been in turn adopted and discarded will be seen as our work proceeds. [Illustration: PERSIAN DANCING GIRL.] [Illustration: EGYPTIAN LADY IN NARROW SKIRT.] The following extract from Fullam will show that Fashion within the shadow of the Pyramids, in the days of the Pharaohs, reigned with power as potent and supreme as that which she exercises in the imperial palaces of Paris and Vienna at the present day:-- "The women of Egypt early paid considerable attention to their toilet. Their dress, according to Herodotus, consisted usually of but one garment, though a second was often added. Among the upper orders the favourite attire was a petticoat tied round the waist with a gay sash, and worn under a robe of fine linen or a sort of chintz variously coloured, and made large and loose, with wide sleeves, the band being fastened in front just under the bust. Their feet were incased in sandals, the rudiment of the present Eastern slipper, which they resembled also in their embroidery and design. Their persons and apparel, in conformity with Oriental taste in all ages, were profusely decked with ornaments, 'jewels of silver and jewels of gold,' with precious gems of extraordinary size, of which imitations, hardly distinguishable from the real stones, were within the reach of the humblest classes, whose passion for finery could not be surpassed by their superiors. The richly carved and embroidered sandals, tied over the instep with tassels of gold, were surmounted by gold anklets or bangles, which, as well as the bracelets encircling the wrist, sparkled with rare gems; and necklaces of gold or of beautiful beads, with a pendant of amethysts or pearls, hung from the neck. Almost every finger was jewelled, and the ring finger in particular was usually allotted several rings, while massive earrings shaped like hoops, or sometimes taking the form of a jewelled asp or of a dragon, adorned the ears. Gloves were used at a very early date, and among the other imperishable relics of that olden time the tombs of Egypt have rendered up to us a pair of striped linen mittens, which once covered the hands of a Theban lady. "Women of quality inclosed their hair with a band of gold, from which a flower drooped over the forehead, while the hair fell in long plaits to the bosom, and behind streamed down the back to the waist. The side hair was secured by combs made of polished wood or by a gold pin, and perhaps was sometimes adorned, like the brow, with a favourite flower. The toilet was furnished with a brazen mirror, polished to such a degree as to reflect every lineament of the face, and the belles of Egypt, as ladies of the present day may imagine, spent no small portion of their time with this faithful counsellor. The boudoirs were not devoid of an air of luxury and refinement particularly congenial to a modern imagination. A stand near the unglazed window supported vases of flowers, which filled the room with delicious odours; a soft carpet overspread the floor; two or three richly-carved chairs and an embroidered fauteuil afforded easy and inviting seats; and the lotus and papyrus were frescoed on the walls. Besides the brazen mirror, other accessories of the toilet were arranged on the ebony table, and boxes and caskets grotesquely carved, some containing jewels, others furnished with oils and ointments, took their place with quaintly-cut smelling bottles, wooden combs, silver or bronze bodkins, and lastly, pins and needles. "Seated at this shrine, the Egyptian beauty, with her dark glance fixed on the brazen mirror, sought to heighten those charms which are always most potent in their native simplicity. A touch of collyrium gave illusive magnitude to her voluptuous eyes; another cosmetic stained their lids; a delicate brush pencilled her brows--sometimes, alas! imparted a deceitful bloom to her cheeks; and her taper fingers were coloured with the juice of henna. Precious ointments were poured on her hair, and enveloped her in an atmosphere of perfume, while the jeweller's and milliner's arts combined to decorate her person." In Sir Gardner Wilkinson's admirable work on ancient Egypt, to which I am indebted for some valuable information, there is a plate representing a lady in a bath with her attendants, drawn from a sculpture in a tomb at Thebes, whence we may derive some faint idea of the elaborate character of an Egyptian toilet. The lady is seated in a sort of pan, with her long hair streaming over her shoulders, and is supported by the arm of an attendant, who, with her other hand, holds a flower to her nose, while another damsel pours water over her head, and a third washes and rubs down her delicate arms. A fourth maiden receives her jewels, and deposits them on a stand, where she awaits the moment when they will be again required. There appears little doubt that the ancient Israelitish ladies, amongst their almost endless and most complex articles of adornment, numbered the corset in a tolerably efficient form, and of attractive and rich material, for we read in the twenty-fourth verse of the third chapter of Isaiah, referring to Divine displeasure manifested against the people of Jerusalem and Judah, and the taking away of matters of personal adornment from the women, that "instead of a girdle there should be a rent, and instead of well-set hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth, and burning instead of beauty." Here we have the coarse, repulsive, unattractive sackcloth held up in marked contrast to the stomacher, which was without question a garment on which much attention was bestowed; and the following extract from Fullam's _History of Woman_ shows how costly and magnificent was the costume of the period:-- "The bridal dress of a princess or Jewish lady of rank, whose parents possessed sufficient means, was of the most sumptuous description, as may be seen from the account given of that worn by the bride of Solomon in the Canticles, and the various articles enumerated show the additions which feminine taste had already made to the toilet. The body was now clothed in a bodice ascending to the network which inclosed, rather than concealed, the swelling bust; and jewelled clasps and earrings, with strings of pearls and chains of gold, gave a dazzling effect to Oriental beauty. In Solomon's reign silk is said to have been added to the resources of the toilet, and the sex owe to a sister, Pamphyla, the daughter of Patous, the discovery of this exquisite material, in which woman wrested from Nature a dress worthy of her charms. "The ordinary attire of Jewish women was made of linen, usually white, without any intermixture of colours, though, in accordance with the injunction in Numbers xv. 38, they made 'fringes in the borders of their garments,' and 'put upon the fringe of the borders a riband of blue.' Judith, when she sought to captivate Holofernes, 'put on her garments of gladness, wherewith she was clad during the life of Manasses her husband; and she took sandals upon her feet, and put about her bracelets, and her chains, and her rings, and her earrings, and all her ornaments, and decked herself bravely to allure the eyes of all men that should see her.' Gemmed bangles encircled her ankles, attracting the glance to her delicate white feet; and Holofernes, by an Oriental figure of speech, is said to have been 'ravished by the beauty of her sandals.' Like the belles of Egypt she did not disdain, in setting off her charms, to have recourse to perfumes and cosmetics, and previously to setting out she 'anointed herself with precious ointment.' In another place Jezebel is said to 'paint her eyelids;' and Solomon, in the Proverbs, in describing the deceitful woman, adjures his son not to be 'taken with her eyelids,' evidently alluding to the use of collyrium. The Jewish beauty owed no slight obligation to her luxuriant tresses, which were decorated with waving plumes and strings of pearls; and in allusion to this custom, followed among the tribes from time immemorial, St. Paul affirms that 'a woman's ornament is her hair.' Judith 'braided the hair of her head and put a tire upon it;' and the headdress of Pharaoh's daughter, in the Canticles, is compared by Solomon to Carmel. No mention is made of Judith's mirror, but it was undoubtedly made of brass, like those described in Exodus xxxviii. 8 as 'the looking-glasses of the women which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.'" [Illustration] CHAPTER II. Homer the first ethnic writer who speaks of an article of dress allied to the Corset--The cestus or girdle of Venus--Terentius, the Roman dramatist, and his remarks on the practice of tight-lacing--The use of the strophium by the ladies of Rome, and the mitra of the Grecian belles--The peplus as worn by the ancients--Toilet of a Roman lady of fashion--Roman baths--Fashionable promenades of Ancient Rome--Boundless luxury and extravagance--Cleopatra and her jewels--The taper waists and tight-lacing of the ancient Roman ladies--Conquest of the Roman Empire. Amongst the ethnic writers, Homer appears to be the first who describes an article of female dress closely allied to the corset. He tells us of the cestus or girdle of Venus, mother of the Loves and Graces, and of the haughty Juno, who was fabled to have borrowed it with a view to the heightening and increasing her personal attractions, in order that Jupiter might become a more tractable and orderly husband. The poet attributes most potent magical virtues to the cestus, but these are doubtlessly used in a figurative sense, and Juno, in borrowing the cestus, merely obtained from a lady of acknowledged elegance of figure a corset with which to set her own attractions off to the best possible advantage, so that her husband might be charmed with her improved appearance; and Juno appears to have been a very far-seeing and sensible woman. From periods of very remote antiquity, and with the gradual increase of civilisation, much attention appears to have been paid to the formation and cultivation of the female figure, and much the same means were had recourse to for the achievement of the same end prior to 560 B.C. as in the year 1868. Terentius, the Roman dramatist, who was born in the year 560, causes one of his characters, in speaking of the object of his affections, to exclaim-- "This pretty creature isn't at all like our town ladies, whose mothers saddle their backs and straitlace their waists to make them well-shaped. If any chance to grow a little plumper than the rest, they presently cry, 'She's an hostess,' and then her allowance must be shortened, and though she be naturally fat and lusty, yet by her dieting she is made as slender as a broomstick. By this means one woodcock or another is caught in their springe." [Illustration: LADY OF ANCIENT GREECE.] Strutt informs us that the Roman women, married as well as unmarried, used girdles, and besides them they sometimes wore a broad swath or bandage round their breasts, called strophium, which seems to have answered the purpose of the bodice or stays, and had a buckle or bandage on the left shoulder, and that the mitra or girdle of the Greeks probably resembled the strophium of the Romans. The annexed illustration represents a lady of Ancient Greece. He also speaks of the Muses as being described by Hesiod as being girt with golden "_mitres_," and goes on to inform us that Theocritus in one of his pastorals introduces a damsel complaining to a shepherd of his rudeness, saying he had loosened her mitra or girdle, and tells her he means to dedicate the same to Venus. So it will be seen that the waist and its adornment were considered at that early period of the world's history matters of no ordinary importance, and whether the term strophium, zone, mitra, custula, stays, bodice, or corset is made use of, the end sought to be obtained by their aid was the same. Constant mention is made by early writers of the _peplus_ as being a very elegant garment, and there are notices of it as back as the Trojan war, and the ladies of Troy appear to have generally worn it. On the authority of Strutt, it may be stated to have been "a thin light mantle worn by Grecian ladies above the tunic;" and we read that Antinous presented to Penelope a beautiful large and variegated peplus, having twelve buckles of gold, with tongues neatly curved. The peplus, however, was a very splendid part of the lady's dress, and it is rarely mentioned by Homer without some epithet to distinguish it as such. He calls it the _variegated_ peplus and the painted peplus, alluding to ornamental decorations either interwoven or worked with the needle upon it, which consisted not only in diversity of colours, but of flowers, foliage, and other kinds of imagery, and sometimes he styles it the _soft purple peplus_, which was then valuable on account of the excellence of the colour. We learn from a variety of sources that the early Roman and Grecian ladies indulged in almost unprecedented luxury in matters of personal adornment, as the following extract from Fullam will show:-- "The toilet of a Roman lady involved an elaborate and very costly process. It commenced at night, when the face, supposed to have been tarnished by exposure, was overlaid with a poultice, composed of boiled or moistened flour spread on with the fingers. Poppæan unguents sealed the lips, and the body was profusely rubbed with Cerona ointment. In the morning the poultice and unguents were washed off; a bath of asses' milk imparted a delicate whiteness to the skin, and the pale face was freshened and revived with enamel. The full eyelids, which the Roman lady still knows so well how to use--now suddenly raising them, to reveal a glance of surprise or of melting tenderness, now letting them drop like a veil over the lustrous eyes--the full, rounded eyelids were coloured within, and a needle dipped in jetty dye gave length and sphericity to the eyebrows. The forehead was encircled by a wreath or fillet fastened in the luxuriant hair which rose in front in a pyramidal pile formed of successive ranges of curls, and giving the appearance of more than ordinary height. "'So high she builds her head, she seems to be, View her in front, a tall Andromache; But walk all round her, and you'll quickly find She's not so great a personage behind.' "Roman ladies frequented the public baths, and it was not unusual for dames of the highest rank to resort to these lavatories in the dead hour of the night. Seated in a palanquin or sedan borne by sturdy chairmen, and preceded by slaves bearing flambeaux, they made their way through the deserted streets, delighted to arouse and alarm their neighbours. A close chair conveyed the patrician matron to the spectacles and shows, to which she always repaired in great state, surrounded by her servants and slaves, the dependants of her husband, and the clients of her house, all wearing the badge of the particular faction she espoused. The factions of the circus were four in number, and were distinguished by their respective colours of blue, green, white, and red, to which Domitian, who was a zealous patron of the Circensian games, added the less popular hues of gold and purple. But the spectators generally attached themselves either to the blue or the green, and the latter was the chief favourite, numbering among its adherents emperors and empresses, senators, knights, and noble dames, as well as the great mass of the people, who, when their champions were defeated, carried their partisanship to such an extreme that the streets were repeatedly deluged with the blood of the blues, and more than once the safety of the state was imperilled by these disgraceful commotions. "The public walks and gardens were a fashionable resort of the Roman ladies. There they presented themselves in rich costume, which bore testimony alike to the wealth of their husbands and their own taste. A yellow tire or hood partly covered, but did not conceal, their piled hair; their vest of muslin or sarcenet, clasped with gems, was draped with a murry-coloured robe descending to their high-heeled Greek boots; necklaces of emerald hung from their swan-like necks, and jewelled earrings from their ears; diamonds glittered on their fingers, and their dazzling complexions were shielded from the sun by a parasol." The researches of Strutt show us that the shoes of the ladies, and especially among the Romans, proved a very expensive part of the dress. In general they were white, but persons of opulence did not confine themselves to any colour. We find them black, scarlet, purple, yellow, and green. They were often not only richly adorned with fringes and embroideries of gold, but set with pearls and precious stones of the most costly kind, and these extravagances were not confined to persons of rank. They were imitated by those of lower station, and became so prevalent at the commencement of the third century, that even the luxurious Emperor Heliogabalus thought it necessary to publish an edict prohibiting the use of such expensive shoes excepting to women of quality. The women wore the close shoe or _calceus_. Gloves, too, as we have seen before, were known and used in very early ages, and it appears probable that they were first devised by those whose labours called them to the thick-tangled thorn coverts, but that they were worn by those who did not labour is clearly proved by Homer, who describes the father of Ulysses when living in a state of rest as wearing gloves; but he gives us no information as to the material from which they were manufactured. The Romans appear to have been much more addicted to the practice of wearing gloves than the Greeks, and we are informed that "under the emperors they were made with fringes," though others were without them, and were fashioned much after the manner of the mittens of the present day. Further on we learn that "as riches and luxury increased, the lady's toilet was proportionately filled with ornaments for the person, so that it was called '_the woman's world_.'" They not only anointed the hair and used rich perfumes, but sometimes they _painted it_. They also made it appear of a bright yellow colour by the assistance of washes and compositions made for that purpose; but they never used powder, which is a much later invention. They frizzled and curled the hair with hot irons, and sometimes they raised it to a great height by rows of curls one above another in the form of a helmet, and such as had not sufficient hair of their own used false hair to complete the lofty pile, and these curls appear to have been fashioned with hairpins. The Grecian virgins used to braid their hair in a multiplicity of knots, but that custom, as well as painting the under part of the eyelids with black paint, was discommended by an ancient poet. Persons of rank had slaves to perform for them the offices of the toilet. They held the mirror in their hand themselves and gave directions, and Martial tells us that, if the slaves unfortunately placed a hairpin wrong, or omitted to twist the curls exactly as they were ordered, the mirror was thrown at the offender's head, or, according to Juvenal, the whip was applied with much severity. The hair was adorned with ornaments of gold, with pearls and precious stones, and sometimes with garlands or chaplets of flowers. It was also bound with fillets and ribbons of various colours and kinds. The net or hair-caul for the purpose of inclosing the hinder part of the hair was in general use with the Grecian and Roman ladies. These ornaments were frequently enriched with embroidery, and sometimes made so thin that Martial sarcastically called them "_bladders_." Again, in the matter of _earrings_, we quote from the same valuable and trustworthy authority. No adornment of the head claims priority to earrings. They have been fashionable, as Montfaucon justly observes, in all ages and almost all nations. It is evident from Homer that the Grecian women bored their ears for the admission of these ornaments. The poet gives earrings to the goddess Juno, and the words he uses on the occasion are literally these:--"In her well-perforated ears she put the earrings of elaborate workmanship, having three eyes in each"--that is, three pendants or jewels, either made in the form of eyes, or so called from their brightness. The extravagance of the Grecian and Roman ladies in the purchase of these articles of adornment almost exceeds belief. Pliny says, "They seek for pearls at the bottom of the Red Sea, and search the bowels of the earth for emeralds to ornament their ears;" and Seneca tells us that "a single pair of earrings was worth the revenue of a large estate, and that some women would wear at their ears the price of two or three patrimonies." We read that the earrings worn by Cleopatra were valued at £161,458, and that Servilia, the mother of Brutus, was presented with a pair by Julius Cæsar, the value of which was £48,457. Bracelets are also ornaments of high antiquity, as are rings and brooches of various forms for fastening the dress. Rich gold chains and jewelled fastenings were in common use during this period. The annexed illustration represents a Roman lady of rank about the reign of Heliogabalus. Little alteration appears to have taken place in the general style of costume for some very considerable period of time, and the patrician ladies concealed beneath their flowing draperies a kind of corset, which they tightened very considerably, for a slight and tapering waist was looked upon as a great beauty in women, and great attention was paid to the formation of the figure, in spite of all that has been written about the purely natural and statuesque forms of the Roman matrons. On the conquest of the Roman Empire by the wild and savage Hunnish tribes, fashion, art, taste, literature, and civilisation were swept ruthlessly away, and a long, weird night of mental darkness may be said to have reigned throughout the land from the tenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, and we see little or nothing of Roman elegance or magnificence of dress to distinguish it above other nations from that period. [Illustration] [Illustration: ROMAN LADY OF RANK (REIGN OF HELIOGABALUS).] CHAPTER III. The ladies of Old France--Their fashions during the reign of King Pepin--Revival of the taste for small waists--Introduction of "_cottes hardies_"--Monkish satire on the Corset in England in the year 1043, curious MS. relating to--The small waists of the thirteenth century--The ancient poem of _Launfal_--The Lady Triamore, daughter of the King of the Fairies--Curious entry in the household register of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, date 1265--Corsets worn by gentlemen at that period--The kirtle as worn in England--The penance of Jane Shore--Dress of Blanche, daughter of Edward III--Dunbar's _Thistle and Rose_--Admiration for small waists in Scotland in the olden time--Chaucer's writings--Small waists admired in his day--The use of the surcoat in England--Reckless hardihood of a determined tailor--The surcoat worn by Marie d'Anjou of France--Italian supremacy in matters of dress--The Medici, Este, and Visconti--Costume of an Italian duchess described--Freaks of fashion in France and Germany--Long trains--Laws to restrain the length of skirts--Snake-toed shoes give place to high-heeled slippers. Research fails to show us that the ladies of France in their simple Hersvingian and Carlovingian dresses paid any attention to the formation of the waist or its display. But during the ninth century we find the dresses worn extremely tight, and so made as to define the waist and render it as slim as possible; and although the art of making the description of corsets worn by the ladies of Rome was no doubt at that time lost, the revived taste for slender figures led to the peculiar form of corsage known as _cottes hardies_, which were much stiffened and worn extremely tight. These took the place of the quaint, oddly-formed robes we see draping the figures of Childeric's and Pepin's queens. The "_cottes hardies_" were, moreover, clasped at the waist by a broad belt, and seem pretty well to have merited their martial name. Very soon after this period it is probable that a much more complete description of corset was invented, although we do not find any marked representation of its form until 1043. A manuscript of that date at present in the British Museum bears on it the strange and anomalous figure represented in the annexed illustration. Opinions vary somewhat as to whether its origin might not have been Italian, but we see no reason for adopting this view, and consider it as of decidedly home production. It will be seen that the shoulder, upper part of the arm, and figure are those of a well-formed female, who wears an unmistakable corset, tightly laced, and stiffened by two busks in front, from one of which the lace, with a tag at the end, depends. The head, wings, tail, feet, and claws are all those of a demon or fiend. The drapery is worn so long as to render large knots in it requisite to prevent dragging on the ground. The ring held in the left claw is of gold, and probably intended to represent a massive and costly bracelet. Produced, as this MS. appears to have been, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, there is little doubt that it was a severe monkish satire on the prevailing fashion, and a most ungallant warning to the male sex that alabaster shoulders and slender waists were too often associated with attributes of a rather brimstone character, and that an inordinate love of long, trailing garments and ornaments of precious metals were snares and enticements of a sinister nature. Many of the figures to be found on ancient MSS. after this period show by their contour that the corset was worn beneath the drapery, and Strutt, whose work was published in 1796, thus writes of the customs relating to dress in the period following shortly after:--"In the thirteenth century, and probably much prior to that period, a long and slender waist was considered by our ancestors as a criterion of elegance in the female form. We ought not, therefore, to wonder if it be proved that the tight lacing and compressing of the body was practised by the ladies even in early times, and especially by such of them as were inclined to be corpulent." He then, in order to show at what an early date of the history of this country a confirmed taste for small waists existed, quotes from a very ancient poem, entitled _Launfal_, in which the Lady Triamore, daughter of the King of the Fairies, and attendant ladies are described. Of two of the latter it is said-- "Their kirtles were of rede cendel,[1] I laced smalle, jollyf, and well, There might none gayer go." [1] A rich description of silk. [Illustration: THE FIEND OF FASHION, FROM AN ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT.] In the French version of the same poem it is, we read, more fully expressed. It says, "They were richly habited and very tightly laced." The Lady Triamore is thus described:-- "The lady was in a purple pall, With gentill bodye and middle small." Wharton quotes from an ancient poem, which he believes to date as far back as 1200, in which a lover, speaking of the object of his admiration, thus throws down the gauntlet of challenge, and exclaims-- "Middle her she hath mensk small." The word _mensk_ or _maint_ being used instead of very or much. Some differences of opinion have existed among writers as to the origin of the word _corset_. Some are of opinion that the French words _corps_, the body, and _serrer_ (to tightly inclose or incase), led to the adoption of the term. Madame La Sante gives it as her opinion, however, that it is more probably a corruption of the single word _corps_, which was formerly written _cors_, and may be taken as a diminutive form of it. Another view of the matter has been that the name of a rich material called _corse_, which was at one time extensively used in the manufacture of corsets, may have been thus corrupted. This is scarcely probable, as the word corset was in use at too early a period to admit of that origin. Perhaps as early an instance of the use of the term corset as any in existence may be found as a portion of an entry in the household register of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, which bears the date May 24, 1265:-- "Item: Pro ix ulnis radii. Pariensis pro robas æstivas corsetto et clochia pro eodem."[2] [2] Item: For nine ells, Paris measure, for summer robes, corsets, and cloaks for the same. The persons for whom these garments were made were Richard, King of the Normans, and Edward, his son, whose death occurred in the year 1308. So that corsets were, even in those early days, used by gentlemen as well as ladies. The term kirtle, so often referred to, may not clearly convey to the mind of the modern reader the nature of the garment indicated by it, and therefore it may not be amiss to give Strutt's description of it. He says, "The kirtle, or, as it was anciently written '_kertel_,' is a part of the dress used by the men and the women, but especially by the latter. It was sometimes a habit of state, and worn by persons of high rank." The garment sometimes called a "_surcol_" Chaucer renders _kirtle_, and we have no reason to dispute his authority. Kirtles are very frequently mentioned in old romances. They are said to have been of different textures and of different colours, but especially of green; and sometimes they were laced closely to the body, and probably answered the purpose of the bodice or stays--_vide Launfal_, before referred to:-- "Their kirtles were of rede cendel, I laced smalle, jollyf, and well." To appear in a kirtle only seems to have been a mark of servitude. Thus the lady of Sir Ladore, when he feasted the king, by way of courtesy waited at the table-- "The lady was gentyll and small, In kirtle alone she served in hall." We are further informed that at the close of the fifteenth century it was used as a habit of penance, and we read that Jane Shore, when performing penance, walked barefoot, a lighted taper in her hand, and having only her kirtle upon her back. John Gower, however, who wrote at about the same period as Chaucer, thus describes a company of ladies. They were, says he, "clothed all alike, in kirtles with rich capes or mantles, parti-coloured, white, and blue, embroidered all over with various devices." Their bodies are described as being long and small, and they had crowns of gold upon their heads, as though each of them had been a queen. We find that the tight-laced young ladies of the court of the Lady Triamore "had mantles of green-coloured velvet, handsomely bordered with gold, and lined with rich furs. Their heads were neatly attired in kerchiefs, and were ornamented with cut work and richly-striped wires of gold, and upon their kerchiefs they had each of them a pretty coronal, embellished with sixty gems or more;" and of their pretty mistress it is said in the same poem, that her cheeks were as red as the rose when it first blossoms. Her hair shone upon her head like golden wire, falling beneath a crown of gold richly ornamented with precious stones. Her vesture was purple, and her mantle, lined with white ermine, was also elegantly furred with the same. The Princess Blanche, the daughter of Edward III., the subject of the annexed illustration, appears to have copied closely the dress above described, and, like the maids of honour of the Lady Triamore herself, she is not only richly habited but thoroughly well-laced as well. Thus we see, in the year 1361, the full influence of the corset on the costume of that period. There is another poem, said to be more ancient than even _Launfal_, which, no doubt, served to give a tone and direction to the fashions of times following after. Here we find a beautiful lady described as wearing a splendid girdle of beaten gold, embellished with rubies and emeralds, about her _middle small_. [Illustration: THE PRINCESS BLANCHE, DAUGHTER OF EDWARD III.] Gower, too, when describing a lover who is in the act of admiring his mistress, thus writes:-- "He seeth hir shape forthwith, all Hir bodye round, hir middle small." That the taste for slender figures was not confined to England will be shown by the following quotation from Dunbar's _Thistle and Rose_. When the belles of Scotland grouped together are described he tells us that "Their middles were as small as wands." A great number of ancient writings descriptive of female beauty go clearly to prove that both slenderness and length of waist were held in the highest esteem and considered indispensable elements of elegance, and there can be no question that such being the case no pains were spared to acquire the coveted grace a very small, long, and round waist conferred on its possessor. The lower classes were not slow in imitating their superiors, and the practice of tight lacing prevailed throughout every grade of society. This was the case even as far back as Chaucer's day, about 1340. He, in describing the carpenter's wife, speaks of her as a handsome, well-made young female, and informs us that "her body was genteel" (or elegant) and "small as a weasel," and immediately afterwards that she was "Long as a maste, and upright as a bolt." Notwithstanding the strict way in which the waist was laced during the thirteenth century, the talents of the ingenious were directed to the construction of some article of dress which should reduce the figure to still more slender proportions, and the following remarks by Strutt show that tight lacing was much on the increase from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries. He says-- "A small waist was decidedly, as we have seen before, one criterion of a beautiful form, and, generally speaking, its length was currently regulated by a just idea of elegance, and especially in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth the women seem to have contracted a vitiated taste, and not being content with their form as God hath made it, introduced the corset or bodice--a stiff and unnatural disguisement even in its origin." [Illustration: LADY OF RANK OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.] How far this newly-introduced form of the corset became a "disguisement" will be best judged of by a glance at the foregoing illustration, which represents a lady in the dress worn just at the close of the thirteenth century. The term _surcoat_ was given to this new introduction. This in many instances was worn over the dress somewhat after the manner of the body of a riding-habit, being attached to the skirt, which spreads into a long trailing train. An old author, speaking of these articles of dress, thus writes:-- "There came to me two women wearing _surcoats_, longer than they were tall by about a yard, so that they were obliged to carry their trains upon their arms to prevent their trailing upon the ground, and they had sleeves to these surcoats reaching to the elbows." The trains of these dresses at length reached such formidable dimensions that Charles V. of France became so enraged as to cause an edict to be issued hurling threats of excommunication at the heads of all those who dared to wear a dress which terminated "like the tail of a serpent." Notwithstanding this tremendously alarming threat, a tailor was found fully equal to the occasion, who, in spite of the terrors inspired by candle, bell, and book, set to work (lion-hearted man that he was) and made a magnificent surcoat for Madame du Gatinais, which not only trailed far behind on the ground, but actually "took _five yards of Brussels net for sleeves, which also trailed_." History, or even tradition, fails to inform us what dreadful fate overtook this desperate tailor after the performance of a feat so recklessly daring; but we can scarcely fancy that his end could have been of the kind common to tailors of less audacious depravity. The bodies of these surcoats were very much stiffened, and so made as to admit of being laced with extreme tightness. They were often very richly ornamented with furs and costly needlework. As fashion changed, dresses were made with open fronts, so as to be worn over the surcoat without altogether concealing it. A portrait of Marie d'Anjou, Queen of France, shows this arrangement of costume. The waist appears very tightly laced, and the body of the surcoat much resembles the modern bodice, but is made by stiffening and cut to perform the part of a very strong and efficient corset. Until the termination of the fourteenth century very little change appears to have been made either in costume or the treatment of the figure, but at the commencement of the fifteenth century, when such noble families as the Medici, Este, and Visconti established fashions and styles of costume for themselves, each house vied with the other in the splendour of their apparel. The great masters of the period, by painting ideal compositions, also gave a marked tone to the increasing taste for dress. The costume of an Italian duchess, whose portrait is to be seen in the Academy at Pisa, has been thus described:--"The headdress is a gold coronet, the chemisette is finely interwoven with gold, the under-dress is black, the square bodice being bordered with white beads, the over-dress is gold brocade, the sides are open, and fastened together again with gold _agrafes_; the loose sleeves, like the chemisette, are of golden tissue, fastened to the shoulders with _agrafes_. The under-sleeves, which are of peculiar construction, and are visible, are crimson velvet, and reach to the centre of the hand. They are cut out at the wrists, and white puffings of the same material as the chemisette protrude through the openings." In both France and Germany a great many strange freaks of fashion appear to have been practised about this time. The tight, harlequin-like dress was adopted by the gentlemen, whilst the long trains again stirred the ire of royalty. We find Albert of Saxony issuing the following laws:--"No wives or daughters of knights are to wear dresses exceeding one yard and a-half in length, no spangles in their caps, nor high frills round their throats." During the reign of the Dauphin in France many changes in dress were effected. The length of the sleeves was much curtailed, and the preposterously long toes of the shoes reduced to a convenient standard. The ladies appear to have for some time resisted the innovation, but one Poulaine, an ingenious Parisian shoemaker, happening to devise a very attractive shoe with a heel fitted to it, the ladies hailed joyfully the new favourite, and the old snake-toed shoe passed away. Still, it was no uncommon thing to see some fop of the period with one shoe white and the other black, or one boot and one shoe. [Illustration: LADY OF THE COURT OF QUEEN CATHERINE DE MEDICI.] [Illustration: FULL COURT DRESS AS WORN IN FRANCE, 1515.] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. The _bonnet à canon_ and sugarloaf headdress--Headdress of the women of Normandy at the present day--Odd dress of King Louis XI.--Return of Charles VIII. from Naples--A golden time for tailors and milliners--General change of fashion--Costumes of the time of Francis I. of France and Maximilian of Germany--General use of pins in France and England--Masks worn in France--Establishment of the empire of Fashion in France--The puffed or _bouffant_ sleeves of the reign of Henry II.--The Bernaise dress--Costume of the unfortunate Marie Stuart--Rich dresses and long slender waists of the period--The tight-lacing of Henry III. of France--The Emperor Joseph of Austria, his edict forbidding the use of stays, and how the ladies regarded it--Queen Catherine de Medici and Queen Elizabeth of England--The severe form of Corsets worn in both France and England--The _corps_--Steel Corset covers of the period--Royal standard of fashionable slenderness--The lawn ruffs of Queen Bess--The art of starching--Voluminous nether-garments worn by the gentlemen of the period--Fashions of the ladies of Venice--Philip Stubs on the ruff--Queen Elizabeth's collection of false hair--Stubs furious at the fashions of ladies--King James and his fondness for dress and fashion--Restrictions and sumptuary laws regarding dress--Side-arms of the period. From about 1380 to some time afterwards headdresses of most singular form of construction were in general wear in fashionable circles. One of these, the _bonnet à canon_, was introduced by Isabel of Bavaria. The "_sugarloaf_" headdress was also in high esteem, and considered especially becoming and attractive. The accompanying illustration faithfully represents both of these. The latter in a modified form is still worn by the women of Normandy. Throughout the reign of Louis XI. dress continued to be most sumptuous in its character. Velvet was profusely worn, with costly precious stones encircling the trimmings. Sumptuary laws were issued right and left, with a view to the correction of so much extravagance, whilst the king himself wore a battered, shabby old felt cap, with a bordering of leaden figures of the Virgin Mary round it. The rest of his attire was plain and simple to a degree. [Illustration: LADIES OF FASHION IN THE COSTUME OF 1380.] [Illustration: NORMAN HEADDRESS OF THE PRESENT DAY.] Next we see his successor, Charles VIII., returning as a conqueror from Naples, dressed in the first style of Italian fashion. Then came a period of intense activity on the part of milliners and tailors, and a short time sufficed to completely metamorphose the reigning belles of the nation. Smaller, much more becoming and coquettish headdresses were introduced, and a general change of style brought about. Germany participated in the same sudden change of fashion, which lasted until the reign of Francis I. Accompanying illustrations represent a lady of the court of Maximilian I. of Germany, and a lady of the court of Francis I. of France. During his reign pins came into general use both in France and England, although their use had been known to the most ancient races, numerous specimens having been discovered in the excavations of Thebes and other Old World cities. Ladies' masks or visors were also introduced in France at this period, but they did not become general in England until the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was about this time that France commenced the establishment of her own fashions and invented for herself, and that the ladies of that nation became celebrated for the taste and elegance of their raiment. On Henry II. succeeding Charles this taste was steadily on the increase. The _bouffant_, or puffed form of sleeve, was introduced, and a very pretty and becoming style of headdress known as the _Bernaise_. The illustration shows a lady wearing this, the feather being a mark of distinction. The dress is made of rich brocade, and the waist exceedingly long (period, 1547.) The right-hand figure represents the unfortunate Marie Stuart arrayed in a court dress of the period, 1559. On the head is a gold coronet; her under-dress is gold brocade, with gold arabesque work over it; the over-dress is velvet, trimmed with ermine; the girdle consisted of costly strings of pearls; the sleeves are of gold-coloured silk, and the puffings are separated from each other by an arrangement of precious stones; the front of the dress is also profusely ornamented in the same manner; the frill or ruff was made from costly lace from Venice or Genoa, and was invented by this very charming but unfortunate lady; the form of the waist is, as will be seen on reference to this illustration, long, and shows by its contour the full influence of the tightly-laced corset beneath the dress, which fits the figure with extraordinary accuracy. At this time Fashion held such despotic sway throughout the continent of Europe, that the Emperor Joseph of Austria, following out his extraordinary penchant for the passing of edicts, and becoming alarmed at the formidable lures laid out for the capture of mankind by the fair sex, passed a law rigorously forbidding the use of the corset in all nunneries and places where young females were educated; and no less a threat than that of excommunication, and the loss of all the indulgences the Church was capable of affording, hung over the heads of all those evil-disposed damsels who persisted in a treasonable manner in the practice of confining their waists with such evil instruments as stays. Royal command, like an electric shock, startled the College of Physicians into activity and zeal, and learned dissertations on the crying sin of tight lacing were scattered broadcast amongst the ranks of the benighted and tight-laced ladies of the time, much as the advertisements of cheap furnishing ironmongers are hurled into the West-End omnibuses of our own day. It is proverbial that gratuitous advice is rarely followed by the recipient. Open defiance was in a very short time bid to the edicts of the emperor and the erudite dissertations of the doctors. The corsets were, if possible, laced tighter than ever, and without anything very particular happening to the world at large in consequence. [Illustration: LADY OF THE COURT OF CHARLES VIII., 1560.] [Illustration: LADY OF THE COURT OF MAXIMILIAN OF GERMANY AND FRANCIS OF FRANCE.] [Illustration: CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE TIME OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI.] [Illustration: CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (OPEN).] [Illustration: THE BERNAISE HEADDRESS, AND COSTUME OF MARIE STUART.] On Queen Catherine de Medici, who, it will be seen, was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England, assuming the position of power which she so long maintained at the court of France, costume and fashion became her study, and at no period of the world's history were its laws more tremendously exacting, and the ladies of her court, as well as those in distinguished circles, were compelled to obey them. With her a thick waist was an abomination, and extraordinary tenuity was insisted on, thirteen inches waist measure being the standard of fashionable elegance, and in order that this extreme slenderness might be arrived at she herself invented or introduced an extremely severe and powerful form of the corset, known as the _corps_. It is thus described by a talented French writer:--"This formidable corset was hardened and stiffened in every imaginable way; it descended in a long hard point, and rose stiff and tight to the throat, making the wearers look as if they were imprisoned in a closely-fitting fortress." And in this rigid contrivance the form of the fair wearer was incased, when a system of gradual and determined constriction was followed out until the waist arrived at the required degree of slenderness, as shown in the annexed illustration. Several writers have mentioned the "_steel corsets_" of this period, and assumed that they were used for the purpose of forcibly reducing the size of the waist. In this opinion they were incorrect, as the steel framework in question was simply used to wear over the corset after the waist had been reduced by lacing to the required standard, in order that the dress over it might fit with inflexible and unerring exactness, and that not even a fold might be seen in the faultless stomacher then worn. These corsets (or, more correctly, corset-covers) were constructed of very thin steel plate, which was cut out and wrought into a species of open-work pattern, with a view to giving lightness to them. Numbers of holes were drilled through the flat surfaces between the hollows of the pattern, through which the needle and thread were passed in covering them accurately with velvet, silk, or other rich materials. During the reign of Queen Catherine de Medici, to whom is attributed the invention of these contrivances, they became great favourites, and were much worn, not only at her court, but throughout the greater part of the continent. They were made in two pieces, opened longitudinally by hinges, and were secured when closed by a sort of _hasp and pin_, much like an ordinary box fastening. At both the front and back of the corsage a long rod or bar of steel projected in a curved direction downwards, and on these bars mainly depended the adjustment of the long peaked body of the dress, and the set of the skirt behind. The illustration at page 71 gives a view of one of those ancient dress-improvers. [Illustration: CORSET-COVER OF STEEL WORN IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (CLOSED).] [Illustration: HENRY III. OF FRANCE AND THE PRINCESS MARGARET OF LORRAINE.] [Illustration: LADY OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.] The votaries of fashion of Queen Elizabeth's court were not slow in imitating in a rough manner the new continental invention, and the illustrations at pages 72 and 76, taken from photographs, will show that, although not precisely alike, the steel corset-covers of England were much in principle like those of France, and the accompanying illustration represents a court lady in one of them. We have no evidence, however, that their use ever became very general in this country, and we find a most powerful and unyielding form of the corset constructed of very stout materials and closely ribbed with whalebone superseding them. This was the _corps_ before mentioned, and its use was by no means confined to the ladies of the time, for we find the gentlemen laced in garments of this kind to no ordinary degree of tightness. That this custom prevailed for some very considerable time will be shown by the accompanying illustration, which represents Queen Catherine's son, Henry III. (who was much addicted to the practice of tight lacing), and the Princess Margaret of Lorraine, who was just the style of figure to please his taste, which was ladylike in the extreme. Eardrops in his ears, delicate kid gloves on his hands; hair dyed to the fashionable tint, brushed back under a coquettish little velvet cap, in which waved a white ostrich's feather; hips bolstered and padded out, waist laced in the very tightest and most unyielding of corsets, and feet incased in embroidered satin shoes, Henry was a true son of his fashionable mother, only lacking her strong will and powerful understanding. England under Elizabeth's reign followed close on the heels of France in the prevailing style of dress. From about the middle of her reign the upper classes of both sexes carried out the custom of tight lacing to an extreme which knew scarcely any bounds. The corsets were so thickly quilted with whalebone, so long and rigid when laced to the figure, that the long pointed stomachers then worn fitted faultlessly well, without a wrinkle, just as did the dresses of the French court over the steel framework before described. The following lines by an old author will give some idea of their unbending character:-- "These privie coats, by art made strong, With bones, with paste, with such-like ware, Whereby their back and sides grow long, And now they harnest gallants are; Were they for use against the foe Our dames for Amazons might go." On examining the accompanying illustration representing a lady of the court of Queen Elizabeth, it will be observed that the farthingale, or verdingale, as it is sometimes written, and from which the modern crinoline petticoat is borrowed, serves to give the hips extraordinary width, which, coupled with the frill round the bottom of the stomacher, gave the waist the appearance of remarkable slenderness as well as length. The great size of the frills or ruffs also lent their aid in producing the same effect. It was in the reign of Elizabeth that the wearing of lawn and cambric commenced in this country; previously even royal personages had been contented with fine holland as a material for their ruffs. When Queen Bess had her first lawn ruffs there was no one in England who could starch them, and she procured some Dutch women to perform the operation. It is said that her first starcher was the wife of her coachman, Guillan. Some years later one Mistress Dinghen Vauden Plasse, the wife of a Flemish knight, established herself in London as a professed starcher. She also gave lessons in the art, and many ladies sent their daughters and kinswomen to learn of her. Her terms were five pounds for the starching and twenty shillings additional for learning to "seeth" the starch. Saffron was used with it to impart to it a yellow colour which was much admired. The gentlemen of the period indulged in nether garments so puffed out and voluminous that the legislature was compelled to take the matter in hand. We read of "a man who, having been brought before the judges for infringing the law made against these extensive articles of clothing, pleaded the convenience of his pockets as an excuse for his misdemeanour. They appeared, indeed, to have answered to him the purposes both of wardrobe and linen cupboard, for from their ample recesses he drew forth the following articles--viz., a pair of sheets, two tablecloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a comb, besides nightcaps and other useful things; his defence being--'Your worship may understand that because I have no safer storehouse these pockets do serve me for a roome to lay up my goodes in; and though it be a strait prison, yet it is big enough for them.'" His discharge was granted, and his clever defence well laughed at. [Illustration: A VENETIAN LADY OF FASHION, 1560.] [Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH.] The Venetian ladies appear to have been fully aware of the reducing effect of frills and ruffs on the apparent size of waist of the wearer, and they were, as the annexed illustration will show, worn of extraordinary dimensions; but the front of the figure was, of course, only displayed, and on this all the decoration and ornamentation that extravagant taste could lavish was bestowed. The Elizabethan ruff, large as it was, bore no comparison with this, and was worn as shown in the accompanying portrait of the "Virgin Queen," who indulged in numerous artifices for heightening her personal attractions. The ruffs and frills of the period so excited the ire of Philip Stubs, a citizen of London, that in his work, dated 1585, he thus launches out against them in the quaint language of the time:-- "The women there vse great ruffes and neckerchers of holland, laune, cameruke, and such clothe as the greatest threed shall not be so big as the least haire that is, and lest they should fall downe they are smeared and starched in the devil's liquor, I mean starche; after that dried with great diligence, streaked, patted, and rubbed very nicely, and so applied to their goodly necks, and withal vnderpropped with supportasses (as I told you before), the stately arches of pride; beyond all this they have a further fetche, nothing inferiour to the rest, as namely--three or four degrees of minor ruffes placed _gradation_, one beneath another, and al under the mayster deuilruffe. The skirtes, then, of these great ruffes are long and wide, every way pleated and crested full curiously, God wot! Then, last of all, they are either clogged with gold, silver, or silk lace of stately price, wrought all over with needleworke, speckeled and sparkeled here and there with the sunne, the mone, the starres, and many other antiques strange to beholde. Some are wrought with open worke downe to the midst of the ruffe, and further, some with close worke, some wyth purled lace so cloied, and other gewgaws so pestered, as the ruffe is the least parte of itselfe. Sometimes they are pinned upp to their eares, sometimes they are suffered to hange over theyr shoulders, like windemill sailes fluttering in the winde; and thus every one pleaseth her selfe in her foolish devises." In the matter of false hair her majesty Queen Elizabeth was a perfect connoisseur, having, so it is said, eighty changes of various kinds always on hand. The fashionable ladies, too, turned their attention to artificial adornment of that kind with no ordinary energy, and poor old Stubs appears almost beside himself with indignation on the subject, and thus writes about it:--"The hair must of force be curled, frisled, and crisped, laid out in wreaths and borders from one ear to another. And, lest it should fall down, it is underpropped with forks, wires, and I cannot tell what, rather like grim, stern monsters than chaste Christian matrons. At their hair thus wreathed and crested are hanged bugles, ouches, rings, gold and silver glasses, and such like childish gewgaws." The fashion of painting the face also calls down his furious condemnation, and the dresses come in for a fair share of his vituperation, and their length is evidently a source of excessive exasperation. We give his opinions in his own odd, scolding words:-- "Their gownes be no less famous than the rest, for some are of silke, some velvet, some of grograine, some of taffatie, some of scarlet, and some of fine cloth of x., xx., or xl. shillings a yarde. But if the whole gowne be not silke or velvet, then the same shall be layd with lace two or three fingers broade all over the gowne, or els the most parte, or if not so (as lace is not fine enough sometimes), then it must bee garded with great gardes of velvet, every yard fower or sixe fingers broad at the least, and edged with costly lace, and as these gownes be of divers and sundry colours, so are they of divers fashions--chaunging with the moone--for some be of new fashion, some of the olde, some of thys fashion, and some of that; some with sleeves hanging downe to their skirtes, trailing on the ground, and cast over their shoulders like cows' tailes; some have sleeves muche shorter, cut vp the arme and poincted with silke ribbons, very gallantly tied with true love's knottes (for so they call them); some have capes reachyng downe to the midest of their backes, faced with velvet, or els with some wrought silke taffatie at the least, and fringed about very bravely (and to shut vp all in a worde), some are peerled and rinsled downe the backe wonderfully, with more knackes than I can declare. Then have they petticoates of the beste clothe that can be bought, and of the fayrest dye that can be made. And sometimes they are not of clothe neither, for that is thought too base, but of scarlet grograine, taffatie, silke, and such like, fringed about the skirtes with silke fringe of chaungeable colour, but whiche is more vayne, of whatsoever their petticoates be yet must they have kirtles (for so they call them), either of silke, velvett, grogaraine, taffatie, satten, or scarlet, bordered with gardes, lace, fringe, and I cannot tell what besides." History fails to enlighten us as to whether the irascible Stubs was blessed with a stylish wife and a large family of fashionable daughters, but we rather incline to the belief that he must have been a confirmed old bachelor, as we cannot find that he was ever placed in a lunatic asylum, a fate which would inevitably have befallen him if the fashions of the time had been brought within the sphere of his own dwelling. It is somewhat singular that, writing, as he did, in the most violent manner against almost every article of personal adornment, and every artifice of fashionable life, the then universal and extreme use of the corset should have escaped censure at his hands. King James, who succeeded Elizabeth, manifested an inordinate fondness for dress. We read that--"Not only his courtiers, but all the youthful portion of his subjects, were infected in a like manner, and the attire of a fashionable gentleman in those days could scarcely have been exceeded in fantastic device and profuse decoration. The hair was long and flowing, falling upon the shoulders; the hat, made of silk, velvet, or beaver (the latter being most esteemed), was high-crowned, narrow-brimmed, and steeple-shaped. It was occasionally covered with gold and silver embroidery, a lofty plume of feathers, and a hatband sparkling with gems being frequently worn with it. It was customary to dye the beard of various colours, according to the fancy of the wearer, and its shape also differed with his profession. The most effeminate fashion at this time was that of wearing jewelled rings in the ears, which was common among the upper and middle ranks. Gems were also suspended to ribbons round the neck, while the long 'lovelock' of hair so carefully cherished under the left ear was adorned with roses of ribbons, and even real flowers. The ruff had already been reduced by order of Queen Elizabeth, who enacted that when reaching beyond 'a nayle of a yeard in depth' it should be clipped. In the early part of her reign the doublet and hose had attained a preposterous size, especially the nether garments, which were stuffed and bolstered with wool and hair to such an extent that Strutt tells us, on the authority of one of the Harleian manuscripts, that a scaffold was erected round the interior of the Parliament House for the accommodation of such members as wore them! This was taken down in the eighth year of Elizabeth's reign, when this ridiculous fashion was laid aside. The doublet was afterwards reduced in size, but still so hard-quilted that the wearer could not stoop to the ground, and was incased as in a coat of mail. In shape it was like a waistcoat, with a large cape, and either close or very wide sleeves. These latter were termed _Danish_. A cloak of the richest materials, embroidered in gold or silver, and faced with foxskin, lambskin, or sable, was buttoned over the left shoulder. None, however, under the rank of an earl were permitted to indulge in sable facings. The hose were either of woven silk, velvet, or damask; the garters were worn externally below the knee, made of gold, silver, or velvet, and trimmed with a deep gold fringe. Red silk stockings, parti-coloured gaiters, and even 'cross gartering' to represent the Scotch tartan, were frequently seen. The shoes of this period were cork-soled, and elevated their wearers at least two or three inches from the ground. They were composed of velvet of various colours, worked in the precious metals, and if fastened with strings, immense roses of ribbon were attached to them, variously ornamented, and frequently of great value, as may be seen in Howe's continuation of Stowe's Chronicle, where he tells us 'men of rank wear garters and shoe-roses of more than five pounds price.' The dress of a gentleman was not considered perfect without a dagger and rapier. The former was worn at the back, and was highly ornamented. The latter having superseded, about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, the heavy two-handed sword, previously used in England, was, indeed, chiefly worn as an ornament, the hilt and scabbard being always profusely decorated." [Illustration] CHAPTER V. Strange freaks of Louise de Lorraine--One of her adventures--Her dress at a royal _fête_--Marie de Medici--The distended dresses of her time--Hair-powder--Costume _à la enfant_--Escapade of the young Louis--Low dresses of the period--The court of Louis XIV. of France--High heels, slender waists, and fancy costumes--The Siamese dress--Charles I. of England--Patches introduced--Elaborate costumes of the period--Puritanism, its effect on the fashions--Fashions in Cromwell's time, and the general prevalence of the practice of tight-lacing--The ladies of Augsburg described by Hoechstetterus. Little change appears to have taken place in the prevailing fashions of England for some considerable time after this period. In France two opposing influences sprang up. Henry III., as we have seen, was the slave of fashion, and mainly occupied his time in devising some new and extravagant article of raiment. His wife, Louise de Lorraine, on the other hand, although exceedingly handsome, was of a gloomy, stern, and ascetic disposition, dressing more like a nun than the wife of so gay a husband. She caused numerous sumptuary laws to be framed, in order to, if possible, reduce the style of ladies' dress to a standard nearer her own; and the following anecdote will serve to show the petty spirit in which her powers were sought to be exercised. [Illustration: COURT DRESS DURING THE BOYHOOD OF LOUIS XIII.] [Illustration: MARIE DE MEDICI.] A writer on her life says, "She was accustomed to go out on foot with but a single attendant, both habited plainly in some woollen fabric, and one day, on entering a mercer's shop in the Rue St. Denis, she encountered the wife of a president tricked out superbly in the latest fashions of the day. The subject did not recognise the sovereign, who inquired her name, and received for answer that she was called 'La Présidente de M.,' the information being given curtly, and with the additional remark, 'to satisfy your curiosity.' To this the queen replied, 'But, Madame la Présidente, you are very smart for a person of your condition.' Still the interrogator was not recognised, and Madame la Présidente, with that pertness so characteristic of ordinary womankind, replied, 'At any rate, you did not pay for my smartness.' Scarcely was this retort completed when it dawned upon the speaker that it was the queen who had been putting these posing questions, and then a scene followed of contrite apology on the one hand, and remonstrance on the frivolity of smart attire on the other, both very easy to imagine." With all this pretended simplicity and humility, Queen Louise, on certain occasions, indulged in the most lavish display of her personal attractions. It is related of her that on the marriage of her sister Margaret, she attended a magnificent _fête_ given at the Hôtel de Bourbon, and made her appearance in the saloon or grand ball-room as the leader of twelve beautiful young ladies, arrayed as Naiads. The queen wore a dress of silver cloth, with a tunic of flesh-coloured and silver _crêpes_ over it; on her head she wore a splendid ornament, composed of triangles of diamonds, rubies, and various other gems and precious stones. Still the king was the acknowledged leader of fashion, which the queen did all in her power to suppress, except when it suited her royal caprice to astonish the world with her own elegance. Henry IV. appears to have had no especial inclination for matters relating to fashion, and the world wagged much as it pleased so far as he was concerned. On his marrying, however, his second wife, Marie de Medici, another ardent supporter of all that was splendid, sumptuous, and magnificent was found. His first wife, indeed, Marguerite de Valois, had strong fashionable proclivities, but she was utterly eclipsed by the new star, whose portrait is the subject of the accompanying illustration, in which it will be seen that the wide hips and distended form of dress accompany the long and narrow waist. This style of costume remained popular, as did hair-powder, which was introduced in consequence of the grey locks of Henry IV., until the boy-king Louis XIII., who was placed under the control and regency of his mother, caused by his juvenile appearance a marked change in the fashions of the time. The men shaved off their whiskers and beards, and the ladies brushed back their hair _à l'enfant_, and as about this time Marie showed strong indications of a tendency towards portliness, the hoops were discarded; and short waists, laced to an extreme degree of tightness, long trailing skirts, and very high-heeled shoes were introduced. The dresses of this period of sudden change were worn excessively low, and it is said of young Louis that he was so alarmed, enraged, and astonished at the sight of the white shoulders of a lady of high position that he threw a glass of wine over them, and precipitately quitted the scene of his discomfiture. The annexed illustration shows the style of dress after the changes above referred to. The next noteworthy changes we shall see taking place during the reign of Charles I. in England and Louis XIV. of France. The court of the _Grand Monarque_ was one of extraordinary pomp and magnificence; flowing ringlets, shoes with heels of extraordinary height, and waists of extreme slenderness were the rage. Fancy costumes were also much affected. The accompanying illustration represents a lady and gentleman of the period equipped for the _chase_, but of what it would be difficult to say, unless butterflies were considered in the category of game. The so-called Siamese dress, which became so generally popular, was worn first during the reign of Louis XIV. Many of these dresses were extremely rich and elegant; one is described as having the tunic or upper-skirt composed of scarlet silk with brocaded gold flowers. The under-skirt was of green and gold, with frills of exquisite work from the elbow to the wrist. The accompanying illustration represents a court lady dressed in this style, and that which follows it a fancy dress of the same period. It was in this reign that the coloured and ornamented clocks to ladies' stockings first made their appearance. Patches for the face were first worn in England during the reign of Charles, although they continued in use for a great number of years, and the following satirical lines were written by an old author regarding them and one of their wearers:-- "Your homely face, Flippanta, you disguise With patches numerous as Argus' eyes; I own that patching's requisite for you, For more we're pleased the less your face we view; Yet I advise, since my advice you ask, Wear but one patch, and be that patch a mask." [Illustration: FANCY COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV.] [Illustration: SIAMESE DRESS WORN AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.] The fashions set by the court of Louis were eagerly seized on by the whole of Europe. The flowing curls, lace cuffs, and profuse embroidery in use at the court of Charles of England were all borrowed from France, but the general licence and laxity of the period for some short time showed itself in the dress of the ladies, whilst fickleness and love of change, accompanied by thoughtless luxury and profusion, prevailed. The following complaint of a lady's serving-man, dated 1631, will show that the Puritans were not without reason in condemning the extravagances of the time:-- "Here is a catalogue as tedious as a taylor's bill of all the devices which I am commanded to provide (_videlicet_):-- "Chains, coronets, pendants, bracelets, and earrings, Pins, girdles, spangles, embroidaries, and rings, Shadomes, rebatacs, ribbands, ruffs, cuffs, falls, Scarfs, feathers, fans, maskes, muffes, laces, cauls, Thin tiffanies, cobweb lawn, and fardingales, Sweet sals, vyles, wimples, glasses, crumping pins, Pots of ointment, combs, with poking-sticks, and bodkins, Coyfes, gorgets, fringes, rowels, fillets, and hair laces, Silks, damasks, velvets, tinsels, cloth of gold, Of tissues with colours a hundredfold, But in her tyres so new-fangled is she That which doth with her humour now agree, To-morrow she dislikes; now doth she swear That a losse body is the neatest weare, But ere an hour be gone she will protest A strait gown graces her proportion best. "Now calls she for a boisterous fardingale, Then to her hips she'll have her garments fall. Now doth she praise a sleeve that's long and wide, Yet by and by that fashion doth deride; Sometimes she applauds a pavement-sweeping train, And presently dispraiseth it again; Now she commands a shallow band so small That it may seem scarce any band at all; But now a new fancy doth she reele, And calls for one as big as a coach-wheele; She'll weare a flowry coronet to-day, The symbol of her beauty's sad decay; To-morrow she a waving plume will try, The emblem of all female levitie; Now in her hat, then in her hair is drest, Now of all fashions she thinks change the best." On Puritanism becoming general the style of dress adopted by the so-called "Roundheads," as a contrast to that of the hated "Cavaliers," was stiff, prim, and formal to a degree; and during Cromwell's sway as Protector, small waists, stiff corsets, and very tight lacing again became the fashion; and Bulwer, who writes in 1653, in speaking of the young ladies of his day, says, "They strive all they possibly can by streight lacing themselves to attain unto a wand-like smallness of waist, never thinking themselves fine enough until they can span their waists." The annexed illustration, adapted by us from his work, _The Artificial Changeling_, represents a young lady who has achieved the desired tenuity. He also quotes from Hoechstetterus, who in his description of "_Auspurge_, the metropolis of _Swevia_," 1653 (meaning Augsburg, the capital of _Suabia_), "They are," saith he, describing the virgins of Auspurge, "slender, streight laced, with '_demisse_' (sloping) shoulders, lest being grosse and well made they should be thought to have too athletique bodies." So throughout the length and breadth of Europe the use of tightly-laced corsets remained general. [Illustration: YOUNG ENGLISH LADY OF FASHION, 1653.] [Illustration: FANCY DRESS WORN IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.] CHAPTER VI. Fashion during the reign of Louis XV.--Costumes _à la_ Watteau--An army of barbers--The fashions of England during the reign of Queen Anne--The diminutive waist and enormous hoop of her day--The farthingale: letters in the _Guardian_ protesting against its use--Fashion in 1713--Low dresses, tight stays, and short skirts: letters relating to--Correspondence touching the fashions of that period from the _Guardian_--Accomplishments of a lady's-maid--Writings of Gay and Ben Jonson--Their remarks on the "_bodice_" and "_stays_." At the death of Louis XIV. and the accession of his successor, Louis XV., in 1715, fashions ran into wonderful extremes and caprices. Hoops became the rage, as did patches, paint, and marvellously high-heeled shoes. The artistic skill of Watteau in depicting costume and devising the attributes of the favourite fancy dresses of the time, led to their adoption among the votaries of fashion. Shepherds who owned no sheep were tricked out in satins, laces, and ribbons, and tripped it daintily hand in hand with the exquisitely-dressed, slender-waisted shepherdesses we see reproduced in Dresden china and the accompanying illustration. Guitars tinkled beneath the trees of many a grove in the pleasure-grounds of the fine old châteaux of France; fruit strewed on the ground, costly wines in massive flagons, groups of gay gallants and charming belles, such as the accompanying illustration represents, engaged in love-making, music and flirtation, make up the scene on which Watteau loved most to dwell, and which King Louis' gay subjects were not slow in performing to the life, and the happy age of the poet appeared all but realised:-- "There was once a golden time When the world was in its prime-- When every day was holiday, And every shepherd learned to love." To carry out the everyday life of this dream world, no small amount of sacrifice and labour was needed, and we are informed that over twelve hundred hairdressers were in full occupation in Paris alone, frizzing, curling, and arranging in a thousand and one fantastical ways, hours being needed to perfect the head-gear of a lady of _ton_. For the prevailing fashions of England we must step back a few years, and glance at the latter portion of the reign of Queen Anne, at which time we find the diminutive size of the waist in marked contrast to the enormous dimensions of the hoop or farthingale, which reached such a formidable size that numerous remonstrances appeared in the journals of the day relative to it. The following letter complaining of the grievance appeared in the _Guardian_ of July 22, 1713:-- "MR. GUARDIAN,--Your predecessor, the _Spectator_, endeavoured, but in vain, to improve the charms of the fair sex by exposing their dress whenever it launched into extremities. Amongst the rest the great petticoat came under his consideration, but in contradiction to whatever he has said, they still resolutely persist in this fashion. The form of their bottom is not, I confess, altogether the same, for whereas before it was one of an orbicular make, they now look as if they were pressed so that they seem to deny access to any part but the middle. Many are the inconveniences that accrue to her majesty's loving subjects from the said petticoats, as hurting men's shins, sweeping down the ware of industrious females in the street, &c. I saw a young lady fall down the other day, and, believe me, sir, she very much resembled an overturned bell without a clapper. Many other disasters I could tell you of that befall themselves as well as others by means of this unwieldy garment. I wish, Mr. Guardian, you would join with me in showing your dislike of such a monstrous fashion, and I hope, when the ladies see this, the opinion of two of the wisest men in England, they will be convinced of their folly. "I am, sir, your daily reader and admirer, "TOM PAIN." [Illustration: COSTUMES AFTER WATTEAU.] [Illustration: CRINOLINE IN 1713.] The accompanying illustration will show that these remonstrances were not without cause. The fashion of wearing extremely low dresses, with particularly short skirts, also led to much correspondence and many strong remarks, which are duly commented on by the editor of the _Guardian_, assisted by his "_good old lady_," as he calls her, "the Lady Lizard." Thus he writes on the subject under discussion:-- "_Editorial letter._ "GUARDIAN, _July 16, 1713_. "I am very well pleased with this approbation of my good sisters. I must confess I have always looked on the 'tucker' to be the _decus et tutamen_, the ornament and defence of the female neck. My good old lady, the Lady Lizard, condemned this fashion from the beginning, and has observed to me, with some concern, that her sex at the same time they are letting down their stays are tucking up their petticoats, which grow shorter and shorter every day. The leg discovers itself in proportion with the neck, but I may possibly take another occasion of handling this extremity, it being my design to keep a watchful eye over every part of the female sex, and to regulate them from head to foot. In the meantime I shall fill up my paper with a letter which comes to me from another of my obliged correspondents." That these very low dresses were not alone worn in the house and at assemblies, but were also occasionally seen on the promenades, is shown by the following satirical appeal to the editor of the journal from which we have just been quoting, and the accompanying illustration represents the too-fascinating style of costume which caused its writer so much concern:-- "_Wednesday, August 12, 1713._ "Notwithstanding your grave advice to the fair sex not to lay the beauties of their necks so open, I find they mind you so little that we young men are as much in danger as ever. Yesterday, about seven in the evening, I took a walk with a gentleman, just come to town, in a public walk. We had not walked above two rounds when the spark on a sudden pretended weariness, and as I importuned him to stay longer he turned short, and, pointing out a celebrated beauty, 'What,' said he, 'do you think I am made of, that I could bear the sight of such snowy beauties? She is intolerably handsome.' Upon this we parted, and I resolved to take a little more air in the garden, yet avoid the danger, by casting my eyes downwards; but, to my unspeakable surprise, discovered in the same fair creature the finest ankle and prettiest foot that ever fancy imagined. If the petticoats as well as the stays thus diminish, what shall we do, dear Mentor? It is neither safe to look at the head nor the feet of the charmer. Whither shall we direct our eyes? I need not trouble you with my description of her, but I beg you would consider that your wards are frail and mortal. "Your most obedient servant, "EPERNECTISES." [Illustration: LOW BODIES AND CURTAILED CRINOLINE.] There is no source, perhaps, from which a clearer view of the fashions of this period, and mode of thought then entertained concerning them, could be obtained than the antiquated journal we have just quoted from. The opinions therein expressed, and the system of reasoning adopted by some of the contributors to its columns, are so singularly quaint that we cannot resist giving the reader the benefit of them. The happy vein of philosophy possessed by the writer of the following letter must have made the world a mere pleasure-garden, through which he wandered at his own sweet will, "king of the universe:"-- "GUARDIAN, _Friday, May 8th, 1713_. "When I walk the streets I use the foregoing natural maxim (viz., that he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it) to convince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight the eye and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gaily attired only to please me. I have a real and they only an imaginary pleasure from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses and stars, brocades and embroidered cloths which I see at a play or birthnight, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those who wear them; and I look on the beaux and ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am growing one of the richest men in Great Britain, with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares or the envy of others." The reply to the foregoing letter by a lady of fashion, written with a strong dash of satire, is equally curious in its way, as it shows the great importance attached to a pleasing and attractive exterior:-- "_To the Editor of the_ GUARDIAN. "_Tuesday, May 19th, 1713._ "SIR,--I am a lady of birth and fortune, but never knew till last Thursday that the splendour of my equipage was so beneficial to my country. I will not deny that I have dressed for some years out of the pride of my heart, but am very glad that you have so far settled my conscience in that particular that now I can look upon my vanities as so many virtues, since I am satisfied that my person and garb give pleasure to my fellow-creatures. I shall not think the three hours' business I usually devote to my toilette below the dignity of a rational soul. I am content to suffer great torment from my stays that my shape may appear graceful to the eyes of others, and often mortify myself with fasting rather than my fatness should give distaste to any man in England. I am making up a rich brocade for the benefit of mankind, and design in a little time to treat the town with a thousand pounds' worth of jewellery. I have ordered my chariot to be newly painted for your use and the world's, and have prevailed upon my husband to present you with a pair of Flanders mares, by driving them every evening round the ring. Gay pendants for my ears, a costly cross for my neck, a diamond of the best water for my finger shall be purchased, at any rate, to enrich you, and I am resolved to be a patriot in every limb. My husband will not scruple to oblige me in these trifles, since I have persuaded him, from your scheme, that pin-money is only so much money set for charitable uses. You see, sir, how expensive you are to me, and I hope you will esteem me accordingly, especially when I assure you that I am, as far as you can see me, "Entirely yours, "CLEORA." The tight lacing and tremendously stiff corsets of the time were also the subjects of satirical remark in some quarters, and were upheld in others, as the two following letters, copied from the _Guardian_ of 1713, will show:-- "_Thursday, June 18th, 1713._ "SIR,--don't know at what nice point you fix the bloom of a young lady, but I am one who can just look back on fifteen. My father dying three years ago left me under the care and direction of my mother, with a fortune not profusely great, yet such as might demand a very handsome settlement if ever proposals of marriage should be offered. My mother, after the usual time of retired mourning was over, was so affectionately indulgent to me as to take me along with her in all her visits, but still, not thinking she gratified my youth enough, permitted me further to go with my relatives to all the publick cheerful but innocent entertainments, where she was too reserved to appear herself. The two first years of my teens were easy, gay, and delightful; every one caressed me, the old ladies told me how finely I grew, and the young ones were proud of my company; but when the third year had a little advanced, my relations used to tell my mother that pretty Miss Clarey was shot up into a woman. The gentlemen began now not to let their eyes glance over me, and in most places I found myself distinguished, but observed the more I grew into the esteem of their sex, the more I lost the favour of my own; some of those whom I had been familiar with grew cold and indifferent; others mistook by design my meaning, made me speak what I never thought, and so, by degrees, took occasion to break off acquaintance. There were several little insignificant reflections cast upon me, as being a lady of a great many acquaintances, and such like, which I seemed not to take notice of. But my mother coming home about a week ago, told me there was a scandal spread about town by my enemies that would at once ruin me for ever for a beauty. I earnestly intreated her to know it; she refused me, but yesterday it discovered itself. Being in an assembly of gentlemen and ladies, one of the gentlemen, who had been very facetious to several of the ladies, at last turned to me. 'And as for you, madam. Prior has already given us your character:-- "'That air and harmony of shape express, Fine by degrees and beautifully less.' "I perceived immediately a malignant smile display itself in the countenance of some of the ladies, which they seconded with a scornful flutter of the fan, till one of them, unable any longer to contain herself, asked the gentleman if he did not remember what Congreve said about Aurelia, for she thought it mighty pretty. He made no answer, but instantly repeated the verses-- "'The Mulcibers who in the Minories sweat, And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat, Deformed themselves, yet forge those stays of steel, Which arm Aurelia with a shape to kill.' "This was no sooner over but it was easily discernable what an ill-natured satisfaction most of the company took, and the more pleasure they showed by dwelling upon the two last lines, the more they increased my trouble and confusion. And now, sir, after this tedious account, what would you advise me to? Is there no way to be cleared of these malicious calumnies? What is beauty worth that makes the possessed thus unhappy? Why was Nature so lavish of her gifts to me as to make her kindness prove a cruelty? They tell me my shape is delicate, my eyes sparkling, my lips I know not what, my cheeks, forsooth, adorned with a just mixture of the rose and lillie; but I wish this face was barely not disagreeable, this voice harsh and unharmonious, these limbs only not deformed, and then perhaps I might live easie and unmolested, and neither raise love and admiration in the men, nor scandal and hatred in the women. "Your very humble servant, "CLARINA." "_Editor's Reply to Letter of Thursday, June 18th, 1713._ "The best answer I can make my fair correspondent is, that she ought to comfort herself with this consideration, that those who talk thus of her know it is false, but wish to make others believe it is true. 'Tis not they think you deformed, but are vexed that they themselves were not so nicely framed. If you will take an old man's advice, laugh and not be concerned at them; they have attained what they endeavoured if they make you uneasie, for it is envy that has made them. I would not have you with your shape one fiftieth part of an inch disproportioned, nor desire your face might be impoverished with the ruin of half a feature, though numbers of remaining beauties might make the loss insensible; but take courage, go into the brightest assemblies, and the world will quickly confess it to be scandal. Thus Plato, hearing it was asserted by some persons that he was a very bad man--'I shall take care,' said he, 'to live so that nobody will believe them.'" The milliners and lady's-maids of the time were expected to fully understand all matters relating to the training of the figure. A writer of this period, in speaking of the requisite accomplishments of a mantua-maker, says--"She must know how to hide all the defects in the proportions of the body, and must be able to mould the shape by the stays so as to preserve the intestines, that while she corrects the body she may not interfere with the pleasures of the palate." Some difference of opinion has existed as to the period at which the word "stays" was first used to indicate an article of dress of the nature of the corset or bodice. It is evident that the term must have been perfectly familiar long anterior to 1713, as constant use is made of it in the letters we have just given. Gay, who wrote about 1720, also avails himself of it in _The Toilette_-- "I own her taper form is made to please, Yet if you saw her unconfined by _stays_!" The word "boddice," or "bodice," was not unfrequently spelt _bodies_ by old authors, amongst whom may be mentioned Ben Jonson, who wrote about 1600, and mentions "The whalebone man That quilts the _bodies_ I have leave to span." [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. General use of the word "stays" after 1600 in England--Costume of the court of Louis XVI.--Dress in 1776--The formidable stays and severe constriction then had recourse to--The stays drawn by Hogarth--Dress during the French revolutionary period--Short waists and long trains--Writings of Buchan--_Jumpers_ and "_Garibaldis_"--Return to the old practice of tight-lacing--Training of figures: backboards and stocks--Medical evidence in favour of stays--Fashion in the reign of George III.--Stays worn habitually by gentlemen--General use of Corsets for boys on the Continent--The officers of Gustavus Adolphus--The use of the Corset for youths: a letter from a gentleman on the subject of--Evidence regarding the wearing of Corsets by gentlemen of the present day--Remarks on the changes of fashion--The term "Crinoline" not new--Crinoline among the South Sea Islanders--Remarks of Madame La Sante on Crinoline and slender waists--Abstinence from food as an assistance to the Corset--Anecdote from the _Traditions of Edinburgh_--The custom of wearing Corsets during sleep, its growing prevalence in schools and private families: letters relating to--The belles of the United States and their "_illusion waists_"--Medical evidence in favour of moderately tight lacing--Letters from ladies who have been subjected to tight-lacing. For some considerable period of time we find stays much more frequently spoken of than corsets in the writings of English authors, but their use continued to be as general and their form of construction just as unyielding as ever, both at home and abroad. The costume worn at the court of Louis XVI., of which the following illustration will give an idea, depended mainly for its completeness on the form of the stays, over which the elaborately-finished body of the dress was made to fit without fold or crease, forming a sort of bodice, which in many instances was sewn on to the figure of the wearer after the stays had been laced to their extreme limit. The towering headdress and immensely wide and distended skirt gave to the figure an additional appearance of tenuity, as we have seen when describing similar contrivances in former times. Most costly laces were used for the sleeves, and the dress itself was often sumptuously brocaded and ornamented with worked wreaths and flowers. High-heeled shoes were not wanting to complete the rather astounding toilet of 1776. For many years before this time, and, in fact, from the commencement of the eighteenth century, it had been the custom for staymakers, in the absence of any other material strong and unyielding enough to stand the wear and tension brought to bear on their wares, to employ a species of leather known as "_bend_," which was not unlike that used for shoe-soles, and measured very nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness. The stays made from this were very long-waisted, forming a narrow conical case, in the most circumscribed portion of which the waist was closely laced, so that the figure was made upright to a degree. Many of Hogarth's figures, who wear the stays of his time (1730), are erect and remarkably slender-waisted. Such stays as he has drawn are perfectly straight in cut, and are filled with stiffening and bone. [Illustration: COURT DRESS OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVI.] [Illustration: CLASSIC COSTUME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.] In 1760 we find a strong disposition manifested to adopt the so-called classic style of costume. During the French revolutionary movement and in the reign of the First Napoleon, the ladies endeavoured to copy the costume of Ancient Greece, and in 1797 were about as successful in their endeavours as young ladies at fancy dress balls usually are in personating mermaids or fairy queens. The annexed illustration represents the classic style of that period. For several years the ladies of England adopted much the same style of costume, and resorted to loose bodies--if bodies they might be called--long trains, and waists so short that they began and ended immediately under the armpits. The following illustration represents a lady of 1806. Buchan, in writing during this short-waisted, long-trained period, congratulates himself and society at large on the fact of "the old strait waistcoats of whalebone," as he styles them, falling into disuse. Not long after this the laws of fashion became unsettled, as they periodically have done for ages, and the lines written by an author who wrote not long after might have been justly applied to the changeable tastes of this transition period:-- "Now a shape in neat stays, Now a slattern in jumps," these "jumps" being merely loose short jackets, very much like those worn under the name of "_jumpers_" at the present day by shipwrights and some other artificers. The form of the modern "Garibaldi" appears to have been borrowed from this. The reign of relaxation seems to have been of a comparatively short duration indeed, as we see by the remark made by Buchan's son, who edited a new edition of his father's work, _Advice to Mothers_, and an appendix to it:--"Small" (says he) "is the confidence to be placed in the permanent effects of fashion. Had the author lived till the present year (1810), he would have witnessed the fashion of tight lacing revived with a degree of fury and prevailing to an extent which he could form no conception of, and which posterity will not credit. Stays are now composed, not of whalebone, indeed, or hardened leather, but of bars of iron and steel from three to four inches broad, and many of them not less than eighteen in length." The same author informs us that it was by no means uncommon to see "A mother lay her daughter down upon the carpet, and, placing her foot on her back, break half-a-dozen laces in tightening her stays." Those who advocate the use of the corset as being indispensable to the female toilet have much reason on their side when they insist that these temporary freaks of fancy for loose and careless attire only call for infinitely more rigid and severe constriction after they (as they invariably have done) pass away, than if the regular training of the figure had been systematically carried out by the aid of corsets of ordinary power. In a period certainly not much over thirty years, the old-established standard of elegance, "the span," was again established for waist measurement. Strutt, whose work was published in 1796, informs us that in his own time he remembers it to have been said of young women, in proof of the excellence of their shape, that you might _span their waists_, and he also speaks of having seen a singing girl at the Italian Opera whose waist was laced to such an excessive degree of smallness that it was painful to look at her. [Illustration: LADY OF FASHION, 1806.] Pope, in the _Challenge_, in speaking of the improved charms of a beauty of the court of George II., clearly shows in what high esteem a slender figure was held. As a bit of acceptable news, he says-- "Tell Pickenbourg how _slim_ she's grown." There is abundant evidence to show that no ordinary amount of management and training was had recourse to then, as now, for reducing the waists of those whose figures had been neglected to the required standard of fashionable perfection, and that those who understood the art were somewhat chary in conferring the benefit of it. In a poem entitled the _Bassit Table_, attributed to Lady M. W. Montagu, Similinda, in exposing the ingratitude of a rival beauty, exclaims-- "She owes to me the very charms she wears-- An awkward thing when first she came to town, _Her shape unfashioned_ and her face unknown; I introduced her to the park and plays, And by my interest _Cozens made her stays_." A favour in those days no doubt well worthy of gratitude and due consideration. About this time it was the custom of some fashionable staymakers to sew a narrow, stiff, curved bar of steel along the upper edge of the stays, which, extending back to the shoulders on each side, effectually kept them back, and rendered the use of shoulder-straps superfluous. The slightest tendency to stoop was at once corrected by the use of the backboard, which was strapped flat against the back of the waist and shoulders, extending up the back of the neck, where a steel ring covered with leather projected to the front and encircled the throat. The young lady of fashion undergoing the then system of boarding-school training enjoyed no bed of roses, especially if unblessed on the score of slenderness. A hard time indeed must an awkward, careless girl have had of it, incased in stiff, tightly-laced stays, backboard on back, and feet in stocks. She simply had to improve or suffer, and probably did both. It is singular and noteworthy that although so many of the older authors give stays the credit of constantly producing spinal curvature, an able writer on the subject of the present day should make this unqualified assertion:--"To some, stays may have been injurious; fewer evils, so far as my experience goes, have arisen from them than from other causes." It is well known that ladies of the eighteenth century did not suffer from spinal disease in the proportion of those of the nineteenth, which might arise in some degree from the system of education; but some highly-educated women of that period were elegant and graceful figures, and it is well known they generally wore stiff stays, though their make, it must be admitted, was less calculated to injure the figure than many of those of the present day. The author we have just quoted goes on to say--"Mr. Walker, in ridiculing the practice of wearing stays, has chosen a very homely and not very correct illustration of the human figure. 'The uppermost pair of ribs,' says he, 'which lie just at the bottom of the neck, are very short. The next pair are rather longer, the third longer still, and thus they go on increasing in length to the seventh pair, or last true ribs, after which the length diminishes, but without materially contracting the size of the cavity, because the false ribs only go round a part of the body. Hence the chest has a sort of conical shape, or it may be compared to a common beehive, the narrow pointed end being next the neck, and the broad end undermost; the natural form of the chest, in short, is just the reverse of the fashionable shape of the waist; the latter is narrow below and wide above, the former is narrow above and wide below.' Surely, when the idea struck him, he must have been gazing on a living skeleton, uncovered with muscle. After reading his observations, I took the measure of a well-formed little girl, seven years of age, who had never worn stays, and found the circumference of the bust just below the shoulders one inch and a-half larger than at the lower part of the waist." The views of the author just quoted seem to be borne out by the researches of a French physician of high standing who has paid much attention to the subject. He positively asserts that "_Corsets cannot be charged with causing deviation of the vertebral column_." After the period referred to by Buchan's son, when tight-lacing was so rigorously revived, we see no diminution of it, and towards the end of George III.'s reign, gentlemen, as well as ladies, availed themselves of the assistance of the corset-maker. Advertising tailors of the time freely advertised their "Codrington corsets" and "Petersham stiffners" for gentlemen of fashion, much as the "Alexandra corset," or "the Empress's own stay," is brought to the notice of the public at the present day. Soemmering informs us that as long ago as 1760, "It was the fashion in Berlin, and also in Holland a few years before, to apply corsets to children, and many families might be named in which parental fondness selected the handsomest of several boys to put in corsets." In France, Russia, Austria, and Germany, this practice has been decidedly on the increase since that time, and lads intended for the army are treated much after the manner of young ladies, and are almost as tightly laced. It is related of Prince de Ligne and Prince Kaunitz that they were invariably incased in most expensively-made satin corsets, the former wearing black and the latter white. Dr. Doran, in writing of the officers of the far-famed "Lion of the North," Gustavus Adolphus, says, "They were the tightest-laced exquisites of suffering humanity." The worthy doctor, like many others who have written on the subject, inseparably associates the habitual wearing of corsets with extreme suffering; but the gentlemen who, like the ladies, have been subjected to the full discipline of the corset, not only emphatically deny that it has caused them any injury, and, beyond the inconvenience experienced on adopting any new article of attire, little uneasiness, but, on the contrary, maintain that the sensations associated with the confirmed practice of tight-lacing are so agreeable that those who are once addicted to it rarely abandon the practice. The following letter to the _Englishwoman's Magazine_ of November, 1867, from a gentleman who was educated in Vienna, will show this:-- "MADAM,--May I be permitted for once to ask admission to your 'Conversazione,' and to plead as excuse for my intrusion that I am really anxious to indorse your fair correspondent's (Belle's) assertion that it is those who know nothing practically of the corset who are most vociferous in condemning it? Strong-minded women who have never worn a pair of stays, and gentlemen blinded by hastily-formed prejudice, alike anathematise an article of dress of the good qualities of which they are utterly ignorant, and which consequently they cannot appreciate. On a subject of so much importance as regards comfort (to say nothing of the question of elegance, scarcely less important on a point of feminine costume), no amount of theory will ever weigh very heavily when opposed to practical experience. "The proof of the pudding is a proverb too true not to be acted on in such a case. To put the matter to actual test, can any of the opponents of the corset honestly state that they have given up stays after having fairly tried them, except in compliance with the persuasions or commands of friends or medical advisers, who seek in the much-abused corset a convenient first cause for an ailment that baffles their skill? 'The Young Lady Herself' (a former correspondent) does not complain of either illness or pain, even after the first few months; while, on the other hand, Staylace, Nora, and Belle bring ample testimony, both of themselves and their schoolfellows, as to the comfort and pleasure of tight-lacing. To carry out my first statement as to the truth of Belle's remark, those of the opposite sex who, either from choice or necessity, have adopted this article of attire, are unanimous in its praise; while even among an assemblage of opponents a young lady's elegant figure is universally admired while the cause is denounced. From personal experience, I beg to express a decided and unqualified approval of corsets. I was early sent to school in Austria, where lacing is not considered ridiculous in a gentleman as in England, and I objected in a thoroughly English way when the doctor's wife required me to be laced. I was not allowed any choice, however. A sturdy _mädchen_ was stoically deaf to my remonstrances, and speedily laced me up tightly in a fashionable Viennese corset. I presume my impressions were not very different from those of your lady correspondents. I felt ill at ease and awkward, and the daily lacing tighter and tighter produced inconvenience and absolute pain. In a few months, however, I was as anxious as any of my ten or twelve companions to have my corsets laced as tightly as a pair of strong arms could draw them. It is from no feeling of vanity that I have ever since continued to wear them, for, not caring to incur ridicule, I take good care that my dress shall not betray me, but I am practically convinced of the comfort and pleasantness of tight-lacing, and thoroughly agree with Staylace that the sensation of being tightly laced in an elegant, well-made, tightly-fitting pair of corsets is superb. There is no other word for it. I have dared this avowal because I am thoroughly ashamed of the idle nonsense that is being constantly uttered on this subject in England. The terrors of hysteria, neuralgia, and, above all, consumption, are fearlessly promised to our fair sisters if they dare to disregard preconceived opinions, while, on the other hand, some medical men are beginning slowly to admit that they cannot conscientiously support the extravagant assertions of former days. '_Stay torture_,' '_whalebone vices_,' and 'corset screws' are very terrible and horrifying things upon paper, but when translated into _coutil_ or satin they wear a different appearance in the eyes of those most competent to give an opinion. That much perfectly unnecessary discomfort and inconvenience is incurred by the purchasers of ready-made corsets is doubtless true. The waist measure being right, the chest, where undue constriction will naturally produce evil effects, is very generally left to chance. If, then, the wearer suffers, who is to blame but herself? "The remark echoed by nearly all your correspondents, that ladies have the remedy in their own hands by having their stays made to measure, is too self-evident for me to wish to enlarge upon it; but I do wish to assert and insist that, if a corset allows sufficient room in the chest, the waist may be laced as tightly as the wearer desires without fear of evil consequences; and, further, that the ladies themselves who have given tight-lacing a fair trial, and myself and schoolfellows converted against our will, are the only jury entitled to pronounce authoritatively on the subject, and that the comfortable support and enjoyment afforded by a well-laced corset quite overbalances the theoretical evils that are so confidently prophesied by outsiders. "WALTER." Since it has become a custom to send lads from England to the Continent for education, many of them adhere to the use of the corset on their return, and of the use of this article of attire among the rising generation of the gentlemen of this country there can be no doubt; we are informed by one of the leading corset-makers in London that it is by no means unusual to receive the orders of gentlemen, not for the manufacture of the belts so commonly used in horse-exercise, but veritable corsets, strongly boned, steeled, and made to lace behind in the usual way--not, as the corset-maker assured us, from any feeling of vanity on the part of the wearers, who so arranged their dresses that no one would even suspect that they wore corsets beneath them, but simply because they had become accustomed to tight-lacing, and were fond of it. So it will be seen that the fair sex are not the only corset-wearers. [Illustration: FASHIONABLE DRESS IN 1824.] [Illustration: LADY OF FASHION, 1827.] During 1824, it will be seen by the accompanying illustration that fashion demanded the contour of the figure should be fully defined, and the absence of any approach to fullness about the skirt below the waist led to the use of very tight stays, in order that there might be some contrast in the outline of the figure. This style of dress, with slight modifications, remained in fashion for several years. In 1827, the dress, as will be seen on reference to the annexed illustration, had changed but little; but three years, or thereabouts, worked a considerable change, and we see, in 1830, sleeves of the most formidable size, hats to match, short skirts, and long slender waists the rage again. A few years later the skirts had assumed a much wider spread; the sleeves of puffed-out pattern were discarded. The waist took its natural position, and was displayed to the best advantage by the expansion of drapery below it, as will be seen on reference to the annexed cut. The term "crinoline" is by no means a new one, and long before the hooped petticoats with which the fashions of the last few years have made us so familiar, the horsehair cloth, so much used for distending the skirts of dresses, was commonly known by that name. It is not our intention here to enter on a description of the almost endless forms which from time to time this adjunct to ladies' dress has assumed. Whether the idea of its construction was first borrowed from certain savage tribes it is difficult to determine. That a very marked and unmistakable form of it existed amongst the natives of certain of the South Sea Islands at their discovery by the early navigators, the curious cut, representing a native belle, will show, and there is no doubt that, although the dress of the savage is somewhat different in its arrangement from that of the European lady of fashion, the object sought by the use of a wide-spread base to the form is the same. Madame La Sante, in writing on the subject, says--"Every one must allow that the expanding skirts of a dress, springing out immediately below the waist, materially assist by contrast in making the waist look small and slender. It is, therefore, to be hoped that now that crinoline no longer assumes absurd dimensions, it will long continue to hold its ground." The same author, in speaking of the prevailing taste for slender waists, thus writes:--"We have seen that for many hundred years a slender figure has been considered a most attractive female charm, and there is nothing to lead us to suppose that a taste which appears to be implanted in man's very nature will ever cease to render the acquisition of a small waist an object of anxious solicitude with those who have the care of the young." For several years this solicitude has been decidedly on the increase, and many expedients which were had recourse to in ancient days for reducing the waist to exceeding slenderness, are, we shall see as we proceed, in full operation. A very sparing diet has, as we have already seen, from the days of Terentius, been one great aid to the operation of the corset. There is a very quaint account to be found in the _Traditions of Edinburgh_ bearing on this dieting system. An elderly lady of fashion, who appears to have lived in Scotland during the early part of the last century, was engaged on the formation of the figures of her daughters, stinted meals and tight corsets worn day and night being some of the means made use of; but it is related that a certain cunning and evil-minded cook, whose coarse mind only ran on the pleasure of the appetite, used to creep stealthily in the dead of night to the chamber in which the young ladies slept, unlace their stays, and let them feed heartily on the strictly-prohibited dainties of the pantry; grown rash by impunity, she one night ventured to attempt running the blockade with hot roast goose, but three fatal circumstances combined against the success of the dangerous undertaking. In the first place, the savoury perfume arising from hot roast goose was penetrating to an alarming degree; in the second, the old lady, as ill-luck would have it, happened to be awake, and, worse than all, had no snuff, so smelt goose. The scene which followed the capture of the illicit cargo and the detection of the culprit cook can be much more easily imagined than described. [Illustration: LADY OF FASHION, 1830.] [Illustration: LADY OF FASHION, 1837.] The custom of wearing the corset by night as well as by day, above referred to, although partially discontinued for some time, is becoming general again. About the commencement of the last century the custom was much advocated and followed in France, and it is said to reduce and form the figure much more rapidly than any system of lacing by day only could bring about. A French author of the period referred to says--"Many mothers who have an eye to the main chance, through an excess of zeal, or rather from a strange fear, condemn their daughters to wear corsets night and day, lest the interruption of their use should hinder their project of procuring for them fine waists." That ladies are fully aware of the potent influences of the practice, the following letter to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ will show:-- "As several of your correspondents have remarked, the personal experience of those who have for a number of years worn tight-fitting corsets can alone enable a clear and fair judgment to be pronounced upon their use. Happening to have had what I believe you will admit to be an unusual experience of tight-lacing, I trust you will allow me to tell the story of my younger days. Owing to the absence of my parents in India, I was allowed to attain the age of fourteen before any care was bestowed upon my figure; but their return home fortunately saved me from growing into a clumsy, inelegant girl; for my mamma was so shocked at my appearance that she took the unusual plan of making me sleep in my corset. For the first few weeks I occasionally felt considerable discomfort, owing, in a great measure, to not having worn stays before, and also to their extreme tightness and stiffness. Yet, though I was never allowed to slacken them before retiring to rest, they did not in the least interfere with my sleep, nor produce any ill effects whatever. I may mention that my mamma, fearing that, at so late an age, I should have great difficulty in securing a presentable figure, considered ordinary means insufficient, and consequently had my corsets filled with whalebone and furnished with shoulder-straps, to cure the habit of stooping which I had contracted. The busk, which was nearly inflexible, was not front-fastening, and the lace being secured in a hard knot behind and at the top, effectually prevented any attempt on my part to unloose my stays. Though I have read lately of this plan having been tried with advantage, I believe it is as yet an unusual one, and as the testimony of one who has undergone it without the least injury to health cannot fail to be of value in proving that the much less severe system usually adopted must be even less likely to do harm, I am sure you will do me and your numerous readers the favour of inserting this letter in your most entertaining and valuable magazine. I am delighted to see the friends of the corset muster so strong at the 'Englishwoman's Conversazione.' What is most required, however, are the personal experiences of the ladies themselves, and not mere treatises on tight-lacing by those who, like your correspondent Brisbane, have never tried it. "MIGNONETTE." Another correspondent to the same journal (signing herself "Débutante") writes in the number for November, 1867, as follows:-- "Mignonette's case is not an '_unusual_' one. She has just finished her education at a 'West-End school' where the system was strictly enforced. As she entered as a pupil at the age of thirteen and was very slender, she was fitted on her arrival with a corset, which could be drawn close without the extreme tightness found necessary in Mignonette's case. They did not open in front, and were fastened by the under-governess in such a manner that any attempt to unlace them during the night would be immediately detected at the morning's inspection. After the first week or two she felt no discomfort or pain of any kind, though, as she was still growing, her stays became proportionately tighter, but owing to her figure never being allowed to enlarge during the nine or ten hours of sleep, as is usually the case, this was almost imperceptible." [Illustration: THE CRINOLINE OF A SOUTH SEA ISLANDER.] Madame La Sante also refers to the custom as being much more general than is commonly supposed. She says--"Several instances of this system in private families have lately come to my own knowledge, and I am acquainted with more than one fashionable school in the neighbourhood of London where the practice is made a rule of the establishment. Such a method is doubtlessly resorted to from a sense of duty, and those girls who have been subjected to this discipline, and with whom I have had an opportunity of conversing, say that for the first few months the uneasiness by the continued compression was very considerable, but that after a time they became so accustomed to it that they felt reluctant to discontinue the practice." In the United States of America the ladies often possess figures of remarkable slenderness and elegance, and the term "_illusion_" is not unfrequently applied to a waist of more than ordinary taperness. In a great number of instances the custom above referred to would be found to have mainly contributed to its original formation. The way in which doctors disagree on matters relating to the corset question is most remarkable. The older writers, as we have seen, launched out in the most sweeping and condemnatory manner against almost every article of becoming or attractive attire. Corsets were most furiously denounced, and had the qualities which were gravely attributed to them been one-thousandth part as deadly as they were represented, the civilised world would long ere this have been utterly depopulated. When we find such diseases and ailments as the following attributed by authors of supposed talent to the use of the corset, we are no longer surprised at remarks and strictures emanating from similar sources meeting with ridicule and derision: "hooping-cough, obliquity of vision, polypus, apoplexy, stoppage of the nose, pains in the eyes, and earache" are all laid at the door of the stays. We are rather surprised that large ears and wooden legs were not added to the category, as they might have been with an equal show of reason. Medical writers of the present day are beginning to take a totally different view of the matter, as the following letter from a surgeon of much experience will show:-- "My attention has just been directed to an interesting and important discussion in your magazine on the subject of corsets, and I have been urged as a medical man to give my opinion regarding them. Under these circumstances I trust you will allow me to attend the 'Englishwoman's Conversazione' for once, as medical men are supposed to be the great opponents of the corset. It is no doubt true that those medical men who studied for their profession some thirty or forty years ago are still prejudiced against this elegant article of female dress, for stays were very different things even then to what they are now. The medical works, too, which they studied were written years before, and spoke against the buckram and iron stays of the last century. The name 'stays,' however, being still used at the present time, the same odium still attaches to them in the minds of physicians of the old school. But the rising generation of doctors are free from these prejudices, and fairly judge the light and elegant corsets of the present day on their own merits. In short, it is now generally admitted, and I, for one, freely allow, that moderate compression of the waist by well-made corsets is far from being injurious. It is really absurdly illogical for the opponents of the corset to bring forward quotations from medical writers of the last century, for the animadversions of Soemmering are still quoted. Let us, however, merely look at facts as they at present stand; statistics prove that there are several thousand more women than men in the United Kingdom. A statement in the Registrar-General's Report of a few years since has been brought forward to prove that corsets produce an enormous mortality from consumption, but these would-be benefactors of the fair sex omit to state how many males die from that disease. If there be any preponderance of deaths among women from consumption, the cause may easily be found in the low dress, the thin shoes, and the sedentary occupations in close rooms, without attributing the blame to the corset. Dr. Walshe, in his well-known work on diseases of the lungs, distinctly asserts that corsets cannot be accused of causing consumption. With regard to spinal curvature, a disease which has been connected by some writers with the use of stays, an eminent French physician, speaking of corsets, says--'They cannot be charged with causing deviations of the vertebral column.' Let us, then, hear no more nonsense about the terrible consequences of wearing corsets, at all events till the ladies return to the buckram and iron of our great-grandmothers. Your fair readers may rest assured that what is said against stays at the present day is merely the lingering echo of prejudice, and is quite inapplicable now-a-days to the light and elegant production of the scientific _corsetière_. As a medical man (and not one of the old school) I feel perfectly justified in saying that ladies who are content with a moderate application of the corset may secure that most elegant female charm, a slender waist", without fear of injury to health. "MEDICUS." A great number of ladies who, by the systematic use of the corset, have had their waists reduced to the fashionable standard, are to be constantly met in society. The great majority declare that they have in no way suffered in health from the treatment they had been subjected to. _Vide_ the following letter from the _Queen_ of July 18, 1863:-- "MADAM,--As I have for a long time been a constant reader of the _Lady's Journal_, I venture to ask you if you, or any of your valuable correspondents, will kindly tell me if it is true that small waists are again coming into fashion generally? I am aware that they cannot be said to have gone out of fashion altogether, for one often sees very slender figures; but I think during the last few years they have been less thought of than formerly. I have heard, however, from several sources, and by the public prints, that they are again to be _La Mode_. Now I fortunately possess a figure which will, I hope, satisfy the demand of fashion in this respect. What is the smallest-sized waist that one can have? Mine is sixteen and a-half inches, and, I have heard, is considered small. I do not believe what is said against the corset, though I admit that if a girl is an invalid, or has a very tender constitution, too sudden a reduction of the waist may be injurious. With a waist which is, I believe, considered small, I can truly say I have good health. If all that was said against the corset were true, how is it so many ladies live to an advanced age? A friend of mine has lately died at the age of eighty-six, who has frequently told me anecdotes of how in her young days she was laced cruelly tight, and at the age of seventeen had a waist fifteen inches. Yet she was eighty-six when she died. I know that it has been so long the habit of public journals to take their example from medical men (who, I contend, are not the best judges in the matter) in running down the corset, and the very legitimate, and, if properly employed, harmless mode of giving a graceful slenderness to the figure, that I can hardly expect that at present you will have courage to take the part of the ladies. But I beg you to be so kind as to tell me what you know of the state of the fashion as regards the length and size of the waist, and whether my waist would be considered small. Also what is the smallest-sized waist known among ladies of fashion. By doing this in an early number you will very much oblige, "Yours, &c., "CONSTANCE." The foregoing letter was followed on the 25th of the same month by one from another correspondent to the same paper, fully bearing out the truth of the view therein contained, and at the same time showing the system adopted in many of the French finishing schools:-- "MADAM,--As a constant reader of your highly-interesting and valuable paper, I have ventured to reply to a letter under the above heading from your correspondent Constance, contained in your last week's impression. In reply to her first question, there is little doubt, I think, that slender and long waists will ere long be _la mode_. Ladies of fashion here who are fortunate enough to possess such enviable and graceful attractions, take most especial care by the arrangement of their toilets to show them off to the very best advantage. A waist of sixteen and a-half-inches would, I am of opinion, be considered, for a lady of fair average size and stature, small enough to satisfy even the most exacting of Fashion's votaries. The question as to how small one's waist can be is rather hard to answer, and I am not aware that any standard has yet been laid down on the subject, but an application to any of our fashionable corset-makers for the waist measurement of the smallest sizes made would go far to clear the point up. Many of the corsets worn at our late brilliant assemblies were about the size of your correspondent's, and some few, I have been informed, even less. I beg to testify most fully to the truth of the remarks made by Constance as to the absurdly-exaggerated statements (evidently made by persons utterly ignorant of the whole matter) touching the dreadfully injurious effects of the corset on the female constitution. My own, and a wide range of other experiences, leads me to a totally different conclusion, and I fully believe that, except in cases of confirmed disease or bad constitution, a well-made and nicely-fitting corset inflicts no more injury than a tight pair of gloves. Up to the age of fifteen I was educated at a small provincial school, was suffered to run as nearly wild as could well be, and grew stout, indifferent and careless as to personal appearance, dress, manners, or any of their belongings. Family circumstances and change of fortune at this time led my relatives to the conclusion that my education required a continental finish. Advantage was therefore taken of the protection offered by some friends about to travel, and I was, with well-filled trunks and a great deal of good advice, packed off to a highly-genteel and fashionable establishment for young ladies, situated in the suburbs of Paris. The morning after my arrival I was aroused by the clang of the 'morning bell.' I was in the act of commencing a hurried and by no means an elaborate toilet, when the under-governess, accompanied by a brisk, trim little woman, the bearer of a long cardboard case, made their appearance; corsets of various patterns, as well as silk laces of most portentous length, were at once produced, and a very short time was allowed to elapse before my experiences in the art and mystery of tight-lacing may be fairly said to have commenced. My dresses were all removed, in order that the waists should be taken in and the make altered; a frock was borrowed for me for the day, and from that hour I was subjected to the strict and rigid system of lacing in force through the whole establishment, no relaxation of its discipline being allowed during the day on any pretence whatever. For the period (nearly three years) I remained as a pupil, I may say that my health was excellent, as was that of the great majority of my young companions in 'bondage,' and on taking my departure I had grown from a clumsy girl to a very smart young lady, and my waist was exactly seven inches less than on the day of my arrival. From Paris I proceeded at once to join my relatives in the island of Mauritius, and on my arrival in the isle sacred to the memories of Paul and Virginia, I found the reign of 'Queen Corset' most arbitrary and absolute, but without in any way that I could discover interfering with either the health or vivacity of her exceedingly attractive and pretty subjects. Before concluding, and whilst on the subject, a few words on the 'front-fastening corset,' now so generally worn, may not come amiss. After a thorough trial I have finally abandoned its use, as being imperfect and faulty in every way, excepting the very doubtful advantage of being a little more quickly put on and off. Split up and open at the front as they are, and only fastening here and there, the whole of the compactness and stability so highly important in this part, of all others, of a corset is all but lost, whilst the ordinary steel busk secures these conditions, to the wearing out of the material of which the corset is composed. The long double-looped round lace used is, I consider, by no means either as neat, secure, or durable as a flat plaited silk lace of good quality. Trusting these remarks and replies may prove such as required by Constance, I beg to subscribe myself, "FANNY." Another lady writing to the _Queen_ on the same subject in the month of August has a waist under sixteen inches in circumference, as will be seen by the annexed letter, and yet she declares her health to be uninjured:-- "DEAR MADAM,--I have read with interest the letters of Constance and Fanny on the subject of slender waists. It is so much the fashion among medical men to cry down tight-lacing that advocates are very daring who venture to uphold the practice. It has ever been in vogue among our sex, and will, I maintain, always continue so long as elegant figures are admired, for the wearing of corsets produces a grace and slenderness which nature never gives, and if the corset is discontinued or relaxed, the figure at once becomes stout and loose. The dress fits better over a close-laced corset, and the fullness of the skirts, and ease of its folds, are greatly enhanced by the slenderness of the waist. My own waist is under sixteen inches. I have always enjoyed good health. Why, then, if the practice of tight-lacing is not prejudicial to the constitution of all its votaries, should we be debarred from the means of improving our appearance and attaining an elegant and graceful figure? I quite agree with Fanny respecting the front-fastening corset. I consider it objectionable. The figure can never be so neat or slender as in an ordinary well-laced corset. May I inquire what has become of your correspondent Mary Blackbraid? Her partialities for gloves and wigs brought upon her severe remarks from your numerous correspondents. I agree with her in the glove question, and always wear them as much as possible in the house. I find they keep the hands cooler, and in my opinion there is no such finish to the appearance as a well-gloved hand. Where I am now staying the ladies invariably wear them, and I have heard gentlemen express their admiration of the practice. I have worn them to sleep in for some years, and never found any inconvenience. Pardon me trespassing so much on your space, but your interesting paper is the only one open to our defence from the strictures of the over-particular. "ELIZA." The following letter from the columns of the _Queen_ contains much matter bearing immediately on the subject, and will no doubt be of interest to the reader:-- "MADAM,--I am sure your numerous readers will thank you for your kindness in publishing so impartially the correspondence you have received on the subject of the corset, and as the question is one of great importance, and moreover one on which much difference of opinion seems to exist, I trust you will continue to give us the benefit of your correspondents' remarks. "When I read the very _àpropos_ letter of Constance, and the excellent letter of Fanny in reply, I was quite prepared to see in your last number some strong expressions of opinion against this most becoming fashion; but I think that they, as well as Eliza, need not be discouraged by the formidable opposition they have met with, and I beg you will afford me space for a few lines, in order to refute the arguments of the anti-corset party, in your valuable journal. "Much as I, in common with all your readers, delight in reading Mr. Frank Buckland's articles, I really cannot agree with him in his view of the subject. In the first place, I really must question his authority in the matter, for I am convinced that it is only those who have experienced the comfortable support afforded by a well-made corset who are entitled to pronounce their opinion. What can Mr. Buckland, or any one not of the corset-wearing sex, know of the practical operation of this indispensable article of female attire? I will not attempt so arduous a task as that of disproving all that Mr. Combe and his professional brethren have written against tight-lacing; I am even willing to admit that there may be persons so constituted that the attainment of a graceful slenderness would be injurious; but these are the exceptions, not the rule. The remarks of the faculty are founded principally on theory, backed up by an occasional case which might very often be referred to some other cause with equal justice. But who does not know that practice often belies theory, or that theory is frequently at fault? Slender waists have been in fashion for several hundred years, and for the purposes of my argument I will refer to a period thirty or forty years ago. No one then thought of questioning the absolute necessity of attaining a slender figure by the instrumentality of the corset. If, let me ask Mr. Buckland and your other correspondents, theory be true that torture and death are the result, how does it happen not only that there are millions of healthy middle-aged ladies among us now, but that the female population actually exceeds the male? By what wonderful means have they continued to exist and enjoy such perfect health, while such a terrible engine of destruction as the corset was at work upon their frames? If all that theory said against the corset were true, not a thousand women would now be left alive. "I cannot avoid troubling you a little further while I descend more into details. Spinal curvature, it is said, is caused by wearing stays. But what kind of stays were they which produced this result, and were no other causes discernible? I think that in every instance it would be found that the stays have been badly made, that they have not been properly laced, or that the busk and materials have not been sufficiently firm. "In addition to this, girls are too often compelled to maintain an erect position on a form or a music-stool for too long a time during school hours. If the corset is properly made, a young lady may be allowed to lean back in her chair without danger of acquiring lounging habits or injuring her figure. It is to this over-tiring of the muscles that all spinal curvature is attributable, and not to the stays, which, if properly employed, would act as a sure preventative. Again, let me ask any one of the opposite sex who, at any rate at the present day, do not wear stays, whether they have never experienced 'palpitation or flushings,' headaches, and red noses? What right has any one to make these special attendants on small-waisted ladies? There is no more danger of incurring these evils than by a gentleman wearing a hat. Well may the old lady have 'forgotten' these little items in her anecdotes. The comparison between the human frame and a watch is correct in some respects, but it is particularly unhappy in relation to the present subject. The works of a watch are hard and unyielding, and not being possessed of life and power of growing, cannot adapt themselves to their outer case. If you squeeze in the case the works will be broken and put out of order; far different is it with the supple and growing frame of a young girl. If the various organs are prevented from taking a certain form or direction, they will accommodate themselves to any other with perfect ease. Nothing is broken or interfered with in its action. I will, of course, allow that if a fully-grown woman were to attempt to reduce her waist suddenly, respiration and digestion would be stopped; but it is rarely, if ever, that a lady arrives at maturity before she has imbibed sufficient notions of elegance and propriety to induce her to conform to this becoming fashion to some extent. Happy indeed those who are blessed with mothers who are wise enough to educate their daughters' figures with an eye to their future comfort. The constant discomfort felt by those whose clumsy waists and exuberant forms are a perpetual bugbear to their happiness and advancement should warn mothers of the necessity of looking to the future, and by directing their figures successfully while young, avoid the unsuccessful attempts to force them at an advanced age. One word more on the question. Is a small waist admired by the gentlemen? Mr. Buckland, it seems, has become so imbued with Mr. Combe's ideas against tight-lacing, that he looks upon a slender waist with feelings evidently far from admiration. But is this any reason or authority for concluding that every gentleman of taste is of a like opinion? On the contrary, I think it goes far to prove that it is other than the younger class of gentlemen (for whom, of course, the ladies lay their attractions) who run down the corset. Many times in fashionable assemblies have I heard gentlemen criticising the young ladies in such terms as these;--'What a clumsy figure Miss---- is! it completely spoils her.' 'What a pity Miss---- has not a neater figure!' and so on, and I believe there is not one young man in a thousand who does not admire a graceful slenderness of the waist. What young man cares to dance with girls who resemble casks in form? I have invariably noticed that the girls with the smallest waists are the queens of the ball-room. I have not space to enter into the discussion as to whether the artificial waist is more beautiful than that of the Venus de Medici; on such matters every one forms their own opinions. The waist of the Venus is beautiful for the Venus, but would cease to be so if clothed. I maintain that the comparison is not a good one, as the circumstances are not equal. In other respects, let the ladies, then, not be led to make themselves ungraceful and unattractive by listening to theories which are contradicted by practice, promulgated by persons ignorant, as far as their personal experience goes, of the operation and effect of corsets, and taken up by ladies and gentlemen, not of the youngest, who, like your Country Subscriber, are past the age when the pleasantest excitements of life form topics of interest. Is it not natural that a young lady should be anxious to present a sylph-like form instead of appearing matronly? There are some to whom the words 'tight lacing' suggest immediately what they are pleased to term 'torture,' 'misery,' &c., but who have never taken the trouble to inquire into the subject, preferring the far easier way of taking for granted that all that has been said against it is true. When such would-be benefactors to the fair sex hear of a sudden death, or see a lady faint at a ball or a theatre, they immediately raise the cry of 'Tight-lacing!' An instance occurred not long ago in which, in a public journal, the sudden death of a young lady was ascribed to this cause, but in a few days afterwards was expressly contradicted in a paragraph of the same paper. Do we never hear of men dying suddenly, or fainting away from overheat? That small waists are the fashion admits of no doubt, for I have myself applied to several fashionable corset-makers in London and the principal fashionable resorts to ascertain whether it be the case. I gather from their information that small waists are most unmistakably the fashion; that there are more corsets made to order under eighteen inches than over that measurement; that the smallest size is usually fifteen inches, though few possess so elegantly small a waist, the majority being about seventeen or eighteen inches; that the ladies are now beginning to see that the front-fastening busk is not so good as the old-fashioned kind, and have their daughters' corsets well boned. Many also prefer shoulder-straps for the stays of growing girls, which keep the chest expanded, and prevent their leaning too much on the busk. If these are not too tight they are very advantageous to the figure, and the upper part of the corset should just fit, but not be tight. A corset made on these principles will cause no injury to health, unless the girl is naturally of a consumptive constitution, in which case no one would think of lacing at all tightly. "I must apologise for this long letter, but I felt bound to take advantage of the opportunity you afford to discuss this really important question. "I remain, madam, yours, "ADMIRER." CHAPTER VIII. The elegant figure of the Empress of Austria--Slender waists the fashion in Vienna--The small size of Corsets frequently made in London--Letter from the _Queen_ on small waists--Remarks on the portrait of the Empress of Austria in the Exhibition--Diminutive waist of Lady Morton--General remarks on the figure--Remarks on figure-training by the use of stays--Mode of constructing Corsets for growing girls--Tight-lacing abolished by the early use of well-constructed Corsets--Boarding-school discipline and extreme tight-lacing--Letter in praise of tight Corsets--Letter in praise of Crinoline and Corsets--Another letter on boarding-school discipline and figure-training--The waist of fashion contrasted with that of the Venus de Medici--A fashionably-dressed statue--Clumsy figures a serious drawback to young ladies--Letter from a lady, who habitually laces with extreme tightness, in praise of the Corset--Opinions of a young baronet on slender waists; letter from a family man on the same subject. As most of our readers will be aware, the much-admired Empress of Austria has been long celebrated for possessing a waist of sixteen inches in circumference, and a friend of ours, who has recently had unusual opportunities afforded for judging of the fashionable world of Vienna, assures us that waists of equal slenderness are by no means uncommon. We are also informed by one of the first West-End corset-makers that sixteen inches is a size not unfrequently made in London. Much valuable and interesting information can be gathered from the following letter from a talented correspondent of the _Queen_ a few months ago:-- "CORSETS AND SMALL WAISTS. "I am a constant reader of the _Queen_, and look forward with anxiety for more of the very interesting letters on the corset question which you are so obliging as to insert in your paper. I know many who take as much pleasure in reading them as myself, for the subject is one on which both health and beauty greatly depend. All who visited the picture-gallery in the Exhibition of 1862 must have seen an exquisitely-painted portrait of the beautiful Empress of Austria, and though it did not show the waist in the most favourable position, some idea may be formed of its elegant slenderness and easy grace. Many were the remarks made upon it by all classes of critics while I seated myself opposite the picture for a few minutes. I should like any one who maintains that small waists are not generally admired to have taken up the position which I did for half-an-hour, and I am sure she would soon find her opinion unsupported by facts; your correspondents, however, are at fault in supposing that sixteen inches is the smallest waist that the world has almost ever known. Lady Babbage, in her _Collection of Curiosities_, tells us that in a portrait of Lady Morton, in the possession of Lord Dillon, the waist cannot exceed ten or twelve inches in circumference, and at the largest part immediately beneath the armpits not more than twenty-four, and the immense length of the figure seems to give it the appearance of even greater slenderness. Catherine de Medici considered the standard of perfection to be thirteen inches. It is scarcely to be supposed that any lady of the present day possesses such an absurdly small waist as thirteen inches, but I am certain that not a few could be found whose waistband does not exceed fifteen inches and three-quarters or sixteen inches. Much depends on the height and width of the shoulders; narrow shoulders generally admit of a small waist, and many tall women are naturally so slender as to be able to show a small waist with very little lacing. It is needless to remark how much depends on the corset. Your correspondent, A. H. Turnour, says that the long corsets, if well pulled in at the waist, compress one cruelly all the way up, and cause the shoulders to deport themselves awkwardly and stiffly. Now, no corset will be able to do this if constructed as it should be. I believe the great fault to be that when the corset is laced on it is very generally open an inch or so from top to bottom. The consequence of this is, that when the wearer is sitting down, and the pressure on the waist the greatest, the tendency is to pull the less tightly drawn lace at the top of the corset tighter; on changing the posture this does not right itself, and consequently an unnecessary and injurious compression round the chest is experienced. Now, if the corset, when fitted, were so made that it should meet all the way, or at any rate _above_ and _below_ the waist, when laced on, this evil would be entirely avoided, and absence of compression round the upper part of the chest would give an increased appearance of slenderness to the waist and allow the lungs as much play as the waistbands. There seems to be an idea that when the corset is made to meet it gives a stiffness to the figure. In the days of buckram this might be the case, but no such effect need be feared from the light and flexible stays of the present day, and the fault which frequently leads to the fear of wearing corsets which do not meet is, that the formation of the waist is not begun early enough. The consequence of this is, that the waist has to be _compressed_ into a slender shape after it has been allowed to swell, and the stays are therefore made so as to allow of being laced tighter and tighter. Now I am persuaded that much inconvenience is caused by this practice, which might be entirely avoided by the following simple plan, which I have myself tried with my own daughters, and have found to answer admirably. At the age of seven I had them fitted with stays without much bone and a flexible busk, and these were made to meet from top to bottom when laced, and so as not to exercise the least pressure round the chest and beneath the waist, and only a very _slight_ pressure at the waist, just enough to show off the figure and give it a roundness. To prevent the stays from slipping, easy shoulder-straps were added. In front, extending from the top more than half way to the waist, were two sets of lace-holes, by which the stays could be enlarged round the upper part. As my daughters grew, these permitted of my always preventing any undue pressure, but I always laced the stays so as to meet behind. When new ones were required they were made exactly the same size at the waist, but as large round the upper part as the gradual enlargement had made the former pair. They were also of course made a little longer, and the position of the shoulder-straps slightly altered; by these means their figures were directed instead of forced into a slender shape; no inconvenience was felt, and my daughters, I am happy to say, are straight, and enjoy perfect health, while the waist of the eldest is eighteen inches, and that of the youngest seventeen. I am convinced that my plan is the most reasonable one that can be adopted. By this means '_tight-lacing_' will be abolished, for no tight-lacing or compression is required, and the child, being accustomed to the stays from an early age, does not experience any of the inconveniences which are sometimes felt by those who do not adopt them till twelve or fourteen. "A FORMER CORRESPONDENT (Edinburgh)." The advisability of training instead of forcing the figure into slenderness is now becoming almost universally admitted by those who have paid any attention to the subject; yet it appears from the following letters, which appeared in the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of January and February, 1868, that the corset, even when employed at a comparatively late period of life, is capable of reducing the size of the waist in an extraordinary manner, without causing the serious consequences which it has so long been the custom to associate with the practice of tight-lacing. A Tight-Lacer expresses herself to the following effect:--"Most of your correspondents advocate the early use of the corset as the best means to secure a slender waist. No doubt this is the best and most easy mode, but still I think there are many young ladies who have never worn tight stays who might have small waists even now if they would only give themselves the trouble. I did not commence to lace tightly until I was married, nor should I have done so then had not my husband been so particularly fond of a small waist; but I was determined not to lose one atom of his affection for the sake of a little trouble. I could not bear to think of him liking any one else's figure better than mine, consequently, although my waist measured twenty-three inches, I went and ordered a pair of stays, made very strong and filled with stiff bone, measuring only fourteen inches round the waist. These, with the assistance of my maid, I put on, and managed the first day to lace my waist in to eighteen inches. At night I slept in my corset without loosing the lace in the least. The next day my maid got my waist to seventeen inches, and so on, an inch smaller every day, until she got them to meet. I wore them regularly without ever taking them off, having them tightened afresh every day, as the laces might stretch a little. They did not open in front, so that I could not undo them if I had wanted. For the first few days the pain was very great, but as soon as the stays were laced close, and I had worn them so for a few days, I began to care nothing about it, and in a month or so I would not have taken them off on any account, for I quite enjoyed the sensation, and when I let my husband see me with a dress to fit I was amply repaid for my trouble; and although I am now grown older, and the fresh bloom of youth is gone from my cheek, still my figure remains the same, which is a charm age will not rob me of. I have never had cause to regret the step I took." Another lady says--"A correspondent in the October number of your magazine states that her waist is only thirteen inches round, but she does not state her height. My waist is only twelve inches round; but then, although I am eighteen years old, I am only four feet five inches in height, so that my waist is never noticed as small; while my elder sister (whose height is five feet eight inches) is considered to have a very nice figure, though her waist is twenty-three inches round. I am glad to have an opportunity of expressing my opinions on the subject of tight-lacing. I quite agree with those who think it perfectly necessary with the present style of dress (which style I hope is likely to continue). I believe every one admires the effect of tight-lacing, though they may not approve in theory. My father always used to declaim loudly against stays of any kind, so my sister and I were suffered to grow up without any attention being paid to our figures, and with all our clothes made perfectly loose, till my sister was eighteen and I fifteen years old, when papa, after accompanying us to some party, made some remarks on the clumsiness of our figures, and the ill-fitting make of our dresses. Fortunately, it was not too late. Mamma immediately had well-fitting corsets made for us, and as we were both anxious to have small waists we tightened each other's laces four and five times a day for more than a year; now we only tighten them (after the morning) when we are going to a party." As it has been most justly remarked, no description of evidence can be so conclusive as that of those whose daily and hourly experience brings them in contact with the matter under discussion, and we append here a letter from a correspondent to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of May, 1867, giving her boarding-school experience in the matter of extreme tight-lacing:-- Nora says--"I venture to trouble you with a few particulars on the subject of 'tight-lacing,' having seen a letter in your March number inviting correspondence on the matter. I was placed at the age of fifteen at a fashionable school in London, and there it was the custom for the waists of the pupils to be reduced one inch per month until they were what the lady principal considered small enough. When I left school at seventeen, my waist measured only thirteen inches, it having been formerly twenty-three inches in circumference. Every morning one of the maids used to come to assist us to dress, and a governess superintended to see that our corsets were drawn as tight as possible. After the first few minutes every morning I felt no pain, and the only ill effects apparently were occasional headaches and loss of appetite. I should be glad if you will inform me if it is possible for girls to have a waist of fashionable size and yet preserve their health. Very few of my fellow-pupils appeared to suffer, except the pain caused by the extreme tightness of the stays. In one case where the girl was stout and largely built, two strong maids were obliged to use their utmost force to make her waist the size ordered by the lady principal--viz., seventeen inches--and though she fainted twice while the stays were being made to meet, she wore them without seeming injury to her health, and before she left school she had a waist measuring only fourteen inches, yet she never suffered a day's illness. Generally all the blame is laid by parents on the principal of the school, but it is often a subject of the greatest rivalry among the girls to see which can get the smallest waist, and often while the servant was drawing in the waist of my friend to the utmost of her strength, the young lady, though being tightened till she had hardly breath to speak, would urge the maid to pull the stays yet closer, and tell her not to let the lace slip in the least. I think this is a subject which is not sufficiently understood. Though I have always heard tight-lacing condemned, I have never suffered any ill effects myself, and, as a rule, our school was singularly free from illness. By publishing this side of the question in the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ you will greatly oblige." Cases like the foregoing are most important and remarkable, as they show most indisputably that loss of health is not so inseparably associated with even the most unflinching application of the corset as the world has been led to suppose. It rather appears that although a very considerable amount of inconvenience and uneasiness is experienced by those who are unaccustomed to the reducing and restraining influences of the corset, when adopted at rather a late period of growth, they not only in a short time cease to suffer, but of their own free will continue the practice and become partial to it. Thus writes an Edinburgh lady, who incloses her card, to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of March, 1867:-- "I have been abroad for the last four years, during which I left my daughter at a large and fashionable boarding-school near London. I sent for her home directly I arrived, and, having had no bad accounts of her health during my absence, I expected to see a fresh rosy girl of seventeen come bounding to welcome me. What, then, was my surprise to see a tall, pale young lady glide slowly in with measured gait and languidly embrace me; when she had removed her mantle I understood at once what had been mainly instrumental in metamorphosing my merry romping girl to a pale fashionable belle. Her waist had, during the four years she had been at school, been reduced to such absurdly small dimensions that I could easily have clasped it with my two hands. 'How could you be so foolish,' I exclaimed, 'as to sacrifice your health for the sake of a fashionable figure?' 'Please don't blame me, mamma,' she replied, 'I assure you I would not have voluntarily submitted to the torture I have suffered for all the admiration in the world.' She then told me how the most merciless system of tight-lacing was the rule of the establishment, and how she and her forty or fifty fellow-pupils had been daily imprisoned in vices of whalebone drawn tight by the muscular arms of sturdy waiting-maids, till the fashionable standard of tenuity was attained. The torture at first was, she declared, often intolerable; but all entreaties were vain, as no relaxation of the cruel laces was allowed during the day under any pretext except decided illness. 'But why did you not complain to me at first?' I inquired. 'As soon as I found to what a system of torture I was condemned,' she replied, 'I wrote a long letter to you describing my sufferings, and praying you to take me away. But the lady principal made it a rule to revise all letters sent by, or received by, the pupils, and when she saw mine she not only refused to let it pass, but punished me severely for rebelling against the discipline of the school.' 'At least you will now obtain relief from your sufferings,' I exclaimed, 'for you shall not go back to that school any more.' On attempting to discontinue the tight-lacing, however, my daughter found that she had been so weakened by the severe pressure of the last four years that her muscles were powerless to support her, and she has therefore been compelled to lace as tight as ever, or nearly so. She says, however, that she does not suffer much inconvenience now, or, indeed, after the first two years--so wonderful is the power of Nature to accommodate herself to circumstances. The mischief is done; her muscles have been, so to speak, murdered, and she must submit for life to be incased in a stiff panoply of whalebone and steel, and all this torture and misery for what?--merely to attract admiration for her small waist. I called on the lady principal of the establishment the next day, and was told that very few ladies objected to their daughters having their figures improved, that small waists were just now as fashionable as ever, and that no young lady could go into good society with a coarse, clumsy waist like a rustic, that she had always given great satisfaction by her system, which she assured me required unremitting perseverance and strictness, owing to the obstinacy of young girls, and the difficulty of making them understand the importance of a good figure. Finding that I could not touch the heart of this female inquisitor, who was so blinded by fashion, I determined to write to you and inform your readers of the system adopted in fashionable boarding-schools, so that if they do not wish their daughters tortured into wasp-waisted invalids they may avoid sending them to schools where the corset-screw is an institution of the establishment." And on the appearance of her letter it was replied to by another lady, who writes as follows:-- "In reply to the invitation from the lady from Edinburgh to a discussion on the popular system amongst our sex of compression of the waist, when requisite to attain elegance of figure, I beg to say that I am inclined, from the tone of her letter, to consider her an advocate of the system she at first sight appears to condemn. This conviction of mine may arise from my own partiality to the practice of tight-lacing, but the manner in which she puts the question almost inclines me to believe that she is, as a corset-maker, financially interested in the general adoption of the corset-screw. Her account of the whole affair seems so artificial, so made up for a purpose, so to speak, that I, for one, am inclined to totally discredit it. A waist 'easily clasped with two hands.' Ye powers! what perfection! how delightful! I declare that ever since I read that I have worn a pair of stays that I had rejected for being too small for me, as they did not quite meet behind (and I can't bear a pair that I cannot closely lace), and have submitted to an extra amount of muscular exertion from my maid in order to approach, if ever so distantly, the delightful dimensions of two handsful. Then, again, how charmingly she insinuates that if we will only persevere, only submit to a short probationary period of torture, the hated compression (but desired attenuation) will have become a second nature to us, that not only will it not inconvenience us, but possibly we shall be obliged, for comfort's sake itself, to continue the practice. Now, madam, as a part of the present whole of modern dress, every one must admit that a slender waist is a great acquisition, and from my own experience and the experience of several young lady friends similarly addicted to guide me, I beg to pronounce the so-called evils of tight-lacing to be a mere bugbear and so much cant. Every woman has the remedy in her own hands. If she feels the practice to be an injury to her, she can but discontinue it at any time. To me the sensation of being tightly laced in a pair of elegant, well-made, tightly-fitting corsets is superb, and I have never felt any evil to arise therefrom. I rejoice in quite a collection of these much-abused objects--in silk, satin, and coutil of every style and colour--and never feel prouder or happier, so far as matters of the toilette are concerned, than when I survey in myself the fascinating undulations of outline. "STAYLACE." Then follows a letter rather calculated to cast doubt on the subject of the sufferings of the young lady whose case has been described, from a lady who, although possessing a small waist, knows nothing of them. Thus she writes:-- "Please let me join in the all-absorbing discussion you have introduced at the Englishwoman's monthly Conversazione, and let me first thank Staylace for her capital letter. I quite agree with her in suspecting the story of the young lady at the boarding-school to be overdrawn a little. Would the young lady herself oblige us with a description of her 'tortures,' as I and several of my friends who follow the present fashion of small waists are curious to know something of them, having never experienced these terrible sufferings, though my waistband measures only eighteen inches? The truth is, there are always a number of fussy middle-aged people who (with the best intentions, no doubt) are always abusing some article of female dress. The best of it is, these benevolent individuals are usually of that sex whose costume precludes them from making a personal trial of the articles they condemn. Now it is the crinoline which draws forth their indignant outcries, now the corset, and now the chignon. They know not from their own experience how the crinoline relieves us from the weight of many under-skirts, and prevents them from clinging to us while walking, and they have never felt the comfortable support of a well-made corset. Yet they decry the use of the first as unaccountable, and of the second as suicidal. Let me tell them, however, that the ladies themselves judge from practice and not from theory, and if the opponents of the corset require proof of this, let me remind them that compression of the waist has been more or less universal throughout the civilised world for three or four centuries, in spite of reams of paper and gallons of printing-ink. I may add that, for my own part, I have always laced tightly, and have always enjoyed good health. Allow me to recommend ladies to have their corsets made to measure, and if they do not feel they suffer any inconvenience, they may certainly take the example of your clever correspondent Staylace, and look upon the outcry as a 'bugbear and so much cant.' "BELLE." Thus called on, the young lady herself writes and confirms, as it will be seen, the statements of others, that the late use of the corset is the main source of pain on its first adoption; and the statement she makes that her waist is so much admired that she sometimes forgets the pain passed through in attaining it, coupled with the confession that she is not in ill-health, gives her letter strong significance. Here it is in its integrity:-- "In last month's number of your valuable magazine you were kind enough to publish a letter from my mamma on the subject of tight-lacing, and as your correspondent Staylace says she is inclined to think the whole story made up for a purpose, mamma has requested me to write and confirm what she stated in her letter. It seems wonderful to me how your correspondent can lace so tightly and never feel any inconvenience. It may be, very likely, owing to her having begun very young. In my case I can only say I suffered sometimes perfect torture from my stays, especially after dinner, not that I ate heartily, for that I found impossible, even if we had been allowed to do so by our schoolmistress, who considered it unladylike. The great difference between your correspondent Staylace and myself seems to be that she was incased in corsets at an early age, and thus became gradually accustomed to tight-lacing, while I did not wear them till I went to school at fourteen, and I did not wear them voluntarily. Of course it is impossible to say whether I underwent greater pressure than she has. I think I must have done so, for my waist had grown large before it was subjected to the lacing, and had to be reduced to its present tenuity, whereas, if she began stays earlier, that would have prevented her figure from growing so large. Perhaps Staylace will be so kind as to say whether she began stays early, or at any rate before fourteen, and what is the size of her waist and her height? One reason why she does not feel any inconvenience from tight corsets may be that, when she feels disposed, she may loosen them, and thus prevent any pain from coming on. But when I was at school I was not allowed to loosen them in the least, however much they distressed me, so that what was in the morning merely a feeling of irksome pressure, became towards the end of the day a regular torture. I quite admit that slender waists are beautiful--in fact, my own waist is so much admired that I sometimes forget the pain I underwent in attaining it. I am also quite ready to confess I am not in ill-health, though I often feel languid and disinclined for walking out. Nor do I think a girl whose constitution is sound would suffer any injury to her health from moderate lacing, but I must beg that you will allow me to declare that when stays are not worn till fourteen years of age, very tight lacing causes absolute torture for the first few months, and it was principally to deter ladies from subjecting their daughters to this pain in similar cases that mamma wrote to you. I am sure any young lady who has (like myself) begun tight-lacing rather late will corroborate what I have said, and I hope some will come forward and do so, now you so kindly give the opportunity." Much ill-deserved blame has been from time to time cast on the lady principals of fashionable schools for insisting on the strict use of the corset by the young ladies in their charge. The following letter from a schoolmistress of great experience, and another from a young lady who has finished her education at a fashionable boarding-school, will at once serve to show that the measures adopted by the heads of these establishments for the obtainment of elegant figures are in the end fully appreciated by those who have been fortunate enough to profit by them. A Schoolmistress Correspondent says--"As a regular subscriber to your valuable magazine, I see you have invited your numerous readers to discuss the subject brought forward by a correspondent in Edinburgh, and as the principal of a large ladies' school in that city, I feel sure you will kindly allow me space to say a few words in reply to her letter. In the first place it must be apparent that your correspondent committed a great mistake in placing her daughter at a fashionable school if she did not wish her to become a fashionable belle, or she should at least have given instructions that her daughter should not have her figure trained in what every one knows is the fashionable style. For my own part I have always paid particular attention to the figures of the young ladies intrusted to my care, and being fully convinced that if the general health is properly attended to, corsets are far from being the dreadfully hurtful things some people imagine. I have never hesitated to employ this most important and elegant article of dress, except in one case where the pupil was of a consumptive tendency, and I was specially requested not to allow her to dress at all tightly. All my pupils enjoy good health, my great secret being regular exercise, a point which is almost always disregarded. It appears from your correspondent's letter that the young lady did not experience any inconvenience after the first two years she was at the school, nor does her mother say her health was affected. She only complains that she is no longer a 'romping girl.' Now, no young lady of eighteen who expects to move in fashionable society would wish to be thought a romping schoolgirl. With regard to the slight pain in the muscles which the young lady described as 'torture,' this was no doubt caused by her not having been accustomed by degrees to a close-fitting dress before she went to the school. I find that girls who have commenced the use of stays at an early age, and become gradually used to them, do not experience any uneasiness when they are worn tighter at fourteen or fifteen. There can be no doubt that a slender figure is as much admired as ever, and always will be so. The present fashion of short waists is admitted on all hands to be very ugly, and will soon go out. Those girls, then, who have not had their figures properly attended to while growing will be unable to reduce their waists when the fashion changes, whereas, by proper care now, they will be able to adopt the fashion of longer waists without any inconvenience. I trust you will allow us schoolmistresses fair play in this important matter, and insert this, or part of it, in your magazine." Mignon says--"DEAR MRS. ENGLISHWOMAN,--I beg--I pray--that you will not close your delightful Conversazione to the tight-lacing question: it is an absorbing one; hundreds, thousands of your young lady readers are deeply interested in this matter, and the subscribers to your excellent magazine are increasing daily, to my own knowledge, by reason of this interesting controversy; pray wait a little, and you will see how the tight-lacers and their gentlemen admirers will rally round the banner that has been unfurled. There is an attempt being made to introduce the hideous fashion of the 'Empire,' as it is called. Why should we, who have been disciplined at home and at school, and laced tighter and tighter month after month, until our waists have become 'small by degrees and beautifully less,' be expected to hide our figures (which we know are admired) under such atrocious drapery? My stay and dress maker both tell me that it is only the ill-formed and waistless ones that have taken to the fashion; such, of course, are well pleased, and will have no objection to have their waistbands as high as their armpits. Angular and rigid figures have always pretended to sneer at tight-lacers, but any one of them would give half, nay, their whole fortune to attain to such small dimensions as some of your correspondents describe. I shall keep my waist where nature has placed it, and where art has improved it, for my own comfort, and because a certain friend has said that he never could survive if it were any larger or shorter. My waist remains just as it was a year and a-half ago, when I left school, where in the course of three years it was by imperceptible degrees laced from twenty to fifteen inches, not only without injury to health but with great satisfaction and comfort to myself." It has been much the fashion amongst those who have written in condemnation of the use of the corset to contrast the figure of the Venus de Medici with that of a fashionably-dressed lady of the present day; but the comparison is anything but a happy one, as it would be quite as reasonable to insist that because the sandalled and stockingless foot of the lady of Ancient Greece was statuesque in contour when forming a portion of a statue, it should be substituted for the fashionable boot or slipper and silk stocking of the present day. That perfection itself in the sculptor's art when draped in fashionable attire would become supremely grotesque and ridiculous was not long since fully proved by actual experiment. A former contributor to the columns of the _Queen_, who at one time followed the medical profession, felt so convinced of the claims to admiration possessed by the classic order of form, that he obtained a copy of the Greek Slave, and had it draped by a first-rate milliner, who made use of all the modern appliances of the toilet, corset and crinoline included. The result was that dress made a perfect fright of her, and the disappointed experimentalist candidly confessed that he did not like her half as well as he had done. The waist was disproportionately thick, and the whole _tout ensemble_ dowdy in the extreme. No fallacy can be greater than to apply the rules of ancient art to modern costume. Thus writes an artist in the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of September, 1867:-- "I do not for a moment deny the truth of your artist correspondent's assertions, for I consider, as every one must, that the proportions of the human body are the most beautiful in creation (where all is beautiful and correct), but the great mistake which so many make is this. In civilised countries the body is always clothed; and that clothing, especially of the ladies of European nations, completely hides the contour of the body. The effect of this is to give great clumsiness to the waist when that part of the person is of its natural size. Let any one make a fair and unprejudiced trial, such as this: let him get a statuette of some celebrated antique, the Venus de Medici or the Greek Slave, and have it dressed in an ordinary dress of the present day, and see what the effect really is. Until fashion, in its ever-changing round, returns to the costume of Ancient Greece or Rome, we can never expect to persuade ladies not to compress their waists merely on the score of beauty; and as several of your correspondents have shown that a moderate compression is not so injurious as some supposed, there is no chance of the corset becoming an obsolete article of female dress. It has been in use for seven or eight hundred years, and now that its form and construction are so much modified and improved, there need be no longer an outcry against it; indeed, outcry has for centuries failed to affect it, though other articles of dress have become in their turn obsolete, a clear proof that there is something more than mere arbitrary fashion in its hold upon the fair sex." Another gentleman, not an artist, but whose sisters now suffer from all the annoyances consequent on clumsy, ill-trained figures, thus writes to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of September, 1867:-- "Though the subject on which I propose to address to you a few observations hardly concerns a man, I hope you will allow me a little space in your excellent journal to express my views upon it. I have been much interested by reading the correspondence on the subject of slender waists, and the means used for attaining them. Now, there can be no doubt that gentlemen admire those figures the most which have attained the greatest slenderness. I think there is no more deplorable sight than a large and clumsy waist; and as nature, without assistance from art, seldom produces a really small waist, I think those mothers and schoolmistresses who insist upon their daughters or pupils between the ages of ten and seventeen wearing well-made corsets, and having them tightly laced, confer upon the young ladies a great benefit, which, though they may not appreciate at the time, they will when they go out into society. Certainly some of your correspondents seem to have fallen into the hands of schoolmistresses thoroughly aware of the advantages of a good figure--a waist that two hands can easily clasp is certainly a marvel. I never had the good fortune to see such a one, yet one of your correspondents assures us that her daughter's was no larger than that. Nora, too, says that her waist only measured thirteen inches when she left school; this seems to me to be miraculously small. Most gentlemen do not think much about the means used for attaining a fashionable figure, and I should not have done so either if I had not heard it a good deal discussed in my family, where my sisters were never allowed to lace at all tightly, the consequence of which is, that now that they are grown up they have very clumsy figures, much to their regret; but it is too late to alter them now. As doctors seem to think that the dangers of tight-lacing have been much exaggerated, and as I know many ladies with very slender waists enjoying quite as good health as their more strongly built sisters, I would urge upon all who wish to have good figures not to be deterred by alarmists from endeavouring gradually to attain an elegant shape." It is most remarkable that, notwithstanding the number of letters which have been published casting condemnation and ridicule on those who wear corsets, not one can we discover containing the personal experiences of those who have been anything but temporary sufferers from even their extreme use, whilst such letters as the following, which appeared in the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ of August, 1867, are of a nature to lead to the conclusion that unless the germs of disease of some kind are rooted in the system, a well-made and perfectly-fitting corset may be worn with impunity, even when habitually laced with considerable tightness. The lady thus gives her own experiences and those of her daughters:-- "From the absence of any correspondence on the all-important topic of tight-lacing in your August number, I very much fear that the subject has come to an end. If so, many other subscribers besides myself will be very sorry for it. I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to see the sentiments that were expressed by so many who, like myself, are addicted to the practice of tight-lacing, and as for many years I have been in the habit of lacing extremely tight, I trust that you will allow me, by inserting this or part of it, to make known that I have never suffered any pain or illness from it. In the days when I was a schoolgirl, stays were worn much stiffer and higher than the flimsy things now used, and were, besides, provided with shoulder-straps, so that to be very tightly incased in them was a much more serious affair than at the present day.[3] But, nevertheless, I remember our governess would insist on the greatest possible amount of constriction being used, and always twice a day our stays were tightened still more. A great amount of exercise was inculcated, which perhaps did away with any ill effects this extreme tight-lacing might have occasioned, but while at school I imbibed a liking for the practice, and have ever since insisted on my maid lacing me as tightly as she possibly can. I quite agree with Staylace in saying that to be tightly laced in a pair of tight-fitting stays is a most superb sensation. My two daughters, aged respectively sixteen and eighteen, are brought up in the same way, and would not consider themselves properly dressed unless their stays were drawn together. They can bear me out in my favourable opinion of tight-lacing, and their good health speaks volumes in its praise. I hope, madam, you will kindly insert this letter in your valuable and largely-circulated magazine." [3] Fairholt remarks, in speaking of the discipline observed in schools during the reign of George III.--"It was the fashion to educate girls in stiffness of manner at all public schools, and particularly to cultivate a fall of the shoulders and an upright set of the bust. The top of the steel stay busk had a long stocking-needle attached to it to prevent girls from spoiling their shape by stooping too much over their needlework. This I have heard from a lady since dead who had often felt these gentle hints and lamented their disuse." Many opponents to the use of the corset have strongly urged the somewhat weak argument, that ladies with slender waists are not generally admired by the gentlemen. That question has been ably dealt with in one or two of the preceding letters from ladies, and it is but fair to them that the opinions of both the young and old of the male sex (candidly communicated to the columns of the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_) should be added to the weight of evidence in favour of almost universal admiration for a slender and well-rounded waist. Thus writes a young baronet in the number for October, 1867:-- "As you have given your readers the benefit of Another Correspondent's excellent letter will you kindly allow another member of the sterner sex to give his opinion on the subject of small waists? Those who have endeavoured to abolish this most becoming fashion have not hesitated to declare that gentlemen do not care for a slender figure, but that, on the contrary, their only feeling on beholding a waist of eighteen inches is one of pity and contempt. Now so far from this being the case, there is not one gentleman in a thousand who is not charmed with the sight. Elderly gentlemen, no doubt, may be found who look upon such things as 'vanity and vexation of spirit;' but is it for these that young ladies usually cultivate their charms? There is one suggestion I should be glad to make if you will permit me, and that is that all those ladies who possess that most elegant attraction, a slender waist, should not hide it so completely by shawls or loose paletots when on the promenade or in the street. When by good-luck I chance to meet a lady who has the good taste, I may say the kindness, to show her tapering waist by wearing a close-fitting paletot, I not unfrequently turn to admire, and so far from thinking of the means used to obtain the result, I am held spellbound by the beauty of the figure." That elderly gentlemen are by no means as indifferent to the attractions of elegant slenderness as our young correspondent supposes, will be best shown by a letter from a family man on the subject, communicated to the above journal, November, 1867. He says-- "I have read with much interest the correspondence on the above subject in the Englishwoman's Conversazione for several months past, having accidentally met with one of the numbers of your magazine in a friend's house, and have since regularly taken it, although not previously a subscriber. As an ardent admirer of small waists in ladies, I wish to record for the satisfaction of those who possess them the fact, which is sometimes disputed, that the pains bestowed in attaining a slender figure are _not_ in vain so far as we gentlemen are concerned, and some of us are positively absurd in our excessive admiration of this particular female beauty. Poets and novelists are perpetually introducing heroines with tiny waists and impossible feet, and if they are to portray female loveliness in all its attributes, they could not well omit two _such essential_ points, and I take it their ideal is not an unfair criterion of the taste of the public at large. I am delighted to learn from very clear evidence put forward by your many correspondents that 'small waists' are attainable by most ladies at little or no inconvenience, and that those of the clumsier build are willing to suffer a certain amount of pain if necessary in reducing their bulky figures to graceful proportions, and, above all, that this can be done without injury to health, for after all it would be a dearly-purchased charm if health were sacrificed. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, I recollect the word '_stays_' was uttered as though a certain amount of disgrace attached to the wearer, and '_tight-lacing_' was looked on as a crime; but I am glad to see that a reaction is setting in, and that ladies are not afraid to state openly that 'they lace _very_ tightly,' and many of them declare the sensation of being laced as tightly as possible as positively a _pleasurable one_. I may say that personally I feel that every lady of my acquaintance, or with whom I may come in contact, who does so places me under a direct obligation. I will go further than your correspondent, A Young Baronet, and say that whenever I meet a young lady who possesses the charm of a small waist, and has the good taste to wear the tight-fitting dress now fashionable for the promenade, I make it a point to see her pretty figure more than once, and have often gone considerably out of my way to do so. Although married years and years ago, I am still a slave to a '_little waist_,' and I am proud to say my wife humours my whim, and her waist is decidedly a small one. I will, therefore, add my experience to that of others (more competent to give an opinion, having experienced tight-lacing in their own proper persons), and state that she never enjoyed better health than when her waist was the smallest, and I shall be much disappointed if her daughters, when they '_come out_' do not emulate their mother's slender figure. By keeping your Conversazione open to the advocates of tight-lacing, and thoroughly ventilating the subject, you will, in my opinion, confer a benefit on the rising generation of young ladies, whose mammas, in too many instances, are so _prejudiced_ against the use of the corset that they permit their daughters to grow up into clumsy, awkward young women, to their own disgust and great detriment in the matrimonial market. "I am, madam, your obedient servant, "BENEDICT." [Illustration] [Illustration: THE FASHION OF 1865.] CHAPTER IX. The elegance of dress mainly dependent on the Corset--Fashion and dress of 1865--The short-waisted dresses and trains of 1867--Tight Corsets needed for short waists--Letter on the figure--Description of a peculiar form of Corset worn by some ladies of fashion in France--Proportions of the figure and size of the waist considered--The point at which the waist should be formed--Remarks of the older writers on stays--Corsets and high-heeled shoes denounced--Alarming diseases said to be produced by wearing high-heeled shoes--Mortality amongst the female sex not on the increase--Extraordinary statistics of the Corset trade--The Corset of the present day contrasted with that of the olden time. We could very easily add letters enough to occupy the remaining portion of this work, all incontestably proving that slender waists _are_, notwithstanding that which some few writers have urged to the contrary, held in high esteem by the great majority of the sterner sex. Without the aid of the corset, it has been very fairly argued, no dress of the present day could be worn, unless its fair possessor was willing to submit to the withering contempt of merciless society. The annexed illustration represents a lady dressed in the fashion of the close of 1865, and there are few who would be unwilling to admit its elegance and good taste. One glance at the contour of the figure is sufficient to show the full influence of the modern form of corset on the adjustment of this style of costume, and it would be a waste of both time and space to represent the figure in its uncultivated form similarly arrayed. In 1867, we find a strong tendency towards the short waists, low dresses, and long trailing trains of old times, and we are forcibly reminded, when contemplating the passing caprice, of the lines from a parody on the "Banks of Banna"-- "Shepherds, I have lost my waist. Have you seen my body?" Still the waist is by no means suffered to remain _perdu_, but, as in 1827, has to be laced with very considerable tightness to compensate the eye for its loss of taperness and length. The annexed illustration represents a lady of fashion of 1867, and it would be a perfect work of supererogation to ask our readers how a lady so dressed would look "unlaced and unconfined." The ladies themselves are by far the best judges of the matter, and the following letter from the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ will show that the corset has to play an important part in the now-existing style of dress. Thus writes a lady who signs herself Edina:-- "Allow me to occupy a small portion of your valuable space with the subject of stays. I quite agree with A Young Baronet that all those ladies who possess that most elegant attraction, a slender waist, should not hide it so completely by shawls whenever they promenade. Excuse my offering a few remarks to facilitate that desirable object, a handsome figure. Ladies, when dressing for the afternoon walk or ride, or the evening display, when putting on their stays at first, should not lace them quite tight; in about a quarter of an hour they might again tighten them, and in the course of half-an-hour or so lace them to the requisite tightness. They may fancy in this way there is no sudden compression of the waist, and the figure gets more easily accustomed to tight-lacing. Occasionally, in France, ladies who are very particular about their figures have their corsets made in three pieces, laced down the sides as well as behind, and cut away over the hips; the holes for the laces are very numerous and close together. This form of corset offers great facilities for the most perfect adjustment to the figure, as well as power of tight-lacing when required, and perfect ease in walking or dancing. I may add that, in order to insure a good fit and to keep it properly in its place, the busk in front, and the whalebones behind, are made somewhat longer than the present fashion. Perhaps the lady in your September number, who signs herself An Inveterate Tight-Lacer, might find a trial of a corset made in this form a great boon as well as a comfort in tight-lacing." Practical hints such as these will not fail to be of interest to the reader. Numerous inquiries, as will be seen on reference to the foregoing correspondence, have been made as to what circumference the waist should be to meet the requirements of elegance. [Illustration: THE FASHION OF 1867] It must be borne in mind, when dealing with this question, that height and breadth of shoulder have much to do with proportionate slenderness of waist. A lady who is tall and wide-shouldered would appear very neatly shaped with a waist laced to twenty or twenty-one inches, whilst with a slight, narrow form of figure that size would carry the appearance of much clumsiness with it. Madame La Sante says--"A waist may vary in circumference from seventeen to twenty-three inches, according to the general proportions of the figure, and yet appear in all cases slender and elegant." We have abundant evidence before us, however, that seventeen inches is by no means the lowest standard of waist-measure to be met with in the fashionable circles of either London, New York, Paris, or Vienna. Numbers of corsets sixteen inches at the waist, and even less, are made in each of these cities every day. In the large provincial towns, both at home and abroad, corset-makers follow out the rules laid down by fashion. We are disposed to think, therefore, dealing with the evidence before us, that a lady of medium stature and average breadth of shoulder would be subscribing to the laws of fashionable taste if the circumference of her waist was not more than from seventeen to nineteen inches, measuring outside the dress. Fashion has indulged in some strange freaks regarding the length and position of the waist, as a reference to many of the illustrations will show, but its true position can be laid down so clearly that no doubt need remain on the matter. A line drawn midway between the hip and the lowest rib gives the exact point from which the tapering form of the waist should spring, and by keeping this rule in view it appears the statement made by so many ladies (that provided ample space is allowed for the chest the waist may be laced to an extreme of smallness without injury) has much truth to support it. The contributors to works of popular instruction even in our own day are very lavish in their denunciations of the practice of wearing corsets, and, following in the track of the ancient writers on the same subject, muster such a deadly and tremendously formidable array of ailments, failings, and diseases as inseparably associated with the wearing of that particular article of attire, that the very persons for whom these terrors are invoked, seeing from their own daily experience how overdrawn they are and how little knowledge their authors show about the subject, laugh the whole matter to scorn and follow the fashion. We have now before us a very talented and well-conducted journal, in which there are some sweeping blows at the use of both corsets and high-heeled boots or shoes, and, as an instance of the frightfully severe way in which the ladies of the time (1842) laced themselves, the writer assures us that he had actually seen a young lady's waist-belt which measured exactly "_twenty-two_ inches," "showing that the _chest_ to which it was applied had been reduced to a diameter (allowing for clothes) of little more than seven inches." The chest is thus shown as being about one inch less than the waist. Now, in 1842 it must have been a very eccentric lady indeed who formed her waist round her _chest_, and as to the twenty-two-inch waistband, we cannot help thinking that the majority of our readers would seek one of considerably smaller size as an indication of the practice of tight-lacing in the owner. And now on the score of high-heeled boots and slippers, we are, like the immortal boy in _Pickwick_, "going to make your flesh creep." In writing of these terrible engines of destruction our mentor says--"From the uneasiness and constraint experienced in the feet sympathetic affections of a dangerous kind often assail the stomach and chest, as hæmorrhage, apoplexy, and consumption. Low-heeled shoes, with sufficient room for the toes, would completely prevent all such consequences." How the shareholders of life assurance companies must quake in their shoes as the smart and becoming footgear of the period meets their distracted vision at every turn! and what between the fatal high heels and waists of deadly taperness, it is a wonder that female existence can continue, and that all the policies do not fall due in less than a week, all the undertakers sink into hopeless idiocy in a day from an overwhelming press of business, and all the gentlemen engage in sanguinary encounter for the possession of the "_last woman_," who has survived the common fate by reason of her barefooted habits and of her early abandonment of stays. We do not find, as a matter of fact, that the Registrar-General has his duties materially increased, or that the bills of female mortality are by any means alarming, although on a moderate calculation there are considerably over twelve million corsets in the United Kingdom alone, laced with as many laces round as many waists every day in the week, with, in many instances, a little extra tension for Sundays. We learn from the columns of _Once a Week_ that the total value of stays made for British consumption annually, cannot be less than £1,000,000 sterling, to produce which about 36,000,000 yards of material are required. The stay trade of London employs more than 10,000 in town and country, whilst the provincial firms employ about 25,000 more; of these, about 8,000 reside in London, and there is about one male to every twenty-five women. Returns show that we receive every year from France and Germany about 2,000,000 corsets. One corset-manufacturer in the neighbourhood of Stuttgard has, we are informed, over 1,300 persons in constant employment, and turns out annually about 300,000 finished corsets. Messrs. Thomson and Co., the manufacturers of the glove-fitting corset, turn out incredible numbers from their immense manufactories in England, America, and on the continent. It will be readily conceived that the colonial demand and consumption is proportionately great. The quantity of steel annually made use of for the manufacture of stay-busks and crinolines is perfectly enormous. Of the importance of the whale fishery, and the great value of whalebone, it will be needless to speak here, further than to inform our readers that more than half the whalebone which finds its way into the market is consumed by the corset-makers. Silk, cotton, and wool, in very large quantities, are either spun up into laces or used in the sewing or manufacture of the corset itself. No inconsiderable quantity of timber is made use of for working up into busks. Oxhorn, ebonite, gutta-percha, and hardened brass are all occasionally used for the same purpose, whilst the brass eyelet-holes, of which we shall have to say more by-and-by, are turned out in such vast and incalculable quantities, that any attempt at computing their number would be useless. It will be seen by these statistics and remarks that, unlike certain other articles of raiment which have reigned in popular esteem for a time, and then passed away, the corset has not only become an established institution throughout the whole civilised world, but is of immense commercial importance, and in rapidly-increasing demand and esteem. We shall now have to remark on some of the most noteworthy forms of the corset worn at the present day, contrasting them with those of the olden time. The steel corset-_covers_ we have already figured and described. On these contrivances being found heavy and too unbending in their construction, a form of corset was, as we have before said, contrived, which needed no cover to preserve its perfect smoothness of surface and rigidity of form; the front was therefore enriched with gold and silver tissue, and ornamented with embroidery, performing the part of both corset and stomacher, whilst the back was made of a heavier material, because the dress of the period often concealed it. [Illustration: CORSET, FORMING BOTH CORSET AND STOMACHER (FRONT).] [Illustration: CORSET, FORMING BOTH CORSET AND STOMACHER (BACK).] The annexed illustrations are carefully sketched from a very excellent specimen of this form of corset or bodice, kindly lent us for the purpose by Messrs. Simmons, the well-known costumiers of Tavistock-street, Covent Garden, by whom it has been preserved as a great curiosity. The materials used in its construction are very strong, whilst every part the least liable to be put out of form is literally plated with whalebone, making its weight considerable. The lace-holes are worked with blue silk, and are very numerous and close together. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. Remarks on front-fastening stays--Thomson's glove-fitting Corsets--Plan for adding stability to the front-fastening Corset--De la Garde's French Corset--System of self-measurement--The Redresseur Corset of Vienna and its influence on the figures of young persons--Remarks on the flimsy materials used in the manufacture of Corsets--Hints as to proper materials--The "Minet Back" Corset described--Elastic Corsets condemned--The narrow bands used as substitutes for Corsets injurious to the figure--Remarks on the proper application of the Corset with the view to the production of a graceful figure--Thomson's Zephyrina Crinoline--Costume of the present season--The claims of Nature and Art considered--The belle of Damara Land. [Illustration: COMMON CHEAP STAY, FASTENED.] [Illustration: COMMON CHEAP STAY, OPEN.] [Illustration: THE GLOVE-FITTING CORSET (THOMSON AND CO.)] It would be difficult to find a much more marked contrast to the style of bodice referred to in our last chapter than is to be found in the ordinary cheap front-fastening corset commonly sold by drapers. The accompanying illustrations accurately represent it, and those who have written on the subject have much reason on their side when they insist that it neither aids in the formation of a good figure nor helps to maintain the proportions of one when formed. Corsets such as these have neither beauty of contour nor compactness of construction. The two narrow busks through which the holes are drilled for the reception of the _studs_ or _catches_ are too often formed of steel so low in quality that fracture at these weak points is a common occurrence, when some danger of injury from the broken ends is to be apprehended. It will also be found that when these bars or plates are deficient in width and insufficient in stiffness the corset will no longer support the figure, or form a foundation for the dress to be neatly adjusted over. On the introduction of the front-fastening system it was at once seen that much saving of time and trouble was gained by the great facility with which corsets constructed according to it could be put on and off but the objections before referred to were soon manifest, and the ingenuity of inventors was called into action to remedy and overcome them, and it was during this _transition_ stage in the history of the corset that the front-fastening principle met with much condemnation at the hands of those who made the formation of the figure a study. From Thomson and Co., of New York, we have received a pattern of their "_glove-fitting corset_," the subject of the accompanying illustration, in the formation of which the old evils have been most successfully dealt with. The steels are of the highest class of quality and of the requisite degree of substance to insure both safety and sustaining power. Accidental unfastening of the front, so common, and, to say the least of it, inconvenient, in the old form of attachment, is rendered impossible by the introduction of a very ingenious but simple spring _latch_, which is opened or closed in an instant at the pleasure of the wearer. This corset is decidedly the best form on the front-fastening plan we have seen. Its mode of construction is excellent; it is so cut as to admit of its adapting itself to every undulation of the figure with extraordinary facility. We have suggested to the firm the advisability of furnishing to the public corsets combining their excellent method of cutting, great strength of material, and admirable finish, with the single steel busk and hind-lacing arrangement of the ordinary stay. The requirements of all would be then met, for although numbers of ladies prefer the front-fastening corset, it will be observed that a great number of those who have written on the subject, and make the formation and maintenance of the figure a study, positively declare from experience that the waist never looks so small or neatly proportioned as when evenly and well laced in the hind-lacing and close-fronted form of corset. It has of late become the custom to remedy the want of firmness and stability found to exist in many of the common front-fastening corsets by sewing a kind of sheath or case on the inside of the front immediately behind the two steels on which the studs and slots are fixed; into this a rather wide steel busk is passed, so that the division or opening has the centre line of the _extra_ busk immediately behind it. That this plan answers in some measure the desired end there is no doubt, but in such a corset as that of Thomson and Co. no such expedient is needed. [Illustration: CORSET OF MESSRS. DE LA GARDE, PARIS (FRONT).] [Illustration: CORSET OF MESSRS. DE LA GARDE, PARIS (BACK).] The accompanying illustrations are from sketches made expressly for this work from a corset made by De La Garde and Co., of Paris, and our readers will form their own opinion as to the contour of the figure from which these drawings were made, which is that of a lady who has for many years worn corsets made by the above-mentioned firm. The waist-measure is eighteen inches. The remarks as to the advisability of having corsets made to measure are scarcely borne out by her experiences. She informs us that it has always been her custom to forward to Messrs. De La Garde and Co.'s agent the measure taken round the chest below the arms, from beneath the arm to the hip, the circumference of the hips, and the waist-measure, when the fit is a matter of certainty. By adopting this system ladies residing in the country can, she assures us, always provide themselves with corsets made by the first manufacturers in Europe without the trouble and inconvenience of being attended for the purpose of measurement. In ordering the "_glove-fitting corset_," the waist measure only need be given. From M. Weiss, of Vienna, we have received a pattern and photographs from which our other illustrations are taken. Here we have represented the so-called "_redresseur_" corset, devised mainly with a view to the formation of the figure in young persons, or where careless and awkward habits of posture have been contracted. It will be seen on examination that the front of the chest is left entirely free for expansion, the waist only being confined at the point where restraint is most called for. The back is supported and kept upright by the system of boning adopted with that view, and the shoulder-straps, after passing completely round the point of the shoulder, are hooked together behind, thus bringing the shoulders in their proper position and keeping them there. As a corrective and improver to the figure there can be no doubt that the _redresseur_ corset is a safe and most efficient contrivance. We have had an opportunity of seeing it worn, and can testify to the marked and obvious improvement which was at once brought about by its application. [Illustration: THE "REDRESSEUR" CORSET OF VIENNA (WEISS).] We have heard many complaints lately of the flimsy manner in which corsets of comparatively high price are turned out by their makers, the stitching being so weak that re-sewing is not unfrequently needed after a few days' wear. The edges of the whalebones, too, instead of being rounded off and rendered smooth, are often, we find, left as sharp as a knife, causing the coutil or other material to be cut through in a very few days. The eyelet-holes are also made so small and narrow at the flanges that no hold on the material is afforded, and even the most moderate kind of lacing causes them to break from their hold, fall out, and leave a hole in the material of which the corset is made, which if not immediately repaired by working round in the old-fashioned way rapidly enlarges, frays out, and runs into an unsightly hole. Corset-makers should see that the circle of metal beyond the orifice through which the lace passes is sufficiently wide to close down perfectly on the fabric, and retain a firm hold of it; if they do not do so, the old worked eyelet-hole is preferable to the stud, notwithstanding the neat appearance of the stud and the apparent advantage it has over the old plan. A form of corset made without lacing-holes, known as the "_Minet Back_," with which many of our readers will no doubt be familiar, and which was extensively worn in France some few years ago, is still to be obtained of some few makers in England. This has a row of short strong loops sewn just beyond each back whalebone. Through these pass from top to bottom, on each side of the back, a long round bar of strong whalebone, which is secured in its place by a string passing through a hole made in its top to the upper loop of each row. The lace (a flat silk one) was passed through the spaces between the loops, and was tightened over the smooth round whalebone, thus enabling the wearer not only to lace with extreme tightness without danger to the corset, but admitting of its almost instant removal by slightly slackening the lace and then drawing out one of the bars, which immediately sets the interlacing free from end to end. We are rather surprised that more of these corsets are not worn, as there are numerous advantages attendant on them. Our space will not admit of our more than glancing _en passant_ at the various inventions which have from time to time been brought to the notice of the public. By some inventors the use of elastic webbing or woven indiarubber cloth was taken advantage of, and great stress was laid on the resilient qualities of the corsets to which it was applied. But it must never be lost sight of that all materials of an elastic nature, when fitted tightly to the figure, not only have the power of expanding on the application of force, but are unceasingly exercising their own extensive powers of contraction. Thus, no amount of custom could ever adapt the waist to the space allotted to it, as with the elastic corset it is changing every second, and always exercising constriction even when loosely laced. The narrow bands hollowed out over the hips may be, as some writers on the subject have stated, adapted for the possessors of very slight figures who ride much on horseback; but many ladies of great experience in the matter strongly condemn them as being inefficient and calculated to lead to much detriment to the figure. Thus writes a correspondent to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_:-- "As one of your correspondents recommends the waistbands in lieu of corsets, I have during the last three weeks made a trial of them, and shall be glad if you will allow me to express my opinion that they are not only disadvantageous but positively dangerous to the figure. Your correspondent says that ordinary corsets, if drawn in well at the waist, hurt a woman cruelly all the way up. I can only say that if she finds such to be the case the remedy is in her own hands. If ladies would only take the trouble to have their stays made to measure for them, and have plenty of room allowed round the chest, not only would the waist look smaller, but no discomfort would be felt such as H. W. describes. Young girls should always be accurately fitted, but it is, I have found, a mistake to have their corsets too flimsy or elastic. I quite agree that they should be commenced early--indeed, they usually are so, and thus extreme compression being unnecessary, the instances brought forward by the lady who commenced the discussion and by Nora must, I think, be looked upon as exceptional cases. "EFFIE MARGETSON." Another lady writing in the same journal says--"No one will grudge 'The Young Lady Herself' any sympathy she may claim for the torture she has submitted to, but so far from her case being condemnatory of stays it is the reverse, for she candidly admits that she does not suffer ill-health. Now such a case as hers is an exception, and the stout young lady spoken of by Nora is also an exception, for it is seldom that girls are allowed to attain the age of fourteen or fifteen before commencing stays. The great secret is to begin their use as early as possible, and no such severe compression will be requisite. It seems absurd to allow the waist to grow large and clumsy, and then to reduce it again to more elegant proportions by means which must at first be more or less productive of inconvenience. There is no article of civilised dress which, when first begun to be worn, does not feel uncomfortable for a time to those who have never worn it before. The barefooted Highland lassie carries her shoes to the town, puts them on on her arrival, and discards them again directly she leaves the centre of civilisation. A hat or a coat would be at first insupportable to the men of many nations, and we all know how soon the African belle threw aside the crinoline she had been induced to purchase. But surely no one would argue against these necessary articles of dress merely on the ground of inconvenience to the wearer, for, however uncomfortable they may be at first, it is astonishing how soon that feeling goes off and how indispensable they become. My opinion is that stays should always be made to order, and not be of too flimsy a construction. I think H. W.'s suggestions regarding the waistbands only applicable to middle-aged ladies or invalids, as they do not give sufficient support to growing girls, and are likely to make the figure look too much like a sack tied round the middle instead of gradually tapering to the waist. Brisbane's letter shows how those who have never tried tight-lacing are prejudiced against it, and that merely from being shown a print in an old medical work, while Nora's letter is infinitely more valuable, as showing how even the most extreme lacing can be employed without injury to health. "L. THOMPSON." Such a work as this would be incomplete without some remarks touching the best means to be applied for the achievement of the desired end, and hence a letter from a lady of great experience, who has paid much attention to the subject, contributed to the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_, enables us to give the very best possible kind of information--viz., that gathered by personal observation. Thus she writes:-- "In the numerous communications on the subject of tight-lacing which have appeared in the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_, but little has been said on the best mode of applying the corset in order to produce elegance of figure. It seems to me that nearly all those who suffer from tight-lacing do so from an _injudicious_ use of the corset, and in such cases the unfortunate corset generally gets all the blame, and not the wearer who makes an improper use of it. I can easily understand that a girl who is full grown, or nearly so, and who has been unaccustomed to wear tight stays, should find it difficult and painful to lace in her waist to a fashionable size; but if the corset be worn at an early age and the figure gradually moulded by it, I know of no terrible consequences that need be apprehended. I would therefore recommend the early use of a corset that fits the figure nicely and no more. Now, simply wearing stays that only _fit_, will, when a girl is growing, in a great measure prevent the waist from becoming clumsy. If, however, on her reaching the age of fourteen or fifteen, her waist be still considered too large, a smaller corset may be worn with advantage, which should be _gradually_ tightened till the requisite slimness is achieved. I know of so many instances in which, under this system, girls have, when full grown, possessed both a good figure and good health, that I can recommend it with confidence to those parents who wish their children to grow up into elegant and healthy women. As to whether compression of the waist by symmetrical corsets injures the health in any way, opinion seems to be divided. The personal experiences of tight-lacers, as your correspondent Belle has observed, will do more to solve this knotty question than any amount of theory. But whatever conclusion we may come to on this point, there is no denying the fact that very many of the strongest and healthiest women one sees in society habitually practise tight-lacing, and apparently do so with impunity. "AN OLD SUBSCRIBER." As we have before stated, the remarks and observations contained in the above letter are the result of careful study and a thorough acquaintance with the subject, and not of hasty conclusion, prejudice, or theory. A letter in the earlier portion of this work, from an old Edinburgh correspondent to the _Queen_, than whom few are more competent to direct and advise on this important subject, will be found precisely to the same end, and we feel sure, in laying before the reader such united experiences, that much will be done towards the establishment of such a system of management as will lead to the almost certain achievement of grace and elegance of figure without the sacrifice of health. That these are most important and desirable objects for attainment few would be puritanical and headstrong enough to deny, and there can be no question that, however superb or simple a lady's costume may be, it is mainly dependent for its elegance of adjustment and distinctiveness of style to the corset and crinoline beneath it. We have seen how Mrs. Selby's invention influenced the world of fashion in her day, and a glance at the illustration at page 114 will be sufficient to prove how inferior, in point of grace and elegance, the costume of that period was to that of our own time. Some idea may be formed of the wide-spread and almost universal attention which Mrs. Selby's wondrous "_crinoline conception_" met at the hands of the fashionable world by a perusal of the following lines, which were written at Bath concerning it in the year 1711, and are entitled, _The Farthingale Reviewed; or, More Work for the Cooper. A paneygerick on the late but most admirable invention of the hooped petticoat._ "There's scarce a bard that writ in former time Had e'er so great, so bright a theme for rhyme; The _Mantua_ swain, if living, would confess Ours more surprising than his Tyrian dress, And Ovid's mistress, in her loose attire, Would cease to charm his eyes or fan Love's fire. Were he at _Bath_, and had these coats in view, He'd write his _Metamorphosis_ anew, "Delia, fresh hooped, would o'er his heart prevail, To leave Corinna and her tawdry veil. Hear, great Apollo! and my genius guide, To sing this glorious miracle of pride, Nor yet disdain the subject for its name, Since meaner things have oft been sung to Fame; Even boots and spurs have graced heroic verse, Butler his knight's whole suit did well rehearse; King Harry's costume stands upon record, And every age will precedents afford. Then on, my Muse, and sing in epic strain The petticoat--thou shalt not sing in vain, The petticoat will sure reward thy pain; With all thy skill its secret virtues tell-- A petticoat should still be handled well. "Oh garment heavenly wide! thy spacious round Do's my astonished thoughts almost confound; My fancy cannot grasp thee at a view, None at first sight e'er such a picture drew. The daring artist that describes thee true, Must change his sides as modern statesmen do, Or like the painter, when some church he draws, Following his own, and not the builder's laws, At once shows but the prospect to the sight, For north and south together can't be right. "Hence, ye profane! nor think I shall reveal The happy wonders which these vests conceal; Hence your unhallow'd eyes and ears remove, 'Tis _Cupid's_ circle, 'tis the orb of Love. Let it suffice you see th' unwieldy fair Sail through the streets with gales of swelling air; Nor think (like fools) the ladies, would they try, Arm'd with their furbelows and these, could fly. That's all romantick, for these garments show Their thoughts are with their petticoats below. "Nor must we blame them whilst they stretch their art In rich adornment and being wondrous smart; For that, perhaps, may stand 'em more in stead Than loads of ribbons fluttering on the head. And, let philosophers say what they will, There's something surer than their eyes do's kill; We tell the nymph that we her face adore, But plain she sees we glance at something more. "In vain the ladies spend their morning hours Erecting on their heads stupendous towers; A battery from thence might scare the foe, But certain victory is gained below. Let _Damon_ then the adverse champion be-- Topknots for him, and petticoats for me; Nor must he urge it spoils the ladies' shape, Tho' (as the multitude at monsters gape) The world appears all lost in wild amaze, As on these new, these strange machines they gaze; For if the Queen the poets tell us of, from Paphos came, Attired as we are told by antique fame, Thus would they wonder at the heavenly dame. "I own the female world is much estranged From what it was, and top and bottom changed. The head was once their darling constant care, But women's heads can't heavy burdens bear-- As much, I mean, as they can do elsewhere; So wisely they transferred the mode of dress, And furnished t'other end with the excess. What tho' like spires or pyramids they show, Sharp at the top, and vast of bulk below? It is a sign they stand the more secure: A maypole will not like a church endure, And ships at sea, when stormy winds prevail, Are safer in their ballast than their sail. "Hail, happy coat! for modern damsels fit, Product of ladies' and of taylors' wit; Child of Invention rather than of Pride, What wonders dost thou show, what wonders hide! Within the shelter of thy useful shade, Thin _Galatea's_ shrivelled limbs appear As plump and charming as they did last year; Whilst tall _Miranda_ her lank shape improves, And, graced by thee, in some proportion moves. Ev'n those who are diminutively short May please themselves and make their neighbours sport, When, to their armpits harnessed up in thee, Nothing but head and petticoats we see. But, oh! what a figure fat _Sempronia_ makes! At her gigantick form the pavement quakes; By thy addition she's so much enlarged, Where'er she comes, the sextons now are charged That all church doors and pews be wider made-- A vast advantage to a joiner's trade. "Ye airy nymphs, that do these garments wear, Forgive my want of skill, not want of care; Forgive me if I have not well displayed A coat for such important uses made. If aught I have forgot, it was to prove How fit they are, how _apropos_ for love, How in their circles cooling zephyrs play, Just as a tall ship's sails are filled on some bright summer day. But there my Muse must halt--she dares no more Than hope the pardon which she ask'd before." [Illustration: THE FASHION OF 1868.] Fashions have altered, times have changed, hooped petticoats have been in turn honoured and banished, just as the fickle goddess of the mirror has decreed. Still, as an arrow shot in the air returns in time to earth, so surely does the hooped jupon return to power after a temporary estrangement from the world of gaiety. The illustration on page 223 represents the last new form of crinoline, and there can be no doubt that its open form of front is a most important and noteworthy improvement. Preceding this engraving, we have an illustration representing two ladies in the costume of the present season arranged over "the glove-fitting corset" and "Zephyrina jupon," for patterns of both of which we are indebted to the courtesy of Messrs. Thomson and Co., the inventors and manufacturers. [Illustration: THE ZEPHYRINA JUPON.] It is the custom with some authors to uphold the claims of _nature_ in matters relating to human elegance, and we admit that nature in her own way is particularly charming, so long as the accessories and surroundings are in unison. But in the human heart everywhere dwells an innate love of adornment, and untaught savages, in their toilet appliances and tastes, closely resemble the belles of highly-civilised communities. We have already referred to the crinoline petticoats worn by the Tahitian girls when they were first seen by the early navigators. The frilled ruff which so long remained a high court favourite during the Elizabethan period (and which, if we mistake not, will again have its day) was as well known to the dusky beauties of the palm-clad, wave-lashed islands of the Pacific, when Cook first sailed forth to discover new lands, as it was to the stately and proud dames of Venice. Beneath, we place side by side types of savage elegance and refined taste. Where the one begins and the other ends, who shall say? [Illustration: TAHITIAN DANCING GIRL. VENETIAN LADY.] INDEX. Adventure, an, of Louise de Lorraine, 92, 97. Alarming diseases said to be produced by wearing high-heeled shoes, 194, 195. Ancient inhabitants of Polenqui, reduction of the waist by, 10. An Italian duchess, the costume of, 54. Antiquities of Egypt, researches among, 25-27. Augsburg, the ladies of, by Hoechstetterus, 104. Austria, Empress of, elegant figure of, 165. Backboards and stocks, 134. Bands (narrow), used as substitutes for corsets injurious, 213, 214. Barbers, an army of, 110. Beauties of Circassia, 13, 14. Beauty, Hindoo ideas regarding, 19, 20. Belles of India, 19, 20. Belt (ornamented) of the Indians, 9. Bernaise dress, 65. Blanche, daughter of Edward III., dress of, 49. Boarding-school discipline, letter on, 170, 171. Boddice, bodice, or bodies, 123. Bonnet à canon, the, 60. Bouffant sleeves of the reign of Henry II., 65. Bridal dress of an Israelitish lady, 28. Buchan, writings of, 130. Ceylon, figure-training in, 13. Chaucer's writings, his admiration of small waists, 50. Chinese gentleman, letter from a, 20. Cleopatra and her jewels, 37. Clumsy figures great drawbacks to young ladies, 182. Conquest of the Roman Empire, 38. Corps, the, 72, 75. Corset, a peculiar form of, worn by some ladies of fashion in France, 190. Corset in use among the Israelitish ladies, 28, 29. Corset, general use of the, on the Continent for boys, 136-138. Corset, origin of, 9. Corset, use of by the inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago, 10. Corset-covers (steel), 75. Corsets and high-heeled shoes denounced, 194, 195. Corsets, custom of wearing during sleep, 150, 153. Corsets for growing girls, remarks on, 167, 168. Corsets of the present day contrasted with those of the olden time, 196. Corsets, remarks on the proper application of, 214-216. Corsets, severe form of, worn in the Elizabethan period, 75, 76. Corsets, the small size of, made in London, 165. Corsets, their use for youths, 138. Corsets worn by gentlemen in 1265, 46. Corsets worn by gentlemen of the present time, 138. Costume à l'enfant, 98. Costume à la Watteau, 109. Costume of the court of Louis XVI., 124. Costumes of the ladies of Israel, 27-29. Cottes hardies, 41. Crim Tartary, beautiful princesses of, 14, 19. Crinoline among the South Sea Islanders, 143. Crinoline and slender waists, remarks of Madame La Sante on, 143, 144. Crinoline not a new term, 143. Cromwell's time, tight-lacing in, 104. De La Garde's French corsets, 209, 210. Demon of fashion, a monkish satire, 42. Determined tailor, a, 55. Dress in 1776, 129. Dress, its elegance dependent on the corset, 189. Dresses (low) of 1713, 115. Dunbar's Thistle and Rose, 50. Earth-eating in Java, 13. Eastern Archipelago, use of the corset in, 10. Edict of the Emperor Joseph of Austria forbidding the use of stays, 66. Edinburgh, Traditions of, anecdote from, 144. Egyptian fashions and costumes, 25-27. Elastic corsets condemned, 213. Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, entry in household register of, 45, 46. Elegance of figure highly esteemed by the Persians, 20. Elegant costumes of the ancient Jewish ladies, 27-29. Empress of Austria, the, portrait of, 166. Escapade of young Louis of France, 98. Extravagance of the Roman ladies, 36. Families, Medici, Este, and Visconti, 54. Family man, letter from a, 184, 185. Farthingale, the, protest against, 110. Fashionable promenades of Ancient Rome, 35. Fashion and dress in 1865, 189. Fashion in the reign of King Pepin, 41. Fashion in 1713, 115. Fashions in Ancient Egypt, 27-29. Figure, general remarks on the, 182. Figure, letter on the, 190-193. Figure, reduction of, by the ancient inhabitants of Polenqui, 10. Figure-training, 133, 167. Food, abstinence from, an assistance to the corset, 144, 149. Freaks of fashion in France and Germany, 54. French revolutionary period, dress during, 129. Front-fastening stays, remarks concerning, 202-204. Gay, the writings of, 123. Guardian, the, correspondence from, relating to the fashions of 1713, 110, 115, 116, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123. Guardian, the, letters from, relating to low dresses and tight stays, 120-123. Gustavus Adolphus, the officers of, 135. Hair powder, its introduction, 97. Henry III. of France a wearer of corsets, 76, 81. Hindoo belles, 19, 20. Hindoo standards of beauty, 19, 20. Hogarth, stays drawn by, 129. Homer speaks of the corset, 30. Improvements in corsets brought about by the advance of civilisation, 10. Indian hunting-belt, 9, 10. Israelitish ladies, 27-29. Jane Shore, penance of, 46-49. Java, earth-eating in, 13. Jonson (Ben), his remarks on stays, 123. Jumpers and Garibaldis, 130. King Charles I. of England, fashions of the court of, 103. King George III., fashion in the reign of, 135. King James and his fondness for dress, 89, 90. King Louis XV. of France, fashion in the reign of, 109. Kirtle, the, 46. Ladies of Old France, 41. Lady Morton, diminutive waist of, 166. Lady Triamore, daughter of the King of the Fairies, 45. Lady's-maid, accomplishments of a, 123. Launfal, poem of, 45. Lawn ruffs of Queen Bess, 82, 87. Laws, sumptuary, relating to dress, 90. Letter from a lady, who habitually laces with extreme tightness, in praise of the practice, 182-184. Letters from ladies who have been subjected to tight-lacing, 155-164. Louis XIV. of France, court of, 98. Louis XIV. of France, the court of, high-heeled shoes, slender waists, and fancy costumes, fashionable at, 98. Louise de Lorraine, fête dress of, 97. Louise de Lorraine, strange freaks of, 92, 97. Marie d'Anjou, costume of, 54. Marie de Medici and the costumes of her time, 97. Marie Stuart, costume of, 159. Medical evidence in favour of stays, 134, 135. Medical man, letter from, in favour of moderately tight lacing, 154, 155. Minet back corset described, 213. Mitra used by the Grecian ladies, 33. Mode of adding stability to the front-fastening corset, 209. Mortality among the female sex not on the increase, 195. Old authors, their remarks on stays, 194. Peplus, the, 33. Proportions of the figure and size of waist considered, 193. Puritanism, its effect on fashion, 104. Queen Anne, fashions during the reign of, 110. Queen Catherine de Medici and Queen Elizabeth of England, 72, 75. Queen Elizabeth's collection of false hair, 87, 88. Queen newspaper, letter from, on small waists, 165-168. Redresseur corset of Vienna, 210. Remarks on the changes of fashion, 143. Remarks on the flimsy materials used in making some modern corsets, 210. Revival of the taste for small waists in Old France, 41. Roman baths, 34, 35. Royal standard of fashionable slenderness, 72. Scotland, small waists admired in, in olden times, 50. Scriptural references, 29. Selby, Mrs., the invention of, reviewed, 217. Self-measurement, remarks concerning, 209. Short waists and long trains, 129. Siamese dress, the, 98. Side-arms of the Elizabethan period, 91. Snake-toed shoes, long sleeves, and high-heeled slippers, 59. Starching, the art of, 82. Statistics, extraordinary, of the corset trade, 195. Statue, a fashionably dressed, 180. Stays, formidable kind of, in use in 1776, 129. Stays, the general use of the word after 1600 in England, 124. Stays worn habitually by gentlemen, 135. Strophium, the use of, by the ladies of Rome, 33. Stubs, Philip, on the ruff, 87-89. Stubs, his indignation, 88, 89. Taper waists and figure-training in Ancient Rome, 38. Terentius, strictures and remarks of, 30. Thirteenth century, the small waists of, 42. Thomson's glove-fitting corsets, 204, 205. Tight corsets, letter in praise of, 182, 183. Tight corsets needed for short waists, 190. Tight-lacing revived, 130. Toilet of a Roman lady of fashion, 34-36. United States of America, belles of the, 153. Venice, fashions of the ladies of, 82, 87. Venus de Medici, waist of, contrasted with the waist of fashion, 180. Venus, the cestus of, 30. Vienna, slender waists the fashion in, 165. Voluminous nether-garments of the gentlemen of the Elizabethan period, 82. Waist, the point at which it should be formed, 193, 194· Young Baronet, letter from, 184. Zephyrina jupon of Thomson and Co., 221. Transcriber's Note: Original spelling/hyphenation/punctuation has been retained, but typographical errors have been corrected. 
33020	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the numerous original illustrations, many of which are in full color. See 33020-h.htm or 33020-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33020/33020-h/33020-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33020/33020-h.zip) ENGLISH COSTUME Painted & Described by DION CLAYTON CALTHROP Published by Adam & Charles Black London · MCMVII [Illustration: {Scissors}] Published in four volumes during 1906. Published in one volume, April, 1907. Agents America The Macmillan Company 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York Canada The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd. 70 Bond Street, Toronto India Macmillan & Company, Ltd. Macmillan Building, Bombay 309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE IV. (1820-1830) Here you see the coat which we now wear, slightly altered, in our evening dress. It came into fashion, with this form of top-boots, in 1799, and was called a Jean-de-Bry. Notice the commencement of the whisker fashion.] INTRODUCTION The world, if we choose to see it so, is a complicated picture of people dressing and undressing. The history of the world is composed of the chat of a little band of tailors seated cross-legged on their boards; they gossip across the centuries, feeling, as they should, very busy and important. Someone made the coat of many colours for Joseph, another cut into material for Elijah's mantle. Baldwin, from his stall on the site of the great battle, has only to stretch his neck round to nod to the tailor who made the toga for Julius Cæsar; has only to lean forward to smile to Pasquino, the wittiest of tailors. John Pepys, the tailor, gossips with his neighbour who cut that jackanapes coat with silver buttons so proudly worn by Samuel Pepys, his son. Mr. Schweitzer, who cut Beau Brummell's coat, talks to Mr. Meyer, who shaped his pantaloons. Our world is full of the sound of scissors, the clipping of which, with the gossiping tongues, drown the grander voices of history. As you will see, I have devoted myself entirely to civil costume--that is, the clothes a man or a woman would wear from choice, and not by reason of an appointment to some ecclesiastical post, or to a military calling, or to the Bar, or the Bench. Such clothes are but symbols of their trades and professions, and have been dealt with by persons who specialize in those professions. I have taken the date of the Conquest as my starting-point, and from that date--a very simple period of clothes--I have followed the changes of the garments reign by reign, fold by fold, button by button, until we arrive quite smoothly at Beau Brummell, the inventor of modern clothes, the prophet of cleanliness. I have taken considerable pains to trace the influence of one garment upon its successor, to reduce the wardrobe for each reign down to its simplest cuts and folds, so that the reader may follow quite easily the passage of the coat from its birth to its ripe age, and by this means may not only know the clothes of one time, but the reasons for those garments. To the best of my knowledge, such a thing has never been done before; most works on dress try to include the world from Adam to Charles Dickens, lump a century into a page, and dismiss the ancient Egyptians in a couple of colour plates. So many young gentlemen have blown away their patrimony on feathers and tobacco that it is necessary for us to confine ourselves to certain gentlemen and ladies in our own country. A knowledge of history is essential to the study of mankind, and a knowledge of history is never perfect without a knowledge of the clothes with which to dress it. A man, in a sense, belongs to his clothes; they are so much a part of him that, to take him seriously, one must know how he walked about, in what habit, with what air. I am compelled to speak strongly of my own work because I believe in it, and I feel that the series of paintings in these volumes are really a valuable addition to English history. To be modest is often to be excessively vain, and, having made an exhaustive study of my subject from my own point of view, I do not feel called upon to hide my knowledge under a bushel. Of course, I do not suggest that the ordinary cultured man should acquire the same amount of knowledge as a painter, or a writer of historical subjects, or an actor, but he should understand the clothes of his own people, and be able to visualize any date in which he may be interested. One half of the people who talk glibly of Beau Brummell have but half an idea when he lived, and no idea that, for example, he wore whiskers. Hamlet they can conjure up, but would have some difficulty in recognising Shakespeare, because most portraits of him are but head and shoulders. Napoleon has stamped himself on men's minds very largely through the medium of a certain form of hat, a lock of hair, and a gray coat. In future years an orchid will be remembered as an emblem. I have arranged, as far as it is possible, that each plate shall show the emblem or distinguishing mark of the reign it illustrates, so that the continuity of costume shall be remembered by the arresting notes. As the fig-leaf identifies Adam, so may the chaperon twisted into a cockscomb mark Richard II. As the curled and scented hair of Alcibiades occurs to our mind, so shall Beau Nash manage his clouded cane. Elizabeth shall be helped to the memory by her Piccadilly ruff; square Henry VIII. by his broad-toed shoes and his little flat cap; Anne Boleyn by her black satin nightdress; James be called up as padded trucks; Maximilian as puffs and slashes; D'Orsay by the curve of his hat; Tennyson as a dingy brigand; Gladstone as a collar; and even more recent examples, as the Whistlerian lock and the Burns blue suit. And what romantic incidents may we not hang upon our clothes-line! The cloak of Samuel Pepys ('Dapper Dick,' as he signed himself to a certain lady) sheltering four ladies from the rain; Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak over the mud to protect the shoes of that great humorist Elizabeth (I never think of her apart from the saying, 'Ginger for pluck'); Mary, Queen of Scots, ordering false attires of hair during her captivity--all these scenes clinched into reality by the knowledge of the dress proper to them. And what are we doing to help modern history--the picture of our own times--that it may look beautiful in the ages to come? I cannot answer you that. Some chapters of this work have appeared in the _Connoisseur_, and I have to thank the editor for his courtesy in allowing me to reproduce them. I must also thank Mr. Pownall for his help in the early stages of my labours. One thing more I must add: I do not wish this book to go forth and be received with that frigid politeness which usually welcomes a history to the shelves of the bookcase, there to remain unread. The book is intended to be read, and is not wrapped up in grandiose phrases and a great wind about nothing; I would wish to be thought more friendly than the antiquarian and more truthful than the historian, and so have endeavoured to show, in addition to the body of the clothes, some little of their soul. DION CLAYTON CALTHROP. Contents PAGE WILLIAM THE FIRST 1 WILLIAM THE SECOND 10 HENRY THE FIRST 21 STEPHEN 29 HENRY THE SECOND 46 RICHARD THE FIRST 55 JOHN 62 HENRY THE THIRD 67 EDWARD THE FIRST 81 EDWARD THE SECOND 92 EDWARD THE THIRD 102 RICHARD THE SECOND 122 THE END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 141 HENRY THE FOURTH 152 HENRY THE FIFTH 161 HENRY THE SIXTH 176 EDWARD THE FOURTH 198 EDWARD THE FIFTH 213 RICHARD THE THIRD 213 HENRY THE SEVENTH 223 HENRY THE EIGHTH 247 EDWARD THE SIXTH 274 MARY 283 ELIZABETH 291 JAMES THE FIRST 325 CHARLES THE FIRST 341 THE CROMWELLS 359 CHARLES THE SECOND 365 JAMES THE SECOND 378 WILLIAM AND MARY 383 QUEEN ANNE 395 GEORGE THE FIRST 406 GEORGE THE SECOND 414 GEORGE THE THIRD 432 GEORGE THE FOURTH 440 Illustrations in Colour 1. A Man of the Time of George IV. 1820-1830 _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. A Man of the Time of William I. 1066-1087 2 3. A Woman of the Time of William I. " 8 4. A Man of the Time of William II. 1087-1100 10 5. A Woman of the Time of William II. " 16 6. A Man of the Time of Henry I. 1100-1135 22 7. A Child of the Time of Henry I. " 24 8. A Woman of the Time of Henry I. " 26 9. A Man of the Time of Stephen 1135-1154 30 10. A Woman of the Time of Stephen " 38 11. A Man of the Time of Henry II. 1154-1189 46 12. A Woman of the Time of Henry II. " 52 13. A Man of the Time of Richard I. 1189-1199 56 14. A Woman of the Time of Richard I. " 60 15. A Man of the Time of John 1199-1216 62 16. A Woman of the Time of John " 66 17. A Man of the Time of Henry III. 1216-1272 68 18. A Woman of the Time of Henry III. " 74 19. A Peasant of Early England 78 20. A Man and Woman of the Time of Edward I. 1272-1307 88 21. A Man and Woman of the Time of Edward II. 1307-1327 96 22. A Man of the Time of Edward III. 1327-1377 112 23. A Woman of the Time of Edward III. " 120 24. A Man of the Time of Richard II. 1377-1399 128 25. A Woman of the Time of Richard II. " 136 26. A Man and Woman of the Time of Henry IV. 1399-1413 152 27. A Man of the Time of Henry V. 1413-1422 164 28. A Woman of the Time of Henry V. " 172 29. A Man of the Time of Henry VI. 1422-1461 180 30. A Woman of the Time of Henry VI. " 192 31. A Man of the Time of Edward IV. 1461-1483 200 32. A Woman of the Time of Edward IV. " 208 33. A Man of the Time of Richard III. 1483-1485 216 34. A Woman of the Time of Richard III. " 220 35. A Man of the Time of Henry VII. 1485-1509 226 36. A Woman of the Time of Henry VII. " 242 37. A Man of the Time of Henry VIII. 1509-1547 250 38. A Man of the Time of Henry VIII. " 256 39. A Woman of the Time of Henry VIII. " 258 40. A Woman of the Time of Henry VIII. " 266 41. A Man and Woman of the Time of Edward VI. 1547-1553 278 42. A Man of the Time of Mary 1553-1558 286 43. A Woman of the Time of Mary " 290 44. A Man of the Time of Elizabeth 1558-1603 298 45. A Woman of the Time of Elizabeth " 306 46. A Woman of the Time of Elizabeth " 314 47. A Man of the Time of James I. 1603-1625 330 48. A Woman of the Time of James I. " 338 49. A Man of the Time of Charles I. 1625-1649 346 50. A Woman of the Time of Charles I. " 354 51. A Cromwellian Man 1649-1660 360 52. A Woman of the Time of the Cromwells " 362 53. A Woman of the Time of the Cromwells " 364 54. A Man of the Time of Charles II. 1660-1685 366 55. A Man of the Time of Charles II. " 368 56. A Woman of the Time of Charles II. " 372 57. A Man of the Time of James II. 1685-1689 378 58. A Woman of the Time of James II. " 380 59. A Man of the Time of William and Mary 1689-1702 384 60. A Woman of the Time of William and Mary " 392 61. A Man of the Time of Queen Anne 1702-1714 396 62. A Woman of the Time of Queen Anne " 400 63. A Man of the Time of George I. 1714-1727 408 64. A Woman of the Time of George I. 1714-1727 412 65. A Man of the Time of George II. 1727-1760 416 66. A Woman of the Time of George II. " 424 67. A Man of the Time of George III. 1760-1820 432 68. A Woman of the Time of George III. " 434 69. A Man of the Time of George III. 1760-1820 436 70. A Woman of the Time of George III. " 438 Illustrations in Black and White FACING PAGE A Series of Thirty-two Half-tone Reproductions of Engravings by Hollar 358 A Series of Sixty Half-tone Reproductions of Wash Drawings by the Dightons--Father and Son--and by the Author 440 Numerous Line Drawings by the Author throughout the Text. WILLIAM THE FIRST Reigned twenty-one years: 1066-1087. Born 1027. Married, 1053, Matilda of Flanders. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of William I.; a shoe}] Why France should always give the lead in the matter of dress is a nice point in sartorial morality--a morality which holds that it takes nine tailors to make a man and but one milliner to break him, a code, in fact, with which this book will often have to deal. Sartorially, then, we commence with the 14th of October, 1066, upon which day, fatal to the fashions of the country, the flag of King Harold, sumptuously woven and embroidered in gold, bearing the figure of a man fighting, studded with precious stones, was captured. William, of Norse blood and pirate traditions, landed in England, and brought with him bloodshed, devastation, new laws, new customs, and new fashions. Principal among these last was the method of shaving the hair at the back of the head, which fashion speedily died out by reason of the parlous times and the haste of war, besides the utter absurdity of the idea. Fashion, however, has no sense of the ridiculous, and soon replaced the one folly by some other extravagance. William I. found the Saxons very plainly dressed, and he did little to alter the masculine mode. He found the Saxon ladies to be as excellent at embroidery as were their Norman sisters, and in such times the spindle side was content to sit patiently at home weaving while the men were abroad ravaging the country. William was not of the stuff of dandies. No man could draw his bow; he helped with his own hands to clear the snowdrift on the march to Chester. Stark and fierce he was, loving the solitudes of the woods and the sight of hart and hind. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM I. (1066-1087) Cloak buckled at the shoulder. Leather thongs crossed on his legs. Shoes of leather. Tunic fitting to his body like a jersey.] When some kind of order was restored in England, many of the Saxons who had fled the country and gone to Constantinople came back, bringing with them the Oriental idea of dress. The Jews came with Eastern merchandise into England, and brought rich-coloured stuffs, and as these spread through the country by slow degrees, there came a gradual change in colour and material, and finer stuffs replaced the old homespun garments. The Jews were at this time very eminent as silk manufacturers and makers of purple cloth. The Britons had been very famous for their dyed woollen stuffs. Boadicea is said to have worn a tunic of chequered stuff, which was in all probability rather of the nature of Scotch plaids. The tunics worn by the men of this time were, roughly speaking, of two kinds: those that fitted close to the body, and those that hung loose, being gathered into the waist by a band. The close-fitting tunic was in the form of a knitted jersey, with skirts reaching to the knee; it was open on either side to the hips, and fell from the hips in loose folds. The neck was slit open four or five inches, and had an edging of embroidery, and the sleeves were wide, and reached just below the elbows. These also had an edging of embroidery, or a band different in colour to the rest of the tunic. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William I.}] The other form of tunic was made exactly in shape like the modern shirt, except that the neck opening was smaller. It was loose and easy, with wide sleeves to the elbow, and was gathered in at the waist by a band of stuff or leather. The skirts of the tunics were cut square or V-shaped in front and behind. There were also tunics similar in shape to either of those mentioned, except that the skirts were very short, and were tucked into wide, short breeches which reached to the knee, or into the trousers which men wore. Under this tunic was a plain shirt, loosely fitting, the sleeves tight and wrinkled over the wrist, the neck showing above the opening of the tunic. This shirt was generally white, and the opening at the neck was sometimes stitched with coloured or black wool. Upon the legs they wore neat-fitting drawers of wool or cloth, dyed or of natural colour, or loose trousers of the same materials, sometimes worn loose, but more generally bound round just above the knee and at the ankle. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William I.}] They wore woollen socks, and for footgear they wore shoes of skin and leather, and boots of soft leather shaped naturally to the foot and strapped or buckled across the instep. The tops of the boots were sometimes ornamented with coloured bands. The cloak worn was semicircular in shape, with or without a small semicircle cut out at the neck. It was fastened over the right shoulder or in the centre by means of a large round or square brooch, or it was held in place by means of a metal ring or a stuff loop through which the cloak was pushed; or it was tied by two cords sewn on to the right side of the cloak, which cords took a bunch of the stuff into a knot and so held it, the ends of the cords having tags of metal or plain ornaments. One may see the very same make and fashion of tunic as the Normans wore under their armour being worn to-day by the Dervishes in Lower Egypt--a coarse wool tunic, well padded, made in the form of tunic and short drawers in one piece, the wide sleeves reaching just below the elbow. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William I.}] The hats and caps of these men were of the most simple form--plain round-topped skull-caps, flat caps close to the head without a brim, and a hat with a peak like the helmet. Hoods, of course, were worn during the winter, made very close to the head, and they were also worn under the helmets. Thus in such a guise may we picture the Norman lord at home, eating his meat with his fingers, his feet in loose skin shoes tied with thongs, his legs in loose trousers bound with crossed garters, his tunic open at the neck showing the white edge of his shirt, his face clean-shaven, and his hair neatly cropped. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William I.}] Nothing could be plainer or more homely than the dress of a Norman lady. Her loose gown was made with ample skirts reaching well on to the ground, and it was gathered in at the waist by a belt of wool, cloth, silk, or cloth of gold web. The gown fitted easily across the shoulders, but fell from there in loose folds. The neck opening was cut as the man's, about five inches down the front, and the border ornamented with some fine needlework, as also were the borders of the wide sleeves, which came just below the elbows. Often the gown was made short, so that when it was girded up the border of it fell only to the knees, and showed the long chemise below. The girdle was, perhaps, the richest portion of their attire, and was sometimes of silk diapered with gold thread, but such a girdle would be very costly. More often it would be plain wool, and be tied simply round the waist with short ends, which did not show. The chemise was a plain white garment, with tight sleeves which wrinkled at the wrists; that is to say, they were really too long for the arm, and so were caught in small folds at the wrist. The gown, opening at the neck in the same way as did the men's tunics, showed the white of the chemise, the opening being held together sometimes by a brooch. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William I.; a type of neckline}] Towards the end of the reign the upper part of the gown--that is, from the neck to the waist--was worn close and fitted more closely to the figure, but not over-tightly--much as a tight jersey would fit. Over all was a cloak of the semicircular shape, very voluminous--about three feet in diameter--which was brooched in the centre or on the shoulder. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM I. (1066-1087) A twist of wool holds the gown at the waist. Under the gown the chemise shows. The neck of the gown is embroidered.] On the head, where the hair was closely coiled with a few curls at the forehead, a wimple was worn, which was wound about the head and thrown over the shoulder, not allowing the hair to show. These wimples were sometimes very broad, and were almost like a mantle, so that they fell over the shoulders below the breast. Tied round the wimple they sometimes had a snood, or band of silk. The shoes were like those worn by the men. These ladies were all housewives, cooking, preparing simples, doing embroidery and weaving. They were their own milliners and dressmakers, and generally made their husbands' clothes, although some garments might be made by the town tailors; but, as a rule, they weaved, cut, sewed, and fitted for their families, and then, after the garments were finished to satisfaction, they would begin upon strips of embroidery to decorate them. In such occupation we may picture them, and imagine them sitting by the windows with their ladies, busily sewing, looking up from their work to see hedged fields in lambing-time, while shepherds in rough sheepskin clothes drove the sheep into a neat enclosure, and saw to it that they lay on warm straw against the cold February night. WILLIAM THE SECOND Reigned thirteen years: 1087-1100. Born _c._ 1060. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of William II.}] About this time there came to England a Norman, who settled near by the Abbey of Battle--Baldwin the Tailor by name, whom one might call the father of English tailoring. Baldwin the Tailor sat contentedly cross-legged on his bench and plied his needle and thread, and snipped, and cut, and sewed, watching the birds pick worms and insects from the turf of the battleground. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM II. (1087-1100) Shows the wide drawers with an embroidered hem. Under them can be seen the long woollen drawers bound with leather thongs.] England is getting a little more settled. The reign opens picturesquely enough with William Rufus hastening to England with his father's ring, and ends with the tragedy of the New Forest and a blood-stained tunic. Clothes begin to play an important part. Rich fur-lined cloaks and gowns trail on the ground, and sweep the daisies so lately pressed by mailed feet and sopped with blood where the Saxons fell. [Illustration: The Cloak pushed through a Ring.] Times have changed since Baldwin was at the coronation at Westminster on Christmas Day twenty years ago. Flemish weavers and farmers arrive from overseas, and are established by William II. in the North to teach the people pacific arts, causing in time a stream of Flemish merchandise to flow into the country, chiefly of rich fabrics and fine cloths. The men adopt longer tunics, made after the same pattern as before--split up either side and loose in the sleeve--but in many cases the skirts reach to the ground in heavy folds, and the sleeves hang over the hands by quite a yard. The necks of these tunics are ornamented as before, with coloured bands or stiff embroidery. The cuffs have the embroidery both inside and out, so that when the long sleeve is turned back over the hand the embroidery will show. The fashion in cloaks is still the same--of a semicircular pattern. The shoes are the same as in the previous reign--that is, of the shape of the foot, except in rare cases of dandyism, when the shoes were made with long, narrow toes, and these, being stuffed with moss or wool, were so stiffened and curled up at the ends that they presented what was supposed to be a delightfully extravagant appearance. They wore a sort of ankle garter of soft leather or cloth, which came over the top of the boot and just above the ankle. The hair, beard, and moustaches were worn long and carefully combed--in fact, the length of the beard caused the priests to rail at them under such terms as 'filthy goats.' But they had hardly the right to censorship, since they themselves had to be severely reprimanded by their Bishops for their extravagance in dress. Many gentlemen, and especially the Welsh, wore long loose trousers as far as the ankle, leaving these garments free from any cross gartering. These were secured about the waist by a girdle of stuff or leather. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of William II.}] The ultra-fashionable dress was an elongation of every part of the simple dress of the previous reign. Given these few details, it is easy for anyone who wishes to go further to do so, in which case he must keep to the main outline very carefully; but as to the actual length of sleeve or shoe, or the very measurements of a cloak, they varied with the individual folly of the owner. So a man might have long sleeves and a short tunic, or a tunic which trailed upon the ground, the sleeves of which reached only to the elbow. I have noticed that it is the general custom of writers upon the dress of this early time to dwell lovingly upon the colours of the various parts of the dress as they were painted in the illuminated manuscripts. This is a foolish waste of time, insomuch as the colours were made the means of displays of pure design on the part of the very early illuminators; and if one were to go upon such evidence as this, by the exactness of such drawings alone, then every Norman had a face the colour of which nearly resembled wet biscuit, and hair picked out in brown lines round each wave and curl. These woollen clothes--cap, tunic, semicircular cloak, and leg coverings--have all been actually found in the tomb of a Briton of the Bronze Age. So little did the clothes alter in shape, that the early Briton and the late Norman were dressed nearly exactly alike. When the tomb of William II. was opened in 1868, it was found, as had been suspected, that the grave had been opened and looted of what valuables it might have contained; but there were found among the dust which filled the bottom of the tomb fragments of red cloth, of gold cloth, a turquoise, a serpent's head in ivory, and a wooden spear shaft, perhaps the very spear that William carried on that fatal day in the New Forest. Also with the dust and bones of the dead King some nutshells were discovered, and examination showed that mice had been able to get into the tomb. So, if you please, you may hit upon a pretty moral. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William II.}] And so the lady began to lace.... A moralist, a denouncer of the fair sex, a satirist, would have his fling at this. What thundering epithets and avalanche of words should burst out at such a momentous point in English history! However, the lady pleased herself. Not that the lacing was very tight, but it commenced the habit, and the habit begat the harm, and the thing grew until it arrived finally at that buckram, square-built, cardboard-and-tissue figure which titters and totters through the Elizabethan era. Our male eyes, trained from infancy upwards to avoid gazing into certain shop windows, nevertheless retain a vivid impression of an awesome affair therein, which we understood by hints and signs confined our mothers' figures in its deadly grip. That the lady did not lace herself overtight is proved by the many informations we have of her household duties; that she laced tight enough for unkind comment is shown by the fact that some old monk pictured the devil in a neat-laced gown. It was, at any rate, a distinct departure from the loosely-clothed lady of 1066 towards the neater figure of 1135. The lacing was more to draw the wrinkles of the close-woven bodice of the gown smooth than to form a false waist and accentuated hips, the beauty of which malformation I must leave to the writers in ladies' journals and the condemnation to health faddists. However, the lacing was not the only matter of note. A change was coming over all feminine apparel--a change towards richness, which made itself felt in this reign more in the fabric than in the actual make of the garment. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM II. (1087-1100) This shows the gown, which is laced behind, fitting more closely to the figure. The sleeves are wider above the wrist.] The gown was open at the neck in the usual manner, was full in the skirt and longer than heretofore, was laced at the back, and was loose in the sleeve. The sleeve as worn by the men--that is, the over-long sleeve hanging down over the hand--was also worn by the women, and hung down or was turned back, according to the freak of the wearer. Not only this, but a new idea began, which was to cut a hole in the long sleeve where the hand came, and, pushing the hand through, to let the rest of the sleeve droop down. This developed, as we shall see later. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William II.}] Then the cloak, which had before been fastened by a brooch on the shoulder or in the centre of the breast, was now held more tightly over the shoulders by a set of laces or bands which ran round the back from underneath the brooch where they were fastened, thus giving more definition to the shoulders. You must remember that such fashions as the hole in the sleeve and the laced cloak were not any more universal than is any modern fashion, and that the good dame in the country was about a century behind the times with her loose gown and heavy cloak. There were still the short gowns, which, being tucked in at the waist by the girdle, showed the thick wool chemise below and the unlaced gown, fitting like a jersey. The large wimple was still worn wrapped about the head, and the hair was still carefully hidden. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William II.}] Shall we imagine that it is night, and that the lady is going to bed? She is in her long white chemise, standing at the window looking down upon the market square of a small town. The moon picks out every detail of carving on the church, and throws the porch into a dense gloom. Not a soul is about, not a light is to be seen, not a sound is to be heard. The lady is about to leave the window, when she hears a sound in the street below. She peers down, and sees a man running towards the church; he goes in and out of the shadows. From her open window she can hear his heavy breathing. Now he darts into the shadow of the porch, and then out of the gloom comes a furious knocking, and a voice crying, 'Sanctuary!' The lady at her window knows that cry well. Soon the monks in the belfry will awake and ring the Galilee-bell. The Galilee-bell tolls, and the knocking ceases. A few curious citizens look out. A dog barks. Then a door opens and closes with a bang. There is silence in the square again, but the lady still stands at her window, and she follows the man in her thoughts. Now he is admitted by the monks, and goes at once to the altar of the patron-saint of the church, where he kneels and asks for a coroner. The coroner, an aged monk, comes to him and confesses him. He tells his crime, and renounces his rights in the kingdom; and then, in that dark church, he strips to his shirt and offers his clothes to the sacrist for his fee. Ragged, mud-stained clothes, torn cloak, all fall from him in a heap upon the floor of the church. Now the sacrist gives him a large cloak with a cross upon the shoulder, and, having fed him, gives him into the charge of the under-sheriff, who will next day pass him from constable to constable towards the coast, where he will be seen on board a ship, and so pass away, an exile for ever. The night is cold. The lady pulls a curtain across the window, and then, stripping herself of her chemise, she gets into bed. HENRY THE FIRST Reigned thirty-five years: 1100-1135. Born 1068. Married to Matilda of Scotland, 1100; to Adela of Louvain, 1121. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry I.; two types of shoe}] The Father of Popular Literature, Gerald of Wales, says: 'It is better to be dumb than not to be understood. New times require new fashions, and so I have thrown utterly aside the old and dry methods of some authors, and aimed at adopting the fashion of speech which is actually in vogue to-day.' Vainly, perhaps, I have endeavoured to follow this precept laid down by Father Gerald, trying by slight pictures of the times to make the dry bones live, to make the clothes stir up and puff themselves into the shapes of men. It is almost a necessity that one who would describe, paint, stage, or understand the costume of this reign should know the state of England at the time. For there is in this reign a distinction without a difference in clothes; the shapes are almost identical to the shapes and patterns of the previous reigns, but everybody is a little better dressed. The mantles worn by the few in the time of William the Red are worn now by most of the nobility, fur-lined and very full. One may see on the sides of the west door of Rochester Cathedral Henry and his first wife, and notice that the mantle he wears is very full; one may see that he wears a supertunic, which is gathered round his waist. This tunic is the usual Norman tunic reaching to the knee, but now it is worn over an under-tunic which reaches to the ground in heavy folds. One may notice that the King's hair is long and elegantly twisted into pipes or ringlets, and that it hangs over his shoulders. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY I. (1100-1135) His hair is curled in ringlets; he wears a long cloak. The shirt shows at the neck of the tunic. The small design in the corner is from a sanctuary door-knocker.] No longer is the priestly abuse of 'filthy goat' applicable, for Henry's beard is neatly trimmed and cut round his face. These two things are the only practical difference between the two dates--the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. The under-tunic was made as a perfectly plain gown with tight sleeves ending at the wrist; it hung loose and full upon the figure. Over this was worn the short tunic with wide sleeves ending at the elbow. Both tunics would have broad borders of embroidered work or bands of coloured material. The supertunic would be brooched by one of those circular Norman brooches which was an ornamental circle of open gold-work in which stones and jewels were set. The brooch was fastened by a central pin. The extravagances of the previous reign were in some measure done away with; even the very long hair was not fashionable in the latter half of this reign, and the ultra-long sleeve was not so usual. So we may give as a list of clothes for men in this reign: A white linen shirt. A long tunic, open at the neck, falling to the ground, with tight sleeves to the wrist. A short tunic reaching only to the knees, more open at the neck than the long tunic, generally fastened by a brooch. Tight, well-fitting drawers or loose trousers. Bandages or garters crossed from the ankle to the knee to confine the loose trousers or ornament the tights. Boots of soft leather which had an ornamental band at the top. Socks with an embroidered top. Shoes of cloth and leather with an embroidered band down the centre and round the top. Shoes of skin tied with leather thongs. Caps of skin or cloth of a very plain shape and without a brim. Belts of leather or cloth or silk. Semicircular cloaks fastened as previously described, and often lined with fur. The clothes of every colour, but with little or no pattern; the patterns principally confined to irregular groups of dots. And to think that in the year in which Henry died Nizami visited the grave of Omar Al Khayyám in the Hira Cemetery at Nishapur! [Illustration: A CHILD OF THE TIME OF HENRY I. It is only in quite recent years that there have been quite distinct dresses for children, fashions indeed which began with the ideas for the improvement in hygiene. For many centuries children were dressed, with slight modifications, after the manner of their parents, looking like little men and women, until in the end they arrived at the grotesque infants of Hogarth's day, powdered and patched, with little stiff skirted suits and stiff brocade gowns, with little swords and little fans and, no doubt, many pretty airs and graces. One thing I have never seen until the early sixteenth century, and that is girls wearing any of the massive head-gear of their parents; in all other particulars they were the same.] THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry I.}] The greatest change in the appearance of the women was in the arrangement of the hair. After a hundred years or more of headcloths and hidden hair suddenly appears a head of hair. Until now a lady might have been bald for all the notice she took of her hair; now she must needs borrow hair to add to her own, so that her plaits shall be thick and long. It is easy to see how this came about. The hair, for convenience, had always been plaited in two plaits and coiled round the head, where it lay concealed by the wimple. One day some fine lady decides to discard her close and uncomfortable head-covering. She lets her plaits hang over her shoulders, and so appears in public. Contempt of other ladies who have fine heads of hair for the thinness of her plaits; competition in thick and long hair; anger of ladies whose hair is not thick and long; enormous demand for artificial hair; failure of the supply to meet the ever-increasing demand; invention of silken cases filled with a substitute for hair, these cases attached to the end of the plaits to elongate them--in this manner do many fashions arrive and flourish, until such time as the common people find means of copying them, and then my lady wonders how she could ever have worn such a common affair. The gowns of these ladies remained much the same, except that the loose gown, without any show of the figure, was in great favour; this gown was confined by a long girdle. The girdle was a long rope of silk or wool, which was placed simply round the waist and loosely knotted; or it was wound round above the waist once, crossed behind, and then knotted in front, and the ends allowed to hang down. The ends of the girdle had tassels and knots depending from them. The silk cases into which the hair was placed were often made of silk of variegated colours, and these cases had metal ends or tassels. The girdles sometimes were broad bands of silk diapered with gold thread, of which manufacture specimens remain to us. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY I. (1100-1135) This shows the pendant sleeve with an embroidered hem. The long plaits of hair ended with metal, or silk, tags. At the neck and wrists the white chemise shows.] The sleeves of the gowns had now altered in shape, and had acquired a sort of pendulent cuff, which hung down about two hands' breadth from the wrist. The border was, as usual, richly ornamented. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry I.}] Then we have a new invention, the pelisse. It is a loose silk coat, which is brooched at the waist, or buttoned into a silk loop. The sleeves are long--that is, they gradually increase in size from the underarm to the wrist, and sometimes are knotted at the ends, and so are unlike the other gown sleeves, which grow suddenly long near to the wrist. This pelisse reaches to the knees, and is well open in front. The idea was evidently brought back from the East after the knights arrived back from the First Crusade, as it is in shape exactly like the coats worn by Persian ladies. We may conceive a nice picture of Countess Constance, the wife of Hugh Lufus, Earl of Chester, as she appeared in her dairy fresh from milking the cows, which were her pride. No doubt she did help to milk them; and in her long under-gown, with her plaits once more confined in the folds of her wimple, she made cheeses--such good cheeses that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, rejoiced in a present of some of them. What a change it must have been to Matilda, free of the veil that she hated, from the Black Nuns of Romsey, and the taunts and blows of her aunt Christina, to become the wife of King Henry, and to disport herself in fine garments and long plaited hair--Matilda the very royal, the daughter of a King, the sister to three Kings, the wife of a King, the mother of an Empress! STEPHEN Reigned nineteen years: 1135-1154. Born 1094. Married, 1124, to Matilda of Boulogne. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Stephen}] When one regards the mass of material in existence showing costume of the tenth and eleventh centuries, it appears curious that so little fabric remains of this particular period. The few pieces of fabric in existence are so worn and bare that they tell little, whereas pieces of earlier date of English or Norman material are perfect, although thin and delicate. There are few illuminated manuscripts of the twelfth century, or of the first half of it, and to the few there are all previous historians of costume have gone, so that one is left without choice but to go also to these same books. The possibilities, however, of the manuscripts referred to have not been exhausted, and too much attention has been paid to the queer drawing of the illuminators; so that where they utilized to the full the artistic license, others have sought to pin it down as accurate delineation of the costume of the time. In this I have left out all the supereccentric costumes, fearing that such existed merely in the imagination of the artist, and I have applied myself to the more ordinary and understandable. As there are such excellent works on armour, I have not touched at all upon the subject, so that we are left but the few simple garments that men wore when they put off their armour, or that the peasant and the merchant habitually wore. Ladies occupied their leisure in embroidery and other fine sewing, in consequence of which the borders of tunics, of cloaks, the edgings of sleeves, and bands upon the shoes, were elegantly patterned. The more important the man, the finer his shoes. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF STEPHEN (1135-1154) He is wearing a cloak with hood attached; it is of skin, the smooth leather inside. He has an ankle gaiter covering the top of his shoes. On the arm over which the cloak hangs can be seen the white sleeve of the shirt.] As will be seen from the drawings, the man wore his hair long, smoothly parted in the centre, with a lock drawn down the parting from the back of his head. As a rule, the hair curled back naturally, and hung on the shoulders, but sometimes the older fashion of the past reign remained, and the hair was carefully curled in locks and tied with coloured ribbon. Besides the hood as covering for the head, men wore one or other of the simple caps shown, made of cloth or of fur, or of cloth fur-lined. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Stephen; two types of shoe; a boot}] [Illustration: {Two types of tunic; two types of cloak; four types of sleeve showing cuff variations}] Next to his skin the man of every class wore a shirt of the pattern shown--the selfsame shirt that we wear to day, excepting that the sleeves were made very long and tight-fitting, and were pushed back over the wrist, giving those wrinkles which we notice on all the Bayeux tapestry sleeves, and which we see for many centuries in drawings of the undergarment. The shape has always remained the same; the modes of fastening the shirt differ very slightly--so little, in fact, that a shirt of the fourth century which still remains in existence shows the same button and loop that we notice of the shirts of the twelfth century. The richer man had his shirt embroidered round the neck and sometimes at the cuffs. Over this garment the man wore his tunic--of wool, or cloth, or (rarely) of silk; the drawing explains the exact making of it. The tunic, as will be seen, was embroidered at the neck, the cuffs, and round the border. One drawing shows the most usual of these tunics, while the other drawings will explain the variations from it--either a tight sleeve made long and rolled back, a sleeve made very wide at the cuff and allowed to hang, or a sleeve made so that it fell some way over the hand. It was embroidered inside and out at the cuff, and was turned back to allow free use of the hand. Over the tunic was worn the cloak, a very simple garment, being a piece of cloth cut in the shape of a semicircle, embroidered on the border or not, according to the purse and position of the owner. Sometimes a piece was cut out to fit the neck. Another form of cloak was worn with a hood. This was generally used for travelling, or worn by such people as shepherds. It was made for the richer folk of fine cloth, fur-lined, or entirely of fur, and for the poorer people of skin or wool. The cloak was fastened by a brooch, and was pinned in the centre or on either shoulder, most generally on the right; or it was pushed through a ring sewn on to the right side of the neck of the cloak. The brooches were practically the same as those worn in the earlier reigns, or were occasionally of a pure Roman design. As will be seen in the small diagrams of men wearing the clothes of the day, the tunic, the shirt, and the cloak were worn according to the season, and many drawings in the MSS. of the date show men wearing the shirt alone. On their legs men wore trousers of leather for riding, bound round with leather thongs, and trousers of wool also, bound with coloured straps of wool or cloth. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Stephen; an alternative hat for a man}] Stockings of wool were worn, and cloth stockings also, and socks. There was a sock without a foot, jewelled or embroidered round the top, which was worn over the stocking and over the top of the boot in the manner of ankle gaiters. The country man wore twists of straw round his calf and ankle. For the feet there were several varieties of boots and shoes made of leather and stout cloth, now and again with wooden soles. As has been said before, the important people rejoiced in elegant footgear of all colours. All the shoes buttoned with one button above the outside ankle. The boots were sometimes tall, reaching to the bottom of the calf of the leg, and were rolled over, showing a coloured lining. Sometimes they were loose and wrinkled over the ankle. They were both, boot and shoe, made to fit the foot; for in this reign nearly all the extravagances of the previous reign had died out, and it is rare to find drawings or mention of long shoes stuffed with tow or wool. During the reign of Stephen the nation was too occupied in wars and battles to indulge in excessive finery, and few arts flourished, although useful improvements occurred in the crafts. There is in the British Museum a fine enamelled plate of this date which is a representation of Henry of Blois, Stephen's brother, who was the Bishop of Winchester. Part of the inscription, translated by Mr. Franks, says that 'Art is above gold and gems,' and that 'Henry, while living, gives gifts of brass to God.' Champlevé enamel was very finely made in the twelfth century, and many beautiful examples remain, notably a plaque which was placed on the column at the foot of which Geoffrey Plantagenet was buried. It is a portrait of him, and shows the Byzantine influence still over the French style. This may appear to be rather apart from costume, but it leads one to suppose that the ornaments of the time may have been frequently executed in enamel or in brass--such ornaments as rings and brooches. It is hard to say anything definite about the colours of the dresses at this time. All that we can say is that the poorer classes were clothed principally in self-coloured garments, and that the dyes used for the clothes of the nobles were of very brilliant hues. But a street scene would be more occupied by the colour of armour. One would have seen a knight and men-at-arms--the knight in his plain armour and the men in leather and steel; a few merchants in coloured cloaks, and the common crowd in brownish-yellow clothes with occasional bands of colour encircling their waists. The more simply the people are represented, the more truthful will be the picture or presentation. Few pictures of this exact time are painted, and few stories are written about it, but this will give all the information necessary to produce any picture or stage-play, or to illustrate any story. The garments are perfectly easy to cut out and make. In order to prove this I have had them made from the bare outlines given here, without any trouble. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Stephen}] Though many parts of England were at this time being harassed by wars, still the domestic element grew and flourished. The homes of the English from being bare and rude began to know the delights of embroidery and weaving. The workroom of the ladies was the most civilized part of the castle, and the effect of the Norman invasion of foreign fashions was beginning to be felt. As the knights were away to their fighting, so were the knights' ladies engaged in sewing sleeve embroideries, placing of pearls upon shoes, making silk cases for their hair, and otherwise stitching, cutting, and contriving against the return of their lords. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Stephen}] It is recorded that Matilda escaped from Oxford by a postern in a white dress, and no doubt her women sympathizers made much of white for dresses. The ladies wore a simple undergarment of thin material called a sherte or camise; this was bordered with some slight embroidery, and had tightish long sleeves pushed back over the wrist. The garment fell well on to the ground. This camise was worn by all classes. The upper garment was one of three kinds: made from the neck to below the breast, including the sleeves of soft material; from the breast to the hips it was made of some elastic material, as knitted wool or thin cloth, stiffened by criss-cross bands of cloth, and was fitted to the figure and laced up the back; the lower part was made of the same material as the sleeves and bust. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF STEPHEN (1135-1154) Her dress fits to her figure by lacing at the back. Her long sleeves are tied up to keep them from trailing upon the ground. Her hair is fastened at the end into silken cases. She has a wimple in her hands which she may wind about her head.] The second was made tight-fitting in the body and bust, all of one elastic material, and the skirt of loose thin stuff. The third was a loose tunic reaching half-way between the knees and feet, showing the camise, and tied about the waist and hips by a long girdle. The sleeves of these garments showed as many variations as those of the men, but with the poor folk they were short and useful, and with the rich they went to extreme length, and were often knotted to prevent them from trailing on the ground. The collar and the borders of the sleeves were enriched with embroidery in simple designs. In the case of the loose upper garment the border was also embroidered. In winter a cloak of the same shape as was worn by the men was used--_i.e._, cut exactly semicircular, with embroidered edges. The shoes of the ladies were fitted to the foot in no extravagant shape, and were sewn with bands of pearls or embroidery. The poorer folk went about barefoot. The hair was a matter of great moment and most carefully treated; it was parted in the centre and then plaited, sometimes intertwined with coloured ribbands or twists of thin coloured material; it was added to in length by artificial hair, and was tied up in a number of ways. Either it was placed in a tight silk case, like an umbrella case, which came about half-way up the plait from the bottom, and had little tassels depending from it, or the hair was added to till it reached nearly to the feet, and was bound round with ribbands, the ends having little gold or silver pendants. The hair hung, as a rule, down the front on either side of the face, or occasionally behind down the back, as was the case when the wimple was worn. When the ladies went travelling or out riding they rode astride like men, and wore the ordinary common-hooded cloak. Brooches for the tunic and rings for the fingers were common among the wealthy. The plait was introduced into the architecture of the time, as is shown by a Norman moulding at Durham. Compared with the Saxon ladies, these ladies of Stephen's time were elegantly attired; compared with the Plantagenet ladies, they were dressed in the simplest of costumes. No doubt there were, as in all ages, women who gave all their body and soul to clothes, who wore sleeves twice the length of anyone else, who had more elaborate plaits and more highly ornamented shoes; but, taking the period as a whole, the clothes of both sexes were plainer than in any other period of English history. One must remember that when the Normans came into the country the gentlemen among the Saxons had already borrowed the fashions prevalent in France, but that the ladies still kept in the main to simple clothes; indeed, it was the man who strutted to woo clad in all the fopperies of his time--to win the simple woman who toiled and span to deck her lord in extravagant embroideries. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Stephen}] The learning of the country was shared by the ladies and the clergy, and the influence of Osburgha, the mother of Alfred, and Editha, the wife of Edward the Confessor, was paramount among the noble ladies of the country. The energy of the clergy in this reign was more directed to building and the branches of architecture than to the more studious and sedentary works of illumination and writing, so that the sources from which we gather information with regard to the costume in England are few, and also peculiar, as the drawing of this date was, although careful, extremely archaic. Picture the market-town on a market day when the serfs were waiting to buy at the stalls until the buyers from the abbey and the castle had had their pick of the fish and the meat. The lady's steward and the Father-Procurator bought carefully for their establishments, talking meanwhile of the annual catch of eels for the abbey. Picture Robese, the mother of Thomas, the son of Gilbert Becket, weighing the boy Thomas each year on his birthday, and giving his weight in money, clothes, and provisions to the poor. She was a type of the devout housewife of her day, and the wife of a wealthy trader. The barons were fortifying their castles, and the duties of their ladies were homely and domestic. They provided the food for men-at-arms, the followers, and for their husbands; saw that simples were ready with bandages against wounds and sickness; looked, no doubt, to provisions in case of siege; sewed with their maidens in a vestiary or workroom, and dressed as best they could for their position. What they must have heard and seen was enough to turn them from the altar of fashion to works of compassion. Their houses contained dreadful prisons and dungeons, where men were put upon rachentegs, and fastened to these beams so that they were unable to sit, lie, or sleep, but must starve. From their windows in the towers the ladies could see men dragged, prisoners, up to the castle walls, through the hall, up the staircase, and cast, perhaps past their very eyes, from the tower to the moat below. Such times and sights were not likely to foster proud millinery or dainty ways, despite of which innate vanity ran to ribbands in the hair, monstrous sleeves, jewelled shoes, and tight waists. The tiring women were not overworked until a later period, when the hair would take hours to dress, and the dresses months to embroider. In the town about the castle the merchants' wives wore simple homespun clothes of the same form as their ladies. The serfs wore plain smocks loose over the camise and tied about the waist, and in the bitter cold weather skins of sheep and wolves unlined and but roughly dressed. [Illustration: Cases for the Hair.] In 1154 the Treaty of Wallingford brought many of the evils to an end, and Stephen was officially recognised as King, making Henry his heir. Before the year was out Stephen died. I have not touched on ecclesiastical costume because there are so many excellent and complete works upon such dress, but I may say that it was above all civil dress most rich and magnificent. I have given this slight picture of the time in order to show a reason for the simplicity of the dress, and to show how, enclosed in their walls, the clergy were increasing in riches and in learning; how, despite the disorders of war, the internal peace of the towns and hamlets was growing, with craft gilds and merchant gilds. The lords and barons fighting their battles knew little of the bond of strength that was growing up in these primitive labour unions; but the lady in her bower, in closer touch with the people, receiving visits from foreign merchants and pedlars with rare goods to sell or barter, saw how, underlying the miseries of bloodshed and disaster, the land began to bloom and prosper, to grow out of the rough place it had been into the fair place of market-town and garden it was to be. Meanwhile London's thirteen conventual establishments were added to by another, the Priory of St. Bartholomew, raised by Rahere, the King's minstrel. HENRY THE SECOND Reigned thirty-five years: 1154-1189. Born 1133. Married, 1152, to Eleanor of Guienne. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry II.}] The King himself is described as being careless of dress, chatty, outspoken. His hair was close-cropped, his neck was thick, and his eyes were prominent; his cheek-bones were high, and his lips coarse. The costume of this reign was very plain in design, but rich in stuffs. Gilt spurs were attached to the boots by red leather straps, gloves were worn with jewels in the backs of them, and the mantles seem to have been ornamented with designs. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY II. (1154-1189) He wears the short cloak, and his long tunic is held by a brooch at the neck and is girdled by a long-tongued belt. There are gloves on his hands.] The time of patterns upon clothes began. The patterns were simple, as crescents, lozenges, stars. William de Magna Villa had come back from the Holy Land with a new fabric, a precious silk called 'imperial,' which was made in a workshop patronized by the Byzantine Emperors. The long tunic and the short supertunic were still worn, but these were not so frequently split up at the side. High boots reaching to the calf of the leg were in common use. That part of the hood which fell upon the shoulders was now cut in a neat pattern round the edge. Silks, into which gold thread was sewn or woven, made fine clothes, and cloth cloaks lined with expensive furs, even to the cost of a thousand pounds of our money, were worn. The loose trouser was going out altogether, and in its stead the hose were made to fit more closely to the leg, and were all of gay colours; they were gartered with gold bands crossed, the ends of which had tassels, which hung down when the garter was crossed and tied about the knee. Henry, despite his own careless appearance, was nicknamed Court Manteau, or Short Mantle, on account of a short cloak or mantle he is supposed to have brought into fashion. The shirts of the men, which showed at the opening of the tunic, were buttoned with small gold buttons or studs of gold sewn into the linen. The initial difference in this reign was the more usual occurrence of patterns in diaper upon the clothes. The length of a yard was fixed by the length of the King's arm. With the few exceptions mentioned, the costume is the same as in the time of Stephen. It is curious to note what scraps of pleasant gossip come to us from these early times: St. Thomas à Becket dining off a pheasant the day before his martyrdom; the angry King calling to his knights, 'How a fellow that hath eaten my bread, a beggar that first came to my Court on a lame horse, dares to insult his King and the Royal Family, and tread upon my whole kingdom, and not one of the cowards I nourish at my table, not one will deliver me of this turbulent priest!'--the veins no doubt swelling on his bull-like neck, the prominent eyes bloodshot with temper, the result of that angry speech, to end in the King's public penance before the martyr's tomb. Picture the scene at Canterbury on August 23, 1179, when Louis VII., King of France, dressed in the manner and habit of a pilgrim, came to the shrine and offered there his cup of gold and a royal precious stone, and vowed a gift of a hundred hogsheads of wine as a yearly rental to the convent. A common sight in London streets at this time was a tin medal of St. Thomas hung about the necks of the pilgrims. And here I cannot help but give another picture. Henry II., passing through Wales on his way to Ireland in 1172, hears the exploits of King Arthur which are sung to him by the Welsh bards. In this song the bards mention the place of King Arthur's burial, at Glastonbury Abbey in the churchyard. When Henry comes back from Ireland he visits the Abbot of Glastonbury, and repeats to him the story of King Arthur's tomb. One can picture the search: the King talking eagerly to the Abbot; the monks or lay-brothers digging in the place indicated by the words of the song; the knights in armour, their mantles wrapped about them, standing by. Then, as the monks search 7 feet below the surface, a spade rings upon stone. Picture the interest, the excitement of these antiquarians. It is a broad stone which is uncovered, and upon it is a thin leaden plate in the form of a corpse, bearing the inscription: 'HIC JACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA.' They draw up this great stone, and with greedy eyes read the inscription. The monks continue to dig. Presently, at the depth of 16 feet, they find the trunk of a tree, and in its hollowed shape lie Arthur and his Queen--Arthur and Guinevere, two names which to us now are part of England, part of ourselves, as much as our patron St. George. Here they lie upon the turf, and all the party gaze on their remains. The skull of Arthur is covered with wounds; his bones are enormous. The Queen's body is in a good state of preservation, and her hair is neatly plaited, and is of the colour of gold. Suddenly she falls to dust. They bury them again with great care. So lay our national hero since he died at the Battle of Camlan in Cornwall in the year 542, and after death was conveyed by sea to Glastonbury, and all traces of his burial-place lost except in the songs of the people until such day as Henry found him and his Queen. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry II.; a circular pin}] About this time came the fashion of the chin-band, and again the glory of the hair was hidden under the wimple. To dress a lady's hair for this time the hair must be brushed out, and then divided into two parts: these are to be plaited, and then brought round the crown of the head and fastened in front above the forehead. The front pieces of hair are to be neatly pushed back from the forehead, to show a high brow. Now a cloth of linen is taken, folded under the chin, and brought over the top of the head, and there pinned. Then another thin band of linen is placed round the head and fastened neatly at the back; and over all a piece of fine linen is draped, and so arranged that it shall just cover the forehead-band and fall on to the shoulders. This last piece of linen is fastened to the chin-band and the forehead-strap by pins. [Illustration: {Four steps to dress a woman's hair}] This fashion gave rise in later times to a linen cap; the forehead-strap was increased in height and stiffened so that it rose slightly above the crown of the head, and the wimple, instead of hanging over it, was sewn down inside it, and fell over the top of the cap. Later the cap was sewn in pleats. The gown of this time was quite loose, with a deep band round the neck and round the hem of the skirts, which were very full. So far as one can tell, it was put on over the head, having no other opening but at the neck, and was held at the waist by an ornamental girdle. The chemise showed above the neck of the gown, which was fastened by the usual round brooch. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY II. (1154-1189) There is a chin-band to be seen passing under the wimple; this band is pinned to hold it round the head.] The sleeves were well fitting, rather loose at the elbow, and fell shaped over the wrist, where there was a deep border of embroidery. It is quite possible that the cuffs and hem may have been made of fur. The shoes were, as usual to the last two reigns, rather blunt at the toe, and generally fitting without buckle, button, or strap round the ankle, where they were rolled back. Above the waist the tied girdle was still worn, but this was being supplanted by a broad belt of silk or ornamented leather, which fastened by means of a buckle. The tongue of the belt was made very long, and when buckled hung down below the knee. The cloaks, from the light way in which they are held, appear to have been made of silk or some such fine material as fine cloth. They are held on to the shoulders by a running band of stuff or a silk cord, the ends of which pass through two fasteners sewn on to the cloak, and these are knotted or have some projecting ornament which prevents the cord from slipping out of the fastener. In this way one sees the cloak hanging from the shoulders behind, and the cord stretched tight across the breast, or the cord knotted in a second place, and so bringing the cloak more over the shoulders. The effigy of the Queen at Fontevraud shows her dress covered with diagonal bars of gold, in the triangles of which there are gold crescents placed from point to point, and no doubt other ladies of her time had their emblems or badges embroidered into their gowns. RICHARD THE FIRST Reigned ten years: 1189-1199. Born 1157. Married, 1191, to Berengaria of Navarre. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Richard I.; a hood; a shoe}] The King had but little influence over dress in his time, seeing that he left England as soon as he was made King, and only came back for two months in 1194 to raise money and to be crowned again. The general costume was then as plain as it had ever been, with long tunics and broad belts fastened by a big buckle. The difference in costume between this short reign and that of Henry II. is almost imperceptible; if any difference may be noted, it is in the tinge of Orientalism in the garments. There is more of the long and flowing robe, more of the capacious mantle, the wider sleeve. No doubt the many who came from the Crusades made a good deal of difference to English homes, and actual dresses and tunics from the East, of gorgeous colours and Eastern designs, were, one must suppose, to be seen in England. Cloth of gold and cloth of gold and silks--that is, warf of silk and weft of gold--were much prized, and were called by various names from the Persian, as 'ciclatoun,' 'siglaton.' Such stuff, when of great thickness and value--so thick that six threads of silk or hemp were in the warf--was called 'samite.' Later, when the cloth of gold was more in use, and the name had changed from 'ciclatoun' to 'bundekin,' and from that to 'tissue,' to keep such fine cloth from fraying or tarnishing, they put very thin sheets of paper away between the folds of the garments; so to this day we call such paper tissue-paper. Leaf-gold was used sometimes over silk to give pattern and richness to it. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD I. (1189-1199)] A curious survival of this time, which has a connection with costume, was the case of Abraham Thornton in 1818. Abraham Thornton was accused of having drowned Mary Ashford, but he was acquitted by the jury. This acquittal did not satisfy popular feeling, and the brother of Mary Ashford appealed. Now Thornton was well advised as to his next proceeding, and, following the still existent law of this early time of which I write, he went to Westminster Hall, where he threw down, as a gage of battle, an antique gauntlet without fingers or thumb, of white tanned skin ornamented with silk fringes and sewn work, crossed by a narrow band of leather, the fastenings of leather tags and thongs. This done, he declared himself ready to defend himself in a fight, and so to uphold his innocence, saying that he was within his rights, and that no judge could compel him to come before a jury. This was held to be good and within the law, so Abraham Thornton won his case, as the brother refused to pick up the gauntlet. The scandal of this procedure caused the abolishment of the trial by battle, which had remained in the country's laws from the time of Henry II. until 1819. It was a time of foreign war and improvement in military armour and arms. Richard I. favoured the cross-bow, and brought it into general use in England to be used in conjunction with the old 4-foot bow and the great bow 6 feet long with the cloth-yard arrow--a bow which could send a shaft through a 4-inch door. For some time this military movement, together with the influence of the East, kept England from any advance or great change in costume; indeed, the Orientalism reached a pitch in the age of Henry III. which, so far as costume is concerned, may be called the Age of Draperies. To recall such a time in pictures, one must then see visions of loose-tuniced men, with heavy cloaks; of men in short tunics with sleeves tight or loose at the wrists; of hoods with capes to them, the cape-edge sometimes cut in a round design; of soft leather boots and shoes, the boots reaching to the calf of the leg. To see in the streets bright Oriental colours and cloaks edged with broad bands of pattern; to see hooded heads and bared heads on which the hair was long; to see many long-bearded men; to see old men leaning on tan-handled sticks; the sailor in a cap or coif tied under his chin; the builder, stonemason, and skilled workman in the same coif; to see, as a whole, a brilliant shifting colour scheme in which armour gleamed and leather tunics supplied a dull, fine background. Among these one might see, at a town, by the shore, a thief of a sailor being carried through the streets with his head shaven, tarred and feathered. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Richard I.; a pouch}] It is difficult to describe an influence in clothes. It is difficult nowadays to say in millinery where Paris begins and London accepts. The hint of Paris in a gown suggests taste; the whole of Paris in a gown savours of servile imitation. No well-dressed Englishwoman should, or does, look French, but she may have a subtle cachet of France if she choose. The perfection of art is to conceal the means to the end; the perfection of dress is to hide the milliner in the millinery. The ladies of Richard I.'s time did not wear Oriental clothes, but they had a flavour of Orientalism pervading their dress--rather masculine Orientalism than feminine. The long cloak with the cord that held it over the shoulders; the long, loose gown of fine colours and simple designs; the soft, low, heelless shoes; the long, unbound hair, or the hair held up and concealed under an untied wimple--these gave a touch of something foreign to the dress. Away in the country there was little to dress for, and what clothes they had were made in the house. Stuffs brought home from Cyprus, from Palestine, from Asia Minor, were laboriously conveyed to the house, and there made up into gowns. Local smiths and silver-workers made them buckles and brooches and ornamental studs for their long belts, or clasps for their purses. A wreck would break up on the shore near by, and the news would arrive, perhaps, that some bales of stuff were washed ashore and were to be sold. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD I. (1189-1199) Her very full cloak is kept in place by the cord which passes through loops. A large buckle holds the neck of the gown well together. The gown is ornamented with a simple diaper pattern; the hem and neck are deeply embroidered.] The female anchorites of these days were busy gossips, and from their hermitage or shelter by a bridge on the road would see the world go by, and pick up friends by means of gifts of bandages or purses made by them, despite the fact that this traffic was forbidden to them. So the lady in the country might get news of her lord abroad, and hear that certain silks and stuffs were on their way home. The gowns they wore were long, flowing and loose; they were girded about the middle with leathern or silk belts, which drew the gown loosely together. The end of the belt, after being buckled, hung down to about the knee. These gowns were close at the neck, and there fastened by a brooch; the sleeves were wide until they came to the wrist, over which they fitted closely. The cloaks were ample, and were held on by brooches or laces across the bosom. The shoes were the shape of the foot, sewn, embroidered, elaborate. The wimples were pieces of silk or white linen held to the hair in front by pins, and allowed to flow over the head at the back. There were still remaining at this date women who wore the tight-fitting gown laced at the back, and who tied their chins up in gorgets. JOHN Reigned seventeen years: 1199-1216. Born 1167. Married, in 1189, to Hadwisa, of Gloucester, whom he divorced; married, in 1200, to Isabella of Angoulême. THE MEN There was a garment in this reign which was the keynote of costume at the time, and this was the surcoat. It had been worn over the armour for some time, but in this reign it began to be an initial part of dress. Take a piece of stuff about 9 or 10 yards in length and about 22 inches wide; cut a hole in the centre of this wide enough to admit of a man's head passing through, and you have a surcoat. [Illustration: {A simple surcoat pattern}] [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF JOHN (1199-1216)] Under this garment the men wore a flowing gown, the sleeves of which were so wide that they reached at the base from the shoulder to the waist, and narrowed off to a tight band at the wrist. These two garments were held together by a leather belt buckled about the middle, with the tongue of the belt hanging down. Broad borders of design edged the gowns at the foot and at the neck, and heraldic devices were sewn upon the surcoats. King John himself, the quick, social, humorous man, dressed very finely. He loved the company of ladies and their love, but in spite of his love for them, he starved and tortured them, starved and beat children, was insolent, selfish, and wholly indifferent to the truth. He laughed aloud during the Mass, but for all that was superstitious to the degree of hanging relics about his neck; and he was buried in a monk's cowl, which was strapped under his chin. Silk was becoming more common in England, and the cultivation of the silkworm was in some measure gaining hold. In 1213 the Abbot of Cirencester, Alexander of Neckham, wrote upon the habits of the silkworm. Irish cloth of red colour was largely in favour, presumably for cloaks and hoods. The general costume of this reign was very much the same as that of Henry II. and Richard I.--the long loose gown, the heavy cloak, the long hair cut at the neck, the fashion of beards, the shoes, belts, hoods, and heavy fur cloaks, all much the same as before, the only real difference being in the general use of the surcoat and the very convenient looseness of the sleeves under the arms. [Illustration: {A man of the time of John; an alternative cuff}] There is an inclination in writing of a costume one can visualize mentally to leave out much that might be useful to the student who knows little or nothing of the period of dress in which one is writing; so perhaps it will be better to now dress a man completely. First, long hair and a neatly-trimmed beard; over this a hood and cape or a circular cap, with a slight projection on the top of it. Second, a shirt of white, like a modern soft shirt. Third, tights of cloth or wool. Fourth, shoes strapped over the instep or tied with thongs, or fitting at the ankle like a slipper, or boots of soft leather turned over a little at the top, at the base of the calf of the leg. [Illustration: {A man of the time of John}] Fifth, a gown, loosely fitting, buckled at the neck, with sleeves wide at the top and tight at the wrist, or quite loose and coming to just below the elbow, or a tunic reaching only to the knees, both gown and tunic fastened with a belt. Sixth, a surcoat sometimes, at others a cloak held together by a brooch, or made for travelling with a hood. This completes an ordinary wardrobe of the time. THE WOMEN As may be seen from the plate, no change in costume took place. The hair plaited and bound round the head or allowed to flow loose upon the shoulders. Over the hair a gorget binding up the neck and chin. Over all a wimple pinned to the gorget. A long loose gown with brooch at the neck. Sleeves tight at the wrist. The whole gown held in at the waist by a belt, with one long end hanging down. Shoes made to fit the shape of the foot, and very elaborately embroidered and sewn. A long cloak with buckle or lace fastening. In this reign there were thirty English towns which had carried on a trade in dyed cloths for fifty years. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF JOHN (1199-1216) One may just see the purse beneath the cloak, where it hangs from the belt. The cloak itself is of fine diaper-patterned material.] HENRY THE THIRD Reigned fifty-six years: 1216-1272. Born 1207. Married, 1236, to Eleanor of Provence. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry III.}] Despite the fact that historians allude to the extravagance of this reign, there is little in the actual form of the costume to bear out the idea. Extravagant it was in a large way, and costly for one who would appear well dressed; but the fopperies lay more in the stuffs than in the cut of the garments worn. It was an age of draperies. This age must call up pictures of bewrapped people swathed in heavy cloaks of cloth of Flanders dyed with the famous Flemish madder dye; of people in silk cloaks and gowns from Italy; of people in loose tunics made of English cloth. This long reign of over fifty years is a transitional period in the history of clothes, as in its course the draped man developed very slowly towards the coated man, and the loose-hung clothes very gradually began to shape themselves to the body. The transition from tunic and cloak and Oriental draperies is so slow and so little marked by definite change that to the ordinary observer the Edwardian cotehardie seems to have sprung from nowhere: man seems to have, on a sudden, dropped his stately wraps and mantles and discarded his chrysalis form to appear in tight lines following the figure--a form infinitely more gay and alluring to the eye than the ponderous figure that walks through the end of the thirteenth century. Up to and through the time from the Conquest until the end of Henry III.'s reign the clothes of England appear--that is, they appear to me--to be lordly, rich, fine, but never courtier-like and elegant. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY III. (1216-1272) Heavy cloak and fulness of dress characteristic of this time.] If one may take fashion as a person, one may say: Fashion arrived in 1066 in swaddling-clothes, and so remained enveloped in rich cloaks and flowing draperies until 1240, when the boy began to show a more active interest in life; this interest grew until, in 1270, it developed into a distaste for heavy clothes; but the boy knew of no way as yet in which to rid himself of the trailings of his mother cloak. Then, in about 1272, he invented a cloak more like a strange, long tunic, through which he might thrust his arms for freedom; on this cloak he caused his hood to be fastened, and so made himself three garments in one, and gave himself greater ease. Then dawned the fourteenth century--the youth of clothes--and our fashion boy shot up, dropped his mantles and heaviness, and came out from thence slim and youthful in a cotehardie. Of such a time as this it is not easy to say the right and helpful thing, because, given a flowing gown and a capacious mantle, imagination does the rest. Cut does not enter into the arena. Imagine a stage picture of this time: a mass of wonderful, brilliant colours--a crowd of men in long, loose gowns or surcoats; a crowd of ladies in long, loose gowns; both men and women hung with cloaks or mantles of good stuffs and gay colours. A background of humbler persons in homespun tunics with cloth or frieze hoods over their heads. Here and there a fop--out of his date, a quarter-century before his time--in a loose coat with pocket-holes in front and a buttoned neck to his coat, his shoes very pointed and laced at the sides, his hair long, curled, and bound by a fillet or encompassed with a cap with an upturned brim. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry III.}] The beginning of the coat was this: the surcoat, which up till now was split at both sides from the shoulder to the hem, was now sewn up, leaving only a wide armhole from the base of the ribs to the shoulder. This surcoat was loose and easy, and was held in at the waist by a belt. In due time a surcoat appeared which was slightly shaped to the figure, was split up in front instead of at the sides, and in which the armholes were smaller and the neck tighter, and fastened by two or three buttons. In front of this surcoat two pocket-holes showed. This surcoat was also fastened by a belt at the waist. In common with the general feeling towards more elaborate clothes, the shoes grew beyond their normal shape, and now, no longer conforming to the shape of the foot, they became elongated at the toes, and stuck out in a sharp point; this point was loose and soft, waiting for a future day when men should make it still longer and stuff it with tow and moss. Of all the shapes of nature, no shape has been so marvellously maltreated as the human foot. It has suffered as no other portion of the body has suffered: it has endured exceeding length and exceeding narrowness; it has been swelled into broad, club-like shapes; it has been artificially raised from the ground, ended off square, pressed into tight points, curved under, and finally, as to-day, placed in hard, shining, tight leather boxes. All this has been done to one of the most beautiful parts of the human anatomy by the votaries of fashion, who have in turn been delighted to expose the curves of their bodies, the round swelling of their hips, the beauties of their nether limbs, the whiteness of their bosoms, the turn of their elbows and arms, and the rotundity of their shoulders, but who have, for some mysterious reasons, been for hundreds of years ashamed of the nakedness of their feet. Let me give a wardrobe for a man of this time. A hood with a cape to it; the peak of the hood made full, but about half a hand's breadth longer than necessary to the hood; the cape cut sometimes at the edge into a number of short slits. A cap of soft stuff to fit the head, with or without an upturned brim. A fillet of silk or metal for the hair. A gown made very loose and open at the neck, wide in the body, the sleeves loose or tight to the wrist. The gown long or short, on the ground or to the knee, and almost invariably belted at the waist by a long belt of leather with ornamental studs. A surcoat split from shoulder to hem, or sewn up except for a wide armhole. A coat shaped very slightly to the figure, having pocket-holes in front, small armholes, and a buttoned neck. A great oblong-shaped piece of stuff for a cloak, or a heavy, round cloak with an attached hood. Tights of cloth or sewn silk--that is, pieces of silk cut and sewn to the shape of the leg. Shoes with long points--about 2 inches beyond the toes--fastened by a strap in front, or laced at the sides, or made to pull on and fit at the ankle, the last sometimes with a V-shaped piece cut away on either side. There was a tendency to beads, and a universal custom of long hair. In all such clothes as are mentioned above every rich stuff of cloth, silk, wool, and frieze may be used, and fur linings and fur hats are constant, as also are furred edges to garments. There was a slight increase of heraldic ornament, and a certain amount of foreign diaper patterning on the clothes. THE WOMEN Now the lady must needs begin to repair the ravages of time and touch the cheek that no longer knows the bloom of youth with--rouge. This in itself shows the change in the age. Since the Britons--poor, simple souls--had sought to embellish Nature by staining themselves blue with woad and yellow with ochre, no paint had touched the faces of the fashionable until this reign. Perhaps discreet historians had left that fact veiled, holding the secrets of the lady's toilet too sacred for the black of print; but now the murder came out. The fact in itself is part of the psychology of clothes. Paint the face, and you have a hint towards the condition of fashion. Again, as in the case of the men, no determined cut shows which will point to this age as one of such and such a garment or such an innovation, but--and this I would leave to your imagination--there was a distinction that was not great enough to be a difference. The gowns were loose and flowing, and were gathered in at the waist by a girdle, or, rather, a belt, the tongue of which hung down in front; but as the end of the reign approached, the gowns were shaped a little more to the figure. A lady might possess such clothes as these: the gowns I have mentioned above, the sleeves of which were tight all the way from the shoulder to the wrist, or were loose and cut short just below the elbow, showing the tight sleeves of the under-gown. Shoes very elaborately embroidered and pointed at the toes. A rich cloak made oblong in shape and very ample in cut. A shaped mantle with strings to hold it together over the shoulders. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY III. (1216-1272) This will show how very slight were the changes in woman's dress; a plain cloak, a plain gown, and a wimple over the head.] For the head a wimple made of white linen or perhaps of silk; this she would put above her head, leaving the neck bare. A long belt for her waist, and, if she were a great lady, a pair of gloves to wear or stick into her belt. THE COUNTRY FOLK From the Conquest to the reign of Edward I. [Illustration: {A countryman}] Until the present day the countryman has dressed in a manner most fitted to his surroundings; now the billycock hat, a devil-derived offspring from a Greek source, the Sunday suit of shiny black with purple trousers, the satin tie of Cambridge blue, and the stiff shirt, have almost robbed the peasant of his poetical appearance. Civilization seems to have arrived at our villages with a pocketful of petty religious differences, a bagful of public-houses, a bundle of penny and halfpenny papers full of stories to show the fascination of crime and--these Sunday clothes. The week's workdays still show a sense of the picturesque in corduroys and jerseys or blue shirts, but the landscape is blotted with men wearing out old Sunday clothes, so that the painter of rural scenes with rural characters must either lie or go abroad. As for the countrywoman, she, I am thankful to say, still retains a sense of duty and beauty, and, except on Sunday, remains more or less respectably clad. Chivalry prevents one from saying more. [Illustration: {A countryman}] In the old days--from the Conquest until the end of the thirteenth century--the peasant was dressed in perfect clothes. The villages were self-providing; they grew by then wool and hemp for the spindles. From this was made yarn for materials to be made up into coats and shirts. The homespun frieze that the peasant wore upon his back was hung by the nobleman upon his walls. The village bootmaker made, besides skin sandals to be tied with thongs upon the feet, leather trousers and belts. The mole-catcher provided skin for hats. Hoods of a plain shape were made from the hides of sheep or wolves, the wool or hair being left on the hood. Cloaks lined with sheepskin served to keep away the winter cold. To protect their legs from thorns the men wore bandages of twisted straw wrapped round their trousers, or leather thongs cross-gartered to the knee. The fleece of the sheep was woven in the summer into clothes of wool for the winter. Gloves were made, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, of wool and soft leather; these were shaped like the modern baby's glove, a pouch for the hand and fingers and a place for the thumb. A coarse shirt was worn, over which a tunic, very loosely made, was placed, and belted at the waist. The tunic hardly varied in shape from the Conquest to the time of Elizabeth, being but a sack-like garment with wide sleeves reaching a little below the elbow. The hood was ample and the cloak wide. The women wore gowns of a like material to the men--loose gowns which reached to the ankles and gave scope for easy movement. They wore their hair tied up in a wimple of coarse linen. [Illustration: A PEASANT OF EARLY ENGLAND (WILLIAM I.-HENRY III.) His hood is made from sheepskin, the wool outside, the hem trimmed into points. His legs are bound up with garters of plaited straw. His shoes are of the roughest make of coarse leather. He has the shepherd's horn slung over his shoulder.] The people of the North were more ruggedly clothed than the Southerners, and until the monks founded the sheep-farming industry in Yorkshire the people of those parts had no doubt to depend for their supply of wool upon the more cultivated peoples. [Illustration: {Two countrymen}] Picture these people, then, in very simple natural wool-coloured dresses going about their ordinary country life, attending their bees, their pigs, sheep, and cattle, eating their kele soup, made of colewort and other herbs. See them ragged and hungry, being fed by Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, after all the misery caused by the Conquest; or despairing during the Great Frost of 1205, which began on St. Hilary's Day, January 11, and lasted until March 22, and was so severe that the land was like iron, and could not be dug or tilled. When better days arrived, and farming was taken more seriously by the great lords, when Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, wrote his book on farming and estate management for Margaret, the Dowager-Countess of Lincoln, then clothes and stuffs manufactured in the towns became cheaper and more easy to obtain, and the very rough skin clothes and undressed hides began to vanish from among the clothes of the country, and the rough gartered trouser gave way before cloth cut to fit the leg. On lord and peasant alike the sun of this early age sets, and with the sunset comes the warning bell--the _couvre-feu_--so, on their beds of straw-covered floors, let them sleep.... EDWARD THE FIRST Reigned thirty-five years: 1272-1307. Born 1239. Married, 1254, Eleanor of Castile; 1299, Margaret of France. MEN AND WOMEN Until the performance of the Sherborne Pageant, I had never had the opportunity of seeing a mass of people, under proper, open-air conditions, dressed in the peasant costume of Early England. For once traditional stage notions of costume were cast aside, and an attempt was made, which was perfectly successful, to dress people in the colours of their time. The mass of simple colours--bright reds, blues, and greens--was a perfect expression of the date, giving, as nothing else could give, an appearance of an illuminated book come to life. One might imagine that such a primary-coloured crowd would have appeared un-English, and too Oriental or Italian; but with the background of trees and stone walls, the English summer sky distressed with clouds, the moving cloud shadows and the velvet grass, these fierce hard colours looked distinctly English, undoubtedly of their date, and gave the spirit of the ages, from a clothes point of view, as no other colours could have done. In doing this they attested to the historical truth of the play. It seemed natural to see an English crowd one blazing jewel-work of colour, and, by the excellent taste and knowledge of the designer, the jewel-like hardness of colour was consistently kept. It was interesting to see the difference made to this crowd by the advent of a number of monks in uniform black or brown, and to see the setting in which these jewel-like peasants shone--the play of brilliant hues amid the more sombre browns and blacks, the shifting of the blues and reds, the strong notes of emerald green--all, like the symmetrical accidents of the kaleidoscope, settling into their places in perfect harmony. The entire scene bore the impress of the spirit of historical truth, and it is by such pageants that we can imagine coloured pictures of an England of the past. Again, we could observe the effect of the light-reflecting armour, cold, shimmering steel, coming in a play of colour against the background of peasants, and thereby one could note the exact appearance of an ordinary English day of such a date as this of which I now write, the end of the thirteenth century. The mournful procession bearing the body of Queen Eleanor of Castile, resting at Waltham, would show a picture in the same colours as the early part of the Sherborne Pageant. Colour in England changed very little from the Conquest to the end of the reign of Edward I.; the predominant steel and leather, the gay, simple colours of the crowds, the groups of one colour, as of monks and men-at-arms, gave an effect of constantly changing but ever uniform colours and designs of colour, exactly, as I said before, like the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope. It was not until the reign of Edward II. that the effect of colour changed and became pied, and later, with the advent of stamped velvets, heavily designed brocades, and the shining of satins, we get that general effect best recalled to us by memories of Italian pictures; we get, as it were, a varnish of golden-brown over the crude beauties of the earlier times. It is intensely important to a knowledge of costume to remember the larger changes in the aspect of crowds from the colour point of view. A knowledge of history--by which I do not mean a parrot-like acquirement of dates and Acts of Parliament, but an insight into history as a living thing--is largely transmitted to us by pictures; and, as pictures practically begin for us with the Tudors, we must judge of coloured England from illuminated books. In these you will go from white, green, red, and purple, to such colours as I have just described: more vivid blues, reds, and greens, varied with brown, black, and the colour of steel, into the chequered pages of pied people and striped dresses, into rich-coloured people, people in black; and as you close the book and arrive at the wall-picture, back to the rich-coloured people again. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Edward I.}] The men of this time, it must be remembered, were more adapted to the arts of war than to those of peace; and the knight who was up betimes and into his armour, and to bed early, was not a man of so much leisure that he could stroll about in gay clothes of an inconvenient make. His principal care was to relieve himself of his steel burden and get into a loose gown, belted at the waist, over which, if the weather was inclement, he would wear a loose coat. This coat was made with a hood attached to it, very loose and easy about the neck and very wide about the body; its length was a matter of choice, but it was usual to wear it not much below the knees. The sleeves were also wide and long, having at a convenient place a hole cut, through which the arms could be placed. The men wore their hair long and brushed out about the ears--long, that is, to the nape of the neck. They also were most commonly bearded, with or without a moustache. Upon their heads they wore soft, small hats, with a slight projection at the top, the brim of the hat turned up, and scooped away in front. Fillets of metal were worn about the hair with some gold-work upon them to represent flowers; or they wore, now and again, real chaplets of flowers. There was an increase of heraldic ornament in this age, and the surcoats were often covered with a large device. These surcoats, as in the previous reign, were split from shoulder to bottom hem, or were sewn up below the waist; for these, thin silk, thick silk (called samite), and sendal, or thick stuff, was used, as also for the gowns. The shoes were peaked, and had long toes, but nothing extravagant, and they were laced on the outside of the foot. The boots came in a peak up to the knee. The peasant was still very Norman in appearance, hooded, cloaked, with ill-fitting tights and clumsy shoes; his dress was often of bright colours on festivals, as was the gown and head-handkerchief of his wife. Thus you see that, for ordinary purposes, a man dressed in some gown which was long, loose, and comfortable, the sleeves of it generally tight for freedom, so that they did not hang about his arm, and his shoes, hat, cloak, everything, was as soft and free as he could get them. The woman also followed in the lines of comfort: her under-gown was full and slack at the waist, the sleeves were tight, and were made to unbutton from wrist to elbow; they stopped short at the wrist with a cuff. Her upper gown had short, wide sleeves, was fastened at the back, and was cut but roughly to the figure. The train of this gown was very long. They sought for comfort in every particular but one: for though I think the gorget very becoming, I think that it must have been most distressing to wear. This gorget was a piece of white linen wrapped about the throat, and pinned into its place; the ends were brought up to meet a wad of hair over the ears and there fastened, in this way half framing the face. [Illustration: {Four types of hairstyle and head-dresses for women}] The hair was parted in the middle, and rolled over pads by the ears, so as to make a cushion on which to pin the gorget. This was the general fashion. Now, the earlier form of head-dress gave rise to another fashion. The band which had been tied round the head to keep the wimple in place was enlarged and stiffened with more material, and so became a round linen cap, wider at the top than at the bottom. Sometimes this cap was hollow-crowned, so that it was possible to bring the wimple under the chin, fasten it into place with the cap, and allow it to fall over the top of the cap in folds; sometimes the cap was solidly crowned, and was pleated; sometimes the cap met the gorget, and no hair showed between them. [Illustration: A MAN AND WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD I. (1272-1307) The sleeves of the man's overcoat through which he has thrust his arms are complete sleeves, and could be worn in the ordinary manner but that they are too long to be convenient; hence the opening.] What we know as 'the true lovers' knot' was sometimes used as an ornament sewn on to dresses or gowns. You may know the effigy of Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey, and if you do, you will see an example of the very plainest dress of the time. She has a shaped mantle over her shoulders, which she is holding together by a strap; the long mantle or robe is over a plain, loosely-pleated gown, which fits only at the shoulders; her hair is unbound, and she wears a trefoil crown upon her head. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Edward I.}] The changes in England can best be seen by such monuments as Edward caused to be erected in memory of his beloved wife. The arts of peace were indeed magnificent, and though the knight was the man of war, he knew how to choose his servant in the great arts. Picture such a man as Alexander de Abyngdon, 'le Imaginator,' who with William de Ireland carved the statues of the Queen for five marks each--such a man, with his gown hitched up into his belt, his hood back on his shoulders, watching his statue put into place on the cross at Charing. He is standing by Roger de Crundale, the architect of that cross, and he is directing the workmen who are fixing the statue.... A little apart you may picture Master William Tousell, goldsmith, of London, a very important person, who is making a metal statue of the Queen and one of her father-in-law, Henry III., for Westminster Abbey. At the back men and women in hoods and wimples, in short tunics and loose gowns. A very brightly-coloured picture, though the dyes of the dresses be faded by rain and sun--they are the finer colours for that: Master Tousell, no doubt, in a short tunic for riding, with his loose coat on him, the heavy hood back, a little cap on his head; the workmen with their tunics off, a twist of coloured stuff about their waists, their heads bare. It is a beautiful love-story this, of fierce Edward, the terror of Scotland, for Eleanor, whom he 'cherished tenderly,' and 'whom dead we do not cease to love.' The same man, who could love so tenderly and well, who found a fantastic order of chivalry in the Round Table of Kenilworth, could there swear on the body of a swan the death of Comyn, Regent of Scotland, and could place the Countess of Buchan, who set the crown upon the head of Bruce, in a cage outside one of the towers of Berwick. Despite the plain cut of the garments of this time, and the absence of superficial trimmings, it must have been a fine sight to witness one hundred lords and ladies, all clothed in silk, seated about the Round Table of Kenilworth. EDWARD THE SECOND Reigned twenty years: 1307-1327. Born 1284. Married, 1308, Isabella of France. MEN AND WOMEN Whether the changes in costume that took place in this reign were due to enterprising tailors, or to an exceptionally hot summer, or to the fancy of the King, or to the sprightliness of Piers Gaveston, it is not possible to say. Each theory is arguable, and, no doubt, in some measure each theory is right, for, although men followed the new mode, ladies adhered to their earlier fashions. Take the enterprising tailor--call him an artist. The old loose robe was easy of cut; it afforded no outlet for his craft; it cut into a lot of material, was easily made at home--it was, in fact, a baggy affair that fitted nowhere. Now, is it not possible that some tailor-artist, working upon the vanity of a lordling who was proud of his figure, showed how he could present this figure to its best advantage in a body-tight garment which should reach only to his hips? [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward II.}] Take the hot summer. You may or may not know that a hot summer some years ago suddenly transformed the City of London from a place of top-hats and black coats into a place of flannel jackets and hats of straw, so that it is now possible for a man to arrive at his City office clad according to the thermometer, without incurring the severe displeasure of the Fathers of the City. It seems that somewhere midway between 1307 and 1327 men suddenly dropped their long robes, loosely tied at the waist, and appeared in what looked uncommonly like vests, and went by the name of 'cotehardies.' It must have been surprising to men who remembered England clothed in long and decorous robes to see in their stead these gay, debonair, tight vests of pied cloth or parti-coloured silk. Piers Gaveston, the gay, the graceless but graceful favourite, clever at the tournament, warlike and vain, may have instituted this complete revolution in clothes with the aid of the weak King. [Illustration: {Two types of cotehardie}] [Illustration: {Two types of tunic; two types of collar}] Sufficient, perhaps, to say that, although long robes continued to be worn, cotehardies were all the fashion. There was a general tendency to exaggeration. The hood was attacked by the dandies, and, instead of its modest peak, they caused to be added a long pipe of the material, which they called a 'liripipe.' Every quaint thought and invention for tying up this liripipe was used: they wound it about their heads, and tucked the end into the coil; they put it about their necks, and left the end dangling; they rolled it on to the top of their heads. [Illustration: {Four types of shoe; two types of hat}] The countryman, not behindhand in quaint ideas, copied the form of a Bishop's hood, and appeared with his cloth hood divided into two peaks, one on either side of his head. [Illustration: {Four types of hood}] This new cotehardie was cut in several ways. Strictly speaking, it was a cloth or silk vest, tight to the body, and close over the hips; the length was determined by the fancy of the wearer. It also had influence on the long robes still worn, which, although full below the waist to the feet, now more closely fitted the body and shoulders. The fashionable sleeves were tight to the elbow, and from there hanging and narrow, showing a sleeve belonging to an undergarment. The cloak also varied in shape. The heavy travelling-cloak, with the hood attached, was of the old pattern, long, shapeless, with or without hanging sleeves, loose at the neck, or tightly buttoned. Then there was a hooded cloak, with short sleeves, or with the sleeves cut right away, a sort of hooded surcoat. Then there were two distinct forms of cape: one a plain, circular cape, not very deep, which had a plain, round, narrow collar of fur or cloth, and two or three buttons at the neck; and there was the round cape, without a collar, but with turned back lapels of fur. This form of cape is often to be seen. The boots and shoes were longer at the toes, and were sometimes buttoned at the sides. The same form of hats remain, but these were now treated with fur brims. Round the waist there was always a belt, generally of plain black leather; from it depended a triangular pouch, through which a dagger was sometimes stuck. [Illustration: A MAN AND WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD II. (1307-1327) Notice the great length of liripipe on the man's hood, also his short tunic of rayed cloth, his hanging sleeve and his under-sleeve. The woman has her hair dressed in two side-plaits, to which the gorget or neckcloth is pinned.] The time of parti-coloured clothes was just beginning, and the cotehardie was often made from two coloured materials, dividing the body in two parts by the colour difference; it was the commencement of the age which ran its course during the next reign, when men were striped diagonally, vertically, and in angular bars; when one leg was blue and the other red. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward II.; a cap}] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward II.}] You will note that all work was improving in this reign when you hear that the King paid the wife of John de Bureford 100 marks for an embroidered cope, and that a great green hanging was procured for King's Hall, London, for solemn feasts--a hanging of wool, worked with figures of kings and beasts. The ladies made little practical change in their dress, except to wear an excess of clothes against the lack of draperies indulged in by the men. It is possible to see three garments, or portions of them, in many dresses. First, there was a stuff gown, with tight sleeves buttoned to the elbow from the wrist; this sometimes showed one or two buttons under the gorget in front, and was fitted, but not tightly, to the figure. It fell in pleated folds to the feet, and had a long train; this was worn alone, we may suppose, in summer. Second, there was a gown to go over this other, which had short, wide sleeves, and was full in the skirts. One or other of these gowns had a train, but if the upper gown had a train the under one had not, and _vice versâ_. Third, there was a surcoat like to a man's, not over-long or full, with the sleeve-holes cut out wide; this went over both or either of the other gowns. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Edward II.; a wimple with fillet and gorget}] Upon the head they wore the wimple, the fillet, and about the throat the gorget. The arrangement of the wimple and fillet were new, for the hair was now plaited in two tails, and these brought down straight on either side of the face; the fillet was bound over the wimple in order to show the plait, and the gorget met the wimple behind the plait instead of over it. The older fashion of hair-dressing remained, and the gorget was pinned to the wads of hair over the ears, without the covering of the wimple. Sometimes the fillet was very wide, and placed low on the head over a wimple tied like a gorget; in this way the two side-plaits showed only in front and appeared covered at side-face, while the wimple and broad fillet hid all the top hair of the head. Very rarely a tall, steeple head-dress was worn over the wimple, with a hanging veil; but this was not common, and, indeed, it is not a mark of the time, but belongs more properly to a later date. However, I have seen such a head-dress drawn at or about this time, so must include it. The semicircular mantle was still in use, held over the breast by means of a silk cord. It may seem that I describe these garments in too simple a way, and the rigid antiquarian would have made comment on courtepys, on gamboised garments, on cloth of Gaunt, or cloth of Dunster. I may tell you that a gambeson was the quilted tunic worn under armour, and, for the sake of those whose tastes run into the arid fields of such research, that you may call it wambasium, gobison, wambeys, gambiex, gaubeson, or half a dozen other names; but, to my mind, you will get no further with such knowledge. Falding is an Irish frieze; cyclas is a gown; courtepy is a short gown; kirtle--again, if we know too much we cannot be accurate--kirtle may be a loose gown, or an apron, or a jacket, or a riding-cloak. The tabard was an embroidered surcoat--that is, a surcoat on which was displayed the heraldic device of the owner. Let us close this reign with its mournful end, when Piers Gaveston feels the teeth of the Black Dog of Warwick, and is beheaded on Blacklow Hill; when Hugh le Despenser is hanged on a gibbet; when the Queen lands at Orwell, conspiring against her husband, and the King is a prisoner at Kenilworth. Here at Kenilworth the King hears himself deposed. 'Edward, once King of England,' is hereafter accounted 'a private person, without any manner of royal dignity.' Here Edward, in a plain black gown, sees the steward of his household, Sir Thomas Blount, break his staff of office, done only when a King is dead, and discharge all persons engaged in the royal service. Parliament decided to take this strong measure in January; in the following September Edward was murdered in cold blood at Berkeley Castle. EDWARD THE THIRD Reigned fifty years: 1327-1377. Born 1312. Married, 1328, Philippa of Hainault. THE MEN Kings were Kings in those days; they managed England as a nobleman managed his estates. Edward I., during the year 1299, changed his abode on an average three times a fortnight, visiting in one year seventy-five towns and castles. Edward II. increased his travelling retinue until, in the fourth year of the reign of Edward III., the crowd who accompanied that King had grown to such proportions that he was forced to introduce a law forbidding knights and soldiers to bring their wives and families with them. Edward III., with his gay company, would not be stopped as he rode out of one of the gates of London to pay toll of a penny a cart and a farthing a horse, nor would any of his train. This toll, which included threepence a week on gravel and sand carts going in or out of the City, was raised to help pay for street repairs, the streets and roads of that time being in a continual state of slush, mud, and pits of water. Let us imagine Edward III. and his retinue passing over Wakefield Bridge before he reduced his enormous company. The two priests, William Kaye and William Bull, stand waiting for the King outside the new Saint Mary's Chapel. First come the guard of four-and-twenty archers in the King's livery; then a Marshal and his servants (the other King's Marshal has ridden by some twenty-four hours ago); then comes the Chancellor and his clerks, and with them a good horse carrying the Rolls (this was stopped in the fourth year of Edward's reign); then they see the Chamberlain, who will look to it that the King's rooms are decent and in order, furnished with benches and carpets; next comes the Wardrobe Master, who keeps the King's accounts; and, riding beside the King, the first personal officer of the kingdom, the Seneschal; after that a gay company of knights and their ladies, merchants, monks dressed as ordinary laymen for travelling, soldiers of fortune, women, beggars, minstrels--a motley gang of brightly-clothed people, splashed with the mud and dust of the cavalcade. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Edward III.}] Remembering the condition of the day, the rough travelling, the estates far apart, the dirty inns, one must not imagine this company spick and span. The ladies are riding astride, the gentlemen are in civil garments or half armour. Let us suppose that it is summer, and but an hour or so after a heavy shower. The heat is oppressive: the men have slung their hats at their belts, and have pushed their hoods from their heads; their heavy cloaks, which they donned hastily against the rain, are off now, and hanging across their saddles. These cloaks vary considerably in shape. Here we may see a circular cloak, split down the right side from the neck, it buttons on the shoulder. Here is another circular cloak, jagged at the edge; this buttons at the neck. One man is riding in a cloak, parti-coloured, which is more like a gown, as it has a hood attached to it, and reaches down to his feet. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward III.; two types of hood}] Nearly every man is alike in one respect--clean-shaven, with long hair to his neck, curled at the ears and on the forehead. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward III.}] Most men wear the cotehardie, the well-fitting garment buttoned down the front, and ending over the hips. There is every variety of cotehardie--the long one, coming nearly to the knees; the short one, half-way up the thigh. Some are buttoned all the way down the front, and others only with two or three buttons at the neck. Round the hips of every man is a leather belt, from which hangs a pouch or purse. Some of these purses are beautiful with stitched arabesque designs; some have silver and enamel clasps; some are plain black cloth or natural-coloured leather; nearly all, however, are black. The hoods over the men's heads vary in a number of ways: some are very full in the cape, which is jagged at the hem; some are close about the neck and are plain; some have long liripipes falling from the peak of the hood, and others have a liripipe of medium length. There are two or three kinds of hat worn, and felt and fur caps of the usual shape--round, with a rolled-up brim and a little peak on the top. Some of the hats are tall-crowned, round hats with a close, thick brim--these have strings through the brim so that the hat may be strung on the belt when it is not in use; other hats are of the long, peaked shape, and now and again one may see a feather stuck into them; a third variety shows the brim of a high-crowned hat, castellated. Among the knights you will notice the general tendency to parti-coloured clothes, not only divided completely into halves of two colours, but striped diagonally, vertically, and horizontally, so giving a very diverse appearance to the mass of colour. Here and there a man is riding in his silk surcoat, which is embroidered with his coat of arms or powdered with his badge. Here are cloth, velvet, silk, and woollen stuffs, all of fine dyes, and here is some fine silk cotehardie with patterns upon it gilt in gold leaf, and there is a magnificent piece of stuff, rich in design, from the looms of Palermo. Among the merchants we shall see some more sober colours and quieter cut of clothes; the archers in front are in leather tunics, and these quiet colours in front, and the respectable merchants behind, enclose the brilliant blaze of colour round the King. Behind all come the peasants, minstrels, mummers, and wandering troupes of acrobats; here is a bearward in worn leather cloak and hood, his legs strapped at the ankle, his shoes tied on with thongs; here is a woman in a hood, open at the neck and short at the back: she wears a smocked apron; here is a beggar with a hood of black stuff over his head--a hood with two peaks, one on either side of his head; and again, here is a minstrel with a patched round cloak, and a mummer with a two-peaked hood, the peaks stuffed out stiff, with bells jangling on the points of them. Again, among this last group, we must notice the old-fashioned loose tunics, the coif over the head, tied under the chin, wooden-soled shoes and pouch-gloves. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Edward III.}] There are some Norfolk merchants and some merchants from Flanders among the crowd, and they talk as best they can in a sort of French-Latin-English jargon among themselves; they speak of England as the great wool-producing country, the tax on which produced £30,000 in one year; they talk of the tax, its uses and abuses, and how Norfolk was proved the richest county in wool by the tax of 1341. The people of England little thought to hear artillery used in a field of battle so soon as 1346, when on August 26 it was used for the first time, nor did they realize the horrors that were to come in 1349, when the Great Plague was to sweep over England and kill half the population. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward III.}] There is one man in this crowd who has been marked by everybody. He is a courtier, dressed in the height of fashion. His cotehardie fits him very well: the sleeves are tight from elbow to wrist, as are the sleeves of most of his fellows--some, however, still wear the hanging sleeve and show an under-sleeve--and his sleeve is buttoned from wrist to elbow. He wears the newest fashion upon his arm, the tippet, a piece of silk which is made like a detachable cuff with a long streamer hanging from it; his cotehardie is of medium length, jagged at the bottom, and it is of the finest Sicilian silk, figured with a fine pattern; round his hips he wears a jewelled belt. His hood is parti-coloured and jagged at the edge and round his face, and his liripipe is very long. His tights are parti-coloured, and his shoes, buttoned up the front, are long-toed and are made of red-and-white chequered leather. By him rides a knight, also in the height of fashion, but less noticeable: he has his cotehardie skirt split up in front and turned back; he has not any buttons on his sleeves, and his belt about his waist holds a large square pouch; his shoes are a little above his ankles, and are buckled over the instep. His hair is shorter than is usual, and it is not curled. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward III.; three types of head-gear}] As we observe these knights, a party of armed knights come riding down the road towards the cavalcade; they have come to greet the King. These men have ridden through the rain, and now, as they come closer, one can see that their armour is already red with rust. [Illustration: {A hat}] So the picture should remain on your mind, as I have imagined it for you: the knights in armour and surcoats covered with their heraldic device; the archers; the gay crowd of knights in parti-coloured clothes; the King, in his cotehardie of plain black velvet and his black beaver hat, just as he looked after Calais in later years; the merchants; the servants in parti-coloured liveries of their masters' colours; the tattered crowd behind; and, with the aid of the drawings, you should be able to visualize the picture. Meanwhile Edward will arrive at his destination, and to soothe him before sleep, he will read out of the book of romances, illustrated by Isabella, the nun of Aumbresbury, for which he had paid £66 13s. 4d., which sum was heavy for those days, when £6 would buy twenty-four swans. £66 13s. 4d. is about £800 of our money to-day. THE WOMEN 'I looked on my left half as the lady taught me, And was aware of a woman worthily clothed, Trimmed with fur, the finest on earth, Crowned with a crown, the King had none better. Handsomely her fingers were fretted with gold wire, And thereon red rubies, as red as any hot coal, And diamonds of dearest price, and double manner of sapphires, Orientals and green beryls.... Her robe was full rich, of red scarlet fast dyed, With bands of red gold and of rich stones; Her array ravished me, such richness saw I never.' _Piers the Plowman._ There are two manuscripts in existence the illuminations in which give the most wonderfully pictorial idea of this time; they are the manuscript marked MS. Bodl., Misc. 264, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the Loutrell Psalter in the British Museum. The Loutrell Psalter is, indeed, one of the most notable books in the world; it is an example of illumination at the height of that art; it has for illustrator a person, not only of a high order of intelligence, but a person possessed of the very spirit of Gothic humour, who saw rural England, not only with the eyes of an artist, but with the eyes of a gossiping philosopher. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD III. (1327-1377) Round his arms you will see the curious tippet, the jagged ends of which hang down; these are the remains of the pendant sleeves. His shoes are buttoned in front.] Both this book and the book in the Bodleian Library were illustrated by persons who were charged to the brim with the spirit of their age; they were Chaucerian in their gay good-humour and in their quaint observation, and they have that moral knowledge and outspoken manner which characterize William Langland, whose 'Piers the Plowman' I have quoted above. With Chaucer, Langland, and these illuminators we have a complete exhibition of English life of these times. The pulse of rural England is felt by them in a most remarkable way; the religion, language, thought, politics, the whole trend of rural, provincial, and Court life may be gathered from their books. The drawings in the Loutrell Psalter were completed before the year 1340, and they give us all that wonderful charm, that intimate knowledge, which we enjoy in the 'Canterbury Pilgrims' and the 'Vision of Piers Plowman.' There seems to be something in road-travelling which levels all humanity; there is no road in England which does not throb with history; there is no poem or story written about roads in England which does not in some way move the Englishness in us. Chaucer and Langland make comrades of us as they move along the highway, and with them we meet, on terms of intimacy, all the characters of the fourteenth century. With these illuminators of the Loutrell Psalter and the Bodleian MS. we see actually the stream of English life along a crowded thoroughfare. In these books we may see drawings of every form of agricultural life and manorial existence: we see the country sports, the bear-baiting, and the cock-fighting; we see the harvesters with straw hats, scythes, and reaping-hooks; we see carters, carriers, and great carriages, all depicted in a manner which we can only compare, in later years, to the broad humour of Hogarth; and, as we turn the priceless pages over, the whole fourteenth-century world passes before our eyes--japers and jugglers; disours and jesters; monk, priest, pilgrim, and pardoner; spendthrift and wench; hermits, good and evil; lords, ladies, and Kings. I have written of the men and their dress--how they were often--very often--dirty, dusty, and travel-stained--of the red-rusted armour and the striped and chequered clothes, and now I must write of the women and the manner of their dress. Of the time, you must remember that it was the time of chivalry, when there was a Round Table of Knights at Windsor, founded in 1345; when the Order of the Garter was founded; when tiltings and all manner of tournaments were at their height; and you listen to the minstrels of King Edward's household playing upon the trumpet, the cytole, the pipe, the taberet, the clarion, and the fiddle. St. George, the Primate of Egypt in the fourth century, had now risen to public esteem and notice, so that he became in this time not only the patron saint of chivalry, but the tutelar saint of England. Boys were taken from the care of the ladies of the household at the age of seven, when they became pages to knights, and were sworn to devote themselves to the graces and favours of some girl. At fourteen the boy became a squire, and at twenty-one, if he were possessed of a rental of £20 a year in land, he made his fast and vigil, and was afterward dubbed knight and given his spurs. [Illustration: {Twelve hair arrangements for women}] The noteworthy point about a woman of this reign was her hair. The Queen herself wore an elaborate mode of coiffure for that time; she wore a metal fillet round her head, to which was attached two cases, circular in shape, of gold fretwork, ornamented with precious stones. She wore her hair unplaited, and brought in two parts from the back of her head, and as far as one can see, pushed into the jewelled cases. [Illustration: {Five sleeve types for women}] The most general form of hair-dressing was an excess on the mode of the previous reign, a richness of jewel-work, an abundance of gold wire. It was usual to divide the hair into two plaits, and arrange these on either side of the face, holding them in their place by means of a fillet; they might be worn folded straight up by the face, or at an angle, but they were never left hanging; if hair was left loose it was not plaited, but flowing. The gorget, or throat cloth, was still in general use, and it was attached to the hair by very elaborate-headed pins. Sometimes the hair, dressed with the gorget, was divided into four plaits, two on either side of the face, and fastened horizontally. The wimple of silk or linen was very generally worn. A caul of gold net came into fashion, but not until the end of the reign. The ladies were great upon hunting and hawking, and this must have been a convenient fashion to keep the hair in order. Some wore a white silk or linen cap, so shaped as to include and cover the two side-plaits and combine a gorget and wimple in one. Pointed frontals of pearls were worn across the forehead, and fillets of silk or linen were so tied that long ends hung down the back. [Illustration: {Four women of the time of Edward III.}] Yellow hair was much esteemed, and ladies who were not favoured by Nature, brought saffron to their aid, and by such efforts brought Nature into line with Art. There was the general custom of wearing the surcoat in imitation of the men, a garment I have described frequently--a slightly-fitting garment without sleeves--you will see how this grew later into a gorgeous affair. These surcoats were sometimes of fine cloth of gold covered with an intricate, delicate pattern in which beasts, birds, and foliage mingled in arabesque. Under this surcoat was a plainer, better-fitting garment, made sometimes of the barred and rayed material so common to the men, or of velvet, cloth, or silk, in plain colours, green and red being then very favourite; ermines and many other furs were used to border these gowns. Sometimes you may see that this gown had sleeves short at the elbow, exposing a different coloured under-sleeve, buttoned from elbow to wrist; at other times--in fact, among all fashionable persons--the curious fashion of the tippet, or long streamer, was worn. I have carefully described this fashion in the previous chapter. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward III.}] The plain gown with tight sleeves was most in use, and the skirts of this gown were very voluminous, and had either pockets or holes in the front of them; the holes enabled the wearer to reach the purse hanging from a girdle which encircled the waist of the under-dress. These gowns were generally buttoned in front, from neck to waist, or they were laced. They also wore a heavier gown which reached just below the knee, showing the skirts of the under-gown; the heavy gowns were often fur-lined, and had loose wide sleeves to the elbow. There was at this time a curious fur or cloth cape in use, longer behind than in front--in fact, it varied with the taste of the owner. It was cut in even scallops all round; I say even to show that they were sewn-edged, not jagged and rough-edged. Any pair of these scallops might be longer than any other pair. Ladies wore these capes for hunting, and ornamented the ends with bells. The shoes of the women were not very exaggerated in length, but, as a rule, fitted well to the foot and came out in a slight point. You may use for this reign shoes buckled across the instep, laced at the side, or buttoned up the front. For riding and sport the ladies wore the hood, and sometimes a broad round hat over it, or the peaked hat. The countrywoman wore an ill-fitting gown with tight sleeves, an apron, and an open hood. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD III. (1327-1377) You will notice that the woman also wears the tippet on her arm. The gorget is high about her neck, and is held up by pins to her plaited hair.] Imagine London in the year of the third great pestilence, 1369. It is October, and the worst of the pestilence is over; John Chichester, the Mayor, is riding through the streets about some great affairs; many knights and ladies pass by. It is raining hard after the long drought of the summer, but, despite the rain, many citizens are abroad to see the doings in the City, and one may see the bright parti-coloured clothes of the lords and ladies, and here and there, as a cloak is blown back, a glimpse of rich-patterned cloth of gold. Perhaps Will Langland--Long Will--a gaunt man of thirty-seven, is brushing past a young man of twenty-nine, Chaucer, going to his work. Silk dresses and frieze gowns, velvet and homespun, hurry along as the rain falls more heavily, and after a while the street becomes quite deserted. Then nothing but the dreary monotony of the rain falling from the gables will come to the room of the knight's lady as she lies sick of small-pox. John de Gaddesden, the King's doctor, has prescribed for her that she must lie clothed in scarlet red in a room of that colour, with bed-hangings of that same colour, and so she must lie, without much comfort, while the raindrops, falling down the wide chimney, drip on the logs in the fire and make them hiss. RICHARD THE SECOND Reigned twenty-two years: 1377-1399. Born 1366. Married, 1381, Anne of Bohemia; 1395, Isabella of France. THE MEN The King himself was a leader of fashion; he had by grace of Nature the form, face, and manner which go to make a dandy. The nobles followed the King; the merchants followed the nobles after their kind; the peasants were still clothed in the simplest of garments, having retained the Norman tunic with the sleeves pushed back over the wrist, kept the loose boots and straw gaiters, and showed the improvement in their class by the innovation of gloves made as a thumb with a pouch for the fingers, and pouches for money of cloth and leather hung on a leather belt. This proved the peasant to be a man of some substance by need of his wallet. Everyone wore the chaperon--a cap and cape combined. We have now arrived at the reign which made such a difference to the labourer and workman--such as the blacksmith and miller--and in consequence altered and improved the character of his clothes. The poll-tax of 1380 brought the labourer into individual notice for the first time, and thus arose the free labourer in England and the first labour pamphlets. We have two word-pictures of the times of the greatest value, for they show both sides of the coin: the one by the courtly and comfortable Chaucer, the other by Long Will--William Langland, or Piers the Plowman. Picture the two along the Strand--Long Will singing his dirges for hire, and Chaucer, his hand full of parchments, bustling past. One must remember that, as always, many people dressed out of the fashion; that many men still wore the cotehardie, a well-fitting garment reaching half-way down the thigh, with tight sleeves coming over the hand, decorated with buttons under the sleeve from the elbow to the little finger. This garment had a belt, which was placed round the hips; and this was adorned in many ways: principally it was composed of square pieces of metal joined together, either of silver, or enamel in copper, or of gold set with precious stones. [Illustration: {A cotehardie; hose}] [Illustration: {Three types of footwear; a coat}] The cotehardie was generally made of a pied cloth in horizontal or diagonal bars, in silk or other rich fabric. With this garment the chaperon (to be more fully described) was worn as a hood; the legs were in tights, and the feet in pointed shoes a little longer than the foot. A pouch or wallet depended from the belt, and a sheath containing two daggers, an anelace, and a misericorde. The pouch was a very rich affair, often of stamped gilded leather or sewn velvet--ornamented, in fact, according to the purse of the wearer. In winter such a man as he of the cotehardie would wear an overcoat with an attached hood. This coat was made in various forms: one form with wide sleeves the same width all the way down, under which were slits in the coat to enable the wearer to place his hands inside, as in the modern Raglan coat-pocket. Another form was made very loose and without sleeves, but with the same slits at the side; it was buckled round the waist on occasion by a broad leather belt, very plain. The common heavy travelling-coat was made in this way, and it was only the very fashionable who wore the houppelande for riding or travelling. Sometimes such a man would wear in winter about the town a cloak fastened over the right shoulder with three or four buttons, leaving the right arm free; such a cloak is seen in the brass of Robert Attelathe, Mayor of Lynn. [Illustration: {A draped cloak and simple pattern for it}] In travelling, our gentleman would wear, often in addition to his chaperon, a peaked hat of cloth, high in the crown, with a brim turned up all round, ending in a long peak in front--the same hat that we always associate with Dick Whittington. His gloves would be of leather, often ornamented with designs on the back, or, if he were a knight, with his badge. On this occasion he would wear his sword in a baldric, a long belt over his right shoulder and under his left arm, from which hung also his daggers. Although I am not dealing even with personal arms, one must remember, in representing these people, that daggers were almost as necessary a part of dress as boots or shoes, and that personal comfort often depended upon a skilful use of that natty weapon; the misericorde was used to give the _coup de grâce_. The farmer in harvest-time wore, if he did not wear a hood, a peaked hat or a round, large-brimmed straw hat. [Illustration: The Houppelande or Peliçon.] We may now arrive at the fashionable man, whose eccentricities in clothes were the object of much comment. How the houppelande or peliçon actually was originated I do not know, but it came about that men suddenly began to clothe themselves in this voluminous and awkward garment. It was a long loose-fitting robe, made to fit on the shoulders only, having very long loose sleeves, varying according to the whim of the owner. These sleeves were cut at the edges into the forms of leaves or other designs, and were lined, as the houppelande, with fur or silk. It will be seen that such a garment to suit all weathers and temperatures must be made of various materials and lined accordingly. These materials were almost invariably powdered with badges or some other device, sometimes with a flowing pattern embracing an heraldic design or motto. The sleeves turned back disclosed the sleeve of a cotehardie underneath, with the little buttons running from the elbow to the first knuckle of the little finger. The houppelande had a very high collar, coming well up to the middle of the back of the head; it was buttoned up to the chin in front, and the collar was often turned down half-way, the two top buttons being left undone. It was fastened about the middle by a thin leather belt, very long; this was buckled, and the long end turned under and brought over to hang down; the end was ornamented with many devices--figures of saints, heraldic figures, or other ornaments. Sometimes the entire belt was sewn with small devices in precious metal or enamels. Now, to be in the height of fashion, one either wore the houppelande extremely long in the skirt or extremely short--so short, in fact, as to leave but a frill of it remaining below the waist--leaving the sleeves still their abnormal length. Pretty fads, as tying a dagger round the neck, or allowing it to hang low between the legs, or placing it in the small of the back, were much in vogue. [Illustration: {Two types of long shoe}] Every form of beard or moustache was used, and the hair was worn long to the nape of the neck. By the dandy it was elaborately pressed and curled at the ends. Bands of real or artificial flowers encircled the heads of the dandies, the artificial flowers made in enamels or gold. Rings were worn of great size on thumb and finger; long staffs with elaborate heads were carried. Under the houppelande was the skirt and the cotehardie of thin material, and on the legs hose, pied or powdered, made of silk or cloth cut to the form and sewn. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD II. (1377-1399) His chaperon, or hood, is twisted and tied about his head with the liripipe, the elongated peak of his hood, thrown over his shoulders.] The shoes were of great length, with long points; rarely we find examples of the absurd fashion of wearing the points so long that they were tied back to the knees, but often they were so long that the points came out 6 inches beyond the toe. They were made of every material, sewn with pearls on cloth or velvet, stamped with gold on leather, or the leather raised. The toes were sometimes stuffed hard, sometimes allowed to hang limp. For walking in the streets high clogs of wood were used, made with long pointed ends to support the shoes. I may add that the hose were gartered below the knee to hold them taut with rich garters, but if a man were a Garter Knight he wore but the garter of his Order. [Illustration: {Evolution of the hood to the chaperon}] Much in favour with this court of gallants were rich chains about the neck, having for pendant their badge or some saint's figure in gold or silver. [Illustration: {Five types of head-wear}] Now we come to the most interesting and universal fashion of wearing the chaperon, which I am anxious to show in its various stages. It began with a cape and a hood worn separately; these were joined for convenience so that a man might put on both at once. This fashion held for many years, and then the fashionable man in search of novelty caused the peak of the hood to be lengthened until it grew to reach to his feet. Then he cast about for a fresh mode for his head-wear, and so he twisted the whole affair about his head, leaving the end of the cape, which was jagged at the edge, protruding like a cockscomb. Time went on, and he avoided the trouble of tying this himself, so he had the hat made up all ready tied, much in the manner of a turban. Finally, the chaperon grew into disuse, and it remains to-day a curious reminder in the cockade worn by coachmen (it is almost a replica in miniature, with the round twist and the jagged edge sticking up above the hat) and on the cloaks of the Knights of the Garter, where it is carefully made, and forms a cape on the right shoulder, and in the present head-dress of the French lawyer, a relic of the Middle Ages. The chains worn about the neck remain as badges of office in Mayors and Judges and in various Orders. The button worn by the members of the Legion of Honour and other foreign Orders is, I believe, an idea resulting from the cockade, which, of course, was at the beginning the chaperon in the colours of the servant's lord. [Illustration: {A houppelande showing the leg opening}] When one knows a custom so well, one is apt to leave out many things in describing it. For example, the houppelande was open from the bottom of the skirt to the knee in front or at the side, and this opening was often cut or jagged into shapes; also it was open all the way up the side of the leg, and from the neck to the breast, and buttoned over. I have not remarked on the jester, a member of many households, who wore an exaggeration of the prevalent costume, to which bells were attached at all points. So was much good cloth wasted in vanity, and much excellent time spent upon superfluities, to the harm of the people; perhaps useful enough to please the eye, which must have been regaled with all these men in wonderful colours, strutting peacockwise. [Illustration: {Simpler clothing, hat and hood, and bags of peasants}] The poor peasant, who found cloth becoming very dear, cared not one jot or tittle for the feast of the eye, feeling a certain unreasonable hunger elsewhere. And so over the wardrobe of Dandy Richard stepped Henry, backed by the people. THE WOMEN If ever women were led by the nose by the demon of fashion it was at this time. Not only were their clothes ill-suited to them, but they abused that crowning glory, their hair. No doubt a charming woman is always charming, be she dressed by woad or worth; but to be captivating with your eyebrows plucked out, and with the hair that grows so prettily low on the back of the neck shaved away--was it possible? I expect it was. [Illustration: {Two types of head-dress for women, showing different views and a detail}] The days of high hennins was yet to come; the day of simple hair-dressing was nearly dead, and in the interval were all the arts of the cunning devoted to the guimpe, the gorgières, the mentonnières, the voluminous escoffions. [Illustration: {Two types of head-dress for women, showing different views and a detail}] At this time the lady wore her hair long and hanging freely over her shoulders; her brows were encircled by a chaplet, or chapel of flowers, real or artificial, or by a crown or plain circlet of gold; or she tucked all her hair away under a tight caul, a bag of gold net enriched with precious stones. To dress hair in this manner it was first necessary to plait it in tight plaits and bind them round the head, then to cover this with a wimple, which fell over the back of the neck, and over this to place the caul, or, as it was sometimes called, the dorelet. Now and again the caul was worn without the wimple, and this left the back of the neck exposed; from this all the hair was plucked. [Illustration: {Three types of head-dress for women}] For outdoor exercises the lady would wear the chaperon (explained in the previous chapter), and upon this the peaked hat. The poorer woman wore always the hood, the wimple tied under the chin, or plain plaited hair. One must remember always that the advance of costume only affected the upper classes in the towns, and that the knight's lady in the country was often fifty years behind the times in her gowns. As an instance of this I give the fur tippet hung with bells, used when hawking. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Richard II.}] In the early part of the reign the cotehardie was the universal woman's garment. It was made in two ways: the one a simple, well-fitting garment, skirts and bodice in one, buttoned in front, with neck well open, the skirts ample and long, the sleeves over the hands to the first joints of the fingers, and ornamented with buttons from the elbow to the little finger--this was the general form of the garment for all degrees of rank. The lady enriched this with a belt like a man's, narrow in width round the waist with hanging end, or broad round the hips and richly ornamented. The other form of cotehardie was exactly as the man's, ending short below the hips, under which was worn the petticoat. [Illustration: {Three types of dress for women}] The winter addition to these was the surcoat (as usually worn by a knight over his armour); this was often lined with fur. The surcoat was a long garment without sleeves, and with a split down the sides from the shoulder to the top of the thigh; through this split was seen the cotehardie and the hip-belt. The edges were trimmed with fur, and very frequently ornamental buttons were worn down the front. Over the shoulders was the cloak, left open in front, and fastened by means of a cord of rich substance passing through two loops in the backs of large ornamental studs; this cord was, as a rule, knotted at the waist, the ends hanging down as tassels. [Illustration: {Two types of dress for women}] Later in the reign, when the second Queen of Richard had brought over many rich fashions, the ladies adopted the houppelande, with its heavy collar and wide, hanging sleeves. Every lady and most women carried a purse in the hand or on the girdle, ornamented according to their station. The merchant's wife wore, in common with her maids, a white apron. The child who was spinning a peg-top in the street was simply dressed in a short-skirted cotehardie. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD II. (1377-1399) Her loose surcoat is cut away to show her under-dress. Her hair is completely hidden by her jewelled caul.] For riding and sport the woman was dressed almost exactly as a man--with houppelande or heavy cloak buttoned on the right shoulder, hawking-glove on her left hand with a bell or metal ball depending from it. She wore boots laced up at the side, or long boots of soft leather fastened with hook and eye; shoes like a man's, but not so pointed and extreme. Sometimes for riding a big round hat was worn over a hood. In many cases the dresses were powdered with the monogram of the Blessed Virgin, with badges of the family or some small device, or they were ornamented with a simple flowing pattern, or were plain. All the fripperies of fashion lay in pins for the wimple, the head made as a figure of a patron saint; or girdles rich with precious stones; or mirror-cases on whose ivory fronts were carved the Castle of Love, or hunting scenes, or Calvary. The clasps of purses were rich in design, and rings of every kind were worn on every finger and upon the thumb. Charms against evil were hung about the neck or sewn into the clothes. No matter who wrote, passed, and practised the many sumptuary laws, still, one may know it to have been frequent for persons owning less than £20 a year to wear gold and silver ornaments, although expressly forbidden, and ladies of a lower estate than wives of knights-banneret wore cloth of gold and velvet, and gowns that reached and trailed upon the ground, while their husbands braved it in ermine and marten-lined sleeves which swept the road. The custom of wearing crowns was common to all people of rank, as heraldic distinction of crowns did not commence until the sixteenth century. What a magnificent time for colour was this reign!--the rich houppelandes, the furs, the long-piked shoes with pearls and gold upon them, the massive chains about men's necks; ladies whose heads shone with rich caps and cauls of pearl-embroidered gold, the rich-sheathed baselard stuck in the girdle or hanging from it on a silver chain. Even the poor begging friar was touched by all this finery, and, forgetful of the rules of Saint Francis, he made great haste to convert his alms into a furred cote 'cutted to the knee and quaintly buttoned, hose in hard weather fastened at the ankle, and buckled shoes.' Imagine that amazing woman the Wife of Bath, in her great hat and pound-weight kerchief; the carpenter's wife in her gored apron, at her girdle a purse of leather hanging, decorated with silk tassels and buttons of metal. It is almost impossible to describe clearly the head-dresses--the great gold net bags which encased the hair--for they were ornamented in such different ways, always, or nearly always, following some pattern in diaper in contrast to the patterns which came later when the design followed such lines as are formed by wire-netting, while later still the connecting-thread of the patterns was done away with and the inside decoration alone remained. Well, Richard the King no longer can whistle to Matthew, his favourite greyhound, and Anne the Queen lies stately in the Abbey at Westminster without solace of her little lap-dog; but we are not all modern in our ways, and ladies hang charms about them, from scarabs to queer evil eye coral hands, from silver shoes to month-stones. Crowns of flowers have been worn and crowns of jewels too, just as men and women wore them then, except on Fridays and the eves of fêtes. These things we do, and other ancient things beside, but let us hope that Fashion has lost her cruel mood, and deems it wise to leave our ladies' eyebrows where they be, nor schemes to inspire her faithful devotees with mad desires to hide their hair and shave their napes. The crinoline is threatened--let it come; sandals are here, with short hair and the simple life, but leave me, I pray thee, royal dame, an eyebrow on my lady, if only to give occupation to the love-lorn sonneteer. THE END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY [Illustration: Chaucer.] In the last year of the fourteenth century there were still living two men whose voices have made the century live for us. One of them--Chaucer--remains to-day the father of English poetry, the forerunner of Shakespeare; the other--Gower--less known to most of us, was the author of three long poems--'Speculum Meditantis,' in French; 'Vox Clamantis,' in Latin; 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. Boccaccio had written his 'Decameron,' and it was this method of writing a series of poems or stories by means of connecting-links of narrative that should run through the series, that inspired the form of the 'Confessio Amantis' and the 'Canterbury Tales'; indeed, many stories in both of these works are retold out of the 'Decameron.' Gower wrote of his age as a man giving advice, philosophically; he did not attempt character studies, but framed his poems as narratives with morals fit for application to his times. Chaucer drew his characters clearly--so clearly that they have become as living as have Uncle Toby or Mrs. Gamp--symbolic people, embracing a type of national character. A third writer--Langland--pictured his age from the poor man's point of view, and the three writers, together with the artist of the Loutrell Psalter, bring the age most vividly to our eyes. Of course, in these days of hasty work, it seems hardly feasible to suggest that artists who would illustrate these times should read the works of these three men, and go to the British Museum to look at the Psalter; but any writer must do this, and can do this, considering that the works of the poets are cheap to obtain and the British Museum is free to all. Anyone wishing to picture these times will find that Chaucer has written very carefully of the costume of his Pilgrims. They will find the pith of the costume in this book of mine; but since no book is complete in every sense, they should see for themselves how men of the day drew the costume they saw about them. It will give them a sense of the spirit of the age which so many modern drawings lack. I give you Gower's picture of an exquisite; no words of mine could show so well the manner of the man: 'And therof thenketh he but a lite, For all his lust is to delite In newé thingés, proude and veine, Als ferforth as he may atteine. I trowe, if that he mighté make His body newe, he woldé take A newé form and leve his olde. For what thing that he may behold The which to common use is straunge, Anone his oldé guisé chaunge He woll, and fallé therupon Lich unto the camelion, Whiche upon every sondry hewe That he beholt he moté newe His coloun; and thus unavised Full ofté time he stand desguised. More jolif than the brid in Maie, He maketh him ever fressh and gaie And doth all his array desguise, So that of him the newé guise Of lusty folke all other take.' Now, if I have described the costume of these times clearly--and I think I have done so--these lines should conjure up a gay fellow, with his many changes of dress. If the vision fails, then allow me to say that you are at fault, and have taken no pains with the description. Because the coloured drawing to the chapter of Richard II. shows a long houppelande and a chaperon tied in a certain way, you will very possibly forget that this dandy would have also a short houppelande, differently jagged sleeves, more ruffle about the twisting of his chaperon, more curve to the points of his shoes. You may see the image of Gower for yourself in St. Mary Overies Church, now called St. Saviour's, on the Southwark side of London Bridge. He is dressed in his sober black, his head resting upon his three books. In 1397 Gower retired from active life, and resigned his Rectory of Great Braxted, Essex; he was seventy years of age, and at that age he married Agnes Groundolf in a chapel of his own under the rooms where he lived in the Priory of St. Mary Overies. In 1400 his friend Chaucer died and Gower went blind. He died in 1408. Chaucer, whose eyes saw England in her greatness after the Battle of Crecy in 1346, and in her pitiful state at the downfall of Richard II., saw such a pageant of clothes pass before him that, in describing those wonderful national types, his Canterbury Pilgrims, he marks each one with some hint of array that we may know what manner of habit was proper to them. Here, then, is a list of the clothes he pictured them as wearing: [Illustration {The knight}] THE KNIGHT wears a fustian doublet, all rust-stained by his coat of mail. It is interesting to note how old-fashioned is the character of this 'verray parfit gentil knight,' for he belongs more rightly to the chivalrous time of the first half of Edward III.'s reign rather than to the less gentle time of Richard. [Illustration: {The squire}] THE SQUIRE. His locks were curled, 'as they were leyed in presse.' His short gown with wide sleeves was covered with embroidery of red and white flowers. THE YEOMAN is in a coat and hood of green. He has a sheaf of peacock arrows in his belt; across his shoulder is a green baldrick to carry a horn. There is a figure of St. Christopher in silver hanging on his breast. THE PRIORESS is in a handsome cloak; she wears coral beads gauded with green, and a brooch of gold-- 'On which was first write a-crowned A, And after, "Amor vincit omnia."' THE MONK wears his gown, but has his sleeves trimmed with gray squirrel. To fasten his hood he has a curious gold pin, wrought at the greater end with a love-knot. THE FRIAR has his cape stuck full of knives and pins 'for to yeven faire wyves.' THE MERCHANT is in a motley of colours--parti-coloured. His beard is forked; upon his head is a Flaunderish beaver hat. His boots are elegantly clasped. THE CLERK wears a threadbare tunic. [Illustration: {The man of law}] THE MAN OF LAW is in a coat of parti-colours, his belt of silk with small metal bars on it. THE FRANKELEYN OR COUNTRY GENTLEMAN has a white silk purse and a two-edged dagger, or akelace, at his girdle. 'Then come the HABERDASHER, the CARPENTER, the WEAVER, the DYER, and the TAPESTRY WORKER, all in the livery of their companies. They all carry pouches, girdles, and knives, mounted in silver.' THE SHIPMAN is in a gown of falding (a coarse cloth), reaching to his knees. A dagger is under his arm, on a lace hanging round his neck. THE DOCTOR wears a gown of red and blue (pers was a blue cloth) lined with taffeta and sendal. [Illustration: {The wife of Bath}] THE WIFE OF BATH. Her wimples of fine linen-- 'I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound That on a Sonday were upon hir heed.' Her hose was of fine scarlet red; her shoes were moist and new. Her hat was as broad as a buckler, and she wore a foot-mantle about her hips. THE PLOUGHMAN wears a tabard, a loose smock without sleeves. THE REVE OR STEWARD wears a long surcoat of blue cloth (pers). THE SOMNOUR (an officer who summoned persons before the ecclesiastical courts) wears on his head a garland--'as greet as it were for an ale-stake.' [Illustration: {The pardoner}] THE PARDONER has long yellow hair falling about his shoulders; his hood is turned back, and he wears a tall cap, on which is sewn a Vernicle. This is the handkerchief of St. Veronica on which there was an impression of our Lord's face. This completes the list of Pilgrims, but it will be useful to give a few more descriptions of dress as described by Chaucer. The Carpenter's wife in the Miller's Tale is described: 'Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al As any wesele hir body gent (slim) and small. A ceynt (belt) she werede barred al of silk, A barneclooth (apron) eek as whyt as morne milk Upon hir lendes (loins), ful of many a gore. Whyt was hir smok and brouded al before And eek behinde, on hir coler aboute, Of col-blak silk, within and eek withoute. The tapes of his whyte voluper (a cap) Were of the same suyte--of hir coler; Hir filet broad of silk, and set ful hye. * * * * * And by hir girdel heeng a purs of lether Tasseld with silk and perked with latoun (a compound of copper and zinc). * * * * * A brooch she bare upon hir lowe coler, As broad as is the bos of a buckler. Her shoes were laced on hir legges hye.' Here also, from the Parson's Tale, is a sermon against the vain clothing of his time, that will serve to show how you may best paint this age, and to what excess of imagination you may run. I have reduced the wording into more modern English: 'As to the first sin, that is in superfluitee of clothing, which that maketh it so dere, to the harm of the people; not only the cost of embroidering, the elaborate endenting or barring, ornamenting with waved lines, paling, winding, or bending, and semblable waste of cloth in vanity; but there is also costly furring in their gowns, so muche pounching of chisels to make holes, so much dagging of shears; forthwith the superfluity in the length of the foresaid gowns, trailing in the dung and the mire, on horse and eek on foot, as well of man as of woman, that all this trailing is verily as in effect wasted, consumed, threadbare, and rotten with dung, rather than it is given to the poor; to great damage of the aforesaid poor folk. 'Upon the other side, to speak of the horrible disordinate scantiness of clothing, as be this cutted sloppes or hainselins (short jackets), that through their shortness do not cover the shameful members of man, to wicked intent.' After this, the good Parson, rising to a magnificent torrent of wrathful words, makes use of such homely expressions that should move the hearts of his hearers--words which, in our day, are not seemly to our artificial and refined palates. Further, Chaucer remarks upon the devices of love-knots upon clothes, which he calls 'amorettes'; on trimmed clothes, as being 'apyked'; on nearly all the fads and fashions of his time. It is to Chaucer, and such pictures as he presents, that our minds turn when we think vaguely of the Middle Ages, and it is worth our careful study, if we wish to appreciate the times to the full, to read, no matter the hard spelling, the 'Vision of Piers the Plowman,' by Langland. I have drawn a few of the Pilgrims, in order to show that they may be reconstructed by reading the chapters on the fourteenth century. HENRY THE FOURTH Reigned fourteen years: 1399-1413. Born 1366. Married, 1380, Mary de Bohun; 1403, Joan of Navarre. THE MEN AND WOMEN The reign opens sombrely enough--Richard in prison, and twenty-five suits of cloth of gold left, among other of his butterfly raiment, in Haverford Castle. We are still in the age of the houppelande, the time of cut edges, jagging, big sleeves and trailing gowns. Our fine gentlemen take the air in the long loose gown, or the short edition of the same with the skirts cut from it. They have invented, or the tailor has invented, or necessity has contrived, a new sleeve. It is a bag sleeve, very full and fine, enormous at the elbow, tight at the wrist, where it may fall over the hand in a wide cuff with dagged edges, or it may end in a plain band. [Illustration: A MAN AND WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY IV. (1399-1413) Very little change in dress; the man in the loose gown called the houppelande. The woman also in a houppelande.] Let us take six gentlemen met together to learn the old thirteenth-century part-song, the round entitled 'Sumer is icumen in.' [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry IV.}] The first, maybe, is in the high-collared houppelande with the long skirts; his sleeves are of a different colour to his gown, and are fastened to it under cut epaulettes at his shoulders; he wears a baldrick, hung with bells, over his shoulder; his houppelande is split on one side to show his parti-coloured hose beyond his knee; his shoes are long and very pointed; his hair is cut short, and he wears a twisted roll of stuff round his head. The second is in the latest mode; he wears the voluminous sleeves which end in a plain band at his wrist, and these sleeves are of a different colour to his houppelande, the skirts of which are cut short at the knee, and then are cut into neat dags. This garment is not so full as that of the first gentleman, which is gathered in at the waist by a long-tongued belt, but is buttoned down the front to the waist and is full in the skirt; also it has no collar. This man wears his hair long and curled at the nape of his neck. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry IV.}] A third of these gentlemen, a big burly man, is in a very short tunic with wide sleeves; his tights are of two colours, his left leg red, his right blue. Over his tunic he wears a quilted waistcoat, the collar and armholes of which are trimmed with fur. [Illustration {A man of the time of Henry IV.}] A fourth wears a loose houppelande, one half of which is blue and the other half black; it is buttoned from throat to foot; the sleeves are wide. His hair is long, and his beard is brushed into two points. [Illustration: {Four men of the time of Henry IV.; five types of hat; a pouch}] [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry IV.}] The fifth gentleman wears a houppelande of middle length, with a very high collar buttoned up the neck, the two top buttons being undone; the top of the collar rolls over. He has the epaulette, but instead of showing the very full bag sleeves he shows a little loose sleeve to the elbow, and a tight sleeve from the elbow to the hand, where it forms a cuff. He wears a very new-fashioned cap like a stiff sugar-bag, with the top lopping over. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry IV.}] The sixth and last of this group is wearing an unbound houppelande--that is, he wears no belt. He wears a plain hood which is over his head, and a soft, loose, peaked hat. 'Sumer is icumen in,' the six sing out, and the shepherd, who can hear them from outside, is considering whether he can play the air upon his pipe. He is dressed in a loose tunic, a hood, and a wide-brimmed straw hat; his pipe is stuck in his belt. Let us suppose that the wives of the six gentlemen are seated listening to the manly voices of their lords. The first wears a dress of blue, which is laced from the opening to the waist, where the laces are tied in a neat bow and hang down. Her dress is cut fairly low; it has tight sleeves which come over her hands to the knuckles in tight cuffs. There is a wide border, about a foot and a half, of ermine on the skirt of her dress. She wears a mantle over her shoulders. Her hair is enclosed in a stiff square caul of gold wire over cloth of gold. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry IV.}] The second lady is wearing a houppelande with wide, hanging sleeves all cut at the edge; the cut of this gown is loose, except that it fits across her shoulders; she also wears a caul, from the back of which emerges a linen wimple. The third lady is in surcoat and cotehardie; the surcoat has a pleated skirt, and the borders of it are edged thickly with fur; it is cut low enough at the sides to show a belt over the hips. The cotehardie, of a different colour to the surcoat, has tight sleeves with buttons from elbow to little finger. This lady has her hair cut short at the nape of her neck, and bound about the brows with a golden circlet. [Illustration: {Three women of the time of Henry IV.}] A fourth wears a very loose houppelande, encircled about the waist with a broad belt, the tongue of which hangs down and has an ornamented end. This houppelande falls in great folds from the neck to the feet, and is gathered into the neck; it has loose, but not wide, sleeves, falling just below the elbow. The gown is worn over a cotehardie, the sleeves of which show through the other sleeves, and the skirt of which shows when the gown skirt is gathered up. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry IV.}] The fifth lady also wears a cotehardie with a skirt to it; she wears over it a circular mantle, buttoned by three buttons on the right shoulder, and split from there to the edge on both sides, showing the dress; the front semicircle of the cloak is held to the waist by a belt so that the back hangs loose. Her hair is in a caul. The sixth is in a very plain dress, tight-fitting, buttoned in front, with full skirts. She wears a white linen hood which shows the shape of the caul in which her hair is imprisoned. So is this queer old round sung, 'Sumer is icumen in.' Afterwards, perhaps one of these ladies, wishing to get some spite against one of the gentlemen, will ride away in a heavy riding-cloak, the hood over her head and a peaked hat on that, and she will call upon a witch. The witch will answer the rapping at her humble door, and will come out, dressed in a country dress--just an ill-fitting gown and hood, with some attempt at classical ornament on the gown, or a cloak sewn with the sacred initials thrown over her back. These two will bargain awhile for the price of a leaden image to be made in the likeness of the ill-fated gentleman, or, rather, a rough figure, on which his name will be scratched; then the puppet will be cast into the fire and melted while certain evil charms are spoken, and the malicious accident required to befall him will be spoken aloud for the Devil's private ear. Possibly some woman sought a witch near Evesham in the year 1410, and bought certain intentions against a tailor of that place, Badby by name; for this much is certain: that the tailor was burnt for Lollardy ten years after the first victim for Lollard heresy, William Sawtre. HENRY THE FIFTH Reigned nine years: 1413-1422. Born 1388. Married, 1420, Katherine of France. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry V.}] I think I may call this a transitional period of clothes, for it contains the ragged ends of the time of Richard II. and the old clothes of the time of Henry IV., and it contains the germs of a definite fashion, a marked change which came out of the chrysalis stage, and showed itself in the prosperous butterflies of the sixth Henry's time. We retain the houppelande, its curtailments, its exaggerations, its high and low collar, its plain or jagged sleeves. We retain the long hair, which 'busheth pleasauntlie,' and the short hair of the previous reign. Also we see the new ideas for the priest-cropped hair and the roundlet hat. I speak of the men only. It was as if, in the press of French affairs, man had but time to ransack his grandfather's and his father's chests, and from thence to pull out a garment or two at a venture. If the garment was a little worn in the upper part of the sleeve, he had a slash made there, and embroidered it round. If the baldrick hung with bells was worn out in parts, he cut those pieces away and turned the baldrick into a belt. If the skirts of the houppelande were sadly frayed at the edge, enter Scissors again to cut them off short; perhaps the sleeves were good--well, leave them on; perhaps the skirts were good and the sleeves soiled--well, cut out the sleeves and pop in some of his father's bag sleeves. Mind you, my honest gentleman had trouble brewing: no sooner had he left the wars in Normandy and Guienne than the siege of Harfleur loomed to his vision, and after that Agincourt--Agincourt, where unarmoured men prevailed over mailed knights at the odds of six to one; Agincourt, where archers beat the great knights of France on open ground! Hear them hammer on the French armour with their steel mallets, while the Frenchmen, weighed down with their armour, sank knee-deep in the mud--where we lost 100 men, against the French loss of 10,000! [Illustration: A Belt with Bells.] See the port of Le Havre, with the English army landed there--Henry in his full-sleeved gown, his hair cropped close and shaven round his head from his neck to an inch above his ears, buskins on his feet, for he wore buskins in preference to long boots or pointed shoes. The ships in the harbour are painted in gay colours--red, blue, in stripes, in squares; the sails are sewn with armorial bearings or some device. Some of our gentlemen are wearing open houppelandes over their armour; some wear the stuffed turban on their heads, with a jewelled brooch stuck in it; some wear the sugar-bag cap, which falls to one side; some are hooded, others wear peaked hats. One hears, 'By halidom!' I wonder if all the many, many people who have hastily written historical novels of this age, and have peppered them with 'By halidoms,' knew that 'By halidom' means 'By the relics of the saints,' and that an 'harlote' means a man who was a buffoon who told ribald stories? [Illustration: The Turban.] Still, among all these gentlemen, clothed, as it were, second-hand, we have the fine fellow, the dandy--he to whom dress is a religion, to whom stuffs are sonnets, cuts are lyrical, and tailors are the poets of their age. Such a man will have his tunic neatly pleated, rejecting the chance folds of the easy-fitting houppelande, the folds of which were determined by the buckling of the belt. His folds will be regular and precise, his collar will be very stiff, with a rolled top; his hose will be of two colours, one to each leg, or parti-coloured. His shoes will match his hose, and be of two colours; his turban hat will be cocked at a jaunty angle; his sleeves will be of a monstrous length and width. He will hang a chain about his neck, and load his fingers with rings. A fellow to him, one of his own kidney, will wear the skirt of his tunic a little longer, and will cause it to be cut up the middle; his sleeves will not be pendant, like drooping wings, but will be swollen like full-blown bagpipes. An inner sleeve, very finely embroidered, will peep under the upper cuff. His collar is done away with, but he wears a little hood with cut edges about his neck; his hair is cropped in the new manner, like a priest's without a tonsure; his hat is of the queer sugar-bag shape, and it flops in a drowsy elegance over the stuffed brim. As for his shoes, they are two fingers long beyond his toes. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY V. (1413-1422) Notice the bag cap with a jewel stuck in it.] We shall see the fashions of the two past reigns hopelessly garbled, cobbled, and stitched together; a sleeve from one, a skirt from another. Men-at-arms in short tunics of leather and quilted waistcoats to wear under their half-armour; beggars in fashions dating from the eleventh century; a great mass of people in undistinguishable attire, looking mostly like voluminous cloaks on spindle legs, or mere bundles of drapery; here and there a sober gentleman in a houppelande of the simplest kind, with wide skirts reaching to his feet, and the belt with the long tongue about his middle. The patterns upon the dresses of these people are heraldry contortions--heraldic beasts intertwined in screws and twists of conventional foliage, griffins and black dogs held by floral chains to architectural branches, martlets and salamanders struggling in grotesque bushes, or very elaborate geometrical patterned stuffs. There is a picture of the Middle Ages which was written by Langland in 'Piers the Plowman'--a picture of an alehouse, where Peronelle of Flanders and Clarice of Cockeslane sit with the hangman of Tyburn and a dozen others. It is a picture of the fourteenth century, but it holds good until the time of Henry VIII., when Skelton, his tutor, describes just such another tavern on the highroad, where some bring wedding-rings to pay their scot of ale, and 'Some bryngeth her husband's hood Because the ale is good.' Both accounts are gems of description, both full of that rich, happy, Gothic flavour, that sense of impressionist portraiture, of broad humour, which distinguishes the drawings in the Loutrell Psalter. [Illustration: The Sugar-bag Cap.] [Illustration: A Hood.] I feel now as if I might be accused of being interesting and of overlaying my history with too much side comment, and I am well aware that convention demands that such books as this shall be as dull as possible; then shall the vulgar rejoice, because they have been trained to believe that dullness and knowledge snore in each other's arms. However wholeheartedly you may set about writing a list of clothes attributable to certain dates, there will crop up spirits of the age, who blur the edges of the dates, and give a lifelike semblance to them which carries the facts into the sphere of fiction, and fiction was ever on the side of truth. No story has ever been invented by man but it has been beaten out of time by Nature and the police-courts; no romance has been penned so intricate but fact will supply a more surprising twist to life. But, whereas facts are of necessity bald and naked things, fiction, which is the wardrobe of fact, will clothe truth in more accustomed guise. I put before you some true facts of the clothes of this time, clothed in a little coat of facts put fictionally. I write the word 'cloak'; describe to you that such people wore circular cloaks split at one or both sides, on one side to the neck, on the other below the shoulder; of semicircular cloaks, of square cloaks, of oblong cloaks, all of which were worn (I speak of these, and you may cut them out with some thought); but I wish to do more than that--I wish to give you a gleam of the spirit in which the cloaks were worn. A cloak will partake of the very soul and conscience of its owner; become draggle-tailed, flaunting, effeminate, masterful, pompous, or dignified. Trousers, I think, of all the garments of men, fail most to show the state of his soul; they merely proclaim the qualities of his purse. Cloaks give most the true man, and after that there is much in the cock of a hat and the conduct of a cane. In later days one might tell what manner of man had called to find you away if he chanced to leave his snuff-box behind. This reasoning is not finicky, but very profound; accept it in the right spirit. Now, one more picture of the age. The rich man at home, dressed, as I say, in his father's finery, with some vague additions of his own, has acquired a sense of luxury. He prefers to dine alone, in a room with a chimney and a fire in it. He can see through a window in the wall by his side into the hall, where his more patriarchal forebears loved to take their meals. The soiled rushes are being swept away, and fresh herbs and rushes strewn in their place; on these mattresses will in their turn be placed, on which his household presently will lay them down to sleep. THE WOMEN Every time I write the heading 'The Women' to such chapters as these, I feel that such threadbare cloak of chivalry as I may pin about my shoulders is in danger of slipping off. Should I write 'The Ladies'? But although all ladies are women, not all women are ladies, and as it is far finer to be a sweet woman than a great dame, I will adhere to my original heading, 'The Women.' However, in the remote ages of which I now write, the ladies were dressed and the women wore clothes, which is a subtle distinction. I dare not bring my reasoning up to the present day. As I said in my last chapter, this was an age of medley--of this and that wardrobe flung open, and old fashions renovated or carried on. Fashion, that elusive goddess, changes her moods and modes with such a quiet swiftness that she leaves us breathless and far behind, with a bundle of silks and velvets in our arms. How is a fashion born? Who mothers it? Who nurses it to fame, and in whose arms does it die? High collar, low collar, short hair, long hair, boot, buskin, shoe--who wore you first? Who last condemned you to the World's Great Rag Market of Forgotten Fads? Now this, I have said, was a transitional age, but I cannot begin to say who was the first great dame to crown her head with horns, and who the last to forsake the jewelled caul. It is only on rare occasions that the decisive step can be traced to any one person or group of persons: Charles II. and his frock-coat, Brummell and his starched stock, are finger-posts on Fashion's highroad, but they are not quite true guides. Charles was recommended to the coat, and I think the mist of soap and warm water that enshrines Brummell as the Apostle of Cleanliness blurs also the mirror of truth. It does not much matter. No doubt--and here there will be readers the first to correct me and the last to see my point--there are persons living full of curious knowledge who, diving yet more deeply into the dusty crevices of history, could point a finger at the man who first cut his hair in the early fifteenth-century manner, and could write you the name and the dignities of the lady who first crowned her fair head with horns. For myself, I begin with certainty at Adam and the fig-leaf, and after that I plunge into the world's wardrobe in hopes. Certain it is that in this reign the close caul grew out of all decent proportions, and swelled into every form of excrescence and protuberance, until in the reign of Henry VI. it towered above the heads of the ladies, and dwarfed the stature of the men. This curious head-gear, the caul, after a modest appearance, as a mere close, gold-work cap, in the time of Edward III., grew into a stiffer affair in the time of Richard II., but still was little more than a stiff sponge-bag of gold wire and stuff and a little padding; grew still more in the time of Henry IV., and took squarer shapes and stiffer padding; and in the reign of Henry V. it became like a great orange, with a hole cut in it for the face--an orange which covered the ears, was cut straight across the forehead, and bound all round with a stiff jewelled band. Then came the idea of the horn. Whether some superstitious lady thought that the wearing of horns would keep away the evil eye, or whether it was a mere frivol of some vain Duchess, I do not know. As this fashion came most vividly into prominence in the following reign, I shall leave a more detailed description of it until that time, letting myself give but a short notice of its more simple forms. We see the caul grow from its circular shape into two box forms on either side of the head; the uppermost points of the boxes are arranged in horns, whose points are of any length from 4 to 14 inches. The top of this head-dress is covered with a wimple, which is sometimes stiffened with wires. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY V. (1413-1422) Her surcoat is stiffened in front with fur and shaped with a band of metal. Her belt is low on the hips of the under-dress. The horns on her head carry the large linen wimple.] There is also a shape something like a fez or a flower-pot, over which a heavy wimple is hung, attached to this shape; outside the wimple are two horns of silk, linen, or stuff--that is, silk bags stuffed to the likeness of horns. I should say that a true picture of this time would give but few of these very elaborate horn head-dresses, and the mass of women would be wearing the round caul. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry V.}] The surcoat over the cotehardie is the general wear, but it has more fit about it than formerly; the form of the waist and bust are accentuated by means of a band of heavy gold embroidery, shaped to the figure. The edges of the surcoat are furred somewhat heavily, and the skirt often has a deep border of fur. Sometimes a band of metal ornament runs across the top of the breast and down the centre of the surcoat, coming below the fur edging. The belt over the hips of the cotehardie holds the purse, and often a ballade or a rondel. You will see a few of the old houppelandes, with their varieties of sleeve, and in particular that long, loose double sleeve, or, rather, the very long under-sleeve, falling over the hand. This under-sleeve is part of the houppelande. All the dresses have trains, very full trains, which sweep the ground, and those readers who wish to make such garments must remember to be very generous over the material. The women commonly wear the semicircular mantle, which they fasten across them by cords running through ornamental brooches. They wear very rich metal and enamel belts round their hips, the exact ornamentation of which cannot be described here; but it was the ornament of the age, which can easily be discovered. In the country, of course, simpler garments prevail, and plain surcoats and cotehardies are wrapped in cloaks and mantles of homespun material. The hood has not fallen out of use for women, and the peaked hat surmounts it for riding or rough weather. Ladies wear wooden clogs or sandals besides their shoes, and they have not yet taken to the horns upon their heads; some few of them, the great dames of the counties whose lords have been to London on King's business, or returned from France with new ideas, have donned the elaborate business of head-boxes and wires and great wimples. As one of the ladies rides in the country lanes, she may pass that Augustine convent where Dame Petronilla is spiritual Mother to so many, and may see her in Agincourt year keeping her pig-tally with Nicholas Swon, the swineherd. They may see some of the labourers she hires dressed in the blood-red cloth she has given them, for the dyeing of which she paid 7s. 8d. for 27 ells. The good dame's nuns are very neat; they have an allowance of 6s. 8d. a year for dress. This is in 1415. No doubt next year my lady, riding through the lanes, will meet some sturdy beggar, who will whine for alms, pleading that he is an old soldier lately from the field of Agincourt. NOTE As there is so little real change, for drawings of women's dress see the numerous drawings in previous chapter. HENRY THE SIXTH Reigned thirty-nine years: 1422-1461. Born 1421. Dethroned 1461. Died 1471. Married, 1446, Margaret of Anjou. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.; two types of sleeve}] What a reign! Was history ever better dressed? I never waver between the cardboard figures of the great Elizabethan time and this reign as a monument to lavish display, but if any time should beat this for quaintness, colour, and variety, it is the time of Henry VIII. Look at the scenes and characters to be dressed: John, Duke of Bedford, the Protector, Joan of Arc, Jack Cade, a hundred other people; Crevant, Verneuil, Orleans, London Bridge, Ludlow, St. Albans, and a hundred other historical backgrounds. Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of the fact that Joan of Arc is one of the world's personalities, it is difficult to pick our people out of the tapestries. Now, you may have noticed that in trying to recreate a period in your mind certain things immediately swing into your vision: it is difficult to think of the Conquest without the Bayeux tapestry; it is difficult to think of the dawn of the sixteenth century without the dreamy, romantic landscapes which back the figures of Giorgione; and it is not easy to think of these people of the Henry VI. period without placing them against conventional tapestry trees, yellow-white castles with red, pepper-pot roofs, grass luxuriant with needlework flowers, and all the other accessories of the art. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}] The early times are easily imagined in rough surroundings or in open air; knights in armour ride quite comfortably down modern English lanes. Alfred may burn his cakes realistically, and Canute rebuke his courtiers on the beach--these one may see in the round. Elizabeth rides to Tilbury, Charles II. casts his horoscope, and George rings the bell, each in their proper atmosphere, but the Dark Ages are dark, not only in modes of thought, but in being ages of grotesque, of ornamentation, of anything but realism. One has, I think, a conventional mind's eye for the times from Edward I. to Richard III., from 1272 to 1485, and it is really more easy for a Chinaman to call up a vision of 604 A.D., when Laot-sen, the Chinese philosopher, was born. Laot-sen, the child-old man, he who was born with white hair, lived till he was eighty-one, and, having had five million followers, went up to heaven on a black buffalo. In China things have changed very little: the costume is much the same, the customs are the same, the attitude towards life has not changed. But here the semicivilized, superstitious, rather dirty, fourteenth and fifteenth century person has gone. Scratch a Russian, they say, and you will see a Tartar; do the same office by an Englishman, and you may find a hint of the Renaissance under his skin, but no more. The Middle Ages are dead and dust. We will proceed with that congenial paradox which states that the seat of learning lies in the head, and so discuss the most distinctive costumery of this time, the roundlet. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.; two types of head-gear}] Now, the roundlet is one of those things which delight the clothes-hunter or the costume expert. It is the natural result of a long series of fashions for the head, and its pedigree is free from any impediment or hindrance; it is the great-grandson of the hood, which is derived from a fold in a cloak, which is the beginning of all things. I am about to run the risk of displeasure in repeating to some extent what I have already written about the chaperon, the hood, and the other ancestors and descendants of the roundlet. A fashion is born, not made. Necessity is the mother of Art, and Art is the father of Invention. A man must cover his head, and if he has a cloak, it is an easy thing in rain or sunshine to pull the folds of the cloak over his head. An ingenious fellow in the East has an idea: he takes his 8 feet--or more--of material; he folds it in half, and at about a foot and a half, or some such convenient length, he puts several neat and strong stitches joining one point of the folded material. When he wraps this garment about him, leaving the sewn point in the centre of his neck at the back, he finds that he has directed the folds of his coat in such a manner as to form a hood, which he may place on or off his head more conveniently than the plain unsewn length of stuff. The morning sun rises on the sands of Sahara and lights upon the first burnoose. By a simple process in tailoring, some man, who did not care that the peak of his hood should be attached to his cloak, cut his cloth so that the cloak had a hood, the peak of which was separate and so looser, and yet more easy to pull on or off. Now comes a man who was taken by the shape of the hood, but did not require to wear a cloak, so he cut his cloth in such a way that he had a hood and shoulder-cape only. From this to the man who closed the front of the hood from the neck to the edge of the cape is but a quick and quiet step. By now necessity was satisfied and had given birth to art. Man, having admired his face in the still waters of a pool, seeing how the oval framed in the hood vastly became him, sought to tickle his vanity and win the approbation of the other sex, so, taking some shears, cut the edge of his cape in scallops and leaves. A more dandified fellow, distressed at the success of his brother's plumage, caused the peak of his hood to be made long. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461) His hair is cropped over his ears and has a thick fringe on his forehead. Upon the ground is his roundlet, a hat derived from the twisted chaperon of Richard II.'s day. This hat is worn to-day, in miniature, on the shoulder of the Garter robes.] Need one say more? The long peak grew and grew into the preposterous liripipe which hung down the back from the head to the feet. The dandy spirit of another age, seeing that the liripipe can grow no more, and that the shape of the hood is common and not in the true dandiacal spirit, whips off his hood, and, placing the top of his head where his face was, he twists the liripipe about his head, imprisons part of the cape, and, after a fixing twist, slips the liripipe through part of its twined self and lets the end hang down on one side of his face, while the jagged end of the hood rises or falls like a cockscomb on the other. Cockscomb! there's food for discussion in that--fops, beaux, dandies, coxcombs--surely. I shall not go into the matter of the hood with two peaks, which was not, I take it, a true child of fashion in the direct line, but a mere cousin--a junior branch at that. As to the dates on this family tree, the vague, mysterious beginnings B.C.--goodness knows when--in a general way the Fall, the Flood, and the First Crusade, until the time of the First Edward; the end of the thirteenth century, when the liripipe budded, the time of the Second Edward; the first third of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe was in full flower, the time of the Third Edward; the middle of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe as a liripipe was dying, the time of the Second Richard; the end of the century, when the chaperon became the twisted cockscomb turban. Then, after that, until the twenty-second year of the fifteenth century, when the roundlet was born--those are the dates. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}] We have arrived by now, quite naturally, at the roundlet. I left you interested at the last phase of the hood, the chaperon so called, twisted up in a fantastical shape on man's head. You must see that the mere process of tying and retying, twisting, coiling and arranging, was tedious in the extreme, especially in stirring times with the trumpets sounding in England and France. Now what more likely for the artist of the tied hood than to puzzle his brains in order to reach a means by which he could get at the effect without so much labour! Enter invention--enter invention and exit art. With invention, the made-up chaperon sewn so as to look as if it had been tied. There was the twist round the head, the cockscomb, the hanging piece of liripipe. Again this was to be simplified: the twist made into a smooth roll, the skull to be covered by an ordinary cap attached to the roll, the cockscomb converted into a plain piece of cloth or silk, the liripipe to become broader. And the end of this, a little round hat with a heavily-rolled and stuffed brim, pleated drapery hanging over one side and streamer of broad stuff over the other; just such a hat did these people wear, on their heads or slung over their shoulder, being held in the left hand by means of the streamer. There the honourable family of hood came to a green old age, and was, at the end of the fifteenth century, allowed to retire from the world of fashion, and was given a pension and a home, in which home you may still see it--on the shoulders of the Garter robe. Also it has two more places of honourable distinction--the roundlet is on the Garter robe; the chaperon, with the cut edge, rests as a cockade in the hats of liveried servants, and the minutest member of the family remains in the foreign buttons of honourable Orders. [Illustration: {Six types of head-gear}] We have the roundlet, then, for principal head-gear in this reign, but we must not forget that the hood is not dead; it is out of the strict realms of fashion, but it is now a practical country garment, or is used for riding in towns. There are also other forms of head-wear--tall, conical hats with tall brims of fur, some brims cut or scooped out in places; again, the hood may have a furred edge showing round the face opening; then we see a cap which fits the head, has a long, loose back falling over the neck, and over this is worn a roll or hoop of twisted stuff. Then there is the sugar-loaf hat, like a circus clown's, and there is a broad, flat-brimmed hat with a round top, like Noah's hat in the popular representations of the Ark. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry VI.}] Besides these, we have the jester's three-peaked hood and one-peaked hood, the cape of which came, divided into points, to the knees, and had arms with bell sleeves. Let us see what manner of man we have under such hats: almost without exception among the gentlemen we have the priestly hair--that queer, shaved, tonsure-like cut, but without the circular piece cut away from the crown of the head. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}] The cut of the tunic in the body has little variation; it may be longer or shorter, an inch above or an inch below the knee, but it is on one main principle. It is a loose tunic with a wide neck open in front about a couple or three inches; the skirt is full, and may be cut up on one or both sides; it may be edged with fur or some stuff different to the body of the garment, or it may be jagged, either in regular small scoops or in long fringe-like jags. The tunic is always belted very low, giving an odd appearance to the men of this time, as it made them look very short in the leg. The great desire for variety is displayed in the forms of sleeve for this tunic: you may have the ordinary balloon sleeve ending in a stuff roll or fur edge for cuff, or you may have a half-sleeve, very wide indeed, like shoulder-capes, and terminated in the same manner as the bottom of the tunics--that is, fur-edged tunic, fur-edged sleeve, and so on, as described; under this shows the tight sleeve of an undergarment, the collar of which shows above the tunic collar at the neck. The length of these shoulder-cape sleeves varies according to the owner's taste, from small epaulettes to heavy capes below the elbow. There is also a sleeve tight from wrist to below the elbow, and at that point very big and wide, tapering gradually to the shoulder. You will still see one or two high collars rolled over, and there is a distinct continuance of the fashion for long-pointed shoes. There is an almost new form of overcoat which is really a tunic of the time, unbelted, and with the sleeves cut out; also one with short, but very full, sleeves, the body very loose; and besides the ordinary forms of square, oblong, and round cloak, there is a circular cloak split up the right side to the base of the biceps, with a round hole in the centre, edged with fur, for the passage of the head. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry VI.}] Velvet was in common use for gowns, tunics, and even for bed-clothes, in the place of blankets. It was made in all kinds of beautiful designs, diapered, and raised over a ground of gold or silk, or double-piled, one pile on another of the same colour making the pattern known by the relief. The massed effect of well-dressed crowds must have been fine and rich in colour--here and there a very rich lady or a magnificent gentleman in pall (the beautiful gold or crimson web, known also as bandekin), the velvets, the silks of marvellous colours, and none too fresh or new. I think that such a gathering differed most strongly from a gathering of to-day by the fact that one is impressed to-day with the new, almost tinny newness, of the people's clothes, and that these other people were not so extravagant in the number of their dresses as in the quality, so that then one would have seen many old and beautifully-faded velvets and sun-licked silks and rain-improved cloths. Among all this crowd would pass, in a plain tunic and short shoes, Henry, the ascetic King. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {Six types of head-dress for women}] One is almost disappointed to find nothing upon the curious subject of horns in 'Sartor Resartus.' Such a flaunting, Jovian spirit, and poetry of abuse as might have been expected from the illustrious and iconoclastic author would have suited me, at this present date, most admirably. I feel the need of a few thundering German words, or a brass band at the end of my pen, or purple ink in my inkwell, or some fantastic and wholly arresting piece of sensationalism by which to convey to you that you have now stepped into the same world as the Duchess out of 'Alice in Wonderland.' [Illustration: {A head-dress for a woman}] Look out of your window and see upon the flower-enamelled turf a hundred bundles of vanity taking the air. The heads of these ladies are carried very erect, as are all heads bearing weights. The waists of these ladies are apparently under their bosoms; their feet seem to be an ell long. An assembly hour is, after the manner of Lydgate's poem, a dream of delicious faces surmounted by minarets, towers, horns, excrescences of every shape--enormous, fat, heart-shaped erections, covered with rich, falling drapery, or snow-white linen, or gold tissue; gold-wire boxes sewn with pearls and blazing with colours; round, flat-topped caps, from under which girls' hair escapes in a river of colour; crown shapes, circular shapes, mitre shapes, turbans, and shovel-shaped linen erections, wired into place. Oh, my lady, my lady! how did you ever hear the soft speeches of gallantry? How did the gentle whispers of love ever penetrate those bosses of millinery? [Illustration: {Two types of head-dress for women}] And the moralists, among whom Heaven forbid that I should be found, painted lurid pictures for you of hell and purgatory, in which such head-dresses turned into instruments of torture; you lifted your long-fingered, medieval hand and shook the finger with the toad-stone upon it, as if to dispel the poison of their words. I think it is beyond me to describe in understandable terms the proper contortions of your towered heads, for I have little use for archaic words, for crespine, henk, and jacque, for herygouds with honginde sleeves, for all the blank cartridges of antiquarianism. I cannot convey the triple-curved crown, the ear buttress, the magnet-shaped roll in adequate language, but I can draw them for you. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry VI.}] I will attempt the most popular of the roll head-dresses and the simpler of the stiff-wired box. Take a roll, stuffed with hemp or tow, of some rich material and twist it into the form of a heart in front and a V shape behind, where join the ends, or, better, make a circle or hoop of your rolled stuff and bend it in this way. Then make a cap that will fit the head and come over the ears, and make it so that this cap shall join the heart-shaped roll at all points and cause it to appear without any open spaces between the head and the roll; the point of the heart in front will be round, and will come over the centre of the face. By joining cap and roll you will have one complete affair; over this you may brooch a linen wimple or a fine piece of jagged silk. In fact, you may twist your circle of stuff in any manner, providing you keep a vague U shape in front and completely cover the hair behind. For the box pattern it is necessary to make a box, let us say of octagonal shape, flat before and behind, or slightly curved; cut away the side under the face, or leave but a thin strip of it to go under the chin. Now stuff your box on either side of the face and cut away the central square, except for 3 inches at the top, on the forehead; here, in this cut-away piece, the face shows. You will have made your box of buckram and stuffed the wings of it with tow; now you must fit your box to a head and sew linen between the sides of the head and the tow to hold it firm and make it good to wear. You have now finished the rough shape, and you must ornament it. Take a piece of thin gold web and cover your box, then get some gold braid and make a diaper or criss-cross pattern all over the box, leaving fair sized lozenges; in these put, at regular intervals as a plain check, small squares of crimson silk so that they fit across the lozenge and so make a double pattern. Now take some gold wire or brass wire and knot it at neat intervals, and then stitch it on to the edges of the gold braid, after which pearl beads may be arranged on the crimson squares and at the cross of the braid; then you will have your box-patterned head-dress complete. It remains for you to enlarge upon this, if you wish, in the following manner: take a stiff piece of wire and curve it into the segment of a circle, so that you may bend the horns as much or as little as you will, fasten the centre of this to the band across the forehead, or on to the side-boxes, and over it place a large wimple with the front edge cut. Again, for further enhancement of this delectable piece of goods, you may fix a low gold crown above all--a crown of an elliptical shape--and there you will have as much magnificence as ever graced lady of the fifteenth century. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461) Her head-dress is very high, and over it is a coloured and jagged silk wimple, a new innovation, being a change from the centuries of white linen wimples. Her waist is high, after a long period of low waists.] September 28, 1443, Margaret Paston writes to her husband in London 'I would ye were at home, if it were your ease, and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is where ye be now, liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet.' [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] My dear diplomatist, I have forgotten if you got both your husband and the gown, or the gown only, but it was a sweetly pretty letter, and worded in such a way as must have caused your good knight to smile, despite his sore. And what had you in your mind's eye when you wrote 'liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet'? It was one of those new gowns with the high waist and the bodice opening very low, the collar quite over your shoulders, and the thick fur edge on your shoulders and tapering into a point at your bosom. You wanted sleeves like wings, and a fur edge to the bottom of the gown, besides the fur upon the edges of the sleeves--those quaint sleeves, thin to your elbows, and then great and wide, like a foresail. I suppose you had an under-gown of some wonderful diapered silk which you thought would go well with scarlet, because, as you knew, the under-gown would show at your neck, and its long train would trail behind you, and its skirt would fall about your feet and show very bravely when you bunched up the short upper gown--all the mode--and so you hinted at scarlet. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] Now I come to think of it, the sleeve must have been hard to arrive at, the fashions were so many. To have had them tight would have minimized the use of your undergarment; to have had them of the same width from elbow to wrist would not have given you the newest of the new ideas to show in Norfolk; then, for some reason, you rejected the bag sleeve, which was also in the fashion. No doubt you had a cotehardie with well-fitting sleeves and good full skirts, and a surcoat with a wide fur edge, or perhaps, in the latest fashion of these garments, with an entire fur bodice to it. You may have had also one of those rather ugly little jackets, very full, with very full sleeves which came tight at the wrist, long-waisted, with a little skirt an inch or so below the belt. A mantle, with cords to keep it on, I know you had. Possibly--I have just thought of it--the sleeves of your under-gown, the tight sleeves, were laced together from elbow to wrist, in place of the old-fashioned buttons. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] I wonder if you ever saw the great metal-worker, William Austin, one of the first among English artists to leave a great name behind him--I mean the Austin who modelled the effigy of Earl Richard Beauchamp, at Warwick. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] You must have heard the leper use his rattle to warn you of his proximity. You, too, may have thought that Joan of Arc was a sorceress and Friar Bungay a magician. You may have--I have not your wonderful letter here for reference--heard all about Eleanor of Cobham, and how she did penance in a shift in the London streets for magic against the King's person. Some ladies, I notice, wore the long-tongued belt--buckled it in front, and then pushed it round until the buckle came into the centre of the back and the tongue hung down like a tail; but these ladies were not wearing the high-waisted gown, but a gown with a normal waist, and with no train, but a skirt of even fulness and of the same length all the way round. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] There were striped stuffs, piled velvet, rich-patterned silks, and homespun cloths and wool to choose from. Long-peaked shoes, of course, and wooden clogs out of doors. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}] The town and country maids, the merchants' wives, and the poor generally, each and all according to purse and pride, dressed in humbler imitation of the cut of the clothes of the high-born, in quite simple dresses, with purse, girdle, and apron, with heads in hoods, or twisted wimples of coarse linen. Well, there you lie, ladies, on the tops of cold tombs, stiff and sedate, your hands uplifted in prayer, your noses as often as not knocked off by later-day schoolboys, crop-headed Puritans, or Henry VIII.'s sacrilegious hirelings. Lie still in your huge head-dresses and your neat-folded gowns--a moral, in marble or bronze, of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. EDWARD THE FOURTH Reigned twenty-two years: 1461-1483. Born 1441. Married, 1464, Elizabeth Woodville. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.}] I invite you to call up this reign by a picture of Caxton's shop: you may imagine yourself in the almonry at Westminster, where, in a small enclosure by the west front of the church, there is a chapel and some almshouses. You will be able to see the rich come to look at Mr. Caxton's wares and the poor slinking in to receive alms. 'If it please any man, spiritual or temporal, to buy any pyes of two or three commemorations of Salisbury use emprynted after the form of this present letter, which be well and truly correct, let him come to Westminster into the Almonry at the red pale, and he shall have them good cheap.' This was Caxton's advertisement. As you watch the people going and coming about the small enclosure, you will notice that the tonsured hair has gone out of fashion, and that whereas the merchants, citizens, and such people wear the roundlet hat, the nobles and fine gentlemen are in black velvet caps, or tall hats with long-peaked brims, or in round high hats with fur brim close to the crown of the hat, or in caps with little rolled brims with a button at the top, over which two laces pass from back to front, and from under the brim there falls the last sign, the dying gasp of the liripipe, now jagged and now with tasselled ends. We have arrived at the generally accepted vague idea of 'medieval costume,' which means really a hazy notion of the dress of this date: a steeple head-dress for ladies, a short waist, and a train; a tall, sugar-loaf hat with a flat top for the men, long hair, very short and very long tunics, long-pointed shoes, and wide sleeves--this, I think, is the amateur's idea of 'costume in the Middle Ages.' You will notice that all, or nearly all, the passers-by Caxton's have long hair; that the dandies have extra-long hair brushed out in a cloud at the back; that the older men wear long, very simple gowns, which they belt in at the waist with a stuff or leather belt, on which is hung a bag-purse; that these plain gowns are laced across the front to the waist over a vest of some coloured stuff other than the gown. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Edward IV.}] You will see that the poor are in very simple tunics--just a loose, stuff shirt with sleeves about 8 inches wide, and with the skirts reaching to the knees, a belt about their middle--rough, shapeless leather shoes, and woollen tights. You will remember in the early part of the reign, before the heraldic shield with the red pale, Caxton's sign, caught your eye, that the fashionable wore very wide sleeves, great swollen bags fitting only at shoulder and wrist, and you may recall the fact that a tailor was fined twenty shillings in 1463 for making such wide sleeves. Poulaines, the very long shoes, are now forbidden, except that an esquire and anyone over that rank might wear them 2 inches beyond the toes; but I think the dandies wore the shoes and paid the fine if it were enforced. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD IV. (1461-1483) Notice the jagged ribbon falling from the brim of his hat; this is the last of the liripipe.] See Caxton, in a sober-coloured gown, long, and laced in the front, showing a plain vest under the lacing, talking to some of his great customers. The Duchess of Somerset has just lent him 'Blanchardine and Eglantine'; Earl Rivers, the Queen's brother, talks over his own translation of 'The Sayings of the Philosophers'; and Caxton is extolling that worshipful man Geoffrey Chaucer, and singing praises in reverence 'for that noble poet and great clerke, Vergyl.' Edward himself has been to the shop and has consented to become patron of an edition of Tully--Edward, with his very subtle face, his tall, handsome appearance, his cold, elegant manners. He is dressed in a velvet gown edged with fur; the neck of the gown is low, and the silk vest shows above it. Across his chest are gold laces tapering to his waist; these are straight across the front of his gown-opening. His hair is straight, and falls to the nape of his neck; he wears a black velvet cap upon his head. The skirts of his gown reach to his knees, and are fur-edged; his sleeves are full at the elbows and tight over his wrists; he is wearing red Spanish leather tall boots, turned over at the top. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.; lacing on a cut sleeve}] As he stands talking to Caxton, one or two gentlemen, who have also dismounted, stand about him. Three of them are in the height of the fashion. The first wears a velvet tunic, with fur edges. The tunic is pleated before and behind, and is full and slightly pursed in front; the sleeves are long, and are cut from shoulder to wrist, where they are sewn together again; cuff and border of the cut or opening are both edged with fur. The neck is high, but there is no collar. The length of the tunic is quite short; it comes well above the knees. His under-sleeves are full, and are of rich silk; his shoes are certainly over the allowed length; his tights are well cut. His peaked hat has gold bands round the crown. The second gentleman is also in a very short tunic, with very wide sleeves; this tunic is pleated into large even folds, and has a belt of its own material. His hair is long, and bushed behind; his tights are in two colours, and he wears an eighteen-penny pair of black leather slops or shoes. His hat is black, tall, but without a peak; a long feather is brooched into one side of it. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.; three types of boot}] The third man is wearing a low black cap, with a little close brim; a jagged piece of stuff, about 3 feet long, hangs from under the brim of his hat. He is wearing long, straight hair. This man is wearing a little short tunic, which is loose at the waist, and comes but an inch or two below it; the sleeves are very loose and wide, and are not fastened at the wrist; the tunic has a little collar. The shortness of his tunic shows the whole of his tights, and also the ribbon-fastened cod-piece in front. His shoes are split at the sides, and come into a peak before and behind. Now, our gentlemen of this time, having cut open their baggy sleeves, and made them to hang down and expose all the under-sleeve, must now needs lace them up again very loosely. Then, by way of change, the tight sleeve was split at the elbow to show a white shirt. Then came the broad shoulders, when the sleeves were swelled out at the top to give an air of great breadth to the shoulders and a more elegant taper to the waist. Some men had patterns sewn on one leg of their tights. The gown, or whatever top garment was being worn, was sometimes cut into a low, V shape behind at the neck to show the undergarment, above which showed a piece of white shirt. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.}] A long gown, in shape like a monk's habit, wide sleeves, the same width all the way down, a loose neck--a garment indeed to put on over the head, to slip on for comfort and warmth--was quite a marked fashion in the streets--as marked as the little tunic. [Illustration: {Twelve types of head-gear for men}] If you are remembering Caxton's shop and a crowd of gentlemen, notice one in a big fur hat, which comes over his eyes; and see also a man who has wound a strip of cloth about his neck and over his head, then, letting one end hang down, has clapped his round, steeple-crowned hat over it. You will see high collars, low collars, and absence of collar, long gown open to the waist, long gown without opening, short-skirted tunic, tunic without any skirt, long, short, and medium shoes, and, at the end of the reign, one or two broad-toed shoes. Many of these men would be carrying sticks; most of them would have their fingers covered with rings. Among the group of gentlemen about Edward some merchants have pressed closer to see the King, and a girl or two has stolen into the front row. The King, turning to make a laughing remark to one of his courtiers, will see a roguish, pretty face behind him--the face of a merchant's wife; he will smile at her in a meaning way. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A head-dress for a woman}] France, at this date, shows us a sartorial Savonarola, by name Thomas Conecte, a preaching friar, who held an Anti-Hennin Crusade, which ended in a bonfire of these steeple head-dresses. The flames of these peculiar hats lit up the inspired devotees, and showed their heads wrapped in plain linen wimples or some little unaffected caps. But the ashes were hardly cold before the gray light of the next day showed the figure of the dreaded preacher small upon the horizon, and lit upon the sewing-maids as they sat making fresh steeples for the adornment of their ladies' heads. Joan of Arc is dead, and another very different apparition of womankind looms out of the mists of history. Whilst Joan of Arc is hymned and numbered among the happy company of saints triumphant, Jane Shore is roared in drinking-songs and ballads of a disreputable order, and is held up as an awful example. She has for years been represented upon the boards of West End and Surrey-side theatres--in her prime as the mistress of Edward IV., in her penance before the church door, and in her poverty and starvation, hounded from house to house in a Christian country where bread was denied to her. I myself have seen her through the person of a stout, melancholy, and h-less lady, who, dressed in a sort of burlesque fish-wife costume, has lain dying on the prompt-side of the stage, in a whirl of paper snow, while, to the edification of the twopenny gallery, she has bewailed her evil life, and has been allowed, by a munificent management, to die in the arms of white-clad angels. There is a gleam of truth in the representation, and you may see the real Jane Shore in a high steeple head-dress, with a thin veil thrown over it, with a frontlet or little loop of black velvet over her forehead; in a high-waisted dress, open in a V shape from shoulder to waist, the opening laced over the square-cut under-gown, the upper gown having a collar of fur or silk, a long train, broad cuffs, perhaps 7 inches long from the base of her fingers, with a broad, coloured band about her waist, a broader trimming of the same colour round the hem of her shirt, and in long peaked shoes. In person of mean stature, her hair dark yellow, her face round and full, her eyes gray, and her countenance as cheerful as herself. The second real picture of her shows you a haggard woman, with her hair unbound and falling about her shoulders, shivering in a shift, which she clutches about her with one hand, while the other holds a dripping candle; and the third picture shows an old woman in dirty wimple and untidy rags. [Illustration: {Six types of head-dress for women}] There are many ways of making the steeple head-dress. For the most part they are long, black-covered steeples, resting at an angle of forty-five degrees to the head, the broad end having a deep velvet band round it, with hanging sides, which come to the level of the chin; the point end has a long veil attached to it, which floats lightly down, or is carried on to one shoulder. Sometimes this steeple hat is worn over a hood, the cape of which is tucked into the dress. Some of these hats have a jutting, upturned piece in front, and they are also covered with all manner of coloured stuffs, but not commonly so. All persons having an income of £10 a year and over will have that black velvet loop, the frontlet, sewn into their hats. There is another new shape for hats, varying in height from 8 to 18 inches. It is a cylinder, broader at the top than the bottom, the crown sometimes flat and sometimes rounded into the hat itself; this hat is generally jewelled, and covered with rich material. The veils are attached to these hats in several ways; either they float down behind from the centre of the crown of the hat, or they are sewn on to the base of the hat, and are supported on wires, so as to shade the face, making a roof over it, pointed in front and behind, or flat across the front and bent into a point behind, or circular. Take two circles of wire, one the size of the base of your hat and the other larger, and dress your linen or thin silk upon them; then you may pinch the wire into any variations of squares and circles you please. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD IV. (1461-1483) She wears the high hennin from which hangs a wisp of linen. On her forehead is the velvet frontlet, and across her forehead is a veil stretched on wires.] The veil was sometimes worn all over the steeple hat, coming down over the face, but stiff enough to stand away from it. Towards the end of the reign the hats were not so high or so erect. Remember, also, that the horned head-dress of the previous reign is not by any means extinct. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}] There remain two more forms of making the human face hideous: one is the head-dress closely resembling an enormous sponge bag, which for some unknown reason lasted well into the reign of Henry VII. as a variety to the fashionable head-gear of that time, and the other is very simple, being a wimple kept on the head by a circular stuffed hoop of material, which showed, plain and severe across the forehead. The simple folk wore a hood of linen, with a liripipe and wide ear-flaps. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}] The dresses are plain in cut; they are all short-waisted if at all fashionable. The most of them have a broad waist-belt, and very deep borders to their skirts; they have broad, turned-back cuffs, often of black. These cuffs, on being turned down over the hand, show the same colour as the dress; they are, in fact, the old long cuff over the fingers turned back for comfort. It is by the variety of openings at the necks of the gowns that you may get change. First, let me take the most ordinary--that is, an opening of a V shape from shoulders to waist, the foot of the V at the waist, the points on the top of the shoulders at the join of the arm. Across this opening is seen, cut square and coming up to the base of the bosom, the under-gown. You may now proceed to vary this by lacing the V across, but not drawing it together, by having the V fur-edged, or made to turn over in a collar of black upon light material, or its opposite, by showing a vest of stuff other than that of the under-gown, which will then make a variety of colour when the skirt is held up over the arm. Or you may have your dress so cut that it is high in front and square cut, and over this you may sew a false V collar wither to or above the waist. I have said that the whole neck-opening may be covered by a gorget of cloth, which was pinned up to the steeple hat, or by a hood of thin stuff or silk, the cape of which was tucked into the dress. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}] The lady, I think, is now complete down to her long-pointed shoes, her necklet of stones or gold chain, with cross or heraldic pendant, and it remains to show that the countrywoman dressed very plainly, in a decent-fitting dress, with her waist in its proper place, her skirt full, the sleeves of her dress turned back like my lady's, her head wrapped in a wimple or warmed in a hood, her feet in plain, foot-shaped shoes, and wooden clogs strapped on to them for outdoor use or kitchen work; in fact, she looked much like any old body to-day who has lived in a village, except that the wimple and the hood then worn are out of place to-day, more's the pity! No doubt ladies were just human in those days, and fussed and frittered over an inch or so of hennin, or a yard or two of train. One cut her dress too low to please the others, and another wore her horned head-dress despite the dictates of Fashion, which said, 'Away with horns, and into steeples.' No doubt the tall hennins, with their floating veils, looked like black masts with silken sails, and the ladies like a crowd of shipping, with velvet trains for waves about their feet; no doubt the steeples swayed and the silks rustled when the heads turned to look at the fine men in the days when hump-shouldered Richard was a dandy. EDWARD THE FIFTH Reigned two months: April and June, 1487. RICHARD THE THIRD Reigned two years: 1483-1485. Born 1450. Married, 1473, Anne Neville. THE MEN [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.}] Fashion's pulse beat very weak in the spring of 1483. More attune to the pipes of Fate were the black cloaks of conspirators and a measured tread of soft-shoed feet than lute and dance of airy millinery. The axe of the executioner soiled many white shirts, and dreadful forebodings fluttered the dovecots of high-hennined ladies. The old order was dying; Medievalism, which made a last spluttering flame in the next reign, was now burnt low, and was saving for that last effort. When Richard married Anne Neville, in the same year was Raphael born in Italy; literature was beginning, thought was beginning; many of the great spirits of the Renaissance were alive and working in Italy; the very trend of clothes showed something vaguely different, something which shows, however, that the foundations of the world were being shaken--so shaken that men and women, coming out of the gloom of the fourteenth century through the half-light of the fifteenth, saw the first signs of a new day, the first show of spring, and, with a perversity or an eagerness to meet the coming day, they began to change their clothes. It is in this reign of Richard III. that we get, for the men, a hint of the peculiar magnificence of the first years of the sixteenth century; we get the first flush of those wonderful patterns which are used by Memline and Holbein, those variations of the pine-apple pattern, and of that peculiar convention which is traceable in the outline of the Tudor rose. The men, at first sight, do not appear very different to the men of Edward IV.'s time; they have the long hair, the general clean-shaven faces, open-breasted tunics, and full-pleated skirts. But, as a rule, the man, peculiar to his time, the clothes-post of his age, has discarded the tall peaked hat, and is almost always dressed in the black velvet, stiff-brimmed hat. The pleated skirt to his tunic has grown longer, and his purse has grown larger; the sleeves are tighter, and the old tunic with the split, hanging sleeves has grown fuller, longer, and has become an overcoat, being now open all the way down. You will see that the neck of the tunic is cut very low, and that you may see above it, above the black velvet with which it is so often bound, the rich colour or fine material of an undergarment, a sort of waistcoat, and yet again above that the straight top of a finely-pleated white shirt. Sometimes the sleeves of the tunic will be wide, and when the arm is flung up in gesticulation, the baggy white shirt, tight-buttoned at the wrist, will show. Instead of the overcoat with the hanging sleeves, you will find a very plain-cut overcoat, with sleeves comfortably wide, and with little plain lapels to the collar. It is cut wide enough in the back to allow for the spread of the tunic. Black velvet is becoming a very fashionable trimming, and will be seen as a border or as under-vest to show between the shirt and the tunic. No clothes of the last reign will be incongruous in this; the very short tunics which expose the cod-piece, the split-sleeve tunic, all the variations, I have described. Judges walk about, looking like gentlemen of the time of Richard II.: a judge wears a long loose gown, with wide sleeves, from out of which appear the sleeves of his under-tunic, buttoned from elbow to wrist; he wears a cloak with a hood, the cloak split up the right side, and fastened by three buttons upon the right shoulder. A doctor is in very plain, ample gown, with a cape over his shoulders and a small round cap on his head. His gown is not bound at the waist. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD III. (1483-1485) Here one sees the first of the broad-toed shoes and the birth of the Tudor costume--the full pleated skirts and the prominence of white shirt.] The blunt shoes have come into fashion, and with this the old long-peaked shoe dies for ever. Common-sense will show you that the gentlemen who had leisure to hunt in these times did not wear their most foppish garments, that the tunics were plain, the boots high, the cloaks of strong material. They wore a hunting-hat, with a long peak over the eyes and a little peak over the neck at the back; a broad band passed under the chin, and, buttoning on to either side of the hat, kept it in place. The peasant wore a loose tunic, often open-breasted and laced across; he had a belt about his waist, a hood over his head, and often a broad-brimmed Noah's Ark hat over the hood; his slops, or loose trousers, were tied below the knee and at the ankles. A shepherd would stick his pipe in his belt, so that he might march before his flock, piping them into the fold. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.; a hat}] To sum up, you must picture a man in a dress of Edward IV.'s time, modified, or, rather, expanded or expanding into the costume of Henry VII.'s time--a reign, in fact, which hardly has a distinct costume to itself--that is, for the men--but has a hand stretched out to two centuries, the fifteenth and the sixteenth; yet, if I have shown the man to you as I myself can see him, he is different from his father in 1461, and will change a great deal before 1500. THE WOMEN [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.}] Here we are at the end of an epoch, at the close of a costume period, at one of those curious final dates in a history of clothes which says that within a year or so the women of one time will look hopelessly old-fashioned and queer to the modern woman. Except for the peculiar sponge-bag turban, which had a few years of life in it, the woman in Henry VII.'s reign would look back at this time and smile, and the young woman would laugh at the old ideas of beauty. The River of Time runs under many bridges, and it would seem that the arches were low to the Bridge of Fashion in 1483, and the steeple hat was lowered to prevent contact with them. The correct angle of forty-five degrees changed into a right angle, the steeple hat, the hennin, came toppling down, and an embroidered bonnet, perched right on the back of the head, came into vogue. It is this bonnet which gives, from our point of view, distinction to the reign. It was a definite fashion, a distinct halt. It had travelled along the years of the fourteenth century, from the wimple and the horns, and the stiff turbans, and the boxes of stiffened cloth of gold; it had languished in the caul and blossomed in the huge wimple-covered horns; it had shot up in the hennin; and now it gave, as its last transformation, this bonnet at the back of the head, with the stiff wimple stretched upon wires. Soon was to come the diamond-shaped head-dress, and after that the birth of hair as a beauty. In this case the hair was drawn as tightly as possible away from the forehead, and at the forehead the smaller hairs were plucked away; even eyebrows were a little out of fashion. Then this cylindrical bonnet was placed at the back of the head, with its wings of thin linen stiffly sewn or propped on wires. These wires were generally of a V shape, the V point at the forehead. On some occasions two straight wires came out on either side of the face in addition to the V, and so made two wings on either side of the face and two wings over the back of the head. It is more easy to describe through means of the drawings, and the reader will soon see what bend to give to the wires in order that the wings may be properly held out. Beyond this head-dress there was very little alteration in the lady's dress since the previous reign. The skirts were full; the waist was high, but not absurdly so; the band round the dress was broad; the sleeves were tight; and the cuffs, often of fur, were folded back to a good depth. The neck opening of the dress varied, as did that of the previous reign, but whereas the most fashionable opening was then from neck to waist, this reign gave more liking to a higher corsage, over the top of which a narrow piece of stuff showed, often of black velvet. We may safely assume that the ladies followed the men in the matter of broad shoes. For a time the old fashion of the long-tongued belt came in, and we see instances of such belts being worn with the tongue reaching nearly to the feet, tipped with a metal ornament. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD III. (1483-1485) The great erection on her head is made of thin linen stretched upon wires; through this one may see her jewelled cap.] Not until night did these ladies discard their winged head erections; not until the streets were dark, and the brass basins swinging from the barbers' poles shone but dimly, and the tailors no longer sat, cross-legged, on the benches in their shop-fronts--then might my lady uncover her head and talk, in company with my lord, over the strange new stories of Prester John and of the Wandering Jew; then, at her proper time, she will go to her rest and sleep soundly beneath her embroidered quilt, under the protection of the saints whose pictures she has sewn into the corners of it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that she lies on. So we come to an end of a second series of dates, from the First Edward to the Third Richard, and we leave them to come to the Tudors and their follies and fantastics; we leave an age that is quaint, rich, and yet fairly simple, to come to an age of padded hips and farthingales, monstrous ruffs, knee-breeks, rag-stuffed trunks, and high-heeled shoes. With the drawings and text you should be able to people a vast world of figures, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, 1272, to nearly the end of the fifteenth, 1485, and if you allow ordinary horse-sense to have play, you will be able to people your world with correctly-dressed figures in the true inspiration of their time. You cannot disassociate the man from his tailor; his clothes must appeal to you, historically and soulfully, as an outward and visible sign to the graces and vices of his age and times. HENRY THE SEVENTH Reigned 24 years: 1485-1509. Born, 1456. Married, 1486, Elizabeth of York. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.; hose}] Everyone has felt that curious faint aroma, that sensation of lifting, which proclaims the first day of Spring and the burial of Winter. Although nothing tangible has taken place, there is in the atmosphere a full-charged suggestion of promise, of green-sickness; there is a quickening of the pulse, a thrumming of the heart, and many an eager, quick glance around for the first buds of the new order of things. England's winter was buried on Bosworth Field: England's spring, as if by magic, commenced with Henry's entry into London. The first picture of the reign shows the mayor, the sheriffs, and the aldermen, clothed in violet, waiting at Shoreditch for the coming of the victor. The same day shows Henry in St. Paul's, hearing a _Te Deum_; in the Cathedral church, packed to its limit, three new banners waved, one bearing a figure of St. George, another a dragon of red on white and green sarcenet, and the third showed a dun cow on yellow tarterne. Spring, of course, does not, except in a poetic sense, burst forth in a day, there are long months of preparation, hints, signs in the air, new notes from the throats of birds. The springtime of a country takes more than the preparation of months. Nine years before Henry came to the throne Caxton was learning to print in the little room of Collard Mansion--he was to print his 'Facts of Arms,' joyous tales and pleasant histories of chivalry, by especial desire of Henry himself. Later still, towards the end of the reign, the first book of travel in the West began to go from hand to hand--it was written by Amerigo Vespucci, cousin to La Bella Simonetta. Great thoughts were abroad, new ideas were constantly under discussion, the Arts rose to the occasion and put forth flowers of beauty on many stems long supposed to be dead or dormant and incapable of improvement. It was the great age of individual English expression in every form but that of literature and painting, both these arts being but in their cradles; Chaucer and Gower and Langland had written, but they lay in their graves long before new great minds arose. The clouds of the Middle Ages were dispersed, and the sun shone. The costume was at once dignified and magnificent--not that one can call the little coats great ideals of dignity, but even they, by their richness and by the splendour of the persons they adorned, come into the category. The long gowns of both men and women were rich beyond words in colour, texture, and design, they were imposing, exact, and gorgeous. Upon a fine day the streets must have glittered when a gentleman or lady passed by. The fashions of the time have survived for us in the Court cards: take the jacks, knaves, valets--call them as you will, and you will see the costume of this reign but slightly modified into a design, the cards of to-day and the cards of that day are almost identical. Some years ago the modification was less noticeable; I can remember playing Pope Joan with cards printed with full-length figures, just as the illustrations to 'Alice in Wonderland' are drawn. In the knave you will see the peculiar square hat which came in at this time, and the petti-cote, the long coat, the big sleeve, and the broad-toed shoes. You will see the long hair, undressed and flowing over the shoulders (the professional classes, as the lawyer, cut their hair close, so also did the peasant). Over this flowing hair a dandy would wear a little cap with a narrow, rolled-up brim, and over this, on occasions, an enormous hat of felt, ornamented with a prodigious quantity of feathers. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.}] There was, indeed, quite a choice of hats: the berretino--a square hat pinched in at the corners; many round hats, some with a high, tight brim, some with the least brim possible; into these brims, or into a band round the hat, one might stick feathers or pin a brooch. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VII. (1485-1509)] The chaperon, before described, was still worn by Garter Knights at times, and by official, legal, civic, and college persons. What a choice of coats the gentlemen had, and still might be in the fashion! Most common among these was the long coat like a dressing-gown, hanging upon the ground all round, with a wide collar, square behind, and turning back in the front down to the waist--this was the general shape of the collar, and you may vary it on this idea in every way: turn it back and show the stuff to the feet, close it up nearly to the neck, cut it off completely. Now for the sleeves of such a coat. I have shown in the illustrations many varieties, the most common was the wide sleeve, narrow at the shoulder, and hanging over the hand in folds. The slashes, which show the white shirt, are usual, and of every order. The shirt itself was often ornamented with fine gathers and fancy stitching, and was gathered about the neck by a ribbon. As the years went on it is easy to see that the shirt was worn nearer to the neck, the gathers became higher and higher, became more ornamented, and finally rose, in all extravagant finery, to behind the ears--and we have the Elizabethan ruff. [Illustration: COATS--HATS] Next to the shirt a waistcoat, or stomacher, of the most gorgeous patterned stuff, laced across the breast sometimes, more often fastened behind. This reached to the waist where it met long hose of every scheme of colour--striped, dotted, divided in bands--everything--displaying the indelicate but universal pouch in front, tied with coloured ribbons. On the feet, shoes of all materials, from cloth and velvet to leather beautifully worked, and of the most absurd length; these also were slashed with puffs of white stuff. Many of these shoes were but a sole and a toe, and were tied on by thongs passing through the sole. Of course the long coat would not alone satisfy the dandy, but he must needs cut it off into a short jacket, or petti-cote, and leave it open to better display his marvellous vest. Here we have the origin of the use of the word 'petticoat'--now wrongly applied; in Scotland, to this day, a woman's skirts are called her 'coats.' About the waists of these coats was a short sash, or a girdle, from which hung a very elaborate purse, or a dagger. Stick in hand, jewel in your hat, dandy--extravagant, exquisite dandy! All ages know you, from the day you choose your covering of leaves with care, to the hour of your white duck motoring-suit: a very bird of a man, rejoicing in your plumage, a very human ass, a very narrow individual, you stride, strut, simper through the story of the universe, a perfect monument of the Fall of Man, a gorgeous symbol of the decay of manhood. In this our Henry's reign, your hair busheth pleasantly, and is kembed prettily over the ear, where it glimmers as gold i' the sun--pretty fellow--Lord! how your feathered bonnet becomes you, and your satin stomacher is brave over a padded chest. Your white hands, freed from any nasty brawls and clean of any form of work, lie in their embroidered gloves. Your pride forbids the carriage of a sword, which is borne behind you--much use may it be!--by a mincing fellow in your dainty livery. And if--oh, rare disguise!--your coiffure hides a noble brow, or your little, neat-rimmed coif a clever head, less honour be to you who dress your limbs to imitate the peacock, and hide your mind beneath the weight of scented clothes. [Illustration: SLEEVES] In the illustrations to this chapter and the next, my drawings are collected and redrawn in my scheme from works so beautiful and highly finished that every student should go to see them for himself at the British Museum. My drawings, I hope, make it quite clear what was worn in the end of the fifteenth century and the first nine years of the sixteenth, and anyone with a slight knowledge of pictures will be able to supply themselves with a large amount of extra matter. I would recommend MS. Roy 16, F. 2; MS. Roy 19, C. 8; and especially Harleian MS. 4425. Of the lower classes, also, these books show quite a number. There are beggars and peasants, whose dress was simply old-fashioned and very plain; they wore the broad shoes and leather belts and short coats, worsted hose, and cloaks of fair cloth. 'Poverty,' the old woman with the spoon in her hat, is a good example of the poor of the time. When one knows the wealth of material of the time, and has seen the wonder of the stuffs, one knows that within certain lines imagination may have full scope. Stuffs of silk, embroidered with coupled birds and branches, and flowers following out a prescribed line, the embroideries edged and sewn with gold thread; velvet on velvet, short-napped fustian, damasked stuffs and diapered stuffs--what pictures on canvas, or on the stage, may be made; what marvels of colour walked about the streets in those days! It was to the eye an age of elaborate patterns--mostly large--and all this broken colour and glitter of gold thread must have made the streets gay indeed. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.}] Imagine, shall we say, Corfe Castle on a day when a party of ladies and gentlemen assembled to 'course a stagge,' when the huntsmen, in green, gathered in the outer ward, and the grooms, in fine coloured liveries, held the gaily-decked horses; then, from the walls lined with archers, would come the blast of the horn, and out would walk my lord and my lady, with knights, and squires, and ladies, and gallants, over the bridge across the castle ditch, between the round towers. Behind them the dungeon tower, and the great gray mass of the keep--all a fitting and impressive background to their bravery. The gentlemen, in long coats of all wonderful colours and devices, with little hats, jewelled and feathered, with boots to the knee of soft leather, turned back in colours at the top; on their left hands the thick hawking glove on which, jessed and hooded, sits the hawk--for some who will not go with the hounds will fly the hawk on the Isle of Purbeck. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.}] Below, in the town over the moat, a crowd is gathered to see them off--merchants in grave colours, and coats turned back with fur, their ink-horns slung at their waists, with pens and dagger and purse; beggars; pilgrims, from over seas, landed at Poole Harbour, in long gowns, worn with penitence and dusty travels, shells in their hats, staffs in their hands; wide-eyed children in smocks; butchers in blue; men of all guilds and women of all classes. The drawbridge is down, the portcullis up, and the party, gleaming like a bed of flowers in their multi-coloured robes, pass over the bridge, through the town, and into the valley. The sun goes in and leaves the grim castle, gray and solemn, standing out against the green of the hills.... And of Henry himself, the great Tudor, greater, more farseeing than the eighth Henry, a man who so dominates the age, and fills it with his spirit, that no mental picture is complete without him. His fine, humorous face, the quizzical eye, the firm mouth, showing his character. The great lover of art, of English art, soon to be pulverized by pseudo-classic influences; the man who pulled down the chapel at the west end of Westminster Abbey with the house by it--Chaucer's house--to make way for that superb triumph of ornate building, his chapel, beside which the mathematical squares and angles of classic buildings show as would boxes of bricks by a gorgeous flower. The stories against him are, in reality, stories for him, invented by those whom he kept to their work, and whom he despoiled of their ill-gotten gains. He borrowed, but he paid back in full; he came into a disordered, distressed kingdom, ruled it by fear--as had to be done in those days--and left it a kingdom ready for the fruits of his ordered works--to the fleshy beast who so nearly ruined the country. What remained, indeed, was the result of his father's genius. THE WOMEN Take up a pack of cards and look at the queen. You may see the extraordinary head-gear as worn by ladies at the end of the fifteenth century and in the first years of the sixteenth, worn in a modified form all through the next reign, after which that description of head-dress vanished for ever, its place to be taken by caps, hats, and bonnets. The richest of these head-dresses were made of a black silk or some such black material, the top stiffened to the shape of a sloping house-roof, the edges falling by the face on either side--made stiff, so as to stand parallel--these were sewn with gold and pearls on colour or white. The end of the hood hung over the shoulders and down the back; this was surmounted by a stole of stiffened material, also richly sewn with jewels, and the whole pinned on to a close-fitting cap of a different colour, the edge of which showed above the forehead. [Illustration: {Seven head-dresses for women; side and front view of a shoe}] The more moderate head-dress was of black again, but in shape nearly square, and slit at the sides to enable it to hang more easily over the shoulders. It was placed over a coif, often of white linen or of black material, was turned over from the forehead, folded, and pinned back; often it was edged with gold. On either side of the hood were hanging ornamental metal-tipped tags to tie back the hood from the shoulders, and this became, in time--that is, at the end of the reign--the ordinary manner of wearing them, till they were finally made up so. The ordinary head-dress was of white linen, crimped or embroidered in white, made in a piece to hang over the shoulders and down the back, folded back and stiffened in front to that peculiar triangular shape in fashion; this was worn by the older women over a white hood. The plain coif, or close-fitting linen cap, was the most general wear for the poor and middle classes. The hair was worn long and naturally over the shoulders by young girls, and plainly parted in the centre and dressed close to the head by women wearing the large head-dress. Another form of head-dress, less common, was the turban--a loose bag of silk, gold and pearl embroidered, fitting over the hair and forehead tightly, and loose above. The gowns of the women were very simply cut, having either a long train or no train at all, these last cut to show the under-skirt of some fine material, the bodice of which showed above the over gown at the shoulders. The ladies who wore the long gown generally had it lined with some fine fur, and to prevent this dragging in the mud, as also to show the elegance of their furs, they fastened the train to a button or brooch placed at the back of the waistband. This, in time, developed into the looped skirts of Elizabethan times. [Illustration: {Three women of the time of Henry VII.}] The bodice of the gown was square cut and not very low, having an ornamental border of fur, embroidery, or other rich coloured material sewn on to it. This border went sometimes round the shoulders and down the front of the dress to below the knees. Above the bodice was nearly always seen the V-shaped opening of the under petticoat bodice, and across and above that, the white embroidered or crimped chemise. The sleeves were as the men's--tight all the way down from the shoulder to the wrist, the cuffs coming well over the first joints of the fingers (sometimes these cuffs are turned back to show elaborate linings), or they were made tight at the shoulder and gradually looser until they became very full over the lower arm, edged or lined with fur or soft silk, or loose and baggy all the way from shoulder to hand. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VII.}] At this time Bruges became world-famed for her silken texture; her satins were used in England for church garments and other clothes. The damask silks were greatly in use, and were nearly always covered with the peculiar semi-Spanish pattern, the base of which was some contortion of the pomegranate. Some of these patterns were small and wonderfully fine, depending on their wealth of detail for their magnificent appearance, others were huge, so that but few repeats of the design appeared on the dress. Block-printed linens were also in use, and the samples in South Kensington will show how beautiful and artistic they were, for all their simple design. As Bruges supplied us with silks, satins, and velvets, the last also beautifully damasked, Yprès sent her linen to us, and the whole of Flanders sent us painters and illuminators who worked in England at the last of the great illuminated books, but this art died as printing and illustrating by wood-blocks came in to take its place. Nearly every lady had her own common linen, and often other stuffs, woven in her own house, and the long winter evenings were great times for the sewing chambers, where the lady and her maids sat at the looms. To-day one may see in Bruges the women at the cottage doors busy over their lace-making, and the English women by the sea making nets--so in those times was every woman at her cottage door making coarse linens and other stuffs to earn her daily bread, while my lady was sitting in her chamber weaving, or embroidering a bearing cloth for her child against her time. However, the years of the Wars of the Roses had had their effect on every kind of English work, and as the most elegant books were painted and written by Flemings, as the finest linen came from Yprès, the best silks and velvets from Bruges, the great masters of painting from Florence, Germany, and Belgium, so also the elaborate and wonderful embroidery, for which we had been so famous, died away, and English work was but coarse at the best, until, in the early sixteen hundreds, the new style came into use of raising figures some height above the ground-work of the design, and the rich embroidery of the Stuart times revived this art. I have shown that this age was the age of fine patterns, as some ages are ages of quaint cut, and some of jewel-laden dresses, and some of dainty needlework. A few ladies wore their gowns open to the waist to show the stomacher, as the men did, and open behind to the waist, laced across, the waist being embraced by a girdle of the shape so long in use, with long ends and metal ornaments; the girdle held the purse of the lady. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VII. (1485-1509) Notice the diamond-shaped head-dress, the wide, fur-edged gown with its full sleeves.] The illustrations given with this chapter show very completely the costume of this time, and, except in cases of royal persons or very gorgeously apparelled ladies, they are complete enough to need no description. The shoes, it will be seen, are very broad at the toes, with thick soles, sometimes made much in the manner of sandals--that is, with only a toecap, the rest flat, to be tied on by strings. As this work is entirely for use, it may be said, that artists who have costumes made for them, and costumiers who make for the stage, hardly ever allow enough material for the gowns worn by men and women in this and other reigns, where the heaviness and richness of the folds was the great keynote. To make a gown, of such a kind as these good ladies wore, one needs, at least, twelve yards of material, fifty-two inches wide, to give the right appearance. It is possible to acquire at many of the best shops nowadays actual copies of embroidered stuffs, velvets, and damask silks of this time, and of stuffs up to Early Victorian patterns, and this makes it easy for painters to procure what, in other days, they were forced to invent. Many artists have their costumes made of Bolton sheeting, on to which they stencil the patterns they wish to use--this is not a bad thing to do, as sheeting is not dear and it falls into beautiful folds. The older ladies and widows of this time nearly all dressed in very simple, almost conventual garments, many of them wearing the 'barbe' of pleated linen, which covered the lower part of the face and the chin--a sort of linen beard--it reached to the breast, and is still worn by some religious orders of women. Badges were still much in use, and the servants always wore some form of badge on their left sleeve--either merely the colours of their masters, or a small silver, or other metal, shield. Thus, the badge worn by the servants of Henry VII. would be either a greyhound, a crowned hawthorn bush, a red dragon, a portcullis, or the red and white roses joined together. The last two were used by all the Tudors, and the red rose and the portcullis are still used. From these badges we get the signs of many of our inns, either started by servants, who used their master's badge for a device, or because the inn lay on a certain property the lord of which carried chequers, or a red dragon, or a tiger's head. I mentioned the silks of Bruges and her velvets without giving enough prominence to the fine velvets of Florence, a sample of which, a cope, once used in Westminster Abbey, is preserved at Stonyhurst College; it was left by Henry VII. to 'Our Monastery of Westminster,' and is of beautiful design--a gold ground, covered with boughs and leaves raised in soft velvet pile of ruby colour, through which little loops of gold thread appear. I imagine Elizabeth of York, Queen to Henry VII., of the subtle countenance--gentle Elizabeth, who died in child-birth--proceeding through London, from the Tower to Westminster, to her coronation; the streets cleansed and the houses hung with tapestry, arras and gold cloth, the fine-coloured dresses of the crowd, the armoured soldiers, all the rich estate of the company about her, and the fine trappings of the horses. Our Queen went to her coronation with some Italian masts, paper flowers, and some hundreds of thousands of yards of bunting and cheap flags; the people mostly in sombre clothes; the soldiers in ugly red, stiff coats, were the only colour of note passing down Whitehall, past the hideous green stuck with frozen Members of Parliament, to the grand, wonderful Abbey, which has seen so many Queens crowned. HENRY THE EIGHTH Reigned thirty-eight years: 1509-1547. Born, 1491. Married, 1509, Katherine of Aragon; 1532, Anne Boleyn; 1536, Jane Seymour; 1540, Anne of Cleves; 1540, Katherine Howard; 1548, Katherine Parr. THE MEN VERSES BY HENRY THE EIGHTH IN PRAISE OF CONSTANCY 'As the holy grouth grene with ivie all alone Whose flowerys cannot be seen and grene wode levys be gone, Now unto my lady, promyse to her I make From all other only to her I me betake. Adew myne owne ladye, adew my specyall Who hath my hart trewly, be sure, and ever shall.' So, with songs and music of his own composition, comes the richest man in Europe to the throne of England. Gay, brave, tall, full of conceit in his own strength, Henry, a king, a Tudor, a handsome man, abounding in excellence of craft and art, the inheritance from his father and mother, figures in our pageant a veritable symbol of the Renaissance in England. He had, in common with the marvellous characters of that Springtime of History, the quick intelligence and all the personal charm that the age brought forth in abundance. In his reign the accumulated mass of brain all over the world budded and flowered; the time gave to us a succession of the most remarkable people in any historical period, and it is one of the triumphs of false reasoning to prove this, in England, to have been the result of the separation from the Catholic Church. For centuries the Church had organized and prepared the ground in which this tree of the world's knowledge was planted, had pruned, cut back, nursed the tree, until gradually it flowered, its branches spread over Christian Europe, and when the flowering branch hanging over England gave forth its first-fruits, those men who ate of the fruit and benefited by the shade were the first to quarrel with the gardeners. In these days there lived and died Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Dürer, Erasmus, Holbein, Copernicus, Luther, Rabelais, and Michael Angelo, to mention a few men of every shade of thought, and in this goodly time came Henry to the English throne, to leave, at his death, instead of the firm progress of order instituted by his father, a bankrupt country with an enormously rich Government. You may see for the later pictures of his reign a great bloated mass of corpulence, with running ulcers on his legs and the blood of wives and people on his hands, striding in his well-known attitude over the festering slums his rule had produced in London. Harry, _Grace à Dieu_! The mental picture from our--costume--point of view is widely different from that of the last reign. No longer do we see hoods and cowls, brown, gray, white, and black in the streets, no longer the throngs of fine craftsmen, of church-carvers, gilders, embroiderers, candle-makers, illuminators, missal-makers; all these served but to swell the ranks of the unemployed, and caused a new problem to England, never since solved, of the skilled poor out of work. The hospitals were closed--that should bring a picture to your eyes--where the streets had been thronged with the doctors of the poor and of the rich in their habits, no monks or lay brothers were to be seen. The sick, the blind, the insane had no home but the overhung back alleys where the foulest diseases might accumulate and hot-beds of vice spring up, while in the main streets Harry Tudor was carried to his bear-baiting, a quivering mass of jewels shaking on his corrupt body, on his thumb that wonderful diamond the Regale of France, stolen by him from the desecrated shrine of St. Thomas à Becket. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; collar; ruff}] [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547) He wears the club-toed shoes, the white shirt embroidered in black silk, the padded shoulders, and the flat cap by which this reign is easily remembered.] [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; breeches}] There are two distinct classes of fashion to be seen, the German-Swiss fashion and the English fashion, a natural evolution of the national dress. The German fashion is that slashed, extravagant-looking creation which we know so well from the drawings of Albert Dürer and the more German designs of Holbein. The garments which were known as 'blistered' clothes are excessive growths on to the most extravagant designs of the Henry VII. date. The shirt cut low in the neck, and sewn with black embroidery; the little waistcoat ending at the waist and cut straight across from shoulder to shoulder, tied with thongs of leather or coloured laces to the breeches, leaving a gap between which showed the shirt; the universal pouch on the breeches often highly decorated and jewelled. From the line drawings you will see that the sleeves and the breeches took every form, were of any odd assortment of colours, were cut, puffed, and splashed all over, so that the shirt might be pushed through the holes, looking indeed 'blistered.' [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.}] The shoes were of many shapes, as I have shown, agreeing in one point only--that the toes should be cut very broad, often, indeed, quite square. Short or hanging hair, both were the fashion, and little flat caps with the rim cut at intervals, or the large flat hats of the previous reign, covered with feathers and curiously slashed, were worn with these costumes. Cloaks, as you may see, were worn over the dress, and also those overcoats shaped much like the modern dressing-gown. It is from these 'blistered,' padded breeches that we derive the trunks of the next reign, the slashings grown into long ribbon-like slits, the hose puffed at the knee. Separate pairs of sleeves were worn with the waistcoats, or with the petti-cotes, a favourite sleeve trimming being broad velvet bands. The invention sprang, as usual, from necessity, by vanity to custom. In 1477 the Swiss beat and routed the Duke of Burgundy at Nantes, and the soldiers, whose clothes were in rags, cut and tore up his silk tents, his banners, all material they could find, and made themselves clothes of these odd pieces--clothes still so torn and ragged that their shirts puffed out of every hole and rent. The arrival of the victorious army caused all the non-fighters to copy this curious freak in clothes, and the courtiers perpetuated the event by proclaiming blistering as the fashion. The other and more usual fashion springs from the habit of clothes in bygone reigns. Let us first take the shirt A. It will be seen how, in this reign, the tendency of the shirt was to come close about the neck. The previous reign showed us, as a rule, a shirt cut very low in the neck, with the hem drawn together with laces; these laces pulled more tightly together, thus rucking the material into closer gathers, caused the cut of the shirt to be altered and made so that the hem frilled out round the neck--a collar, in fact. That this collar took all forms under certain limitations will be noticed, also that thick necked gentlemen--Henry himself must have invented this--wore the collar of the shirt turned down and tied with strings of linen. The cuffs of the shirt, when they showed at the wrist, were often, as was the collar, sewn with elaborate designs in black thread or silk. Now we take the waistcoat B. As you may see from the drawing showing the German form of dress, this waistcoat was really a petti-cote, a waistcoat with sleeves. This waistcoat was generally of richly ornamented material (Henry in purple satin, embroidered with his initials and the Tudor rose; Henry in brocade covered with posies made in letters of fine gold bullion). The material was slashed and puffed or plain, and dependent for its effect on the richness of its embroidery or design of the fabric. It was worn with or without sleeves; in most cases the sleeves were detachable. [Illustration: {Two types of sleeve; eight hats for men}] The coat C. This coat was made with bases like a frock, a skirted coat, in fact; the material used was generally plain, of velvet, fine cloth, silk, or satin. The varieties of cut were numerous, and are shown in the drawings--open to the waist, open all the way in front, close to the neck--every way; where the coat was open in front it generally parted to show the bragetto, or jewelled pouch. It was a matter for choice spirits to decide whether or no they should wear sleeves to their coats, or show the sleeves of their waistcoats. No doubt Madame Fashion saw to it that the changes were rung sufficiently to make hay while the sun shone on extravagant tastes. The coat was held at the waist with a sash of silk tied in a bow with short ends. Towards the end of the reign, foreshadowing the Elizabethan jerkin or jacket, the custom grew more universal of the coat with sleeves and the high neck, the bases were cut shorter to show the full trunks, and the waistcoat was almost entirely done away with, the collar grew in proportion, and spread, like the tail of an angry turkey, in ruffle and folded pleat round the man's neck. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547) This is the extreme German-English fashion. In Germany and Switzerland this was carried to greater lengths.] The overcoat D is the gown of the previous reign cut, for the dandy, into a shorter affair, reaching not far below the knee; for the grave man it remained long, but, for all, the collar had changed to a wide affair stretching well over the shoulders. It was made, this collar, of such stuff as lined the cloak, maybe it was of fur, or of satin, of silk, or of cloth of gold. The tremendous folds of these overcoats gave to the persons in them a sense of splendour and dignity; the short sleeves of the fashionable overcoats, puffed and swollen, barred with rich _appliqué_ designs or bars of fur, reaching only to the elbow, there to end in a hem of fur or some rich stuff, the collar as wide as these padded shoulders, all told in effect as garments which gave a great air of well-being and richness to their owner. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.}] Of course, I suppose one must explain, the sleeves varied in every way: were long, short, full, medium full, according to taste. Sometimes the overcoats were sleeveless. Beneath these garments the trunks were worn--loose little breeches, which, in the German style, were bagged, puffed, rolled, and slashed in infinite varieties. Let it be noticed that the cutting of slashes was hardly ever a straight slit, but in the curve of an elongated S or a double S curve. Other slashes were squared top and bottom. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Henry VIII.}] All men wore tight hose, in some cases puffed at the knee; in fact, the bagging, sagging, and slashing of hose suggested the separate breeches or trunks of hose. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547) A plain but rich looking dress. The peculiar head-dress has a pad of silk in front to hold it from the forehead. The half-sleeves are well shown.] The shoes were very broad, and were sometimes stuffed into a mound at the toes, were sewn with precious stones, and, also, were cut and puffed with silk. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.}] The little flat cap will be seen in all its varieties in the drawings. The Irish were forbidden by law to wear a shirt, smock, kerchor, bendel, neckerchor, mocket (a handkerchor), or linen cap coloured or dyed with saffron; or to wear in shirts or smocks above seven yards of cloth. To wear black genet you must be royal; to wear sable you must rank above a viscount; to wear marten or velvet trimming you must be worth over two hundred marks a year. Short hair came into fashion about 1521. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Henry VIII. (torso only); three types of shoe; two types of boot; a cod-piece}] So well known is the story of Sir Philip Calthrop and John Drakes the shoemaker of Norwich, who tried to ape the fashion, that I must here allude to this ancestor of mine who was the first of the dandies of note, among persons not of the royal blood. The story itself, retold in every history of costume, is to this effect: Drakes, the shoemaker, seeing that the county talked of Sir Philip's clothes, ordered a gown from the same tailor. This reached the ears of Sir Philip, who then ordered his gown to be cut as full of slashes as the shears could make it. The ruin of cloth so staggered the shoemaker that he vowed to keep to his own humble fashion in future. No doubt Sir Philip's slashes were cunningly embroidered round, and the gown made rich and sparkling with the device of seed pearls so much in use. This man's son, also Sir Philip, married Amy, daughter of Sir William Boleyn, of Blickling, Norfolk. She was aunt to Queen Anne Boleyn. THE WOMEN One cannot call to mind pictures of this time without, in the first instance, seeing the form of Henry rise up sharply before us followed by his company of wives. The fat, uxorious giant comes straight to the front of the picture, he dominates the age pictorially; and, as a fitting background, one sees the six women who were sacrificed on the political altar to pander to his vanity. Katherine of Aragon--the fine and noble lady--a tool of political desires, cast off after Henry had searched his precious conscience, after eighteen years of married life, to find that he had scruples as to the spirituality of the marriage. Anne Boleyn, tainted with the life of the Court, a pitiful figure in spite of all her odious crimes; how often must a ghost, in a black satin nightdress edged with black velvet, have haunted the royal dreams. And the rest of them, clustered round the vain king, while in the background the great figures of the time loom hugely as they play with the crowned puppets. [Illustration: {Eight stages in the evolution of the hood}] The note of the time, as we look at it with our eyes keen on the picture, is the final evolution of the hood. Bit by bit, inch by inch, the plain fabric has become enriched, each succeeding step in an elaboration of the simple form; the border next to the face is turned back, then the hood is lined with fine stuff and the turnover shows this to advantage; then the sides are split and the back is made more full; then a tag is sewn on to the sides by which means the cut side may be fastened off the shoulders. The front is now stiffened and shaped at an angle, this front is sewn with jewels, and, as the angle forms a gap between the forehead and the point of the hood, a pad is added to fill in the vacant space. At last one arrives at the diamond-shaped head-dress worn in this reign, and, in this reign, elaborated in every way, elaborated, in fact, out of existence. In order to make the head-dress in its 1509 state you must make the white lining with the jewelled turnover as a separate cap. However, I think that the drawings speak for themselves more plainly than I can write. [Illustration: {Four types of head-dress for women}] Every device for crowding jewels together was used, criss-cross, in groups of small numbers, in great masses. Pendants were worn, hung upon jewelled chains that wound twice round the neck, once close to the neck, the second loop loose and passed, as a rule, under the lawn shift. Large brooches decorated the bodices, brooches with drop ornaments, the body of the brooch of fine gold workmanship, many of them wrought in Italy. The shift, delicately embroidered with black silk, had often a band of jewellery upon it, and this shift was square cut, following the shape of the bodice. The bodice of the gown was square cut and much stiffened to a box-like shape. The sleeves of the gown were narrow at the shoulders, and after fitting the arm for about six inches down from the shoulders, they widened gradually until, just below the elbow, they became square and very full; in this way they showed the false under-sleeve. This under-sleeve was generally made of a fine rich-patterned silk or brocade, the same stuff which formed the under-gown; the sleeve was a binding for the very full lawn or cambric sleeve which showed in a ruffle at the wrist and in great puffs under the forearm. The under-sleeve was really more like a gauntlet, as it was generally held together by buttoned tags; it was puffed with other coloured silk, slashed to show the shift, or it might be plain. Now the sleeve of the gown was subject to much alteration. It was, as I have described, made very square and full at the elbow, and over this some ladies wore a false sleeve of gold net--you may imagine the length to which net will go, studied with jewels, crossed in many ways, twisted into patterns, sewn on to the sleeve in sloping lines--but, besides this, the sleeve was turned back to form a deep square cuff which was often made of black or coloured velvet, or of fur. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VIII.; a head-dress}] In all this I am taking no account of the German fashions, which I must describe separately. Look at the drawings I have made of the German fashion. I find that they leave me dumb--mere man has but a limited vocabulary when the talk comes to clothes--and these dresses that look like silk pumpkins, blistered and puffed and slashed, sewn in ribs, swollen, and altogether so queer, are beyond the furious dashes that my pen makes at truth and millinery. The costumes of the people of this age have grown up in the minds of most artists as being inseparable from the drawings of Holbein and Dürer. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry VIII.}] Surely, I say to myself, most people who will read this will know their Holbein and Dürer, between whom there lies a vast difference, but who between them show, the one, the estate of England, and the other, those most German fashions which had so powerful an influence upon our own. Both these men show the profusion of richness, the extravagant follies of the dress of their time, how, to use the words of Pliny: 'We penetrate into the bowels of the earth, digging veins of gold and silver, and ores of brass and lead; we seek also for gems and certain little pebbles. Driving galleries into the depths, we draw out the bowels of the earth, that the gems we seek may be worn on the finger. How many hands are wasted in order that a single joint may sparkle! If any hell there were, it had assuredly ere now been disclosed by the borings of avarice and luxury!' [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547) Notice the wide cuffs covered with gold network, and the rich panel of the under-skirt.] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VIII.; three types of sleeve}] Or in the writings of Tertullian, called by Sigismund Feyerabendt, citizen and printer of Frankfort, a 'most strict censor who most severely blames women:' 'Come now,' says Tertullian, 'if from the first both the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Chinese spun from the tree, and the Tyrians dyed and the Phrygians embroidered, and the Babylonians inwove; and if pearls shone and rubies flashed, if gold itself, too, came up from the earth with the desire for it; and if now, too, no lying but the mirror's were allowed, Eve, I suppose, would have desired these things on her expulsion from Paradise, and when spiritually dead.' One sees by the tortured and twisted German fashion that the hair was plaited, and so, in curves and twists, dropped into coarse gold-web nets, thrust into web nets with velvet pouches to them, so that the hair stuck out behind in a great knob, or at the side in two protuberances; over all a cap like to the man's, but that it was infinitely more feathered and jewelled. Then, again, they wore those hideous barbes or beard-like linen cloths, over the chin, and an infinite variety of caps of linen upon their heads--caps which showed always the form of the head beneath. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VIII.; three types of hat for women}] In common with the men, their overcoats and cloaks were voluminous, and needed to be so if those great sleeves had to be stuffed into them; fur collars or silk collars, with facings to match, were rolled over to show little or great expanses of these materials. Here, to show what dainty creatures were our lady ancestors, to show from what beef and blood and bone we come, I give you (keep your eye meanwhile upon the wonderful dresses) the daily allowance of a Maid of Honour. Every morning at breakfast one chyne of beef from the kitchen, one chete loaf and one maunchet at the pantry bar, and one gallon of ale at the buttery bar. For dinner a piece of beef, a stroke of roast and a reward from the kitchen. A caste of chete bread from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale at the buttery bar. Afternoon--should they suffer the pangs of hunger--a maunchet of bread from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale at the buttery bar. Supper, a messe of pottage, a piece of mutton and a reward from the kitchen. A caste of chete bread from the pantry bar, and a gallon of ale at the buttery bar. After supper--to insure a good night's rest--a chete loaf and a maunchet from the pantry bar, and half a gallon of ale from the seller bar. Four and a half gallons of ale! I wonder did they drink it all themselves? All this, and down in the mornings in velvets and silks, with faces as fresh as primroses. It is the fate of all articles of clothing or adornment, naturally tied or twisted, or folded and pinned by the devotees of fashion, to become, after some little time, made up, ready made, into the shapes which had before some of the owner's mood and personality about them. These hoods worn by the women, these wide sleeves to the gowns, these hanging sleeves to the overcoats, the velvet slip of under-dress, all, in their time, became falsified into ready-made articles. With the hoods you can see for yourselves how they lend themselves by their shape to personal taste; they were made up, all ready sewn; where pins had been used, the folds of velvet at the back were made steadfast, the crimp of the white linen was determined, the angle of the side-flap ruled by some unwritten law of mode. In the end, by a process of evolution, the diamond shape disappeared, and the cap was placed further back on the head, the contour being circular where it had previously been pointed. The velvet hanging-piece remained at the back of the head, but was smaller, in one piece, and was never pinned up, and the entire shape gradually altered towards, and finally into, the well-known Mary Queen of Scots head-dress, with which every reader must be familiar. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry VIII.}] It has often occurred to me while writing this book that the absolute history of one such head-dress would be of more help than these isolated remarks, which have to be dropped only to be taken up in another reign, but I have felt that, after all, the arrangement is best as it stands, because we can follow, if we are willing, the complete wardrobe of one reign into the next, without mixing the two up. It is difficult to keep two interests running together, but I myself have felt, when reading other works on the subject, that the way in which the various articles of clothing are mixed up is more disturbing than useful. The wide sleeve to the gown, once part and parcel of the gown, was at last made separate from it--as a cuff more than a sleeve naturally widening--and in the next reign, among the most fashionable, left out altogether. The upper part of the dress, once cut low and square to show the under-dress, or a vest of other stuff, was now made, towards the end of the reign, with a false top of other stuff, so replacing the under-dress. Lacing was carried to extremes, so that the body was pinched into the hard roll-like appearance always identified with this time; on the other hand, many, wiser women I should say, were this the place for morals, preferred to lace loose, and show, beneath the lacing, the colour of the under-dress. Many were the varieties of girdle and belt, from plain silk sashes with tasselled ends to rich jewelled chain girdles ending in heavy ornaments. For detail one can do no better than go to Holbein, the master of detail, and to-day, when photographs of pictures are so cheap, and lives of painters, copiously illustrated, are so easily attainable at low prices, it is the finest education, not only in painting, but in Tudor atmosphere and in matters of dress, to go straightway and study the master--that master who touched, without intention, on the moral of his age when he painted a miniature of the Blessed Thomas More on the back of a playing card. EDWARD THE SIXTH Reigned six years: 1547-1553. Born, 1537. THE MEN AND WOMEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward VI.; a type of hat}] Here we have a reign which, from its very shortness, can hardly be expected to yield us much in the way of change, yet it shows, by very slight movements, that form of growth which preludes the great changes to come. I think I may call a halt here, and proceed to tell you why this volume is commenced with Henry VII., called the Tudor and Stuart volume, and ends with the Cromwells. It is because, between these reigns, the tunic achieves maturity, becomes a doublet, and dies, practically just in the middle of the reign of Charles II. of pungent memory. The peculiar garment, or rather, this garment peculiar to a certain time, runs through its various degrees of cut. It is, at first, a loose body garment with skirts; the skirts become arranged in precise folds, the folds on the skirt are shortened, the shorter they become the tighter becomes the coat; then we run through with this coat in its periods of puffings, slashings, this, that, and the other sleeve, all coats retaining the small piece of skirt or basque, and so to the straight, severe Cromwellian jerkin with the piece of skirt cut into tabs, until the volume ends, and hey presto! there marches into history a Persian business--a frock coat, straight, trim, quite a near cousin to our own garment of afternoon ceremony. For a sign of the times it may be mentioned that a boy threw his cap at the Host just at the time of the Elevation. To Queen Elizabeth has been given the palm for the wearing of the first silk stockings in England, but it is known that Sir Thomas Gresham gave a pair of silk stockings to Edward VI. We now see a more general appearance in the streets of the flat cap upon the heads of citizens. The hood, that eminently practical head-gear, took long to die, and, when at last it went out of fashion, except among the labouring classes, there came in the cap that now remains to us in the cap of the Beefeaters at the Tower of London. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Edward VI.}] It is the time of jerkin or jacket, doublet or coat, and hose--generally worn with trunks, which were puffed, short knickerbockers. The flat cap, afterwards the statute cap as ordered by Elizabeth, became, as I say, the ordinary head-wear, though some, no doubt, kept hoods upon their heavy travelling cloaks. This cap, which some of the Bluecoat Boys still wear, was enforced upon the people by Elizabeth for the encouragement of the English trade of cappers. 'One cap of wool, knit, thicked, and dressed in England,' was to be worn by all over six years of age, except such persons as had 'twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship.' Edward, according to the portraits, always wore a flat cap, the base of the crown ornamented with bands of jewels. The Bluecoat Boys, and long may they have the sense to keep to their dress, show us exactly the ordinary dress of the citizen, except that the modern knickerbocker has taken the place of the trunks. Also, the long skirts of these blue coats were, in Edward's time, the mark of the grave man, others wore these same skirts cut to the knee. That peculiar fashion of the previous reign--the enormously broad-shouldered appearance--still held in this reign to some extent, though the collars of the jerkins, or, as one may more easily know them, overcoats or jackets, open garments, were not so wide, and allowed more of the puffed shoulder of the sleeve to show. Indeed, the collar became quite small, as in the Windsor Holbein painting of Edward, and the puff in the shoulders not so rotund. The doublet of this reign shows no change, but the collar of the shirt begins to show signs of the ruff of later years. It is no larger, but is generally left untied with the ornamental strings hanging. Antiquarian research has, as it often does, muddled us as to the meaning of the word 'partlet.' Fairholt, who is very good in many ways, puts down in his glossary, 'Partlet: A gorget for women.' Then he goes on to say that a partlet may be goodness knows what else. Minshein says they are 'part of a man's attire, as the loose collar of a doublet, to be set on or taken off by itself, without the bodies, as the picadillies now a daies, or as mens' bands, or womens' neckerchiefs, which are in some, or at least have been within memorie, called partlets.' Sir F. Madden says: 'The partlet evidently appears to have been the corset or habit-shirt worn at that period, and which so commonly occurs in the portraits of the time, generally made of velvet and ornamented with precious stones.' [Illustration: A MAN AND WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD VI. (1547-1553) The change from the dress of the previous reign should be easily noticed, especially in the case of the woman. This dress is, of course, of the plainest in this time.] Hall, the author of 'Satires,' 1598, speaks of a man, an effeminate dandy, as wearing a partlet strip. It appears to me, who am unwillingly forced into judging between so many learned persons, that, from all I have been able to gather from contemporary records and papers, the partlet is indeed, as Minshein says, 'the loose collar of a doublet,' in reality the same thing as a shirt band. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Edward VI.}] Henry VIII. wore a band about his neck, the forerunner of the ruff. Some of his bands were of silver cloth with ruffs to them, others, as I have shown, were wonderfully embroidered. In this case, then, the partlet is head of the family tree to our own collar, 'to be set on or taken off by itself,' and so by way of ruff, valued at threescore pound price apiece, to plain bands, to falling bands, laced neckcloth, stock--to the nine pennyworth of misery we bolt around our necks. Dress, on the whole, is much plainer, sleeves are not so full of cuts and slashes, and they fit more closely to the arm. The materials are rich, but the ornament is not so lavish; the portrait of Edward by Gwillim Stretes is a good example of ornament, rich but simple. Shoes are not cut about at the toe quite with the same splendour, but are still broad in the toe. For the women, it may be said that the change towards simplicity is even more marked. The very elaborate head-dress, the folded, diamond-shaped French hood has disappeared almost entirely, and, for the rich, the half hoop, set back from the forehead with a piece of velvet or silk to hang down the back, will best describe the head-gear. From that to the centre-pointed hoop shows the trend of the shape. This latest form of woman's head apparel was born, I think, out of the folds of the linen cap worn in the house, and this, being repeated in the velvet night-caps, became the extreme of fashion. The drawing will show how the square end of the linen cap, falling in the centre of the circular cap-shape, cut the semicircle and overlapped it, thus giving the appearance later to become exaggerated into a form cut especially to that shape. (I try to be as lucid as I can manage, but the difficulties of describing such evolutions in any but tangled language I leave the reader to imagine.) [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Edward VI.; two types of head-dress}] The women are also wearing cloth hoods, rather baggy cap-like hoods, with a hanging-piece behind. The most notable change is the collar of the gown, which suddenly springs into existence. It is a high collar and very open in front, showing a piece of the under-dress. On this collar is sewn--what I shall call--the woman's partlet, as the embroidery is often detachable and answers the same purpose as the man's partlet; this later became a separate article, and was under-propped with wires to hold it out stiffly. The same stiff-bodied appearance holds good, but in more simple dresses the skirts were not quite as voluminous as heretofore. With overcoats in general the hanging sleeve is being worn, the arm of the wearer coming out just below the puffed shoulder-piece. With these remarks we may safely go on to the reign of Mary; another reign which does not yield us much in the way of clothes. MARY Reigned five years: 1553-1558. Born, 1516. Married, 1554, Philip of Spain. THE MEN AND WOMEN I cannot do better than commence this chapter by taking you back to the evening of August 3, 1553. Mary, with her half-sister Elizabeth, entered London on this date. At Aldgate she was met by the Mayor of London, who gave her the City sword. From the Antiquarian Repertory comes this account: 'First, the citizens' children walked before her magnificently dressed; after followed gentlemen habited in velvets of all sorts, some black, others in white, yellow, violet, and carnation; others wore satins or taffety, and some damasks of all colours, having plenty of gold buttons; afterwards followed the Mayor, with the City Companies, and the chiefs or masters of the several trades; after them, the Lords, richly habited, and the most considerable knights; next came the ladies, married and single, in the midst of whom was the Queen herself, mounted on a small white ambling nag, the housings of which were fringed with gold thread; about her were six lacqueys, habited in vests of gold. 'The Queen herself was dressed in violet velvet, and was then about forty years of age, and rather fresh coloured. 'Before her were six lords bareheaded, each carrying in his hand a yellow mace, and some others bearing the arms and crown. Behind her followed the archers, as well of the first as the second guard. 'She was followed by her sister, named Madame Elizabeth, in truth a beautiful Princess, who was also accompanied by ladies both married and single.' In the crowds about the city waiting to stare at the new Queen as she passed by, one could recognise the various professions by their colours. The trained bands in white doublets with the City arms before and behind; lawyers in black; sheriffs and aldermen in furred gowns with satin sleeves; citizens in brown cloaks and workers in cloth or leather doublets; citizens' servants in blue liveries; gentlemen's servants in very gorgeous liveries of their masters' colours. Here is a description of a gentleman's page and his clothes: 'One doublet of yelow million fustian, th'one halfe buttoned with peche-colour buttons, and the other half laced downwards; one payer of peche-colour, laced with smale tawnye lace; a graye hat with a copper edge rounde about it, with a band p'cell of the same hatt; a payer of watchet (blue) stockings. Likewise he hath twoe clokes, th'one of vessey colour, garded with twoe yards of black clothe and twisted lace of carnacion colour, and lyned with crymsone bayes; and th'other is a red shipp russet colour, striped about th'cape and down the fore face, twisted with two rows of twisted lace, russet and gold buttons afore and uppon the shoulder, being of the clothe itself, set with the said twisted lace and the buttons of russet silk and gold.' This will give some notion of the elaborate liveries worn, and also it will show how, having understood the forms of the garments and the material which may be used, the rest, ornament and fancy, depend on the sense of the reader. A change has come over the streets, the town is full of Spaniards come over with Philip, and these bring with them many innovations in dress. The most noticeable is the high-peaked Spanish hat, a velvet bag with a narrow brim, worn on one side of the head. There is, also, a hard-crowned hat, round the crown-base of which is a gold cord clasped by a jewel; a feather is stuck into this hat. Yet the mass of citizens wear the flat cap, some of them, the older men, have a coif tied under their chins, and over this the flat cap. Again, older men wear black velvet skull caps. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Mary}] With these Spaniards comes, also, the first appearance of the ruff, very neat and small. Although the overcoats of Henry's and Edward's reigns still form the principal wear, the short Spanish cloak has come in, cut in full folds, and reaching not far below the waist. They also brought in the cloak with a turned up high collar; and some had sleeves to their cloaks. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF MARY (1553-1558) The half-way between the dress of 1530 and 1560. A cloak very much of the period, and a tunic in the state of evolution towards the doublet.] One sees more beards and moustaches, short clipped beards, and beards with two points. Shoes are now more to the shape of the foot, and high boots strapped up over the knee, also half-boots with the tops turned over to be seen. Often, where the hose meet the trunks, these are turned down. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Mary; two types of boot}] The doublets become shaped more closely to the body, all showing the gradual change towards the Elizabethan costume, but still retaining the characteristics of earlier times, as the long skirt to the doublet, and the opening to show the collar of the shirt, or partlet strip. Ladies now show more hair, parted, as before, in the centre, but now puffed out at the sides. The new shape of head-dress becomes popular, and the upstanding collar to the gown is almost universal. The gowns themselves, though retaining the same appearance as before, full skirts, no trains, big sleeves, and split to show the under-gown, have the top part of the gown covering the bosom made of a separate material, as, for instance, a gown of fine cloth will have collar and yoke of velvet. Women wear neat linen caps, made very plain and close to the head, with small ear-pieces. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Mary}] On the shoulders there is a fashion of wearing kerchiefs of linen or silk, white as a rule; white, in fact, is frequently used for dresses, both for men and women. The custom of carrying small posies of flowers comes in, and it is interesting to see the Queen, in her portrait by Antonio More, carrying a bunch of violets arranged exactly as the penny bunches sold now in our streets. There was, in most dresses, a great profusion of gold buttons, and the wearing of gold chains was common--in fact, a gold chain about the neck for a man, and a gold chain girdle for a woman, were part of the ordinary everyday dress. [Illustration: {Two types of head-dress for women; two types of collar}] You will realize that to one born in the reign of Henry VIII. the appearance of people now was very different, and, to anyone as far away as we are now, the intervening reigns of Edward and Mary are interesting as showing the wonderful quiet change that could take place in those few years, and alter man's exterior from the appearance of a playing-card, stiff, square, blob-footed, to the doublet and hose person with a cart-wheel of a ruff, which recalls to us Elizabethan dress. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF QUEEN MARY (1553-1558) The habit of wearing flowers in the opening of the dress was frequent at this time, was, in fact, begun about this reign. One can easily see in this dress the ground-work of the Elizabethan fashion, the earliest of which was an exaggeration of this costume.] ELIZABETH Reigned 45 years: 1558-1603. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Elizabeth}] Here we are in the middle of great discoveries with adventurers, with Calvin and Michael Angelo, living and dying, and Galileo and Shakespeare seeing light--in the very centre and heart of these things, and we and they discussing the relations of the law to linen. How, they and we ask, are breeches, and slop-hose cut in panes, to be lined? In such writings we are bound to concern ourselves with the little things that matter, and in this reign we meet a hundred little things, little fussy things, the like of which we leave alone to-day. But this is not quite true. To-day a man, whether he cares to admit it or no, is for ever choosing patterns, colours, shades, styles to suit his own peculiar personality. From the cradle to the grave we are decked with useless ornaments--bibs, sashes, frills, little jackets, neat ties, different coloured boots, clothes of ceremony, clothes supposed to be in harmony with the country, down, at last, to the clothes of an old gentleman, keeping a vague reminder of twenty, thirty years ago in their style, and then--grave clothes. How well we know the Elizabethan! He is a stock figure in our imagination; he figured in our first schoolboy romances, he strutted in the first plays we saw. Because it was an heroic time we hark back to it to visualize it as best we may so that we can come nearer to our heroes--Drake, Raleigh, and the rest. The very names of the garments arouse associations--ruff, trunks, jumper, doublet, jerkin, cloak, bone-bobbin lace, and lace of Flanders--they almost take one's breath away. Here comes a gentleman in a great ruff, yellow-starched, an egg-shaped pearl dangles from one ear. One hand rests on his padded hip, the other holds a case of toothpicks and a napkin; he is going to his tavern to dine. His doublet is bellied like a pea's cod, and his breeches are bombasted, his little hat is stuck on one side and the feather in it curls over the brim. His doublet is covered with a herring-bone pattern in silk stitches, and is slashed all over. He is exaggerated, monstrous; he is tight-laced; his trunks stick out a foot all round him, and his walk is, in consequence, a little affected; but, for all that, he is a gallant figure. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Elizabeth}] Behind him comes a gentleman in loose knee-breeches barred with velvet; at the knee he has a frill of lace. His jerkin is not stuffed out, and his ruff is not starched to stick up round his head. His hair is cut in three points, one over each ear and the third over the centre of his forehead, where we see a twisted lock tied with ribbon. We seem to know these people well--very well. The first, whose clothes are of white silk sewn with red and blue, whose trunk hose have clocks of silk sewn on them, reminds us of whom? And the second gentleman in green and red, with heels of red on his shoes? Suddenly there flashes across our memory the picture of a lighted stage, a row of shops, a policeman, and then a well-known voice calling, 'Hello, Joey, here we are again!' Here we are again after all these centuries--clown and pantaloon, the rustic with red health on his face, the old man in Venetian slops--St. Pantaloone--just as Elizabethan, humour included, as anything can well be. Then, enter Harlequin in his clothes of gorgeous patches; the quick, almost invisible thief, the instigator of all the evil and magic. His patches and rags have grown to symmetrical pattern, his loose doublet has become this tight-fitting lizard skin of flashing gold and colours, but his atmosphere recalls the great days. To these enter 1830--Columbine--an early Victorian lady, who contrives to look sweetly modest in the shortest and frilliest of skirts; she looks like a rose, a rose on two pink stalks. She, being so different, gives the picture just the air of magic incongruity. Once, years ago, she was dressed in rags like Harlequin, but I suppose that the age of sentiment clothed her in her ballet costume rather than see her in her costly tatters. We are a conservative nation, and we like our own old jokes so much that we have kept through the ages this extraordinary pleasing entertainment straight down, clothes and all, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Even as we dream of this, and the harlequinade dazzles our eyes, the dream changes--a new sound is heard, a sound from the remote past, too. We listen eagerly, clown, pantaloon, harlequin, and columbine vanish to the sound of the pan-pipes and the voice of Punch. 'Root-ti-toot, rootity-toot!' There, by the corner of the quiet square, is a tall box covered with checkered cloth. Above a man's height is an opening, and on a tiny stage are two figures, one in a doublet stiffened out like a pea pod, with a ruff hanging loose about his neck, bands at his wrists, a cap on his head--Punch. The other with a linen cap and a ruff round her neck--Judy. Below, on the ground by the gentleman who bangs a drum and blows on the pan-pipes stuck in his muffler, is a dog with a ruff round his neck--Toby. And we know--delightful to think of it--that a box hidden by the check covering, contains many curiously dressed figures--all friends of ours. The world is certainly curious, and I suppose that an Elizabethan revisiting us to-day would find but one thing the same, the humour of the harlequinade and the Punch and Judy show. Now let us get to the dull part. If you wish to swim in a sea of allusions there are a number of books into which you may dive-- 'Microcynicon.' 'Pleasant Quippes for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen.' Hall's 'Satires.' Stubbes' 'Anatomie of Abuses.' 'The Cobbler's Prophesie.' 'The Debate between Pride and Lowliness.' 'The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine.' 'The Wits Nurserie.' Euphues' 'Golden Legacie.' 'Every Man out of his Humour.' If you do not come out from these saturated with detail then you will never absorb anything. For the shapes, the doublet was a close-fitting garment, cut, if in the Italian fashion, down to a long peak in front. They were made without sleeves, like a waistcoat, and an epaulette overhung the armhole. The sleeves were tied into the doublet by means of points (ribbons with metal tags). These doublets were for a long time stuffed or bombasted into the form known as 'pea's cod bellied' or 'shotten-bellied.' The jerkin was a jacket with sleeves, and was often worn over the doublet. The sleeves of the jerkin were often open from shoulder to wrist to show the doublet sleeve underneath. These sleeves were very wide, and were ornamented with large buttons. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Elizabeth; a travelling cloak; a jerkin}] The jornet was a loose travelling cloak. The jumper a loose jerkin, worn for comfort or extra clothing in winter. Both doublet and jerkin had a little skirt or base. [Illustration: {Three types of doublet; two types of epaulette}] The very wide breeches known as trunks were worn by nearly everybody in the early part of the reign, until they vied with Venetian breeches for fashion. They were sometimes made of a series of wide bands of different colours placed alternately; sometimes they were of bands, showing the stuffed trunk hose underneath. They were stuffed with anything that came handy--wool, rags, or bran--and were of such proportions that special seats were put in the Houses of Parliament for the gentlemen who wore them. The fashion at its height appears to have lasted about eight years. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603) He wears a double linen collar, nearly as usual at this time as the ruff. His trunk hose will be seen through the openings of his trunks. His boots are held up by two leather straps. His cloak is an Italian fashion.] The Venetian breeches were very full at the top and narrowed to the knee; they were slashed and puffed, or paned like lattice windows with bars of coloured stuffs or gold lace. The French breeches were tight and ruffled in puffs about the thighs. The stockings were of yarn, or silk, or wool. They were gartered about the knee, and pulled up over the breeches; but the man most proud of his leg wore no garters, but depended on the shape of his leg and the fit of his stocking to keep the position. These stockings were sewn with clocks at the ankles, and had various patterns on them, sometimes of gold or silver thread. Openwork stockings were known. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Elizabeth}] The stockings and breeches were called, if the breeches were short and the stockings all the way up the leg, trunk hose and trunks; if the breeches came to the knee and the stockings just came over them, they were known as upper stocks and nether stocks. The shoes were shaped to the foot, and made of various leathers or stuffs; a rose of ribbon sometimes decorated the shoes. There were shoes with high cork soles called moyles. Of course, there were gallants who did things no one else thought of doing--wearing very square-toed shoes, for instance, or cock feathers in their hair. The sturtops were boots to the ankle. [Illustration: {Three types of hat for men; three type of breeches and stockings}] As for the hair, we have the love-lock tied with ribbons, the very same that we see caricatured in the wigs of clown and pantaloon. We have, also, hair left fairly long and brushed straight back from the forehead, and short-cropped hair. Beards and moustaches are worn by most. They wore little cloaks covered with embroidery, lace, sometimes even with pearls. For winter or for hard travelling the jornet or loose cloak was worn. The older and more sedate wore long stuff gowns with hanging sleeves; these gowns, made to fit at the waist and over the trunks, gave an absurd Noah's ark-like appearance to the wearers. Those who cared nothing for the fashions left their gowns open and wore them loose. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Elizabeth}] The common people wore simple clothes of the same cut as their lords--trunks or loose trousers, long hose, and plain jerkins or doublets. In the country the fashions alter, as a rule, but little; however, in this reign Corydon goes to meet Sylvia in somewhat fashionable clothes. Lodge says: 'His holiday suit marvellous seemly, in a russet jacket, welted with the same, and faced with red worsted, having a pair of blue camblet sleeves, bound at the wrists with four yellow laces, closed before very richly with a dozen pewter buttons. His hose of gray kersey, with a large slop barred all across the pocket holes with three fair guards, stitched on either side with red thread.' His stockings are also gray kersey, tied with different coloured laces; his bonnet is green, and has a copper brooch with the picture of St. Dennis. 'And to want nothing that might make him amorous in his old days, he had a fair shirt-band of white lockeram, whipt over with Coventry blue of no small cost.' [Illustration: {Three men of the time of Elizabeth; a sleeve}] The hats worn vary in shape from steeple-crowned, narrow-brimmed hats, to flat, broad-crowned hats; others show the coming tendency towards the broad-brimmed Jacobean hat. Round these hats were hatbands of every sort, gold chains, ruffled lace, silk or wool. [Illustration: {Five types of hat for men}] I think we may let these gallants rest now to walk among the shades--a walking geography of clothes they are, with French doublets, German hose, Spanish hats and cloaks, Italian ruffs, Flemish shoes; and these with chalked faces, fuzzed periwigs of false hair, partlet strips, wood busks to keep straight slim waists, will make the shades laugh perhaps, or perhaps only sigh, for there are many in that dim wardrobe of fashions who are still more foolish, still more false, than these Elizabethans. THE WOMEN Now this is the reign of the ruff and the monstrous hoop and the wired hair. As a companion to her lord, who came from the hands of his barber with his hair after the Italian manner, short and round and curled in front and frizzed, or like a Spaniard, long hair at his ears curled at the two ends, or with a French love-lock dangling down his shoulders, she--his lady--sits under the hands of her maid, and tries various attires of false _hair_, principally of a yellow colour. Every now and again she consults the looking-glass hanging on her girdle; sometimes she dresses her hair with chains of gold, from which jewels or gold-work tassels hang; sometimes she, too, allows a love-lock to rest upon her shoulder, or fall negligently on her ruff. Even the country girl eagerly waits for news of the town fashions, and follows them as best she may. In the early part of the reign the simple costume of the previous reign was still worn, and even the court ladies were quietly, though richly, dressed. In the first two years the ruff remained a fairly small size, and was made of holland, which remained stiff, and held the folds well; but later, there entered several Dutch ladies, headed by Mistress Dingham Vander Plasse, of Flanders, in 1564, who taught her pupils the art of starching cambric, and the art of folding, cutting, and pinching ruffs at five pounds a head, and the art of making starch, at the price of one pound. First, the lady put on her underpropper of wire and holland, and then she would place with a great nicety her ruff of lace, or linen, or cambric. One must understand that the ruff may be great or small, that only the very fashionable wore such a ruff as required an underpropper, and that the starched circular ruff would stand by itself without the other appliance. [Illustration: {Twelve types of head-dress and collar or ruff for women}] Before the advent of the heavily-jewelled and embroidered stomacher, and the enormous spread of skirt, the dress was a modification of that worn by the ladies in the time of Henry VIII. First, a gown cut square across the bosom and low over the shoulders, full sleeves ending in bands of cambric over the hands (these sleeves slit to show puffs of cambric from the elbow to the wrist), the skirt full and long, but without any train; the whole fitted well to the figure as far as the waist, and very stiff in front. Over this a second gown, generally of plain material, split above in a V-shape, split below at the waist, and cut away to show the under-gown. The sleeves of this gown were wide, and were turned back or cut away just by the elbow. Both gowns were laced up the back. This second gown had, as a rule, a high, standing collar, which was lined with some rich silk or with lace. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603)] [Illustration: {Four women of the time of Elizabeth}] This shape gave way to a more exaggerated form, and finally to many varieties of exaggeration. The lady might wear a jerkin like in shape to a man's, except that often it was cut low and square over the bosom, and was not stuffed quite so much in front; every variety of rich material was used for this jerkin, and the sleeves were as varied as were the man's, split and tied with ribbons. False sleeves attached at the shoulders, and left to hang loose, puffed, slashed all over, with or without bands of cambric or lace at the wrists; these bands sometimes were frills, sometimes stiffened and turned back. No person except royalty might wear crimson except in under-garments, and the middle class were not allowed to wear velvet except for sleeves. This jerkin was sometimes worn buttoned up, like a man's, to the neck, and when the hoops came into fashion and were worn high up near the waist, the basque or flounce at the bottom of the jerkin was made long, and pleated full to the top of the hooped petticoat. The plainer fashion of this was a gown buttoned high--up to the ruff--and opened from the waist to the feet to show a full petticoat of rich material; this was the general wear of the more sober-minded. Sometimes a cape was worn over the head and shoulders, not a shaped cape, but a plain, oblong piece of stuff. The ladies sometimes wore the shaped cape, with the high collar that the men wore. The French hood with a short liripipe was worn by country ladies; this covered the hair, showing nothing but a neat parting in front. The openwork lace bonnet, of the shape so well known by the portraits of Queen Mary of Scotland, is not possible to exactly describe in writing; one variety of it may be seen in the line drawing given. It is made of cambric and cut lace sewn on to wires bent into the shape required. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Elizabeth}] In such a time of extravagance in fashion the additions one may make to any form of dress in the way of ribbons, bows, sewn pearls, cuts, slashes, and puffs are without number, and I can only give the structure on which such ornamental fripperies can be placed. The hair, for example, can be dressed with pearls, rings of gold, strings of pearls, feathers, or glass ornaments. Men and women wore monstrous earrings, but curiously enough this fashion was more common to men than women. Hats were interchangeable, more especially the trim hat with a feather, in shape like those worn by the Yeoman of the Guard, but smaller. The shoulder pinions of the jerkins were puffed, slashed, and beribboned in every way. The wing sleeves, open from the shoulder all the way down, were so long sometimes as to reach the ground, and were left hanging in front, or thrown back over the shoulders, the better to display the rich under-sleeve. The ladies' shoes were cork-soled, high-heeled, and round-toed. The girdles were of every stuff, from gold cord, curiously knotted, to twisted silk; from these hung looking-glasses, and in them were stuck the embroidered and scented gloves. Ladies went masked about the streets and in the theatres, or if they wished to be unconventional, they sat in the playing booths unmasked, their painted faces exposed to the public gaze. The shoes with the high cork soles, to which I have just alluded, were in common use all over Europe, and were of all heights--from two inches to seven or eight--and they were called _chopines_. They were not such a foolish custom as might appear, for they protected the wearer from the appalling filth of the streets. The tall chopines that Hamlet mentions were really very high-soled slippers, into which the richly-embroidered shoes were placed to protect them when the ladies walked abroad. The shoes were made of leather and velvet stitched with silk, embroidered with gold, or stamped with patterns, slashed sometimes, and sometimes laced with coloured silk laces. Some ladies wore bombazines, or a silk and cotton stuff made at Norwich, and bone lace made at Honiton, both at that time the newest of English goods, although before made in Flanders; and they imported Italian lace and Venetian shoes, stuffed their stomachers with bombast, and wore a frontlet on their French hoods, called a _bongrace_, to keep their faces from sunburn. Cambric they brought from Cambrai in France, and calico from Calicut in India--the world was hunted high and low for spoil to deck these gorgeous, stiff, buckramed people, so that under all this load of universal goods one might hardly hope to find more than a clothes prop; in fact, one might more easily imagine the overdressed figure to be a marvellous marionette than a decent Englishwoman. [Illustration: {Four women of the time of Elizabeth}] [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Elizabeth}] Falstaff will not wear coarse dowlas shirts, dandies call for ostrich feathers, ladies must have Coventry blue gowns and Italian flag-shaped fans; everybody is in the fashion from milkmaids to ladies of the court, each as best as they may manage it. The Jew moves about the streets in his long gaberdine and yellow cap, the lady pads about her garden in tall chopines, and the gentleman sits down as well as he may in his bombasted breeches and smokes Herbe de la Reine in a pipe of clay, and the country woman walks along in her stamell red petticoat guarded or strapped with black, or rides past to market in her over-guard skirts. Let us imagine, by way of a picture of the times, the Queen in her bedchamber under the hands of her tiring-women: She is sitting before a mirror in her embroidered chemise of fine Raynes linen, in her under-linen petticoat and her silk stockings with the gold thread clocks. Over these she wears a rich wrap. Slippers are on her feet. In front of her, on a table, are rouge and chalk and a pad of cotton-wool--already she has made up her face, and her bright bird-like eyes shine in a painted mask, her strong face, her hawk-like nose and her expressionless mouth reflect back at her from the mirror. Beside the rouge pot is a Nuremberg egg watch, quietly ticking in its crystal case. One of the women brings forward a number of attires of false hair, golden and red, and from these the Queen chooses one. It is a close periwig of tight red curls, among which pearls and pieces of burnished metal shine. With great care this wig is fastened on to the Queen's head, and she watches the process with her bright eyes and still features in the great mirror. Then, when this wig is fixed to her mind, she rises, and is helped into the privie coat of bones and buckram, which is laced tightly by the women at her back. Now comes the moment when they are about to fasten on her whalebone hips the great farthingale--over which her voluminous petticoats and skirts will fall. The wheel of bone is tied with ribbons about her waist, and there securely fastened. After some delay in choosing an under-gown, she then puts on several linen petticoats, one over another, to give the required fulness to her figure; and then comes the stiffly-embroidered under-gown--in this case but a petticoat with a linen bodice which has no sleeves. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603) Compare this with the other plate showing the opposite fashion.] With great care she seats herself on a broad chair, and a perfect army of ruffs is laid before her. As the tire-woman is displaying the ruffs she talks to the Queen, and tells her that peculiar story, then current, of the Lady of Antwerp, who was in a great way because she could not get her ruff to set aright, and when in a passion she called upon the devil to take it, as if in answer to the summons a young and handsome gentleman appeared. Together they tried the ruff, and the young gentleman suddenly strangled the lady and vanished. Now when they came to carry away the coffin of the lady some days later, it was found that no one could lift it, so, in the end, it was opened, and there, to the surprise of everybody, sat a great black cat setting a ruff. The Queen's eyes twinkle on this story, for she has a great fund of dry humour--and so, to the business of the ruffs. First one and then another is discarded; and finally the choice falls between one of great size, shaped like a catherine-wheel and starched blue, and the other of three depths but not of such great circumference, starched yellow, after the receipt of Mrs. Turner, afterwards hung at Tyburn in a ruff of the same colour. The Queen wavers, and the tire-woman recommends the smaller bands: 'This, madame, is one of those ruffs made by Mr. Higgins, the tailor near to St. James's, where he has set up an establishment for the making of such affairs--it is a picadillie, and would----' The Queen stops her and chooses the ruff; it is very much purled into folds, and it bristles with points. The women approach with a crimson over-gown and slips it over the Queen's head--it is open in front to show the rich petticoat, and it has great stuffed wings, epaulettes, or mahoitres on the shoulders. The tight-fitting bodice of the gown is buttoned up to the throat, and is stuffed out in front to meet the fall of the hoops; it has falling sleeves, but the real sleeves are now brought and tied to the points attached to the shoulders of the gown. They are puffed sleeves of the same material as the under-gown, and the falling sleeves of the upper gown are now tied with one or two bows across them so that the effect of the sleeves is much the same as the effect of the skirts; an embroidered stuff showing in the opening of a plain material. These are called virago sleeves. This done, the strings of pearls are placed around the Queen's neck, and then the underpropper or supportasse of wire and holland is fastened on her neck, and the picadillie ruff laid over it. The Queen exchanges her slippers for cork-soled shoes, stands while her girdle is knotted, sees that the looking-glass, fan, and pomander are hung upon it, and then, after a final survey of herself in the glass, she calls for her muckinder or handkerchief, and--Queen Elizabeth is dressed. So in this manner the Queen struts down to posterity, a wonderful woman in ridiculous clothes, and in her train we may dimly see Mr. Higgins, the tailor, who named a street without knowing it, a street known in every part of the civilized world; but, nowadays, one hardly thinks of connecting Piccadilly with a lace ruff.... SHAKESPEARE AND CLOTHES There are not so many allusions to Elizabethan dress in the plays of Shakespeare as one might suppose upon first thought. One has grown so accustomed to Shakespeare put on the stage in elaborate dresses that one imagines, or one is apt to imagine, that there is a warrant for some of the dresses in the plays. In some cases he confounds the producer and the illustrator by introducing garments of his own date into historical plays, as, for example, Coriolanus. Here are the clothes allusions in that play: 'When you cast your stinking greasy caps, You have made good work, You and your apron-men.' 'Go to them with this bonnet in your hand.' 'Enter Coriolanus in a gown of humility.' 'Matrons fling gloves, ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers.' 'The kitchen malkin pins her richest lockram[A] 'bout her reechy neck.' [A] 'Lockram' is coarse linen. 'Our veiled dames.' 'Commit the war of white and damask in their nicely gawded cheeks to the wanton and spoil of Phoebus' burning kisses.' 'Doublets that hangmen would bury with these that wore them.' I have not kept the lines in verse, but in a convenient way to show their allusions. In 'Pericles' we have mention of ruffs and bases. Pericles says: 'I am provided of a pair of bases.' Certainly the bases might be made to appear Roman, if one accepts the long slips of cloth or leather in Roman military dress as being bases; but Shakespeare is really--as in the case of the ruffs--alluding to the petticoats of the doublet of his time worn by grave persons. Bases also apply to silk hose. In 'Titus Andronicus' we have: 'An idiot holds his bauble for his God.' Julius Cæsar is mentioned as an Elizabethan: 'He plucked ope his doublet.' The Carpenter in 'Julius Cæsar' is asked: 'Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?' The mob have 'sweaty night-caps.' Cleopatra, in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' says: 'I'll give thee an armour all of gold.' The 'Winter's Tale,' the action of which occurs in Pagan times, is full of anachronisms. As, for instance, Whitsun pastorals, Christian burial, an Emperor of Russia, and an Italian fifteenth-century painter. Also: 'Lawn as white as driven snow; Cyprus[B] black as ere was crow; Gloves as sweet as damask roses; Masks for faces and for noses; Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber, Perfume for a lady's chamber; Golden quoifs and stomachers, Pins and polking-sticks of steel.' [B] Thin stuff for women's veils. So, you see, Autolycus, the pedlar of these early times, is spoken of as carrying polking-sticks with which to stiffen ruffs. Shylock, in 'The Merchant of Venice,' should wear an orange-tawny bonnet lined with black taffeta, for in this way were the Jews of Venice distinguished in 1581. In 'The Tempest' one may hear of rye-straw hats, of gaberdines, rapiers, and a pied fool's costume. In 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' we hear: 'Why, then, your ladyship must cut your hair.' 'No, girl; I'll tie it up in silken strings With twenty odd conceited true-love knot; To be fantastic may become a youth Of greater time than I shall show to be.' Also: 'Since she did neglect her looking-glass, And threw her sun-expelling mask away.' Many ladies at this time wore velvet masks. 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' gives us a thrummed hat, a muffler or linen to hide part of the face, gloves, fans. Falstaff says: 'When Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan, I took it up my honour thou had'st it not.' Also: 'The firm fashion of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy fait in a semicircled farthingale.' 'Twelfth Night' is celebrated for us by Malvolio's cross garters. Sir Toby, who considers his clothes good enough to drink in, says: 'So be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.' Sir Toby also remarks to Sir Andrew upon the excellent constitution of his leg, and Sir Andrew replied that: 'It does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock.' The Clown says: 'A sentence is but a cheveril[C] glove to a good wit.' [C] 'Cheveril' is kid leather. In 'Much Ado About Nothing' we learn of one who lies awake ten nights, 'carving the fashion of his doublet.' Also of one who is 'in the shape of two countries at once, as a German from the waist downwards all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet.' Again of a gown: 'Cloth of gold, and cuts, and laced with silver set with pearls down sides, side sleeves, and skirts, round under borne with a bluish tinsel.' In 'As You Like It' one may show a careless desolation by ungartered hose, unbanded bonnet, unbuttoned sleeve, and untied shoe. 'The Taming of the Shrew' tells of serving-men: 'In their new fustian and their white jackets.... Let their blue coats be brushed, and their garters of an indifferent knit.' Also we have a cap 'moulded on a porringer.' 'Love's Labour's Lost' tells of: 'Your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting.' 'All's Well that Ends Well': 'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? Dost make a hose of thy sleeves?' 'Yonder's my lord your son with a patch of velvet on's face: whether there be a scar under't or no, the velvet knows.... There's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.' In 'Henry IV.,' Part II., there is an allusion to the blue dress of Beadles. Also: 'About the satin for my short cloak and slops.' 'The smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles.' 'To take notice how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, or to bear the inventory of thy shirts.' There are small and unimportant remarks upon dress in other plays, as dancing-shoes in 'Romeo and Juliet' and in 'Henry VIII.': 'The remains of fool and feather that they got in France.' 'Tennis and tall stockings, Short blistered breeches and those types of travel.' But in 'Hamlet' we find more allusions than in the rest. Hamlet is ever before us in his black: ''Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black.' 'Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced; No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled, Ungartered, and down-goes to his ancle; Pale as his shirt.' 'Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine.'[D] [D] Shoes with very high soles. 'O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion into tatters.' 'With two provincial roses on my ragged shoes, My sea-gown scarfed about me.' Having read this, I think it will be seen that there is no such great difficulty in costuming any play, except perhaps this last. There have been many attempts to put 'Hamlet' into the clothes of the date of his story, but even when the rest of the characters are dressed in skins and cross-gartered trousers, when the Viking element is strongly insisted upon, still there remains the absolutely Elizabethan figure in inky black, with his very Elizabethan thoughts, the central figure, almost the great symbol of his age. JAMES THE FIRST Reigned twenty-two years: 1603-1625. Born 1566. Married 1589, Anne of Denmark. THE MEN This couplet may give a little sketch of the man we should now see before us: 'His ruffe is set, his head set in his ruff; His reverend trunks become him well enough.' We are still in the times of the upstanding ruff; we are watching, like sartorial gardeners, for the droop of this linen flower. Presently this pride of man, and of woman too, will lose its bristling, super-starched air, and will hang down about the necks of the cavaliers; indeed, if we look very carefully, we see towards the end of the reign the first fruits of elegance born out of Elizabethan precision. Now in such a matter lies the difficulty of presenting an age or a reign in an isolated chapter. In the first place, one must endeavour to show how a Carolean gentleman, meeting a man in the street, might say immediately, 'Here comes one who still affects Jacobean clothes.' Or how an Elizabethan lady might come to life, and, meeting the same man, might exclaim, 'Ah! these are evidently the new fashions.' The Carolean gentleman would notice at first a certain air of stiffness, a certain padded arrangement, a stiff hat, a crisp ornament of feathers. He would see that the doublet varied from his own in being more slashed, or slashed in many more degrees. He would see that it was stiffened into an artificial figure, that the little skirt of it was very orderly, that the cut of the sleeves was tight. He would notice also that the man's hair was only half long, giving an appearance not of being grown long for beauty, but merely that it had not been cut for some time. He would be struck with the preciseness, the correct air of the man. He would see, unless the stranger happened to be an exquisite fellow, that his shoes were plain, that the 'roses' on them were small and neat. His trunks, he would observe, were wide and full, but stiff. Mind you, he would be regarding this man with seventeenth-century eyes--eyes which told him that he was himself an elegant, careless fellow, dressed in the best of taste and comfort--eyes which showed him that the Jacobean was a nice enough person in his dress, but old-fashioned, grandfatherly. To us, meeting the pair of them, I am afraid that a certain notion we possess nowadays of cleanliness and such habits would oppress us in the company of both, despite the fact that they changed their linen on Sundays, or were supposed to do so. And we, in our absurd clothes, with hard hats on our heads, and stiff collars tight about our necks, creases in our trousers, and some patent invention of the devil on our feet, might feel that the Jacobean gentleman looked and was untidy, to say the least of it, and had better be viewed from a distance. To the Elizabethan lady the case would be reversed. The man would show her that the fashions for men had been modified since her day; she would see that his hair was not kept in, what she would consider, order; she would see that his ruff was smaller, and his hat brim was larger. She would, I venture to think, disapprove of him, thinking that he did not look so 'smart.' For ourselves, I think we should distinguish him at once as a man who wore very large knickerbockers tied at the knee, and, in looking at a company of men of this time, we should be struck by the padding of these garments to a preposterous size. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of James I.; three types of shoe; one type of boot}] There has come into fashion a form of ruff cut square in front and tied under the chin, which can be seen in the drawings better than it can be described; indeed, the alterations in clothes are not easy to describe, except that they follow the general movement towards looseness. The trunks have become less like pumpkins and more like loose, wide bags. The hats, some of them stiff and hard, show in other forms an inclination to slouch. Doublets are often made loose, and little sets of slashes appear inside the elbow of the sleeves, which will presently become one long slash in Cavalier costumes. We have still: 'Morisco gowns, Barbarian sleeves, Polonian shoes, with divers far fetcht trifles; Such as the wandering English galant rifles Strange countries for.' But we have not, for all that, the wild extravaganza of fashions that marked the foregoing reign. Indeed, says another writer, giving us a neat picture of a man: 'His doublet is So close and pent as if he feared one prison Would not be strong enough to keep his soul in, But his taylor makes another; And trust me (for I knew it when I loved Cupid) He does endure much pain for poor praise Of a neat fitting suit.' To wear something abnormally tight seems to be the condition of the world in love, from James I. to David Copperfield. Naturally, a man of the time might be riding down the street across a Scotch plaid saddle cloth and pass by a beggar dressed in clothes of Henry VIII.'s time, or pass a friend looking truly Elizabethan--but he would find generally that the short, swollen trunks were very little worn, and also--another point--that a number of men had taken to walking in boots, tall boots, instead of shoes. [Illustration: {A man of the time of James I.; a variation of breeches}] As he rides along in his velvet cloak, his puffed and slashed doublet, his silken hose, his hands gloved with embroidered gloves, or bared to show his rings, smelling of scents, a chain about his neck, he will hear the many street cries about him: 'Will you buy any sand, mistress?' 'Brooms, brooms for old shoes! Pouch-rings, boots, or buskings! Will ye buy any new brooms?' 'New oysters, new oysters! New, new cockles!' 'Fresh herrings, cockels nye!' 'Will you buy any straw?' 'Hay yee any kitchen stuff, maids?' 'Pippins fine! Cherrie ripe, ripe, ripe!' [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES I. (1603-1625) He shows the merging of the Elizabethan fashion into the fashion of Charles I. The stiff doublet and the loose breeches, the plain collar, and the ribbons at the knees. On his hawking glove is a hawk, hooded and jessed.] [Illustration: {Four men of the time of James I.; the bottom of a doublet; an alternative collar; shoe and stocking}] And he will pass apprentices, most of them still in flat caps, blue doublets, and white cloth breeches and stockings, sewn all in one piece, with daggers on their backs or at their sides. And then, travelling with his man, he will come to his inn. For the life of me, though it has little to do with dress, I must give this picture of an inn from Fynes Moryson, which will do no harm, despite the fact that Sir Walter Besant quoted some of it. 'As soon as a passenger comes to an Inn, the servants run to him' (these would be in doublet and hose of some plain colour, with shirt-collars to the doublets turned down loose; the trunks would be wide and to the knee, and there buttoned), 'and one takes his horse and walks him till he be cool, then rubs him and gives him meat, yet I must say that they are not much to be trusted in this last point, without the eye of the Master or his servant to oversee them. Another servant gives the passenger his private chamber, and kindles his fire, the third pulls off his boots and makes them clean' (these two servants would be wearing aprons). 'Then the Host or Hostess visits him, and if he will eat with the Host, or at a common table with the others, his meal will cost him sixpence, or in some places but fourpence, yet this course is less honourable and not used by Gentlemen; but if he will eat in his chamber' (he will retain his hat within the house), 'he commands what meats he will according to his appetite, and as much as he thinks fit for him and his company, yea, the kitchen is open to him, to command the meat to be dressed as he likes best; and when he sits at table, the Host or Hostess will accompany him, if they have many guests, will at least visit him, taking it for courtesy to be bid sit down; while he eats, if he have company especially, he shall be offered music, which he may freely take or refuse, and if he be solitary the musicians will give him good day with music in the morning. 'It is the custom and in no way disgraceful to set up part of supper for his breakfast. 'Lastly, a Man cannot more freely command at home in his own house than he may do in his Inn, and at parting if he give some few pence to the Chamberlin and Ostler they wish him a happy journey.' Beyond this and the drawings I need say no more. The drawings will show how the points of a doublet may be varied, the epaulette left or taken away, the little skirts cut or left plain. They show you how a hat may be feathered and the correct shape of the hat; how breeches may be left loose at the knee, or tied, or buttoned; of the frills at the wrist and the ruffs at the neck--of everything, I hope, that is necessary and useful. [Illustration: {A man of the time of James I.}] THE WOMEN 'What fashion will make a woman have the best body, tailor?' 'A short Dutch waist, with a round Catherine-wheel fardingale, a close sleeve, with a cartoose collar, or a pickadell.' I think, with a little imagination, we can see the lady: add to our picture a feather fan, a man's beaver hat with a fine band round it stuck with a rose or a feather, shoes with ribbons or roses, and jewels in the hair--and I think the lady walks. Yet so difficult do I find it to lead her tripping out of the wardrobe into the world, I would remind myself of the laws for servants in this time: 'And no servant may toy with the maids under pain of fourpence.' It is a salutary warning, and one that must be kept in the mind's eye, and as I pluck the lady from the old print, hold her by the Dutch waist, and twirl her round until the Catherine-wheel fardingale is a blurred circle, and the pickadell a mist of white linen, I feel, for my prying, like one who has toyed under pain of fourpence. [Illustration: {High collar and head-dress for a woman}] There are many excellent people with the true historical mind who would pick up my lady and strip her in so passionless a way as to leave her but a mass of Latin names--so many bones, tissues, and nerves--and who would then label and classify her wardrobe under so many old English and French, Dutch and Spanish names, bringing to bear weighty arguments several pages long over the derivation of the word 'cartoose' or 'pickadell,' write in notebooks of her little secret fineries, bear down on one another with thundering eloquence upon the relation of St. Catherine and her wheel upon seventeenth-century dressmaking, and so confuse and bewilder the more simple and less learned folk that we should turn away from the Eve of the seventeenth century and from the heap of clothes upon the floor no whit the wiser for all their pains. Not that I would laugh, even smile, at the diligence of these learned men who in their day puzzled the father of Tristram Shandy over the question of breeches, but, as it is in my mind impossible to disassociate the clothes and the woman, I find it difficult to follow their dissertations, however enlightening, upon Early English cross-stitch. And now, after I have said all this, I find myself doing very nearly the same thing. You will find, if you look into the lady's wardrobe, that she has other fashions than the close sleeve: she has a close sleeve as an under sleeve, with a long hanging sleeve falling from the elbow; she has ruffs at her wrist of pointed lace, more cuffs than ruffs, indeed. She does not always follow the fashion of the short Dutch waist as she has, we can see, a dress with a long waist and a tapering front to the bodice. Some dresses of hers are divided in the skirts to show a barred petticoat, or a petticoat with a broad border of embroidery. Sometimes she is covered with little bows, and at others with much gold lacing; and now and again she wears a narrow sash round her waist tied with a bow in front. She is taking more readily to the man's hat, feathered and banded, and in so doing is forced to dress her hair more simply and do away with jewellery on her forehead; but, as is often the case, she dresses her hair with plumes and jewels and little linen or lace ruffs, and atop of all wears a linen cap with side wings to it and a peak in the centre. Her ruff is now, most generally, in the form of an upstanding collar to her dress, open in front, finishing on her shoulders with some neat bow or other ornament. It is of lace of very fine workmanship, edged plain and square, or in all manner of fancy scallops, circles, and points. Sometimes she will wear both ruff and collar, the ruff underneath to prop up her collar at the back to the required modish angle. Sometimes her bodice will finish off in a double Catherine-wheel. Her maid is a deal more simple; her hair is dressed very plainly, a loop by the ears, a twist at the nape of the neck. She has a shawl over her shoulders, or a broad falling collar of white linen. She has no fardingale, but her skirts are full. Her bodice fits, but is not stiffened artificially; her sleeves are tight and neat, and her cuffs plain. Upon her head is a broad-brimmed plain hat. [Illustration: {Comparison of head-dress between a lady and a maid}] She has a piece of gossip for her mistress: at Chelsea they are making a satin dress for the Princess of Wales from Chinese silkworm's silk. On another day comes the news that the Constable of Castile when at Whitehall subscribed very handsomely to the English fashion, and kissed the Queen's hands and the cheeks of twenty ladies of honour. The fashion for dresses of pure white, either in silk, cloth, or velvet has affected both men and women; and the countries which gave a name to the cuts of the garments are evidenced in the literature of the time. How a man's breeches or slops are Spanish; his waist, like the lady's, Dutch; his doublet French; his and her sleeves and wings on the shoulders French; their boots Polonian, cloaks German, hose Venetian, hats from everywhere. These spruce coxcombs, with looking-glasses set in their tobacco boxes, so that they may privately confer with them to see-- 'How his band jumpeth with his piccadilly, Whether his band-strings balence equally, Which way his feather wags,' strut along on their high-heeled shoes, and ogle any lady as she passes. Another fashion common to those in the high mode was to have the bodice below the ruff cut so low as to show all the breast bare, and this, together with the painting of the face, gave great offence to the more sober-minded. The ruffs and collars of lace were starched in many colours--purple, goose-green, red and blue, yellow being completely out of the fashion since the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury by Mrs. Anne Turner, the friend of the Countess of Somerset; and this because Mrs. Turner elected to appear at the gallows in a yellow ruff. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES I. (1603-1625) Here is seen the wide fardingale, or farthingale, the elaborate under-skirt, and the long hanging sleeves of the gown. Also, the very tall upstanding ruff or collar of lace.] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of James I.; a ruff and hat; an alternative dress}] As for the fardingale, it was having its last fling. This absurd garment had its uses once--so they say who write scandal of a Spanish Princess, and served to conceal her state upon a certain time; but when ladies forsook the fashion, they wore a loose, almost shapeless, gown, open from the waist to the feet, and a plain, unstiffened jerkin or jacket underneath. Such a conglomeration is needed (if you remember we are looking over a lady's wardrobe) to make a lady of the time: such stuffs as rash, taffeta paropa, novats, shagge, filizetta, damask, mochado. Rash is silk and stuff, taffeta is thin silk, mochado is mock velvet. There, again, one may fall into an antiquarian trap; whereas mochado is a manufacture of silk to imitate velvet, mokkadoe is a woollen cloth, and so on; there is no end to it. Still, some may read and ask themselves what is a rebatoe. It is the collar-like ruff worn at this time. In this medley of things we shall see purles, falles, squares, buskes, tires, fans, palisadoes (this is a wire to hold the hair next to the first or duchess knot), puffs, ruffs, partlets, frislets, fillets, pendulets, bracelets, busk-points, shoe-ties, shoe roses, bongrace bonnets, and whalebone wheels--Eve! All this, for what purpose? To turn out one of those extraordinary creatures with a cart-wheel round the middle of their persons. As the reign died, so did its fashions die also: padded breeches lost some of their bombast, ruffs much of their starch, and fardingales much of their circumference, and the lady became more Elizabethan in appearance, wore a roll under her hair in front, and a small hood with a jewelled frontlet on her forehead. It was the last of the Tudor dress, and came, as the last flicker of a candle, before the new mode, Fashion's next footstep. CHARLES THE FIRST Reigned twenty-four years: 1625-1649. Born 1600. Married 1625, Henrietta of France. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Charles I.}] This surely is the age of elegance, if one may trust such an elegant and graceful mind as had Vandyck. In all the wonderful gallery of portraits he has left, these silvery graceful people pose in garments of ease. The main thing that I must do is to show how, gradually, the stiff Jacobean dress became unfrozen from its clutch upon the human form, how whalebones in men's jackets melted away, breeches no longer swelled themselves with rags and bran, collars fell down, and shirts lounged through great open spaces in the sleeves. It was the time of an immaculate carelessness; the hair was free, or seemed free, to droop in languid tresses on men's shoulders, curl at pretty will on men's foreheads. Shirts were left open at the neck, breeches were loosed at the knee. Do I revile the time if I say that the men had an air, a certain supercilious air, of being dukes disguised as art students? [Illustration: {Six styles of hair and beard}] We know, all of us, the Vandyck beard, the Carolean moustache brushed away from the lips; we know Lord Pembroke's tousled--carefully tousled--hair; Kiligrew's elegant locks. From the head to the neck is but a step--a sad step in this reign--and here we find our friend the ruff utterly tamed; 'pickadillies, now out of request,' writes one, tamed into the falling band, the Vandyck collar, which form of neck-dress has never left the necks and shoulders of our modern youthful prodigies; indeed, at one time, no youthful genius dare be without one. The variations of this collar are too well known; of such lace as edged them and of the manner of their tying, it would waste time to tell, except that in some instances the strings are secured by a ring. [Illustration: {A doublet}] Such a change has come over the doublet as to make it hardly the same garment; the little slashes have become two or three wide cuts, the sleeves are wide and loose with, as a rule, one big opening on the inside of the arm, with this opening embroidered round. The cuffs are like little collars, turned back with point-lace edges. The actual cut of the doublet has not altered a great deal, the ordinary run of doublet has the pointed front, it is tied round the waist with a little narrow sash; but there has arrived a new jacket, cut round, left open from the middle of the breast, sometimes cut so short as to show the shirt below bulged out over the breeches. Sometimes you will see one of these new short jackets with a slit in the back, and under this the man will be wearing the round trunks of his father's time. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles I.; a type of jacket; a type of breeches}] The breeches are mostly in two classes--the long breeches the shape of bellows, tied at the knee with a number of points or a bunch of coloured ribbons; or the breeches cut the same width all the way down, loose at the knee and there ornamented with a row of points (ribbons tied in bows with tags on them). A new method of ornamentation was this notion of coloured ribbons in bunches, on the breeches, in front, at the sides, at the knees--almost anywhere--and also upon the coats. For some time the older fashioned short round cape or cloak prevailed, but later, large silk cloaks used as wraps thrown across the shoulders were used as well. The other cloaks had straps, like the modern golf cape, by which the cloak might be allowed to fall from the shoulders. A custom arrived of wearing boots more frequently, and there was the tall, square-toed, high-heeled boot, fitting up the leg to just below the knee, without a turnover; the stiff, thick leather, blacking boot with broad, stiff tops, also not turned back; and there was also the result of the extraordinary melting, crumpled dismissal of all previous stiffness, whereby the old tall boot drooped down until it turned over and fell into a wide cup, all creases and wrinkles, nearly over the foot, while across the instep was a wide, shaped flap of leather. This last falling boot-top was turned in all manner of ways by those who cared to give thought to it. [Illustration: {Sixteen types of boot and shoe}] [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF CHARLES I. (1625-1649) He has wrapped his blue cloak over his arm, a usual method of carrying the cloak. He is simply dressed, without bunches of ribbons or points.] The insides of the tops of these boots were lined with lace or silk, and the dandy turned them down to give full show to the lining--this turning of broad tops was such an inconvenience that he was forced to use a straddled walk when he wore his boots thus. Canes were carried with gold, silver, or bone heads, and were ornamented further by bunches of ribbon. Coming again to the head, we find ribbon also in use to tie up locks of hair; delicate shades of ribbon belonging to some fair lady were used to tie up locks to show delicate shades of love. Some men wore two long love-locks on either side of the face, others wore two elaborately-curled locks on one side only. The hats, as the drawings will show, are broad in the brim and of an average height in the crown, but a dandy, here and there, wore a hat with next to no brim and a high crown. Most hats were feathered. There is a washing tally in existence of this time belonging, I think, to the Duke of Rutland, which is very interesting. It is made of beech-wood covered with linen, and is divided into fifteen squares. In the centre of each square there is a circle cut, and in the circle are numbers. Over the number is a plate with a pin for pivot in the centre, a handle to turn, and a hole to expose a number. Above each circle are the names of the articles in this order: Ruffs. Bandes. Cuffes. Handkercher. Cappes. Shirtes. Halfshirts. Boote Hose. Topps. Sockes. Sheetes. Pillowberes. Table Clothes. Napkins. Towells. Topps are linen boot-frills, and halfshirts are stomachers. There remains little to be said except that black was a favourite dress for men, also light blue and cream-coloured satin. Bristol paste diamonds were in great demand, and turquoise rings were very fashionable. For the rest, Vandyck's pictures are available to most people, or good reproductions of them, and those, with a knowledge of how such dress came into being, are all that can be needed. THE WOMEN There is one new thing you must be prepared to meet in this reign, and that will best be described by quoting the title of a book written at this time: 'A Wonder of Wonders, or a Metamorphosis of Fair Faces into Foul Visages; an invective against black-spotted faces.' By this you may see at once that every humour was let loose in the shapes of stars, and moons, crowns, slashes, lozenges, and even a coach and horses, cut in black silk, ready to be gummed to the faces of the fair. Knowing from other histories of such fads that the germ of the matter lies in a royal indisposition, we look in vain for the conceited history of the Princess and the Pimple, but no doubt some more earnest enquirer after truth will hit upon the story--this toy tragedy of the dressing-table. For the dress we can do no better than look at the 'Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus,' that wonderfully careful compilation by Hollar of all the dresses in every class of society. It is interesting to see how the Jacobean costume lost, by degrees, its formal stiffness, and first fardingale and then ruff vanished. Early in the reign the high-dressed hair was abandoned, and to take its place the hair was dressed so that it was gathered up by the ears, left parted on the crown, and twisted at the back to hold a plume or feather. Time went on, and hair-dressing again altered; the hair was now taken in four parts: first the hair was drawn well back off the forehead, then the two side divisions were curled neatly and dressed to fall over the ears, the fourth group of hair was neatly twisted and so made into a small knot holding the front hair in its place. Later on came the fringe of small curls, as in the portrait of Queen Henrietta at Windsor by Vandyck. We see at first that while the ruff, or rather the rebatoe--that starched lace high collar--remained, the fardingale having disappeared, left, for the upper gown, an enormous quantity of waste loose material that had previously been stretched over the fardingale and parted in front to show the satin petticoat. From this there sprung, firstly, a wide, loose gown, open all the way down and tied about the middle with a narrow sash, the opening showing the boned bodice of the under-dress with its pointed protruding stomacher, the woman's fashion having retained the form of the man's jerkin. Below this showed the satin petticoat with its centre strip or band of embroidery, and the wide border of the same. In many cases the long hanging sleeves were kept. Then there came the fall of the rebatoe and the decline of the protruding figure, and with this the notion of tying back the full upper skirt to show more plainly the satin petticoat, which was now losing the centre band of ornament and the border. With this revolution in dress the disappearing ruff became at first much lower and then finally vanished, and a lace collar, falling over the shoulders, took its place. This gave rise to two distinct fashions in collars, the one as I have described, the other a collar from the neck, like a large edition of the man's collar of that time. This collar came over the shoulders and in two points over the breast, sometimes completely hiding the upper part of the dress. The stiff-boned bodice gave place to one more easily cut, shorter, with, in place of the long point, a series of long strips, each strip ornamented round the hem. At this time the sleeves, different from the old-fashioned tight sleeves, were very full indeed, and the sleeve of the loose over-gown was made wider in proportion, and was tied across the under-sleeve above the elbow by a knot of ribbons, the whole ending in a deep cuff of lace. Then the over-gown disappeared, the bodice became a short jacket laced in front, openly, so as to show the sleeveless bodice of the same material and colour as the petticoat; the sleeves were not made so wide, and they were cut to come just below the elbow, leaving the wrists and forearm bare. In winter a lady often wore one of those loose Dutch jackets, round and full, with sleeves just long enough to cover the under-sleeves, the whole lined and edged with fur; or she might wear a short circular fur-lined cape with a small turned-over collar. In summer the little jacket was often discarded, and the dress was cut very simply but very low in the bust, and they wore those voluminous silk wraps in common with the men. The little sashes were very much worn, and ornaments of knots of ribbon or points (that is, a ribbon with a metal tag at either end) were universal. The change of fashion to short full sleeves gave rise to the turned back cuff of the same material as the sleeve, and some costumes show this short jacket with its short sleeves with cuffs, while under it shows the dress with tight sleeves reaching to the wrists where were linen or lace cuffs, a combination of two fashions. Part of the lady's equipment now was a big feather fan, and a big fur muff for winter; also the fashion of wearing long gloves to reach to the elbow came in with the advent of short sleeves. Naturally enough there was every variety of evolution from the old fashion to the new, as the tight sleeves did not, of course, become immediately wide and loose, but by some common movement, so curious in the history of such revolutions, the sleeve grew and grew from puffs at the elbow to wide cuffs, to wide shoulders, until the entire sleeve became swollen out of all proportion, and the last little pieces of tightness were removed. The form of dress with cuffs to the jackets, lacing, sashes, bunches of ribbon, and looped up skirts, lasted for a great number of years. It was started by the death of the fardingale, and it lived into the age of hoops. These ladies wore shoe-roses upon their shoes, and these bunches of ribbon, very artificially made up, cost sometimes as much as from three to thirty pounds a pair, these very expensive roses being ornamented with jewels. From these we derive the saying, 'Roses worth a family.' In the country the women wore red, gray, and black cloth homespun, and for riding they put on safeguards or outer petticoats. The wide-brimmed beaver hat was in general wear, and a lady riding in the country would wear such a hat or a hood and a cloak and soft top boots. Women's petticoats were called plackets as well as petticoats. With the careless air that was then adopted by everybody, which was to grow yet more carefully careless in the reign of Charles II., the hair was a matter which must have undivided attention, and centuries of tight dressing had not improved many heads, so that when the loose love-locks and the dainty tendrils became the fashion, many good ladies and gentlemen had recourse to the wigmaker. From this time until but an hundred years ago, from the periwig bought for Sexton, the fool of Henry VIII., down to the scratches and bobs of one's grandfather's youth, the wigmaker lived and prospered. To-day, more secretly yet more surely, does the maker of transformations live and prosper, but in the days when to be wigless was to be undressed the perruquier was a very great person. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF CHARLES I. (1625-1649) Notice the broad collar and deep cuffs. The dress is simple but rich. The bodice is laced with the same colour as the narrow sash. The hair is arranged in a series of elaborate curls over the forehead.] This was the day, then, of satins, loosened hair, elbow sleeves, and little forehead curls. The stiffness of the older times will pass away, but it had left its clutch still on these ladies; how far it vanished, how entirely it left costume, will be seen in the next royal reign, when Nell Gwynne was favourite and Sir Peter Lely painted her. ENGRAVINGS BY HOLLAR These excellent drawings by Hollar need no explanation. They are included in this book because of their great value as accurate contemporary drawings of costume. [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] THE CROMWELLS 1649-1660. THE MEN AND WOMEN 'I left my pure mistress for a space, And to a snip-snap barber straight went I; I cut my hair, and did my corps uncase Of 'parel's pride that did offend the eye; My high crowned hat, my little beard also, My pecked band, my shoes were sharp at toe. 'Gone was my sword, my belt was laid aside, And I transformed both in looks and speech; My 'parel plain, my cloak was void of pride, My little skirts, my metamorphosed breech, My stockings black, my garters were tied shorter, My gloves no scent; thus marched I to her porter.' [Illustration: {A man of the time of the Cromwells; a type of jacket}] It is a question, in this time of restraint, of formalism, where anything could be made plain, cut in a cumbrous fashion, rendered inelegant, it was done. The little jackets were denuded of all forms of frippery, the breeches were cut straight, and the ornaments, if any, were of the most severe order. Hats became broader in the brim, boots wider in the tops, in fact, big boots seemed almost a sign of heavy religious feeling. The nice hair, love-locks, ordered negligence all vanished, and plain crops or straight hair, not over long, marked these extraordinary people. It was a natural revolt against extravagance, and in some more sensible minds it was not carried to excess; points and bows were allowable, though of sombre colours. Sashes still held good, but of larger size, ruffs at the wrists were worn, but of plain linen. The bands or collars varied in size according to the religious enthusiasm of the wearers, but all were plain without lace edgings, and were tied with plain strings. Black, dark brown, and dull gray were the common colours, relieved sometimes, if the man was wearing a sleeveless coat, by the yellow and red-barred sleeves of the under-jacket, or possibly by coloured sleeves sewn into the coat under the shoulder-wings. Overcoats were cut as simply as possible, though they did not skimp the material but made them wide and loose. [Illustration: A CROMWELLIAN MAN (1649-1660) Notice the careful plainness of his dress, and his very wide-topped boots.] [Illustration: {Three men of the time of the Cromwells; a type of sleeve; two types of breeches and boot; a type of collar}] The women dressed their hair more plainly, the less serious retained the little bunches of side curls, but the others smoothed their hair away under linen caps or black hoods tied under their chins. Another thing the women did was to cut from their bodices all the little strips but the one in the middle of the back, and this they left, like a tail, behind. Some, of course, dressed as before with the difference in colour and in ornament that made for severity. It had an effect on the country insomuch as the country people ceased to be extravagant in the materials for garments and in many like ways, and so lay by good fortunes for their families--these families coming later into the gay court of Charles II. had all the more to lavish on the follies of his fashions. [Illustration: {A man of the time of the Cromwells; a type of coat}] The Puritan is as well-known a figure as any in history; an intelligent child could draw you a picture or describe you a Puritan as well as he could describe the Noah of Noah's Ark. He has become part of the stock for an Academy humourist, a thousand anecdote pictures have been painted of him; very often his nose is red, generally he has a book in his hand, laughing maids bring him jacks of ale, jeering Cavaliers swagger past him: his black cloak, board shoes, wide Geneva bands are as much part of our national picture as Punch or Harlequin. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660) This is not one of the most Puritanical dresses, but shows how the richness of the reign of Charles I. was toned down. She carries a muff in her hand, wears a good wide collar and cuffs, and neat roses on her shoes.] [Illustration: {Two women of the time of the Cromwells; a type of jacket; two types of head-dress for women}] The Puritaness is also known. She is generally represented as a sly bird in sombre clothes; her town garments, full skirts, black hood, deep linen collar are shown to hide a merry-eyed lady, her country clothes, apron, striped petticoat, bunched up skirt, linen cap, her little flaunt of curls show her still mischievous. The pair of them, in reality religious fanatics, prepared a harvest that they little dreamt of--a harvest of extravagant clothes and extravagant manners, when the country broke loose from its false bondage of texts, scriptural shirts, and religious petticoats, and launched into a bondage, equally false, of low cut dresses and enormous periwigs. In the next reign you will see an entirely new era of clothes--the doublet and jerkin, the trunks and ruffs have their last eccentric fling, they become caricatures of themselves, they do all the foolish things garments can do, and then, all of a sudden, they vanish--never to be taken up again. Hair, long-neglected, is to have its full sway, wigs are the note for two centuries, so utterly different did the man become in the short space of thirty-five years, that the buck of the Restoration and the beau of the Jacobean order would stare helplessly at each other, wondering each to himself what manner of fool this was standing before him. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660) This shows the modification of the dress of the time of Charles I. Not an extreme change, but an endeavour towards simplicity.] CHARLES THE SECOND Reigned twenty-five years: 1660-1685. Born 1630. Married, 1662, Katherine of Portugal. THE MEN AND WOMEN [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles II.}] England, apparently with a sigh of relief, lays aside her hair shirt, and proves that she has been wearing a silk vest under it. Ribbon-makers and wig-makers, lace-makers, tailors, and shoemakers, pour out thankful offerings at the altar of Fashion. One kind of folly has replaced another; it is only the same goddess in different clothes. The lamp that winked and flickered before the stern black figure in Geneva bands and prim curls is put to shame by the flare of a thousand candles shining on the painted face, the exposed bosom, the flaunting love-locks of this Carolean deity. [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles II.}] We have burst out into periwigs, monstrous, bushy; we have donned petticoat breeches ruffled like a pigeon; we have cut our coats till they are mere apologies, serving to show off our fine shirts; and we have done the like with our coat-sleeves, leaving a little cuff glittering with buttons, and above that we have cut a great slit, all to show the marvel of our linen. Those of us who still wear the long wide breeches adorn them with heavy frills of deep lace, and sew bunches of ribbons along the seams. We tie our cravats in long, stiff bows or knot them tight, and allow the wide lace ends to float gracefully. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II. (1660-1685) This shows the dress during the first half of the reign. The feature of groups of ribboning is shown, with the short sleeve, the full shirt, and the petticoat.] Our hats, broad-brimmed and stiff, are loaded with feathers; our little cloaks are barred with silk and lace and gold cord; our shoes are square-toed and high-heeled, and are tied with a long-ended bow of ribbon. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Charles II.; a type of sleeve; the back of a coat}] Ribbon reigns triumphant: it ties our periwigs into bunches at the ends; it hangs in loops round our waists; it ties our shirt-sleeves up in several places; it twists itself round our knees. It is on our hats and heads, and necks and arms, and legs and shoes, and it peers out of the tops of our boots. Divines rave, moralists rush into print, to no purpose. The names seem to convey a sense of luxury: dove-coloured silk brocade, Rhingrave breeches, white lutestring seamed all over with scarlet and silver lace, sleeves whipt with a point lace, coat trimmed and figured with silver twist or satin ribbon; canvas, camblet, galloon and shamey, vellam buttons and taffety ribbons. The cannons, those bunches of ribbons round our knees, and the confidents, those bunches of curls by our ladies' cheeks, do not shake at the thunderings of Mr. Baxter or other moral gentlemen who regard a Maypole as a stinking idol. Mr. Hall writes on 'The Loathsomeness of Long Hair,' Mr. Prynne on 'The Unloveliness of Lovelocks,' and we do not care a pinch of rappe. Little moustaches and tiny lip beards grow under careful treatment, and the ladies wear a solar system in patches on their cheeks. The ladies soon escaped the bondage of the broad Puritan collars, and all these had hid was exposed. The sleeves left the arms bare to the elbow, and, being slit above and joined loosely by ribbons, showed the arm nearly to the shoulder. The sleeves of these dresses also followed the masculine fashion of little cuffs and tied-up linen under-sleeves. The bodices came to a peak in front and were round behind. The skirts were full, satin being favoured, and when held up showed a satin petticoat with a long train. The ladies, for a time, indulged in a peculiar loop of hair on their foreheads, called a 'fore-top,' which gave rise to another fashion, less common, called a 'taure,' or bull's head, being an arrangement of hair on the forehead resembling the close curls of a bull. The loose curls on the forehead were called 'favorites'; the long locks arranged to hang away from the face over the ears were called 'heart-breakers'; and the curls close to the cheek were called 'confidents.' Ladies wore cloaks with baggy hoods for travelling, and for the Mall the same hats as men, loaded with feathers. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II. (1660-1685) This is the change which came over men's dress on or about October, 1666. It is the new-fashioned vest or body-coat introduced to the notice of Charles by John Evelyn.] [Illustration: {A man of the time of Charles II.}] [Illustration: {A man of the time of Charles II.}] I am going to leave the change in dress during this reign to the next chapter, in which you will read how it struck Mr. Pepys. This change separates the old world of dress from the new; it is the advent of frocked coats, the ancestor of our frock-coat. It finishes completely the series of evolutions beginning with the old tunic, running through the gown stages to the doublet of Elizabethan times, lives in the half coat, half doublet of Charles I., and ends in the absurd little jackets of Charles II., who, sartorially, steps from the end of the Middle Ages into the New Ages, closes the door on a wardrobe of brilliant eccentricity, and opens a cupboard containing our first frock-coat. PEPYS AND CLOTHES It is not really necessary for me to remind the reader that one of the best companions in the world, Samuel Pepys, was the son of a tailor. Possibly--I say possibly because the argument is really absurd--he may have inherited his great interest in clothes from his father. You see where the argument leads in the end: that all men to take an interest in clothes must be born tailors' sons. This is no more true of Adam, who certainly did interest himself, than it is of myself. Pepys was educated at St. Paul's School, went to Trinity College, Cambridge, got drunk there, and took a scholarship. He married when he was twenty-two a girl of fifteen, the daughter of a Huguenot. He was born in 1633, three years after the birth of Charles II., of outrageous but delightful memory, and he commenced his Diary in 1660, the year in which Charles entered London, ending it in 1669, owing to his increasing weakness of sight. He was made Secretary to the Admiralty in 1672, in 1673 he became a member of Parliament, was sent to the Tower as a Papist in 1679, and released in 1680. In 1684 he became President of the Royal Society, and he died in 1703, and is buried in St. Olave's, Crutched Friars. Pepys mentions, in 1660, his coat with long skirts, fur cap, and buckles on his shoes. The coat was, doubtless, an old-fashioned Cromwellian coat with no waist. Later he goes to see Mr. Calthrop, and wears his white suit with silver lace, having left off his great skirt-coat. He leaves Mr. Calthrop to lay up his money and change his shoes and stockings. He mentions his scarlet waistclothes, presumably a sash, and regards Mr. John Pickering as an ass because of his feathers and his new suit made at the Hague. He mentions his linning stockings and wide cannons. This mention of wide cannons leads me to suppose that at this time any ornament at the knee would be called cannons, whether it was a part of the breeches or the stockings, or a separate frill or bunch of ribbons to put on. On July 1, still in the same year, comes home his fine camlett cloak and gold buttons; also a silk suit. Later he buys a jackanapes coat with silver buttons. Then he and Mr. Pin, the tailor, agree upon a velvet coat and cap ('the first I ever had'). He buys short black stockings to wear over silk ones for mourning. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of Charles II.}] On October 7 he says that, long cloaks being out of fashion, he must get a short one. He speaks of a suit made in France for My Lord costing £200. He mentions ladies' masks. In 1662 his wife has a pair of peruques of hair and a new-fashioned petticoat of sancenett with black, broad lace. Smocks are mentioned, and linen petticoats. He has a riding-suit with close knees. His new lace band is so neat that he is resolved they shall be his great expense. He wears a scallop. In 1663 he has a new black cloth suit, with white linings under all--as the fashion is--to appear under the breeches. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II. (1650-1685) You will notice her hair in ringlets tied with a ribbon, and dressed over a frame at the sides.] The Queen wears a white-laced waistcoat and a crimson short petticoat. Ladies are wearing hats covered with feathers. [Illustration: {Three types of wig for men}] God willing, he will begin next week to wear his three-pound periwig. He has spent last month (October) £12 on Miss Pepys, and £55 on his clothes. He has silk tops for his legs and a new shag gown. He has a close-bodied coat, light-coloured cloth with a gold edge. He sees Lady Castlemaine in yellow satin with a pinner on. In 1664 his wife begins to wear light-coloured locks. In 1665 there is a new fashion for ladies of yellow bird's-eye hood. There is a fear of the hair of periwigs during the Plague. Even in the middle of the Plague Pepys ponders on the next fashion. In 1666 women begin to wear buttoned-up riding-coats, hats and periwigs. On October 8 the King says he will set a thrifty fashion in clothes. At this momentous date in history we must break for a minute from our friend Pepys, and hear how this came about. Evelyn had given the King his pamphlet entitled 'Tyrannus, or the Mode.' The King reads the pamphlet, and is struck with the idea of the Persian coat. A long pause may be made here, in which the reader may float on a mental cloud back into the dim ages in the East, and there behold a transmogrified edition of his own frock-coat gracing the back of some staid philosopher. Evelyn had also published 'Mundus Muliebris; or, the Ladies' Dressing-Room Unlocked.' [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}] So, only one month after the Great Fire of London, only a short time before the Dutch burnt ships in the Medway, only a year after the Plague, King Charles decides to reform the fashion. By October 13 the new vests are made, and the King and the Duke of York try them on. On the fifteenth the King wears his in public, and says he will never change to another fashion. 'It is,' says Pepys, 'a long cassocke close to the body, of black cloth and pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black ribband like a pigeon's legs.' [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}] The ladies, to make an alteration, are to wear short skirts. Nell Gwynne had a neat ankle, so I imagine she had a hand in this fashion. On October 17 the King, seeing Lord St. Alban in an all black suit, says that the black and white makes them look too much like magpies. He bespeaks one of all black velvet. Sir Philip Howard increases in the Eastern fashion, and wears a nightgown and a turban like a Turk. On November 2 Pepys buys a vest like the King's. On November 22 the King of France, Louis XIV., who had declared war against England earlier in the year, says that he will dress all his footmen in vests like the King of England. However, fashion is beyond the power of royal command, and the world soon followed in the matter of the Persian coat and vest, even to the present day. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}] Next year, 1667, Pepys notes that Lady Newcastle, in her velvet cap and her hair about her ears, is the talk of the town. She wears a number of black patches because of the pimples about her mouth, she is naked-necked (no great peculiarity), and she wears a _just au corps_, which is a close body-coat. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}] Pepys notices the shepherd at Epsom with his wool-knit stockings of two colours, mixed. He wears a new camlett cloak. The shoe-strings have given place to buckles, and children wear long coats. In 1668 his wife wears a flower tabby suit ('everybody in love with it'). He is forced to lend the Duke of York his cloak because it rains. His barber agrees to keep his periwig in order for £1 a year. He buys a black bombazin suit. In 1669 his wife wears the new French gown called a sac; he pays 55s. for his new belt. His wife still wears her old flower tabby gown. So ends the dress note in the Diary. JAMES THE SECOND Reigned four years: 1685-1689. Born 1633. Married, 1661, Anne Hyde; 1673, Mary of Modena. THE MEN AND WOMEN [Illustration: {Two men of the time of James II.; a type of sleeve}] In such a short space of time as this reign occupies it is not possible to show any great difference in the character of the dress, but there is a tendency, shown over the country at large, to discard the earlier beribboned fashions, and to take more seriously to the long coat and waistcoat. There is a tendency, even, to become more buttoned up--to present what I can only call a frock-coat figure. The coat became closer to the body, and was braided across the front in many rows, the ends fringed out and held by buttons. The waistcoat, with the pockets an arm's length down, was cut the same length as the coat. Breeches were more frequently cut tighter, and were buttoned up the side of the leg. The cuffs of the sleeves were wide, and were turned back well over the wrist. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES II. (1685-1689) The body-coat has now become the universal fashion, as have also the wide knee-breeches. Buckles are used on the shoes instead of strings.] [Illustration: {A man of the time of James II.}] Of course the change was gradual, and more men wore the transitional coat than the tight one. By the coat in its changing stages I mean such a coat as this: the short coat of the early Charles II. period made long, and, following the old lines of cut, correspondingly loose. The sleeves remained much the same, well over the elbow, showing the white shirt full and tied with ribbons. The shoe-strings had nearly died out, giving place to a buckle placed on a strap well over the instep. There is a hint of growth in the periwig, and of fewer feathers round the brim of the hat; indeed, little low hats with broad brims, merely ornamented with a bunch or so of ribbons, began to become fashionable. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of James II.}] Swords were carried in broad baldricks richly ornamented. The waistclothes of Mr. Pepys would, by now, have grown into broad sashes, with heavily fringed ends, and would be worn round the outside coat; for riding, this appears to have been the fashion, together with small peaked caps, like jockey caps, and high boots. The ladies of this reign simplified the dress into a gown more tight to the bust, the sleeves more like the men's, the skirt still very full, but not quite so long in the train. Black hoods with or without capes were worn, and wide collars coming over the shoulders again came into fashion. The pinner, noticed by Pepys, was often worn. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES II. (1685-1689) Notice the broad collar again in use, also the nosegay. The sleeves are more in the mannish fashion.] But the most noticeable change occurs in the dress of countryfolk and ordinary citizens. The men began to drop all forms of doublet, and take to the long coat, a suit of black grogram below the knees, a sash, and a walking-stick; for the cold, a short black cloak. In the country the change would be very noticeable. The country town, the countryside, was, until a few years back, distinctly Puritanical in garb; there were Elizabethan doublets on old men, and wide Cromwellian breeches, patched doubtless, walked the market-place. Hair was worn short. Now the russet brown clothes take a decided character in the direction of the Persian coat and knickerbockers closed at the knee. The good-wife of the farmer knots a loose cloth over her head, and pops a broad-brimmed man's hat over it. She has the sleeves of her dress made with turned-back cuffs, like her husband's, ties her shoes with strings, laces her dress in front, so as to show a bright-coloured under-bodice, and, as like as not, wears a green pinner (an apron with bib, which was pinned on to the dress), and altogether brings herself up to date. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of James II.}] One might see the farmer's wife riding to market with her eggs in a basket covered with a corner of her red cloak, and many a red cloak would she meet on the way to clep with on the times and the fashions. The green apron was a mark of a Quaker in America, and the Society of Friends was not by any means sad in colour until late in their history. Most notable was the neckcloth in this unhappy reign, which went by the name of Judge Jeffreys' hempen cravat. WILLIAM AND MARY Reigned thirteen years: 1689-1702. The King born in 1650; the Queen born in 1662; married in 1677. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of William and Mary}] First and foremost, the wig. Periwig, peruke, campaign wig with pole-locks or dildos, all the rage, all the thought of the first gentlemen. Their heads loaded with curl upon curl, long ringlets hanging over their shoulders and down their backs, some brown, some covered with meal until their coats looked like millers' coats; scented hair, almost hiding the loose-tied cravat, 'most agreeably discoloured with snuff from top to bottom.' [Illustration: {A man of the time of William and Mary; a type of cuff}] My fine gentleman walking the street with the square-cut coat open to show a fine waistcoat, his stick hanging by a ribbon on to his wrist and rattling on the pavement as it dragged along, his hat carefully perched on his wig, the crown made wide and high to hold the two wings of curls, which formed a negligent central parting. His pockets, low down in his coat, show a lace kerchief half dropping from one of them. One hand is in a small muff, the other holds a fine silver-gilt box filled with Vigo snuff. He wears high-heeled shoes, red heeled, perhaps, and the tongue of his shoe sticks up well above the instep. Probably he is on his way to the theatre, where he will comb his periwig in public, and puff away the clouds of powder that come from it. The fair lady in a side box, who hides her face behind a mask, is delighted if Sir Beau will bow to her. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1702) Strings again in use on the shoes. Cuffs much broader; wigs more full; skirts wider. Coat left open to show the long waistcoat.] We are now among most precise people. One must walk here with just such an air of artificiality as will account one a fellow of high tone. The more enormous is our wig, the more frequently we take a pinch of Violet Strasburg or Best Brazil, Orangery, Bergamotte, or Jassamena, the more shall we be followed by persons anxious to learn the fashion. We may even draw a little silver bowl from our pocket, place it on a seat by us, and, in meditative mood, spit therein. We have gone completely into skirted coats and big flapped waistcoats; we have adopted the big cuff buttoned back; we have given up altogether the wide knee-breeches, and wear only breeches not tight to the leg, but just full enough for comfort. The hats have altered considerably now; they are cocked up at all angles, turned off the forehead, turned up one side, turned up all round; some are fringed with gold or silver lace, others are crowned with feathers. We hear of such a number of claret-coloured suits that we must imagine that colour to be all the rage, and, in contrast to other times not long gone by, we must stiffen ourselves in buckram-lined skirts. These powdered Absaloms could change themselves into very fine fighting creatures, and look twice as sober again when occasion demanded. They rode about the country in periwigs, certainly, but not quite so bushy and curled; many of them took to the travelling or campaign wig with the dildos or pole-locks. These wigs were full over the ears and at the sides of the forehead, but they were low in the crown, and the two front ends were twisted into single pipes of hair; or the pipes of hair at the side were entirely removed, and one single pipe hung down the back. The custom of thus twisting the hair at the back, and there holding it with a ribbon, gave rise to the later pigtail. The periwigs so altered were known as short bobs, the bob being the fullness of the hair by the cheeks of the wig. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William and Mary}] The cuffs of the coat-sleeve varied to the idea and taste of the owner of the coat; sometimes the sleeve was widened at the elbow to 18 inches, and the cuffs, turned back to meet the sleeves, were wider still. Two, three, or even more buttons held the cuff back. The pockets on the coats were cut vertically and horizontally, and these also might be buttoned up. Often the coat was held by only two centre buttons, and the waistcoat flaps were not buttoned at all. The men's and women's muffs were small, and often tied and slung with ribbons. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William and Mary}] Plain round riding-coats were worn, fastened by a clasp or a couple of large buttons. The habit of tying the neckcloth in a bow with full hanging ends was dying out, and a more loosely tied cravat was being worn; this was finished with fine lace ends, and was frequently worn quite long. [Illustration: {Three men of the time of William and Mary}] Stockings were pulled over the knee, and were gartered below and rolled above it. The ordinary citizen wore a modified edition of these clothes--plain in cut, full, without half the number of buttons, and without the tremendous periwig, wearing merely his own hair long. For convenience in riding, the skirts of the coats were slit up the back to the waist; this slit could be buttoned up if need be. [Illustration: {A man of the time of William and Mary; a shoe}] Now, let us give the dandy of this time his pipe, and let him go in peace. Let us watch him stroll down the street, planting his high heels carefully, to join two companions outside the tobacco shop. Here, by the great carved wood figure of a smoking Indian with his kilt of tobacco leaves, he meets his fellows. From the hoop hung by the door one chooses a pipe, another asks for a quid to chew and a spittoon, the third calls for a paper of snuff newly rasped. Then they pull aside the curtains and go into the room behind the shop, where, seated at a table made of planks upon barrels, they will discuss the merits of smoking, chewing, and snuffing. 'We three are engaged in one cause, I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws.' THE WOMEN Let me picture for you a lady of this time in the language of those learned in dress, and you will see how much it may benefit. 'We see her coming afar off; against the yew hedge her weeds shine for a moment. We see her figuretto gown well looped and puffed with the monte-la-haut. Her échelle is beautiful, and her pinner exquisitely worked. We can see her commode, her top-not, and her fontage, for she wears no rayonné. A silver pin holds her meurtriers, and the fashion suits better than did the crève-coeurs. One hand holds her Saxon green muffetee, under one arm is her chapeau-bras. She is beautiful, she needs no plumpers, and she regards us kindly with her watchet eyes.' A lady of this date would read this and enjoy it, just as a lady of to-day would understand modern dress language, which is equally peculiar to the mere man. For example, this one of the Queen of Spain's hats from her trousseau (curiously enough a trousseau is a little bundle): 'The hat is a paille d'Italie trimmed with a profusion of pink roses, accompanied by a pink chiffon ruffle fashioned into masses bouillonnée arranged at intervals and circled with wreaths of shaded roses.' [Illustration: {Two women of the time of William and Mary}] The modern terms so vaguely used are shocking, and the descriptive names given to colours by dress-artists are horrible beyond belief--such as Watteau pink and elephant grey, not to speak of Sèvres-blue cherries. However, the female mind delights in such jargon and hotch-potch. Let me be kind enough to translate our William and Mary fashion language. 'Weeds' is a term still in use in 'widow's weeds,' meaning the entire dress appearance of a woman. A 'figuretto gown looped and puffed with the monte-la-haut' is a gown of figured material gathered into loops over the petticoat and stiffened out with wires 'monte-la-haut.' The 'échelle' is a stomacher laced with ribbons in rungs like a ladder. Her 'pinner' is her apron. The 'commode' is the wire frame over which the curls are arranged, piled up in high masses over the forehead. The 'top-not' is a large bow worn at the top of the commode; and the 'fontage' or 'tower' is a French arrangement of alternate layers of lace and ribbon raised one above another about half a yard high. It was invented in the time of Louis XIV., about 1680, by Mademoiselle Fontage. The 'rayonné' is a cloth hood pinned in a circle. The 'meurtriers,' or murderers, are those twists in the hair which tie or unloose the arrangements of curls; and the 'crève-coeurs' are the row of little forehead curls of the previous reign. A 'muffetee' is a little muff, and a 'chapeau-bras' is a hat never worn, but made to be carried under the arm by men or women; for the men hated to disarrange their wigs. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William and Mary}] 'Plumpers' were artificial arrangements for filling out the cheeks, and 'watchet' eyes are blue eyes. The ladies have changed a good deal by the middle of this reign: they have looped up the gown till it makes side-panniers and a bag-like droop at the back; the under-gown has a long train, and the bodice is long-waisted. The front of the bodice is laced open, and shows either an arrangement of ribbon and lace or a piece of the material of the under-gown. [Illustration: {Two hair arrangements and necklines for women}] Black pinners in silk with a deep frill are worn as well as the white lace and linen ones. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William and Mary}] The ladies wear short black capes of this stuff with a deep frill. Sometimes, instead of the fontage, a lady wears a lace shawl over her head and shoulders, or a sort of lace cap bedizened with coloured ribbons. Her sleeves are like a man's, except that they come to the elbow only, showing a white under-sleeve of lace gathered into a deep frill of lace just below the elbow. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1702) Here you see the cap called the 'fontage,' the black silk apron, the looped skirt, and the hair on the high frame called a 'commode.'] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of William and Mary}] [Illustration: Country Folk.] She is very stiff and tight-laced, and very long in the waist; and at the waist where the gown opens and at the loopings of it the richer wear jewelled brooches. Later in the reign there began a fashion for copying men's clothes, and ladies wore wide skirted coats with deep-flapped pockets, the sleeves of the coats down below the elbow and with deep-turned overcuffs. They wore, like the men, very much puffed and ruffled linen and lace at the wrists. Also they wore men's waistcoat fashions, carried sticks and little arm-hats--chapeau-bras. To complete the dress the hair was done in a bob-wig style, and the cravat was tied round their necks and pinned. For the winter one of those loose Dutch jackets lined and edged with fur, having wide sleeves. The general tendency was to look Dutch, stiff, prim, but very prosperous; even the country maid in her best is close upon the heel of fashion with her laced bodice, sleeves with cuffs, apron, and high-heeled shoes. QUEEN ANNE Reigned twelve years: 1702-1714. Born 1665. Married, 1683, Prince George of Denmark. THE MEN AND WOMEN When I turn to the opening of the eighteenth century, and leave Dutch William and his Hollands and his pipe and his bulb-gardens behind, it seems to me that there is a great noise, a tumultuous chattering. We seem to burst upon a date of talkers, of coffee-houses, of snuff and scandal. All this was going on before, I say to myself--people were wearing powdered wigs, and were taking snuff, and were talking scandal, but it did not appeal so forcibly. We arrive at Sedan-chairs and hoops too big for them; we arrive at red-heeled shoes. Though both chairs and red heels belong to the previous reign, still, we arrive at them now--they are very much in the picture. We seem to see a profusion, a confused mass of bobbins and bone lace, mourning hatbands, silk garters, amber canes correctly conducted, country men in red coats, coxcombs, brass and looking-glass snuff-boxes. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Anne}] Gentlemen walk past our mental vision with seals curiously fancied and exquisitely well cut. Ladies are sighing at the toss of a wig or the tap on a snuff-box, falling sick for a pair of striped garters or a pair of fringed gloves. Gentlemen are sitting baldheaded in elegant dressing-gowns, while their wigs are being taken out of roulettes. The peruquier removes the neat, warm clay tube, gives a last pat to the fine pipes of the hair, and then gently places the wig on the waiting gentlemen. If you can look through the walls of London houses you will next see regiments of gentlemen, their faces pressed into glass cones, while the peruquier tosses powder over their newly-put-on periwigs. The bow at the end of the long pigtail on the Ramillies wig is tied--that is over. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ANNE (1702-1714) The coat has become still more full at the sides. The hat has a more generous brim. Red heels in fashion.] Running footmen, looking rather like Indians from the outsides of tobacco shops, speed past. They are dressed in close tunics with a fringed edge, which flicks them just above the knee. Their legs are tied up in leather guards, their feet are strongly shod, their wigs are in small bobs. On their heads are little round caps, with a feather stuck in them. In one hand they carry a long stick about 5 feet high, in the top knob of which they carry some food or a message. A message to whom? [Illustration: A Running Footman.] The running footman knocks on a certain door, and delivers to the pretty maid a note for her ladyship from a handsome, well-shaped youth who frequents the coffee-houses about Charing Cross. There is no answer to the note: her ladyship is too disturbed with household affairs. Her Welsh maid has left her under suspicious circumstances, and has carried off some articles. The lady is even now writing to Mr. Bickerstaff of the _Tatler_ to implore his aid. This is the list of the things she has missed--at least, as much of the list as my mind remembers as it travels back over the years: [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Anne}] A thick wadded Calico Wrapper. A Musk-coloured Velvet Mantle lined with Squirrels' Skins. Eight night shifts, four pairs of stockings curiously darned. Six pairs of laced Shoes, new and old, with the heels of half 2 inches higher than their fellows. A quilted Petticoat of the largest size, and one of Canvas, with whalebone hoops. Three pairs of Stays boulstered below the left shoulder. Two pairs of Hips of the newest fashion. Six Roundabout Aprons, with Pockets, and four strip'd Muslin night rails very little frayed. A silver Cheese toaster with three tongues. A silver Posnet to butter eggs. A Bible bound in Shagreen, with guilt Leaves and Clasps, never opened but once. Two Leather Forehead Cloathes, three pair of oiled Dogskin Gloves. Two brand new Plumpers, three pair of fashionable Eyebrows. Adam and Eve in Bugle work, without Fig-leaves, upon Canvas, curiously wrought with her Ladyship's own hand. Bracelets of braided Hair, Pomander, and Seed Pearl. A large old Purple Velvet Purse, embroidered, and shutting with a spring, containing two Pictures in Miniature, the Features visible. A Silver gilt box for Cashu and Carraway Comfits to be taken at long sermons. A new Gold Repeating Watch made by a Frenchman. Together with a Collection of Receipts to make Pastes for the Hands, Pomatums, Lip Salves, White Pots, and Water of Talk. Of these things one strikes the eye most curiously--the canvas petticoat with whalebone hoops. It dates the last, making me know that the good woman lost her things in or about the year 1710. We are just at the beginning of the era of the tremendous hoop skirt. This gentleman from the country will tell me all about it. I stop him and remark his clothes; by them I guess he has ridden from the country. He is wearing a wide-skirted coat of red with deep flap pockets; his coat has buttons from neck to hem, but only two or three--at the waist--are buttoned. One hand, with the deep cuff pushed back from the wrist to show his neat frilled shirt, is thrust into his unbuttoned breeches pocket, the two pockets being across the top of his breeches. Round his neck is a black Steenkirk cravat (a black silk tie knotted and twisted or allowed to hang over loose). His hat is of black, and the wide brim is turned back from his forehead. His wig is a short black periwig in bobs--that is, it is gathered into bunches just on the shoulders, and is twisted in a little bob at the back of the neck. I have forgotten whether he wore red or blue stockings rolled above the knee, but either is likely. His shoes are strong, high-heeled, and have a big tongue showing above the buckle. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Anne}] [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ANNE (1702-1714) Notice that the fontage has become much lower, and the hoop of the skirt has become enormous. The hair is more naturally dressed.] He tells me that in Norfolk, where he has come from, the hoop has not come into fashion; that ladies there dress much as they did before Queen Anne came to the throne. The fontage is lower, perhaps, the waist may be longer, but skirts are full and have long trains, and are gathered in loops to show the petticoat of silk with its deep double row of flounces. Aprons are worn long, and have good pockets. Cuffs are deep, but are lowered to below the elbow. The bodice of the gown is cut high in the back and low in front, and is decked with a deep frill of lace or linen, which allows less bare neck to show than formerly. A very observant gentleman! 'But you have seen the new hoop?' I ask him. Yes, he has seen it. As he rode into town he noticed that the old fashions gave way to new, that every mile brought the fontage lower and the hair more hidden, until short curls and a little cap of linen or lace entirely replaced the old high head-dress and the profusion of curls on the shoulders. The hoop, he noticed, became larger and larger as he neared the town, and the train grew shorter, and the patterns on the under-skirt grew larger with the hoop. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Anne}] I leave my gentleman from the country and I stroll about the streets to regard the fashions. Here, I see, is a gentleman in one of the new Ramillies wigs--a wig of white hair drawn back from the forehead and puffed out full over the ears. At the back the wig is gathered into a long queue, the plaited or twisted tail of a wig, and is ornamented at the top and bottom of the queue with a black bow. [Illustration: {Ramillies wig; Black Steenkirk; a hat for men}] I notice that this gentleman is dressed in more easy fashion than some. His coat is not buttoned, the flaps of his waistcoat are not over big, his breeches are easy, his tie is loose. I know where this gentleman has stepped from; he has come straight out of a sampler of mine, by means of which piece of needlework I can get his story without book. I know that he has a tremendous periwig at home covered with scented powder; I know that he has an elegant suit with fullness of the skirts, at his sides gathered up to a button of silver gilt; there is plenty of lace on this coat, and deep bands of it on the cuffs. He has also, I am certain, a cane with an amber head very curiously clouded, and this cane he hangs on to his fifth button by a blue silk ribbon. This cane is never used except to lift it up at a coachman, hold it over the head of a drawer, or point out the circumstances of a story. Also, he has a single eyeglass, or perspective, which he will advance to his eye to gaze at a toast or an orange wench. There is another figure on the sampler--a lady in one of those wide hoops; she has a fan in her hand. I know her as well as the gentleman, and know that she can use her fan as becomes a prude or a coquette. I know she takes her chocolate in bed at nine in the morning, at eleven she drinks a dish of bohea, tries a new head at her twelve o'clock toilette, and at two cheapens fans at the Change. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Anne}] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of Anne}] I have seen her at her mantua-makers; I have watched her embroider a corner of her flower handkerchief, and give it up to sit before her glass to determine a patch. She is a good coachwoman, and puts her dainty laced shoe against the opposite seat to balance herself against the many jolts; meanwhile she takes her mask off for a look at the passing world. If only I could ride in the coach with her! If only I could I should see the fruit wenches in sprigged petticoats and flat, broad-brimmed hats; the ballad-sellers in tattered long-skirted coats; the country women in black hoods and cloaks, and the men in frieze coats. The ladies would pass by in pearl necklaces, flowered stomachers, artificial nosegays, and shaded furbelows: one is noted by her muff, one by her tippet, one by her fan. Here a gentleman bows to our coach, and my lady's heart beats to see his open waistcoat, his red heels, his suit of flowered satin. I should not fail to notice the monstrous petticoats worn by ladies in chairs or in coaches, these hoops stuffed out with cordage and stiffened with whalebone, and, according to Mr. Bickerstaff, making the women look like extinguishers--'with a little knob at the upper end, and widening downward till it ends in a basis of a most enormous circumference.' To finish. I quite agree with Mr. Bickerstaff, when he mentions the great shoe-shop at the St. James's end of Pall Mall, that the shoes there displayed, notably the slippers with green lace and blue heels, do create irregular thoughts in the youth of this nation. GEORGE THE FIRST Reigned thirteen years: 1714-1727. Born 1660. Married, 1682, Sophia of Brunswick. THE MEN AND WOMEN [Illustration: {1720: A woman of the time of George I.; a shoe}] We cannot do better than open Thackeray, and put a finger on this passage: 'There is the Lion's Head, down whose jaws the Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great banker's in Fleet Street the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy. People this street, so ornamented with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lacquey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now). 'Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwig appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers bawling and bustling at the door--gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat-caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass.' _The Four Georges._ [Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of George I.}] We find ourselves, very willingly, discussing the shoes of the King of France with a crowd of powdered beaux; those shoes the dandyism of which has never been surpassed, the heels, if you please, painted by Vandermeulen with scenes from Rhenish victories! Or we go to the toy-shops in Fleet Street, where we may make assignations or buy us a mask, where loaded dice are slyly handed over the counter. Everywhere--the beau. He rides the world like a cock-horse, or like Og the giant rode the Ark of Noah, steering it with his feet, getting his washing for nothing, and his meals passed up to him out by the chimney. Here is the old soldier begging in his tattered coat of red; here is a suspicious-looking character with a black patch over his eye; here the whalebone hoop of a petticoat takes up the way, and above the monstrous hoop is the tight bodice, and out of that comes the shoulders supporting the radiant Molly--patches, powder, paint, and smiles. Here a woman passes in a Nithsdale hood, covering her from head to foot--this great cloak with a piquant history of prison-breaking; here, with a clatter of high red heels, the beau, the everlasting beau, in gold lace, wide cuffs, full skirts, swinging cane. A scene of flashing colours. The coats embroidered with flowers and butterflies, the cuffs a mass of fine sewing, the three-cornered hats cocked at a jaunty angle, the stockings rolled above the knee. Wigs in three divisions of loops at the back pass by, wigs in long queues, wigs in back and side bobs. Lacquer-hilted swords, paste buckles, gold and silver snuff-boxes flashing in the sun, which struggles through the mass of swinging signs. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I. (1714-1727) The buckles on the shoes are now much larger; the stockings are loosely rolled above the knee. The great periwig is going out, and the looped and curled wig, very white with powder, is in fashion.] [Illustration: {A hat; coat tails; a wig}] There is a curious sameness about the clean-shaven faces surmounted by white wigs; there is--if we believe the pictures--a tendency to fat due to the tight waist of the breeches or the buckling of the belts. The ladies wear little lace and linen caps, their hair escaping in a ringlet or so at the side, and flowing down behind, or gathered close up to a small knob on the head. The gentlemen's coats fall in full folds on either side; the back, at present, has not begun to stick out so heavily with buckram. Aprons for ladies are still worn. Silks and satins, brocades and fine cloths, white wigs powdering velvet shoulders, crowds of cut-throats, elegant gentlemen, patched Aspasias, tavern swindlers, foreign adventurers, thieves, a highwayman, a footpad, a poor poet--and narrow streets and mud. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}] Everywhere we see the skirted coat, the big flapped waistcoat; even beggar boys, little pot-high urchins, are wearing some old laced waistcoat tied with string about their middles--a pair of heel-trodden, buckleless shoes on their feet, more likely bare-footed. Here is a man snatched from the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword Alley by the King's men--a pickpocket, a highwayman, a cut-throat in hiding. He will repent his jokes on Jack Ketch's kitchen when he feels the lash of the whip on his naked shoulders as he screams behind the cart-tail; ladies in flowered hoops will stop to look at him, beaux will lift their quizzing glasses, a young girl will whisper behind a fan, painted with the loves of Jove, to a gorgeous young fop in a light-buttoned coat of sky-blue. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}] There is a sadder sight to come, a cart on the way to Tyburn, a poor fellow standing by his coffin with a nosegay in his breast; he is full of Dutch courage, for, as becomes a notorious highwayman, he must show game before the crowd, so he is full of stum and Yorkshire stingo. Maybe we stop to see a pirate hanging in chains by the river, and we are jostled by horse officers and watermen, revenue men and jerkers, and, as usual, the curious beau, his glass to his eye. Never was such a time for curiosity: a man is preaching mystic religion; there is a new flavour to the Rainbow Tavern furmity; there is a fellow who can sew with his toes; a man is in the pillory for publishing Jacobite ballads--and always there is the beau looking on. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of George I.}] Country ladies, still in small hoops, even in full dresses innocent of whalebone, are bewildered by the noise; country gentlemen, in plain-coloured coats and stout shoes, have come to London on South Sea Bubble business. They will go to the Fair to see the Harlequin and Scaramouch dance, they will buy a new perfume at The Civet Cat, and they will go home--the lady's head full of the new hoop fashion, and she will cut away the sleeve of her old dress and put in fresh lace; the gentleman full of curses on tavern bills and the outrageous price of South Sea shares. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}] 'And what,' says country dame to country dame lately from town--'what is the mode in gentlemen's hair?' Her own goodman has an old periwig, very full, and a small bob for ordinary wear. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}] 'The very full periwig is going out,' our lady assures her; 'a tied wig is quite the mode, a wig in three queues tied in round bobs, or in hair loops, and the long single queue wig is coming in rapidly, and will soon be all the wear.' So, with talk of flowered tabbies and fine lutestring, are the fashions passed on. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I. (1714-1727) You will see that the fontage has given way to a small lace cap. The hair is drawn off the forehead. The hoop of the skirt is still large.] [Illustration: {A woman of the time of George I.}] Just as Sir Roger de Coverley nearly called a young lady in riding-dress 'sir,' because of the upper half of her body, so the ladies of this day might well be taken for 'sirs,' with their double-breasted riding-coats like the men, and their hair in a queue surmounted by a cocked hat. Colours and combinations of colours are very striking: petticoats of black satin covered with large bunches of worked flowers, morning gown of yellow flowered satin faced with cherry-coloured bands, waistcoats of one colour with a fringe of another, bird's-eye hoods, bodices covered with gold lace and embroidered flowers--all these gave a gay, artificial appearance to the age; but we are to become still more quaintly devised, still more powdered and patched, in the next reign. GEORGE THE SECOND Reigned thirty-three years: 1727-1760. Born 1683. Married, 1705, Caroline of Anspach. THE MEN Just a few names of wigs, and you will see how the periwig has gone into the background, how the bob-wig has superseded the campaign wig; you will find a veritable confusion of barbers' enthusiasms, half-forgotten designs, names dependent on a twist, a lock, a careful disarrangement--pigeon's-wing wigs with wings of hair at the sides, comets with long, full tails, cauliflowers with a profusion of curls, royal bind-wigs, staircase wigs, ladders, brushes, Count Saxe wigs, cut bobs, long bobs, negligents, chain-buckles, drop-wigs, bags. Go and look at Hogarth; there's a world of dress for you by the grim humorist who painted Sarah Malcolm, the murderess, in her cell; who painted 'Taste in High Life.' Wigs! inexhaustible subject--wigs passing from father to son until they arrived at the second-hand dealers in Monmouth Street, and there, after a rough overhauling, began a new life. There was a wig lottery at sixpence a ticket in Rosemary Lane, and with even ordinary wigs--Grizzle Majors at twenty-five shillings, Great Tyes at a guinea, and Brown Bagwigs at fifteen shillings--quite a considerable saving might be made by the lucky lottery winner. [Illustration: {Back view of a man's coat; seven types of hat for men}] On wigs, hats cocked to suit the passing fashion, broad-brimmed, narrow-brimmed, round, three-cornered, high-brimmed, low-brimmed, turned high off the forehead, turned low in front and high at the back--an endless crowd. Such a day for clothes, for patches, and politics, Tory side and Whig to your face, Tory or Whig cock to your hat; pockets high, pockets low, stiff cuffs, crushable cuffs, a regular jumble of go-as-you-please. Let me try to sort the jumble. [Illustration: {1739: Two views of a coat for men}] [Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.; a sleeve; a waistcoat}] Foremost, the coat. The coat is growing more full, more spread; it becomes, on the beau, a great spreading, flaunting, skirted affair just buttoned by a button or two at the waist. It is laced or embroidered all over; it is flowered or plain. The cuffs are huge; they will, of course, suit the fancy of the owner, or the tailor. About 1745 they will get small--some will get small; then the fashions begin to run riot; by the cut of coat you may not know the date of it, then, when you pass it in the street. From 1745 there begins the same jumble as to-day, a hopeless thing to unravel; in the next reign, certainly, you may tell yourself here is one of the new Macaronis, but that will be all you will mark out of the crowd of fashions--one more remarkable, newer than the rest, but perhaps you have been in the country for a week, and a new mode has come in and is dying out. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE II. (1727-1760) Notice the heavy cuffs, and the very full skirts of the coat. He carries a _chapeau bras_ under his arm--a hat for carrying only, since he will not ruffle his wig. He wears a black satin tie to his wig, the ends of which tie come round his neck, are made into a bow, and brooched with a solitaire.] [Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.}] From coat let us look at waistcoat. Full flaps and long almost to the knees; but again, about 1756, they will be shorter. They are fringed, flowered, laced, open to show the lace cravat fall so daintily, to show the black velvet bow-tie that comes over from the black velvet, or silk, or satin tie of the queue. Ruffles of lace, of all qualities, at the wrists, the beau's hand emerging with his snuff-box from a filmy froth of white lace. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.; a wig; breeches and stockings}] In this era of costume--from George I. to George IV.--the great thing to remember is that the coat changes more than anything else; from the stiff William and Mary coat with its deep, stiff cuffs, you see the change towards the George I. coat, a looser cut of the same design, still simple in embroideries; then the coat skirts are gathered to a button at each side of the coat just behind the pockets. Then, in George II.'s reign, the skirt hangs in parallel folds free from the button, and shapes to the back more closely, the opening of the coat, from the neck to the waist, being so cut as to hang over the buttons and show the cravat and the waistcoat. Then, later in the same reign, we see the coat with the skirts free of buckram and very full all round, and the cuffs also free of stiffening and folding with the crease of the elbow. Then, about 1745, we get the coat left more open, and, for the beau, cut much shorter--this often worn over a double-breasted waistcoat. Then, arriving at George III., we get a long series of coat changes, with a collar on it, turned over and standing high in the neck, with the skirts buttoned back, then cut away; then the front of the coat cut away like the modern dress-coat. [Illustration: {Four men of the time of George II.}] In following out these really complicated changes, I have done my best to make my meaning clear by placing dates against those drawings where dates are valuable, hoping by this means to show the rise and fall of certain fashions more clearly than any description would do. It will be noticed that, for ceremony, the periwig gave place to the tie-wig, or, in some few cases, to natural hair curled and powdered. The older men kept to the periwig no doubt from fondness of the old and, as they thought, more grave fashion; but, as I showed at the beginning of the chapter, the beau and the young man, even the quite middle-class man, wore, or had the choice of wearing, endless varieties of false attires of hair. The sporting man had his own idea of dress, even as to-day he has a piquant idea in clothes, and who shall say he has not the right? A black wig, a jockey cap with a bow at the back of it, a very resplendent morning gown richly laced, a morning cap, and very comfortable embroidered slippers, such mixtures of clothes in his wardrobe--his coat, no doubt, a little over-full, but of good cloth, his fine clothes rather over-embroidered, his tie-wig often pushed too far back on his forehead, and so showing his cropped hair underneath. Muffs must be remembered, as every dandy carried a muff in winter, some big, others grotesquely small. Bath must be remembered, and the great Beau Nash in the famous Pump-Room--as Thackeray says, so say I: 'I should like to have seen the Folly,' he says, meaning Nash. 'It was a splendid embroidered, beruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots!), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner.' It was the fashion to wear new clothes on the Queen's birthday, March 1, and then the streets noted the loyal people who indulged their extravagance or pushed a new fashion on that day. Do not forget that no hard-and-fast rules can be laid down; a man's a man for all his tailor tells him he is a walking fashion plate. Those who liked short cuffs wore them, those who did not care for solitaires did without; the height of a heel, the breadth of a buckle, the sweep of a skirt, all lay at the taste of the owner--merely would I have you remember the essentials. [Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.; four styles of hair for men}] There was a deal of dressing up--the King, bless you, in a Turkish array at a masque--the day of the Corydon and Sylvia: mock shepherd, dainty shepherdess was here; my lord in silk loose coat with paste buttons, fringed waistcoat, little three-cornered hat under his arm, and a pastoral staff between his fingers, a crook covered with cherry and blue ribbons; and my lady in such a hoop of sprigged silk or some such stuff, the tiniest of straw hat on her head, high heels tapping the ground, all a-shepherding--what? Cupids, I suppose, little Dresden loves, little comfit-box jokes, little spiteful remarks about the Germans. [Illustration: {1745: Two men of the time of George II.; 1758: Three men of the time of George II.}] Come, let me doff my Kevenhuller hat with the gold fringe, bring my red heels together with a smart tap, bow, with my hand on the third button of my coat from which my stick dangles, and let me introduce the ladies. THE WOMEN I will introduce the fair, painted, powdered, patched, perfumed sex (though this would do for man or woman of the great world then) by some lines from the _Bath Guide_: 'Bring, O bring thy essence-pot, Amber, musk, and bergamot; Eau de chipre, eau de luce, Sanspareil, and citron juice. * * * * * In a band-box is contained Painted lawns, and chequered shades, Crape that's worn by love-lorn maids, Watered tabbies, flowered brocades; Straw-built hats, and bonnets green, Catgut, gauzes, tippets, ruffs; Fans and hoods, and feathered muffs, Stomachers, and Paris nets, Earrings, necklaces, aigrets, Fringes, blouses, and mignionets; Fine vermillion for the cheek, Velvet patches à la grecque. Come, but don't forget the gloves, Which, with all the smiling loves, Venus caught young Cupid picking From the tender breast of chicken.' [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE II. (1727-1760) She is wearing a large pinner over her dress. Notice the large panniers, the sleeves without cuffs, the tied cap, and the shortness of the skirts.] [Illustration: {Three women of the time of George II.}] Now I think it will be best to describe a lady of quality. In the first years of the reign she still wears the large hoop skirt, a circular whalebone arrangement started at the waist, and, at intervals, the hoops were placed so that the petticoat stood out all round like a bell; over this the skirt hung stiff and solemn. The bodice was tight-laced, cut square in front where the neckerchief of linen or lace made the edge soft. The sleeves still retained the cuff covering the elbow, and the under-sleeve of linen with lace frills came half-way down the forearm, leaving bare arm and wrist to show. [Illustration: {Four women of the time of George II.}] Over the skirt she would wear, as her taste held her, a long, plain apron, or a long, tucked apron, or an apron to her knees. The bodice generally formed the top of a gown, which gown was very full-skirted, and was divided so as to hang back behind the dress, showing, often, very little in front. This will be seen clearly in the illustrations. The hair is very tightly gathered up behind, twisted into a small knob on the top of the head, and either drawn straight back from the forehead or parted in the middle, allowing a small fringe to hang on the temples. Nearly every woman wore a small cap or a small round straw hat with a ribbon round it. The lady's shoes would be high-heeled and pointed-toed, with a little buckle and strap. About the middle of the reign the sacque became the general town fashion, the sacque being so named on account of the back, which fell from the shoulders into wide, loose folds over the hooped petticoat. The sacque was gathered at the back in close pleats, which fell open over the skirt part of this dress. The front of the sacque was sometimes open, sometimes made tight in the bodice. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of George II.; four types of shoe}] Now the lady would puff her hair at the sides and powder it; if she had no hair she wore false, and a little later a full wig. She would now often discard her neat cap and wear a veil behind her back, over her hair, and falling over her shoulders. In 1748, so they say, and so I believe to be true, the King, walking in the Mall, saw the Duchess of Bedford riding in a blue riding-habit with white silk facings--this would be a man's skirted coat, double-breasted, a cravat, a three-corned hat, and a full blue skirt. He admired her dress so much and thought it so neat that he straightway ordered that the officers of the navy, who, until now, had worn scarlet, should take this coat for the model of their new uniform. So did the navy go into blue and white. The poorer classes were not, of course, dressed in hooped skirts, but the bodice and gown over the petticoat, the apron, and the turned back cuff to the short sleeve were worn by all. The orange wench laced her gown neatly, and wore a white cloth tied over her head; about her shoulders she wore a kerchief of white, and often a plain frill of linen at her elbows. There were blue canvas, striped dimity, flannel, and ticken for the humble; for the rich, lustrings, satins, Padesois, velvets, damasks, fans and Leghorn hats, bands of Valenciennes and Point de Dunquerque--these might be bought of Mrs. Holt, whose card Hogarth engraved, at the Two Olive Posts in the Broad part of the Strand. [Illustration: {Two women of the time of George II.}] Seventeen hundred and fifty-five saw the one-horse chairs introduced from France, called cabriolets, the first of our own extraordinary wild-looking conveyances contrived for the minimum of comfort and the maximum of danger. This invention captivated the hearts of both men and women. The men painted cabriolets on their waistcoats, they embroidered them on their stockings, they cut them out in black silk and patched their cheeks with them, horse and all; the women began to take up, a little later, the cabriolet caps with round sides like linen wheels, and later still, at the very end of the reign, there began a craze for such head-dresses--post-chaises, chairs and chairmen, even waggons, and this craze grew and grew, and hair grew--in wigs--to meet the cry for hair and straw men-of-war, for loads of hay, for birds of paradise, for goodness knows what forms of utter absurdity, all of which I put down to the introduction of the cab. I think that I can best describe the lady of this day as a swollen, skirted figure with a pinched waist, little head of hair, or tiny cap, developing into a loose sacque-backed figure still whaleboned out, with hair puffed at the sides and powdered, getting ready to develop again into a queer figure under a tower of hair, but that waits for the next reign. One cannot do better than go to Hogarth's prints and pictures--wonderful records of this time--one picture especially, 'Taste in High Life,' being a fine record of the clothes of 1742; here you will see the panier and the sacque, the monstrous muff, the huge hoop, the long-tailed wig, the black boy and the monkey. In the 'Noon' of the 'Four Parts of the Day' there are clothes again satirized. [Illustration: {A woman of the time of George II.; a shawl}] I am trusting that the drawings will supply what my words have failed to picture, and I again--for the twenty-first time--repeat that, given the cut and the idea of the time, the student has always to realize that there can be no hard-and-fast rule about the fashions; with the shape he can take liberties up to the points shown, with colour he can do anything--patterns of the materials are obtainable, and Hogarth will give anything required in detail. GEORGE THE THIRD Reigned sixty years: 1760-1820. Born 1738. Married, 1761, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. THE MEN AND WOMEN Throughout this long reign the changes of costume are so frequent, so varied, and so jumbled together, that any precise account of them would be impossible. I have endeavoured to give a leading example of most kind of styles in the budget of drawings which goes with this chapter. Details concerning this reign are so numerous: Fashion books, fashion articles in the _London Magazine_, the _St. James's Chronicle_, works innumerable on hair-dressing, tailors' patterns--these are easily within the reach of those who hunt the second-hand shops, or are within reasonable distance of a library. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820) The full-skirted coat, though still worn, has given way, in general, to the tail-coat. The waistcoat is much shorter. Black silk knee-breeches and stockings are very general.] Following my drawings, you will see in the first the ordinary wig, skirted coat, knee-breeches, chapeau-bras, cravat or waistcoat, of the man about town. I do not mean of the exquisite about town, but, if you will take it kindly, just such clothes as you or I might have worn. [Illustration: {Eleven types of head-dress for women; three types of shoe}] In the second drawing we see a fashionable man, who might have strutted past the first fellow in the Park. His hair is dressed in a twisted roll; he wears a tight-brimmed little hat, a frogged coat, a fringed waistcoat, striped breeches, and buckled shoes. In the third we see the dress of a Macaroni. On his absurd wig he wears a little Nevernoise hat; his cravat is tied in a bow; his breeches are loose, and beribboned at the knee. Many of these Macaronis wore coloured strings at the knee of their breeches, but the fashion died away when Jack Rann, 'Sixteen String Jack,' as he was called after this fashion, had been hung in this make of breeches. In number four we see the development of the tail-coat and the high-buttoned waistcoat. The tail-coat is, of course, son to the frock-coat, the skirts of which, being inconvenient for riding, had first been buttoned back and then cut back to give more play. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820) In the earlier half of the reign. Notice her sack dress over a satin dress, and the white, elaborately made skirt. Also the big cap and the curls of white wig.] In the fifth drawing we see the double-breasted cut-away coat. Number six is but a further tail-coat design. Number seven shows how different were the styles at one time. Indeed, except for the Macaroni and other extreme fashions, the entire budget of men as shown might have formed a crowd in the Park on one day about twenty years before the end of the reign. There would not be much powdered hair after 1795, but a few examples would remain. A distinct change is shown in the eighth drawing of the long-tailed, full coat, the broad hat, the hair powdered, but not tied. Number nine is another example of the same style. The tenth drawing shows the kind of hat we associate with Napoleon, and, in fact, very Napoleonic garments. In eleven we have a distinct change in the appearance of English dress. The gentleman is a Zebra, and is so-called from his striped clothes. He is, of course, in the extreme of fashion, which did not last for long; but it shows a tendency towards later Georgian appearance--the top-hat, the shorter hair, the larger neckcloth, the pantaloons--forerunners of Brummell's invention--the open sleeve. [Illustration: {Fourteen styles of hair and hats for men}] [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820) The cuffs have gone, and now the sleeve is left unbuttoned at the wrist. The coat is long and full-skirted, but not stiffened. The cravat is loosely tied, and the frilled ends stick out. These frills were, in the end, made on the shirt, and were called chitterlings.] Number twelve shows us an ordinary gentleman in a coat and waistcoat, with square flaps, called dog's ears. As the drawings continue you can see that the dress became more and more simple, more like modern evening dress as to the coats, more like modern stiff fashion about the neck. The drawings of the women's dresses should also speak for themselves. You may watch the growth of the wig and the decline of the hoop--I trust with ease. You may see those towers of hair of which there are so many stories. Those masses of meal and stuffing, powder and pomatum, the dressing of which took many hours. Those piles of decorated, perfumed, reeking mess, by which a lady could show her fancy for the navy by balancing a straw ship on her head, for sport by showing a coach, for gardening by a regular bed of flowers. Heads which were only dressed, perhaps, once in three weeks, and were then rescented because it was necessary. Monstrous germ-gatherers of horse-hair, hemp-wool, and powder, laid on in a paste, the cleaning of which is too awful to give in full detail. 'Three weeks,' says my lady's hairdresser, 'is as long as a head can go well in the summer without being opened.' [Illustration: {1772: A woman of the time of George III.; two types of hat; 1775: A woman of the time of George III.; 1794: A woman of the time of George III.}] [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820) This shows the last of the pannier dresses, which gave way in 1794 or 1795 to Empire dresses. A change came over all dress after the Revolution.] Then we go on to the absurd idea which came over womankind that it was most becoming to look like a pouter pigeon. She took to a buffon, a gauze or fine linen kerchief, which stuck out pigeon-like in front, giving an exaggerated bosom to those who wore it. With this fashion of 1786 came the broad-brimmed hat. Travel a little further and you have the mob cap. All of a sudden out go hoops, full skirts, high hair, powder, buffons, broad-brimmed hats, patches, high-heeled shoes, and in come willowy figures and thin, nearly transparent dresses, turbans, low shoes, straight fringes. I am going to give a chapter from a fashion book, to show you how impossible it is to deal with the vagaries of fashion in the next reign, and if I chose to occupy the space, I could give a similar chapter to make the confusion of this reign more confounded. DRAWINGS TO ILLUSTRATE THE COSTUME OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR, AND THE REMAINING TWELVE BY THE DIGHTONS, FATHER AND SON [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Five men}] [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Four men and a boy}] [Illustration: {A man and three women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: The King.] [Illustration: The Navy.] [Illustration: The Army.] [Illustration: Pensioners.] [Illustration: The Church.] [Illustration: The Law.] [Illustration: The Stage.] [Illustration: The Universities.] [Illustration: The Country.] [Illustration: The Duke of Norfolk.] [Illustration: The City.] [Illustration: The Duke of Queensberry.] GEORGE THE FOURTH Reigned ten years: 1820-1830. Born 1762. Married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick. Out of the many fashion books of this time I have chosen, from a little brown book in front of me, a description of the fashions for ladies during one part of 1827. It will serve to show how mere man, blundering on the many complexities of the feminine passion for dress--I was going to say clothes--may find himself left amid a froth of frills, high and dry, except for a whiff of spray, standing in his unromantic garments on the shore of the great world of gauze and gussets, while the most noodle-headed girl sails gracefully away upon the high seas to pirate some new device of the Devil or Paris. Our wives--bless them!--occasionally treat us to a few bewildering terms, hoping by their gossamer knowledge to present to our gaze a mental picture of a new, adorable, ardently desired--hat. Perhaps those nine proverbial tailors who go to make the one proverbial man, least of his sex, might, by a strenuous effort, confine the history of clothes during this reign into a compact literature of forty volumes. It would be indecent, as undecorous as the advertisements in ladies' papers, to attempt to fathom the language of the man who endeavoured to read the monumental effigy to the vanity of human desire for adornment. But is it adornment? Nowadays to be dressed well is not always the same thing as to be well dressed. Often it is far from it. The question of modern clothes is one of great perplexity. It seems that what is beauty one year may be the abomination of desolation the next, because the trick of that beauty has become common property. You puff your hair at the sides, you are in the true sanctum of the mode; you puff your hair at the sides, you are for ever utterly cast out as one having no understanding. I shall not attempt to explain it: it passes beyond the realms of explanation into the pure air of Truth. The Truth is simple. Aristocracy being no longer real, but only a cult, one is afraid of one's servants. Your servant puffs her hair at the sides, and, hang it! she becomes exactly like an aristocrat. Our servant having dropped her _g's_ for many years as well as her _h's_, it behoved us to pronounce our _g's_ and our _h's_. Our servants having learned our English, it became necessary for us to drop our _g's_; we seem at present unwilling in the matter of the _h_, but that will come. To cut the cackle and come to the clothes-horse, let me say that the bunglement of clothes which passes all comprehension in King George IV.'s reign is best explained by my cuttings from the book of one who apparently knew. Let the older writer have his, or her, fling in his, or her, words. 'CUROSY REMARKS ON THE LAST NEW FASHIONS. 'The City of London is now, indeed, most splendid in its buildings and extent; London is carried into the country; but never was it more deserted. 'A very, very few years ago, and during the summer, the dresses of the wives and daughters of our opulent tradesmen would furnish subjects for the investigators of fashion. 'Now, if those who chance to remain in London take a day's excursion of about eight or ten miles distance from the Metropolis, they hear the innkeepers deprecating the steamboats, by which they declare they are almost ruined: on Sundays, which would sometimes bring them the clear profits of ten or twenty pounds, they now scarce produce ten shillings. 'No; those of the middle class belonging to _Cockney Island_ must leave town, though the days are short, and even getting cold and comfortless; the steamboats carrying them off by shoals to Margate and its vicinity. 'The pursuit after elegant and superior modes of dress must carry us farther; it is now from the rural retirement of the country seats belonging to the noble and wealthy that we must collect them. 'Young ladies wear their hair well arranged, but not quite with the simplicity that prevailed last month; during the warmth of the summer months, the braids across the forehead were certainly the best; but now, when neither in fear of heat or damp, the curls again appear in numerous clusters round the face; and some young ladies, who seem to place their chief pride in a fine head of hair, have such a multitude of small ringlets that give to what is a natural charm all the _poodle-like_ appearance of a wig. 'The bows of hair are elevated on the summit of the head, and confined by a comb of tortoise-shell. 'Caps of the cornette kind are much in fashion, made of blond, and ornamented with flowers, or puffs of coloured gauze; most of the cornettes are small, and tie under the chin, with a bow on one side, of white satin ribbon; those which have ribbons or gauze lappets floating loose have them much shorter than formerly. 'A few dress hats have been seen at dinner-parties and musical amateur meetings in the country, of transparent white crape, ornamented with a small elegant bouquet of marabones. 'When these dress hats are of coloured crape, they are generally ornamented with flowers of the same tint as the hat, in preference to feathers. 'Printed muslins and chintzes are still very much worn in the morning walks, with handsome sashes, having three ends depending down each side, not much beyond the hips. With one of these dresses we saw a young lady wear a rich black satin pelerine, handsomely trimmed with a very beautiful black blond; it had a very neat effect, as the dress was light. 'White muslin dresses, though they are always worn partially in the country till the winter actually commences, are now seldom seen except on the young: the embroidery on these dresses is exquisite. Dresses of Indian red, either in taffety or chintz, have already made their appearance, and are expected to be much in favour the ensuing winter; the chintzes have much black in their patterns; but this light material will, in course, be soon laid aside for silks, and these, like the taffeties which have partially appeared, will no doubt be plain: with these dresses was worn a Canezon spencer, with long sleeves of white muslin, trimmed with narrow lace. 'Gros de Naples dresses are very general, especially for receiving dinner-parties, and for friendly evening society. 'At private dances, the only kind of ball that has at present taken place, are worn dresses of the white-figured gauze over white satin or gros de Naples; at the theatricals sometimes performed by noble amateurs, the younger part of the audience, who do not take a part, are generally attired in very clear muslin, over white satin, with drapery scarves of lace, barêge, or thick embroidered tulle. 'Cachemire shawls, with a white ground, and a pattern of coloured flowers or green foliage, are now much worn in outdoor costumes, especially for the morning walk; the mornings being rather chilly, these warm envelopes are almost indispensable. We are sorry, however, to find our modern belles so tardy in adopting those coverings, which ought now to succeed to the light appendages of summer costume. 'The muslin Canezon spencer, the silk fichu, and even the lighter barêge, are frequently the sole additions to a high dress, or even to one but partially so. 'We have lately seen finished to the order of a lady of rank in the county of Suffolk, a very beautiful pelisse of jonquil-coloured gros de Naples. It fastens close down from the throat to the feet, in front, with large covered buttons; at a suitable distance on each side of this fastening are three bias folds, rather narrow, brought close together under the belt, and enlarging as they descend to the border of the skirt. A large pelerine cape is made to take on and off; and the bust from the back of each shoulder is ornamented with the same bias folds, forming a stomacher in front of the waist. The sleeves, _à la Marie_, are puckered a few inches above the wrist, and confined by three straps; each with a large button. Though long ends are very much in favour with silk pelerines, yet there are quite as many that are quite round; such was the black satin pelerine we cited above. 'Coloured bonnets are now all the rage; we are happy to say that some, though all too large, are in the charming cottage style, and are modestly tied under the chin. Some bonnets are so excessively large that they are obliged to be placed quite at the back of the head; and as their extensive brims will not support a veil, when they are ornamented with a broad blond, the edge of that just falls over the hair, but does not even conceal the eyes. Leghorn hats are very general; their trimmings consist chiefly of ribbons, though some ladies add a few branches of green foliage between the bows or puffs: these are chiefly of the fern; a great improvement to these green branches is the having a few wild roses intermingled. 'The most admired colours are lavender, Esterhazy, olive-green, lilac, marshmallow blossom, and Indian red. 'At rural fêtes, the ornaments of the hats generally consist of flowers; these hats are backward in the Arcadian fashion, and discover a wreath of small flowers on the hair, _ex bandeau_. In Paris the most admired colours are ethereal-blue, Hortensia, cameleopard-yellow, pink, grass-green, jonquil, and Parma-violet.'--_September 1, 1827._ Really this little fashion book is very charming: it recreates, for me, the elegant simpering ladies; it gives, in its style, just that artificial note which conjures this age of ladies with hats--'in the charming cottage style, modestly tied under the chin.' They had the complete art of languor, these dear creatures; they lisped Italian, and were fine needlewomen; they painted weak little landscapes: nooks or arbours found them dreaming of a Gothic revival--they were all this and more; but through this sweet envelope the delicate refined souls shone: they were true women, often great women; their loops of hair, their cameleopard pelerines, shall not rob them of immortality, cannot destroy their softening influence, which permeated even the outrageous dandyism of the men of their time and steered the three-bottle gentlemen, their husbands and our grandfathers, into a grand old age which we reverence to-day, and wonder at, seeing them as giants against our nerve-shattered, drug-taking generation. As for the men, look at the innumerable pictures, and collect, for instance, the material for a colossal work upon the stock ties of the time, run your list of varieties into some semblance of order; commence with the varieties of macassar-brown stocks, pass on to patent leather stocks, take your man for a walk and cause him to pass a window full of Hibernian stocks, and let him discourse on the stocks worn by turf enthusiasts, and, when you are approaching the end of your twenty-third volume, give a picture of a country dinner-party, and end your work with a description of the gentlemen under the table being relieved of their stocks by the faithful family butler. POWDER AND PATCHES 'The affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had.' 'At the devill's shopps you buy A dresse of powdered hayre.' From the splendid pageant of history what figures come to you most willingly? Does a great procession go by the window of your mind? Knights bronzed by the sun of Palestine, kings in chains, emperors in blood-drenched purple, poets clothed like grocers with the souls of angels shining through their eyes, fussy Secretaries of State, informers, spies, inquisitors, Court cards come to life, harlequins, statesmen in great ruffs, wives of Bath in foot-mantles and white wimples, sulky Puritans, laughing Cavaliers, Dutchmen drinking gin and talking politics, men in wide-skirted coats and huge black periwigs--all walking, riding, being carried in coaches, in sedan-chairs, over the face of England. Every step of the procession yields wonderful dreams of colour; in every group there is one who, by the personality of his clothes, can claim the name of beau. Near the tail of the throng there is a chattering, bowing, rustling crowd, dimmed by a white mist of scented hair-powder. They are headed, I think--for one cannot see too clearly--by the cook of the Comte de Bellemare, a man by name Legros, the great hairdresser. Under his arm is a book, the title of which reads, 'Art de la Coiffure des Dames Françaises.' Behind him is a lady in an enormous hoop; her hair is dressed _à la belle Poule_; she is arguing some minute point of the disposition of patches with Monsieur Léonard, another artist in hair. 'What will be the next wear?' she asks. 'A heart near the eye--_l'assassine_, eh? Or a star near the lips--_la friponne_? Must I wear a _galante_ on my cheek, an _enjouée_ in my dimple, or _la majestueuse_ on my forehead?' Before we can hear the reply another voice is raised, a guttural German voice; it is John Schnorr, the ironmaster of Erzgebinge. 'The feet stuck in it, I tell you,' he says--'actually stuck! I got from my saddle and looked at the ground. My horse had carried me on to what proved to be a mine of wealth. Hair-powder! I sold it in Dresden, in Leipsic; and then, at Meissen, what does Böttcher do but use my hair-powder to make white porcelain!' And so the chatter goes on. Here is Charles Fox tapping the ground with his red heels and proclaiming, in a voice thick with wine, on the merits of blue hair-powder; here is Brummell, free from hair-powder, free from the obnoxious necessity of going with his regiment to Manchester. The dressy person and the person who is well dressed--these two showing everywhere. The one is in a screaming hue of woad, the other a quiet note of blue dye; the one in excessive velvet sleeves that he cannot manage, the other controlling a rich amplitude of material with perfect grace. Here a liripipe is extravagantly long; here a gold circlet decorates curled locks with matchless taste. Everywhere the battle between taste and gaudiness. High hennins, steeples of millinery, stick up out of the crowd; below these, the towers of powdered hair bow and sway as the fine ladies patter along. What a rustle and a bustle of silks and satins, of flowered tabbies, rich brocades, cut velvets, superfine cloths, woollens, cloth of gold! See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of Coeur de Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed Norman ladies with bound-up chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of Katherine Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of King James's Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the Hogarthian women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing figures in Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed, in hoop skirts, flirting with a fan--the lady; in gold-laced wide coat, solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels--the gentleman. 'I protest, madam,' he is saying, 'but you flatter me vastly.' 'La, sir,' she replies, 'I am prodigiously truthful.' 'And how are we to know that all this is true?' the critics ask, guarding the interest of the public. 'We see that your book is full of statements, and there are no, or few, authorities given for your studies. Where,' they ask, 'are the venerable anecdotes which are given a place in every respectable work on your subject?' To appease the appetites which are always hungry for skeletons, I give a short list of those books which have proved most useful: MS. Cotton, Claudius, B. iv. MS. Harl., 603. Psalter, English, eleventh century. The Bayeaux Tapestry. MS. Cotton, Tiberius, C. vi. Psalter. MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 17, 1. Illustrated by Eadwine, a monk, 1130-1174. MS. Harl. Roll, Y. vi. MS. Harl., 5102. Stothard's 'Monumental Effigies.' MS. C. C. C., Camb., xvi. MS. Cott., Nero, D. 1. MS. Cott., Nero, C. iv. Full of drawings. MS. Roy., 14, C. vii. Lansdowne MS., British Museum. Macklin's 'Monumental Brasses.' _Journal of the Archæological Association._ MS. Roy., 2, B. vii. MS. Roy., 10, E. iv. Good marginal drawings. The Loutrell Psalter. Invaluable for costume. MS. Bodl. Misc., 264. 1338-1344. Very full of useful drawings. Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Ellesmere MS. of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.' Boutell's 'Monumental Brasses.' MS. Harl., 1819. Metrical history of the close of Richard II.'s reign. Good drawings for costume. MS. Harl., 1892. MS. Harl., 2278. Lydgate's 'Life of St. Edmund.' MS. Roy., 15, E. vi. Fine miniatures. The Bedford Missal, MS. Add., 18850. MS. Harl., 2982. A Book of Hours. Many good drawings. MS. Harl., 4425. The Romance of the Rose. Fine and useful drawings. MS. Lambeth, 265. MS. Roy., 19, C. viii. MS. Roy., 16, F. ii. Turberville's 'Book of Falconrie' and 'Book of Hunting.' Shaw's 'Dresses and Decorations.' Jusserand's 'English Novel' and 'Wayfaring Life.' Very excellent books, full of reproductions from illuminated books, prints, and pictures. The Shepherd's Calendar, 1579, British Museum. Harding's 'Historical Portraits.' Nichols's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.' Stubbes's 'Anatomie of Abuses,' 1583. Braun's 'Civitates orbis terrarum.' 'Vestusta Monumenta.' Hollar's 'Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus.' Hollar's 'Aula Veneris.' Pepys's Diary. Evelyn's Diary. Tempest's 'Cries of London.' Fifty plates. Atkinson's 'Costumes of Great Britain.' In addition to these, there are, of course, many other books, prints, engravings, sets of pictures, and heaps of caricatures. The excellent labours of the Society of Antiquaries and the Archæological Association have helped me enormously; these, with wills, wardrobe accounts, 'Satires' by Hall and others, 'Anatomies of Abuses,' broadsides, and other works on the same subject, French, German, and English, have made my task easier than it might have been. It was no use to spin out my list of manuscripts with the numbers--endless numbers--of those which proved dry ground, so I have given those only which have yielded a rich harvest. BEAU BRUMMELL AND CLOTHES _'A person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to give him a favourable impression of you, for,' and she sunk her voice to a whisper, 'he is the celebrated Mr. Brummell.'_--'Life of Beau Brummell,' Captain Jesse. Those who care to make the melancholy pilgrimage may see, in the Protestant Cemetery at Caen, the tomb of George Bryan Brummell. He died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840. It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty, clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur. Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man of whom Thackeray spoke so truly: 'But a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty-brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing.' Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which fetched £15,000 second-hand--a wardrobe that had been a man. He invented a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink silk coat with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He was a coward, a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in our eyes, walks for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell. I have said that Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He was the Beau who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty linen, the greasy hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to a position, ever since held by Englishmen, of quiet, unobtrusive cleanliness, decent linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress. He made clean linen and washing daily a part of English life. See him seated before his dressing-glass, a mahogany-framed sliding cheval glass with brass arms on either sides for candles. By his side is George IV., recovering from his drunken bout of last night. The Beau's glass reflects his clean-complexioned face, his grey eyes, his light brown hair, and sandy whiskers. A servant produces a shirt with a 12-inch collar fixed to it, assists the Beau into it, arranges it, and stands aside. The collar nearly hides the Beau's face. Now, with his hand protected with a discarded shirt, he folds his collar down to the required height. Now he takes his white stock and folds it carefully round the collar; the stock is a foot high and slightly starched. A supreme moment of artistic decision, and the stock and collar take their perfect creases. In an hour or so he will be ready to partake of a light meal with the royal gentleman. He will stand up and survey himself in his morning dress, his regular, quiet suit. A blue coat, light breeches fitting the leg well, a light waistcoat over a waistcoat of some other colour, never a startling contrast, Hessian boots, or top-boots and buckskins. There was nothing very peculiar about his clothes except, as Lord Byron said, 'an exquisite propriety.' His evening dress was a blue coat, white waistcoat, black trousers buttoned at the ankle--these were of his own invention, and one may say it was the wearing of them that made trousers more popular than knee-breeches--striped silk stockings, and a white stock. He was a man of perfect taste--of fastidious taste. On his tables lay books of all kinds in fine covers. Who would suspect it? but the Prince is leaning an arm on a copy of Ellis's 'Early English Metrical Romances.' The Beau is a rhymer, an elegant verse-maker. Here we see the paper-presser of Napoleon--I am flitting for the moment over some years, and see him in his room in Calais--here we notice his passion for buhl, his Sèvres china painted with Court beauties. In his house in Chapel Street he saw daily portraits of Nelson and Pitt and George III. upon his walls. This is no Beau as we understand the term, for we make it a word of contempt, a nickname for a feeble fellow in magnificent garments. Rather this is the room of an educated gentleman of 'exquisite propriety.' He played high, as did most gentlemen; he was superstitious, as are many of the best of men. That lucky sixpence with the hole in it that you gave to a cabman, Beau Brummell, was that loss the commencement of your downward career? There are hundreds of anecdotes of Brummell which, despite those of the 'George, ring the bell' character, and those told of his heavy gaming, are more valuable as showing his wit, his cleanliness, his distaste of display--in fact, his 'exquisite propriety.' A Beau is hardly a possible figure to-day; we have so few personalities, and those we have are chiefly concerned with trade--men who uphold trusts, men who fight trusts, men who speak for trade in the House of Commons. We have not the same large vulgarities as our grandfathers, nor have we the same wholesome refinement; in killing the evil--the great gambler, the great men of the turf, the great prize-fighters, the heavy wine-drinkers--we have killed, also, the good, the classic, well-spoken civil gentleman. Our manners have suffered at the expense of our morals. Fifty or sixty years ago the world was full of great men, saying, writing, thinking, great things. To-day--perhaps it is too early to speak of to-day. Personalities are so little marked by their clothes, by any stamp of individuality, that the caricaturist, or even the minute and truthful artist, be he painter or writer, has a difficult task before him when he sets out to point at the men of these our times. George Brummell came into the world on June 7, 1778. He was a year or so late for the Macaroni style of dress, many years behind the Fribbles, after the Smarts, and must have seen the rise and fall of the Zebras when he was thirteen. During his life he saw the old-fashioned full frock-coat, bagwig, solitaire, and ruffles die away; he saw the decline and fall of knee-breeches for common wear, and the pantaloons invented by himself take their place. From these pantaloons reaching to the ankle came the trousers, as fashionable garments, open over the instep at first, and joined by loops and buttons, then strapped under the boot, and after that in every manner of cut to the present style. He saw the three-cornered hat vanish from the hat-boxes of the polite world, and he saw fine-coloured clothes give way to blue coats with brass buttons or coats of solemn black. It may be said that England went into mourning over the French Revolution, and has not yet recovered. Beau Brummell, on his way to Eton, saw a gay-coloured crowd of powdered and patched people, saw claret-coloured coats covered with embroidery, gold-laced hats, twinkling shoe-buckles. On his last walks in Caen, no doubt, he dreamed of London as a place of gay colours instead of the drab place it was beginning to be. To-day there is no more monotonous sight than the pavements of Piccadilly crowded with people in dingy, sad clothes, with silk tubes on their heads, their black and gray suits being splashed by the mud from black hansoms, or by the scatterings of motor-cars driven by aristocratic-looking mechanics, in which mechanical-looking aristocrats lounge, darkly clad. Here and there some woman's dress enlivens the monotony; here a red pillar-box shines in the sun; there, again, we bless the Post-Office for their red mail-carts, and perhaps we are strengthened to bear the gloom by the sight of a blue or red bus. But our hearts are not in tune with the picture; we feel the lack of colour, of romance, of everything but money, in the street. Suddenly a magnificent policeman stops the traffic; there is a sound of jingling harness, of horses' hoofs beating in unison. There flashes upon us an escort of Life Guards sparkling in the sun, flashing specks of light from swords, breastplates, helmets. The little forest of waving plumes, the raising of hats, the polite murmuring of cheers, warms us. We feel young, our hearts beat; we feel more healthy, more alive, for this gleam of colour. Then an open carriage passes us swiftly as we stand with bared heads. There is a momentary sight of a man in uniform--a man with a wonderful face, clever, dignified, kind. And we say, with a catch in our voices: 'THE KING--GOD BLESS HIM!' THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND * * * * * Transcriber's note: Illustration captions in {curly brackets} have been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader. Hyphenation has been made consistent. Minor errors in punctuation have been corrected. The following items were noted by the transcriber: Page 361--the text reads, "Another thing the women did was to cut from their bodices all the little strips but the in the middle of the back, ..." which seems to be missing the word 'one' between 'the' and 'in'. It has been added in this etext. Page 442--the word CUROSY may be an error for CURSORY, or it may be the pen-name of the quoted writer. However, as the transcriber was unable to confirm either way, it has been preserved as printed. Archaic spelling is preserved as printed. Variable spelling has been made consistent where there was a prevalence of one form over the other, and typographic errors have been repaired, as follows: Page 38 (plate facing)--whimple amended to wimple--"She has a wimple in her hands which she may wind about her head." Page 52 (plate facing)--whimple amended to wimple--"There is a chin-band to be seen passing under the wimple; ..." Page 54--Fontevfaud amended to Fontevraud--"The effigy of the Queen at Fontevraud shows her dress ..." Page 73--wode amended to woad--"... by staining themselves blue with woad and yellow with ochre, ..." Page 74 (plate facing)--whimple amended to wimple--"... a plain cloak, a plain gown, and a wimple over the head." Page 82--kaleidscope amended to kaleidoscope--"... like the symmetrical accidents of the kaleidoscope, ..." Page 87--head-hankerchief amended to head-handkerchief--"... as was the gown and head-handkerchief of his wife." Page 92--repeated 'new' deleted--"... for, although men followed the new mode, ladies adhered to their earlier fashions." Page 94--tieing amended to tying--"Every quaint thought and invention for tying up this liripipe was used: ..." Page 96--tow amended to two--"Then there were two distinct forms of cape: ..." Page 123--Ploughman amended to Plowman--"... William Langland, or Piers the Plowman." Page 142--Louttrell amended to Loutrell--"... together with the artist of the Loutrell Psalter, ..." Page 142--repeated 'British' removed--"... are cheap to obtain and the British Museum is free to all." Page 154--waistcoast amended to waistcoat--"Over his tunic he wears a quilted waistcoat, ..." Page 189--excresences amended to excrescences--"... surmounted by minarets, towers, horns, excrescences of every shape ..." Page 247--Katharine amended to Katherine--"Married, 1509, Katherine of Aragon; ..." and "... 1540, Katherine Howard; ..." Page 259--martin amended to marten--"... to wear marten or velvet trimming you must be worth over two hundred marks a year." Page 291--anp amended to and (typesetting error)--"How, they and we ask, are breeches, ..." Page 296--Nuserie amended to Nurserie--"'The Wits Nurserie.'" Page 305--underproper amended to underpropper--"First, the lady put on her underpropper of wire ..." and "... wore such a ruff as required an underpropper, ..." Page 313--choses amended to chooses--"... and from these the Queen chooses one." Page 334--fardingle amended to fardingale--"... and twirl her round until the Catherine-wheel fardingale is a blurred circle, ..." Page 337--Castille amended to Castile--"On another day comes the news that the Constable of Castile ..." Page 417--Macaronies amended to Macaronis--"... you may tell yourself here is one of the new Macaronis, ..." The frontispiece illustration has been moved to follow the title page. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. 
42682	----	THE HERITAGE OF DRESS [Illustration: VERY EARLY MAN IN JAVA. (_Chapter II._) _PLATE I._] THE HERITAGE OF DRESS BEING NOTES ON THE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF CLOTHES BY WILFRED MARK WEBB FELLOW OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON CURATOR OF ETON COLLEGE MUSEUM WITH ELEVEN PLATES AND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE FIGURES IN THE TEXT LONDON E. GRANT RICHARDS 1907 TO MY WIFE HILDA E. WEBB PREFACE It would be difficult to find a subject of more universal interest than that of dress, and hosts of books have been written which deal with the attire that has been adopted at different times and by various nations or social classes. The ornamental and artistic sides of the question have also received much consideration, but the volumes that have appeared serve chiefly as works of reference. The present book aims at being of more immediate interest and usefulness; it starts with things as they are, and is really a popular contribution to the natural history of man. On all sides the advantages of observation and the need for the nature-study method in education are being rightly urged, but there is a tendency to narrow the purview. Anything in our environment is worthy of notice, and though attention is well directed towards that which is least artificial, we should not leave man and his works altogether on one side. There is material for observation, research, and deduction, even in a bowler hat and a cut-away coat. One of the pleasantest features in connection with the making of this book has been the kind and ready help which I have received from all sides. Here and there throughout the text the names of friends and correspondents who have given their assistance have been mentioned. To these I offer my hearty thanks, as well as to the following, who with suggestions, information, or with material for illustrations, have contributed in no small way to the interest of the book: Messrs. Fownes Brothers & Company, Mr. Allan A. Hooke, Mr. W. S. Ward, Mr. Karl, of Messrs. Nathan & Company, Messrs. Tress & Company, Messrs. Lincoln & Bennett, Mr. M. D. Hill, the Rev. A. W. Upcott, Head Master of Christ's Hospital, Miss Clark, Miss Hodgson, the Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, Mr. Henry Miller, of the Church Association, Mr. Ravenscroft, of Messrs. Ede Sons & Ravenscroft, Mr. Paley Baildon, Mr. George Hertslet, of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, Messrs. Wilkinson & Company, Mr. C. M. Mühlberg, Mr. W. S. Parker, of Messrs. Debenhams, Ltd., Capt. H. Trench, Major J. W. Mallet, of the _Army and Navy Gazette_, Mr. Basil White, of Messrs. Hawkes & Company, Mr. W. H. Jesson, Messrs. Souter & Company, Mr. William Lawrence, Mr. Heather Bigg, Dr. J. Cantlie, and the Rt. Hon. Viscountess Harberton. A glance at the bibliography, which is given on pages 363-7, will show the principal books and papers to which reference has been made. In connection with the illustrations, special thanks must be given to Monsieur Maurice Sand, the Editor of the _Review of the University of Brussels_, for his kind permission to reproduce a number of the figures used to illustrate a translation of Sir George Darwin's article. These are Figures 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33, 46, 48, 62, 63, and 82. Acknowledgments are due to Mr. St. John Hope for Figures 86-8, to Messrs. A. & C. Black for Figures 123 and 124 and 132 and 133, and to Messrs. Prewett & Co. for Figures 111 and 112. For the original of Plate II, I am indebted to the kindness of Captain R. Ford, of Plate III to Mr. Henry Stevens; Plate IV has been taken from a brass rubbing in Rugby School Museum, through the kind offices of Mr. J. M. Hardwich. I have to thank Mr. R. Bamber for the original of Plate VIII, which was obtained through his instrumentality. Figure B of Plate IX was kindly contributed by the Rev. A. W. Upcott, Head Master of Christ's Hospital, and Figures B and C on Plate X were copied from Moseley's "Voyage of the 'Challenger,'" by the kind permission of Mr. John Murray, while Figure D is due to the courtesy of General Robley. Plate XI is reprinted from _The Reliquary_, by the kind permission of Messrs. Bemrose and Sons, and the source of other illustrations is acknowledged beneath them, while the classic collection of pictures which were brought together by the late Mr. F. W. Fairholt to illustrate his "Costume in England" has proved, as will be seen, of the utmost service. In conclusion, I have much pleasure in calling attention to the time and care which Mr. W. J. Webb has expended upon the figures, which are a feature of the book; and I must mention the willing help which I have been afforded in a number of details by Miss Amy Astbury and Mr. Bernard Weaver. WILFRED MARK WEBB. ODSTOCK, HANWELL, _November, 1907_. CONTENTS I THE THRALL OF DRESS PAGE The principles of evolution applied to clothes 1 II THE ORIGIN OF DRESS 6 III DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN COAT The ancestral shawl--Problematical buttons 15 IV BUTTONS AS CHRONICLES Episodes in the later history of the coat and cuffs 25 V COLLARS AND BANDS Nicks in coat lapels--The why and wherefore of the white shirt front 41 VI VESTIGES IN THE HAT How hats were evolved--Why plumes are on the left side--The growth of the busby--Helmets and cocked hats 49 VII SHOES AND STOCKINGS Early foot-gear--The origin of the clock--A modern imitation of tattooing--Gaily coloured garters 62 VIII PETTICOATS AND TROUSERS The belted plaid and kilt--Early skirts--The antiquity of trousers--Trouser stripes 72 IX COATS OF ARMS Signet rings--Armorial bearings--Escutcheons--Crests--Badges 83 X GLOVES AND MITTENS Origin of the baby's glove--Fourchettes--The "points" on the backs of gloves 94 XI TAGS, PINS, AND BALDRICS Laces--The evolution and vagaries of the safety-pin--Primitive methods of carrying burdens as illustrated by muff-chains, baldrics, and yokes 100 XII ORNAMENTS Primitive necklaces--Finger rings--The origin of the hair comb--Buttons--Studs--Flowers--Feathers--Amulets 111 XIII HAIR DRESSING Head shaving--Wigs that are still worn--Roman curls and fringes 126 XIV SPECIAL DRESSES Fashions kept up by ceremonies--Survivals in special costume--Flowing garments 135 XV SERVANTS' DRESS The prototypes of liveries--Reminiscences of George II and George III--Origin of the page-boy's buttons--The jockey cap--Aprons 139 XVI COCKADES The cockade a degenerated chaperon--The varieties of the cockade--Cockade wearers 152 XVII CHILDREN'S DRESS Survivals in children's dress--Special school costumes--The blue-coat boy--Public school boys--Adoption of special dress at girls' schools 162 XVIII WEDDING GARMENTS The veil--Bridesmaids and bribery--Old shoes--Orange blossom 175 XIX MOURNING Colours associated with mourning--Widows' weeds--Perennial mourning 181 XX COSTUME CONNECTED WITH RELIGION The surplice and "the cloth"--The civil origin of vestments--Fine vestments--Processional vestments, so called--Nuns' dress--The choker 184 XXI SUNDAY CLOTHES The significance of Sunday clothes--The wearing of hats in church by ladies 205 XXII ACADEMICAL DRESS Gowns and hanging sleeves--The forerunner of the hood--The origin of the doctor's hat--The evolution of the mortar-board 208 XXIII LEGAL DRESS Vestiges of the coif--Hoods and gowns--Signs of mourning 215 XXIV STATE AND COURT ATTIRE Coronation dress--Parliamentary robes--Mistakes in Court dress--Vestiges of the wig and of the chaperon--Court cards 221 XXV SURVIVALS IN MILITARY UNIFORMS Armour--Prickers for flint locks--Forage cords--Reminiscences of gallantry--Regimental badges--Courtship colours 233 XXVI NAVAL UNIFORM Supposed survivals--Petticoats and wide breeches 251 XXVII THE COSTUME OF PUPPETS Punch and Judy--Fashion dolls--Dolls in swaddling clothes--The Egyptian "shabbies" 253 XXVIII THE CLOWN AND PAINTING THE BODY The clown's dress--Savage painting and survivals of it--Tattooing--Patches and false complexions--Masks 269 XXIX STAGE COSTUMES The harlequin, pantaloon, columbine, and acrobat 282 XXX NIGHTDRESS Bands on nightgowns--Nightcaps--Night attire worn in the streets 287 XXXI THE DRESS OF ANIMALS Natural representatives of clothes--Horse trappings--Amulets on harness--Dogs' disguises--Fashions in the form of animals 291 XXXII COLOUR Importance of colour--Instinctive love of bright hues--Desirability of coloured clothes and gay scenes--Colour and complexion 305 XXXIII PATTERNS Ancient designs--Checks and tartans--Parti-coloured clothes--Evolution of ornamentation 311 XXXIV IMPRESSIONS TO BE GAINED FROM DRESS Clues from clothes--Individuality not disguised by them--Modern dress of other countries--Significance of clothes 315 XXXV THE EFFECT OF CLOTHES UPON THE INDIVIDUAL The origin of stays--Tight lacing no new thing--Its effects--Mr. Heather Bigg on the need for support--The ideal foot--Skull deformities--Padding 322 XXXVI FURTHER EFFECTS OF CLOTHES ON THE INDIVIDUAL Mental effects of different clothes--Preferences of girls for certain articles of dress--Movements that depend upon the presence or absence of clothes 339 XXXVII THE RISE AND FALL OF FASHIONS Reason why fashions are followed--Gay clothes seen when periods of depression are over--Condemnation of fashions by the clergy--Quakers--Sumptuary laws--The killing of fashions 343 XXXVIII DRESS REFORM Clothes to be avoided--Need for warmer garments--"Rational" dress for women 354 CONCLUSION 362 BIBLIOGRAPHY 363 INDEX 369 LIST OF PLATES PLATE FACING PAGE I. Very early man in Java. Illustrating the remarks in Chapter II, pages 6 and 7 _Frontispiece_ II. A woman and a witch-doctor of Central Africa, showing the part that ornaments may play even when clothing is of the scantiest. (From a photograph by Captain Ford) 9 III. The silk vest worn by Charles I on the scaffold. Illustrating the sleeved tunic opening for a short distance down the front. (From a photograph by Mr. Henry Stevens) 18 IV. Reproduction of a brass to John Brandon and his two wives in the Church of St. Mary, King's Lynn. Date, 1364. On the male figure, continuous rows of buttons run from the wrist to the elbow of the under-vest. The women wear the wimple and gorget or throat cloth 38 V. A Siamese Princess wearing trousers 81 VI. Two Padaung women, showing the numerous metal collars which they wear round their necks 114 VII. Methods of hairdressing, illustrated by Romano-Egyptian portrait models in the Myers Collection, Eton College Museum. (From photographs by Wilfred Mark Webb) 129 VIII. A barge girl, showing the costume worn on the canals. (From a photograph by Wakefield Brentford) 150 IX. Fig. A. The cap worn by the scholars of Christ's Hospital until the middle of the nineteenth century. Fig. B. A scholar of Christ's Hospital. (By the courtesy of the Rev. A. W. Upcott, M.A., Head Master of Christ's Hospital) 167 X. Fig. A. The head of a clown, showing the painted face, the ruff, and the Elizabethan method of doing the hair. Fig. B. The face of a Japanese actor (after Moseley, by the courtesy of Mr. John Murray). Fig. C. The painted face of a paper figure which is burned at Chinese funerals (after Moseley, by the courtesy of Mr. John Murray). Fig. D. The tattooed head of a Moorish chief. (By the courtesy of General Robley) 270 XI. Wooden stay busks. These incidentally show survivals of primitive ornament. From _The Reliquary_, by kind permission of Messrs. Bemrose & Sons, Ltd. 326 LIST OF FIGURES FIG. PAGE 1. Drawing of a woman engraved by a cave man 9 2. Sketch showing the development of the tunic. In this stage it has no arms 17 3. Diagram showing the way in which a sleeved tunic is derived from the shawl 18 4. A smock frock 19 5. Jacket of a woman, made in one piece. Bronze stage of culture (after Worsaae) 19 6. Man's dress showing buttons on the right side 20 7. Woman's dress showing buttons on the left side 21 8. Diagram showing how a man does up a button. First stage 23 9. Diagram showing how a man does up a button. Second stage 23 10. Diagram showing how a woman does up a button. First stage 23 11. Diagram showing how a woman does up a button. Second stage 23 12. The buttons on the back of a policeman's great-coat 26 13. The buttons that close the slit up the back of an ulster 27 14. A back view of a seventeenth-century coat showing the buttons and buttonholes 28 15. The tab and buttons on the back of a soldier's great-coat which make a temporary waist 29 16. The buttons and tab on a tramway driver's coat 31 17. An eighteenth-century coat with side buttons and tab 31 18. Side tabs and buttons at the back (after Racinet) 31 19. A coat worn at the end of the seventeenth century (after H. Bonnart) 32 20. A modern coat with side pockets 32 21. A footman's coat, modern, with vestigial pocket flaps 33 22. Coat skirts buttoned back (after Hogarth) 33 23. A coat with the skirts buttoned back and showing the lining 34 24. A dress coat with skirts cut away 34 25. A modern coat cuff with buttons 35 26. Turned-back cuff, end of seventeenth century (after Bonnart) 35 27. A coat sleeve (after Hogarth) with horizontal row of buttons 36 28. Sleeve of a coat of the seventeenth century, reputed to have been worn by Charles I 36 29. The turned-back cuff of an overcoat, modern 37 30. A sleeve with vertical buttons and a turned-back cuff as well (from a uniform, after Hogarth) 37 31. The uniform of a coastguard officer of 1775 (after Racinet) 39 32. The nicks in the coat and waistcoat 41 33. A stage when the nick was useful (Lucien Bonaparte, after Paul Lacroix) 42 34. The "toothpick" on a dress coat 43 35. Modern bands 45 36. A blue-coat boy's bands 45 37. A chorister of Jesus College, Cambridge, showing the collar worn until recently. (From a photograph, by the courtesy of Mr. H. Austin Wheaton) 45 38. A stage in the reduction of bands (portrait of Jan Steen from the _Illustrated Magazine of Art_) 46 39. Full-sized bands (portrait of John Pym from the _Illustrated Magazine of Art_) 46 40. A modern bandbox, now used for hats 47 41. Bands that survive at the present day 47 42. The turban of a Jewish priest (after Kitto) compared with the dome of the Mosque of Omar 50 43. A Siamese head-dress and a Pra Pang or votive spire (after P. A. Thompson) 51 44. A Gothic spire (St. Stephens, Caen) compared with the hennin (the latter after Fairholt) 51 45. Band with streamers fastening on the head-dress of an Egyptian woman. From a figure of the Sixth Dynasty, 3500 B.C. 52 46. A lady's head-dress confined with a fillet, fourteenth century (after Viollet le Duc) 52 47. A sailor hat with band and streamers 53 48. A twelfth-century head-dress with streamers, from a MS. (after Viollet le Duc) 53 49. A modern Scotch cap with streamers 54 50. A mitre of the See of Durham showing the strings (after Millington) 54 51. Small vestigial bow of ribbon in a modern hat 55 52. A hat with the remains of lacing 55 53. A hunting hat with complete lacing inside 56 54. A disc of leather 57 55. The disc perforated and the lace inserted 57 56. The lace tightened to form a crown 57 57. The ends of the lace tied as a bow inside 57 58. A bow fastened to the lining of a lady's hat 58 59. Plumes on the left side 58 60. The red Hungarian cap, which was the forerunner of the busby 59 61. A busby (of the Hon. Artillery Company) in which the cap is a vestige only 59 62. A fireman's helmet (of the ancient Greek type) 60 63. Buttons so arranged that the broad brim of a hat can be fastened to the crown, thus forming a temporary "cock" (Hudibras, after Hogarth) 60 64. A modern boot decorated with perforations made in the leather 63 65. An ornamented Roman shoe, of two thicknesses 63 66. A Roman shoe of open-work leather 63 67. A hide shoe of pre-Roman type from Ireland (after Fairholt) 64 68. The original top boot with the upper part temporarily turned down 65 69. The modern top boot in which the upper part can no longer be turned up 66 70. Puttees 66 71. Leg bandages of a royal personage at the end of the tenth century (after Fairholt) 67 72. A stocking with clocks 68 73. An embroidered stocking showing the further evolution of the clock (date 1900) 69 74. An open-work stocking of 1905 69 75. A shawl used as a kilt by a chieftain of Denmark in the bronze stage of culture (after Worsaae) 73 76. A simple dress in the form of a petticoat from an Egyptian figure of the Sixth Dynasty (3500 B.C.), from the Myers collection in Eton College Museum 74 77. A Korean servant (after Hough) 75 78. A short kilt 76 79. A barbarian soldier wearing characteristic trousers (from a diptych of St. Paul, after Marriott) 78 80. A Saxon military man wearing wide trousers (from the Harleian MS., No. 603, after Fairholt) 79 81. A peasant woman of Champéry wearing trousers 80 82. A German Hussar of 1808 81 83. The crest on a modern signet ring 85 84. Sir Geoffrey Loutterell and the ladies of his family, showing the extent to which armorial bearings were worn in the middle of the fourteenth century. From a psalter, made for Sir Geoffrey (after Fairholt) 85 85. The crest and surcoat of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, A.D. 1347. From the brass to Sir Hugh Hasting at Elsyng, Norfolk (after Charles Boutell) 86 86. The helmet and crest of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope) 88 87. The shield of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope) 89 88. The surcoat or jupon of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope) 89 89. The postilion of a Lord Mayor of London, wearing a crest upon his cap, and a coat of arms upon his sleeve (copied by permission from a plate published by the John Williamson Co., Ltd.) 92 90. A baby's glove without separate fingers 95 91. The back of a woollen glove showing the three vestiges known as "points" 96 92. A modern kid glove showing the fourchettes or pieces between the fingers, which form three pointed V's 97 93. Queen Elizabeth's coronation glove, showing the stitching carried down on to the back. (From a photograph by the courtesy of Messrs. Fownes Brothers and Co.) 97 94. The glove of Anne, Queen Consort of James I, showing the embroidery on the fingers, which is the ancestor of the modern "points." (From a photograph, by the courtesy of Messrs. Fownes Brothers and Co.) 99 95. A silk lace with simple metal tags 101 96. Ornamental metal tags on a velvet neck ribbon 101 97. A simple safety-pin 102 98. An Etruscan brooch or fibula, resembling a safety-pin. (In the collection of Major W. J. Myers in Eton College Museum) 103 99. The safety-pin in the waistband 103 100. The safety-pin grown larger and used for fastening on a hat 104 101. A muff-chain 105 102. A hawker, illustrating the primitive way of carrying a burden 107 103. A courier-bag supported by a baldric 107 104. An ornamental baldric of the early fifteenth century. (Royal MS. 15, D. 5, after Fairholt) 108 105. A lady's dress, showing the part which is called a yoke, and recalls a primitive method of carrying burdens 109 106. A loom comb found in the Glastonbury lake dwellings (after Boyd Dawkins) 118 107. A modern comb for the hair 118 108. Two studs of bronze, seen from above and from the side, later Bronze Age (after Worsaae) 119 109. The "flash" of five black ribbons on the collar of the Welsh Fusiliers. A survival from the days of the pigtail 134 110. The modern groom, showing the belt to which ladies clung when riding on a pillion 140 111. A footman in plush breeches and with powdered hair. His "pouter" coat dates from the reign of George III. By the courtesy of Messrs. F. T. Prewett and Co. 141 112. A sheriff's coachman with the full-skirted coat of the time of George II. By the courtesy of Messrs. Prewett and Co. 142 113. The wig-bag (a survival of the bag-wig) now seen on the back of the collar of the Lord Mayor's coachman 143 114. A modern page-boy's livery 145 115. The Dutch skeleton dress, fashionable for boys in 1826 145 116. The cockade known as the "large treble," representing a survival of the chaperon 152 117. A "treble cockade" covered with black cloth for mourning. The concentric circles would appear to represent the twisted liripipe of the chaperon 154 118. Treble cockade used by Chelsea pensioners 155 119. The Regent cockade 155 120. Royal cockade for state occasions 155 121. Ordinary Royal cockade 155 122.{Two stages in the evolution of the chaperon. Combined { hood and cape 156 { 123.{Enlargement of the peak of the hood to form the liripipe. { (After Calthrop, by kind permission of Messrs. A. and { C. Black) 156 124.{Further development of the chaperon. Cape and liripipe { made into a head-dress that can be altered at will 157 { 125.{A chaperon ready made up, in order to save trouble. { (After Calthrop, by kind permission of Messrs. A. and { C. Black) 157 126. Dress worn by the girls at Coombe Hill School, Westerham. It is a modification of the Dervish Djibah 172 127. Dress worn by the girls at the Croft School, Betley, when at work 173 128. St. Gregory the Great with his father Gordianus, who was a senator, on his right, and his mother Sylvia on his left. This shows the similarity between ecclesiastical and civil costume in early times. From an authentic picture (after Marriott) 188 129. A priest in the vestments now worn at the celebration of the Eucharist 194 130. The coat of arms of Thomas à Becket, showing an archbishop's pall 198 131. The head-dress of a nun showing the veil and breast-cloth derived from the wimple, the cap which represents the chin-cloth, together with the frontal and the hood 203 132. The head-dress of a lady of the time of Henry II. The wimple is shown covering the chin and head-bands (after Calthrop) 203 133. The chin-band and forehead strap after the wimple has been removed (after Calthrop) 203 134. Hanging sleeve of the fifteenth century 209 135. The hanging sleeve of a Chancellor of Oxford University 211 136. A college cap or trencher 214 137. Cranmer's hat, illustrating a stage in the evolution of a mortar-board (after Fairholt) 214 138. The hat of a bishop of the Stuart Period showing a stage at which the stiffening now seen in the mortar-board was becoming necessary (after Fairholt) 214 139. The wig of a modern judge 216 140. The vestige of the coif from the wig of a serjeant-at-law 217 141. A barrister's gown showing the vestigial hood and its streamer. The buttons and braid which once temporarily looped up the sleeves now fix it permanently 219 142. A Yeoman of the Guard of the present reign 224 143. The wig-bag or "flash" from a Court suit, showing the rosette held away and displaying the black silk bag. At the lower corners of the latter loops are seen, which are probably the remains of those through which a ribbon was passed, which went round the neck and fastened on the breast by a brooch 229 144. The hood from the mantle of a Knight of the Garter, showing the survival of the chaperon and its liripipe 230 145. Relic of chain mail on the shoulder of an Imperial Yeoman 233 146. Chain mail illustrated by the brass of Sir Richard de Trumpington, A.D. 1289 234 147. A reversion in military equipment. One of Cromwell's Ironsides (1679), from a print. A Cavalryman sketched at Aldershot in 1901. Copied, by permission, from the _Daily Mail_ 237 148. The prickers on the shoulder-belt of a Hussar, which survive from the time of flint-lock muskets 239 149. The Oscan Pulicinella of 1731, without a long nose. The dress is very similar to that figured in 1630 (after Riccoboni) 256 150. The Calabrian Giangurgolo of 1731, with the long nose. The dress is very similar to that figured in 1630 (after Riccoboni) 257 151. An ancient bronze statuette with the face and features of Punch (after Ficorroni) 258 152. A fourteenth-century puppet-show (from the MS. of the "Roman d'Alexandre") 259 153. Punch, from the Punch and Judy Show, showing the ruff and other details of Elizabethan costume 263 154. Judy, from the Punch and Judy Show, with ruff, mob cap, and apron 263 155. The Beadle, from the Punch and Judy Show 264 156. The Doctor, from the Punch and Judy Show, with wig and white tie 264 157. A clown, showing a survival of an Elizabethan costume 270 158. The dress of a modern harlequin 284 159. A pantaloon, showing an Elizabethan costume of which Venetian breeches form part 285 160. The bands that survive on a lady's nightdress 289 161. A woman's nightcap, still worn in Wiltshire 289 162. A man's nightcap, from Oxfordshire 290 163. An English horse amulet in the form of a crescent. The flat places near the tips of the horns are evidence that the form is derived from two boars' tusks 294 164. An English horse amulet showing both the heart and the sun 296 165. The cowry-shell ornaments on the head of an officer's charger of the 10th Hussars. The pendant recalls that on mules in Palestine 298 166. Cowry shells on an Eastern mule, hanging like the pendant of the 10th Hussars 299 167. Cowry shells on the head-stall of a camel from Palestine 299 168. A Merveilleuse (after A. Robida) 345 169. A modern family, consisting of the average-sized mother, the taller daughter, and the puny boy (from a drawing by Miss Audrey Watson in "Physical Efficiency," by Dr. Cantlie, by kind permission of Messrs. Putnam's Sons) 357 I THE THRALL OF DRESS THE PRINCIPLES OF EVOLUTION APPLIED TO CLOTHES _The numbers in the text refer to a bibliography at the end of the book_ Unluckily, perhaps, we are born naked and helpless, but no sooner do we come into the world than we are provided with body-guards in the shape of clothes. In consequence, our social position is made manifest. Our vanity is flattered at the same time that our modesty is assured. On the other hand, however, our skin may be chafed, our hair worn away, and, should our equipment strictly follow the dictates of the Goddess Fashion, our bodies may even be deformed and our lives shortened. Moreover, there are other penalties to be paid; we are kept warm in summer as well as in winter, the purchase of our attire may entail the spending of much money, while the mere donning and doffing of our clothes gives rise to a prodigious waste of time. Even tramps have at intervals to replace the rags which cover them, and while, for all practical purposes, every one else takes off his clothes when going to bed and puts them on again when getting up, many of those who are at work in the daytime "dress for dinner" in the evening. Moreover, Society may demand a further expenditure of time on the part of its members, and the rule may be laid down that the higher the standing of a civilized individual, the more often does he change his garments. In fact, more than one monarch, from the way in which he appears in different uniforms at various functions which follow one another in quick succession, has been likened to the now familiar "lightning change artist" of the music-hall stage. It is thus quite clear that all of us are more or less under the thrall of dress. Those, therefore, who find the position irksome, will gain solace from the interesting investigations which can be made into the origin and development of costume. Others, again, whose clothes already find favour in their eyes, will enjoy looking at them from a different point of view. As a matter of fact, our artificial coverings have become so much a part of our life that one may perhaps be allowed to apply the methods of the naturalist to their consideration, and deal with them as if they were part and parcel of the creature which wears them. Darwin established beyond a doubt[1] that the plants and animals of to-day are the direct descendants of older and often very different forms, and it is the task and delight of the naturalist to trace their genealogies. Most useful suggestions may be obtained from the small vestiges that remain in the bodies of present-day creatures, of structures which in early times were important and useful organs. For instance, if the skin be lifted from the head of a "slow worm" we find a third eye, which tells us that once its ancestors, like the giant Cyclops, were able to look out from the middle of their faces. Again, to take a case which applies to ourselves, and has a melancholy interest for us, one might mention the vermiform appendix. This is a remnant of a great sac which once was useful when our ancestors were vegetarians; now it is worse than useless, for it is very liable to become irritated and give rise to what is known as appendicitis. So long as a quarter of a century ago Sir George Darwin pointed out[2] that the great theory of evolution established by his father could be applied with much advantage to the study of dress, and it will be seen as we proceed that not the least fascinating part of the subject are vestiges similar to those which we have just described, and which have often survived solely for ornamental reasons. Many of these are so familiar, that in running the eye in the ordinary way over a man's usual costume, attention would not be drawn to them. There is the band round the outside of his hat and the little bow inside; the nick in the collar of his coat and the more or less useless buttons on his sleeves and back; while we must not forget the curious ornamentation on the toes of his boots, nor the crest on his signet ring. When, however, an indication is given of the times and peoples to which these trivialities can be made to carry us back, interest is aroused to a remarkable degree. It can also be well maintained, for other clothes present similar quaint survivals for investigation, while the evolution of many individual garments is worth following, and special costumes have been handed down to the present day, practically unchanged. Fortunately, the student of dress is in a much better position than the naturalist proper. The evidence available when the history of an organism in past ages is being unravelled, is very scanty in many cases. Sometimes the fossil remains recovered from the earth are very perfect and follow one another in unbroken succession, but they usually consist merely of the hard parts of the creatures. The individual development of an organism is also a help, but when the changes which have taken untold ages to perfect, are repeated, as in the case of the chicken in the egg, within the space of a few short weeks, it is not surprising that much is left out and obscured. Man has existed in a civilized condition for a comparatively short time, and there remain all kinds of records and illustrations, not to mention actual clothes themselves, which can be consulted or examined. Moreover, primitive men in almost every stage of culture are, or were till quite lately, to be found somewhere in the world, and much can be gleaned from them as to the origin and uses of costume. There is a point that may be borne in mind when seeking for curiosities of clothing, and it is that the more special or ceremonial the occasion, the more ancient or more primitive the costume which is worn. In this connection also it may be mentioned that the dress of the master of one generation may survive as that of the servant in another. II THE ORIGIN OF DRESS Both he and his people were black as sloes For the region they lived in was torrid, And their principal clothes were a ring through the nose And a patch of red paint on the forehead. THOMAS HOOD THE YOUNGER. In seeking the origin of dress we necessarily assume that once upon a time our primitive ancestors did not wear any clothes at all. Even nowadays, in our own country, at sports, in the ball-room, and on the stage, the garments worn, or some of them, may be reduced to the minimum that the rules of Society appear to demand. There are, moreover, two reasons why very early man did not trouble to dress: first of all, he was covered with hair like the majority of mammals; and, secondly, it is more than probable that his home was within the tropics. (See Plate I., Frontispiece.) The two ideas are quite compatible, for all the great apes--chimpanzee, orang-utan, and gorilla--which are the nearest relatives of man, have been found in the warmer regions of the world, and are well supplied with hair. It has long been thought that the cradle of mankind is to be looked for in the south of Asia, and it is a striking fact that of recent years the bones of the earliest known creature that can with certainty be called a man (_Pithecanthropus erectus_) were discovered in Java.[3] At the same time it appears that _Pithecanthropus_, although it walked erect, approximated more closely to the apes than does any more recent human being, and in making a restoration of the type in question, one would feel bound to endow it with a coat of hair. This has since been lost, and, according to Darwin, owing to æsthetic reasons, the members of one sex having chosen as mates those of the other who were the least hairy. Man also has found his way into most parts of the globe, but he has not always acted with regard to dress in the same way in similar climates. The problem, therefore, which we have set ourselves to solve, proves to be less simple than it appeared at the outset, for great use may be made of clothes in one cold country and not in another, while they may be unknown in certain parts of the tropics, and adopted elsewhere within their radius. Very often when it is sought to explain a matter, it is found that this can be done in two or three different ways, and it is quite possible that all of them may be correct. This fact may with advantage be borne in mind when seeking for the reasons which lead to the adoption of dress, for the first time, by any particular race. Perhaps it will help us if we pause for a moment to consider why clothes are worn at the present day. There is no doubt but that in the case of many garments their ornamental character, real or supposed, is the first consideration. Others are chosen chiefly for protection and warmth, while, as already indicated, the rest suffice to satisfy the claims of modesty. Although the three reasons are now intimately combined, it is practically certain that any one of them is sufficient to have led to the adoption of clothes in the first place, and as if these were not enough there may be other contributing, if not actual causes. We may now consider these matters in detail. It would seem from the study of modern peoples, who are still in a very simple state of civilization, as well as from one of the earliest drawings scratched by the cave-men who were contemporary with the mammoth in France, that ornaments are the most primitive part of dress. (See Figure 1 and Plate II.) [Illustration: A WOMAN AND A WITCH DOCTOR OF CENTRAL AFRICA, SHEWING THE PART THAT ORNAMENTS MAY PLAY EVEN WHEN CLOTHING IS OF THE SCANTIEST. (_From a photograph by Captain Ford._) _PLATE II._] Generally speaking, the more simple the race, the greater is its love of ornament. The cave-man's sketch shows a woman who is devoid of clothing, but who wears bracelets, while it is said that in the original a necklace can be traced, though owing to an injury to the fragment of bone on which the drawing was made, the head of the figure has been lost. On the West Coast of Africa, where clothes are not a necessity owing to the heat, bracelets are worn in such numbers by the native belles as to cover a large part of the forearm, while anklets rise in succession nearly to the knee. (See Plate II.) Again, in New Guinea the women of some tribes who do not indulge in a single scrap of clothing, still wear ornaments on their heads and round their necks. [Illustration: FIGURE 1.--Drawing of a woman engraved by a cave-man. (Modified from Wilson.)] There is, however, something to be advanced on behalf of savages that cannot be said for white people who bedizen themselves with jewellery, or bedeck themselves with the feathers of rare and beautiful birds. Uncivilized people have no pockets nor safes in which to keep their valuables, and it comes about that these take a form which permits them to be worn on the person, so that many of the objects which take the place of ornaments--such as teeth, shells, and beads--serve as the currencies of their owners. Even now there are individuals of whom it is said that they "put all their money on their backs," but, unfortunately for them, it depreciates sadly in value, and cannot be turned to account at a moment's notice. Furthermore, one naked warrior is very much like another, and chiefs, in order that they may easily be identified, have come to wear certain ornaments just as at the other extreme with regard to covering, knights in full armour carried crests on their helmets and other devices on their surcoats and shields. Clothes proper are of later origin, and, as we have already mentioned, would only be adopted for protective purposes after man had lost the greater part of his hairy covering. It is probable that this had happened before the earliest settlers arrived in this country, although the cave-men made their drawings of themselves in the nude, and it is contended that the marks on their bodies are similar to those in the drawings of animals and are not mere attempts at shading, but indicate the presence of hair. In the first place, man was a hunter pure and simple, and his clothes were made from the hairy skins of his quarry. At the present time the Eskimos are clothed in this way, and there is little doubt but that they are the descendants of the cave-men, who made the striking drawings to which we have already alluded. Their implements, stature, and so forth, all point this way, and the fact that their clothes are merely adopted as a protection against the weather, is shown by the fact that they remove them altogether when in their huts. We have already said that it does not always follow that even when the climate is cold, complete dress is brought into use. When H.M.S. _Beagle_ visited South America, some of the Tierra del Fuegians wore only an otter skin or some small scrap about as large as a pocket-handkerchief. It was laced across the breast by strings, and was shifted from side to side according to the direction of the wind. Others, both men and women, wore nothing. One of the latter, who was suckling a recently born child, came alongside the vessel in a canoe, and stayed there, out of pure curiosity, while the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom and on the bare body of her baby.[4] Some races can make very passable clothes by hammering the fibres from the bark of trees into a kind of cloth, while when men took to husbandry and cultivated plants that produce fibres, they learned also to spin and weave materials from which to make their garments. The use of furs has always survived to a greater or less extent, but it is interesting to note that motoring has caused a return to primitive dress as regards external garments, for in order to withstand the air which is met when the car is in rapid movement, fur clothes and leather suits have been introduced, the latter of course being not quite so old in type as the former. It must not be forgotten at this point that climate is not the only enemy that man has had to face, and that armour was a development of dress, intended to preserve him from the onslaughts of his own species. We have now noticed two ways in which clothes must have been brought into use, namely, as adornments and for protection. We have still to consider the third of the obvious reasons. Modesty is a habit, or one might perhaps call it equally well a fashion, which is so widespread that some have characterized it as being an instinct, and have stated quite wrongly that it is universal. The most curious point with regard to the matter is that very different ideas of modesty prevail in various regions of the world, one part of the body being covered by some people and another by others. Besides, it by no means follows that a naked race is less chaste than one which is clothed. Although at the present day races exist where only the men cover themselves, it is very likely that clothes worthy of the name were first worn by women, for keen observers have pointed out that men dependent on their skill and speed in the chase would hardly encumber themselves with clothes, though having comely wives they might deem it advisable for them to be protected from the public gaze. This idea is still carried out in Eastern countries, where women cover even the greater part of their faces, and are usually secluded in a harem. As bearing out, however, what we have just said with regard to modesty, it may be mentioned that the peasant women in Egypt are perfectly happy so long as their faces and the backs of their heads are covered, and it is considered even more shameful to expose the latter than the former. The objection made not long ago to the appearance of English women in church without hats may be remembered in this connection. Painting may often replace clothing, and members of races accustomed to decorate their bodies in this way, are much ashamed if they are seen unpainted. Tattooing also does away to a great extent with bareness, and it is obvious that unclothed black men and women never present such a naked appearance as do lighter-coloured races. In fact, a white man who bathed with a number of coloured people likened himself and his companions to an artificial, blanched, and sickly plant among its healthy dark green fellows. Doubtless the hair of original man was coloured so as to match his surroundings, and it seems likely that the tint of his skin was reddish. We have now no need for protective colouration (except in war time), and as we do not live in the tropics, we should gain no advantage from being black; therefore pigment is but little developed in our skins, and it has been suggested that clothes sometimes have been adopted by white races for æsthetic reasons apart from their development from ordinary ornaments. It seems possible, too, that man, upon realizing that he differed from other animals in having no natural covering, set about to provide himself with one. There is, however, another contributing cause which may have led to the adoption of dress, and this depends on the action of women themselves. They may put on clothes for reasons of coquetry just as on occasion they may modify or discard them. For instance, fashion at a moment's notice may obscure one part of the body that hitherto was obvious, and at the same time emphasize the natural outlines of others which before were hidden. Again, the bare necks and arms displayed in our ball-rooms afford another case in point. III DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN COAT THE ANCESTRAL SHAWL--PROBLEMATICAL BUTTONS Now that we have considered the origin of dress as a whole, we may turn with advantage to the evolution of individual garments. People are very often pleased to allude to what are called the vagaries of fashion, but it is curious to notice how little real change is made in costume at the present time. The really useful characters are always retained, and our modern clothes can be reduced to a very few types. A skirt is a skirt whether it falls naturally, is held out all round with a hoop, or crinoline, or is only supported behind by what at one time was known as an "improver." And in the same way it may be said that trousers remain trousers whether they have bell bottoms or are peg tops. Even types which we recognize as being quite distinct, are often so closely related as to cause surprise when their family history is made known. Although it constantly alters as regards details, which from a constructional point of view are quite unimportant, woman's dress does not seem to have varied to any very great extent. Consequently, there are not quite so many curious features to be seen as in the ordinary clothes or uniforms of men. On the other hand, however, we may with greater reason hope to find that some primitive characters have survived until the present day. No article of clothing could well be simpler than the shawl, and though there is an art in its arrangement, the only point in its structure that would appear to invite attention is the presence of a fringe on only two sides. This seems to be a small matter, but it takes us straight back to the time when men had ceased to be hunters merely, and having become agriculturists had learned, as we have already indicated, to weave fibres with the help of simple looms. From the cloth thus made clothes were constructed, though skins continued to be used as outer mantles. When the stuff was taken from these early looms, the threads of the warp were left hanging from two opposite edges, and the fringe that we have now on our shawls is a direct survival of this accidental occurrence. There seems not the slightest doubt but that we can trace the coat from the shawl. A simple improvement in the latter is to join two edges of the shawl together and make a tunic. Such a tubular garment was used in Greece, and, with some slight modifications, is worn by Egyptian women to-day. It came up to the armpits, was gathered up on to each shoulder and fastened with two brooches. (Figure 2.) [Illustration: FIG. 2.--Sketch showing the development of the tunic. In this stage it has no arms.] The next stage in development would be a sleeved tunic, and how easily this could be derived from a shawl can be seen by putting a narrow one over the shoulders and lifting up the arms as shown in Figure 3. The material has only to be sewn together under the arms, and if necessary cut into shape. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--Diagram showing the way in which a sleeved tunic is derived from the shawl.] If the front be not sewn up, we get the coat as we know it; if the edges be joined along half their length or more, then we have a sleeved tunic, a shirt, or vest (see Plate III). The smock-frock (see Figure 4) and gown are more voluminous, while the jersey is short again, and has only a small opening at the neck. An interesting garment is found among the costumes of the Bronze Age chieftains of Denmark and their wives, which have been preserved in the oak coffins of these people, owing to the action of tannin from the wood which has preserved the woven material.[5] The article in question belonged to one of the women, and though the front edges are joined for a short distance, it is practically a jacket. The sleeves are made all in one piece, and the garment is very nearly as highly evolved as the Cardigan jacket, which it very much resembles. (See Figure 5.) [Illustration: THE SILK VEST WORN BY CHARLES I ON THE SCAFFOLD. ILLUSTRATING THE SLEEVED TUNIC OPENING FOR A SHORT DISTANCE DOWN THE FRONT. (_From a photograph by Mr. Henry Stevens._) _PLATE III._] [Illustration: FIG. 4.--A smock frock.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--Jacket of a woman, made in one piece. Bronze stage of culture (after Worsaae).] It is by this time clear, that several important garments are the descendants of the shawl, which is still used by men in the British Isles under the title of the plaid, or maud. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Man's dress showing buttons on the right side.] Though differing, of course, in detail, the upper garments of men and women agree in general construction. One of the points alluded to is worthy of mention, namely, that the buttons on a man's coat are on the right side and the buttonholes on his left, while in the case of women's attire the exact opposite is found--at least, so far as one can ascertain--in European countries. In the East, the little knobs which are passed through loops and take the place of buttons, may in the women's dress be on the right side, and in other Asiatic costumes the same thing holds good. In connection with this peculiarity, it may be pointed out that men and women have different ways of doing up buttons. The man takes hold of the button with his right hand, puts his left thumb into the buttonhole and pushes the button against it. Then he pulls the stuff over with his right forefinger and pushes the button through with his right thumb while he guides it with his left. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--Woman's dress showing buttons on the left side.] The woman, on the other hand, puts her right thumb through the buttonhole, takes hold of the button with the fingers of the same hand, and finally, if the other hand is at liberty, brings it up to finish the process. (See Figures 6 to 11.) To explain the difference in the position of the buttons is not by any means easy. In the correspondence which has arisen out of lectures which the writer has given on the evolution of dress, it has, in the first place, been suggested that the arrangement of his clothing permitted a man to thrust his right and fighting arm into his jacket in order to keep it warm. This explanation, of course, does not account for the variation in the case of women. Dr. Lyman, of Baltimore, has submitted the theory that a man wearing a loose cloak, toga, or plaid, would grasp it with the left hand and thrust the left side over the right so as to leave the right-hand free in order to hold a weapon or implement. A woman would grasp her attire with her right hand, and push it over the left side and leave her left arm unencumbered, wherewith to carry a child. It would, however, seem more natural for the right side to be pulled over the left, but it is unlikely that a man would fight in a loose cloak, and the toga was only worn in times of peace. Moreover, the jacket, as we have seen, was developed from the cloak through the tunic. A tunic was worn under the toga, and as the only loose edge of the latter lies in the same way as the buttonhole side of a man's coat, it is feasible that the edges of the tunic beneath would for convenience be made to lap the same way. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--First stage. FIG. 9.--Second stage. Diagrams showing how a man does up a button.] [Illustration: FIG. 10.--First stage. FIG. 11.--Second stage. Diagrams showing how a woman does up a button.] To turn to women's dress, it is customary, as Dr. Lyman says, to carry children on the left arm, and they are allowed to suck the left breast to a greater extent than the other. The left side of a bodice could, if the right lapped over it, be pulled back without exposing so much of the person as if the reverse held good, and in the case of tightly-fitting clothing, if the buttons have to be done up with the right hand alone, the task is made easier. Another interesting little point of difference between the clothes of the two sexes is, that while the buttons on a man's wristbands are on the thumb side, those of a woman are on that which corresponds with the little finger. This arrangement is no doubt correlated with that previously discussed, but the reason for it is not obvious. IV BUTTONS AS CHRONICLES EPISODES IN THE LATER HISTORY OF THE COAT AND CUFFS We have gained some insight into the development of garments as a whole, and no doubt it is now obvious that the little details of construction will prove by no means the least attractive part of our subject. It has become customary to refer to a button as typifying something of specially small account, though very often much may depend in practice upon one of these despised articles. We have already shown that the mere position of a few buttons that are still useful, may raise most curious points, and in the present chapter we shall proceed to investigate some episodes in the later history of the coat which have left their mark upon it, to a great extent in the shape of useless buttons. This topic will be dealt with in some detail, so that it may serve as a guide to those of our readers who may be induced to undertake the fascinating study of survivals in dress. Afterwards, the general survey of modern clothes will be continued, and here and there lines of research will be indicated, while some problems will be left for our readers to solve. In the second part of the book, it is intended to deal with a certain number of costumes which have been handed down to us as they are. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--The buttons on the back of a policeman's great coat.] At the present time there are usually to be seen two buttons on the back of civilians' coats, except in the case of lounge suits and dinner jackets, and there may be four or more on the great coats of policemen (see Figure 12) and on the tunics of some soldiers. The first question which we will endeavour to answer is, Why are they there? The two upper buttons in the case of uniforms are now used to support a belt, and at first sight it looks as if they were originally intended for this purpose. Their adoption in other cases might then be put down as a survival from a time when civilians carried swords. Unfortunately for this theory, it can be shown that the sword-belt was not necessarily worn outside the coat (see Figures 18 and 19). We must therefore look round for further evidence, and we find that those coats which bear the pair of buttons, have a slit up the middle which gives rise to the skirts or tails. This arrangement carries us back to the time when there were no railways and few conveyances; when men commonly travelled on horseback and their whole attire was adapted to this end, so that they were ready for the saddle at a moment's notice. The division in the coat which we are considering, allowed one tail to fall conveniently on each side of the horse after its rider had mounted it. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--The buttons that close the slit up the back of an ulster.] In long overcoats of to-day we find only a short slit, left for convenience in walking (see Figure 13); but it has a special interest for us, as in connection with it there are two or three buttons and buttonholes, usually hidden, which allow of the opening being closed up. Here, then, we have buttons on the back of the coat still serving a useful purpose, and it is not at all difficult to trace the series of fastenings back to a much longer one, which in the seventeenth century was quite obvious. (See Figure 14.) [Illustration: FIG. 14.--A back view of a seventeenth-century coat showing the buttons and buttonholes.] Each button and buttonhole was placed in the middle of similar pieces of lace or embroidery, so that the sides of the coat were made to look symmetrical. The object in view was the keeping of the skirts of the coat together when the wearer was not on horseback. At the present day the buttons have been duplicated and are on both sides of the coat, and they are still sewn to ornamental pieces in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards. The presence of the lower buttons on uniforms and coats is therefore explained. It might be assumed that the topmost button had also been doubled and raised above the slit, and that in this way we have obtained the two ornaments on the back of our coats. [Illustration: FIG. 15.--The tab and buttons on the back of a soldier's great coat which make a temporary waist.] Before accepting such a solution of the problem, however, it may be well to see if the buttons may not have had another origin; and on looking for some clue we find that two folds take their rise from the point where the buttons are situated. These may be expected to throw some light upon the question. The folds are now permanent, but on a voluminous coat, such as still used by horse soldiers, they can be produced temporarily (see Figure 15) by setting the two buttons further apart and running a tab from one to the other. Sir George Darwin has attempted to carry the history of these two buttons still further back.[6] He has expressed the opinion that each is one of a pair that originally kept in place a small tab at the side of the coat, and so helped to produce a waist when required. (See Figures 17 and 18.) In some drawings of coats (see Figure 18) the side tabs and their corresponding buttons are shown in addition to those on the back of the coat. There is, however, evidence to show that the buttons were originally on the sides of the coat, for they are so wide apart as to be to all intents and purposes in that position, on the uniform overcoats of the London Electric Tramway drivers. (See Figure 16.) They may well represent the topmost buttons of the lateral series, still found on the overcoat of the members of the Corps of Commissionaires. In this case there are three buttons on each side, of which the middle one is used for fastening the side-pocket. [Illustration: FIG. 16.--The buttons and tab on a tramway driver's coat.] [Illustration: FIG. 17.--An eighteenth-century coat with side buttons and tab.] [Illustration: FIG. 18.--Side tabs and buttons at the back (after Racinet).] It is worth while to consider side-pockets, which in their turn are remnants of lateral openings which were made in coats at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the following centuries. The sword-handle conveniently protruded through the left-hand slit, which, like its fellow, ran from the waist to the lower margin of the coat or stopped half-way. (See Figures 18 and 19.) In the latter case, the arrangement very much resembles the vertical pocket which has become common again of recent years. (See Figure 20.) [Illustration: FIG. 19.--A coat worn at the end of the seventeenth-century (after H. Bonnart).] [Illustration: FIG. 20.--A modern coat with side pockets.] Occasionally a tab, such as that to which reference has been made, kept the parts of the coat together; but often there were buttons and buttonholes, at least at the upper end of the openings. These survive in several cases, such as in the overcoat of the commissionaire, while the pocket is sometimes represented by a mere flap (see Figure 21) ornamented with buttons as on the livery of certain footmen. [Illustration: FIG. 21.--A footman's coat, modern, with vestigial pocket flaps.] [Illustration: FIG. 22.--Coat skirts buttoned back (after Hogarth).] To sum up the matter, the topmost pair of buttons has come from the fastenings of the side slit and the lower ones from those of the back slit. Buttons on the skirt behind have in the meantime had a very intimate connection with the evolution of the "swallow-tail" coat (see Figure 24). They were used to fasten the corners of the ordinary riding-coat together, so that the linings should not be injured by the sweat of the horses. (See Figure 22.) Mr. Deane Butcher tells me that he can remember this buttoning back being done in the case of his uncle, when the latter rode to market or to church; but in this case it was the two uppermost buttons which were again brought into use. At dances the coats were also subjected to similar treatment, and what at first was a temporary condition afterwards became a permanent one. It is obvious that the turned-back lining would often be of a different colour from the outside of the coat, and facings on old uniforms, and in that of the present dress of a lord-lieutenant (see Figure 23) are derived from the practice of fastening the corners of the coat together. In the "swallow-tail" the outer corners have been cut right away. (See Figure 24.) [Illustration: FIG. 23.--A coat with the skirts buttoned back and showing the lining.] [Illustration: FIG. 24.--A dress coat with skirts cut away.] The buttons, in the interesting cases which we have described, have been allowed to remain as part and parcel of our costume on account of their decorative character, and in a great measure the same is true of those on coat cuffs (see Figure 25). In many cases there are proper buttonholes, and it is possible to undo the sleeve buttons; but occasionally the arrangement has degenerated and the buttonholes are imitations or only the buttons remain. [Illustration: FIG. 25.--A modern coat cuff with buttons.] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--Turned-back cuff, end of seventeenth century (after Bonnart).] To find an explanation of this feature we shall have to go back again to the seventeenth century, when so much was expended upon coats that it became advisable to turn back the cuffs out of harm's way. To hold them in position, series of buttons and buttonholes were devised, and just as the turning back of the skirts was at first temporary and afterwards came to be done once for all when the coat was made, so the turned-back cuff grew into a permanent institution. In Figure 26 the buttons are one above the other as in modern dress, but in the next two Figures (27 and 28) they are horizontal. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--A coat sleeve (after Hogarth) with a horizontal row of buttons.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.--Sleeve of a coat of the seventeenth century, reputed to have been worn by Charles I.] A survival of this arrangement can still be seen in the coat sleeves of the higher clergy. In ordinary dress, the turned-back edge of the cuff may now only be represented by a band of braid or a row of stitches; but in soldiers' uniforms, an ornamented cuff persists which represents in reality the lining of the sleeve. Again, the turned-back cuff is actually present in the clothes of costermongers, and has been revived on overcoats to a considerable extent during the last few years. (See Figure 29.) As a rule, too, the vertical pocket already described accompanies the turned-back cuff, as it did some centuries ago. (See Figure 20.) [Illustration: FIG. 29.--The turned-back cuff on an overcoat, modern.] [Illustration: FIG. 30.--A sleeve with vertical buttons and a turned-back cuff as well (from a uniform, after Hogarth).] It must not be forgotten that buttons have long been used on narrow sleeves. They are undone when the hand is to be pushed through the cuff, and afterwards fastened for the sake of warmth or to give a neat appearance. It is therefore possible that the ring of buttons is more properly a survival of the time when cuffs were turned back to preserve them, and that the vertical row is really of earlier origin. A uniform represented by Hogarth (Figure 30) shows both the row of buttons and the turned-back cuff, which seems to be quite independent of them. In this instance we may have the degenerated turned-back cuff and one revived, shown together. Such a case, we need scarcely point out, could hardly occur in the case of an animal structure, for if by a "throw back" or "reversion to type" we get a vestigial character once more fully reproduced, we cannot expect the original structure and the vestige to be shown at the same time. The adoption of buttons more or less for ornament has long been practised. John Brandon, who died in the year 1364, is shown on his brass (in the church of St. Mary, King's Lynn) with no less than forty buttons on the sleeves of his undervest, which has embroidered cuffs and is buttoned to the elbow (see Plate IV). We shall, however, have something more to say with regard to buttons from this and other points of view as we proceed. [Illustration: REPRODUCTION OF A BRASS TO JOHN BRANDON AND HIS TWO WIVES, IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY, KING'S LYNN. DATE 1364. ON THE MALE FIGURE A CONTINUOUS ROW OF BUTTONS RUNS FROM THE WRIST TO THE ELBOW OF THE UNDER VEST. THE WOMEN WEAR THE WIMPLE AND THE GORGET OR THROAT CLOTH. _PLATE IV._] An interesting case of superfluous buttons on the front of clothes is to be seen in the case of the short jackets of the postilions, belonging to His Majesty the King. There is a useful row down the middle which closes the garment, and two ornamental rows which start from each shoulder and curve downwards towards the middle row. These are probably vestiges of buttons that were once of use, and to seek an explanation it might be well to study some uniforms of the past. We shall find that in the eighteenth century it was customary to button back the revers of the uniform coat, as in the case of the French coast-guard officer of 1775. (See Figure 31.) Fashion afterwards decreed that the coats should be fastened again with hooks, but the two rows of buttons remained. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--The uniform of a coast-guard officer of 1775 (after Racinet).] In the coat of the postilion there is no trace of the revers which showed the lining, and were consequently of a different colour from the rest of the coat. We find, however, in the peculiar uniform of the Lancers that there are the two side rows of buttons, to which is fastened a red front. This appears to represent the two revers combined. In the present year, 1907, a number of ladies' dresses are to be seen in which the revers trimmed with a different material from the dress are buttoned back against the latter. In some ceremonial dresses and uniforms there are cross stripes on the breast (see Figure 61) which, it has been pointed out, represent series of buttonholes which have become hypertrophied, and are now exaggerated beyond recognition. The braid on the cuff of the London Scottish Volunteers seems also to represent buttonholes. Such features as turned-back cuffs occur in women's clothes, and, as we have seen, the arrangement of buttons may be copied from masculine attire. In other cases buttons seem to appear which have, it would seem, no hereditary right to their position; but it may be well, before dismissing them, to see whether they have not a pedigree. We might cite the case of the buttons that are sewn on to the frocks a little below the knee. They are often at the head of a plait, and it would be worth while to look into their history. V COLLARS AND BANDS NICKS IN COAT LAPELS--THE WHY AND WHEREFORE OF THE WHITE SHIRT FRONT Let us carry on our work of dissecting the clothes of a modern man, and as we once more survey our subject, we may glance a little higher than heretofore, until our eyes rest upon the collar of his coat. This structure passes into the lapels, and at the point of junction there is a curious nick which is repeated in the waistcoat if this be similarly provided with lapels. (See Figure 32.) [Illustration: FIG. 32.--The nicks in the coat and waistcoat.] [Illustration: FIG. 33.--A stage when the nick was useful (Lucien Bonaparte, after Paul Lacroix).] There is always a temptation to invent some interesting theory in order to explain the origin of vestiges, and a penny paper, which hardly boasts of scientific accuracy, not long ago informed its readers that the slit in the coat lapel is the outcome of a "unique and beautiful custom among the orthodox Jews," for in former days, when death visited a Jew's household, he cut the lapel of his coat. It was undoubtedly a custom of the Jews to rend their garments, but it does not, on the face of it, seem likely that the practice would have influenced modern costume. It would appear, however, that the slit in the lapel has a much more prosaic origin, and owes its existence rather to a practical requirement than to a sentimental observance. When the collar of a coat is made to stand up, it is absolutely necessary that a piece should be cut out of the cloth, or the lapel will not lie down. In the exaggerated garment of which we give an illustration (see Figure 33) this need is most manifest; but a moment's thought will show that the provision must be made, even if the collar be small. A trifling experiment will indicate that at the present day the cut is not usually made deep enough to allow of the collar being turned up without disturbing the lapels. [Illustration: FIG. 34.--The "toothpick" on a dress coat.] Another remarkable variation is to be found in the collars of some dress suits. A little point is left on the collar known to tailors as the "toothpick," which runs across the nick into the lapel (see Figure 34). This structure is probably a survival of some particular kind of collar. It might be pointed out here that the facings and collar that are of silk or velvet represent the lining of the coat which came into view when the collar was turned down and the lapels turned back. The case is quite similar to that of the cuffs on uniforms, and to be quite consistent, the whole coat should be lined with what is usually used now only as a kind of trimming. It is but a short step from the features that we have been discussing, to the linen collar and the shirt front. The cutting away of the outer garment to bring the shirt into view is a relic of the time when only those who were very well to do could afford to wear linen, and they showed it, in order to indicate their social position, or at any rate their financial resources. At the same time, the women cut their dresses low so as to show their underlinen; and not content with this, they further, at the end of the thirteenth century, slit their gowns from the armpits to the hips. The openings thus made were laced across, so that the linen garments beneath could easily be seen. The white shirt has long survived, and in spite of its depreciated value has up to quite recently posed as a badge of respectability. Now at last there are signs that its sway is over, and that soon it will come to be only a garment of ceremony. The linen collar of to-day is quite a small affair compared with some of its forerunners. An interesting relic is to be seen in the two little linen flaps which we call bands (see Figure 35). These are still worn by preachers in conjunction with the Geneva gown, by barristers, and by Blue-coat boys (see Figure 36), and we can easily trace their relationship to the collar. Until a few years ago the choristers at Jesus College, Cambridge, wore a peculiar collar which ended in two flaps much resembling bands, and the descent of this from the large structures which were called falling bands is not difficult to trace. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--Modern bands.] [Illustration: FIG. 36.--A blue-coat boy's bands.] [Illustration: FIG. 37.--A chorister of Jesus College, Cambridge, showing the collar worn until recently. (From a photograph by the courtesy of Mr. H. Austin Wheaton.)] The portrait of Jan Steen, which we reproduce, shows bands which are less stiff and formal, but of ampler proportions. (See Figure 38.) Going a little further back, we find the collar that covered the shoulders, such as Milton wore, and which is shown in our picture of John Pym. (See Figure 39.) [Illustration: FIG. 38.--A stage in the reduction of the bands (portrait of Jan Steen from the _Illustrated Magazine of Art_).] [Illustration: FIG. 39.--Full-sized bands (portrait of John Pym from the _Illustrated Magazine of Art_).] At this point we may pause to recall a simple article which is known as a bandbox, but which has been diverted from its original purpose of holding bands, and is now commonly used as a receptacle for hats. Though not itself part of dress, the bandbox furnishes an interesting instance of adaptation to circumstances. It was well suited to contain articles of dress other than those for which it was primarily intended, and hence it has survived in the struggle for existence. (See Figure 40.) [Illustration: FIG. 40.--A modern bandbox, now used for hats.] [Illustration: FIG. 41.--Bands that survive at the present day.] We must not, however, jump to the conclusion that bands are now only represented by vestiges, for they are still to be seen in their full glory on very small boys (see Figure 41), and the writer recalls a lad of fourteen or so who had reached the dignity of trousers who wore the same kind of collar. As he also had a trencher, or in common parlance, a "mortar-board," it is possible that he was not an isolated survival, but belonged to some school which adopted a special costume. As linen collars are one of the articles of dress in regard to which the wearer is allowed in a great measure to follow his own taste, it is not surprising that a great many forms have from time to time been invented. Quite a number are still to be seen here and there, while the development of the more fashionable shapes one from the other would, in itself, form a chapter in the Evolution of Dress. The clerical collar may be singled out, as it fastens behind like the bands, though the reason for this is not at all obvious. In recalling the great ruffs and expanded collars of Queen Elizabeth's reign, one may be inclined to smile at the lengths to which a fad may be carried, and the curious, not to say monstrous, structures that are its culminations. These, like the huge creatures of bygone ages, die out, but differ in this respect that they sometimes revive for a time. For instance, only a few years have passed since the collars of ladies' mantles stood up round the back of their heads; but as the collars usually lacked the decoration and colour of the Elizabethan period, they appeared as if they were intended merely to keep the draught from the necks of their wearers, and they did not last for long. VI VESTIGES IN THE HAT HOW HATS WERE EVOLVED--WHY PLUMES ARE ON THE LEFT SIDE--THE GROWTH OF THE BUSBY--HELMETS AND COCKED HATS Those who have written upon dress from an artistic point of view have recognized that costume and architecture are affected by the same influences. When we come to the hat, we find that its name is connected with a building of a primitive character, namely, a hut. Mr. Allan Poe Newcombe, an architect, some years ago pointed out the curious resemblance which has existed, and is still to be found in many countries, between headgear and habitations or other buildings.[7] It may be that the cases which have been collected together are mere coincidences, though it must be allowed that they are both numerous and striking. It may be that the same taste, or lack of it, has given rise to the similarity of style, or in the beginning, the designer of the hat may have taken the hut as a model. In the Hawaiian Islands, long before the inhabitants troubled about clothes, they built themselves grass houses, and at the present time the characteristic Hawaiian hat is remarkably like the hut. The turbans of Eastern Church dignitaries are still of the same shape as those worn by the high priests among the Jews, and are remarkably like the characteristic dome which surmounts a mosque. (See Figure 42.) [Illustration: FIG. 42.--The turban of a Jewish priest (after Kitto) compared with the dome of the Mosque of Omar.] Looking about in other countries we shall find further instances that support Mr. Newcombe's contention; our illustration of a Siamese head-dress and building is a case in point. (See Figure 43.) Again going back into European history, we find that the high pointed spires of Gothic churches were cotemporaneous with the high horn-like head-dress known as the hennin (see Figure 44). It is claimed, moreover, that like results will be found after a comparison of other styles of architecture with the costume of the period in which they flourished. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--A Siamese head-dress and a Pra Pang or Votive spire (after P.A. Thompson).] [Illustration: FIG. 44.--A Gothic spire (St. Stephen's, Caen) compared with the hennin (the latter after Fairholt).] Leaving this suggestive line of research, and coming to hats as we have them at the present day, we find that they offer several remarkable vestiges for our consideration. First of all there is the hat-band outside, which sometimes ends in two tails or streamers that hang from the back of the hat (see Figure 47). From the bow usually present it is evident that the hat-band was tied, and the streamers represent the loose ends. As a matter of fact, primitively, a head-dress was made from a piece of cloth, round which a fillet was tied so that it fitted the head. In this connexion Figure 45 is most interesting. It represents the back view of the head of the Egyptian woman of the Sixth Dynasty, who is seen in Figure 76, and shows a head-dress which is confined with a fillet that is tied at the back so as to make two tails. [Illustration: FIG. 45.--Band with streamers fastening on the head-dress of an Egyptian woman. From a figure of the Sixth Dynasty, B.C. 3500.] [Illustration: FIG. 46.--A lady's head-dress confined with a fillet, fourteenth century (after Viollet le Duc).] The modern Arab fastens his kefiyeh with a twist of camel's hair without streamers, and the lady of the fourteenth century, shown in Figure 46, has also an ordinary band. The child's sailor hat and the Scotch cap are among the modern head coverings which retain the strings (Figure 49). A twelfth-century head-dress shown in a manuscript (Figure 48) has a great similarity to the Scotch cap, as the band forms a kind of binding to the article in both cases, and there are streamers to both. [Illustration: FIG. 47.--A sailor hat with band and streamers.] [Illustration: FIG. 48.--A twelfth-century head-dress with streamers from a MS. (after Viollet le Duc).] The strings or streamers are to be found in many other head coverings, including the mitres of bishops (see Figure 50). The particular mitre illustrated is that of the See of Durham, which is distinguished from others in being plumed. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--A modern Scotch cap with streamers.] [Illustration: FIG. 50.--A mitre of the See of Durham showing the strings (after Millington).] An interesting suggestion as to the origin of the slit in the top of the mitre may be mentioned here. Head-dresses were used in very early times which were in the form of a fish's head, and it has been thought that the slit in the mitre, so distinctly shown in chess-men, represents the fish's mouth. On looking at the inside of a modern hat, a little bow of silk ribbon will usually be found at the back where the two edges of the leather lining meet. Here, again, is a vestige. (See Figure 51.) [Illustration: FIG. 51.--Small vestigial bow of ribbon in a modern hat.] In some hats the ribbon does not simply make the bow, but it is threaded through a greater or less number of holes in the leather, though now fulfilling no useful purpose. (See Figure 52.) [Illustration: FIG. 52.--A hat with the remains of lacing.] In a hunting hat, however (see Figure 53), the lacing is continuous round the hat, and the lining can be made to fit the wearer. It helps to form a buffer, should the huntsman unfortunately fall on his head, and it is claimed that many lives have been saved by this small detail. [Illustration: FIG. 53.--A hunting hat with complete lacing inside.] It may be gathered from the description that in times when hats could not easily be got to fit their wearers, the lacing inside would be most useful, as it ensured that the size could be adjusted. It is possible also that in the lacing we have a means by which a hat was originally shaped, and that the lace is really a hat-band threaded through the material of the head-dress instead of being tied round outside. The first diagram on page 57 shows a flat piece of leather cut into a circular form; the next shows it perforated and a lace put through the openings; the third indicates how by tightening the string a crown could be made to the hat. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--A disc of leather.] [Illustration: FIG. 55.--The disc perforated and the lace inserted.] [Illustration: FIG. 56.--The lace tightened to form a crown.] [Illustration: FIG. 57.--The ends of the lace tied as a bow inside.] In time, when the crown was made in different ways, it would be easy to transfer the lacing to the lining as seen already in the hunting hat (Figure 53). It is interesting to note that a small bow is also found inside ladies' hats, and often used as a place on which to put the name of the maker. (See Figure 58.) [Illustration: FIG. 58.--A bow fastened to the lining of a lady's hat.] [Illustration: FIG. 59.--Plumes on the left side.] Sir George Darwin has shown why plumes are, and used to be, on the left side of a hat only. In the days when the feathers were particularly long there was also plenty of fighting, and it only needs the attention to be drawn to the point, to make one realize that if the plume had been on the right side, it might often have got in the way of a sword and thereby caused the overthrow or even death of its wearer. At the present day in the army (see Figure 59), the plumes will be found on the left side as in the days of cavaliers. Sir George Darwin[8] has traced the origin of the busby, and has shown that the little red flap that hangs on the left side as a useless appendage is really the original cap. Busbies were the special attributes of the Hussars, who were originally Hungarian soldiers. It is the peasant's cap of Hungary that is the forerunner of the military head-dress which we are considering, and it consisted of a red cap of cloth with a band of fur round the edge. As time went on, the fur on the cap, which was adopted in the end by various regiments, became wider and wider, and the original red cap got smaller and smaller until the form of the modern busby was reached. In some cases even the flap already mentioned has gone, though the fact that the top of the busby is made of cloth instead of fur still points to its origin. (See Figures 60 and 61.) [Illustration: FIG. 60.--The red Hungarian cap, which was the forerunner of the busby.] [Illustration: FIG. 61.--A busby (of the Honourable Artillery Company) in which the cap is a vestige only.] Though we are not discussing armour at the moment, we may say while speaking of military head-dresses that metal helmets are still in use in a few regiments. The helmet also of the fireman deserves attention, as it is practically of the same type as that worn by the ancient Greeks. (See Figure 62.) [Illustration: FIG. 62.--A fireman's helmet (of the ancient Greek type).] [Illustration: FIG. 63.--Buttons so arranged that the broad brim of a hat can be fastened to the crown, thus forming a temporary "cock" (Hudibras after Hogarth).] The cocked hat should also claim our attention, and it gives us another instance of temporary alterations which have ultimately become permanent. The picture of Hudibras shows an early stage in the history of cocking. The strings which connect the brim of a bishop's tall hat to the crown are evidently connected with this practice. In the modern cocked hat more of the right side is turned up than of the left. A little careful examination will render its development from the broad-brimmed hat easily understood, while the representatives of the hat-band and the details of the cocking will be soon discovered. The cock of the hat formed a convenient spot in which to fix an ornament, and the name cockade has come to be applied to such an addition, borne on the hat, as a mark to distinguish the wearer. The part which cockades have played in history is considerable, but as they are now chiefly associated with the liveries of men-servants they will be considered later on in the book. Before, however, we leave, for the present, the subject of head coverings, we ought to mention that a piece of woven material as primitively used without even a restraining band, still survives in the shape of the small shawl which north-country girls and women very generally wear over their heads. The head-dress of the nun is another case in point, and recalls that in vogue in Tudor times, while the sun-bonnet of the barge and market women, though more highly developed, still consists to a considerable extent of simple drapery. VII SHOES AND STOCKINGS EARLY FOOT-GEAR--THE ORIGIN OF THE CLOCK--A MODERN IMITATION OF TATTOOING--GAILY COLOURED GARTERS Many persons still go barefoot, so that ancient as foot-gear may be, the stage preceding its adoption is even now represented. Moreover, sandals, which are very primitive, have been much in use of recent years, and have especially been worn by children. If we turn to ordinary boots and shoes we shall not find many obvious points about them which lead up to their history. Still we shall see in the case of a large number that in places where one piece of leather laps over another, it is perforated with rows of holes which form a kind of simple ornamentation. (See Figure 64.) The perforations do not go through the boot or shoe, and in a Roman example in the British Museum, which is much more highly decorated, there are two thicknesses of leather, of which the outer one only is pierced. (See Figure 65.) In many cases, however, the Roman shoe was truly of open work. It consisted of but one thickness of leather, and from this, large pieces were cut out so as to make a kind of lattice. Several examples of this kind of shoe are exhibited at the British Museum, and we give an illustration of one of these, which is in a very fair state of preservation. (See Figure 66.) [Illustration: FIG. 64.--A modern boot decorated with perforations made in the leather.] [Illustration: FIG. 65.--An ornamented Roman shoe, of two thicknesses.] [Illustration: FIG. 66.--A Roman shoe of open-work leather.] It seems very probable that the ornamentation on our modern shoes is a survival of the open work which was in favour with the Romans, especially as even then the apertures did not always expose the foot. In pre-Roman times in this country there were perforations in some of the shoes which were useful rather than ornamental, and one type (of which a specimen figured by Fairholt is preserved by the Royal Irish Academy) has survived until recently, if it is not to be found to-day, in Scotland and Ireland. This shoe was made of raw hide (see Figure 67), and the holes, it is said, were intended to allow the water to pass through when the wearer was crossing morasses. An examination of the figure will, however, show that the holes are really slits, and it would appear that however useful they may have proved in the way described, they were originally made for quite a different reason. [Illustration: FIG. 67.--A hide shoe of pre-Roman type from Ireland (after Fairholt).] The most primitive kind of shoe would doubtless be a piece of hide placed under the foot and brought up over the toes and round the heel. It would make a rather unprepossessing bundle, and there would be awkward puckers where the hide was gathered up. If the superfluous material at the toe were cut away, we should have a slit in every case where there had previously been a fold. This state of affairs is exactly what is to be seen in the Irish shoe, where the strips of leather that are left are held in place by a thong. In an ingenious way, apparently with the help of the same lace, the difficulty of securing a fit at the heel has also been got over. The result is a very neat shoe indeed, though in reality it is only the original flat piece of hide. [Illustration: FIG. 68.--The original top boot with the upper part temporarily turned down.] One of the most perfect instances of vestiges, as Sir George Darwin points out, is afforded by top boots. In their original form, still to be seen in our streets on sewer men, the boots were made to come above the knee, but fashion decreed that the top should be turned back (see Figure 68), and so it came about that the inside became visible, as did also the tags, with the help of which the boots were pulled on. When the outside of the boots was blacked it would form a distinct contrast to the inside, which remained brown, and in modern top boots the difference in colour has been in many cases greatly accentuated. Indeed, the upper parts are made of different leather, and as ordinary coat cuffs are now incapable of being turned down, the tops of the boots are immovable and cannot be turned up. It is curious, however, that the tags at the sides are still represented and sewn to the boot so as to be quite useless, while new tags placed inside the boot now do their duty. (See Figure 69.) [Illustration: FIG. 69.--A modern top boot in which the upper part can no longer be turned up.] [Illustration: FIG. 70.--Puttees.] Socks and stockings are, at the present time, the most usual coverings for the lower parts of the legs, and there is at least one vestige which remains in their structure that has an interest for us. Before we consider this, however, we may look at another means of protecting the lower extremities which tells of more primitive conditions. The leg bandages so commonly worn by our regular soldiers and volunteers are the case in point. (See Figure 70.) These appear to have been immediately derived from the Indian Army, and their name--"puttees"--is evidence of this; but such an arrangement is very widespread, and was that generally adopted in this country in Anglo-Saxon times. Our illustration is taken from an illuminated manuscript prepared for St. Aethelwold for use at Winchester, which was completed between the years 963 and 964 A.D. Bandaged stockings are common on representations of Anglo-Saxons, but according to Fairholt the example given shows them to greater advantage than does any other known. The figure in question is dressed in royal costume, and the bandages, which are of gold, are fastened just below the knee with a knot from which hang tassels. (See Figure 71.) [Illustration: FIG. 71.--Leg bandages of a royal personage at the end of the tenth century (after Fairholt).] It has been thought that leg bandages were originally derived from the haybands which peasants wrap round their legs, and the writer has seen it stated that ostlers in this country still perpetuate the Anglo-Saxon fashion, though he has never met with an actual instance. The pfiferari who some years ago used to play on bagpipes and other primitive instruments in our streets, wore leg bandages or loose linen stockings, and these were cross-gartered with bands which held in place a simple sandal made of a piece of leather. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--A stocking with clocks.] The vestige in modern stockings to which allusion has been made is very often present, and takes the form of the ornament which we know as a "clock." The name signifies a gusset, and in modern socks and so on, which are woven or knitted all in one piece, no such arrangement is to be found. Stockings, however, like those at first worn by Queen Elizabeth, and used at least by American settlers until the year 1675, were made up from pieces of cloth. In these there would be seams down the sides, and it is possible that where the ornamental lines meet in Figure 72 there may have been a gusset. In any case, it is evident that the intention of the clock was to hide the side seams. Of recent years, when ladies have most sensibly adopted short skirts, the clock has developed into a series of embroidered patterns which cover the front of the foot and ankle. The parentage of these is quite evident from the shape, which is shown in Figure 73. [Illustration: FIG. 73.--An embroidered stocking showing the further evolution of the clock (date 1900).] [Illustration: FIG. 74.--An open-work stocking of 1905.] This ornamentation has been carried still further, though it is not produced in the same way. The patterns, instead of being embroidered, are the result of perforations, or, in more technical language, "open-work," and the background which shows up the design is no longer the material of the stockings, but the skin of their fair wearers. (See Figure 74.) In many cases the stockings are dark in colour, and the effect of tattooing is produced without the preliminary pain and inconvenience. We have here an instance of the way in which the specially human instinct of decorating the body persists, and at the same time a development of the fashion for displaying, in the daytime under a thin veil of gauze or lace, the necks and arms which since the time of our grandmothers have only been allowed to appear uncovered in the evening. Leather stockings were once worn, for example, by William Penn, and they and the leggings of to-day may be a direct survival from the time when our ancestors, though still wearing skins, had learnt to dress them. Leggings, as such, are possibly connected more closely with the protection of man against man than with that of man against the weather, and in that case their history is bound up with that of armour. Gaiters, under the name of spatter-dashes, were originally part of a soldier's uniform. To-day, when worn by civilians in ordinary dress, they are quite short, and go by the contracted name of "spats." Pedestrians still wear the full-sized gaiters in conjunction with knickerbockers, and white gaiters are a feature of Highland regiments. Long Florentine hose, which practically took the place of trousers and stockings together, are now represented by what are called "tights," and are to be seen in the dress of acrobats. We shall allude to these again. Garters when visible on men's legs become very ornamental, and one in use now, merely as a decoration, gave its name to the celebrated Order of Knighthood, among the insignia of which it is still to be found. At the present day garters are hidden, and there is a tendency for them to be replaced by more comfortable straps or "suspenders," but those which ladies wear still retain their gaudy character. In this connection an interesting ceremony may be mentioned, which is carried in Haute-Vienne on the day of St. Eutropius. All the girls of the neighbourhood troop to the church dedicated to the saint at St. Junien-les-Gombes, and each damsel hangs her left garter on the cross hard by, which becomes so smothered with garters of different colours that when seen from a short distance it looks as if it were covered with flowers. VIII PETTICOATS AND TROUSERS THE BELTED PLAID AND KILT--EARLY SKIRTS--THE ANTIQUITY OF TROUSERS--TROUSER STRIPES We were at some pains to trace the evolution of the coat from the shawl, and it is possible also to show that the petticoat, and through this even trousers, have equal claims to the same ancestry. The plaid as we saw it in Chapter III is only a shawl, and at one time in Scotland it was used as a covering for practically the whole of the person. It was ingeniously disposed, and part of it was fastened by a belt round the waist so as to form a kind of kilt or petticoat. Hence arose the name of belted plaid. It seems to have needed a considerable amount of practice to put on this garment properly, and the method customarily adopted by the wearer was to spread the plaid on the ground and, after duly arranging it in its proper folds, to lie down upon it and fix it with the belt. Some races seem to have recognized very much earlier that it would be more convenient to separate the kilt from the upper garment. In fact, if we examine the woven garments which the Danish chieftain wore under his deer-skin cloak, at a time before the use of iron had spread to Western Europe, we find that round his loins he had a small shawl held in place by a girdle. (See Figure 75.) [Illustration: FIG. 75.--A shawl used as a kilt by a chieftain of Denmark in the bronze stage of culture (after Worsaae).] The next stage in the evolution of the petticoat would be characterized by the permanent joining of the edges of the cloth, so that a garment would be formed which resembled the lower part of the tubular tunic which played its part in the evolution of the shirt or coat. Such a state of affairs is to be seen in the simple skirt of the Danish chieftainess whose bodice we have already described. (See page 18.) Here the petticoat was not shaped in any way at the top, but was gathered in round the waist and fastened as in the case of the man with a girdle. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--A simple dress in the form of a petticoat from an Egyptian figure of the Sixth Dynasty (3500 B.C.), from the Myers collection in Eton College Museum.] In a warm climate it would be easy to dispense with a covering for the upper part of the body, and one of the simplest dresses imaginable was adopted in ancient Egypt. This costume is to be seen on the figure of a woman belonging to the Sixth Dynasty (3500 B.C.), which we have already mentioned when tracing the development of the hat-band and ribbons. (See Figure 45.) In this instance there is a simple tight-fitting skirt reaching to the waist or a little above it, which is supported by two straps passing between the bare breasts and over the otherwise naked shoulders. (See Figure 76.) [Illustration: FIG. 77.--A Korean servant (after Hough).] It seems certain, as in the original carving the woman is shown with a burden on her head and in the act of driving a calf before her, that she is a representative of the peasant class. In the Korea at the present day, women of the lower orders, although they adopt a jacket which covers their arms and shoulders, wear so short an one that as there is no garment beneath it leaves their breasts quite bare. (See Figure 77.) Such an arrangement would obviously facilitate the nursing of children, and this fact has been advanced as the reason for its adoption. Still it may be merely a fashion such as some women, at the other end of the social scale, once adopted in our non-tropical country. In the time of James I of England, the noble ladies, while they wore an exaggerated ruff round their necks, nevertheless had their dresses cut away from just below it almost to their waists. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--A short kilt.] The short kilt now worn in Scotland represents the lower part of the belted plaid, and is in fact a petticoat and specially interesting, seeing that it is a survival of this type as a man's garment. Of the origin of the sporran which is worn in front of the kilt, little seems to be known, and though it recalls to mind the time when men were clothed in skins, it forms a pouch as well as an ornament, and possibly also may have been useful as a protection. (See Figure 78.) Having once derived the petticoat, however, from the ancestral shawl, it is a very simple matter to proceed and evolve a pair of trousers. As a matter of fact, the Eastern women, when they fasten their petticoats between their ankles for convenience in walking, demonstrate the first stage in the production of bifurcated garments. A single row of stitches will give rise to a kind of divided skirt, while two seams and a single cut made between, and parallel, to them, will produce a pair of trousers. It would be strange if so simple a process, which under many conditions results in such a great improvement, had not been put into practice in very early times, and trousers, although they seem to typify the ugliness of modern costume, are in reality surrounded by a halo of antiquity. It is only right, however, to point out that these tubular garments were in olden days not associated with the highest civilization. The Romans, for instance, did not wear trousers, though the nations whom they were pleased to call barbarians, did. Some of the enemies of Rome are shown on Trajan's column wearing nether garments of the kind most familiar to us, and our illustration is taken from the representation of a barbarian soldier carved on an ivory diptych of St. Paul. (See Figure 79.) [Illustration: FIG. 79.--A barbarian soldier wearing characteristic trousers (from a diptych of St. Paul, after Marriott).] The kilt is sometimes called the garb of old Gaul, but one province of the latter owes its name--Gallia Braccata--to the custom among its inhabitants of wearing braccæ or breeches. In our own country trousers were in vogue before the advent of the Roman conquerors, and though for a time the dress of the invaders was adopted by those who followed their fashions, we find that in the time of the Saxons and Normans the barbarian style found favour once more. In the picture of a Saxon fighting man (see Figure 80), we see that he wears trousers that somewhat recall those of the modern sailor, and there seem to have been many different styles even in those early days. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--A Saxon military man wearing wide trousers (from the Harleian MS., No. 603, after Fairholt).] During the course of our history, long trousers went out of fashion for a very considerable period, though knee-breeches of various kinds flourished from time to time, until recently, when the original and less elegant garment once more triumphed and became part of the everyday dress of men. Boys still wear knickerbockers in one stage of their development, intermediate between the doffing of the petticoat and the donning of the trouser, and there is a tendency, that does not diminish, for the shorter garments to be used by men of all ages when they are not occupied with formal business. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--A peasant woman of Champéry wearing trousers.] Trousers are often wrongly thought to be a modern invention, and it is easy to go away with the idea that they are exclusively the attributes of men. This is far from being the case, and as in Scotland we find the petticoat still in use by men, so in France and Switzerland (see Figure 81) we see the peasant woman wearing trousers of the ordinary type, to say nothing of Oriental countries like Persia and Siam (see Plate V), where trousers form part of the dress of women even of the highest rank. [Illustration: A SIAMESE PRINCESS, SHEWING THE TROUSERS WORN BY WOMEN OF HIGH RANK. _PLATE V._] We must not forget the energetic crusade which is being carried on in this country in favour of "rational dress" for women, on lines which are more sensible than those laid down by Mrs. Bloomer, whose name has been immortalized in connection with divided garments for women. It is not intended, at the moment, to enter into a discussion of the advantages that may be gained by banishing the skirt, as we shall consider clothes, from the point of view of their effect upon the body, in a later chapter. Suffice it to say that the ugly clothes worn a few years ago by lady bicyclists who, while adopting divided garments, tried to make them look like a skirt, did much to hinder the "rational dress" movement. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--A German Hussar of 1808.] There is one vestige in connection with trousers that we may mention before leaving this subject, and that is the stripes which are to be seen on many official dresses, and which have been adopted by some men in their evening dress of recent years. It seems that this takes us back to a row of buttons which were once used along the whole length of the breeches when these were too tight for the foot to be put through them, and in consequence they had to be undone and done up again along the side of the leg. (See Figure 82.) There is little doubt but that the stripe represents a fold of cloth that in some cases covered up these buttons. Just a few of such buttons are still to be seen on riding breeches and those worn by liveried servants. IX COATS OF ARMS SIGNET RINGS--ARMORIAL BEARINGS--ESCUTCHEONS--CRESTS--BADGES Before we deal with coverings for the hand, it will not be amiss to consider something else which is worn on the fingers. Strictly speaking, of course, rings should be reckoned as ornaments, but signet rings very often bear upon them the crest or coat of arms of their wearer, and thus we have still carried on the person at the present day, a small and inconspicuous vestige of what were once most important articles of costume. In fact, they had a significance as great if not greater than any others, for when the face of their wearer was hidden by his helmet, they told to those well versed in heraldry not only his name but his lineage. The crest was worn on the helmet, and might or might not be one of the devices or charges embroidered on the surcoat,--which was worn over the armour--and emblazoned on the shield and elsewhere. At the present day, except in the case of ceremonial dress such as the tabards of heralds, the only survivals are the crest and shield. The devices on the latter are now called a coat of arms, as in olden times they were, as already indicated, merely a repetition of those actually worn on the dress or coat armour. Let us compare for a moment the first two figures which illustrate this chapter. In the first (see Figure 83) we have a tiny device engraved on a ring that is worn on the little finger of the left hand. In the second (see Figure 84) we have Sir Geoffrey Loutterell mounted on his charger in the act of receiving his helmet and shield from some of the ladies belonging to his family. All of the figures and the horse are decorated with armorial bearings. We wonder whether there could be a greater contrast. The knight has what is really his surcoat on his back displaying six martlets with a bend between them. The charges are repeated on a small square shield on his shoulder called an ailette, which was used apparently more as an ornament than as a protection, though it is said that ailettes were originally intended as a defence for the neck. Sir Geoffrey holds his helmet, on which, in the place of the crest, we again see his armorial bearings. They appear again on the pavon or small flag held by one of the ladies, and on the shield which the other carries. We find the same devices repeated five times on the trappings of his charger; and as if this were not enough, the ladies also have the bearings on their dresses. In the case of Lady Loutterell, who was the daughter of Sir Richard Sutton, there is shown also the lion rampant borne by her father. [Illustration: FIG. 83.--The crest on a modern signet ring.] [Illustration: FIG. 84.--Sir Geoffrey Loutterell and the ladies of his family, showing the extent to which armorial bearings were worn in the middle of the fourteenth century. From a psalter, made for Sir Geoffrey (after Fairholt).] We give another illustration taken from the effigy of Henry, the first Duke of Lancaster, on a brass at Elsyng, in Norfolk. (See Figure 85.) On this figure the surcoat is very well shown, and on it are emblazoned the three lions (or leopards) of the Royal Arms of England. It is interesting, too, owing to the label which differences the arms and shows that the wearer was not the king himself. The label takes the form of three vertical bars joined by a horizontal one, and is like that which may be seen to-day on the Prince of Wales's banner in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. In this illustration, too (Figure 85), the crest is very well shown. [Illustration: FIG. 85.--The crest and surcoat of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, A.D. 1347. From the brass to Sir Hugh Hasting at Elsyng, Norfolk (after Charles Boutell).] Armorial bearings are still used to a considerable extent in architecture, but otherwise they are chiefly confined to notepaper, carriage panels, and harness. Occasionally hatchments, or more properly achievements, are put upon the fronts of the houses of important people on the death of a member of the family, and afterwards transferred to the church in which the body is buried. The hatchment consists of the arms of the deceased person, painted on a lozenge-shaped field, which is surrounded by a black frame, and if it indicates the death of a husband, the right half of the field is sable (black), the left, argent (silver). If it is a wife that is dead, the colours on the field are reversed. When a widower, widow, or unmarried person dies, the whole of the field is made black. In olden times the actual helmet, surcoat, and shield were carried at the funeral, and in some instances these were deposited over the tomb of the deceased. Examples survive to the present day, and one of the most interesting cases is to be found in Canterbury Cathedral, where the shield, helmet, and surcoat of Edward the Black Prince are still to be seen. (See Figures 86, 87, and 88.) The Black Prince left most careful instructions in his will with regard to his funeral, and the accoutrements which we are able to figure through the kindness of the Society of Antiquaries, were the "arms of war," as he called them, that were to be carried at the ceremony. His "arms of peace" consisted of his ostrich feather badge, of which we shall again speak. There are traces on the crest and surcoat of a label to distinguish them, but this is absent from the shield, though it occurs on the arms many times repeated on the tomb, alternately with the feather badge already mentioned. [Illustration: FIG. 86.--The helmet and crest of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope).] [Illustration: FIG. 87.--The shield of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope).] [Illustration: FIG. 88.--The surcoat or jupon of the Black Prince. From "Vetusta Monumenta" (after St. John Hope).] With the exception of the signet rings and the ceremonial dress, which were alluded to at the beginning of the chapter, there are now but few cases where armorial bearings are worn on the person. School and college arms are embroidered on the breast pockets of blazers and on the fronts of caps, while perhaps the most common instances are the devices which we see on the buttons of servants. Whole coats of arms may appear, but usually it is the crest of the master, which has now taken the place of the household badge which the retainers wore in olden times. There is a difference generally between a crest and a badge, though in some cases the badge was really a crest. This was so before armorial bearings became hereditary, for the badge which the knight wore on his helmet formed its crest. Afterwards the same device was handed down to generation from generation. Individuals, possibly with a view of hiding their identity, sometimes wore a special badge instead of their family crest; but the badge as generally understood was, as has already been indicated, worn by the retainers and was usually chosen by each head of the family. The matter is further complicated, because badges were sometimes hereditary and occasionally identical with the crest proper. It is of course only the hereditary badges which have survived to the present day, and in only one or two cases are they apparently still used as such, though occasionally they survive for other purposes. The Prince of Wales's feathers we have already mentioned. They were not adopted by the Black Prince for the reasons usually given in history, as there is nothing to show that the King of the Bohemians ever wore them, and long before his time an ostrich feather was often used as a royal badge in England. On his carriage, the Marquis of Abergavenny wears his badges, a rose and a portcullis, one on each side of his crest, and there are interesting cases here and there of badges worn as part of a livery. The porters of the Inner Temple wear the pascal lamb in silver. Watermen still have badges on their arms, and not very long ago the private firemen of the insurance companies wore badges bearing the sign of the company. When speaking of signs, it is worthy of note that very many royal badges have furnished signs for inns. We cannot go into details, but we may mention the White Hart of Richard II, the Falcon and Fetterlock of Henry VII, now degenerated into the hawk and buckle, and the Rose and Crown also used by the Tudors. Those who chance to see the dress of our convicts will hardly be inclined to associate it in any way with that of royalty. Yet it is true, nevertheless, that the broad arrow which marks--we can hardly say adorns--the garments of the penitentiary, is in reality a royal badge. The broad arrow can be traced to an ancient symbol consisting of three converging rods or rays of light used by the Druids, and it was adopted by Edward III as his badge. The symbol was also worn by the Black Prince and other Princes of Wales. As early as the year 1386 the broad arrow was used in the Royal household, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards it was adopted as a mark for distinguishing Government stores. [Illustration: FIG. 89.--The postilion of a Lord Mayor of London, wearing a crest upon his cap, and a coat of arms upon his sleeve. (Copied by permission from a plate published by the John Williamson Co., Ltd.)] We may conclude our remarks upon this fascinating subject by alluding to a case in which a crest is actually borne on the head. It will be seen on looking at Figure 89, which represents the postilion of a Lord Mayor of London, that he wears upon his jockey cap the actual crest of his master, in the same way that in the days of chivalry the knights wore their crests upon their helmets. On his sleeve also there is a full coat of arms with helmet and crest, which takes the place of the badge, and is similar to the instances which we have mentioned just above. X GLOVES AND MITTENS ORIGIN OF THE BABY'S GLOVE--FOURCHETTES--THE "POINTS" ON THE BACKS OF GLOVES Gloves play a considerable part in our everyday life, and now exercise a kind of mild tyranny over us. It is perhaps not to be wondered at, seeing the importance which has been attached to these protectors of the hand in the past. Records show that in the earliest gloves there were no divisions between the fingers, and only the thumbs had a separate covering. This is what one might have expected to be the case, and if we look at the gloves which tiny babies wear (see Figure 90), we shall find a similar state of affairs, so that here we have a direct survival from very early times. Such a case is on all fours with that of young animals which belong to species that originally were spotted like the leopard, but which in the course of their evolution have changed their spots, and are now, like the lion, self-coloured. Among other animals which are spotted when immature may be mentioned the wild boar and the tapir (see Frontispiece). While these young ones are protected by their parents, their primitive colouring is no detriment to them, but when they go out into the world for themselves it would be disadvantageous under existing conditions for them to retain their aboriginal markings. In a similar way the baby wears the primitive glove, which its ancestors made shift to use for purposes of warmth or protection, and the child continues to do so until it is necessary or convenient for it to use its fingers to help itself without removing its gloves. [Illustration: FIG. 90.--A baby's glove without separate fingers.] There is little doubt but that gloves are the products of a cold climate, and it is interesting to note that in Iceland, where in order that gloves may be put on quickly and easily they are made without fingers; and what is more, so that no time shall be wasted in choosing right or left-hand gloves, they are provided with two thumbs, one of which is in use while the other remains idle. Of vestiges, gloves offer a very curious instance. There are on the backs of most of them, at the present day, three lines of raised embroidery or fancy stitching, which run almost parallel with one another, though they converge slightly as they approach the wrist. When these are worked in black on the back of a white woollen glove, for instance, they are very conspicuous, and to explain their origin may well seem puzzling. (See Figure 91.) [Illustration: FIG. 91.--The back of a woollen glove showing the three vestiges known as "points."] Inquiry into the history of these most persistent ornaments is apt to produce a fine crop of speculations. One explanation that may be offered is that the lines are vestiges that date from the time when gloves were so ill-fitting that they had to be laced up the back with the help of a string which was passed through eyelet holes. On hearing this one might be tempted to ask why there should be three ornaments and not one. Another guess which can be more easily shown to be wrong is that we are dealing with the remains of ventilation holes. We say "more easily" because an examination of the facts will show that openings through which air was intended to enter were made in the palm of the glove. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--A modern kid glove showing the fourchettes or pieces between the fingers, which form three pointed V's.] [Illustration: FIG. 93.--Queen Elizabeth's coronation glove showing the stitching carried down on to the back. (From a photograph by the courtesy of Messrs. Fownes Brothers and Co.)] A third suggestion which may occur, is that the ornamentation is a survival from the time when great men, particularly prelates, had various devices and even jewels fixed to the back of their gloves. Once more, however, we meet with the difficulty in the shape of the point that there are always three of the marks. In making a careful investigation into the true origin of the vestiges we can, on the one side, endeavour to see whether there is anything in the form of the hand which can have given rise to the number three, that is so constant; and on the other, whether the glove-makers have any particular name for the marks which may throw some light upon them. In connection with the first line of research, it will be seen on spreading out the fingers that there are, if we ignore the thumb which has its insertion lower down in the hand, three "V"-shaped openings between them, and we find on taking up our second clue that the ornaments are called "points." Now there is a point at the bottom of a "V," and this is well seen in looking at a glove where the pieces or fourchettes which form the insides of the fingers meet (see Figure 92); but if this is evident in a modern glove, it is very much more so in old gloves. (See Figure 93.) A result of this fact was that the stitching which made the fingers was carried down for some distance on to the back of the glove, as seen in Queen Elizabeth's coronation glove. (See Figure 93.) This stitching was and is often somewhat elaborate, and in some cases a line of embroidery covered it. This is well seen in the glove of Anne, the Queen Consort of James I (see Figure 94); and here it is noticeable that the two lines of embroidery at the points of the three "V's" run parallel and touching each other, so that we get a beginning of the three "points" as we know them. With improvements in the making of the fourchettes, the stitching terminated more abruptly, and the embroidery was allowed to remain on the back of the glove, where it is still to be seen. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--The glove of Anne, Queen Consort of James I, showing the embroidery on the fingers, which is the ancestor of modern "points." (From a photograph, by the courtesy of Messrs. Fownes Brothers and Co.)] Some mention should perhaps be made of mittens. When they are used for the purpose of keeping the hands warm, they are usually on the principle of a baby's glove, but with the end of the thumb and part of the bag for the fingers cut off. Otherwise, when these articles are used merely to cover part of the hands, or for ornament, they are more elaborate, and divisions are introduced for some distance between the fingers. In the construction of these, as in that of stockings and other garments, we meet with the modern tendency towards transparency. Often also the patterns are dependent upon the skin showing through, and we are once more reminded of tattooing. XI TAGS, PINS, AND BALDRICS LACES--THE EVOLUTION AND VAGARIES OF THE SAFETY-PIN--PRIMITIVE METHODS OF CARRYING BURDENS AS ILLUSTRATED BY MUFF-CHAINS, BALDRICS, AND YOKES During the course of their evolution many little appurtenances in connection with dress go through a number of changes. Some of them, which at first are useful, afterwards become ornamental. Others, which have reached a stage in which they are both necessary and decorative, may for a time be simplified and retain a practical importance only, while at a later period they resume their ornamental character once more. We have at the present day various laces which are provided with simple metal tags, and which are as primitive as they very well can be. (See Figure 95.) If we examine the dresses of both sexes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we shall find that ties were used to a great extent instead of buttons, and they were provided with metal tags of an ornamental character called aiglets, or, more properly, aiguillettes. In many cases the chief object of the ribbons which they adorned was that of embellishment, for as many as a dozen or more might be found round one knee. Sometimes the tags were in the form of little figures, and in the "Taming of the Shrew" it is said of Petruchio that if you gave him gold enough any one "might marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby." [Illustration: FIG. 95.--A silk lace with simple metal tags.] [Illustration: FIG. 96.--Ornamental metal tags on a velvet neck ribbon.] Of recent years the velvet ribbons which ladies have worn round their necks have been provided in like manner with little tags (see Figure 96), though the fashion does not seem to have developed again to any very great extent. The safety-pin is an object which may well occupy our attention for a moment. As we knew it when we were children, it was merely a piece of wire that had been pointed at one end and bent into the required shape. (See Figure 97.) [Illustration: FIG. 97.--A simple safety-pin.] The point was protected in a very simple manner, and the safety-pins used for fastening hooks to curtains are still constructed in the same way. Occasionally gold safety-pins of a plain and even ornamental character were made and used as brooches by ladies for fastening lace, or by men for securing their ties in the place of the straight scarf-pins. It would seem therefore that a brooch is a development of the safety-pin rather than the reverse; but if we study the brooches or fibulæ of the Romans, we shall find that the pin, instead of being hinged, was often made in one piece with the rest of the structure. A coil or two in the metal acted as a spring, as in the case of the safety-pin, and prevented breakage. We may even find an Etruscan fibula of such simple construction (see Figure 98) that it is to all intents and purposes a safety-pin. All sorts of devices have been invented for the better protection of the points in modern safety-pins, as well as for rendering the opening and closing more easy; but this is the development which has taken place along practical lines. Such pins are for use only, and are not intended to be seen. When, on the other hand, safety-pins are not hidden, they retain their more simple character as regards their fastenings, though they themselves again become decorative, and are ornamented in various ways. We have therefore a very good illustration of the evolution of one thing along two different lines, and of the survival of the fittest types in each case. [Illustration: FIG. 98.--An Etruscan brooch or fibula, resembling a safety-pin. (In the collection of Major W. J. Myers in Eton College Museum.)] The ornamental safety-pin in recent years has changed its habits, and it is interesting to note its vagaries. A little while ago its sphere of action was extended, and instead of figuring under the chins of ladies it took up a position in the back of their waistbands (see Figure 99), where it occupied itself with the duty of keeping blouse and skirt together. Then, as if this situation were not important enough, the safety-pin migrated to the head and usurped the place of the straight hat-pin (see Figure 100), just as in the case of men it has sometimes ousted the tie-pin proper. [Illustration: FIG. 99.--The safety-pin in the waistband.] During the process which we have described the safety-pin has become stronger and larger, until in the last stage it has grown almost out of recognition. [Illustration: FIG. 100.--The safety-pin grown larger and used for fastening on a hat.] Straight pins have developed along the same two lines, and we have the strictly useful pin and tie- or hat-pins, which are often quite as important as fastenings, but which may also be highly ornamental. These small articles have a special claim to our attention, as they have been taken as being emblematical of clothes, or at least of female attire. Even now the allowance which a lady is given for dress is called "pin-money." Moreover, it is possible to illustrate by means of pins the various phases of culture through which mankind has passed in the process of civilization. We meet with pins of bone, in the stage of stone, before metals were used. In the stage characterized by bronze we have pins made of this alloy. Such pins occurred in Egypt before the historic period, and they have been found in the Swiss lake dwellings as well as in our own country. [Illustration: FIG. 101.--A muff-chain.] Although we now live in the iron, or perhaps more correctly steel, stage of culture, the familiar pin of to-day is still usually made of brass; but nevertheless we find steel pins of the ordinary form which are plated with brass, and glass-headed steel pins are very common. In early times also gold, silver, and precious stones were pressed into service for making ornamental pins, and very handsome pins are represented on effigies of the fourteenth century in Westminster Abbey. These, no doubt, have for their descendants the scarf-pins of to-day. [Illustration: FIG. 102.--A hawker, illustrating the primitive way of carrying a burden.] [Illustration: FIG. 103.--A courier-bag supported by a baldric.] A muff-chain is a thing which is very often seen at the present day, and this simple arrangement, coupled with the way in which it is worn (see Figure 101), may lead us along a very interesting line of research, which we may follow for a short time. If we look once again at the muff, we shall see that it is supported by a chain which goes round the back of the neck, allowing the muff to rest against the front of the body. This is a primitive method of carrying a burden. Pedlars of old made use of it, and it is still adopted by the hawker (see Figure 102), because, if necessary, the hands can remain free, while a modification of the same principle is seen when the strap takes the form of a baldric, and passes over one shoulder and under the arm on the other side. In this way travellers carry their courier-bags (see Figure 103), the school-boy or girl supports his or her satchel, the fisherman his creel, and the sportsman his field-glasses. To a baldric also was attached the quiver of the archer, and sometimes such a band was merely worn as a decoration. (See Figure 104.) In the illustration which we give, and which is of the time of Henry V, the baldric is hung with bells like those which were worn by horses. Possibly a survival of the ornamental use of the baldric is to be seen in the ribbons of various orders and in military sashes, though no doubt the bandoleer which carries the pouch or cartridges of a modern soldier represents the useful baldric. It is of interest to note that the red or blue cord worn over the cross-belts of the Life Guards and Horse Guards is a survival of a cord by which the horn containing powder for priming muskets used to be suspended. In this connection we might also mention the leather sling of a rifle and the strap by which the itinerant harpist, in common with the organ-grinder, carries his instrument. [Illustration: FIG. 104.--An ornamental baldric of the early fifteenth century. (Royal MSS. 15 D. 5, after Fairholt.)] The ordinary belt should not be overlooked, as from it many things, such as weapons, may be suspended, not to mention pouches, which may carry ammunition, flint and steel, and so on. [Illustration: FIG. 105.--A lady's dress, showing the part which is called a yoke, and recalls a primitive method of carrying burdens.] Even more intimately connected with dress are pockets, and they may be touched upon here, for they are intended for carrying small objects. We have seen how the flaps of pockets which have become ornamental survive after the pockets themselves have disappeared (see Figure 21), and it is worthy of note that clothes in various countries lend themselves to the transportation of commodities. It has been pointed out by Mr. Otis T. Mason[9] that the Oriental, especially the Korean, has pockets in his sleeves having the capacity of half a bushel; while the Turk and Arab can stow an equal amount in the ample folds of their robes. The writer also remembers hearing the account of a journey in Asia from a traveller who, when riding in wide trousers fastened at the ankle, used to keep all his clean linen in one trouser-leg and his dirty clothes in the other. We are reminded by the name given to the upper part of a lady's dress, namely, the yoke (see Figure 105), of another means of carrying burdens, which still survives in London, where a few milk-women even now carry round their pails on a yoke. Their costume, which includes a small shawl and an apron, can be compared with that of the barge-girl, though the picturesque sun-bonnet of the latter is lacking. XII ORNAMENTS PRIMITIVE NECKLACES--FINGER-RINGS--THE ORIGIN OF THE HAIR COMB--BUTTONS--STUDS--FLOWERS--FEATHERS--AMULETS We have touched upon one or two objects which may have a decorative character, but we now come to a consideration of ornaments themselves. Roughly speaking, they owe their survival to one of two reasons: either the deep-rooted instinct which exists in even the lowest races for adorning their person, or, secondly, the adoption of various objects which have been worn as charms or amulets. Dr. E. B. Tylor[10] has pointed out the tendency of higher civilization to give up savage ornaments. Not the most primitive possibly, but seemingly the most barbarous, are the ornaments which are fastened into the body in special orifices which are pierced to receive them. It is true that in this country we do not make holes in our lips for the insertion of wooden plugs two or three inches across, and the only nose ornaments which we see are on the faces of the Hindu ayahs who have come over from India with their white nurselings; but still many among the population pierce their ears for the reception of earrings. In the higher social ranks ear-drops are now worn which do not require the ear to be perforated for their reception; but among the lower orders--as, for instance, those who live in canal-boats--the ears of men, women, and children are still pierced. Of ornaments which can be attached to the person without injuring it there are more in use, but they are practically confined in civilized countries to the neck, arms, and head. Of those which are fastened to clothes we will not for the moment speak. Beads, which at the moment of writing seem to be greatly in fashion, or their representatives, take us back to the very earliest men of whose work we have any knowledge. In the caves where the Stone Age men of the mammoth period lived there have been found periwinkle shells, which were bored to form bracelets or necklaces, just as nowadays native tribes and æsthetic ladies still make use of the more ornamental and beautiful exotic shells. The prehistoric Egyptians who, it has been calculated, flourished about 6000 B.C., had necklaces of beads cut out from pieces of shell, and others made of many different materials. Among the earliest remains in our own country beads are found, and throughout the historic period everywhere they seem to have held their sway. We have already mentioned how easy it is for ornaments to be used as currencies, owing to the facility with which they may be carried on the person, and beads for many centuries have been used--as in Africa for instance--in the place of money. There are on the west coast of that continent still to be seen "aggries" similar to those which the Arab traders brought with them from Egypt as early as the seventeenth dynasty. At the present day beads of various kinds--for only particular varieties will buy certain commodities--are made and exported to Africa to be used in trading. While speaking of Egyptian beads, it might be said that, as in other matters of art, the Egyptians excelled in the making of beads. Some--known as blue popo beads, which found their way to West Africa--are worth more than their weight in gold at the present day, and the most skilful of the Venetian beadmakers are unable to imitate them sufficiently well to induce the natives to accept them. Chains for the neck in our time do not assume very massive proportions, except those which are used as symbols of office in the case of mayors and by the members of various knightly orders. These take us back to the time of Richard II, when such ornaments came into vogue. Among savage races metal rings find much favour as ornaments, and they illustrate the fact that the lady who wears the minimum of clothes will put up with the height of inconvenience, not to say pain, just as her over-dressed and more civilized white sister will do, in order to be in the height of fashion. The Padaung women put metal collars round their necks when they are young children till these number between twenty and thirty, and the necks of the wearers are stretched out in the most grotesque and uncomfortable fashion. (See Plate VI.) African belles will wear great copper rings on their limbs, which get so hot in the sun that an attendant has to carry water with which to occasionally cool them down. The wearing of armlets and bracelets has never been confined to women. Men among the Greeks did not wear them, but among the Romans they did. Armlets were conferred on soldiers for heroic deeds, and even now the rank of non-commissioned officers in the army is indicated by stripes on their sleeves. [Illustration: TWO PADAUNG WOMEN, SHOWING THE NUMEROUS METAL COLLARS WHICH THEY WEAR ROUND THEIR NECKS. (_See page 114._) _PLATE VI._] Dr. Tylor hints that ordinary finger-rings have originated from those used as signets in Egypt and Babylon. In this case the modern signet ring, which we have already discussed in connection with heraldic devices, is a survival from the earliest times. Most rings are now merely ornamental, though a few are symbolical--the episcopal ring of the bishop, the engagement ring of the betrothed damsel, and the wedding ring of the wife. As early as the seventh century a ring was among the distinctive insignia of a bishop, and one was found on the finger of Bishop Agilbert of Paris (who lived at this time) when his coffin was opened. The ring was of gold and, as is usual, had a jewel set in it, on which, in the particular case mentioned, was a likeness of Christ and of St. Jerome. The origin is no doubt to be found in the fact that in Roman times rings were used as an insignia of rank. The episcopal ring proper was only one of many other rings which a bishop might wear as ornaments. It was borne on the third finger of the right hand, above the second joint, and was usually kept in place with a plain guard ring. The Greeks and Romans used betrothal rings as pledges, but not wedding rings. There is a good deal of interesting symbolism in connection with rings, and it is said that the third finger of the left hand was chosen because in old times it was thought that a vein came to that finger direct from the heart. The practical point is that the finger in question is not very much used, and on it the rings would not be so liable to be worn out as on some of the others. It is also supposed that the left hand was chosen as it was the less important, and the wearing of a ring on this hand signified servitude. An interesting form of early wedding rings was that called the gimmal ring, which consisted of two links, each having a hand upon it, which when brought together formed a single ring with the hands clasped together. The ring was used at betrothal, and the man and woman each kept a half until their wedding day. Perhaps the old custom of breaking a coin upon engagement so that each of the contracting parties may have half, is a relic of the same custom. In Ireland the peasantry still use a ring, though a solid one, bearing clasped hands. We have possibly a survival of the interesting posey rings in those which bear the word Mizpah. This originally signified "a watch-tower," but it is now taken as expressing the following sentiment: "God watch over thee and me when we are apart." In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the couplet or line was, as in the case mentioned, put on the outside of the ring, while later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the words were engraved inside the ring. Occasionally we see a necktie held in place with a ring, and this may well be connected with the custom of wearing rings round the neck on a ribbon. It is recorded that the Duke of Burgundy, who died in 1476, carried his signet ring in this way. A custom is still sometimes followed which dates back to the sixteenth century. It is that of choosing stones on account of the first letters of their names and setting them in a ring in such an order that the initials spell a word or words. For instance, the following--Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, and Diamond, indicate REGARD; while a lover's exhortation is produced by such a combination as Lapis-lazuli, Opal, Verdi-antique, Emerald, Malachite, Emerald. Many of the Egyptian rings are made of blue pottery or faïence, and some of them show highly ornamental and pierced work. The lotus flowers and other figures upon them point to their being symbolical. Others bear the sacred eye in the place where the seal would be in a signet ring, and were probably used as amulets; but of ornaments worn on account of their supposed virtues we will speak in a moment. An ornament for the head, with which we will deal, is the crown. Mr. Elworthy, in a paper to the British Association at Ipswich in 1895, derived the crown from horns of honour. He maintained that the symbols found on the head of the god Serapis were the elements from which were formed the composite head-dress called the crown, into which horns entered to a very great extent. The panache in heraldry is derived from the horn, and it may be recalled that the deer-skin cloaks worn by the Bronze Age people over the woven dresses that have been described on pages 18 and 73, bore the horns of the animal from which they were taken. Though the comb used as an ornament in the hair is also worn on the head, it is on a very much lower plane than the crown, and has presumably a very much less exalted origin. Professor Boyd Dawkins[11] has expressed the opinion that the old loom comb (see Fig. 106), such as one found in the prehistoric lake dwellings which have been excavated at Glastonbury, is the ancestor of the comb worn as a head-dress at the present day (see Fig. 107). Combs were used to push down the weft on a hand loom, the warp being kept taut by means of weights. The long hair-combs used by the natives of the West Carolines are also of very much the same shape as the old loom combs. [Illustration: FIG. 106.--A loom comb found in the Glastonbury lake dwellings (after Boyd Dawkins).] [Illustration: FIG. 107.--A modern comb for the hair.] Already in the safety-pin and scarf-pin we have had instances of fastenings which at times are ornamental. The button and its relative the stud afford another case in point. A stud is in reality a button which appears on both sides of the stuff through which it is put. It is obvious that it is most convenient to use when the material to be fastened is of a stiff texture. At present we use studs in our starched linen, and they are also adopted for fastening parts of leather accoutrements, as they evidently were in the times of the later bronze folk. This will be seen from Figure 108. One of these is adorned with the triskele, which is allied to the swastika, and no doubt gave rise to the three-legged charge on the coat of arms of the Isle of Man and of Sicily. [Illustration: FIG. 108.--Two studs of bronze, seen from above and from the side. Later Bronze Age (after Worsaae).] Buttons have from time to time done a great deal in the way of decorating clothes, in addition to the part which they have played as fastenings. We saw in an earlier chapter how many of our buttons, which are now only ornamental, were once of use, and any history of costume which goes into details will show how largely, superfluous buttons have figured as ornaments. The older Quakers, of course, refused to wear any buttons that were not needful, and brought down upon them the criticisms of Cobbett, who referred to other things which they lacked besides buttons. Although at the present time we may be inclined to appreciate some of our purposeless buttons, on account of their historic associations, we cannot say the same for many of those which now appear on ladies' dresses. There is little sense in having on the front of a bodice a series of buttons of which the first member is very large and the last very small, with the others graduated in size between them, while there seems to be no rhyme nor reason in many other individual buttons or patches of them which are dotted here and there over the costume. It is not as if these additions were really handsome. Not long ago they looked as if the wearer had saved up all her old glove buttons, and then had sewed them to her frock, for they were quite tiny and made of brass. Now, though they are larger, they are merely covered with the cloth of which the dress is made and are usually quite plain. In some cases buttons show great beauty of design, and for this reason, if not on account of the material of which they are made, may be exceedingly valuable. Bearing on the antiquity of buttons, we may say that they are found among prehistoric remains in this country, and though they were foreign to the ancient Egyptians, we learn (through the kindness of Professor Flinders Petrie) that engraved buttons or seals were usual from the sixth to the nineteenth dynasty, probably among foreign immigrants, for the designs are never true Egyptian. In the present year, 1907, Professor Petrie found a cornelian button with a copper shank which belongs to the twelfth dynasty. The use of flowers, whether artificial or natural, on the person, and more particularly the wearing of feathers, also takes us back to the primitive instinct of early or uncivilized man. In our own country the custom of wearing feathers is an exceedingly old one. The single upright specimens worn by the knights of the fourteenth century have been characterized as being preposterous in size. The plumes afterwards worn in helmets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were also immense. In 1606, according to Nichol's "Progresses," on the occasion of the visit of Christian IV, some of the knights "wore strange feathers of rich and great esteem which they called Birdes of Paradice," and, unfortunately, ladies of the present day wear them still. In the reign of Edward IV, we learn, only men, practically speaking, wore feathers. They still survive in the army, but otherwise in the twentieth century, with the exception of an occasional small and modest instance amongst civilians, the wearing of plumes is confined to ladies. Many flowers and feathers are exceedingly beautiful, and from an artistic point of view there seems little reason why we should allow civilization to sweep them away. We are quiet and colourless in our clothing, and if we are not careful the same element of dulness may creep into our lives. At the same time, however, to wear feathers which can only be obtained at the cost of cruelty or of depriving others of the sight of beautiful birds, or, again, of bringing any species to extinction, savours too much of barbarousness and thoughtlessness to be in any way condoned. Ostriches are reared for their feathers, and the plumage of many birds that are killed for food is always at hand. Men have much less opportunity now of showing any great individuality in their dress than heretofore, but sometimes they may be known by always wearing a buttonhole, even if that does not always consist of the same kind of bloom. The language of flowers, though now seemingly considered to be a dead letter, was hardly invented for nothing. Of the brooch and its connection with the safety-pin we have already spoken. In many ornaments we find remnants of religious ideas; for instance, all brooches showing a crescent pattern or bearing the design of a hand are connected with the old phallic worship. The cross, it may be mentioned, is of much more ancient origin than Christianity, and is connected intimately with the swastika or fylfot. The locket and other pendant ornaments must in many, if not all, cases be the descendants of amulets. The Arab women at the present day wear a little metal box containing a written talisman. An ancient Egyptian buried, with his mummies, many amulets and charms so that the soul, in obedience to various precepts, might enter into complete union with Ra, the solar god, and so accompany him on his journey round the world, and secure his everlasting protection. It is due to these ideas that we owe the beautifully modelled figures of glazed pottery found in the Egyptian tombs. Many of them depict the various gods and goddesses acknowledged in Egypt, and they are usually pierced for attachment to the person. These were also carried on the person during life, and children especially were accustomed to wear them. Old religious beliefs and superstitions that have not yet died out, have elsewhere given rise to the wearing of charms, and it is interesting to note that flint arrow-heads, under the name of "elves' arrows," were made into pendants by races who had reached the metal stage of culture. Precious stones, upon which a word may be said here, no doubt at first were prized for their beauty alone, and then imagination gradually endowed many of them with fictitious properties and virtues, though doubtless the supposed attributes of some and the value and beauty of others have kept many precious stones in favour until the present day. Fashion is now particularly fickle as regards them, and craftsmen who deal with gems, feel her decrees[12] more keenly perhaps than any one else. Some half-dozen kinds of stones--such as diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, opals, and turquoises--never go completely out of fashion, but even among these, one or other becomes paramount from time to time. The topaz and chrysolite were reported to lose their brilliancy when placed in liquid that contains poison. To the amethyst was attributed the power of warding off the effects of drunkenness. The diamond, it was believed, gave to the wearers magnanimity, virtue, and courage. The ancients supposed that the opal shared the charm of every stone of which it reflected the colour, but when it was stolen, the thief became invisible, and was allowed to escape scot free. Mr. Claremont[13] has made an interesting suggestion as to the reason why the opal has been considered unlucky. The notion, he says, is not nearly so ancient as many of the superstitions relating to other stones, and probably does not date further back than the Middle Ages. The old name "ophal" was used as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth, and came from the Greek for "eye"-stone, and as eyes are unlucky even in peacocks' feathers, perhaps the explanation of the superstition lies in the name of the stone. Such walking-sticks as those garnished with "sylver" and "golde," which are described as being at the Royal Palace at Greenwich in the reign of Henry VIII, may well be considered as ornaments. The same may be said of the be-ribboned canes of the exquisites of Charles II's and later times. We mention them because, within the last two or three years, there has been a talk of seeing "the nice conduct of a clouded cane" more generally considered, and some men have appeared at the theatre with long, gold-knobbed and tasselled canes. The buckle, which may be ornamental or useful, or both, is well worthy of our attention. It consists in its simple form of a ring and a pin, and the latter is hinged on to the former. It is, in fact, much like a brooch, but without a hasp, and used in a different way. There are brooches, however, at the present day, which are even simpler in construction than the buckle, and they are used[14] even now by blacksmiths in Kirkudbrightshire, in the form of the iron ring and a horseshoe nail, with which they fasten their aprons. Similar pin-ring brooches were used in Ireland until quite recently and are known from early times. Mr. Edward Lovett[15] thinks that such a fastening may well have been derived from two bones of the sheep or deer, the garment being pulled through the ring formed by half the hip girdle, and speared through with the pointed heel bone. A still more primitive pin was no doubt a thorn, and fish-hooks are to this day used on the coasts of Essex, which are made from the same natural object. XIII HAIR DRESSING HEAD SHAVING--WIGS THAT ARE STILL WORN--ROMAN CURLS AND FRINGES The styles in which hair is dressed are so intimately connected with fashions in costume that no excuse is needed for dealing with the question here. Moreover, there are certain vestiges in costume occasionally to be met with which owe their origin to the way in which hair was once arranged. Hair can be treated in all sorts of manners without injuring the person in any way, and usually without causing pain, though some fashions in hair arrangement had results that were far from pleasant, and must have caused considerable discomfort. In addition to the styles in which hair is allowed to grow, there are others which lead to its removal from one or more of the places which it normally covers, and almost every change that could be rung is met with. In addition to the hair on the head, women have only their eyebrows and eyelashes to consider, though it is the fashion to remove any "superfluous" hair from their faces and arms. Men have also to consider moustaches, whiskers, and beard. Nowadays it is decreed that women's hair should be long and that men's should be short; but even now men with long hair do not necessarily look effeminate, as is shown by the cowboys from the Wild West who have taken part in various exhibitions in this country, and whose hair reaches on to their shoulders. The shaving of the whole head is carried out by many savage nations, and this is perhaps surprising, seeing that the process cannot but be laborious and even painful when carried out with flint knives or pieces of shell. The Chinese leave the hair that grows from one small spot in order to make their pigtail. In this country it might be thought that the tonsure of priests was the only remnant of shaving the head; but we need go no farther than the East End of London to find Jewesses who upon marriage shave their head and put on wigs. It appears that the custom is still universal in the remote villages of Russia, where every Jewess on her marriage shaves her head. The wig that is worn is of a very plain pattern, and the hair of which it is composed is parted down the middle. The object which seems to underlie the custom is the destruction of the charm of the women when once they have found husbands. In London the younger women do not seem to be keeping up the practice, and it is mostly in the case of those who are over forty years of age that shaved heads and wigs are to be found. There may be, however, another explanation. In many countries where great value was attached to a profuse head of hair a variety of superstitions arose, and emblematic observances were followed with regard to it. Parents dedicated the hair of their infants to gods, as did young women theirs at their marriage, warriors after a successful campaign, and sailors after deliverance from a storm. The Egyptians of all classes, as well as their slaves, shaved their heads and wore wigs. By this habit they ensured greater cleanliness, and the structure of the wig not only allowed the heat from the head to escape, but protected the latter effectively from the sun. It does not happen that both sexes always follow the practice of shaving their heads, for, contrary to what prevails amongst civilized nations, Fijian women are usually closely cropped, while the men spend much time and attention on cultivating and elaborately arranging a luxuriant mass of hair. The tendency nowadays is to cultivate eyebrows and eyelashes, but if we go back in our history to the reign of Richard II we find that it was thought necessary to pull out the eyebrows, and at the present day in some parts of Africa it is one of the requirements of female beauty to eradicate the eyebrows. Special pinchers for this purpose are to be found among the appliances of the native toilet. A man may of course remove all the hair, speaking in the ordinary way, from his face, or he may retain only his moustache or his whiskers or his beard, or a combination of any two of these. At the present day we meet with all sorts of styles, though one may be the fashion for the moment among the younger generation or those who wish to be considered smart. One cannot alter the disposition of one's hair as easily as one can change one's clothes, and this, perhaps, taken in conjunction with the objection to change on the part of a man and his relatives, gives the variety that has been mentioned. For instance, if it were customary when a man was young for his fellows to wear beards or only a moustache, then he continues to wear a beard or only a moustache. Perhaps no other fashions come round again more regularly than those which govern the amount of hair on a man's face, and it may be interesting to indicate very briefly some of the changes which have taken place during the last two thousand years or so in this country. [Illustration: FIG. A. FIG. B. FIG. C. FIG. D. FIG. E. FIG. F. METHODS OF HAIRDRESSING ILLUSTRATED BY ROMANO-EGYPTIAN PORTRAIT MODELS IN THE MYERS COLLECTION, ETON COLLEGE MUSEUM. (_Photographs by Wilfred Mark Webb_.) (_See pages 129 and 133._) _PLATE VII._] The inhabitants of England at the time of the Roman invasion either did not shave at all or wore only a moustache. The Romans often cut their beards (see Plate VII, Figure F.), and the Saxons parted their beards into double locks or neatly trimmed them. When the Normans came into this country they were closely shaved, but afterwards they went to the opposite extreme. In the fourteenth century old men wore beards and the younger generation shaved. Edward III had a long beard, Edward II two small tufts on his chin, and in Edward IV's time the beard was closely shaven. Afterwards we find that a tax was put on beards, and once more, in Elizabeth's and the following reigns, we have a number of extraordinary fashions in connection with the hair on the chin. When we get to 1798, among the upper classes beards were again no longer worn, and there have been several changes since that time. Apart from the prevailing fashion, there is, under the conditions which we have seen to govern the matter, considerable scope for the indulgence of individual taste, and often an effect is produced which is much more striking than otherwise would be the case. A man may choose, for instance, to grow a large pair of bushy whiskers, and he may thereby give character and importance to his face, which without them would be very insignificant. Curly hair is effective and has its advantages, therefore we find that it is carefully imitated both in the case of real hair and of wigs. The effect is now usually produced artificially only in connection with ladies' hair. When dealing with this branch of the subject, once more we might allude to the monstrous toilets which have been built up in defiance of all laws of proportion and, we might add, of comfort and cleanliness also. To utilize the hair from the heads of others is an ancient practice still to be met with, and all sorts of means for making the most of one's own hair in the shape of pads and so on are still adopted. When speaking of footmen, we shall find that those who dress in the costume that was in fashion when hair powder was in vogue still wear it, and the custom has been traced to the days of Rome, when gold dust was put upon the head. It has been suggested that our Saxon forerunners used coloured hair powder or else dyed their hair, but the evidence comes from Saxon drawings in which the hair is often painted blue, and this may be due merely to the caprice of the artist. It is well to be wary also in studying the colour of clothes at early periods, by looking at pictures, to remember that the illuminators may have followed their own fancy, and made garments of such colours as fitted in with their own ideas of ornament. Though the use of wigs is extremely ancient, the origin, which is customarily ascribed to the peruke, is interesting. Many curious fashions have arisen through royal peculiarities or temporary indispositions, the courtiers having imitated their royal master or mistress, out of compliment. Louis XIV had, when a child, remarkably beautiful hair, which fell in curls on to his shoulders, and to imitate this, his courtiers put on false hair, while later in life the king himself adopted the fashion which they had set. The obvious use of artificial additions to the hair has now been discontinued for very many years except in a few cases. Judges and barristers with a few Parliamentary and other officials still wear wigs, as do also certain coachmen and footmen, but these we shall consider elsewhere. It will prove of no small interest after recalling the various modes of doing the hair which ladies have adopted during the last twenty or thirty years, to compare them with the fashions in Egypt in Roman times about two hundred years before the Christian era. The reason why we can do this so well is that the Romano-Egyptians put on the top of their coffins a model of the head of the person who was buried in it. Professor Flinders Petrie has shown that the effigies were really portraits, and even a glance at some of them would go far to prove the statement. Professor Petrie made composite photographs of the face on the outside of the coffin and of the skull within, and both in the profile as well as in the full-face pictures it was seen that the plaster model clothed the skull, as it were, with flesh. To return to the question of hair dressing, if one examines Plate VII we shall see first of all a lady with corkscrew curls, which were more prevalent in the last century than they are now, though they have not yet died out. Then we have a lady with a very elaborate fringe, another who allows her hair to fall in waves on her forehead, and it forms a chignon at the back. Lastly (Plate VII, Figure B) a little girl with a small bun on the top of her head. Another specimen, not figured here, and also contained in the celebrated Myers Collection, shows the bun exactly as it was worn at the end of the last century. We have included two heads (Plate VII, Figures A and F), one of a boy and the other of a man, showing the great likeness that exists between the way in which hair was done more than two thousand years ago and at the present day. Besides the methods of hair arrangement which have survived or been revived, there are certain little features still to be seen here and there in modern dress which owe their origin to the ways in which hair or wigs were dressed. A remnant of the bag-wig, with its great bow of black ribbon, we may find in the army. For a long time on the backs of the collars of the officers and staff-sergeants of the Welsh Fusiliers there have been fixed some ribbons which hang down their back. These, which are few in number, are called the "flash," and are said to represent the bow which used to ornament the bag-wig. A hundred years ago the officers of the regiment wore their hair turned up behind, and it was then tied with a bow. This is in keeping with another explanation which Mr. R. Simkin has given us, which is that the flash is the survival of a bunch of ribbons that were sewn on the back of the coat-collar to protect it from the pomatum and powder of the "clubbed" or "queued" hair. The privilege of wearing the "flash" has recently been extended to all ranks of the regiment (see Figure 109). [Illustration: FIG. 109.--The "flash" of five black ribbons on the collar of the Welsh Fusiliers. A survival from the days of the pigtail.] A survival of the same kind, which takes us back to the time of wigs, is to be seen on the backs of the collars of several court dresses, and it is known technically as the "wig-bag." It is also, as we have had occasion to mention, to be seen on the back of the collar of the liveries of some servants whose dress is in the old style, and here, as in the case of the Lord Mayor's coachman, it looks as if it had originated in a bow (see Figure 113). XIV SPECIAL DRESSES FASHIONS KEPT UP BY CEREMONIES--SURVIVALS IN SPECIAL COSTUME--FLOWING GARMENTS In the foregoing pages we have been concerned chiefly with individual parts of costume, and while showing how various garments have reached their present form, we have busied ourselves with discovering the origin of many important survivals. We have not however hesitated, in dealing with these details, to touch on all kinds of costumes, and here and there we have left civilians' dress for a moment to take an illustration from that of the soldier or the member of some other profession. At the same time, we have indicated that on occasions of ceremony, whether religious or otherwise, the dress adopted is, as a rule, more primitive or older in style than that which is customarily worn. This is what might be expected, as, on the one hand, innate conservatism and objection to change come into play, and, on the other, ordinary everyday practical matters being for the time put on one side, it is possible to wear clothes which otherwise would be inconvenient and liable to get damaged. When we ourselves dress for dinner we go back nearly a century, but nothing could be more primitive than the Court etiquette of certain tribes,[16] where the subjects of the king may only approach him when entirely unclothed. Livingstone was received by the Queen of the Balonde Negroes in South Africa when she was in a state of complete nudity. The women of neighbouring tribes and members of other races, for instance those in Australia, entirely remove their clothing on festive occasions. Among some black races, also, the girls who are sent as official messengers to important persons are not clothed. There are still certain tribes of "leaf wearers" in India, while at a yearly festival in Madras the whole low-caste population throw off their ordinary clothing and put on aprons of leafy twigs. Another case in point is that of the priests who conducted the sacrifices in ancient Italy and Greece, for they are often represented on monuments as being naked, while the rest of those present at the ceremony are fully clothed. In taking up the question of ceremonial dress among civilized peoples, we find that we have a very wide field in which to wander. We have the Court, which might alone occupy our whole attention; we have naval, military, ecclesiastical, and legal dress, the garb of the universities, the costume of pantomime characters, of the acrobat, of the athlete, and the liveries of servants, besides the costumes adopted for special ceremonies and in connection with particular institutions. In treating of survivals in the case of the army, where the variety in uniform--if we may use this paradoxical expression--is so great, we may content ourselves with discussing matters in a way similar to that which we have adopted before. On the other hand, we may also describe and illustrate particular costumes, as a whole, while showing how far their history may carry us back. In addition to the clothes actually worn by persons, there are those which are found on dolls. These may be on the representations of personages such as St. Nicholas, on the Continent and elsewhere, and they are interesting because in many cases they may show a national costume which is no longer worn. In the same way, puppets such as are used in the play which we know as Punch and Judy, and their dresses, like others which we have studied, may bring to our notice chapters of history in a way that is exceedingly attractive. There is no doubt but that long flowing garments produce a more elegant effect, and give rise to a more stately appearance than those which are short or tight fitting. In the case of men, such garments would now be too much in the way on ordinary occasions, or when any physical exertion is required. The king and noblemen on state occasions wear robes, as do also the members of City companies and borough councillors when they assemble together. The case of the clergy will occur to every one, and legal and academical dress may also be mentioned. In the privacy of the home it is possible for every man to wear a dressing-gown, and pyjamas have not in all cases superseded the more primitive nightshirt. In the case of ladies, we find that they cling lovingly to long dresses, though, as we know, there is much effort being made to dispense with skirts under ordinary conditions, and the fact that short skirts have for some years been fashionable for outdoor use looks as if some progress were being made. XV SERVANTS' DRESS THE PROTOTYPES OF LIVERIES--REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE II AND GEORGE III--ORIGIN OF THE PAGE-BOY'S BUTTONS--THE JOCKEY CAP--APRONS In taking up the question of special costumes, we may perhaps begin with those which we see most commonly, and for that reason we may turn our attention, in the first place, to the liveries and dress of servants. We have laid down a sort of rule that the costume of servants is that of the master of an earlier generation, and we will now bring forward some evidence in support of it. Modern coachmen and outdoor footmen wear the tall hat, the bright buttons, doeskin breeches and the top boots characteristic of the outdoor and riding dress of the gentlemen at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The groom, it will be noticed (see Figure 110), wears in addition a leather belt, and the reason for this will not perhaps strike the inquirer straight away. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did not always drive in carriages, and it was customary for them, when riding on horseback, to sit on a pillion behind a gentleman or a servant. The belt which we now see round the waist of a groom afforded a hold to which they had to cling, in order to prevent themselves from falling off the horse. [Illustration: FIG. 110.--The modern groom, showing the belt to which ladies clung when riding on a pillion.] Such a livery as we have described is also adopted by the general run of well-to-do people. The aristocracy, however, are more inclined to stand upon ceremony, and through it to make more show. Their footmen, who go by the generic name of "Jeames," wear plush breeches, silk stockings, and powdered hair. (See Figure 111.) [Illustration: FIG. 111.--A footman in plush breeches and with powdered hair. His "pouter" coat dates from the reign of George III. (By the courtesy of Messrs. F. T. Prewett and Co.)] A little inquiry will soon show that these peculiarities of dress were those which it pleased the gentlemen of George III's time to adopt. Some flunkeys belonging to the nobility have their breasts ornamented with cords known as aiguillettes, and these give them somewhat of a military appearance, besides reminding us of the old retainers. The coats that go with the plush breeches and are cut away so as to recall the wings of a pigeon--hence the name "pouter" coat--are a special feature of George III's reign. The coachman's coat is usually a little fuller in the skirt, and carries us back to the time of George II. In another way this costume is a little older in its style than that of the footman who powders his own hair instead of wearing a wig like his colleague. (See Figure 112.) [Illustration: FIG. 112.--A sheriff's coachman with the full-skirted coat of the time of George II. (By the courtesy of Messrs. F. T. Prewett and Co.)] In connection with the Lord Mayor more ceremony still is maintained. His coachmen and footmen appear in all the glory of three-cornered hats, which are decorated with feathers, and their coats are highly ornamented. They are representatives of the very fine gentlemen of George III's time. On the back of the collar of the Lord Mayor's coachman, we find an arrangement that looks like an elaborately made rosette of black ribbon (see Figure 113). This is a survival of the bag-wig, of which we shall have occasion to speak again when dealing with Court and military dress, so that we need not go into further details here with regard to this curious vestige. (See page 229, Figure 143.) [Illustration: FIG. 113.--The wig-bag (a survival of the bag-wig) now seen on the back of the collar of the Lord Mayor's coachman.] This is a progressive age, in spite of the many survivals which still flourish, and when we come to consider the costume of the modern manservant who attends at table, or the waiter in the restaurant, we find that he has come out of his generation, as it were, and has adopted the dress of his masters before they have themselves discarded it. Confusion has arisen through this before now, and it has been suggested that if ornamental buttons were worn by the man who serves, the difficulty would be overcome. The writer well remembers being amused when standing in a room at a well-known restaurant, where a private dinner was to be given, to notice the change which suddenly came over the dress of the waiters. When the latter first arrived they had black cloth buttons on their coats, while in a few minutes' time, these same garments were adorned with brass buttons bearing the initials of the firm that provided the dinner. Inquiry soon elicited the fact that the men carried with them small brass cases which were sprung on to their ordinary buttons, and at once gave them the appearance of being on the staff, and showed that they were waiters. The almost overwhelming number of buttons which are worn by page-boys must have been a source of wonder to many. They run from neck to waist of a tight-fitting jacket in such a crowded line that the pages usually go by the name of "Buttons." Occasionally we see the livery ornamented by two other rows of buttons which are useless, and run from the shoulder towards the waist (see Figure 114) in a way similar to that described as being the case on the coats of His Majesty's postilions. On looking at an old book[17] of fashions we find that a costume called the "Dutch Skeleton Dress" was very fashionable for young boys in 1826 (see Figure 115). In this we find that there were brass buttons arranged in three rows, similar to those we have just described. It is difficult even in the modern page-boy's dress to see the lower edge of his coat, but in the case of the small boy of 1826 it was impossible, because his trousers were buttoned on to the outside of it. [Illustration: FIG. 114.--A modern page-boy's livery.] [Illustration: FIG. 115.--The Dutch skeleton dress, fashionable for boys in 1826.] The name of the skeleton dress is interesting, because it points to the buttons marking out the position of the breast bone, and it recalls the story that the lacing on the breast of Hussars, which we have interpreted as representing enlarged buttonholes, was intended to give the appearance of ribs. This would be in keeping with the figure of a skull that was worn by some of them on their head-dress. We may imagine that in the page-boys, with the superabundance of buttons in one row, that the other two series have migrated and joined with those which originally fastened the coat. On special occasions such as weddings and coronations, the nobility and members of old families dress their servants in state liveries, and some very interesting costumes appear for the time. For instance, at the wedding of the Duke of Norfolk in 1877, some of the coachmen and footmen appeared wearing on the shoulder of their livery a "manche" or large hanging sleeve, which is familiar to students of heraldry and may be the origin of the sign usually called the "Crooked Billet." An interesting little survival is sometimes seen on livery collars. It is a little patch of lace, and is an imitation of the knotched buttonhole or laced hole which was commonly made on elaborate dresses. We get a survival of a livery cap, which was worn by servants generally in the middle of the eighteenth century, in the black cap worn by the drum-major of the Foot Guards and the bands of the Household Cavalry. We find that it is also adopted by huntsmen and postilions (see Figure 89), while jockey caps are of a similar shape. The costume of jockeys is an instance of parti-coloured dress which, apart from the Stage, is now chiefly worn in connection with sports such as football and racing. Some parti-coloured garments made their appearance early in English history, as we shall see when dealing with the subject of patterns. The cockade is now a particular feature of the liveried servant, and as the story of its evolution is of a particularly striking nature, we will consider it in a special chapter. Here and there we find survivals of the old beadle, with his three-cornered hat and his long gown with its curious capes and its bright edging. To find the original wearer of such garments we shall have to look about at the end of the seventeenth century. The watch then wore very large coats with many capes, and from these was developed that of the beadle. No doubt colours and other ornamentation were produced so as to bring the dress of the beadle more into the line with liveries and to give him a more ornamental and imposing appearance. We might also mention that the beadle, to whom we shall once more allude, still makes his appearance and plays his part in the Punch and Judy show. When we recall the many and varied liveries which the porters belonging to the various places of amusement and business establishments now wear, we cannot help drawing attention to the magnitude of the problem which would confront any one who desired to trace the origin of their clothes. In one detail or another we see the remains of an old livery, while turning from these we find a gaily coloured plastron borrowed from a Hussar uniform, and besides the cap there are a host of other features which have been taken from military and civilian dress. Railway porters if not menials are the servants of the companies which employ them, and there is one feature of their dress which is worthy of note. It will be seen that their waistcoats, although generally built on the same plan as that of the ordinary individual and having a linen back, are provided with sleeves. It is truly a coat which comes to the waist, such as we shall speak of when dealing with the dress of the Guards and other regiments, and it is usually the outermost garment of the porter. If we now turn to the costume of the gentleman, we shall find a very good instance of what Mr. Paley Baildon claims to be done whenever a new garment is adopted. He says that it is always put on over all the others. In the case of the ordinary civilian we have the waistcoat, which was originally an outer garment. Then comes the frock-coat or surtout, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was an overcoat, and over this again in cold weather the modern ulster or top-coat is put. No consideration of servants' dress would be complete without an allusion to the cap and apron of the house- or parlour-maid. To begin with, we see in these a survival of the special dresses which were once adopted by particular trades. The fact that the cap is white points to a connection with the early head-dresses of women which we see now perpetuated by the nuns, and which are relics of the time when it was customary to have linen caps and hoods. Perhaps there is some connection between the cap of the servant and the custom which condemns women to wear their hats in church and makes them feel desirous of keeping them on their heads at all kinds of public entertainments. On this question, however, we shall have a word to say later. Sometimes servants' caps have strings which, like those that are customarily found on bonnets and on mitres (see page 54), are the survival of the ends of a head fillet. The latest development in this direction is a scarf which is allowed to hang down from the backs of ladies' hats, and which may be of so substantial a nature that it looks very much like a fringed towel. The apron can claim a long history, and just as the plush and powder of the footman were once worn by his master, so we may easily discover that the apron was not always the special attribute of those who work or serve. Towards the end of the seventeenth century aprons were considered an almost essential part of a fine lady's costume. A little later on, Queen Anne made and wore them herself, and very gaily ornamented garments they were. In the case of the lower classes, aprons were--as they still often are--provided with bibs. The old name for them was barme-cloth, and under this title Chaucer refers to the apron of Carpenter's wife as being as white as the morning milk. Unless the article of dress which we are discussing was of considerable age, we should hardly have the proverbial expression which defines a man who is always at home as being tied to his wife's apron-strings. Another name for an apron with a bib which was pinned to the front of the dress was "pinner," which gives us the word pinafore, which refers now to a kind of overall rather than to an apron. In the costumes of the barge-women and milk-women, where we get a slight survival of characteristic country dress, we have seen that in both cases the apron is always adopted as part of the outfit. (See Plate VIII.) [Illustration: A BARGE GIRL WITH THE CHARACTERISTIC BONNET AND APRON. SHE IS NOT WEARING HER SMALL PLAID SHAWL. (_From a photograph by Wakefield, Brentford._) _PLATE VIII._] The uniform of the hospital nurse partakes somewhat of that of the nun, but at the same time the apron is often one of its most important features. We mention this uniform here because it has become customary of recent years for the nurses who look after the children of well-to-do families to assume the bonnet and veil and severely cut collars and cuffs of the hospital nurse. Here again we get a case on all fours with the adoption of evening dress by waiters, and the gradual assumption by the lower classes of the dress of their social superiors. XVI COCKADES THE COCKADE A DEGENERATED CHAPERON--THE VARIETIES OF THE COCKADE--COCKADE WEARERS The cockade as we know it (see Figure 116) is now commonly worn by servants, but, like their clothes generally, it was once used by their masters. The books of an old-established firm of hat manufacturers show that as late as 1789 cockades were worn by gentlemen themselves. Apparently in the beginning, the sporting of a black cockade meant allegiance to the House of Hanover. Now the use of the ornaments is supposed to be confined to the servants of Royalty and of those in the Royal service, though this does not seem to be actually the case. In a letter to the _Morning Post_[18] Messrs. André and Co. say that "the practice has long been regarded as a convenient and fitting sign of social distinction, and that only such persons should assume the cockade as enjoy hereditary rank or else some position of importance in the State, including all officers, military and civil." Yet they can find no trace of the question even having been dealt with by any authority, nor have the classes of persons privileged to display the cockade been at any time accurately defined. [Illustration: FIG. 116.--The cockade, known as the "large treble," representing a survival of the chaperon.] Sir Alfred Scott Gatty, Garter King-at-Arms, points out that the matter is really outside the College of Arms, and it does not come under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain's department, which usually arranges all matters connected with official dress. Before, however, we touch on the various kinds of cockades, and mention those by whom the different types are at present worn, it will be well to deal with the construction and evolution of the cockade, and we shall be able to show that it has considerable claims to be considered something more than a mere conventional rosette. As regards actual material, the basis of the cockade consists of leather, which is japanned, while a certain amount of ribbon may also be used. In the case of mourning, we find that the cockade should properly be covered with black cloth (see Figure 117), but nowadays a piece of crape is often twisted round the one generally worn. The ribbon is usually merely a small bow tied in the middle of the rosette (see Figure 116), but the centre of the latter may be covered with ribbon and the bow replaced by a button. [Illustration: FIG. 117.--A "treble cockade" covered with black cloth for mourning. The concentric circles would appear to represent the twisted liripipe of the chaperon.] The cockades worn by the Royal servants on the front of their three-cornered hats on state occasions (see Figure 120) are large. The rosette has points, while the upper part, or fan, shows them in profusion, and there is no silk bow. The Royal cockade for semi-state has a simple fan, while that worn on the silk hat at ordinary times (see Figure 121) has no fan, but the edges are cut into points and there is a bow of ribbon in the centre. [Illustration: FIG. 118.--Treble cockade used by Chelsea pensioners.] [Illustration: FIG. 119.--The Regent cockade.] [Illustration: FIG. 120.--Royal cockade for state occasions.] [Illustration: FIG. 121.--Ordinary Royal cockade.] The ordinary fan cockade is used in various sizes, and is shown in Figure 116. This is called the "treble," and has a bow of ribbon as a rule. A curious variety worn by the Chelsea Pensioners has no ribbon, while a segment is cut from the lower part of the rosette (see Figure 118). The only other variety with regard to shape that we have now to mention is the "regent" cockade, which is exactly like the treble, but without the fan. (See Figure 119.) [Illustration: Two stages in the evolution of the chaperon. FIG. 122.--Combined hood and cape. FIG. 123.--Enlargement of the peak of the hood to form the liripipe. (After Calthrop, by kind permission of Messrs. A. and C. Black.)] It appears that the cockade can lay claim to have been descended from a very ancient and curious form of head-dress, and Mr. Calthrop[19] has traced in a very interesting way the development of this, as well as of the cockade which is a survival of it in miniature. The head-dress in question was called a chaperon, and came into favour in the time of Richard II. It was itself derived from a hood and a cape which were originally worn separately, but afterwards the two were joined together for convenience, so that they could both be donned at the same time. Fashion lengthened out the peak of the hood extravagantly until it reached nearly to the ground, and then the prolongation was called a liripipe. Next it was ordained that the whole arrangement should be twisted up round the head, so that what was in the beginning a cape with jagged edges stuck out on one side like a cock's comb. [Illustration: Further development of the chaperon. FIG. 124.--Cape and liripipe made into a head-dress that can be altered at will. FIG. 125.--A chaperon ready made up, in order to save trouble. (After Calthrop, by kind permission of Messrs. A. and C. Black.)] It will be noticed that the modern cockade shows the jagged edges sticking up, and it would appear that the rosette represents a coiled-up liripipe. Even to-day cockades are of various colours, and, as Mr. Calthrop points out, the servant's chaperon from which it was derived used to bear the colours of the master's livery. The chaperon is also to be seen on the robes of the Knights of the Garter at the present day, where it is fixed on the right shoulder as a kind of cape. (See Figure 144.) Mr. Calthrop also points out that the present head-dress of the French lawyer is another descendant of the chaperon, and that the buttons worn by the members of the Legion of Honour and other foreign Orders are connected with the same idea. A writer in the _Sketch_[20] sees in the rosette and fan of the treble cockade the remnants of the crown and star which we see on military uniforms. He says that the earlier forms seem to have been made of metal, which must surely be a mistake, though the cock of the hat was, as we know, sometimes fastened up with a brooch. The example which he figures, however, and uses in support of his theory, is evidently a helmet plate which displays the star, garter, and St. George's Cross, the whole being surmounted by a crown, and in the cockade he claims to see all these elements in a modified condition. If this derivation of the cockade were correct, it would be in keeping with the quotation which the same writer gives from Cussan's "Handbook of Heraldry," that the privilege of wearing a cockade is confined to the servants of officers in the King's service, or those who by courtesy may be regarded as such. The theory is that the servant is a private soldier who when not wearing his uniform retains this badge as a mark of his profession. We cannot help thinking that Mr. Calthrop's derivation of the cockade is more feasible, though it is not easy to see the remains of the coiled-up liripipe of the chaperon in the way which Mr. Calthrop represents it in his sketch.[21] In the majority of the cockades there is no trace of a spiral such as he indicates in his figure, though in the mourning cockade, concentric rings are very clearly shown. A word may now be said as to those whose coachmen and footmen wear cockades. The Royal cockade is used by the servants of the King, and by those belonging to members of the Royal Household. It is large and circular, as we have seen, and half the disk projects above the top of the hat. The regent cockade, which has no fan, is worn by the servants of naval officers, and no part of it is allowed to project above the hat. The servants of the officers in the Army, Yeomanry, Militia, and Volunteers wear the treble cockade with the fan, as do also the Lords Lieutenant and their deputies, as well as the servants of the members of the Diplomatic Corps. Besides this, it appears that the same kind of cockade is worn by the servants of the following: All peers and their sons and daughters, baronets, knights, and sheriffs, judges, justices, and magistrates; members and high officers of Parliament and of the Civil Service; dignitaries of the Church, King's Counsel, and law officers of the Crown. English ambassadors have the fan painted with three stripes of red, white, and blue, and while the edge of the rosette is red, the next part is white, and the centre blue. In this case also the ribbon in the centre shows the same three colours. The cockade of the Danish ambassador is of ordinary black leather, but the centre is covered with a rosette of ribbon, red at the edge, with a circle of white next to it, and green in the centre, while the whole is finished off with an ornamental black button or knob. Other foreign ambassadors have their cockades coloured upon the same principle as the English; but in some the colours are shown on the fan in bands instead of in stripes, and the centre of the rosette may have segments of different colours instead of rings. In the case of the French ambassador the colours on the fan are in stripes, while those of the rosette are in segments. Of recent years cockades have been reduced in size until they have become mere pigmies in connection with the uniform of "chauffeurs," or motorcar drivers. The latter customarily wear a military kind of hat with a mushroom top, and as a cockade fastened on the side of one of these would not look elegant, a very small cockade is now made and fixed in the front of the cap just above the peak. Would not one of the wearers of the old cock's-comb turbans be amazed if he could see the most recent outcome of his head-dress in its modern surroundings? There seems to be little doubt but that the "cockade" forms part of the livery of many who have no recognized right to it. Perhaps the ease with which it can be assumed is shown by the price lists of jobmasters, in which we find, after the charge for the hire of broughams and victorias, a footnote to the effect that cockades are "6d. extra if required." XVII CHILDREN'S DRESS SURVIVALS IN CHILDREN'S DRESS--SPECIAL SCHOOL COSTUMES--THE BLUE-COAT BOY--PUBLIC SCHOOL BOYS--ADOPTION OF A SPECIAL DRESS AT GIRLS' SCHOOLS Children's costume, though characteristic, is in some instances connected with ceremonies, and in others with particular institutions; it may therefore with advantage be considered at this point. We find that for very many centuries in this country, children, except when small babies and in their early years, were dressed practically in the same way as their parents, and looked like men and women in miniature. The ludicrous effect that was sometimes produced is well seen in Hogarth's engravings, which date from the time when infants were powdered and patched as well as dressed in a way that made them truly grotesque. A relic of this custom is still to be seen in certain costumes which it is now fashionable for children to wear. Possibly the sailor's suit takes the most prominent place, and the Highland dress is also a favourite. It is perhaps not very strange that we do not see little boys going about in the uniform of policemen, and until the South African war occupied the attention of this country, boys were seldom if ever seriously dressed as soldiers, but during the struggle to which allusion has been made, it was not an uncommon sight to see small boys in the khaki uniform and slouch hats which were adopted by the troops in Africa. Now, of course, the knickerbockers of the small boy, and the short skirts of his little sisters, though not absolutely characteristic of extreme youth, are recognized features of children's costume. As regards small infants, it is still customary for some time after they are born to wrap more or less of a bandage round them in order to protect their tender bodies from injury. The modern "binder" is, of course, a relic of swaddling clothes, or those which consisted of a profusion of bandages. These still survive in the Holy Land. It may here be said that we meet in the word "pupa," which is the scientific term that we apply to a chrysalis, with the old Greek name for a baby in swaddling clothes. It is used now because the wings and legs of the future flying insect are hidden in something the same way as are the legs and arms of the much trussed-up baby. From the same word we get the name "puppet" and the French word "poupée," meaning a doll. In Roman Catholic churches at the time of baptism it is still the custom to place on the head of the baby a white cloth. It is now too small to cover the body, and it is called the chrysome, or chrism cloth, and with it once the newly-baptized infant was swathed. This was worn for a month by the child, and if the latter died within that time the cloth was used as a shroud. The chrysome is really the remains of a series of vestments which in the sixth or seventh century were worn by the newly baptized. The most important part of the costume was the albe, which was probably similar to that worn by the clergy, and a chaplet of flowers was also used to crown the child after baptism. There are in this country still a few monumental brasses called chrysom brasses showing babies in their baptismal robes. A case where the child is swathed up even more rigidly than was customary in the old world is to be seen in the case of the North American Indian papoose, which is fastened down to a cradle of board or basket work, and at first is so fixed by the swaddling process that only its head is movable. In some instances several months elapse before even the arms are allowed to be free, and these are fastened up again at night. It is probably owing to deformities that were at first accidentally caused by this bandaging process, that the fashions arose which demand that the shape of the skull in certain races shall be intentionally and artificially altered. To this subject, however, we shall refer again when dealing with the question of the effects of clothes upon the body. As might well be imagined, the petticoats of small boys are a survival, and one which is to be commended in every way. The putting of infants at an early age into jersey knickerbocker suits cannot but be bad for them physically, and it makes them look for all the world like little woollen monkeys. Mr. Druitt[22] has described as many as seven brasses of various dates between the years 1585 and 1642, which show boys dressed in petticoats. Dr. Alice Vickery thinks that it would be well if infant boys and girls were dressed exactly alike, say up to the age of five or seven. She says it is difficult to judge the extent to which sex bias is imbibed in the earliest years, and we should do our best to postpone it as long as possible. She continues[23]:--"If boys and girls were dressed alike, taught together and played together, this would do much to direct attention away from, instead of towards, sex distinction. The longer such a system could be maintained the longer would be the period during which rewards and punishments, praise and blame, would attach to actions and conduct, to the exercise of self-control, kindliness and generosity, efficiency, industry and alertness, quite apart from all intrusions of sex idea, and its possibilities of subjection and predominance. That would in itself be a great gain." "The best school for the training of life and conduct is the school of equality, where privilege and subjection are alike unknown, and the co-education of the sexes is a step in the direction of justice and fraternity." "There is one point more on which I will add a few words. I have always been a great sceptic as to the essential physical inferiority of the feminine. It is true that in the aggregate that inferiority does exist, but where can we find a place, a people among whom the development of girlhood has had full and free scope?" The custom for young girls to wear their hair down is also an old one, though married ladies of the fifteenth century are occasionally represented with flowing tresses. At the present day, as a rule, when a girl puts up her hair her petticoats are usually lengthened simultaneously. The age at which these important changes are made varies. For instance, if a girl has a number of unmarried sisters older than herself, the time is often put off. Sometimes the term "old-fashioned" is synonymous with "sensible," and people with such ideas very often keep their girls in short frocks until they are really grown up. The two changes in the girls' method of dressing are not, however, always made at the same time. In the upper classes we find a tendency for the long dress to come first. Girls, on the other hand, who have to go out into the world as nursemaids and kitchenmaids, may, in order to make themselves look older and more sedate, put up their hair while they are still in short frocks, though it must be said that the effect is not quite pleasing if it is business-like. In the bib of the infant we find a relative of that part of the apron or the more voluminous pinafore which covers the chest. Although grown-up women sometimes wear pinafores, these, like the bibs, must now be considered as part of children's dress, though no doubt in the beginning they were derived from the costume of grown-up people. [Illustration: FIG. A. THE CAP WORN BY THE SCHOLARS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. FIG. B. A SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. (_By the courtesy of the Rev. A. W. Upcott, M.A., Headmaster of Christ's Hospital._) _PLATE IX._] The next subject that we may appropriately consider here is that of the characteristic costumes which are worn in certain schools. In connection with boys, the first case which immediately comes to mind is that of the Blue-coat boys, as the scholars of Christ's Hospital, which was founded in 1552, have come to be called. Their blue coat is part of the ordinary dress of the citizen of the reign of Edward VI, and the scholarly man at this time had the skirts of his blue coat long, while in other cases they were cut off at the knee. Instead of trunks, however, the Blue-coat boy wears more modern knickerbockers, but he clings to his yellow stockings. (See Plate IX, Figure B.) The scholars of Christ's Hospital have discarded caps (see Plate IX, Figure A), but the one which should go with their dress is flat, like the one which came into fashion in the reign just mentioned. It was the one afterwards called the statute cap, when Elizabeth for the good of trade ordered that "one cap of wool, knitted thick and dressed in England," was to be worn "by all over six years of age except such persons as had twenty marks a year in land and their heirs and such as have borne office of worship." A cap of the same kind was worn by Edward VI, and is still part of the dress of Beef-eaters at the Tower of London. The blue coat afterwards came to be the ordinary livery of serving-men in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries, and blue is still a popular colour for coachmen's liveries at the present day. In a similar way we find that certain schools are called grey-coat or green-coat schools, and we have blue schools--for instance, one for boys and another for girls at Wells. Then there is the Red Maid School, which was established in 1627 at Bristol, and in accordance with the founder's will the girls are dressed in red frocks, with white aprons and tippets and plain straw bonnets, trimmed with blue ribbon. In connection with this foundation it may be said that £50 is set on one side each year for the award of marriage portions to girls who have left the school. Our public schools afford us very interesting cases of special dresses. Perhaps no other coat which a boy wears is so well known as the Eton jacket. This is accompanied by a tall silk hat. King's scholars who are on the foundation and live "in College" also wear an academical gown of fairly ample proportions. The Eton jacket was not always black, and originally the head-dress was a mortar-board, and there was a broad lace collar or bands round the neck (see page 47). The black coats and top hats were introduced in 1820 as mourning for King George III, and have been worn ever since. The broad collar which takes its name from Eton is probably a survival of lace bands, and is worn over the jacket in the same way. Very similar coats are also worn by the younger boys at Westminster and at Harrow. In the latter case the jacket finishes off in a small point at the back, whereas the jacket worn at Eton is cut straight. The older boys at Eton wear a morning coat, a stick-up collar, and a white tie. This white tie is also worn by the masters, whether they be clerks in holy orders or not, and it seems to be a survival of a white choker which was wound round and round the stick-up collar, though, on the other hand, it may represent academical bands. At Winchester the scholars wear bands, and this is no doubt connected with the use of academical dress, for it is usual for the boys on the foundation of public schools, as we have seen to be the case at Eton, to wear gowns. The upper boys at Harrow, on the other hand, wear dress-coats with swallow tails; but should, however, a lower boy outgrow his short jacket, he is given what is called "charity" tails. When speeches are made at Eton, those who take part in the performance wear dress-coats, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes. Some costumes have probably been in existence since the foundation and endowment of the schools, and we can find parallel cases in the dress of some almshouses and hospitals for pensioners. Probably the idea originally underlying the wearing of a special dress is the same as is to be seen in modern charity schools, where all the boys or girls are dressed alike. It must simplify the tailoring and dressmaking arrangements, but at the same time it intentionally or unintentionally brands the children. Nevertheless, we see that the boys at most aristocratic and celebrated schools are in very much the same kind of boat. To return to Eton again, we might mention one or two fashions in the ordinary dress which are curious. It is ordained that the lowest button of the waistcoat should be left unbuttoned and the bottom of the trousers should be turned up, while it is part of the performance to thrust the hands deeply into the trouser pockets. If a boy elects to wear an overcoat, and he does not occupy a certain definite position or status in the school, public opinion forces him to keep the collar of his top coat turned up. Of course, schools generally, and sometimes the various houses in important schools, make a particular point of school or house colours. At Eton, on the Fourth of June, in connection with the boating there are interesting ornamentations added to the straw hats in the shape of flowers, and three boys who act as coxswains wear the uniform of an admiral and carry bouquets. The Fourth of June celebrations were instituted to take the place of the festival known as the Eton Montem. The ceremony consisted of a procession to a little hill near Slough, when many old and interesting costumes were worn. The custom came to an end in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, and its immediate object was the collecting of money with which to send the head boy of the year to the University. It seems, however, to have originated in a piece of folk-lore, probably connected with the old tree worship, but sanctioned by the early Christian authorities as a semi-religious function. In this connection it is pleasant to think that flowers seen in the hats on the Fourth of June are a survival of the green branches and garlands that were once brought back each year from the Montem expedition. When dealing with children's dress we ought not to forget the special costumes that have been adopted in some private girls' schools, nor how much is being done in them towards disseminating ideas on the subject of dress reform. For, after all, it is to the women of the future that we must look if any alteration is to be generally made. The introduction of exercises in the gymnasium has necessitated the adoption of a drilling dress in very many cases, but there are schools where such a costume is generally worn at all times, and others where it forms the working dress, while long skirts are only put on when no active exertion is expected. [Illustration: FIG. 126.--Dress worn by the girls at Coombe Hill School, Westerham. It is a modification of the Dervish Djibah.] At Coombe Hill School, Westerham, in Kent, the dress takes the form of a tunic with wide sleeves which come to the elbow (see Figure 126). It is put over the head and has no fastenings. It is modelled upon the Djibah of the Dervishes, and is made of soft woollen material of a fawn colour. The yoke is of green embroidery and the underslip is tussore. Under the tunic a blouse of white silk is worn, and the sleeves, of course, show from the elbow downwards. The rest of the costume consists of cloth knickerbockers and stockings, with sandals or shoes that are made to the shape of the foot. This dress is worn on all occasions at school, and the girls are very proud of it. [Illustration: FIG. 127.--Dress worn by the girls at the Croft School, Betley, when at work.] At the Croft School, Betley, in school and when any basket-making, book-binding, drilling, or Morris-dancing is going on, a special costume is brought into use. In this case it consists of a tunic without sleeves, of red material with a velvet yoke, and shoulder straps (see Figure 127). As a finishing touch there is a girdle tied loosely in a bow. It is not placed round the waist proper, but drops towards the left knee as did the sword-belts which the knights in olden times wore over their armour. A white silk blouse shows above the yoke round the neck and has full sleeves. The knickerbockers in this case are made of red knitted stockinette instead of cloth. The whole costume has been carefully worked out, and Miss Hodgson, one of the principals of the school, has an interesting doll which is dressed exactly like the girls. It should be said that all the girls wear this dress whether they are nine or nineteen years old, and as it is much appreciated by them there is no doubt but that when they come to have girls of their own they will support any movement in favour of the more general adoption of a sensible costume. XVIII WEDDING GARMENTS THE VEIL--BRIDESMAIDS AND BRIBERY--OLD SHOES--ORANGE BLOSSOM Weddings are ceremonies in connection with which we may look for some points of interest, as customs in connection with them change but slowly. In this country, if convention be followed, the bride's dress is of white. The veil that is worn recalls the primitive head-dress that was bound by a fillet, and, like that of the nun, may well be derived from the wimple, though it is said to represent the canopy which in many countries, and by the Jews in our own, is held over, or erected above, the bride and bridegroom. Flowers take a part in the adornment of the bride, and the special use of orange blossom will be dealt with when discussing wedding crowns. It is customary for the bridesmaids to be dressed alike, and they often wear some ornament which has been presented to them by the bridegroom. It may be that this is a survival like many other wedding customs of the old marriage by capture, for in some countries the girl friends of the bride will not allow her to be approached by the bridegroom until he has given them presents, or in reality bribed them. Now, like tipping, it is merely a custom that must be followed, but originally no doubt the bridegroom and his accomplice, the best man, might have found that what they could not do by force they might encompass by bribery. The expression "to tie the nuptial knot" takes its origin from the fact that, among the Babylonians, the priest who conducted the wedding used to take a thread from the garment of the bride and another from that of the bridegroom. These he tied together into a knot and presented to the bride as a symbol of the binding nature of the union between her and her husband. There is an article of dress which often plays a part at weddings, for old shoes are usually thrown after the newly-married pair, while boots, with a hole in them, filled with rice, are hung from the backs of carriages, and satin slippers have on occasion been fastened to the carriage door handle of the railway train which speeds the pair on their honeymoon. We all know that the throwing of old slippers is intended to bring luck to the bride and bridegroom, but it is not apparent what particular form it is intended that the blessing should take, and the origin of the custom is difficult to determine. Mr. James E. Crombie,[24] after carefully considering the various superstitions connected with weddings and shoes, has come to the conclusion that the intention is to ensure that the young couple shall be blessed with children, and that old shoes are thrown because of the idea that the essence or life of the individual that wore them remains in them, and makes them powerful talismans. In this connection it may be well to consider the importance which shoes have assumed at various times in connection with weddings and otherwise. So long ago as the year 1291, a law in Hamburg ordered that the bridegroom should give his bride a pair of shoes, and it is still a custom in Transylvania for the bridegroom to make a similar present on his wedding morning. In Greece the best man puts a new pair of boots, supplied by the bridegroom, on to the feet of the bride when she leaves her father's house. In Bulgaria, a money present which the bridegroom makes to the relatives of the bride is called shoe money, and with it the father of the family buys shoes for it. This money is said to be a relic of the price that was paid to the clan from which a wife was taken. Shoes have figured as part of wages, and they were thrown over the heads of the O'Neils by the O'Cahans when the former were chosen chiefs. This was done to symbolize the superiority of the throwers. In Russia, the wives as part of the wedding festivities remove their husband's boots in order to show their subjection to him, though while the bride dutifully takes off her lord and master's boots as a sign of subserviency, she always hits him on the head with one of them to show that she is not one whit inferior to him. It is said that the Hebrew word for shoe and wife are identical, and a Bedouin form of divorce is "She is my slipper, I have cast her off." The casting of a shoe over land, as mentioned in the Bible, was symbolical of conquering it. As regards fruitfulness, the Eskimo women carry a piece of an old shoe which has once been worn by European sailors, to make them prolific mothers. Women who are blessed with families in China present shoes to the "Mother goddess," and those who wish for children borrow these shoes and vow that if the desired result is effected they will present another one to the divinity when the borrowed shoe is returned. Mr. Crombie gives a number of instances to show that there is still a belief that the soul of persons may live in their shoes. In the Museum of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen is a mummified corpse of a woman who was intentionally drowned in a bog, and from her body, after the murder, a shoe had been removed. During the Arran murder case at Edinburgh, in 1889, it transpired that the boots of the murdered man had been removed by the local constable, who had buried them on the seashore between high and low water marks. No explanation was forthcoming, though the man admitted that it was by the orders of his senior officer that he put them out of sight. There is no doubt but that the idea underlying the action was that of preventing the ghost of the murdered man from walking. It must not be forgotten that shoes used to be thrown after anybody when he or she was starting on a journey, which in old days was a risky business, and Ben Jonson wrote, "Would I had Kemp's shoes to throw after you." This has been interpreted as meaning that Kemp was a lucky individual, and that something of him and his good fortune remained in his shoes. Summing up his remarks, Mr. Crombie says with regard to throwing shoes at weddings that by doing so "we should be doing for the young couple, in a more pleasant way, exactly the same as the relatives of the Galla bride did for her when they anointed her from top to toe with bullock's blood. We should be doing for them with shoes what our Aryan ancestors did for their cattle with the sacred parna rod, and what the herdsmen of Sweden and The Mark do to this day, when on the 1st of May they watch on which branch of the mountain ash the sun first strikes, and then, cutting it down, beat the yearling heifers with it on the loins and haunches, repeating at each stroke a verse in which they pray that as sap comes into the birch so may milk fill the cow's udder. We should be doing with shoes what the Romans did in ancient Rome at the festival of the Lupercalia, when the boys, armed with strips of the skin of the slaughtered goats, used to rush through the city striking all they met, and where women, particularly those who desired to be made fruitful, placed themselves naked in the way, and received the blows of the Luperci on their palms." At a wedding sometimes the priest's vestments play a part. It is customary in some continental countries for the priest to wrap the hands of the bride and bridegroom in his stole, and even in some of our English churches the contracting parties are instructed to take hold of the stole by the officiating clergyman. We might mention that in many countries the bridal dresses are very beautiful, and are often survivals of very old-fashioned costumes. The Norwegian bridal dress is an instance of this. The wearing of a bridal crown is also a custom in Scandinavia, where it is said that every parish possesses its special crown which is the property of the church, but the use of it is only sanctioned when the bride bears an irreproachable character. The wearing of orange blossom has apparently the same meaning, and it may be mentioned that on funeral monuments or brasses the wearing of a garland by the effigy of a girl means that she died a virgin. XIX MOURNING COLOURS ASSOCIATED WITH MOURNING--WIDOWS' WEEDS--PERENNIAL MOURNING The ceremonies connected with death and burial are no exception to the rule which we have laid down, that on solemn and important occasions primitive customs and costumes are most commonly to be met with. The making of clothes from bark has come to have a special significance in the case of races which no longer adopt this in everyday life. The Kayans of Borneo now ordinarily wear smart foreign stuffs which they get from traders; but when they go into mourning they discard these garments, and return once more to the old native garment of bark cloth. The putting on of sackcloth is no doubt a similar custom, and dishevelling of locks is also in keeping with it. Among the many curious customs connected with funeral rites which survive in civilized countries, the adoption of some kind of mourning dress is very general. Sombre black has come to be associated in our minds with mourning, but other colours are used among other nations, and even in this country. The drapery with which the hats of the hired mourners at a child's funeral are veiled are white instead of black. White ostrich feathers may appear on the horses' heads, and white adorns their trappings. Royalty is still privileged to have a special mourning colour--purple is used at state funerals, and grey is looked upon as half-mourning. In China white is the colour used instead of black, and other Oriental nations wear yellow. In modern Egypt, at a funeral, the women, whether relatives or servants of the deceased, are distinguished by a strip of linen or muslin bound round the head and tied in a single knot behind. This stuff is usually of a blue colour. The women of ancient Egypt, as shown on the walls of tombs, wore a similar bandage round their head. Excessive mourning is now becoming a thing of the past, and there is no need now for such laws as were made at the end of the fifteenth century to restrict extravagance in mourning attire. Nowadays men may follow the custom observed by those in the army and those who wear Highland dress of putting a black band round their arm. At the most they wear black clothes and put a wider band round their hats. Among women it is only widows who wear a special costume. It is not a becoming one, though sometimes a smartness is imparted to it that is a little out of keeping with the idea of mourning. Now a widow's dress is called weeds, though this term at one time signified the whole of any woman's costume. For the origin of the widow's veil we must go back to mediæval times, when the dress of widow ladies was similar to that of the convent. It was the custom of elderly ladies whose husbands had died to become what is called vowesses, and to go into seclusion. A relic perhaps of the practice is to be found in the kind of prejudice which still exists in the minds of some people against second marriages. The white cuffs of the widow recall those of the nurse, and similar ones are used by some members of the legal profession as part of their mourning. When dealing with military costume we shall find that signs of mourning, when once adopted, have in some cases never been wholly abandoned. There are similar vestiges like those found in the dress of public schools, and there has been a suggestion of the same thing happening in the Navy. In connection with the hired mourners or mutes at funerals, now so solemnly habited in black, it may be interesting to recall that the old Roman mimes, of whom we have seen that Punch was originally one, were employed at funerals to imitate the language and manners of the deceased. XX COSTUME CONNECTED WITH THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION THE SURPLICE AND "THE CLOTH"--THE CIVIL ORIGIN OF VESTMENTS--SPECIAL VESTMENTS--PROCESSIONAL VESTMENTS, SO CALLED--NUNS' DRESS--THE CHOKER The dress worn by clergy when conducting religious ceremonies offers many opportunities for studying the development of garments, and illustrates at the same time how the dress used by a special class may evolve more slowly and on different lines from the same clothes that may be worn by the people at large. The case is similar to that of animals or plants which are isolated from the other members of their species, and in course of time come to differ very markedly from their far-away relatives who flourish in the old home. We shall see that many of the ecclesiastical vestments can be traced to civil dress; but for the moment we may discuss those which are in use at the present time, and which afford additional evidence in support of our statement that the more important the ceremonial, the more ancient the costume. At the present day we find that the clergy of the Church of England preach either in a white surplice or in a black gown. We can trace the black gown to an order made by James I, but at the present day the vestments worn by the clergy of the Presbyterian Churches are rather professional, or academical like a barrister's gown, than properly ecclesiastical. We have already mentioned the bands (see p. 44) which are worn with the black gown, and here we might mention that when the preacher ministers to a recognized congregation he wears them, though if he is ordained but is conducting an occasional service he does not. Charles I gave instructions that the surplice should be worn, and had an Act passed giving him power to regulate clerical costume. But the clergy sent in a petition that matters should be left as they were, and this request seems to have been granted, as some of the ministers at the time expressed the fear that His Majesty would order them to wear hoods and bells. Mr. Macalister[25] says that the surplice was originally invented to take the place of the albe, which was made so small that it was difficult to put it over the cassock when the latter garment was thick and lined with fur. Originally the surplice was put on over the head, in the same way as the albe, the place of which it took, but some two hundred years ago the surplice was made open in front and fastened at the neck with a button. The reason for this is that in this way the surplice could be put on without disarranging the enormous wigs which were worn during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The cassock, to which we have already alluded, was a long, loose coat or gown, which was worn by both sexes from the eleventh century onwards. The name was applied to the coat adopted by foot soldiers in the time of Elizabeth. In the case of the laity, it was abandoned in favour of the shorter and more convenient coat. The black coat of the modern clergy, whom we term "the cloth," no doubt represents it, while it is of course worn ordinarily by many Roman Catholic clergy, and some High Churchmen, as an everyday garment, for which it was originally intended. The row of buttons which now fasten the long cassocks from neck to the foot have been humorously compared by Lord Grimthorpe to the close row of rivets on a boiler. With regard to the development of the more ornamental dress of the clergy there is a great deal to be said. In the past, two separate origins for it have been suggested, and to pursue either of these would be to take us far back into history. It has been claimed, in the first place, that modern church vestments have been derived from those of the Levitical priesthood. The other idea is that the ceremonial dress of the clergy was derived from the civil costume of the Romans. It appears, however, that careful researches have shown that the decorations which have given ecclesiastical vestments their highly ornamented character--in which they resemble certainly those used by the Jews in Temple worship--have been gradually acquired. The dress of the ancient Christians was simple, and it seems likely that owing to the poverty of the early Church rich clothing could hardly have been adopted. Besides, for many centuries there is no mention of such vestments as we are considering, and no records as to their having been derived from Jewish models. On the other hand, everything points to a more natural origin of the raiment concerned. Flowing garments, as we have already seen, give dignity, and we find that among the Romans such were used in dignified leisure or on occasions of state, in contradistinction to the dress of active existence, which consisted of a short tunic or chiton. It is with the first kind of dress that we have to deal. It consisted of a tunic either short or long, over which was worn the toga which was capable of the same variety of arrangement as the plaid which still survives. Even when the toga was given up by the people generally, on the founding of the Roman Empire, it continued to be used in certain cases. It was etiquette to wear a toga when dining with the Emperor or going to court; advocates wore it, as did clients when they visited their patrons, and it was also adopted at funerals and when sacrifices were being made. On the face of it, it would appear likely that those who ministered to the early Christian Church would follow the general custom. Nothing, perhaps, affords better evidence of this having taken place than an illustration which is considered authentic of St. Gregory the Great with his father and mother. As Mr. Marriott[26] points out, if it were not for the Papal pallium--that is to say, the band round his shoulders--on which crosses are embroidered, and the book of the Gospels which he holds in his hand, it would be hard to distinguish which was the bishop and which the senator. (See Figure 128.) [Illustration: FIG. 128.--St. Gregory the Great with his father Gordianus, who was a senator, on his right, and his mother Sylvia on his left. This shows the similarity between ecclesiastical and civil costume in early times. From an authentic picture (after Marriott).] From this dress it is claimed, by those who have carefully gone into the question, that ecclesiastical vestments have been developed. In connection with this, Mr. Macalister[27] makes the following remarks: "Fashion in dress or ornaments is subject to constant changes, which, though perhaps individually trifling, in time amount to complete revolutions; but the devotees of any religion, true or false, are by nature conservative of its doctrines or observances. At first the early Christians wore the same costume both at worship and at home. Fashion," Mr. Macalister continues, "would slowly change unchecked from year to year, while ecclesiastical conservatism would retard such changes as far as they concern the dress worn at divine service; small differences would spring into existence between everyday dress and the dress of the worshipper. These differences, at first hardly perceptible, would increase as the process went on, until the two styles of costume became sharply distinguished from one another." In this connection it will be interesting to mention those vestments which antiquarians have traced to Roman costume. The albe takes its name from the _tunica alba_, which was used as a purely secular garment until the ninth century. It was worn by all the ministers and deacons, but as the latter had no vestment above the albe, it came to be the special characteristic of the deacons. Usually, as the name implies, the albe was white, but in this country coloured albes were sometimes used. We have already seen that the surplice was derived from the albe, and Mr. Marriott has brought forward all the evidence that he can to show that white was the colour of the vestments at the earliest times in the history of the Church. His arguments, however, do not seem to be conclusive, and his inferences do not commend themselves to Mr. Macalister. The latter thinks, however, that the view that white was the colour appropriated in primitive times to the dress of the Christian ministry is preferable to the theory that the early vestments were of the same elaborate description as their mediæval successors. He is of opinion, nevertheless, that the passages upon which Mr. Marriott bases his arguments are quite consistent with a third alternative, namely, that no distinctive vestments were set apart for the exclusive use of the Christian minister during the first four centuries of the Christian era. The dalmatic was a wide gown or tunic with long full sleeves, which was derived apparently from the albe and used by persons in high secular positions before it was adopted by the Church. In the mediæval period the dalmatic was slit for a short distance up either side and fringes were added to decorate the slits, the hems, and the ends of the sleeves. In this style the garment was worn by a bishop. There were, however, only fringes on the left sleeves and along the left side in the form of this vestment which was appropriated to a deacon. Most elaborate explanations were offered by mediæval writers for this difference, which seems merely to be a matter of convenience for the deacon, who served at the altar. It was important that he should have his right side free, and the heavy fringes would have got into his way. One of the ideas with regard to the fringe was that the absence from the right side symbolizes our freedom from care in the world to come; but why, Mr. Macalister asks, was not the bishop to be exempt from care in the future world? In connection with the coronation of English sovereigns the dalmatic is still used, as well as representatives of other ecclesiastical vestments, but to these we shall refer again. It is not at all unlikely that the stole which a clergyman wears after the fashion of an untied tie, and which hangs from his neck nearly to the ground, is really the same thing as our handkerchief, and it is certain that it was employed originally as a scarf or _orarium_. In many Roman monuments which are not of an ecclesiastical character, scarves are worn over the rest of the dress. They pass over the left shoulder, diagonally, towards the right side, and are fastened under the right arm. They are not to be confounded with the two bands of purple (or _clavi_) which on the tunics of senators and other important men ran round the sides of the neck openings and down to the lower hem. It is probable that the scarves were used in the same way as favours and "colours" among ourselves. It is recorded that Aurelian was the first emperor who distributed "oraria" as presents to the people to be worn as favours. In this connection we must not forget the ribbons of the Knightly Orders, which we have already mentioned when speaking of the baldric. The Fourth Council of Toledo enacted that deacons should wear their stoles over their left shoulder so that their right arm might be free to facilitate the execution of their duties in divine service. An English church vestment actually goes by the name of the scarf, and is a broad black band of silk worn in the same way as the stole. It is probably a modification of some article of university costume, possibly the tippet (see p. 212), and is worn by Doctors of Divinity and the clerical authorities of Collegiate and Cathedral bodies. The outdoor garment which replaced the toga took several forms. One of these had already been in use for some time as part of the dress of the lower classes and of slaves. Speaking briefly, it rose in the world, and emperors even wore it when they were travelling. One form, called the casula, is of interest to us because it is the forerunner of the chasuble. So much attention has been drawn to ecclesiastical vestments of recent years, owing to the adoption by English High Church clergy of those in which Roman Catholic priests celebrate Mass, that it may be perhaps of interest, even at the risk of recapitulation, to consider them. It should be said at the outset that the stripes of embroidery, which are often very elaborate and enriched with jewels, which appear on vestments such as the amice and albe, are called apparels. To garments which are white and have at times to be washed, these ornaments are sewn or otherwise attached, so that they can be removed when it is necessary and replaced. The amice we have not yet mentioned, as it is of mediæval origin and did not come into our consideration of the evolution of modern vestments from Roman dress. It was a rectangular piece of linen, about thirty-six inches by twenty-five inches, with an apparel sewn along one edge and a cross embroidered in the centre. This the priest at the present time wears round his neck. The outer garment or chasuble, which is richly ornamented, we have traced to the garment which replaced the Roman toga, and as it is without sleeves and has become heavier, it has been found necessary to slit up the sides. Under this the stole is worn over the albe, and only its ends appear beneath the chasuble. (See Figure 129.) There is ornamentation on the sleeves of the albe, where they show, and on the back and front of it where it shows below the chasuble. [Illustration: FIG. 129.--A priest in the vestments now worn at the celebration of the Eucharist.] The apparels, according to Druitt, are possibly the remains of the purple bands and other ornamentations of the Roman tunic, from which we have seen that the albe was derived. Over the left arm the priest carries a maniple which is something like a stole. This was originally made of linen, and worn over the fingers of the left hand. There is no doubt but that it was once a napkin and, according to Mr. G. C. Coulton,[28] originally used in the fashion of a modern pocket-handkerchief. That it was a napkin is shown by quotations from ancient writers, and there seems no doubt also that many refinements of Roman civilization, of which the pocket handkerchief was one, were lost in the later Middle Ages. In fact, the handkerchief only began to come into general use in polite society about Henry VIII's reign, and the maniple of the ministrant at the altar must have lost its original use, or Bernard would not have twice warned him against blowing his nose on his chasuble or surplice. When speaking of the handkerchief, there is another use which we may mention. It was often employed for ceremonial purposes in connection with the giving of presents, and this idea seems to have come from Eastern lands, where gifts are wrapped in highly ornamental covers. In the parable of the talents, one of them, it will be remembered, was wrapped in a napkin, and even to-day the labourer has his dinner taken to him in a brightly coloured cotton handkerchief. Among the special vestments of bishops are the dalmatic, which we have already described, and the tunicle, which originally did not differ from it, and began to be worn beneath it about the twelfth century. Others are the buskins or stockings (which were originally reserved for the pope), sandals, ring, gloves, and mitre, together with a pastoral staff adapted from the shepherd's crook. Archbishops have a cross staff and a pallium or pall which is probably derived from the same ancestor as the stole, namely the orarium, which, we have seen, was a favour or distinction granted by the Roman Emperor. The word pallium has been applied to a number of garments in the past, many of which were of a flowing character, and some writers have seen in the archbishop's pall a small vestige of what was once an ample vestment. Early pictures, however, show the pall looped round the shoulders with one end hanging in front of the body and one behind. Mr. Macalister says that it was difficult sometimes to distinguish between it and the stole, and that the next step in its evolution was to knot the free ends to the loops as shown in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. From this it was but an easy step to the final form which consists of an oval loop with a long tail pendent from each of its ends, so that when it is worn on the person it makes a capital "Y" on the back and another on the chest. It should be pointed out that the pall must not be confounded with the apparel of the chasuble called the orphrey, which also has a "Y" shape. In connection with the manufacture of the pall there are some interesting proceedings. It is made from the wool of two lambs, and they are solemnly blessed on Saint Agnes's day in the church dedicated in the name of that saint at Rome. The animals are chosen with special reference to their whiteness and goodness, and are carried into Rome in separate baskets, which are slung over a horse's back. On the way to the church the Pope makes the sign of the cross from a window over the lambs, and they, after Mass has been celebrated and they have been blessed by the celebrant, go back to the Pope, who sends them to a nunnery, where they are shorn and the wool made into palls by the nuns. The modern pall has six black crosses on it, but previous to the eighth century it had sometimes four, sometimes eight, worked in purple. At first the pall was fastened by gold pins to the chasuble to keep it in place, but just as ladies now use little lead weights to keep parts of their dress in position, so lead was used to hold the archbishop's pall in place. The effigy of Albrect von Brandenburg in 1555, at Mayence, shows two palls, which probably indicate that he was Archbishop of Magdeburg as well as of Mayence. This repetition can hardly be strictly correct, as the pall could only be worn within the Archbishop's province. Archbishops in olden days appeared to have had no authority to act until they received their pall from the Pope. The honour was, however, bestowed occasionally on bishops. The pall is generally shown on the coats of arms of archbishops. (See Figure 130.) The cope is one of the so-called processional vestments. It does not appear before the ninth century, and is apparently connected with Roman dress. It was an outer cloak without sleeves, and originally was used as a protection from the weather at open-air processions in Rome, its ancestor probably being the lacerna. In a similar way the almuce was a hood to protect the head, and such articles, as Mr. Macalister says, the clergy would continue to adopt in their cold and draughty churches or in open-air processions. [Illustration: FIG. 130.--The coat of arms of Thomas à Becket. Showing an archbishop's pall.] Of monastic habits the earliest was the Benedictine, consisting of a cassock over which was worn the cowl--a large, loose gown, with hanging sleeves and a hood attached to it. In the old times the costume of abbesses and nuns resembled the mourning habit of widows, who often retired to end their days in a convent. When the English Church was reformed, the Mass vestments practically disappeared. The first Prayer Book of Edward VI prescribed for the Holy Communion a white albe, without any apparels, with a vestment or cope, while the assistant priest or deacons were to wear albes with tunicles. The cope was also to be worn with a plain albe or surplice on Wednesdays and Fridays when there was no communion. The bishop was to wear a rochet, a surplice or albe, and a cope or vestment. The second Prayer Book prohibited the use of the albe, vestment, or cope to the minister, allowing him only a surplice, while the archbishop or bishop was allowed a rochet. The Act of Uniformity upheld the ornaments rubric of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, and this has never been superseded. The lawn sleeves of the modern bishop developed from the rochet, which was a kind of modified albe, which at first had a kind of tight-fitting sleeves or none at all. Over this rochet is worn a black satin chimere, and as it was difficult to get this over the bishop's sleeves, they were removed from the rochet and are now fastened to the chimere. The black scarf we have already considered. It is customary at the present day for clergy of the English Church to wear the academical hood of their university degree over their surplices. This is ordained by the fifty-eighth canon, but ministers who are not graduates are permitted to wear, instead of hoods, "some decent tippet of black, be it not silk." It appears that in the time of Elizabeth, in everyday dress, ministers wore a gown and some of them a silk hood. The tippet is a survival of the almuce, which we mentioned in connection with the cope, and is one of the so-called processional dresses. It must therefore not be confounded with the amice, which is a truly ecclesiastical vestment. As bearing on the conservatism of the Church in matters of dress, we may mention that in Holland, until recent times, the clergy wore a very old-fashioned dress, or perhaps it may better be described as a picturesque uniform, consisting of an old three-cornered hat, and a coat resembling the ordinary evening dress-coat, having a long pleated strip called "the mantle" hooked on the neck, and obviously being a survival from an early and more ample gown of some kind. They wore knee-breeches buckled at the knees, and buckled shoes, but this costume was only used when the minister was officiating at service. Some of the heads of the churches in Scotland still adopt a kind of Court dress. In turning for a moment again to the everyday dress of the clergy, the method of fastening the characteristic white choker at the back seems to have come from the bands. Thackeray in "The Newcomes" uses the name choker as meaning a white necktie, and it was also applied to the old leather stocks which the clerical collar, in its stiffness, resembles. The bishop's hat we have already alluded to, as showing the stage in a process of cocking, the brim being tied to the crown by strings. The clerical gaiters we can derive from the old episcopal buskins, while the apron appears to be a vestige of the cassock to which we have before referred. The dress of monks usually consists of a tunic or closed gown and scapular, while there may be one or more open gowns with a hood at the back. Nuns or Sisters of Mercy are so commonly seen in our streets, and they do so much for the benefit of the poor, and take such a part in educational matters, that their dress is very familiar to us. It is difficult to say how old it may not be, and though stiff hoods similar to those which are now in use by nuns were adopted by women generally in Tudor times, we find in the head-dress of Henry II's reign the counterpart of the linen bands which surround the face and hide the hair. The other garments of nuns may have the same origin as ecclesiastical vestments, for the dress of the Roman women was very much like that of the men. (See Figures 128 and 131-133.) There are, of course, many orders, congregations, and communities of nuns, but we may describe the dress of one of the latter, and then make a few additional remarks. In the case of the Kilburn Sisters of the Church, who are English Catholics--but who have dedicated their lives to religion in the same way as the Roman Catholic nuns--the indoor dress consists of a white cap, the descendant of the Norman chin-band, which fits tightly round the head--as the hair of all nuns is, of course, cut close--and it is gathered round the face with a string. This cap, if it comes down low on the forehead, correspondingly covers the chin, but in many cases the latter is free. Over the white cap in indoor dress a black veil is worn in the case of professed nuns, a blue veil by novices, while postulants, who may be taken as corresponding to probationers in a hospital, wear only a cap, though in chapel they have a white veil as well. Round the neck of the Sister is a white collar, which in this case is separate from the cap and buttons on to it at one side. This collar, which like the veil may be traced to the wimple of Norman and later ladies, is also called a breast cloth or a gremial, and may be, as we have indicated, made in one piece with the cap. In outdoor dress a stiff white hood is placed over the indoor head-dress, and over that again comes the outdoor black veil. It should be mentioned that the Kilburn Sisters now pin their veils to the sides of their linen caps in exactly the same way that the dame in the time of the early Plantagenets did her wimple to the sides of her chin-band. For working Sisters, the rest of the costume is a habit with skin-tight sleeves, though there are also most voluminous outer sleeves which are detachable and can be removed. A small cape is buttoned across the chest, and the number of buttons corresponds with the letters in the word "Obedience." An apron is also worn and a thick girdle, to one of the hanging ends of which a cross is attached. Other Sisters wear a scapular with shoulder-straps, over a white cape. Nuns are not allowed to wear gloves, and some orders use sandals, though absolutely barefooted orders exist. [Illustration: FIG. 131.--The head-dress of a nun showing the veil and breast-cloth derived from the wimple, the cap which represents the chin-cloth, together with the frontal and the hood.] [Illustration: FIG. 132.--The head-dress of a lady of the time of Henry II. The wimple is shown covering the chin- and head-bands (after Calthrop).] [Illustration: FIG. 133.--The chin-band and forehead strap after the wimple has been removed (after Calthrop).] The lay sisters of the community under consideration wear a blue habit and a white cap with flaps. Some orders, in addition to the white cap, wear a plain band round the forehead over it, which is called a frontal, and is seen in the dress of Henry II's time. (See Figures 131 and 133.) Professed sisters wear a wedding ring on the third finger of their right hand. The white outdoor stiffened hoods often stand right up from the head in a very striking way, and sometimes no veils are worn. Some of the caps, which are made in one piece with the collar, are fastened under the chin by two strings, and the goffered edges of the collar recall the bands of the Stuart period. XXI SUNDAY CLOTHES THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUNDAY CLOTHES--THE WEARING OF HATS IN CHURCH BY LADIES Sunday clothes are a time-honoured institution, though it is a sign of the times that many now make no difference between their weekday costume and that which they wear on the day of rest, or if they do, they only put on garments which are appropriate to the relaxations in which they are accustomed to indulge. St. Jerome and St. Clement both exhorted the early Christian worshippers to wear a special dress for worship, and the Jews in their synagogues put on a vestment called a talith, which is used by the whole of the congregation as well as by the officiating minister. We quote the following passage from St. Clement[29] because it deals with the question of women having their heads covered while at church: "The wife and the husband should take their way unto the church, in seemly apparel, with unaffected gait, and speech refrained; having love unfeigned; pure in body and pure in heart; fitly decked for prayer to God. And this further let the woman have: let her wholly cover her head (unless perchance she be at home), for so dressed she will have respect and be withdrawn from gazing eyes. And if thus with modesty, and with a veil, she covereth her own eyes, she shall neither be misled herself, nor shall she draw others, by the exposure of her face, into the dangerous path of sin. For this willeth the Word; seeing that it is meet for the woman that she pray with covered head.... But then so as they, who are joined to Christ, adorn themselves, in a more solemn fashion, for assemblies of the church, even such should they ever be, even so be fashioned, all the days of their life. 'To be, not seem to be,' let that be their watchword; gentle, reverent, full of holy love, at one time not less than at another. "But it is not so, indeed. Somehow doth it come about, that, with change of place, they change both their habit and their manners; even as the polypus is said to change each one his colour to the semblance of the rock whereby he dwells." It will be remembered that not long ago objection was taken by a minister to women appearing in his church without any hats. It would appear that the whole custom is a relic of that still observed in eastern countries, where women cover not only their heads, but also their faces, though, as pointed out in an earlier chapter (see page 13), in some places it is still considered more immodest to uncover the back of the head than to expose any other part of the person; and in Egypt, for instance, an Arab woman disturbed when drawing water will throw her single garment over her head in order to hide it. One is rather afraid that those ladies who follow the lines laid down by St. Clement as to covering their heads in church sometimes obey his injunctions in the letter rather than in the spirit. For scoffers have been found who say that one of the reasons why fashionable ladies go to church is to show their own new hats and gowns and to look at those belonging to their neighbours. The question of covering the head was touched upon when dealing with servants' dress in connection with the cap of the housemaid. (See page 149.) The greatest contrast between Sunday and weekday clothes is to be looked for in the country among agricultural labourers, as the cessation of labour gives an opportunity for discarding the rough and heavy garments of the field in favour of something lighter and of better quality, and this quite apart from the religious idea which no doubt first led to the practice. Probably the custom of putting on Sunday clothes in the country will survive until the rural exodus, which has unfortunately begun, has led to the complete depopulation of our villages. XXII ACADEMICAL DRESS GOWNS AND HANGING SLEEVES--THE FORERUNNER OF THE HOOD--THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTOR'S HAT--THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORTAR-BOARD Many complaints have been very justly made against the solemnity, if not the ugliness, of men's modern evening dress. On important occasions it may be more or less enlivened by the ribbons and stars of various orders, but we really get a return to something of mediæval brightness at those functions connected with the universities at which academical dress is worn. Then the black coats and trousers are practically hidden, in many cases by scarlet, by purple, and other coloured gowns. Occasionally there are combinations of colours which are trying to the eyes of many, but on the whole the effect is one that is pleasing and worthy of repetition. Academical dress is in itself a survival, and the gay colours are almost enough to tell us this. Records exist which show that in the fifteenth century they were already adopted by the graduates of our universities. The evidence which has been brought forward as to the origin of academic costume points to its having been derived from that of the clergy; but there are interesting connections with civil dress, as we shall see. One of the special features of many academic gowns is their long hanging sleeves, and we shall find that so long ago as the time of William Rufus sleeves had grown so long that it had become convenient to make a hole through them through which the hand and forearm could be protruded. (See Figure 134.) [Illustration: FIG. 134.--Hanging sleeve of the fifteenth century.] These sleeves took upon themselves all sorts of forms, and they were made so long and narrow that they resembled very much the elongation of the hood which was called a liripipe. Occasionally it was found necessary to knot them so that they should not trail upon the ground. Very few parts of dress have varied so much as sleeves, and it is said that any costume can be dated by an examination of the sleeves. Nowadays, as in the past, the length of the sleeve and of the gown itself indicates the status of the member of the university. At Oxford, for instance, the undergraduate's gown is so short that it is hardly worthy of the name, and it is without sleeves that act as such. The scholar's gown is more voluminous, and the gowns of the bachelors and masters of arts are more important again, while the sleeves belonging to the latter reach nearly to the ground. When we come, however, to the robes of the Chancellor, which are made of stiffer material, we find that the ancient character of the hanging sleeves is much more marked (see Figure 135), and there is a train so long that small pages are told off to support it. In the old days, the material of which the gowns were made, and their trimmings indicated the rank of the wearers; and, as Mr. Druitt[30] points out, the bachelor, for instance, was unable to use fur of so costly a kind as that worn by his academical superiors. Stuff or silk gowns still have their significance, and in the hoods which are the survival of a part of dress which was once useful and worn by graduates and undergraduates alike, we find great diversity in the case of the various degrees of different universities. [Illustration: FIG. 135.--The hanging sleeve of a Chancellor of Oxford University.] As a head covering, the cap took the place of a hood, and the latter fell down behind like that often seen on a modern ulster. We have already noticed (p. 157) how this peak of the hood was exaggerated, and in old times the liripipe was longer in the case of undergraduates. The modern hood of the universities has grown in size, but it has lost its long streamer. Examples are, of course, most commonly seen in churches, as it is a custom of the clergy to wear their academical hoods over their white surplices. The colour of the hood and of its lining indicates, to the initiated, the university to which the wearer belongs, and the degree which he has taken. In early times a tippet or cape made of fur or cloth edged or lined with fur, according to the degree, was also worn. To this we have alluded when speaking of the surplice (see page 199). It seems also to have originally been a kind of hood which developed first into the almuce, one of the processional vestments of the priesthood. This was covered by the ecclesiastical cope, but was worn outside the academical gown. Doctors of Divinity were allowed to wear scarlet tippets, and the colour survives now in their academical hood, and the ordinary black almuce with its fur lining has not been greatly changed in becoming the hood of the Bachelor of Arts. Sometimes the tippet and sometimes the hood was worn (if we may judge from monumental brasses), but also they were both put on at the same time. The figure of a doctor embroidered on a fifteenth-century cope belonging to the Pro-Cathedral of the Apostles at Clifton, depicts him wearing a tippet edged with white, a red hood, and a red cap. His gown, which is worked in gold thread, is shown with a blue lining. Perhaps no form of head-dress is more strange than the college cap or mortar-board, or, in technical language, _pileus quadratus_, or cater cap. This skull-cap, with its curious square top, is not the only kind of academical head-dress. There is the round cap which is especially that of the doctor, while the mortar-board or trencher already mentioned is used by masters and bachelors, as well as by undergraduates and scholars. The former head-dress seems to have been very little altered, and was developed somewhere about the fourteenth century or earlier from the ecclesiastical skull-cap, which was something like an old-fashioned man's nightcap, with a tuft. The square cap is an undoubted descendant of the ecclesiastical cap of dignity, and in England this also came from the skull-cap already mentioned. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, while still used by ecclesiastics, it began to assume a square or cusped shape. Prof. E. C. Clark[31] agrees with the opinion expressed to him by the late Dr. Littledale, that folds were introduced into the soft material in order to make the cap easier to hold, for by them it was stiffened. The folds became four wings, and so converted the round top into a square. From this it was but a short step to the ecclesiastical biretta of the present day. Any further exaggeration of its top would cause the cap to fall down on the face, and would naturally suggest the insertion of something to stiffen it and hold it out, and in the end the square top of the cap was made of cardboard covered with cloth, and a skull-cap was fixed to it underneath. (See Figure 136.) [Illustration: FIG. 136.--A college cap or trencher.] [Illustration: FIG. 137.--Cranmer's hat, illustrating a stage in the evolution of a mortar-board (after Fairholt).] [Illustration: FIG. 138.--The hat of a bishop of the Stuart Period showing a stage at which the stiffening now seen in the mortar-board was becoming necessary (after Fairholt).] There is a likeness between the round hat of the doctor and the Tudor flat cap, and Fairholt would derive the mortar-board from the same head-dress; and as illustrating the story of its evolution, he compares the cap shown in the portrait of Cranmer (see Figure 137) in the British Museum with that of a bishop of the time of Charles I (see Figure 138); and here again the need for stiffening is obvious, if the enlargement of the crown of the cap be carried any further. XXIII LEGAL DRESS VESTIGES OF THE COIF--HOODS AND GOWNS--SIGNS OF MOURNING It would be strange if the majesty of the law did not depend to some extent upon dress, and there is no doubt but that an impressiveness which would otherwise be absent from our courts is given by wigs and gowns. The wigs themselves are an interesting survival, and presumably are not more uncomfortable to the few who now wear them than they were to many in times gone by. We will describe here a few interesting vestiges among those which are to be met with in legal costume. Any one who has an opportunity of looking on to the top of a judge's wig will notice a small circular depression about three inches across. (See Figure 139.) This has a very interesting history, and in order to trace it we shall have to look at the long wigs of the serjeants-at-law, from whose ranks in the past most of the judges used to come. On the serjeant's wig we shall find that there is a similar depression, and that it is filled with a circular white patch, having a black centre, and reminding one of two large pieces of court plaster, one stuck over the other. (See Figure 140.) [Illustration: FIG. 139.--The wig of a modern judge.] The white piece represents the coif, or close-fitting cap of white lawn or silk which resembles that of a nun, and with which the serjeants-at-law on their creation were decked. From this cap, the body to which the serjeants-at-law belonged was called the Order of the Coif. It seems that the origin of this head-dress cannot definitely be settled. Mr. Druitt[32] and Mr. Paley Baildon are content to consider it as part of the insignia of the serjeants-at-law, in the same way that the round cap indicates the possessor of a doctor's degree, and they are not inclined to give credence to the suggestion that the coif was to hide the tonsure or to prevent its absence from being noticed. The black patch represents a black skull-cap that was worn over the coif. [Illustration: FIG. 140.--The vestige of the coif from the wig of a serjeant-at-law.] After having been in existence for many hundreds of years, the order of serjeants-at-law was abolished by Mr. Gladstone. Lord Lindley, we believe, is the last member who survives. A black skull-cap is also worn by a judge, but it is not to be confounded with the cap of dignity which is used by him when pronouncing sentence, and which was ordered to be worn in church when on circuit. Ordinarily, the judge does not wear his scarlet gown, but a black one, the girdle of which has grown to a very great width. The drab colour of the trimmings, which does not harmonize well with the rest of the gown, has recently begun to give way to primrose, and the change is due to the initiative of the late Lord Coleridge. It is said that black gowns which are worn by the King's Counsel and other barristers superseded the coloured ones on the death of Queen Mary II, and in reality were intended as mourning which has never been discarded. Legal gowns have come down with very little change from the Middle Ages, and are doubtless derived from ecclesiastical through academical costume. The original robes of the serjeants-at-law were somewhat striking in colour, for taking a line down the centre of the black, one half was of a mustard colour and the other red, while the latter was further ornamented with green stripes. The robe of the Barons of the Exchequer was of a beautiful heliotrope tint. The material of the gown of the King's Counsel is indicated by the phrase "taking silk." One peculiarity of the garment is that it has a large collar resembling that of court-ushers and of vergers in churches. The ordinary dress of the King's Counsel which he wears in court is interesting on account of the ornamental cuffs and the escalloped flaps of the pockets of the coat and waistcoat, which resemble those of Court dress. [Illustration: FIG. 141.--A barrister's gown showing the vestigial hood and its streamer. The buttons and braid which once temporarily looped up the sleeves now fix it permanently.] On the barrister's gown there is a tiny hood on the left shoulder resembling that from which the chaperon was developed, and from the vestige runs a streamer which comes over the left shoulder and hangs down in front of the gown. (See Figure 141.) There is also a series of buttons as well as pieces of braid on the sleeves which are survivals, and we have not the hanging sleeves of the King's Counsel, which are comparable to those seen in many academic gowns. Small falling bands are of course generally worn by members of the legal profession, and barristers and King's Counsel when in mourning have a little pleat down the middle of each band. Perhaps the most curious additions to legal costume used in order to indicate mourning are the little white lawn or muslin cuffs, like those of widows, which the King's Counsel wear on their sleeves when the Court is in mourning, or when they themselves have suffered bereavement. XXIV STATE AND COURT ATTIRE CORONATION DRESS--PARLIAMENTARY ROBES--MISTAKES IN COURT DRESS--VESTIGES OF THE WIG AND OF THE CHAPERON--COURT CARDS The English sovereigns are heads of the Church as well as of the State, and in connection with their coronation dress there are, as might be expected, many survivals from the past. The vestments used on the occasion in question agree almost entirely with those which we have described as being worn by a bishop at mass. We may except, however, the amice and the maniple, while the sceptre and crown take the place of the crosier and the mitre. The first vestment to be put on is of linen, and is an albe or rochet, and up to the time of James II it was provided with sleeves--it is known as the _Colobium sindonis_. Over this is placed the tunicle or dalmatic. This is made of silk, and across it is worn the stole in the same way as deacons were ordered to do in the year 561. The custom is still followed in Greece and Rome, whereas priests generally put on the stole immediately after the albe. Over the dalmatic comes the imperial mantle which seems to have been originally a chasuble, but is now slit up in front. This garment, which is of cloth of gold, is embroidered with eagles, that are interesting as probably representing the claim of the King of England to be Emperor of Britain and Lord Paramount over all the Islands of the West. In Charles II's reign further ornaments occurred in the shape of roses and fleur-de-lys, and on Queen Victoria's mantle there were roses, half red and half white, as well as thistles, shamrocks, and fleur-de-lys, while the eagles were embroidered in silver. At the coronation of King Edward VII the vestments which we have described were all used with the exception of the albe, and to the other devices on the imperial mantle the lotus flower was added as a symbol for India, as the King was the first sovereign to be crowned as Emperor of India. The robe which the King wears at the opening of Parliament has a cape of ermine made up in miniver style, and it is lined throughout with the same fur. We might here say that ordinary ermine is decorated with the tails of the stoat, which remain black when this animal puts on its winter dress, whereas in the case of miniver the fur is spotted all over with little black pieces made from the skin of some other animal. This has not always been the same, but at the present time Persian lamb is used. The magnificence of the King's parliamentary robe and its train of crimson velvet may be gathered from the fact that in the making of the miniver, upwards of ten thousand pieces of black fur were used. In a portrait of the King, taken when wearing this robe, he is shown in the uniform of a Field Marshal, and holds in his hand the Field Marshal's baton. The latter originally was a box in which the general carried the orders of his sovereign, and it is rather curious that what was once the emblem of the servant should come to be used by a crowned head himself. The rank of noblemen is indicated on their parliamentary robes by the number of bands of ermine with which they are decorated. A Baron has two, a Viscount two and a half, an Earl three, a Marquis three and a half, and a Duke four, whereas on their coronation robes the same effect is gained by a similar number of rows of black spots on the miniver, which forms a kind of cape. As in connection with life at Court there are a number of special uniforms and official dresses which are carefully prescribed, it is likely that we should find among the dress of those surrounding the sovereign, many and excellent examples of survivals. There is, indeed, one uniform which has come down to us practically unaltered from the year 1485. This is the dress worn by the Yeomen of the Guard, who may be looked upon as the King's Retainers. (See Figure 142.) It is an obvious example of the point that we have dwelt upon in connection with badges and liveries, for borne on the back and chest are the royal crown and initials. Of course, the latter have altered from time to time, and when the King came to the throne the Tudor crown, which had been superseded by that of St. Edward, was replaced. [Illustration: FIG. 142.--A Yeoman of the Guard of the present reign.] The development of the badges on the coat is interesting. In Henry VII's reign there was the crown and the red and white rose. In the time of Anne the thistle was added, and the rose was placed upon a stalk. The Tudor crown was also replaced, for during the Stuart period, St. Edward's crown had appeared, and the royal motto was added. In the Georgian period St. Edward's crown again was made use of, while George III added the shamrock. Now, in King Edward VII's time, we have the Tudor crown, the rose, thistle, and shamrock, the motto "Dieu et mon droit," and the initials "E.R." What the original uniform was, is not quite certain, but practically the same kind of coat was worn in Henry VIII's reign that appears now. The ruff would appear to be Elizabethan, though the hat is earlier. The officers used to wear a similar but more gorgeous uniform, but when William IV commanded that only officers of the army should be given commissions in the Guard, the present dress, which is that of a field officer of the Peninsular period, was introduced. When King Edward VII came to the throne he left the decision as to whether they should wear the old Tudor dress, to the officers themselves, and they decided in favour of the more modern military one. We might mention the halberds that are carried by the Yeomen, and also allude to some of the duties which they have carried out, from the making of the King's bed in early times to searching the Houses of Parliament before the session opens, which is a memory of Guy Fawkes, and of attending, as they have done for centuries, at the giving of alms by the sovereign in Westminster Abbey on Maundy Thursday. Very many uniforms seen at Court show the turned-back edges and the lining of the tails, described when we were dealing with the evolution of the coat (see p. 34)--for instance, in the case of the gentlemen-at-arms, and of several officials. We may mention also the Scottish Archers who wear a green coat with a turned-back part--which represents the lining--of red velvet. The style of Court dress which may be worn to-day by civilians has become somewhat simpler, though ruffles and frills are still to be found in connection, and may be worn with, what is known as old-style dress that is always adopted by the legal profession. The knee-breeches come from the time of William III, and the coat in its original form dates back to the time of Napoleon. The sides of the coat have, however, been cut away, and this was done during the last reign, when the alteration was made for the convenience of those who were not accustomed to wear a sword. The more recent simplification of Court dress has, however, provided pitfalls for the unwary, and all sorts of curious mistakes in small details are made. To show how easy it is to put a button too many here, or too few there, we may describe the differences between the old and new styles. On the old there are seven buttons up the front of the coat and three on the cuffs. In the new, there are but six in the first case and none in the second. Again, in the simplified coat there are no buttons below the flaps (which represent pockets), and but four buttons behind on the tails. In the old style there are three buttons below the flaps--while there are similar ornaments on the waistcoat, which is skirted--and there are six buttons on the tails. Then in addition there is the wig-bag, to which we shall refer in a moment, at the back of the coat collar, as well as the frills and ruffles. Although on the lace of these as much may be spent as on the rest of the costume, the cost of the simpler dress is really not much less than that of the other. A survival is, of course, to be seen in the sword and in the simplified costume, it is worn in a frog instead of on a sling. We have made it evident how much a man now depends upon his tailor for correctness in the detail of his Court dress, and it is amusing to find that wig-bags are put on to modern-style coats, and that the number of buttons is often quite wrong; but if these are the faults of the tailor, it is the man himself who is responsible who goes to Court with his sword hanging at his right side. We have not heard of military men making such a mistake, but officers have been known to appear with their cross-belts over the wrong shoulder. It is a good thing for some that Court etiquette is not so strict as it has been in the past. A curious survival is found in connection with old-style dress and some of the uniforms which are worn by officials, and we have had to mention similar vestiges when speaking of the Lord Mayor's coachman and of the Welsh Fusiliers. This is what is known as a wig-bag (see Figures 109 and 113), though in the Lord Chamberlain's descriptions it is now referred to by the same name as the ornament of somewhat similar origin of the Welsh Fusiliers, namely, the "flash." It consists of a small bag of silk, at the bottom corners of which little satin ribbon loops are fixed, while the whole is covered by an elaborate rosette of satin ribbon, and is suspended from the back of the coat collar. The bag represents the old bag in which the bob of the wig was placed, and the loops no doubt are those through which a ribbon was passed, which went round the neck of those who wore wigs, and was secured by a jewel on the breast. This was to provide against the wig being lost, should it fall from the head of its wearer, for these curious replacements of natural hair were of considerable value, costing twenty, thirty, sixty or even more guineas. The rosette of ribbon is the modern representative of the bow that tied the wig. (See Figure 143.) We have already traced the connection which Mr. Calthrop has shown between the cockade and the chaperon, and we might mention again that this ancient form of head-dress survives in connection with the hood of the mantle of the Knights of the Garter and of other Orders, for instance, those of St. Patrick and of the Thistle. (See Figure 144.) [Illustration: FIG. 143.--The wig-bag or "flash" from a Court suit, showing the rosette held away and displaying the black silk bag. At the lower corners of the latter loops are seen, which are probably the remains of those through which a ribbon was passed, which went round the neck and fastened on the breast by a brooch.] In the case of the Knight of the Garter, the hood consists of a flat piece of crimson velvet about three-quarters of a yard across, slightly oval in shape, and at a spot a little on one side of the centre is to be found the remains of the turban of the chaperon. It is a thick ring covered outside with crimson velvet, and inside with white silk. To one side of this is fastened a long band of crimson velvet one and three-quarter times as long as the hood is wide. This represents, of course, the liripipe of the chaperon. (See page 166 and Figures 122-125.) The edges of the velvet in all cases are ornamented with a white silk piping. The hood is fixed on the right shoulder, and the band representing the liripipe is brought across the breast of the wearer. In addition there are some wide loops and ends of ribbon called the streamer, and narrow ribbons with which to fasten the structure to the mantle. [Illustration: FIG. 144.--The hood from the mantle of a Knight of the Garter, showing the survival of the chaperon and its liripipe.] The hoods of the Orders of the Thistle and of St. Patrick are similar in construction, and in the case of the former the velvet of which they are made is blue in colour. On the mantles of other Orders only the streamer remains. On the left shoulder of the Knights of the Bath and of St. Michael and St. George there is a small vestige of aiguillettes. This is of silk cord in the former case, and of gold cord in the second. The under-dress, which is not commonly worn now, is furnished with trunk hose and silk tights, and from its appearance is known as the silver dress. Much the same style was carried out in all the Orders that we have up to the present had occasion to mention. In the more modern Orders there is, of course, no such ancient under-dress. If we have Kings and Queens at Court, we also have Kings and Queens and Knaves among our playing-cards, and the costumes which survive on the curious pictures which represent them in double, but without their lower limbs, are worthy of some little attention. As a matter of fact, they are Tudor dresses, slightly modified perhaps of recent years, but nevertheless, a common and widespread relic of the fashions which were in vogue when Henry VIII was going through his matrimonial troubles, and shaking this country clear from its allegiance to the Pope. There are two series of ceremonial dresses not immediately connected with the State which it may be worth while to investigate. They are, in the first place, the liveries of the City Companies, and in the second the insignia of Masons. In the first case, on some of the gowns we find again the chaperon appearing as a hood on the shoulder, and many of the caps that are worn have survived for some centuries. A few of the companies still possess their ancient embroidered hearse cloths, which recall the early semi-religious and provident purposes of the guilds out of which the great City Companies have developed. There seems no doubt, too, but that the apron of the Masons is actually derived from that worn by the craftsmen when at work, and in some countries it is still of the same circular form as those which were used by the English masons of the eighteenth century. Other parts of the clothing of Masons are no doubt derived from the old guild liveries, and in the fact that some high officials wear gauntlets we have a reminder of the knights' armour, and possibly a survival from the time when high officials were knights. XXV SURVIVALS IN MILITARY UNIFORMS ARMOUR--PRICKERS FOR FLINT-LOCKS--FORAGE CORDS--REMINISCENCES OF GALLANTRY--REGIMENTAL BADGES--COURTSHIP COLOURS The cuirass of the Household troops which they wear on important occasions, as well as the metal helmets of various regiments, are survivals from the time when armour was of use, and if we examine the shoulders of certain soldiers, we shall find that there are vestiges of chain mail, though now this only takes the place of epaulettes. (See Figure 145.) To see chain mail in its perfection we must go back to the time of Edward I, and if we look, for instance, at the brass of Sir John D'Aubernoun (who died in the year 1277) or of Sir Richard de Trumpington, A.D. 1289 (see Figure 146), which are the earliest remaining in this country, we shall find that the chain mail now represented by a little patch on the shoulder then covered the head and neck, arms and hands, body, feet and legs. [Illustration: FIG. 145.--Relic of chain mail on the shoulder of an Imperial Yeoman.] As time went on, plate armour was mixed with the mail, until at last, in the time of Henry IV, we get the complete plate period in which there was a breastplate and a corresponding back plate, which had already appeared in the period of transition of chain mail to plate armour. From thence onward the development of armour progressed until it gradually disappeared. In Stuart times, jack boots and spur leathers took the place of the armour on the legs, and a buff coat that on the body, with the exception of a gorget. This came to be in the early part of the nineteenth century, merely a small badge of the officer on duty, and in a still more diminished form is to be seen in some foreign armies. [Illustration: FIG. 146.--Chain mail illustrated by the brass of Sir Richard de Trumpington, A.D. 1289.] In the earlier part of the book it was made evident that military uniforms afford a fine field for research, though apart from the remains of armour, however, they are comparatively modern. It was not, indeed, until the reign of Charles II that we meet with uniforms regularly adopted by the Army; and the red coat which has given its name to the soldier, though many regiments are dressed in other colours, was previous to that time merely a best coat. We see it now on fox-hunters and golfers, though a long coat of this colour is still worn by the King's footmen and coachmen. A writer in the _Spectator_, No. 129, says, when speaking of Cornwall: "Here we fancied ourselves in Charles II's reign, people having made little variation in their dress since that time. The smartest of the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock; when they go a-wooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they put on a red coat." There had previous to the Restoration been some attempt to introduce uniform dress for soldiers quite apart from the sovereign's special guards, who, after the fashion of retainers, wore his livery. For instance, the Duke of Norfolk, in the reign of Henry VIII, issued instructions that every soldier should wear a blue coat guarded with red, the right hose to be red, the left blue, and a red stripe three fingers broad down the outside of each leg. The archers are described as wearing white gaberdines, at one time in this reign, while in 1576 those belonging to Ireland had a cassock of blue cloth with two small white guards. Red coats as well as others of blue or white were worn by the English troops in Turenne's army in 1657, and examples of the last two colours are by no means extinct in the army to-day. Red, blue, grey, and green, it may be added, were all worn during the Civil War on both sides. It must not be forgotten, however, that gay uniforms are now only used at home in times of peace, for we have learnt a lesson from the lower animals, many of which are protectively coloured, and the service uniform to-day is one calculated to render its wearer as inconspicuous as possible. Before the time of firearms which could be used with precision, and when hand-to-hand combats played a great part in war, it was necessary for two adversaries to be able to see one another, but now each tries to hide himself. [Illustration: FIG. 147.--A reversion in military equipment. One of Cromwell's Ironsides (1679), from a print. A Cavalryman sketched at Aldershot in 1901. Copied, by permission, from the _Daily Mail_.] Some years ago a sketch, which was made from a cavalry man at Aldershot, was given in the _Daily Mail_; side by side was shown another taken from a print representing one of Cromwell's Ironsides, and the likeness between the two is almost exact. (See Figure 147.) Ornamental epaulettes may also be looked upon as the last remnant of armour, though the modern kind probably came from a shoulder-knot of Charles II's time, as they were originally intended to protect the shoulders from sword-thrusts. At the present day, though they are worn in the English Navy and are common on the Continent, they have practically disappeared from the Army. The officers of the Yeomen of the Guard, whose uniform is that which was worn in the Peninsular War, still wear epaulettes, as do the Gentlemen-at-Arms and the Lords-Lieutenant of Counties. As we have said, there is a fine field for the study of survivals in uniforms proper, and from time to time many of these have attracted the notice of popular writers.[35 & 36] Additional interest is given to this subject by the fact that besides the variations which have gradually evolved, there are special features which have suddenly appeared often in connection with some important battle, which we might liken to the curious sports and freaks which sometimes occur in the natural history world. When, in 1881, the old regimental facings were abolished, many distinctions vanished, still there are more curious details left than we shall be able to describe. We have already seen how the busby was derived from the Hungarian cap, and quite a number of other features have been introduced from foreign countries. The square cap of the Lancer is the national head-dress of the Poles, who call it a shapka, and the uniform itself came from Poland. The sling jacket or dolman of the Hussars (see Figure 82), which is now extinct in our army, was also an introduction, but still on the pouch-belt of Light Cavalry officers are the prickers fastened with silver chains, which were used with old flint-lock muzzle-loaders. (See Figure 148.) [Illustration: FIG. 148.--The prickers on the shoulder-belt of a Hussar, which survive from the time of flint-lock muskets.] Some of these interesting but useless instruments are furnished with plain round knobs, but others made as if they were arrows with feathered shafts. Mr. Caton Woodville gives the following explanation of the aiguillettes worn by aides-de-camp. He says that "they date from the days when the war-horses, or chargers, were of solid build and slow of movement, and when only the adjutants were mounted on fleet steeds. Then the head-dress was a heavy three-cornered hat perched on a wig that was itself often not too securely fastened to its wearer's head. He needed, therefore, a cord with metal tags passing round the brim and under the loops which upheld its three sides. It was fastened to the officer's shoulder, as the weight of the felt hat, with its bars of steel as a protection against sword cuts, was considerable, and it was enough to choke a man if it should happen to dangle from his throat, so the aiguillettes have become the distinguished mark of the assistant to the general commanding in the field or garrison." It should, however, be mentioned also that these ornaments are worn in the Household Cavalry by non-commissioned officers, and are a relic there of the days when these soldiers were gentlemen of the Royal Life Guards, who had the right to a commission in a line regiment after a certain number of years' service. Other soldiers carry them, as do also the footmen of the nobility. Horse soldiers have also an ornamental cord to their head-dresses, and it seems likely that the aiguillettes had another origin, and that prickers or some other instruments were at one time attached to them. In the Lancers there is a very long cap-line, which has been mixed up, we are told by Mr. P. W. Reynolds, with a very interesting survival. This is the remains of a cord used for binding up grass and other forage into bundles, worn for convenience round the body, and over one shoulder by cavalry men, when it was not in use. It is known to the French as a "fourragère." In the Lancers the cap-line passes round the cap and is brought under the right shoulder-strap. So far it is the original cap-line; then it passes twice round the body, under the left arm, and under the right shoulder-strap, and ends, in a festoon and a couple of acorns, which remind one of aiguillettes, on the left breast. The part that goes round the body is the old forage cord. The sergeants' sashes, it is said, were originally intended to make slings so that the wounded could be carried out of action with the help of pikes, and the drum-major's baton is the survival of a cane which the drill-sergeant sometimes used on the backs of the recruits. The "flash" of the Welsh Fusiliers, as we have seen, is a survival from the times when wigs were worn. Here and there we find old head-dresses once nearly universal, such as the shako which is now confined to the Highland Light Infantry and the Scottish Rifles. Other regiments, such as those of the Rifle Brigade, which have been at times used as cavalry, retain certain features of the horse soldier's uniform. For instance, the Rifle Brigade has a head-dress which resembles the Hussars' busby, and instead of a sash the officers wear a cross-belt. The officers of the Somersetshire Light Infantry, which on one occasion was turned into cavalry at a moment's notice, wear a mess jacket of the cavalry pattern; they have also a black worm in their lace, like the East Yorkshire and North Lancashire regiments, which is usually explained as being mourning for Sir John Moore in the first case, and for General Wolfe in the two others. Before turning to peculiarities which were granted for special services, we may mention the black tunics and black plumes of the farriers belonging to the Life Guards, who carry a great axe with which to kill horses that are wounded in battle, and the state trumpeters also of the Household Cavalry, who wear a highly ornamental uniform which has persisted for nearly two centuries. There still remain relics of the time when commanding officers had a great deal to say in connection with the uniforms of their regiments. When the Cameron Highlanders were first raised in 1794, Colonel Cameron did not adopt the Cameron tartan, because he did not think it would go well with a scarlet tunic, and he introduced one which had been designed by his mother, called the "Cameron Erracht," which has been worn ever since. The White Horse of Hanover appears as a badge on several regiments, and it is recorded that George I, objecting to the private crests of the commanding officers, replaced them in many cases with the Hanoverian device. Even now, in spite of the minute regulations of the War Office, which are continually being altered, the uniforms are not always made absolutely as they are prescribed. Little details may be added, and colonels still seem to exercise some influence in the matter. The red puggaree of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry is not obtained from the regimental tailor who supplies the uniform. The white jackets of the Guards and Highland corps which are worn in undress are still called "waistcoats," and, according to Mr. Walter Wood, are a relic of the white waistcoat which was worn under the tunic by the British soldiers down to the time of William IV. It must, however, be remembered that a waistcoat was originally an outer garment, as indicated on page 148. An exceedingly curious privilege is that which has been accorded to the non-commissioned officers and men of the Royal Marines, who for many years have been allowed when in mourning, to cover one button of their tunics with crape. The Eighth Hussars wear their sword-belts over their shoulders, and the tradition is that at the battle of Saragossa they behaved so gallantly that they totally destroyed a corps of Spanish cavalry and took possession of their adversaries' belts. Perhaps the most curious mark of distinction is the extra drummer of the Third Hussars, who enjoys special pay and is permitted to wear a sergeant's uniform. This privilege was granted by George III when it was brought to his notice that the regiment possessed some silver kettledrums which they had captured. The request for this honour was made in 1778 by General Fitzroy, and his wife presented a silver collar for the use of the additional drummer which is still worn to-day. It is handsomely engraved with military devices, and fits closely round the throat. In full dress the Eleventh Hussars wear an ivory-hilted sword made on the model of one picked up at Bhurtpore. The Fifteenth Hussars wear the Austrian Imperial lace on account of their gallantry at Villiers-en-Couche, which prevented the Emperor of Austria from falling a prisoner to the French. The Scots Greys were given Grenadier caps, which are not worn by other cavalry regiments, for their bravery at Ramillies. The Northumberland Fusiliers have red and white hackle feathers--that is to say, that the upper part of their plume is red, and the lower part white. It is recorded that at Wilhelmstahl, and also when in St. Lucia, this regiment was victorious after great struggles, and took from the caps of the French Grenadiers who were slain, enough white feathers to fit up the whole regiment with plumes, the use of which afterwards received official sanction. When, however, an order was made in 1829 that white plumes should be generally worn, the Fusiliers complained that they would lose the distinction which they enjoyed, and by a compromise they were allowed to have a plume which was half red and half white. The Northumberland Fusiliers share with one or two other regiments, that distinguished themselves at the battle of Minden, the privilege of wearing roses in their caps on St. George's Day. We might spend a considerable time in dealing with the badges of various regiments, for often the history of the latter is bound up with them. They figure on the collar and other parts of the uniform, and occasionally, as badges might be expected to do, they appear on the buttons. We have touched upon this subject in connection with George I. The Scots Greys have as a badge an eagle with outstretched wings. It commemorates the capture of a French eagle at Waterloo by Sergeant Ewart, who was given a commission for his bravery. The Gloucestershire Regiment has a badge in front and another on the back of the helmets, because on one occasion, in Egypt, when it was attacked in the rear as well as in front by large bodies of French cavalry, and there was no time to form a square, the commanding officer gave the order, "Rear rank, right about face, fire!" The result was that the enemy was beaten off. In connection with this achievement the second badge was given. An interesting tale is told with regard to the formation of the Guards by Charles II after the Restoration. There were three regiments present, and they were commanded to take up arms as the First, Second, and Third Guards, but while the first and third obeyed the order, General Monk's regiment stood still. The King, who was surprised at the apparent insubordination, asked Monk for the reason. Whereupon he said that his regiment declined to be considered second to any other. As a result, Charles is said to have answered, "Very well, they shall be my Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, and second to none." From this comes their motto, "Nulli secundus." It may be mentioned, also, that this regiment has a distinction which is absolutely unique in the Army, as it bears on the King's colour a small Union Jack, which commemorates the fact that Monk was an Admiral of the Fleet as well as a General. It is only about a hundred years since the pretensions of the English sovereigns to the throne of France ceased to be evident, for it was not until the end of George III's reign that the French fleur-de-lys were removed from the Royal Arms and disappeared from our coins. There is still, however, a survival of the lilies of France on the braid of the drummers in the Guards. White lace with red crowns is what is almost universally worn by drummers in the Army, but the crown is replaced in the case mentioned by the fleur-de-lys. Whilst speaking of the Guards, one may recall that not very long ago a uniform was used by the solicitor with which these soldiers were, and in the case of the Coldstream Guards are still, provided. The solicitor, like the medical officer, wore the cocked hat that is now dying out in the Army, though generals and aides-de-camp still adopt this most curious outcome of the Cavalier's beaver. Here and there, as in the case of the surgeon and veterinary surgeon of the Life Guards, and the medical officers of some Volunteer regiments, we still see the cocked hat. It flourishes also in Court dress, it adorns the Lords-Lieutenant and their deputies, besides maintaining its position among the officers of the Navy. Fur, the material of which the first clothes of our ancestors were made, is still seen to a considerable extent in the Army, and is chiefly used for the construction of busbies. So important was the trade in furs for military purposes at one time, that bear-skins were classified as follows: "Officers," or first grade; "Grenadiers," or second grade; and "unfit for the Army," or third grade. Like all features of dress which are exaggerated, the big busbies of the Guards have on more than one occasion afforded material for the caricaturist. Leech depicted the soldiers of the Brigade of Guards warming their hands and feet in their busbies, which they used as muffs; and an amusing series of sketches for the amusement of the young people was published not long ago, in which the soldier disappeared almost entirely into his busby and became a sort of Humpty-Dumpty. Tall hats of the type of our modern silk hats were not unknown in the Army. Perhaps it may come as a shock to some that Lord Howard of Effingham is shown in a portrait as wearing a top hat, in shape very similar to the modern form, but ornamented with a plume of ostrich feathers. There is, we believe, however, still one top hat which is served out by the War Office at the present day, and this is worn by the Chapel Keeper at Wellington Barracks. Of buttons we have already spoken times out of number, and it may be interesting to mention here that the various regiments of the Brigade of Guards may be told by the arrangement of buttons on the tunic. They are arranged at even distances apart in the Grenadiers, in twos on the Coldstreams, and in threes on the Scots Guards, and in fours on the Irish Guards, which were created of recent years. We find plenty of survivals in the Army of buttons which are seen in similar places to those on civilians' clothes. Mr. P. W. Reynolds has pointed out another, which is found in connection with a cord loop on the collars of the officers of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry. This is a survival of a fashion once universal in the British Infantry, though the loop often consisted of half-inch lace instead of cord. The button was originally on a turned-down collar, and previous to that was on the coat, coming through a hole in the collar with a view to holding the latter properly in place. If officers and sergeants were seen together it would probably be noticed that the former wear their sashes over the left shoulder, whilst the latter wear theirs over the right. To this a single exception can, however, be found. In the Twenty-ninth Foot the sergeants and officers both wear their sashes over the left shoulder, and this custom has been traced back to the battle of Culloden, where so many officers were slain that the sergeants had to take their places. The drummers of the Leicestershire Regiment on state occasions wear tiger-skin aprons instead of the usual ones of pipeclayed leather. This is connected, as is also their badge, with their services in India. A point that is perhaps not generally known is that officers going on voyages in hot climates are allowed to substitute the kamarband for the mess waistcoat, various colours being adopted by various regiments. We have seen the origin of the red coat so far as it affects the modern army. Under these circumstances it is hardly necessary to say that it is not intended to prevent the soldier from seeing his blood when he is wounded, as has sometimes been suggested. It might be taken as acting as a warning colour like that of the wasp or hornet, but we have also noticed the way in which conspicuous dress is replaced by protectively coloured uniforms when the soldiers are upon active service. We cannot help mentioning, however, one case in which the ornamental garb of peace proves useful to its wearer. We find in the animal kingdom that, whatever may happen in modern times in our own case, the males are as a rule the more brightly coloured, and we have come to call the brilliant hues with which they are endowed "courtship colours." The charm which our gallant soldiers seem to have for the fair sex surely entitles us to reckon the gay uniforms of our Army as coming into the category of "courtship colours." XXVI NAVAL UNIFORMS SUPPOSED SURVIVALS--PETTICOATS AND WIDE BREECHES If we had headed this chapter "survivals in naval dress," we should have been in the historic predicament of the writer who took as his topic the snakes of Iceland, and afterwards had to own that there were none. It would be better, however, if we were to say that there are no survivals of a strictly naval kind, as then we should be nearer the truth. There are, of course, in the uniform of both officers and men, plenty of survivals from civilian costume, such as we have spent much time in describing. Though the crews of the galleys, which are the boats reserved for the captain's use, had, in the case of the smart ships, long been dressed in a uniform manner, the actual uniforms of the Navy only date from a little before the year 1767. The colours, blue and white, so tradition says, were due to an inspiration which George II received, while the subject was under discussion, on seeing the Duchess of Bedford riding in a new habit which was of blue faced with white. There are two points in the dress of the ordinary sailor which are commonly supposed to be interesting survivals, and indeed they appear on the surface to have all the makings of such. It has been thought that the black silk handkerchief which a sailor wears round his neck was first put on as mourning for the death of Nelson. The other matter is the blue jean collar which covers the similar-shaped one which is made of the same material as the sailor's jumper. This would no doubt have protected its fellow from the grease of the pigtail which sailors wore once; but Commander Robinson, who has gone into the question, says that pigtails were discarded before the blue jean collar came into existence, and at the same time tells us that black silk handkerchiefs were adopted previous to the time of Nelson. It is not perhaps very widely known that sailors at one time wore a kind of kilt or petticoat, and this no longer ago than the year 1779. Some thirty or forty years earlier there were in vogue loose slops like the petticoat breeches of the reign of Charles II, and the collar of the coat, which was open at the neck, turned back on to the shoulders. The trousers, however, that are now adopted are tight round the body and thighs, but remain very loose round the legs, and are therefore somewhat curious. The method of buttoning is one which they share with the gentlemen of George II's time, the old-fashioned labourer, and, we believe, the bishop. XXVII THE COSTUME OF PUPPETS PUNCH AND JUDY--FASHION DOLLS--DOLLS IN SWADDLING CLOTHES--THE EGYPTIAN "SHABBIES" By way of a change let us turn from people to their images--in fact, to puppets and dolls--for these semblances and caricatures of human forms are generally clothed, and at times may present to us very curious survivals. Let us begin with Punch and Judy, and in this connection we must not forget the dog Toby, for the ruff which he wears round his neck is a reminiscence of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Punch himself, however, is very much older than his clothes, though to find the explanation of the hump in front we must examine the clothes of the time of Henry III of France, when the men's busked doublets came down low to a strap-shaped point, and had a great padded punch-like protuberance.[37] For other peculiarities that we see we may have to go to the times of Henry IV of France, but the character is very many centuries older; and the careful investigations made by a friend of the present writer, Mr. George Heppel,[38] into the history of Punch have shown why his present costume was adopted and what was his prototype. As might be expected, the original Punch was a man--not Pontius Pilate, as has sometimes been suggested owing to the connection of Punch with miracle plays, but a character in the old Italian farces, which go back to the early days of Rome. The town most celebrated for such entertainments was Atella, situated not very far from Naples. The farcical plays were full of buffoonery, and Punch or Pulicinella was one of the stock characters, represented by a live actor, as were also the originals of the Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Scaramouch, among others. It appears that the plays were not written as we understand a play to be written, but as a rule the plot of them was known, and a great deal of the dialogue was left to the actors themselves. From this it will be seen that the art of gagging can hardly be considered to be modern. The Italian, though by no means great as a dramatic author, was, as he is now, exceedingly good as an actor. It is said[39] that for genuine fun no dramatist can beat the Neapolitan, no actor can surpass him. He writes or acts without the least effort; it is born in him, and he cannot help it. The very beggar-boy who hunts one along the street is a consummate actor; his gestures are prolific, easy, and natural; he is a facial artist without knowing it, and he has a power of elocution and expression which are only acquired by experienced performers after many years of study. It may perhaps come as a surprise to many, seeing how long Punch has persisted, to learn that in Italy he was not one of the important characters in the original plays, but his choice as the hero of the puppet-show depended rather on the fact that he had not so much to do as some of the others--the harlequin, for instance. Therefore his character could be better portrayed under the restricted conditions that prevailed in such an entertainment as the Punch and Judy show. It will be obvious also that only two characters can be acting at one time, as the showman has only two hands. Mr. Heppel could only trace one instance of Punch figures being worked by wires like other marionettes. This is a figure in a little book no larger than a playing-card, entitled "Scènes de Polichinelle," in the Art Library at the South Kensington Museum. The showman in the case of the French Punch on occasion makes a virtue of necessity, and when the hero of the puppet-show is about to be tried for murder, the performance is interrupted in order that the following apology may be made:--"The scene which we are about to have the honour to put before you requires a tolerably large number of characters. It is, indeed, impossible to suppose that so important a prisoner as Guignol should be tried without due ceremony and by a single judge, but as the director of this theatre, like the generality of mankind, has but two hands, the actors in this scene will most of them remain quite still. This need not in the least interfere with the truth of the representation, for this stillness gives the administration of justice an additional solemnity. We may suppose that the judges are asleep, which will enable them to decide free from passion, and that the officials of the court are paralysed by the majesty of the court and the magnitude of the issues to be determined." [Illustration: FIG. 149.--The Oscan Pulicinella of 1731, without a long nose. The dress is very similar to that figured in 1630 (after Riccoboni).] The Punch and Judy show went on in Italy side by side with the farces that were represented by living actors, but the idea of puppet-shows is very much more ancient than this. The clothes of Punch were plain, and illustrations made in 1630 are similar to others made a hundred years later (see Figures 149 and 150). [Illustration: FIG. 150.--The Calabrian Giangurgolo of 1731, with the long nose. The dress is very similar to that figured in 1630 (after Riccoboni).] Originally, also, Punch does not seem to have had a long nose. The exaggerated nose is, however, found on the representative of Punch which flourished in Calabria, and which went by the name of "Giangurgolo" (see Figure 150). The French Punch is called Guignol, of which the derivation cannot be directly traced, but Mr. Heppel has made an interesting suggestion that in the name of this character is to be found that of Giangurgolo in a contracted form. As may have been surmised, we got our Punch and Judy by way of France, but as a human actor Punch himself came direct to England. [Illustration: FIG. 151.--An ancient bronze statuette with the face and features of Punch (after Ficorroni).] An ancient statuette which is figured by Ficorroni (see Figure 151) is supposed by antiquarians to represent Punch, and if the individual whom it represents did not go by that name, he must certainly have been one of Punch's ancestors, for the likeness to our modern hero is exceedingly great. References are made by a number of classical authors to puppet-shows, and these were also known in China as long ago as a thousand years before the Christian era. [Illustration: FIG. 152.--A fourteenth-century puppet-show (from the MS. of the "Roman d'Alexandre").] The method also of exhibiting the puppets is not very modern, for a very interesting figure of a show embellishes the celebrated MS. of the "Roman d'Alexandre" (see Figure 152) which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and was executed between the years 1338 and 1344. The figures were evidently worked by the hands as in Punch and Judy, and that it was intended to amuse children is shown by three little girls who are represented as looking on. Though sticks are not strictly a part of dress, unless we consider the canes of the dandies as being so, yet their usefulness in puppet-shows is so great that we are tempted to digress for a moment to give the comments of M. Lemercier de Neuville on the subject:-- "The stick! that is the great argument of Guignol, as well as of Polichinelle. The stick settles everything. It puts an end to disputes, it pays debts, it sends away troublesome people, it disciplines wives, it takes vengeance on men, it is the 'Deus ex machina' of all this Lilliputian world. What a marvellous dramatic resource it is. If a situation becomes difficult to manage, settle it with a blow of the stick. If a _dénouement_ seems to hang fire, hasten its progress by a thrashing. The stick is above all criticism; it checkmates it, it destroys it, for it is in the right, in spite of everybody, because it is the strongest. The stick has no respect of persons. With it Guignol beats his creditors, his friends, his wife, the constable, the judge, the hangman, and the more he strikes the more he makes people laugh. There is no spoken joke that is as good as this. And yet the stick is not beautiful, nor is it new. One sees that it has done duty for a long time, for it is worn out and cracked." We have, in fact, a record of Italian players coming to act their farces in this country in 1577, but as Punch in the capacity of a person is now obsolete with us, we shall only incidentally refer to him as a living actor, though perhaps we might recall the fact that Molière introduced him into his play _Le Malade Imaginaire_. We have spoken already of Punch's hump in front, and it may be interesting in this connection to give the opinion of a Frenchman on the subject of Punch's bodily characteristics. M. Magnin says that with a sufficient amount of exaggeration and caricature to set aside the suspicion of disloyalty, the Punch figure recalls the appearance of some Gascon officer imitating the walk and demeanour of Henri IV in the Guard Chamber of St. Germain or in the Louvre. The hump in front, he says, was derived from the protuberance of the heavy cuirass. This is much the same explanation as that which we have already given, though the cuirass probably stuck out in front of its wearer even more than did the doublet. There is no doubt but that the French like gayer dresses than the Italians, and we have seen that even in 1630 the clothes of Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Scaramouch in Italy were, like those of Punch, plain and simple; but in order to be popular in France the Pulicinella had to dress in a new style, and it is known that already in 1649 the puppet-show of which he is the hero had set up on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre. When Punch got to England it was at a time when gay clothes were worn, and some relics of these he has retained to the present day. Red and yellow play a considerable part in the dress of the Punch figures used by Mr. W. H. Jesson, the members of whose family have for generations been performers of Punch and Judy, and who is one of the few that are still left. Punch has a very high cap of antique appearance, with turned-up brim and a bow of ribbon on the top. The hump on his back is almost horn-like, and forms a complete circle. It seems unlikely that this appendage was developed from any part of costume unless it were perhaps the liripipe; but we may rather imagine that in the past Pulicinella may have been represented as being a hunchback, and certainly Figure 151, taken from the statuette mentioned previously, suggests an individual suffering from such a deformity. Punch also wears a ruff (see Figure 153), though it is not a separate part of his costume, as in Judy's case, where it is of lace and its character is well shown, as it consists of more than one thickness. Judy's head-dress is the mob cap which was fashionable in the time of George III. (See Figure 154.) The beadle, with his three-cornered hat and his brightly trimmed coat and cape, has survived for a century or so after his clothes first became fashionable, and no doubt in the puppet-show he will persist for many years when every living representative of his kind has passed away. (See Figure 155.) Of two more characters we have a word to say,--in the first place, of the doctor, who is brought before us in clothes of almost clerical cut, which remind us of the fact that the members of the medical profession were once more easily recognized by their dress than they are now (see Figure 156); in the second, of Toby, whose sole costume consists of a ruff, that once more takes us back to the time of Good Queen Bess. [Illustration: FIG. 153.--Punch, from the Punch and Judy Show, showing the ruff and other details of Elizabethan costume.] [Illustration: FIG. 154.--Judy, from the Punch and Judy Show, with ruff, mob cap, and apron.] Though Punch has donned new clothes and altered his habits to suit not only the countries in which he sojourned, but the times in which he has performed, yet despite these and other changes that have gone on since he set foot on these islands, there is one thing that has always been his special characteristic. This is his squeaky voice, which he retained even in Molière's play, and it is from the peculiarity of his voice that he gained his name. Pulicinella means a "hen-chicken," which might well be expected to have a squeaky voice. [Illustration: FIG. 155.--The Beadle, from the Punch and Judy Show.] [Illustration: FIG. 156.--The Doctor, from the Punch and Judy Show, with wig and white tie.] With regard to the changes in Punch's behaviour we have a word to say. Originally he was somewhat of a composite character, the constituent elements being derived from several of the personages of the larger theatre. At first, to the amorous and intriguing ways of Pulicinella there was added the roguery of Scaramouch, as well as the dash and braggadocio of the Spanish captain who was a member of the comedy company, akin to the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus and the Bobadil of Ben Jonson. As time went on there was less love-making and trickery and more knocking about, but Mr. Heppel will not allow that the French writers are right in ascribing the whole of this to English influence. For the fact that the puppets are not alive gives an opportunity for dealing blows with a reality that could not be tolerated if the actors were living, and when we remember the way in which dog Toby seizes Punch by the nose, we cannot help feeling that the effect could hardly be so realistically produced on the actual stage. In France, Punch is a bachelor, or if he is married he is not very much married, while in England Punch always runs in double harness. Another alteration has taken place. Polly, who was one of the characters that have disappeared, has departed for the reasons put into the showman's mouth by Mr. Henry Mayhew in 1861. "Miss Polly was left out, because it wasn't exactly moral. Opinions has changed. We ain't better, I fancy. Such things goes on, but people don't like to let it be seen now; that's the difference. Judy's dress, you see, is far different, bless you, than Miss Polly's. Judy's, you see, is bed-furniture stuff, and Polly's is all silk and satin. Yes, that's the way of the world; the wife comes off second best." As in old times, there was much buffoonery introduced even into religious plays, and the characters which have been separated from the other performers to take part in the special harlequinade of the modern pantomime used, together with Punch, to appear side by side with those who took the part of religious personages. To uneducated people there seemed nothing profane about this; but as time went on men and women came to look at matters in a different light. For reasons somewhat similar, the devil and the ghost are now left out, and in the performances that are given in drawing-rooms even the coffin, in some cases. The connection, however, of Punch with religious plays probably accounts for the name by which his wife now goes. Those who mistakenly supposed that the word Punch was derived from Pontius Pilate looked upon Judy as representing Judas Iscariot. We have already pointed out the origin of the former appellation, which ante-dates the Christian era, while a difficulty is met with in the fact that the wife of Punch for many years was known as Joan. Mr. Heppel says that of the miracle plays some of the most popular were taken from the Apocrypha, and a very favourite subject was the tale of Judith and Holofernes. If we cannot find an instance recorded of Punch furnishing the amusement in this story, we can, at any rate, find an advertisement of a play in which Harlequin and Judith were together, and the comic business was sometimes entrusted to Punch and sometimes to Harlequin. Hence Punch and Judy may not improbably have come from Punch and Judith, while Toby naturally suggests the dog in the book of Tobit. With regard to Toby, it may be said that he is represented in France by a cat, and that until the nineteenth century he was only a stuffed figure. In China, where Punch beats his wife to the music of the clarionette instead of Pandæan pipes held in a muffler, Toby is replaced by a wooden dragon with jaws that snap, and this figure is also now introduced in England. Hector the horse has quite disappeared. We might mention here that in the English version a clown is brought in with very considerable effect. There is another connection of dolls with costume rather than of costume with dolls which we may mention at this point. In the fourteenth century, when there were no fashion plates, and written descriptions would hardly do their duty effectively, model costumes were put upon dolls and sent from country to country. It is, moreover, a curious and interesting fact that it was principally from Paris that these fashions were sent out. Examples of national costumes sometimes survive on the bodies of dolls. The figure of St. Nicholas, in Belgium, shows an old dress, and the costume dolls of Holland, France, and Switzerland are excellent records of native dress now seldom seen in everyday life. Mr. Edward Lovett bought a little doll in Lucerne which is in a cradle, and shows excellently well the swaddling clothes that were formerly in use. Ancient Greek and Roman dolls, taken from children's graves, were similarly dressed, and a modern Russian doll, which is also in possession of Mr. Lovett, is shown with the swathing band _in situ_. The only dolls that are to be found in Malta represent ancient saints, and it is said that they are dressed as such. The long garments of Noah and his sons in the toy Noah's Ark are worthy of mention and are an interesting survival. The wrappings that were placed round mummies in ancient Egypt are shown on figures which were found in the tombs, and which are often seen as curiosities in this country. They were carved out of wood or modelled out of clay, while some of them were made out of the well-known glazed faïence. They were put into the tombs in order that they might do the work of the deceased in his after life, and their origin is exceedingly interesting. Many barbarous nations have in the past sacrificed the servants of a chief at his funeral, and the Egyptians, who were humane people, contented themselves with a make-believe, and replaced the actual persons with the figures that we call "ushabti," or, in modern parlance, "shabbies." XXVIII THE CLOWN AND PAINTING THE BODY THE CLOWN'S DRESS--SAVAGE PAINTING AND SURVIVALS OF IT--TATTOOING--PATCHES AND FALSE COMPLEXIONS--MASKS No costume is perhaps more characteristic or better known than that of the clown; and it is of special interest, for while the hat was fashionable at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the dress, generally speaking, is a caricature of that which was in vogue in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The same remarks apply to the method of hair-dressing, and we shall see, when dealing with the other characters that appear in the harlequinade, that the pantaloon in his dress illustrates that of the same time in our history. Unlike the other heroes of the pantomime, the clown is essentially English, and he is to be found also in the circus of to-day, at all times of the year, as well as on the stage at Christmas. As to the clown's clothes, first of all there is the ruff, which is, however, not stiffened out. He has trunk hose or wide breeches which do not reach to his knee, his stockings are well ornamented with clocks; and lastly, there is the paint on his face, which brings us to a custom that seems nearly as old as man himself. (See Figure 157 and Plate X, Figure A.) [Illustration: FIG. 157.--A clown, showing a survival of an Elizabethan costume.] Among the relics of the ancient cave men of Europe are found hollowed stones, and these were used as mortars in which ochre and other colours were ground for painting the body. [Illustration: FIG. A. THE HEAD OF A CLOWN, SHOWING THE PAINTED FACE, THE RUFF AND THE ELIZABETHAN METHOD OF DOING THE HAIR. FIG. B. THE FACE OF A JAPANESE ACTOR. (_After Moseley, by the courtesy of Mr. John Murray._) FIG. C. THE PAINTED FACE OF A PAPER FIGURE WHICH IS BURNED AT CHINESE FUNERALS. (_After Moseley, by the courtesy of Mr. John Murray.)_ FIG. D. THE TATTOOED HEAD OF A MAORI CHIEF. (_By the courtesy of General Robley._) _PLATE X._] The Egyptians still follow the practice of blackening the edge of the eyelid, both below and above the eye, with a black powder called kohl. The material is prepared either from burning an aromatic resin or the shells of almonds. The custom prevailed among both sexes in Egypt far back in its history, and long before the historic period, painting the eyes was already practised by the people whom Professor Petrie called the "New Race" (until he determined that they preceded the dynastic Egyptians). It may be well to point out that these prehistoric people lived about 6000 years B.C.: they had little or no metal, though they made most beautiful flint knives and stone vases. They buried their dead lying on one side with the knees towards the chin, instead of making mummies. Among the contents of their tombs have been found curious slate palettes of all shapes and sizes, similar to some which had previously been known for many years, but the origin of which was undetermined. It has been shown that these palettes were used for grinding up malachite to form a green colour with which to paint the eye. The idea was, it is supposed, to mitigate the glare of the sun, and is similar to that which leads Anglo-Indians to have the under sides of the brims of their hats coloured green. Another kind of temporary ornamentation is produced in Egypt to-day by staining the feet and hands with the juice of the leaves of henna. The result is that the part to which it is applied becomes a yellowish red or deep orange colour. The most common practice is to dye the tips of the fingers and toes so far as the first joint, the whole of the inside of the hand and the sole of the foot, and there are other and more fanciful modes of applying the henna, which is said to have an agreeable effect upon the skin, particularly in the way of preventing it from becoming too tender. The dyeing has to be renewed every fortnight or three weeks, and the stain is brighter and more permanent on the nails than on the fingers. Among many native races in a low stage of civilization there are few who do not decorate their body by painting it in some way. We have already mentioned that painting takes away the appearance of nakedness, and that many nations would be as much ashamed to be seen without their paint, as Europeans would be to walk about without their clothes. On special occasions, however, particularly striking colours are put on--for instance, by the Australians when about to dance a corroboree, and Professor Moseley[40] has pointed out that they have breast stripes and leg stripes such as those which are seen on European uniforms. At first sight these, as Professor Moseley, indeed, points out, would appear to have quite a different origin, but it will be remembered that when speaking of the Hussar uniform and the Dutch skeleton dress (see pages 145-6) it was suggested that the ornamentation might be intended to follow the lines of the chief bones of the body, and it is possible that the same idea may have underlain the painting carried out by savages. In this case what in one instance was effected by paint was in the other done by means of trimmings. Paint plays a great part in savage warfare, and no doubt the intention very often was to terrify the adversary. It is apparently this idea which actuated the old inhabitants of this country, who, as Cæsar says, stained themselves with woad in order to be of horrider aspect in battle; but Dr. Tylor has pointed out the error into which many historians have fallen through considering as savages races who, while having attained to considerable civilization, still kept up the practice of colouring their bodies in time of war. To the instances which we have mentioned of modern races staining themselves, we may add that of the Hindu women in India, who colour their teeth black and paint their feet scarlet. Japanese women blacken their teeth upon marriage. In certain Japanese plays the actors have bright streaks of red paint made on their faces, usually on each side of the eyes (see Plate X, Figure B). Professor Moseley[41] records that the same form of painting is to be seen in the case of Japanese children on festive occasions, for after they have been elaborately dressed by their parents they are further adorned with one or two transverse and narrow streaks of bright red paint, leading outwards from the outer corners of their eyes, or placed near to that position. The style is the same as that which survives in the case of adults on the stage. Professor Moseley brings forward a further case showing that such a form of painting possibly existed in ancient times in China. When a man of distinction died in China in former times, a certain number of servants were sacrificed at his burial. Now, figures made of pasteboard and paper, about three feet or so high, are burnt instead at the funeral service in small furnaces provided for the purpose in the temples, together with cartloads of similar pasteboard gifts which are sent by the survivors for the use of the dead in the next world. Earthenware figures were similarly buried with great men in old times in Japan, and we may compare with these customs that of the Egyptians who buried models of servants, as mentioned on page 268, in the graves of their dead. The pasteboard heads of these funeral servants and retainers are painted with streaks, some of which are put on in almost exactly the same style, at the angles of the eyes, as those of modern Japanese actors. It seems a fair conjecture that the streaks on these heads are a direct survival of an actual former savage form of painting which was once in vogue in China, and probably used to make fighting men hideous. It is well known that primitive customs survive in connection with funerals all over the world with extreme tenacity. The numerous interesting survivals existing in the case of English funerals are familiar. We give a figure taken from the head of a Chinese servant, which Professor Moseley bought at a manufactory of funeral properties in Hong Kong. (See Plate X, Figure C.) With regard to the ordinary use of paint by women in China and Japan, Professor Moseley points out that it is entirely different in principle from that in vogue in Europe. He says: "The use of paint as an ornament in China and Japan seems to me to be of considerable interest. In both countries the women regularly paint their faces when in full dress, of which the paint is a necessary part. "The paint is not put on with any idea of simulating a beauty of complexion, which might be present naturally, or which has been lost by age. The painted face is utterly unlike the appearance of any natural beauty. "An even layer of white is put on over the whole face and neck, with the exception, in Japan, of two or three angular points of natural brown skin, which are left bare at the back of the neck as a contrast. After the face is whitened, a dab of red is rubbed in on the cheeks, below each eye. The lips are then coloured pink with magenta, and in Japan this colour is put on so thickly that it ceases to appear red, but takes on the iridescent metallic green tint of the crystallized aniline colour. "In modern Japanese picture books, the lips of girls may sometimes be seen to be represented thus green. I suppose the idea is that such application of paint shows a meritorious disregard for expense. It is curious that the use of aniline colour should have so rapidly spread in China and Japan. In China, at least, such was not to be expected; but it seems to have supplanted the old rouge, and it is sold spread on folding cards, with Chinese characters on them, at Canton and in Japan. This form of painting the face seems to be exactly of the same nature as savage painting." The likeness of this painting to that of our clowns is of course quite obvious. Sometimes the painting of the body has a practical advantage. The Andaman Islanders plaster themselves with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, which protects their skin from the heat and mosquitoes; but, as Dr. Tylor points out, they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one side of his face red and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and abdomen. Fashions in paint were quite as slavishly followed as any other, and, as we see, have died hard. It is not a very far cry from painting to tattooing. Of savages, Théophile Gautier has said that, having no clothes to embroider, they embroider themselves. Scar tattooing is connected with various rites such as are followed when a brave arrives at manhood, and certainly tattooing serves to indicate the family or tribe to which the ornamented person belongs. There is no doubt, however, that the intention of much tattooing is to increase individual beauty. Excellent examples of this are to be found in the case of the Maoris, whose faces were most elaborately covered with designs. We are kindly permitted to reproduce some of the drawings which General Robley has made from specimens in his magnificent collection (see Plate X, Figure D). The practice now, however, is dying out. Of the Formosans it is said that their skins are covered with flower patterns until they look like damask. Tattooing was practised by the old inhabitants of this country, by the Jews and the earliest Egyptians: it is still carried on in modern Egypt, chiefly on the chin, on the back of the hands, the arms and feet, the middle of the bosom, and the forehead. It survives principally in the case of the women of the lower classes and in the country. Among European sailors and among the lower classes, and even occasionally those up in high social scale, we find tattooing carried on, though the original idea of ornamentation is lost when the decoration is covered by clothing. We have seen occasionally at shows--such as that organized by Barnum--white people who have been tattooed to a very great extent, and even in the case of Europeans the patterns tend to take off the bare look even of the white skin. No doubt the desire to make permanent such ornamentation as that obtained by painting, led to the introduction of tattooing, and just as some marks suggest that they are copied from amulets, so some amulets show traces of having been derived from tattoo patterns. Mr. Lovett has pointed out to us that possibly the floral designs worked on the backs of the bodices of the women of Marken, in Holland, may have originated from tattooing, but no doubt careful research would show some other and undoubted instances. The painting of the face, which is intended to heighten its beauty and hide the ravages of time, is quite another matter. It survives to the present day, but luckily it is much less common in this country than it was a few years ago. It does not, however, seem to have been at all in vogue in England until the Middle Ages, though cosmetics and false complexions were made use of by ladies in Roman times. Fairholt[42] quotes from an old French poem of the thirteenth century which describes the wares of a mercer who declares, "I have cotton with which they rouge, and whitening with which they whiten themselves." The cotton took the place of the hare's foot that is now used in making up, to rub colour on the cheeks. At this point we might consider patches, the use of which made it possible to ornament the skin with patterns that could be removed at will. These patches came into fashion in Charles I's reign, but were banned by the Puritans. As soon, however, as Charles II came into his own again, they made their appearance once more, and took various fantastic shapes: owls, rings, crescents, and crowns; a coach and horses was particularly fashionable, and in the time of Queen Anne it was possible to tell the political views of fashionable ladies by their faces and their fans. Party feeling ran very high at this time, and those who were neutral wore patches on both cheeks, a Whig lady on the right side only, while a High Church Tory dame only adorned the left, and she wore suspended from her wrist a fan on which was depicted a scene from the trial of Dr. Sacheverell at Westminster Hall. Red and white paint was at the same time universally employed by women of fashion, who, as Miss Helen Gordon[43] says, had perforce to keep their lovers at a respectful distance, lest a kiss "snatched by a forward one might transfer the complexion of the mistress to the admirer." The untimely decease of more than one famous beauty was attributed to the paint with which she besmeared her countenance, a notable instance being the death of Lady Coventry, whose husband had been wont to chase her round the dinner-table in his determined efforts to remove the deleterious compound from her face with his serviette. According to Walpole, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu used the cheapest white paint obtainable, and left it so long on her skin that it had literally to be scraped off. It may be inferred that these fine ladies rarely washed; but "the age was careless in that respect, personal cleanliness at a discount, and the essence pot consequently in great demand." We spoke just now of fans, which can, perhaps, be considered an article of dress as they are very often fastened to the person. There seems no doubt but that at first fans did not close, and were made of feathers like those still in use in the East from whence they are derived. Probably in the beginning, leaves were used as fans, and palm-leaf fans are still to be seen. Fans were in general use in the sixteenth century, and the folding one appeared in the next. Sometimes, as at the end of the eighteenth century, large green fans, called sunshades, were used out of doors in the same way as a modern parasol now is. There is another use of the fan still to be noted in China, namely, for blowing up a fire, and from this we no doubt get the expression of "fanning the flame." Painting apparently was not only practised by women, for male courtiers at the end of the sixteenth century occasionally coloured their faces. If we are to believe some of the writers in the newspapers of to-day, men of leisure are not a whit better nor less foolish now. Of masks as an ordinary everyday addition to costume we have no survivals, except in connection with some balls and an occasional burglary; but masks such as we see on the 5th of November will remind us, like the face of the clown, of primitive face-painting, and also of the many curious head-dresses and masks which savages wear at certain ceremonies and dances. It is easy to produce grotesque effects by means of masks, and the discomfort that would arise from the paint is thereby avoided. The practice of wearing masks, and indeed dominoes, by private individuals came from Venice. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries masks made of black satin and velvet often formed part of the toilet of society ladies. At one period the wearing of them was restricted to the times of carnivals; at another, the nobility alone were allowed to use them, and now we only see masks at fancy-dress balls. Of the unwritten laws that rule the wearing of the mask, Mrs. Aria says[44]: "Whether worn privately or in public, its disguise has at all times and in all countries been respected as inviolably sacred. To the masked the greatest extravagance of language and gesture is permitted. He is allowed to indulge in acrid personalities and proclaim scathing truths, which, even if addressed to the monarch himself, go unrebuked. To strike a mask is a serious offence, while in no class of society, however degraded, would any one dare to unmask a woman. Yet another prerogative entitles the masked to invite any woman present, whether masked or not, to dance with him, etiquette decreeing that the queen of the land may not claim exemption from this rule. Dear to romance is the masked highwayman, who flourished until the advent of railways robbed him of his occupation; and a grim figure is ever the masked headsman." XXIX STAGE COSTUMES THE HARLEQUIN, PANTALOON, COLUMBINE, AND ACROBAT While Punch has left the stage and is now a puppet, some of his coadjutors are with us, for the harlequinade is still introduced into many pantomimes at Christmas, and special plays have been written in which these characters appear. The harlequin, who gives his name to what is now an interlude, was some thousand or two years back one of the important personages in the old Italian comedy which gave us Punch, and which we have already mentioned in a previous chapter. Harlequin was versatile and many-sided, and he still keeps up his slap-dash character. It is true that harlequin does not now speak, any more than does the columbine, and we may trace the evolution of the Italian Mimi, or buffoons, into the Pantomimi, who were tragic actors. They, by means of certain well-understood signs and gestures, were able to play tragedies in the open air under conditions which would have prevented their voices from being heard. In some theatres also the actors were not allowed by the authorities to speak. Originally the harlequin was a mime. He had a shaven head, a sooty face--for the mimi blackened their faces like our modern niggers--he had flat, unshod feet and a patched coat of many colours which he derived from the ancient peasants of Italy. Some have seen in the wand of the harlequin a descendant of the rod of Mercury, and have sought for a prototype of the modern pantomime in pagan mysteries. In England, however, we have turned the harlequin into a magician, and his wand is perhaps the gilt wooden sword which belonged to the clown or fool all the world over. Now also we have the character in what Mr. Calthrop terms his tight-fitting lizard-skin of flashing golden colours, for the patches on his rags have now given place to a symmetrical pattern (see Figure 158). There have been many celebrated harlequins who have devoted their lives to the development of this character, and there is an interesting case which Disraeli[45] gives in his "Curiosities of Literature," in which, as part of a quit-rent or feudal tenure--whenever the Abbot of Figéac entered this town--the Lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, with one of his legs bare, has to lead the prelate's horse by its bridle to the abbey. [Illustration: FIG. 158.--The dress of a modern harlequin.] In the clown and the pantaloon we still have the dress of Elizabethan times (see Figures 157 and 159). The paint on the former, as we have seen, will carry us back to times of remote antiquity. His hat is of a shape well known in early English history, and he himself is English all through. The pantaloon, again, is Italian. Both he and his Venetian breeches get their names from St. Pantaleone, one of the patron saints of Venice. Pantaleone was by no means an uncommon patronymic in that place. In order to reconcile the statements that the dress of the pantaloon is Elizabethan and his nether garments are Venetian, which might appear to be mutually contradictory, it must be pointed out that the Venetian breeches had been introduced in the days of earlier Tudors, and were still in vogue when Elizabeth was on the throne. The pantaloon's red and green colours and his red heels are also, as we have indicated, Elizabethan. [Illustration: FIG. 159.--A pantaloon, showing an Elizabethan costume of which Venetian breeches form part.] The columbine, who, like the harlequin, does not speak, and so keeps up the pantomime character, wears the ballet dress of early Victorian times. Originally she was a female harlequin, or harlequinne, and her dress of spangles is still sometimes used in fancy-dress dances. Of the other characters, who once assisted those that we have described, we have none left. Scaramouch persisted for some time, and was, like the harlequin and columbine, a pantomimist. He has gone even from Punch and Judy, though the doctor still remains. Though not strictly a theatrical performer, but seen in the circus, the music-hall, and still also as a wandering mountebank, we have the acrobat. His dress is simple and eminently suitable for the work which he has to do; it consists of a vest, of very short trunk hose or breeches, and long Florentine hose, or, as we now call them, tights. Though such a costume was worn in the reigns of the early Tudors, in detail the breeches are very much like those which were worn by Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Doubtless also in the tights which are so familiar on the stage we have a survival similar to that seen in the acrobat, the clown, and the knights of the older orders. XXX NIGHTDRESS BANDS ON NIGHTGOWNS--NIGHTCAPS--NIGHT ATTIRE WORN IN THE STREET Going to bed can hardly be called a ceremony; but the dress in which the bulk of humanity now sleeps can claim to be a special one. There are, of course, many people, who are not mere casual tramps, who sleep in their everyday clothes. Drovers who have to go to out-of-the-way places with cattle, where they can never be sure of getting a lodging, will sleep possibly after merely removing their outer coat, and it stands to reason that men engaged in this business can hardly be bothered to carry luggage with them. Any survivals that we may have to deal with in the case of our airiest dresses will not take us very far back into history, because our ancestors, from all accounts, went to an extreme which is the opposite to that which we have just been mentioning, and instead of keeping on all their clothes at night, they took them all off and put on no others. Mr. Calthrop[46] graphically describes a scene which he supposes to be taking place in the reign of William Rufus. A lady is disturbed while getting ready for bed by a cry of "sanctuary," and watches from her window until the fugitive is let into the church by the monks. In concluding his story, Mr. Calthrop says, "The night is cold. The lady pulls a curtain across the window, and then, stripping herself of her chemise, she gets into bed." A man's nightshirt is severe in cut like that which he wears in the day, and the sides are slit up in both garments as they are in the dalmatic and the tunics worn by the Anglo-Saxons, which were like a day shirt, longer behind than in front. A survival of the latter as an outer garment is to be seen in the short smocks worn by labourers who dig drains and do similar work. The lady's nightgown may be elegantly ornamented with lace in the same way as are the linen garments which she wears in the daytime; but very often we find a large collar edged with lace, which recalls the falling band which we have had so often to mention. (See Figure 160.) To a great extent sleeping suits of a coat and trousers, which are known by the name of pyjamas, have taken the place of the man's nightshirt. These have the merit of making a man look more presentable if called up on an emergency. We shall see, if we contrast male and female fashions, that it has always been customary for the costume of women to follow that of men, though most ladies draw the line at adopting trousers. We have heard, however, of one young lady at least who does by night what she will not do by day, for she has given up her nightgown in favour of pyjamas. [Illustration: FIG. 160.--The bands that survive on a lady's nightdress.] [Illustration: FIG. 161.--A woman's nightcap, still worn in Wiltshire.] Here and there we find that nightcaps are still worn. That belonging to an old lady, which we figure (see Figure 161), came from the village of Bishopstone in Wiltshire, where no fewer than twelve old ladies, all of them over eighty, still wear such a head-dress at night. Nightcaps were worn by men in the time of the Tudors, and that of Queen Elizabeth, as is shown by the following extract from a bill of 1547: "Pd. for two nyght caps of vellvet for them, 8s. 0d."[47] They were very elaborately embroidered at this time, and in Mary's reign were mentioned in a sumptuary law. Old men still wear nightcaps, and the one we figure was used until lately at South Stoke in Oxfordshire. It is of the familiar style that we associate with such a head-dress, and has a tassel on the top. (See Figure 162.) [Illustration: FIG. 162.--A man's nightcap, from Oxfordshire.] In the time of Queen Anne ladies wore their nightdresses, or night-rails as they were called, in the streets, and the fashion seems to have been in vogue at later times, though every means were taken to try and abolish it. It was not until a murderess was persuaded to appear at her execution in a bedgown that the fad was relinquished. XXXI THE DRESS OF ANIMALS NATURAL REPRESENTATIVES OF CLOTHES--HORSE TRAPPINGS--AMULETS ON HARNESS--DOGS' DISGUISES--FASHIONS IN THE FORM OF ANIMALS Here and there in the animal kingdom we find that creatures protect themselves from injury by building up cases and coverings from extraneous materials, and these may very well be compared with the armour and clothes of mankind. Protection may be gained by merely securing something ready made to take the place of a coat, as is done in the case of the hermit-crab or "soldier," which covers itself with the shell of some dead mollusc. The caddis worm, or larva of the caddis fly, builds its home of sticks and stones or twigs, and thereby not only preserves its soft body from injury, but also harmonizes with its surroundings, in the same way as does the soldier on active service in time of war. To gain protection, also, some molluscs when building their shells introduce stones and other shells and corals into the edifice, so that they become indistinguishable from the sea-bottom on which they lie. Many caterpillars cover themselves with bits of leaves, and even with the help of silk make spiral shells that might easily be mistaken for those of snails. The silk also, from which many of our gay clothes are made, is spun by the silkworm, which, like the larva of many moths, produces it in order to protect the chrysalis while it rests. We are occupied here, however, with the coverings of animals that they owe to man, and first and foremost of those creatures which have come in for his polite attentions is the horse. We may recall the armour by which the chargers of the old knights were protected, and the trappings or emblazoned coverings that were put over this in the same way as the surcoat was made to cover the armour of the knights. (See Figure 84.) The trappings were often made of coloured satin, and were embroidered with gold and silver, and at the exhibition held by the Burlington Fine Arts Society in 1905 a chasuble of red velvet was shown, embroidered with the arms of England in gold, which was apparently made from a horse-trapper of the fourteenth century. Figure 84 well shows how the horses carried the armorial bearings of their masters. In the ostrich-feather ornaments and the velvet trappings of modern funeral horses, we still have some remnants of the days of chivalry. To-day horse clothing, though not intended to be of an ornamental character, we should imagine, is still often decorated with a monogram of the horse's owner. Perhaps one of the most interesting survivals in connection with horses is to be found in the brasses which decorate those used for carts and waggons. Dr. Plowright[48] has shown that many of these ornaments, which are really amulets put on to the harness with a view to protecting the horses against the evil eye, are of Moorish origin. He contrasts their style with the ornamental details shown in the Alhambra, and he figures a number which take the form of a crescent, or a crescent enclosing an eight-rayed star, and others in which the ornament shows eyes and eyebrows conventionalized. In other cases we get the fleur-de-lys treated in an arabesque way, the escallop shell and the mystic interlaced triangles (which were considered the talisman of talismans, and are known as the seal of Solomon or the shield of David), with a crescent in the centre. Miss Lina Eckenstein[49] figures many other horse brasses which can be compared with those worn by Roman cart-horses. Among them is the crescent, which was also worn by women carved in ivory, and by certain senators as ornaments on their shoes. The crescent is made from a thin plate of metal, and is worn by children on the west coast of India, with the points upwards, as a protection against the evil eye, and gold ornaments of similar shape are among those which were worn in ancient Peru. The moon, from times of remote antiquity, has been represented by a ring for the full moon and a half-ring or sickle for the crescent. Miss Eckenstein does not, however, carry the origin of the horse amulets back to the stone stage of civilization, but she thinks that the crescent represents two boars' tusks joined together by a thong, and the horse-amulet now worn in Italy shows the thinness and sharpness of curve that would be evident in one which was made out of boars' tusks. [Illustration: FIG. 163.--An English horse amulet in the form of a crescent. The flat places near the tips of the horns are evidence that the form is derived from two boars' tusks.] We may point out that in some English crescents the hollows which one tusk makes by wearing against its fellow are represented by little flat places on the horns of the crescent near their tips. (See Figure 163.) The brasses seen in England to-day are worn on the face-plate, breast-plate, and martingale. On grand occasions, such as May Day celebrations, and the cart-horse parade of Whit Monday, brasses are specially put on, though there is a tendency now for them to be stamped out of thin metal instead of being cast, with the result that they soon wear out. German horses wear the crescent on a strap which dangles below the right ear. The English crescent from harness will be found to match those which are represented on the horses on Trajan's column and other monuments. The same design is to be seen also on the harness of camels and elephants. The most important symbol besides the moon is that of the sun, which is worn on the top of the head between the ears. Heraldic brasses are not uncommon, and the heart-shaped amulet is also seen; it is possible, too, that this form may be connected with that of the flint arrows, which we have already mentioned as being worn as amulets. In Egypt, an amulet hung on a cow is said to protect the woman who owns it, and Miss Eckenstein suggests a similar origin in the case of the heart worn by horses. A brass showing a horse rampant, came from the estate of the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel, and it will be seen on looking at the arms of the nobleman in question that this device forms one of the supporters of his shield. In prehistoric Egypt the slate palettes on which malachite was ground for face painting were often in the form of two birds, with their bodies put back to back, and their heads fully shown, and when this form degenerates it becomes a kind of heart-shaped shield. Professor Petrie has pointed out that when this decoration is used, as on coffins and elsewhere, it is often thought to be merely a shield. Possibly the heart-shaped amulet may have some connection with this. [Illustration: FIG. 164.--An English horse amulet showing both the heart and the sun.] An amulet found by Professor Vellucci in Umbria consisted of an arrow-head sewn upon a piece of scarlet cloth, which was of a heart shape, and was intended doubtless to emphasize the heart significance. Another horse amulet, obtained by Miss Eckenstein from Sicily, also consists of a piece of scarlet cloth cut into the shape of a heart and decorated with tinsel. An English horse brass seen in Figure 164 shows both the heart and the sun. While on the subject of horses, one might allude to the wisps of straw which are twisted in the mane and tail of cart-horses when they are for sale at markets and fairs. Horses were sacrificed in the old days; and as the slaying of domestic animals was supposed to secure fruitfulness, the horse became identified as a corn spirit, and the killing of horses formed a necessary incident of the harvest. The deity Demeter took upon himself the semblance of a mare, and the word mare is applied in the Midlands to the last uncut ears of corn, at which the sickles are thrown in order to bring them down. It is possible that the wisps of straw worn by horses are connected with these ideas. A very curious and interesting custom is represented on the trappings of the horses ridden by the officers of the 10th Hussars. These trappings are ornamented on full-dress occasions with cowry shells; and to find a parallel to this we have to go to the East, where the head-stalls of the camels and mules are covered with the shells, while round their necks and those of donkeys there may hang an ornament or bell on a band which is similarly decorated. It will be noted that there is a pendant from the head of the Hussar horse which resembles that of the mule of the Holy Land. There is no doubt but that originally these ornaments were really amulets, and it is said that they are a survival of ancient phallic worship. (See Figures 165-7.) Cowry shells were once generally used by the Hussars, and were revived in the case of the 10th Hussars in connection with service in India. [Illustration: FIG. 165.--The cowry-shell ornaments on the head of an officer's charger of the 10th Hussars. The pendant recalls that on mules in Palestine.] Toby, as we have seen, is decorated with an Elizabethan ruff, but the wearing of collars and bells by pet animals is a remnant of a very old custom, and on early mediæval brasses in this country, dogs are often seen decorated with collars--sometimes bearing their actual names--and with bells. Now the wearing of a collar is enforced by law as a means of identification. All dogs found without collars may be considered as strays, and the regulation followed, as is well known, upon the muzzling order by which hydrophobia was practically stamped out. [Illustration: FIG. 166.--Cowry shells on an Eastern mule, hanging like the pendant of the 10th Hussars.] [Illustration: FIG. 167.--Cowry shells on the head-stall of a camel from Palestine.] Mr. C. J. Cornish[50] once considered the subject of animals' clothes, and made some interesting remarks on horses' hats and sun-bonnets. He described the following sight, met with in Kensington Gore: First came a costermonger with his horse duly "hatted" and the hat trimmed with ribbon; next came a lady wearing a hat, in a victoria. Her horse also had a hat, and both hats had pink flowers in them. In Holland, cows wear rain-proof jackets all the winter, and coats for show cattle are quite the fashion in England. Mr. Cornish says that a really smart Jersey cow would not like to be seen at a show without her luggage--"a chest containing, not only her sleeping jacket, but her brushes and combs, cosmetics and horn protectors. She puts on, or has put on, a smarter jacket in the daytime if she has to stand in a draughty place; if she is not sleeping out it does not so much matter. There are many ladies who would almost go without a jacket themselves rather than see their best animals go to a show without proper clothes." In the North lambs are provided with waterproof coats when going on to the hills. These garments are called "brats," and the name has been transferred not only to the young sheep themselves, but also to human babies. We are all familiar with the clothes which monkeys wear when they go about with organs, and the big apes which are exhibited at shows are sometimes even clothed in the dress suit of conventionality. Johanna, the chimpanzee which was at Barnum's exhibition, looked very effective in her petticoats, and the penguins at the Zoo, when performing tricks, wear coats, while animal actors are often dressed to suit their parts. There is one case at least in which animals are disguised by dressing them up. There was a duck-decoy dog which was known to Mr. Cornish, which, in the first instance, grew as much like a fox as it was possible for a dog to be. This proved exceedingly attractive to the ducks, which seem to have an irresistible impulse to swim after a fox in order to see what he is about. In a short time, however, they get used to a particular dog, and their curiosity dies away. Then the dog's master supplies him with a disguise in the shape of a jacket made of sheepskin. Furthermore, when this palls a rough woollen jacket of a black colour is brought into requisition, and the dog apparently knows the meaning of the whole performance. In other cases the disguise of a decoy dog takes the shape of a foxskin with its brush. Racing dogs, prize dogs, and pet dogs also have their coats, and we have heard even of bracelets for poodles, while there are fashions which regulate the way in which the hair of these dogs should be cut. Just as men and women deform themselves, so they mutilate their animals by the clipping of their ears and the shortening of their tails--practices which are worse than the dubbing of the birds' combs in the old days of cock-fighting, for the infliction of one slight injury probably prevented many. This deforming of animals is a savage custom, for Hottentots twist the horns of their cattle and sheep, while a number of horns are produced in Africa by splitting the budding horns of the young animals. Though not obviously causing any deformity, there is one fashion which, though condemned by most people, is still followed by otherwise cultured and humane people. We refer to the bearing-rein with which horses' heads are kept in unnatural, uncomfortable, and constrained positions. If, however, we consider animal fashions as a whole, and bring under discussion the colours and peculiarities of the fur or feathers that cover their bodies, we shall find that men from quite early times have amused themselves with producing all manner of curious and striking appearances. The fact is, that the ordinary conditions and dangers of life in the open, which would soon eliminate any creatures out of harmony with their surroundings, do not act in the case of domesticated animals very much; and this has been a help. We have, therefore, white rats, piebald mice, gold fishes--some even with several tails--yellow canaries, frizzled bantams, hairless dogs, hornless cattle, booted bantams, and top-knotted fowls, as well as hosts of patterns and forms that are hardly to be numbered. There is an adage that "like produces like," but the student of heredity has recently become aware of the fact that animals of a certain colour may not always produce offspring which resemble them in this respect; but that in order to get the tint required for show purposes, parents of some particular but unfashionable colour should be chosen. The colour of animals is taken into consideration in connection with ceremonies. White elephants have to be treated as if they were gods, and proverbially cost much to keep. Black horses are usually used at funerals; white or grey horses, which are much decorated with the badges and insignia of the regiments, carry the kettledrums of the cavalry. The Scots Greys take their name from their horses, which are all grey, like those with which, it is said, they were supplied by William III in Flanders. Spotted Dalmatian hounds are those which are chosen to run by the side of carriages, while circus horses exhibit much variety of colouring. Whips are perhaps a little beside the subject, though there are fashions with regard to them. Not long ago it was customary for the whip stick in connection with a smart turn-out to have a bend in it. In various parts of the East the camel driver carries in a graceful manner a red forked stick, and one of this form was used as a sceptre in ancient Egypt from 5000 B.C. downwards, so that we meet with a very interesting, if humble, survival of what was once a royal ornament. XXXII COLOUR IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR--INSTINCTIVE LOVE OF BRIGHT HUES--DESIRABILITY OF COLOURED CLOTHES AND GAY SCENES--COLOUR AND COMPLEXION It has been apparent throughout this book, as it is in everyday life, that colour plays a tremendous part. Not only has it often a great significance, but its presence or absence must also have a considerable effect upon the minds of the people at large. One cannot help thinking that if women were to dress as a whole in the same quiet, or let us say solemn, tints which are characteristic of men in their everyday life, how much we should lose. Yet that there is a craving for bright colours is shown in every direction, and that they are attractive to those who do not themselves have an opportunity of wearing them is also obvious. The High Church clergy in this country make use of the coloured vestments that had developed in the Roman Catholic Church previous to the Reformation, and which have been proclaimed illegal. The new universities vie with the older seats of learning in the colours which they choose for gowns and hoods. It is merely a question of expense which prevents the fancy-dress dance from being more common than it is. The pageants which have been held in various parts of this country, and the profits which have been made in many cases, bear out what we have said. Men, as shown by the red coats which they don for hunting and golfing, the colours in which they ride steeplechases or play hockey, or the dresses in which they bathe, seek as far as possible during their leisure hour pursuits to go back to bright array. Plays also are popular which are cast in the times when picturesque attire flourished or which borrow it from Oriental countries. The significance of colour is exceedingly far reaching. The ordinary liveries of Royalty in this country are red; the red shirt of the followers of Garibaldi, the red cap of Liberty in the French Revolution, the red rose of Lancaster, call to mind great struggles. The platelayer, it is said, is instructed to wear a red tie so that on emergency it may be used as a danger signal. A red ribbon worn in the hair of a girl in some places on the Continent shows that she is engaged to be married, and it is with a red rag that the chulos in the bull fight enrage the bull. The term "born in the purple" alludes to this colour having been that adopted by emperors and kings in the past. Yellow is a favourite colour with gipsies; the women wear yellow kerchiefs and yellow beads, while the men favour yellow neckties. Mr. Yoxall[51] points out that this colour was worn by mediæval Jews, and had a contemptuous or degrading significance. We have seen that yellow has been chosen as a mourning colour in Oriental countries, and possibly it was adopted on some particular occasion by gipsies like the black worms that we have mentioned in the lace of military uniforms, and has never been entirely left off since. Among savages, yellow comes next in popularity to red, and it is said that young children are also fond of red, but are inclined to prefer yellow. The latter colour is not so stimulating as red, and this is well shown by the fact that the red light used in photographic works was found to cause so much mental irritation on the part of the workers that it has been abandoned in many cases in favour of orange. As regards the preference of older persons, it has been found that schoolgirls are more precocious than boys in the discrimination of colours, and never prefer orange to any other colour, yet they choose yellow rather than green, and usually than violet, but never prefer it to red or blue. As age goes on, male students shift their liking towards the violet end of the spectrum which is the favourite one with men, while women keep to the red. Blue is associated in this country with the boat race held between representatives of the two old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and blue is usually taken to represent the Liberal side in political elections. The blue blouse of the butcher is characteristic, and, as we have found, is a still better instance of the survival of a trade costume than that seen in the case of servants. The colour, it is said, was chosen, as blood stains are not so noticeable upon it as upon other tints. A black habit is that which the clergy adopt when not engaged in religious duties, while white has for centuries been used by them when conducting services. The same two colours, if we can so call them, are to be found in mourning, and to them a man is now restricted when he appears in ordinary Court or evening dress. The use of colour merely as a distinguishing mark without any deeper origin or special significance is so general that we shall touch upon it, and recall one or two instances with which we have previously met. The gorgeous dresses of the Masons and the bright green scarfs of their humbler brethren, the Foresters, are further evidences of the love which civilized man still retains of dressing himself up. It is only but little less strongly developed apparently in him than it is in his children and in savage people. We pointed out that red, although a special character of the British Army, is very far from being the universal colour of the uniform. We have had to deal with blue, buff, white, and black among the other colours that are to be seen adorning the bodies of our soldiers. The colours of heraldry no longer appear on our persons, except when we wear favours such as ribbons of red, white, and blue that come from national flags, and here we may recall that the standards of our regiments are called their "colours," and illustrate not only regimental but national history. The part that colour plays in the hoods and gowns of academical dress has on more than one occasion occupied our attention. Various coloured veils serve to differentiate the sisters of a religious order, while the ribbons and mantles of the knightly orders serve a similar purpose. It seems a great pity that at the present day the chapters or meetings of these Orders are seldom if ever held, and it would surely be interesting and useful, as well as enlivening, for certain occasions to be created on which the public might have an opportunity of seeing more of the dresses which have been handed down to our own times. It is true that the King has of recent years opened Parliament in person, and glimpses may have been had of him in his state robes by a privileged few, but surely some opportunity should be found of having more pageants which are real and where there is no need for any make-believe. Besides having the advantages which we have urged would accrue from the bringing of a little more colour into our lives, such meetings would also have a practical result, and be exceedingly good for trade. It is obvious that certain costumes, particularly the gay peasant dresses of the Continent, suit the style, complexion, and colouring of those who wear them. In races like our own, where we have all kinds of stages between the very fair blonde and the very dark brunette, the question of the choice of colours from an artistic point of view is important. There is also the question of surroundings to be considered, though nowadays it is not every one who can afford the time, as the late Mrs. Haweis did, to visit the rooms in which she was invited to spend an evening, so that the colours of her costume might be arranged to harmonize with her temporary surroundings. XXXIII PATTERNS ANCIENT DESIGNS--CHECKS AND TARTANS--PARTI-COLOURED CLOTHES--EVOLUTION OF ORNAMENTATION The subject of patterns is a very wide one, and we shall content ourselves with mentioning a few to show how these have survived. When speaking of studs, we had occasion to mention the swastika or fylfot, which is probably the earliest known symbol. It is the forerunner of the cross, and it occurs on ecclesiastical vestments as well as civil clothes, and the well-known key pattern was derived from it. On Plate VII, Figure F, it may be seen on the shoulder of the Romano-Egyptian man, and its use seems to be almost universal. The pine pattern which we see on shawls is of Eastern origin, and it is said that it originally was taken from a map of some rivers in Cashmere. Checks and plaids are among the commonest of our present-day designs, and the Gauls and those of our forerunners, who flourished at the time of Cæsar, wore breeches of chequered patterns. In fact, the very name of breeches is derived from "breac," which means striped or spotted, and in Gaelic also signifies the trout, which is speckled. Usually the ancient breeches showed a number of colours, in which, according to Diodorus, red predominated. Queen Boadicea wore a tunic apparently of plaid, the colours of which had a mixture of blue, red, and yellow. The real shepherd's plaid of Scotland is of a plainer character, being merely black and white, but it is in the special tartans of the Scotch clans that we find the system of coloured lines and squares carried to great perfection. These tartans, as we may judge, date back to times of which we have no record, but they have been used continuously in historic times. In the accounts of King James III of Scotland, in 1471, there are several entries with regard to money spent on tartans. The tartans, of course, were a distinguishing mark of the various Scottish clans, but sometimes, when attempts have been made to identify the patterns, confusion has arisen owing to the fact that many clans had more than one tartan; in fact, there may be the common clan tartan; that which was worn only by the chief and his heir; a dress tartan; a fourth for hunting, and a fifth for mourning. For instance, while the dress tartan of the MacPhersons consists chiefly of black and white, with thin lines of red and yellow, the hunting tartan of the same clan is black and buff, with lines of blue and red. Similarly, in the Royal Stuart tartans, we find that the ordinary Royal Stuart has large red squares, the hunting tartan is mostly green and blue, while the dress Stuart has a large amount of white in its composition. There was, of course, a wonderful variety in colours, and it is interesting to note that all the dyes required were obtained from common native plants. In England, after the Norman Conquest, there seems to have been little pattern used up to the time of Henry II, when diaper began to appear. Just as damask takes its name from Damascus, so diaper originally was derived from D'Ypres, meaning "of Ypres," a town which was noted for rich stuffs and fine linen. In Edward II's time pied cloth and parti-coloured silks came into vogue, while costumes of a parti-coloured character, which developed in the following reign to such an extent, were seen for the first time. Sometimes the whole dress would be symmetrically divided, so that half was of one colour and half of another. Again, the clothes would be striped in various directions, or one would find the right arm and left leg coloured blue, while the other two limbs were red. We get something of the same kind of ornamentation nowadays, as already noticed, in the dress of jockeys and the colours of athletic clubs. In studying decorative patterns, the way in which some natural object has often become conventionalized is very interesting to trace, and if this is so in the case of art of civilized people, it is still more true of savage decoration. Our object is not, however, to deal with the evolution of ornamentation pure and simple, though we commend its study to our readers. Turning to the Jews for a moment, we may recall that part of the adornment of the High Priests consisted of pomegranates and bells. The connection does not seem at all obvious, and Mrs. Finn has suggested that the bells are probably the flowers of the pomegranate which have been conventionalized. XXXIV IMPRESSIONS TO BE GAINED FROM DRESS CLUES FROM CLOTHES--INDIVIDUALITY NOT DISGUISED BY THEM--MODERN DRESS OF OTHER COUNTRIES--SIGNIFICANCE OF CLOTHES If we turn our attention once more to clothes and their effect upon the outsider, there are questions to consider with regard to what may be judged from dress. First of all, as to the matter of social status, it must be confessed that it is very much more difficult nowadays than it was years ago to make any pronouncements from clothes, though it must be pointed out that there is a way of wearing clothes, quite irrespective of their kind, that will help us considerably in making a judgment. The reason for the levelling up or down as the case may be, is due, of course, to the standard of luxury having been raised and the price of materials for clothing having been lowered. As regards the determination of the profession of the wearer from his or her dress, it must be said that often we remain quite at a loss in the matter. Bearing and expression and general action may again afford a clue. Characteristic costumes are now rare. We can tell the cleric as a rule, though some, especially those who have belonged to some other profession previously, will not adopt the collarless coat of black, the choker, or the white tie. Servants' liveries may be left out of consideration here, but the man that has to do with horses proverbially looks "horsey." To the list of uniforms to which we are accustomed there has been added of recent years that of the hospital nurse. The garb of various sisterhoods still catches our eye, and there are certain points which may help us occasionally in identifying a doctor, a lawyer, a schoolmaster, and an actor. According to a recent article by a detective in one of the daily papers,[52] the characteristics and individuality of a man will show through his clothes, and the writer alluded to, suggests the putting of a clergyman into a soldier's or a sailor's uniform, or again, the dressing of a valet in his master's clothes. "He will look quite different. He will give a fresh character to the clothes, and you will realize at once that he is a second-hand copy." Mr. Chevasse says that if you walk down Oxford Street, Piccadilly, or through the City, you may pick out the ex-army officer, in his mufti tweed, for his instinct for dress is so ingrained that it is easy to recognize him. Mr. Chevasse would tell the fashionable physician from the following signs. His frock coat, scrupulously cut, his silk hat correctly quiet, which fit in with his sleek manners and the sang-froid of his superior knowledge. The dress dummy is another type--the man with the airs of a peacock, whose every article of dress is meant to attract attention. Of the actor whom one meets in the Strand, it is said that the odds and ends which he wears are typical of the parts he plays, but that his real individual character is not disguised as sometimes he might wish it to be. In similar fashion we are given the points of the modern solicitor, of whom there are, we are told, two classes. The first type is dressed to exhale prosperity, and to convince the litigant that he is a safe man, but the character of his waistcoat will tell you more often than not that he robs Peter to pay Paul. The dress of other solicitors beams out sincerity, truth, reliability; the cloth is good and plain, and is well fitted to inspire trust and confidence. At the present time so many visitors from other countries, who are sojourning here for a while or have come to stay, are to be seen in our streets, that it may be of interest to see what the Editor of the _Tailor and Cutter_[53] has to say upon the subject of their dress, or so far as that of the men goes. He says that, as a rule, in the case of the members of the aristocracy of all nations, their garments give the impression of having been made in London, and are free from the peculiarities which characterize those of other countries. Generally speaking, however, it is not difficult to tell the nationality of a man by his clothes. The American's garments are usually made two sizes too large for him. The collar of his coat is very narrow, and the shoulders and back, on the other hand, exceedingly wide. His jackets are often extremely long, his trousers are peg-tops, finished with raised seams. In some ways the German is a modified American, though often there is to be found a seam up the front of his coat from the waist, as he likes plenty of room about his chest, of which he makes much. While the American, however, often has his coat finished in some extraordinary way which he fancies to be original, there is a lack of personality about the German, and the uniformity of his garments would appear to be the result of his military training. The American likes a lounge suit, and the German the same, or a morning coat, while the Frenchman favours the latter or a frock coat, which he has finished off with as much ornamentation as possible in the way of silk facings, braided edges, and fantastic flaps. His garments are close-fitting, and the waist is emphasized. The Spaniard is like the Frenchman with modifications, for his garments are tasteful and neat, with few peculiarities. In warm weather he wears no vest, and his jackets are close-fitting and finished with a low roll. In Austrian and Hungarian clothes French and German ideas seem to be skilfully blended, while Italian dress has more of the French than of the German characters. Norwegians and Danes are like Englishmen, though there is perhaps a little more preciseness and stiffness about their clothes. The colonial has no desire for show, and his tweed lounge suit is cut for comfort and made up for strength. The impressions to be gained from dress that we have hitherto mentioned in this chapter are chiefly those which are unintentionally given to us by their wearers. The significances which it is meant that clothes should bear are still most numerous and important. To-day, on ordinary occasions, rank is not shown by any special dress, which those in high stations themselves wear, though the case of their servants is different. In earlier times in our history, especially under the earlier Tudors, rank was indicated in civilian dress. Now the frock coat worn by King and Peer is considered just as necessary in many businesses, and is characteristic of the shop-walker. Men of assured position can even afford to dress badly, though the poor man cannot. Here and there we have met with survivals of class costumes (see pages 150 and 308), and to these we may add that of the costermongers, for in the dress of both men and women there are peculiarities which single them out. In the same way we find remnants here and there of special dresses that are characteristic of trades. The blue blouse of the butcher, the white clothes of the butterman or man cook, and the white cap of the latter are cases in point; and in connection with certain duties and modern manufactures we have special dresses. We might allude to the overalls of furriers, feather merchants, and stationers. Divers, sewage men, and miners have special dresses, and boiler cleaners have a curious dress of coat and trousers made in one, which recalls one form of the military tunic used by the Norman soldiers, which sometimes ended in closely fitting trousers. It was first drawn on the legs, and the arms were then put through the sleeves. Such combination garments are shown in contemporary drawings, and it has been questioned whether these were really made in one piece, but the artist, though he might not indicate with certainty the openings through which they were put on, is hardly likely to have left out the lines which would have made clear a division at the waist. At the present time in England there are very little differences in the costume of single and married women, though it was once compulsory for them to dress differently. The remains, however, of the custom are to be found in plenty in foreign countries. In many professions rank is indicated by the dress or its ornamentations. In the Army and Navy, the Church, the legal profession, such points are obvious. We have had occasion to deal with academical costume, and in the knightly orders the same holds good. Just as an undergraduate has a stuff gown, while a graduate may have a silk one, a Proctor is given velvet sleeves and the Chancellor of the University an embroidered gown and train, so, for instance, in the order of Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knight of Grace has a stuff gown, the Knight of Justice a silk one, while the Grand Prior is habited in velvet. XXXV THE EFFECT OF CLOTHES UPON THE INDIVIDUAL THE ORIGIN OF STAYS--TIGHT LACING NO NEW THING--ITS EFFECTS--MR. HEATHER BIGG ON THE NEED FOR SUPPORT--THE IDEAL FOOT--SKULL DEFORMITIES--PADDING We have already seen (page 111) that the human form may be directly mutilated in connection with the wearing of ornaments and in order to produce scars or tattoo marks which are considered to be embellishments and often in a way take the place of clothes, in so much as they do away with the appearance of nakedness. Now we may consider the distortions which are actually caused by clothes and bandages. There are cases for which, as a rule, we have to look outside the confines of Europe in which special contrivances are worn for a time in order to permanently alter the shape of some part of the body. Then, again, we meet among the races which claim to be most highly civilized instances which are not one whit less barbaric, but in which some article of dress is intended to cause or allowed to produce distortions, which satisfy the dictates of some particular fashion. It may be that an appearance of elegance or smartness is aimed at which may be the natural attribute of some persons and the envy of others, or a false idea of symmetry may lead to the same thing. The idea of altering bodily conformation is very ancient, but following our usual plan we will touch, first of all, on the modern examples of the custom before tracing the older ones. Not very long ago, and not for the first time in history, a great many women became imbued with the notion that there was nothing more desirable in this world than a wasp-like waist; and there are rumours, not to say signs, even in the twentieth century, when it might be supposed that we were getting more sensible, that a similar madness is again to overtake the gentler sex. Now we may discuss the apparatus which has been degraded into carrying out the painful duty of producing an attenuated figure. The name stays indicates exactly the original intention of the clothing to which it is applied; but unfortunately something more than mere support has been sought after at various times since the classic period to which the beginnings of stays may be traced. The pair of stays which together form the modern corset--sometimes ignorantly and by false analogy supplied with an extra "s"--is what is now used for purposes of compression. Proximately the idea is that of improving the figure, as it is called, and ensuring that it can be covered with garments of a fashionable shape. The ultimate results are about as bad as they can be, and it is not a question of opinion in this case, for the evil effects can be easily demonstrated. Sir William Flower[54] refers to the practice as being "one of the most remarkable of all the artificial deformities produced by adherents to a conventional standard, in defiance of the dictates of Nature and of reason." He points out that in the process of deforming the skull, to which we shall allude later, the latter being a solid case with tolerably uniform walls, its capacity remains the same whatever alterations may be made in the shape, but in the case of the body it is quite another matter. It can, in fact, be well likened to a cylinder of fixed length which is closed above and below by a framework of bone, and circular compression must actually diminish the area which has to be occupied by some of the most vital organs. He goes on to say that the framework of the chest is a most admirable and complex arrangement of numerous pieces of solid bone and elastic cartilage joined together in such a manner as to allow of expansion and contraction for the purposes of respiration--expansion and contraction which, if a function so essential to the preservation of life and health is to be performed in an efficient manner, should be perfectly free and capable of variation under different circumstances. So, indeed, it has been allowed to be in all parts of the world and in all ages with one exception. It was reserved for mediæval civilized Europe to have invented the system of squeezing together, rendering immobile, and actually deforming the most important part of the human frame; and the custom has been handed down to, and flourishes in, our day, notwithstanding all our professed admiration for the models of classical antiquity, and our awakened attention to the laws of health. The crusade against corsets is by no means confined to this country; even the educational authorities in America and on the continent of Europe have dealt pretty drastically with the matter. It is said, moreover, that the Queen of Portugal has brought before the ladies of her Court the evils of tight lacing, by means of radiographs. There have been other times when even laws have been made with regard to the corset, which, it appears, was first employed for a wrong purpose in mediæval times. It is said of the time of Henry III of France that the corset was no longer the simple basquine that was inoffensive enough at first.[55] The corps piqué which was endured by the fair ladies of the period was an instrument of torture. A hard solid mould into which the wearer had to be compressed, there to remain and suffer in spite of the splinters of wood that penetrated the flesh, took the skin off the waist, and made the ribs ride one over the other. Montaigne and Ambrose Paré are witnesses, and the latter must have known something about the question. It is not, perhaps, surprising that Charles IX and Henry III brought in stringent laws on the subject. We are told[56] that with Catherine de Medici's ascent to the throne the habit became compulsory. She gave her subjects no choice, and said that all women of good birth and breeding should wear corsets which would reduce their waists to the abnormal size of thirteen inches. In our country on various occasions lacing was carried to extremes, as in the time of Henry VIII. In Elizabeth's time, the forerunner of the busks was not fastened to the stays, but consisted of a piece of carved wood which was pushed down inside the bodice. (See Plate XI.) Some of the outer bodices in the times of the early Georges seem to be as hard and unyielding as if they were intended for armour. Tin stays were not unheard of in the days of the earlier colonists in America. [Illustration: WOODEN STAY BUSKS. THESE INCIDENTALLY SHOW SURVIVALS OF PRIMITIVE ORNAMENT. _From the "Reliquary," by kind permission of Messrs. Bembrose & Sons, Ltd._ _PLATE XI._] The craze for tight lacing once more made itself felt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and not many years before the end one heard from time to time of the cruelty that was practised at high-class schools for young ladies, where the girls were made to sleep in specially tight and rigid corsets. Although there is a tendency to abolish stays, it does not, of course, prove that on occasion they may not be of use. Mr. Heather Bigg, the well-known surgeon, who is a specialist in cases of spinal curvature, and who adopts mechanical means of treatment,[57] is in a position to offer an opinion on the use of corsets, as he uses special ones as precautionary means of support and where curvatures may threaten, as well as to be safeguards against relapse after the mechanical treatment of a curvature has been consummated. In one of his books he has much to offer in favour of the corset, and at the outset it may be well to say that Mr. Heather Bigg's remarks are mainly directed against the views of the practitioner who, from the treatment that he advises, is called a gymnastic practitioner, and who, according to Mr. Heather Bigg, goes further than attacking matters of treatment, and in order to popularize his own practice endeavours to entwine with it revolutions that shall extend even to the simplest garments. For instance, the gymnastic practitioner maintains that corsets are detrimental to health. Mr. Heather Bigg's opinions practically are those with which most sensible people would entirely agree. The arguments which he brings forward in favour of them are not, however, very conclusive, as we hope to show. Corsets, he says, are intended in their right and proper use simply to stay and support the body in its natural shape, and not to mould it into funny forms according to the vagaries of fashion. The women of classic times did not use them for this purpose. On the contrary, they had no reason to do so, as their flowing garments did not permit them to display the outlines of their figures; they therefore simply wore corsets because it had been found by centuries of experience that they were conducive to health and serviceable in exertion. His description of the original corset of Greece and Rome will show to what ancient form of stay the modern corset may be traced. The arrangements of the ancients consisted of three pieces, and these were worn either together or separately, as required. They consisted of supporting bands worn round the body in a way very similar to the "putties" worn for support round the legs by the present-day soldiery. The main and most useful portion of the corset was a zone, or loin band. Then there was the thoracic band, or strophion, intended to uphold the breasts and conserve the figure. And, lastly, there was the waistband, which filled up the space between the other two. It is from the conjunction of these triple bands that the modern corset has been evolved, as it is worn by women of every class throughout civilized Europe to-day. What was made before in three pieces is now simply manufactured in one. Now let us consider the reasons given by Mr. Heather Bigg as to why "women of all dominant and civilized races always wear, and with advantage have worn, some binder or corset"; and again, why the whole history of the world shows that extraneous support is beneficial. In the first place, Mr. Heather Bigg says that in primitive and aboriginal races that practically wear no clothes, the girls may be perfect in form when they arrive at their full growth, but that they are, as a rule, "hideous objects of disfigurement after their first child." The inference is that civilized women retain their beauty in later life owing to the fact that they have worn stays. On the other hand, the fact that the native girls lose their beauty must, according to the argument, be because they have not worn stays; but surely this can be compared with the fading of a flower or its changing colour after fertilization, and is rather due to the absence of any conditions or kind of selection which would tend to preserve the woman's youthfulness. Besides, we need go no farther than our own country to find cases where married women gradually lose their beauty, and the Welsh and Italian women proverbially age rapidly. The wearing of belts by navvies when they are doing heavy work is possibly a precautionary measure against strain, but it does not refer to the race as a whole, and one would take it that when it is said that Elijah girt his loins in order to run before the chariot of Ahab, it simply means that he fastened up his flowing garments. To the second question as to history showing that extraneous support is beneficial, Mr. Heather Bigg says that the answer is simple even if Darwinian. He may claim that the "if" saves him, though unintentionally, for in his argument he seems to ignore the main principles of evolution. He says, first of all, that it might just as well be asked why any clothing whatsoever should be found requisite by civilized mankind. He claims rightly, and so far he is in keeping with Darwinism, that man, according to his obvious mechanism and morphology, is a creature built on the quadruped pattern. The word is spelt "quadrupled," though presumably this is a printer's error; but he goes on to say that this building was done with the intent that his body should be horizontal instead of vertical. Of course, the body of the original quadruped was horizontal; but in the course of evolution such changes were made as enabled man to occupy an upright position. Mr. Heather Bigg talks as if it was an intentional act on the part of man when he says that he "managed to rear himself in a permanently erect position, and as he has chosen the upright position, so he has to experience some of the penalties attached to it." The state of affairs is this: man became perfectly well fitted for an upright position, and his internal organs were arranged quite properly for progress on two legs instead of four, although Mr. Heather Bigg claims to the contrary. What may be the case is, that natural selection no longer acts to keep man as perfectly constructed as he was, or to improve him, and some human beings may need support, owing to weakness or the undue development of their bust, just as those of us who suffer from short sight and bad teeth take advantage of eye-glasses and the skill of the dentist. We think it hardly time yet to say that all women need stays, any more than that we all need eye-glasses or should be provided with false teeth at a certain age. Summing up the matter, when human beings take up work for which their bodies were not specially evolved, or when they wish to do things which at one time all human beings could do, but which, through the cessation of the action of natural selection, they are not now able to do, then they want help. This would explain why our soldiers when marching in South Africa found puttees so useful, as Mr. Heather Bigg maintains. The case of dress brought forward by Mr. Heather Bigg is exactly a case in point. We have seen in the opening chapters of this book that man has lost his hairy covering, and, so far as cold climates are concerned, we must agree with Mr. Heather Bigg that it has been found by experience that clothing is necessary for healthful warmth. All the same, we should like to see some experiments tried to show whether even now it might not be quite possible to exist in this climate with little or no artificial covering. We do not agree at all with the statement that as man "has reared himself from four legs on to two, so he has found by similar experience that some sort of bandaged support is required in order to assist an abdominal mechanism that is inadequate for biped progression." In order to prove that the gymnastic practitioner is wrong when he says that corsets are injurious to health, Mr. Heather Bigg brings forward the results of experiments made by Professors Roy and Adami, which he says scientifically prove stays to be distinctly beneficial. These experiments were described at the British Association Meeting in 1888, under the title of "The Physiological Bearing of Waist-belts and Stays," and the effects of these contrivances were tried not only upon men, but upon animals. It was shown that a gentle compression of the abdomen caused a greater flow of blood to other parts of the body, and conduced in consequence to an increase of mental and muscular activity. The experimenters do not seem to have waited to see whether in the course of time these effects were or were not obtained at the expense of the digestive organs, but they concluded that they had directly explained "the beneficial and extensive use of some form or other of waist-belt by all nations that had passed beyond the stage of absolute barbarity." The theory has been advanced that stays are derived from swaddling clothes, and that the custom has survived in the case of women alone, for we may neglect the occasional use of such garments by men in the past at the present time, for, judging from advertisements in the papers, their use is not confined to the fair sex. There seems, however, little evidence in support of this theory, and inquiry from a lady who has lived a long time in Palestine has elicited the information that while swaddling clothes are still in use in the Holy Land, stays do not form a part of native dress. The other part of the body which nowadays appears to be deformed to the greatest extent is the foot. It seems to be considered absolutely necessary, if one is to appear elegant, for one's toes to be pointed in such a way that the apex of the angle is in the middle of the foot instead of on the inner side; and although the two points are probably unconnected, we might here mention the idea that in a perfect foot the second toe ought to be longer than the great toe. This would make the extreme end of the foot a little nearer the middle line, and in Art the second toe is represented as being the longest in accordance with the Greek canon. These proportions were copied from the Egyptian representations, and the original is probably to be found in the negroes, according to Sir William Flower. The latter points out that the longer our big toe is, the further we are removed from apes; and he found, too, that amongst hundreds of bare and therefore undeformed feet of children in Perthshire, which he examined, he was not able to find one in which the second toe was the longest. These children would, of course, belong to the lower classes, and it would be interesting to know whether the same thing holds good in higher social circles when the foot remains normal. It may be well to remember that Sir William Flower was a surgeon, for Mr. Heather Bigg, who tilts with the gymnastic practitioner once more on the subject of boots and stockings, expresses somewhat different ideas upon the question. He alludes to the two classes of people in the British Isles who habitually discard boots and stockings--the fisher-folk and factory girls in some of the large Scotch cities. He says that he scarcely likes to be ungallant about the latter, but commends the adult feet of both of these classes to the inspection of those who would draft their children into the "bare-footed brigade." He continues as follows: The truth is that the feet of those who have been unbooted till they have reached adult life are splayed and spread, large-jointed, and very generally deformed from all approach to the ideal foot as it is depicted by the greatest painters, or modelled by the greatest sculptors. We have seen that the ideal foot of the sculptors is probably not a true ideal from an evolutionary point of view, and there is no doubt but that the ideal foot would be the one produced under natural conditions in which we cannot include boots and stockings. We should take it, however, that the stones of the seashore and the floor of a factory are not the ideal surfaces on which to habitually tread. There is no doubt but that the deformities caused by shoes are often very great, and Sir William Flower sums up the matter in the following sentences:--"The English mother or nurse who thrusts the tender feet of a young child into stiff, unyielding, pointed shoes or boots, often regardless of the essential difference in form of right and left at a time when freedom is especially needed for their proper growth and development, is the exact counterpart of the Chinook Indian woman, applying her bandages and boards to the opposite end of her baby's body, only with considerably less excuse; for a distorted head apparently less affects health and comfort than cramped and misshapen feet, and was also esteemed of more vital importance to preferment in Chinook society. Any one who recollects the boots of the late Lord Palmerston will be reminded that a wide expanse of shoe leather is in this country, even during the prevalence of an opposite fashion, quite compatible with the attainment of the highest political and social eminence."[58] After all, it is generally what our eyes are accustomed to that we consider to be right and fitting. The broad-toed shoes that were adopted in the reign of Henry VIII look clumsy to us; but so did the pneumatic tyres of bicycles after we had got used to the look of the narrow solid ones. It is not so much the wearing of boots of course, but the kind of boots that has to be considered. The high heels of shoes add to the evil effects of the pointed toes, and a copy of a drawing from an advertisement figured by Sir William Flower recalls strongly the stunted foot of a Chinese woman which the wearer of the shoe would be one of the first probably to anathematize. This brings us to the malformation which has been caused through many centuries in a country that can claim a good deal of civilization, and is produced by special bandages after a long and very painful course of treatment. There is very little evidence of alteration in the form of the head having been practised in this country, though one or two skulls have been found, and there is a tradition that the custom prevailed not very long ago in Norfolk. In France, however, it was well known until recent years, and even it may not have now become extinct. There are plenty of records in the works of early writers with regard to the practice, and some of the North-American Indians still follow the fashion of their fathers. The Chinook Indians flatten the skull between boards so that they get the name of Flat-heads, and other tribes produce an elongated skull by constructing bandages of deer hide. Deformation of the head seems to have little effect on the free-living American Indians, but the same statement does not hold good among Europeans. According to the reports of French physicians, they have traced all kinds of troubles to the practice. If we have little evidence of head-deforming in this country by means of compression, we meet occasionally with prehistoric skulls which have been trepanned, and have had inserted into them a small piece of extraneous bone. It is curious that such an operation could have been successfully made when there were probably no instruments of metal with which it could be done, and one might well ask what object could possibly have been in view, especially as the individual so treated had met with no accident that could have rendered the operation necessary. It appears, however, that the piece of bone was probably that of some dead relative, the idea being that the incorporation of it in the head of the young man would give him the qualities of the chief who had departed. It is this notion which probably led to cannibalism. When a brave warrior was slain, his conqueror thought that by eating a small piece of him he might add his adversary's prowess to his own, and no doubt when a respected relative died it was thought that his good qualities would pass to those who ate a portion of him. Besides the alterations that have been permanently made in the shape of the body, there are many curious instances where clothes themselves have been utilized for the purpose of apparently altering its shape. We have seen that Punch's curious figure is due to a costume, while the stuffed breeches adopted in the reign of James I, the great farthingale of Elizabeth's reign, the hooped petticoat of Queen Anne's, and the crinoline of the nineteenth century are instances of fashions that originated with or without apparent reasons. Just as Mrs. Aria discovered what she terms the ancestress of the straight-fronted specialité corset on a bas-relief of a female figure from one of the mysterious forest cities in South America, so Mr. Rhead has reminded us of the festal dress of Otaheite which Captain Cook figured in his "Geography." Our grandmothers in their crinoline may have looked like walking hay-cocks; but the young women of Otaheite who carry presents from one person of rank to another look as if they were issuing from an immense drum. It is nothing new to make up deficiencies with padding that is intended to deceive, and while at one time our countrywomen may have made themselves flat-chested with the help of leaden weights, some, judging from articles which we now see displayed in the shops, are willing to call to their aid artificial contrivances which give the appearance of plumpness to their bust. When speaking of padding, one might recall the fact that the most usual place in which it is to be found--in civilians' clothes at least--is on the shoulder. This reminds us of the way in which sleeves were sometimes puffed up above the shoulder. The protuberance thus formed, Dr. Meyer tells us, was originally intended to prevent weapons from slipping off when they were carried over the shoulder. The fashion has since, however, been adopted in civilian costume both by men and by women. XXXVI FURTHER EFFECTS OF CLOTHES ON THE INDIVIDUAL MENTAL EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT CLOTHES--PREFERENCES OF GIRLS FOR CERTAIN ARTICLES OF DRESS--MOVEMENTS THAT DEPEND UPON THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF CLOTHES Putting on one side the special points of detriment which clothes bring about with regard to the body, we may turn to more general effects. Our language is full of proverbial sayings as to the way in which clothes may give beauty, and also as to how much we owe to fine feathers and to our tailors. Quite apart from the results which clothes have upon other people, there are the mental effects which are produced on ourselves. That it is not, perhaps, comfort or discomfort altogether which causes our body to react on the mind, is shown by the results of some investigations made by Dr. Louis W. Flaccus among the schoolgirls of New York.[59] Feelings of lightheartedness are the result of filmy clothes, and one girl of eighteen said that whenever she had on a garment of this consistency she always wanted to dance. The pleasant mental effects of gauzy stuffs and laces are said by the investigator to be due not only to their lightness, but to the mental associations with which they are connected. Such dresses as those which we have mentioned suggest some gay social function. Again, just as the putting on of a smoking jacket suggests relaxation to a man, so does the assuming of evening dress impart the idea that correct behaviour is necessary. Heavy clothes bring about mental depression. "In a large, heavy hat my spirits are low," says one of the girls who were interrogated, and Dr. Flaccus claims that the mood may change with the hat, while that he has evidence to go upon will be seen from the following answers: "A broad hat makes me feel jolly"; "If my hat is flat on my forehead, I feel depressed"; "If I have a fancy hat on, I am in a coquettish mood"; or again, "I feel brighter in a hat that rolls away from my face." Then the effect which certain surfaces have upon various persons has to be taken into consideration when dealing with this aspect of the subject, for clothes are made of very different materials. To touch a blanket will set some individuals' teeth on edge, and an irritable mood may result when rough material rubs against the skin. Again, while one person feels chills running down her back when she touches velvet, another will delight to feel a velvety surface. Another remarkable thing which Dr. Flaccus has brought before us is the striking difference between the preferences which girls have for certain articles of clothing. Most of the girls to whom the questions were addressed put shoes first; gloves came very close, then neckwear, hats, underwear, jewellery, and ribbons; and though this may not fit in with the ideas of the humorists on the subject, the weakness for hats was shown to be less than one-third that for gloves. Speaking of the effect that clothes may have upon the action of people, we may recall the way in which skirts and trousers may give rise to different habits. If one drops anything into a boy's lap he instinctively brings his knees together to prevent the object thrown from falling between them; whereas a girl would throw her thighs apart in order to make a receptacle with her frock. Advantage has been taken of this fact by those who wished to discover whether a person with whom they were dealing was a woman, or a man masquerading in female attire. More than one novelist has enlarged on this theme, and Mark Twain has used it effectively in the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The occasion is when the hero visits Mrs. Judith Loftus at St. Petersburg, in order to find out what is going on with regard to the murder. Mrs. Loftus, whose suspicions were aroused, got the boy who was dressed up as a girl, to thread a needle, to throw a bit of lead at a rat, and having gained some evidence from these two experiments, she tried a third. She says, "Keep your eye on the rats; you had better have the lead in your lap handy." Huckleberry's story continues: "So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment. I clapped my legs together on it, and she went on talking, but only about a minute. Then she took off the hank (he was holding some yarn), and looked me straight in the face, but very pleasant, and said: "Come, now--what's your real name?" "Wh-what, mum?" "What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob, or what is it?" XXXVII THE RISE AND FALL OF FASHIONS REASONS WHY FASHIONS ARE FOLLOWED--GAY CLOTHES SEEN WHEN PERIODS OF DEPRESSION ARE OVER--CONDEMNATION OF FASHIONS BY THE CLERGY--QUAKERS--SUMPTUARY LAWS--THE KILLING OF FASHIONS The rise and fall of fashions is a matter that affects every nation and practically every individual, for savages are quite as much harassed and tortured by them as any civilized people are. Fashions are perpetuated, as Herbert Spencer has pointed out, by imitation, and from two motives which are widely divergent. It may be prompted by reverence for the one imitated, on the one hand, or by a desire to assert equality with him. In the beginning, no doubt fashions arose with an idea to improve upon nature, though notions as to ideals of beauty must have been hazy in many cases. Fashions have been advanced as evidence in support of the proverb that there is nothing new under the sun, and the way in which some of them come round again goes a very long way to prove it in the case of clothes. Luckily some enormities seem to have died out, but in the light of past history we can never feel quite safe, and we never know, on the other hand, where some slight change which in itself seems novel may not lead us to ridiculous extremes. Of course, many garments and styles are importations from other countries. The pelisse came from Persia at the time of the Crusaders, just as the kimono was brought in recent times from Japan. Fads and peculiarities and even deformities of Royalty, as we saw in the case of the peruke, have introduced fashions. The crinoline, according to all accounts, was first devised to hide the shape of a princess. Perhaps no other contrivance has brought more nuisance in its train or had more ridicule poured upon it; but it is only one instance of many fashions that have been carried to excess. It is true, as we shall have occasion to mention, that in earlier times laws were enacted to restrict the size of ruffs and the length of the toes of shoes, but often with little effect, and when shape and size did not occupy attention, the costliness of the garment caused restrictions to be made, while the clergy seem never to have ceased from inveighing against the follies of fashions. In the twelfth century the devil was represented by an old illustrator in the costume of a fine lady with the long hanging sleeves and tightly laced bodice of the time. A hundred years later English preachers took exception to laced openings through which ladies showed their costly under-linen, and dignified them with the name of "gates of hell." In the twentieth century ministers in the United States have wasted their time in scolding the lady members of their congregations for wearing fancy stockings. Sometimes, on the other hand, the clergy themselves have laid themselves open to criticism with regard to the gorgeousness of their apparel. [Illustration: FIG. 168.--A Merveilleuse (after A. Robida).] Periods of depression have been followed by fashions of the gayest. We may recall the times of Charles II, when England breathed again after the civil wars. After the French Revolution, when the reign of terror was over, the Merveilleuses went back to the dresses of antiquity, such as the Athenian costume and that of the Lacedemonian girls, whose tunics were slit down the sides from the hips. When this was not done the skirts were looped up on the left side above the knee with a cameo brooch. (See Figure 168.) One writer records a wager in which a lady betted that her dress, including trinkets, did not weigh two pounds. She afterwards retired and took off the dress, which was weighed, and the whole costume turned the scales at a little over a pound. One of these dresses went by the name of the "female savage," and consisted of a gauze chemise over pink fleshings, with golden garters. It is not surprising that such costumes, like others before, brought down upon them the condemnation of the Church, and the following "bull," dated at Rome on the 16th October, 1800, is reprinted from _The Times_ of January 28th, 1801:-- "The Pope, so long engaged in reducing the Gallican Church within the Catholic pale, has not been negligent of the duty of recalling the female form within the petticoat and the handkerchief. After speaking in appropriate terms of the present scarcity of clothing, and of the sensations it may excite even in the withered bosom of a monk, and quoting the authority of St. Clement of Alexandria, His Holiness strictly enjoins his officers, civil and ecclesiastical, to repress, by fine or corporal punishment, according to the circumstances of the case, these crying enormities. He directs, too, that their punishment should be extended to such damsels as though at first sight they appear properly attired, are nevertheless decked in transparent robes, and with a voluptuous and magnificent attire display themselves in very seductive and tempting attitudes. Moreover, fathers, husbands, heads of families, who weakly or negligently permit their wives, daughters, servants, etc., to trespass against these rules, shall not escape with impunity. Also, all taylors, haberdashers, milliners and men-milliners, hairdressers, and others who contribute to these enormities of dress shall in no wise pass unpunished." The bull goes on to state that "all priests, confessors, overseers, churchwardens, and others shall in no wise admit such delinquents to the Holy Supper; that they shall not allow women improperly dressed to enter the church, and if they come they shall be driven out, and if they resist, the higher powers shall be required to lend their aid." It is said that a Russian nobleman who was used to judge the position of ladies by the amount of furs and clothes that they wore, on seeing an English lady in a costume of the merveilleuse style offered her money in the belief that she was a beggar. Fashions may have a special significance, as in the case of bell-bottom trousers of the costermonger, for it is said that by the cut of these garments the progress of the wearer's courtship can be traced. When he first "walks out," the bottoms of his trousers are of such an ample size that only the toes of his boots can be seen. As matters proceed and the wedding comes into view, the trousers assume more moderate dimensions below the knee, and when at last the man is married he is content with a bell of quite modest proportions, with what a writer in one of our comic papers describes as an almost total absence of "sauciness" in the cut of the garment. The lengths to which women will go in their desire to appear in the fashion, even if they are not, is shown by the business which a lady in New York is said to have founded. According to all accounts, she deals in nothing but discarded Paris waistbands--that is to say, those which bear the names of well-known dressmakers. Women in plenty in New York will buy these little strips of silk in order to have them stitched into their own dresses, to give their friends the impression that their garments were made in the French capital. Laws intended for the good of trade have brought in fashions, as in the case of the statute cap. The very objections made by religious sects such as the Puritans and Quakers, who have departed from extravagance and superfluity, have given rise to new fashions of plainness. Even Quaker ladies must have shown their love of dress, for at a meeting in 1726 the following message was sent by some of the stronger-minded of them to their fellow-women:-- "As first, that immodest fashion of hooped petticoats or the imitation, either by something put into their petticoats to make them set full, or any other imitation whatever, which we take to be but a branch springing from the same corrupt root of pride. And also that none of our ffriends accustom themselves to wear their gowns with superfluous folds behind, but plain and decent, nor go without aprons, nor to wear superfluous gathers or plaits in their caps or pinners, nor to wear their heads drest high behind; neither to cut or lay their hair on their foreheads or temples. "And that ffriends be careful to avoid wearing striped shoes or red and white heeled shoes or clogs or shoes trimmed with gaudy colours. "And also that no ffriends use that irreverent practice of taking snuff or handing a snuff-box one to the other in meeting. "Also that ffriends avoid the unnecessary use of fans in meeting, lest it direct the mind from the more inward and spiritual exercises which all ought to be concerned in. "And also that ffriends do not accustom themselves to go with bare breasts or bare necks." Perhaps in a minor way superstitions also have tended to keep up fashions. At a wedding, for instance, it is always said that a bride should wear Something old and something new, Something borrowed and something blue. The enactments, however, which were directed against excess in dress do not seem to have always been so successful. The part which the law has played with regard to dress in our own country has been very considerable, and it may be of interest to consider briefly one or two of the so-called sumptuary laws. In Edward III's reign the people were ordered to dress according to their station, and those who were not of high rank were forbidden to use expensive furs and ornaments. These orders were so neglected that Henry IV revised and strengthened them. Slashed sleeves at the time of Edward IV were prohibited to yeomen and any one below their rank. Legislation was also introduced to lessen the preposterous length to which the toes of shoes had grown, for it was enacted that not even the gentlemen should have them of a greater length than two inches. The Recorder of Chester shows the following order made by Henry VIII: "To distinguish the head-dresses of married women from unmarried, no married woman to wear white or other coloured caps; and no woman to wear any hat, unless she rides or goes abroad into the country (except sick or aged persons), on pain of 3s. 4d." Another law amounted to a tax on persons who dressed elegantly, for those who would not keep a horse and armour ready for the wars were fined heavily if they or their wives wore fine clothes or ornaments. It is probable, too, that Henry VIII's officers took care to collect the fines. Mary brought in a law against the use of silk, and a little later on the great ruffs claimed attention, for in 1562 it was ordered that no more than a yard and a half of kersey should be used in making a ruff. James I repealed all the sumptuary laws, though we have seen that he and his successors occupied themselves somewhat with the dress of the clergy. In Scotland, after the rising of 1745, an Act was passed forbidding the wearing of tartan as part of Highland dress, under the penalty of six months' imprisonment for the first offence and transportation beyond the seas for seven years for the second. No Highlander could receive the benefit of the Act of Indemnity without first taking the following oath: "I, A.B., do swear, and as I shall answer to God at the great day of judgement, I have not, nor shall have, in my possession any gun, sword, pistol, or arm whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or any part of the Highland garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my undertakings, family, and property,--may I never see my wife and children, father, mother, or relations,--may I be killed in battle as a coward, and lie without Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred; may all this come across me if I break my oath." This severe and harsh Act caused great discontent, and was repealed in 1772. As showing the hindrances caused to trade by some of the peculiar regulations, we find that in 1565 the Recorder of London describes an interview which he had with civic tailors, who were puzzled as to whether they should "line a slop hose, not cut in panes, with a lining of cotton stitched to the slop over and besydes the linen lining straight to the leg." The Recorder, on considering the words of the proclamation which had caused the trouble, gave it as his opinion that they could not; but the tailors, though they went away satisfied, came back to say that their customers had gone to other tailors outside the City, who made their clothes for them in the way that was first suggested. It was this contretemps which caused the Recorder to write to a higher legal authority. Nowadays clothes and the law have little to do with one another, though occasionally ladies' dresses about which there is a dispute are seriously tried on in court, the legal luminaries meanwhile making a studied pretence of ignorance with regard to the garments. Though there are no statutes to curb modern fashions, yet we are reminded of the rules that have had to be made in certain theatres on account of the overwhelming size of the matinée hat. Although the law does not seem to have been able to change the fashions to a very great extent, they have sometimes been killed suddenly. In the days of public executions, criminals sometimes elected to wear fashionable garments, and in consequence the demand for them ceased. Sometimes, again, those who were interested in the suppression of the fashion persuaded the doomed man or woman to wear a particular dress, and a judge has been known to compass the same end by ordering the hangman who officiated to deck himself in the objectionable garment. The wearing of nightgowns in the street by ladies was stopped owing to a woman being executed in her bedgown. The use of yellow starch had its death-blow when the hangman appeared in orange collar and cuffs. Black satin dresses went out of fashion because Mrs. Manning was hung when wearing one. Now, however, as there are no public executions, there is not this opportunity of getting rid of obnoxious styles, and society ought to look about for another means to repress them. XXXVIII DRESS REFORM CLOTHES TO BE AVOIDED--NEED FOR WARMER GARMENTS--"RATIONAL" DRESS FOR WOMEN It is evident from what we have said about the effect of clothes upon the body, that there is ample opportunity for improvement in our costume as regards its shape and the methods in which it is worn. We have already said also, when speaking of colour, that, in the case of men at any rate, it might often be more picturesque and brighter. There are several societies whose aim it is to bring about improvements. The Rational Dress League has general objects in view, and it also keeps in mind the special one of introducing bifurcated garments for women. There is also the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union which seems to have general objects. Education is needed in order that knowledge of the evil results of wrongly shaped shoes and tight stays may be known, and what is more, such training as will enable that strength of mind to be acquired which will prevent the coming generation from being swayed by foolish fashions. The origin of these it is difficult to trace, but the pioneers of them, whether self-centred costumiers or willing victims, ought to be punished in some way. There are points to be borne in mind in connection with garments which have not yet been considered, and they cause otherwise unoffending clothes to do harm. There is no doubt but that the weight of one's dress should be suspended from the shoulders, though the great majority of women hang much of their clothes from their waists. A good deal of the weight could easily be taken off this part of the body by the fastening of skirts and under garments to bodices, or by the use of shoulder-straps and the introduction of tunics. Dr. Cantlie[60] has very graphically shown the common features of a modern family, and he has given a picture (see Figure 169) of a group consisting of the average-sized mother, the taller and larger-framed daughter, and the insufficiently clad boy of poor physique. This author says that the sailor suit worn at the age of two and a half or three years is a recent innovation, and the rather puny young boy of to-day came in with the change. Dr. Cantlie has estimated that, except in very hot weather, children should have a pound of clothing for every stone they weigh, for the one great secret of rendering children healthy is to keep them warm. As a matter of fact, a girl that weighs three stone really wears clothes that weigh three pounds; but one of the small boys of the same weight, in a sailor suit, wears clothes that only weigh about half as much as his sister's. Dr. Cantlie also objects to short jackets which do not cover the loins, and says that the public school that will introduce the Norfolk jacket in the place of the Eton will thrive at the expense of its neighbours. High collars worn by youths keep the head at the wrong angle, and also perpetuate the deformity of the jaw which is caused by breathing through the mouth. They also prevent the shoulders from being squared in the attempt to get rid of round shoulders. Dr. Cantlie urges a return to the brace worn by our fathers, and still occasionally seen, in which the straps are not united. It is impossible for any one wearing joined braces to stand erect with the shoulders squared, for they press on the neck and cause the wearer to poke his head forward. Dr. Cantlie, however, hopes that the difficulties in the way of obtaining separate braces will not lead to the adoption of the elastic belt, for the only place where this could be worn without bad effects is below the haunch bones, and in ordinary dress this would bring it below the waistcoat. It will be found also that the use of belts by labourers brings evils in its train which were not mentioned by Mr. Heather Bigg, when speaking of the advantages of girding up the loins. (See page 329.) No account of dress and its developments would be complete without a reference to Mrs. Bloomer and the garments which now bear her name, and are emblematical of rational costume. That women have no absolute claim to petticoats as their own special dress has been made quite clear, and it is equally evident that in many places they wear trousers as a matter of course. Still, in this country there seems to be a rooted objection on the part of the majority to doffing skirts, though this seems, however, to be growing less day by day, in spite of the many reasons which cause the fair sex to cling to petticoats. As we have found before, garments which fall to the ground give dignity, and women sacrifice their dignity with difficulty. Yet, as need hardly be pointed out, men do not wear dressing-gowns when they are jumping, nor fur-trimmed mantles when they go to business. Dresses with trains could be kept for ceremonial occasions, or when there is nothing much to be done, or again, we might add, when there is little dust to be raised. [Illustration: FIG. 169.--A modern family, consisting of the average-sized mother, the taller daughter, and the puny boy (from a drawing by Miss Audrey Watson in "Physical Efficiency," by Dr. Cantlie, by kind permission of Messrs. Putnam's Sons).] Bacteriology has shown us that the long skirt disseminates germs as it trails along the ground; in fact, it stirs them up for other people to breathe, and the culprit herself carries off as her fair share a large quantity which settles on her dress. In this way the germs of disease are carried home to the dwelling-house. In these days also, when women even jump on and off motor omnibuses before they are at a stand-still, it is evident that long frocks are objectionable and dangerous. When lady gardeners were first employed at Kew Gardens, it was found that their skirts got in the way, and were liable to damage the plants. The Director ordered that the girls should wear a suitable costume, and they adopted divided garments, though it must be said that they covered them to some extent with an apron. In riding-dress of course ladies wear trousers under their habits when they use a side saddle, although it has been considered right of recent years for them to ride astride, and from time to time we hear that it is being done. In the time of Stephen and of Edward III women rode astride, and the ladies in Mexico and other parts of America regularly do so at the present time. Chaucer described "The Wife of Bath" as wearing "on her feet a paire of spurries sharpe." From this we may judge that she also adopted a cross saddle, and as a matter of fact in the Elesmere MSS. we find a picture of her, showing that she rode astride, and was dressed in a curious garment like a divided bag. On the Continent, ladies who go shooting very often dress like their husbands, and a year or two ago the American newspapers were full of accounts of a lady who imitated the riding costume of a hunting man to the smallest detail. Apropos of this, _The Field_[61] told an amusing story of an English lady who in a measure unintentionally forestalled our American cousins, for after she had had the best part of her habit carried away by some aggressive brambles, she was seen scudding after her horse in a pair of real top boots. Divided garments only appear unfeminine because we are unaccustomed to see them on ladies, and it is no secret that they are worn to a very great extent under skirts. Doubtless there may be some to whom the very idea of such a thing is abhorrent, and possibly there are still wardrobes like those of a good lady mentioned by Miss Alice Morse Earle[62] in her book on the "Costume of Colonial Times." She was the wife of a respectable and well-to-do Dutch settler in the New Netherlands, and her name was Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, and she left behind her in 1641, "a gold hoop ring, a silver medal and chain, and a silver undergirdle to hang keys on; a damask furred jacket, two black camlet jackets, two doublets, one iron gray, the other black; a blue, a steel-gray lined petticoat, and a black coarse camlet-lined petticoat; two black skirts, a new bodice, two white waistcoats, one of Harlem stuff; a little black vest with two sleeves, a pair of damask sleeves, a reddish mourning gown, not linen; four pair pattens, one of Spanish leather; a purple apron and four blue aprons, nineteen cambric caps and four linen ones; a fur cap trimmed with beaver; nine linen handkerchiefs trimmed with lace, two pair of old stockings, and three shifts. One disposed to be critical might note the somewhat scanty proportion of underclothing in this wardrobe, and as Ides's husband swore 'by his manly troth' that the list of her possessions was a true and complete one, we are forced to believe that it was indeed all the underclothing she possessed." It seems, however, as we have said before, that the actual ugliness of many of the so-called bloomer costumes which were in vogue a few years ago, did much to keep back progress in the direction of their adoption. It seems as if women were frightened, as it were, to go the whole hog, and instead of wearing neat knickerbockers they had them exceedingly baggy and inelegant, or adopted a kind of hybrid costume, half bloomers and half skirt. Let us see what the tendency now is with regard to a rational dress for women. Mrs. Bloomer had a skirt just below the knees, and trousers gathered in at the ankles. The modern bloomers come only to the knee, but really, as Dr. Bernard O'Connor says when writing in the Gazette published by the Rational Dress League,[63] "they are made too full." Dr. O'Connor recommends for active exercise, such as cycling, something like a sailor's jacket and sailor's trousers, but the latter should end and be gathered in at the knees. In addition there should be long tight stockings, and Dr. O'Connor adds that tights throughout would be preferable to the ordinary bloomers. It would seem, however, that this dress for general use might be improved as regards both form and elegance, and that a long coat or tunic, reaching nearly to the knees, with fairly tight knickerbockers, is the rational dress that is most to be commended for women. CONCLUSION By way of ending, we would again point out that the account which we have given of survivals in dress and their history, shows that they in their development are governed by the same laws as those which act on the bodies and organs of living creatures, and we hope that what we have gathered together may be taken as a small contribution to "the proper study of mankind," which we have been told times out of number is nothing more nor less than "man." BIBLIOGRAPHY The small numbers given in the text correspond with those printed here. NO. PAGE 1. "The Origin of Species," by Charles Darwin. (First edition published 1859) 2 2. "Development in Dress," by George H. Darwin. _Macmillan's Magazine_, September, 1872, page 410 3 3. "_Pithecanthropus erectus_, eine Menschenaehnliche Uebergangsform aus Java," by Eug. Dubois, Batavia, 1894 7 4. "Journal during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle," by Charles Darwin. Minerva Library, 1889, page 154 11 5. "The Industrial Arts of Denmark," by J. J. A. Worsaae. 1882, page 48 18 6. See Number 2, page 412 30 7. Notice of Lecture given by Mr. Allan Poe Newcombe, in the Sandwich Islands. Quoted from the _Honolulu Commercial Advertiser_ in _The English Mechanic_, No. 1934 49 8. See Number 6 58 9. "The Human Beast of Burden," by Otis T. Mason. Smithsonian Report of the United States National Museum, 1887, page 246 110 10. "Anthropology," by Edward B. Tylor. 1892, page 236 111 11. "The British Lake Dwellings near Glastonbury." 1896, page 13 117 12.} "The Gem Cutter's Craft," by Leopold Claremont. 1906, 123 13.} pages 75 and 87 124 14.} "Some Suggestions as to the Origin of the Penannular 15.} Brooch," by Edward Lovett. _The Reliquary_, Vol. X, 1904, page 15 125 16. "Races of Man," by Oscar Peschel. English Translation, 1889, page 174 136 17. "The Cyclopædia of the British Costumes, from the Metropolitan Repository of Fashions." 1826, page 196 145 18. A letter in _The Morning Post_ of November 12th, 1897, from Messrs. André & Co. 153 19. "English Costume," painted and described by Dion Clayton Calthrop. 1906, page 130 156 20. Article on "Cockades" in _The Sketch_ for March 9th, 1898 158 21. See Number 19 159 22. "Costume from Monumental Brasses," by Herbert Druitt. 1906 165 23. "Rational Dress _v._ Industrialism," _The Rational Dress Gazette_, No. 88, by Dr. Alice Vickery, page 356 165 24. "Shoe-throwing at Weddings," by James E. Crombie, _Folk Lore_, Vol. VI (1895), page 258 176 25. "Ecclesiastical Vestments, their Development and History," by R. A. S. Macalister. 1896, page 140 185 26. "Vestiarium Christianium: the Origin and Gradual Development of the Dress of the Holy Ministry in the Church," by the Rev. Wharton D. Marriott. 1861, page 48 188 27. See Number 25, page 21 189 28. A letter in _The Guardian_, by G. C. Coulton, August, 1907 194 29. Paedag. Lib. iii., page 300 205 30. See Number 22, page 122 210 31. "College Caps and Doctors' Hats," by Professor E. C. Clark. _Archæological Journal_, Vol. LXI. 1894, page 36 213 32. See Number 22, page 224 216 33. "The Sacring of the English Kings," by J. Wickham Legg. _Archæological Journal_, Vol. XLI. 1894, page 35 221 34. "History of the King's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard," by Colonel Sir Reginald Hennell. 1904, plate facing page 32 225 {"Uniforms of our Fighting Forces, Regimental Survivals 35.{ and Peculiarities," by R. Caton Woodville. _Cassell's 36.{ Magazine_, 1906, page 524; and "Peculiarities of British { Army Dress," by Walter Wood. _Pall Mall Magazine_, Vol. { XI. 1897, page 527 238 37. "Yester Year," by A. Robida, English translation, page 83 253 38. A Lecture given by Mr. George Heppel before the Hammersmith Literary and Scientific Society 253 39. "Naples in 1888," by Eustace Neville Rolffe 254 40. "Notes by a Naturalist on H.M.S. Challenger," by Professor Moseley 272 41. See Number 40, page 423 273 42. "Costume in England," by F. W. Fairholt. Revised Edition, 1885, Vol. II, page 303 278 43. "The Whole Stock of a Coquette," by Helen C. Gordon. _English Illustrated Magazine_, February, 1901, page 451 279 44. "Costume: Fanciful, Historical, and Theatrical," by Mrs. Aria. 1906, page 199 281 45. "Curiosities of Literature," by Disraeli. Vol. I, page 186 283 46. See Number 19, page 20 287 47. See Number 42, page 240 289 48. "Suggested Moorish Origin of certain Amulets in use in Great Britain," by Dr. Plowright. _The Reliquary,_ Vol. XII, 1906, page 106 293 49. "Horse Brasses," by Lina Eckenstein. _The Reliquary,_ Vol. XII, 1906, page 251 293 50. "Animal Artisans," by C. J. Cornish. 1906, page 251 300 51. Article by Mr. Yoxall in _The Journal of Gipsy Lore_, new series, Vol. I, part I, 1907 306 52. Article by Mr. J. Chevasse. _Evening News_, April 5th, 1907 316 53. Article in _The Daily Mail_, September 4th, 1907 317 54. "Essays on Museums and other subjects connected with Natural History," by Sir William Flower. 1898, page 350 324 55. See Number 37, page 91 325 56. "The History of the Corset," by Geraldine Vane and F. Glen Walker. _Lady's Realm_ Summer Number, 1901 326 57. "Spinal Curvatures," by Heather Bigg. 1905 326 58. See Number 54, page 347 335 59. Article in _The Morning Leader_ of April 17th, 1906 339 60. "Physical Efficiency," by James Cantlie. 1906 355 61. Leaderette in _The Field_, August 29th, 1902, page 452 359 62. "Costume of Colonial Times," by Alice Morse Earle, page 28 359 63. "Why Won't They Alter It?" by Bernard O'Connor, _Rational Dress Gazette_, No. 87, page 352 361 INDEX NOTE.--_The numbers in heavy type refer to the pages on which figures will be found._ Abbesses, costume of, 198 Abergavenny, the Marquis of, wears badges, 91 Academical dress, 208 -- hoods, 210 Achievements, styles of, 87 Acrobat, dress of, 286 -- tights of, 286 -- trunk hose of, 286 Admiral, uniform of, worn by coxswains at Eton on the Fourth of June, 171 Africa, the West Coast of, little clothing worn on, 8 Aggries, 113 Agilbert, Bishop of Paris, ring of, 114 Aiglets, 100 Aiguillettes, 101, =101= -- Mr. Caton Woodville on, 240 -- of aides-de-camp, 240 -- -- footmen, 141, =141=, 240 -- -- Household Cavalry, 240 -- -- a Knight of the Bath, 231 -- -- -- Knight of St. Michael and St. George, 231 Ailette, 84 Albe, 198, 199 -- of James II, 221 -- originally a secular garment, 189 -- replaced by surplice, 185 Alhambra, 293 Almshouses, costumes of, 170 Almuce, 198, 199 -- forerunner of the tippet, 212 Ambassadors, cockade of Danish, 160 -- -- -- English, 160 -- -- -- Foreign, 160 -- -- -- French, 160 American, dress of the, 318 Amethyst, supposed powers of the, 124 Amice, 200, 221 Amulet, arrow-head, 296 Amulets buried with the head of ancient Egyptians, 122 -- crescent-shaped, 293 -- heart-shaped, 295, 296 -- worn by Egyptian children, 123 Andaman Islanders, painting the body among, 276 André, Messrs., & Co., on cockades, 153 Anglo-Saxon, bandaged stocking of, 67, =67= Animal actors, clothes of, 301 Animals, colour of, in connection with ceremonials, 303 -- curious variations of, produced under domestication, 302 -- spotted when young, 94 -- mutilation of, 302 Anklets, 9 Anne, apron of Queen, 150 -- Consort of James I, glove of, 98, =99= Antiquities, Museum of, Copenhagen, 178 Apparel of chasuble called an orphrey, 196 -- on albe, possibly remains of clavi, 193 Appendix, vermiform, 3 Apron, 149 -- of barge-woman, milk-woman, and hospital nurse, 150 -- -- bishop, a vestige of the cassock, 200 -- -- housemaid, 149 -- -- Judy, 263, =263= -- -- masons, 232 -- -- nuns, 202 -- -- Queen Anne, 150 Aprons, tiger skin, of Leicestershire Regiment, 249 Arab women, 122 -- -- ideas of modesty, 207 Arabs use folds of robes as pockets, 110 Archers, Scottish, coats of, 226 Aria, Mrs., on the ancestress of the straight-fronted specialité corset, 337 -- -- on the unwritten laws that rule the wearing of a mask, 281 Armlets conferred on soldiers, 114 -- need for cooling, in some climates, 114 Armorial bearings on ladies' dresses, 84, =85= Armour, 83 -- a development of dress, 12 -- of chargers, 292 Arms, coat of, 83 -- of England, 86 -- -- schools and colleges, 90 -- -- Thomas à Becket, =198= Arran murder case, 178 Arrow-head amulets, 296 Arrow-heads, flint, as pendants, 123 Arts, gown of master of, 210 -- hood of bachelor of, 212 Atella, celebrated for Italian farces, 254 Athletic clubs, parti-coloured dress of, 313 Aurelian, distribution of oraria by, 192 Austria, Emperor of, 244 Austrian, dress of the, 318 Axe for killing wounded horses, 242 Ayahs, nose-rings of, 111 Babylon, finger-rings in, 114 Baby's glove without fingers, 94, =95= Bachelor of Arts, hood of, 212 Badge and crest, difference between, 90 -- broad arrow, 91 -- of Black Prince, 88 -- -- Edward III, 91 -- -- the porters of the Inner Temple, 91 Badges, hereditary, 90 -- signs derived from royal, 91 -- regimental, 243, 245 -- of Gloucestershire regiment, 245 -- -- private firemen, 91 Badges of the Yeomen of the Guard, 224, =224= -- -- Watermen, 91 -- worn by the Marquis of Abergavenny, 91 Bag-wig, vestige of the, 133, =134=, 143, =143=, 228, =229= Baildon, Mr. Paley, on new garments put over old, 148 -- -- -- -- the coif, 216 Baldric, 106 -- modern use of, 106 -- ornamented with bells, 108, =108= Ballrooms, bare necks in, 14 Band, black on arm as mourning, 182 -- chin, 202, =203= -- hat, 52 Bandaged stockings of Anglo-Saxons, 67 Bandages, leg, 66, =66=, =67= Bandbox, 46, =47= Bandoleer, on baldric, 108 Bands, 44, =45= -- of barristers, 44 -- -- blue-coat boys, 44, =45= -- -- choristers at Jesus College, Cambridge, 45, =45= -- -- Jan Steen, 46, =46= -- -- John Pym, 46, =46= -- -- Milton, 46 -- -- small boys, 47, =47= -- -- the legal profession, 219 -- -- Winchester scholars, 169 -- on a lady's nightgown, 288, =289= -- worn with a black Geneva gown, 44, 185 Bantams, booted, 303 -- frizzled, 303 Baptism, vestments used at, 164 Barbarians wore trousers, 77, =78= Barge women, apron of, 150; Plate VIII facing page 150 -- -- costume of, 110 -- -- sun-bonnet of, 61; Plate VIII facing page 150 Barme-cloth (apron), 150 Barons of the Exchequer, robes of, 218 Barristers' bands, 44 -- gown, 218, =219= -- wigs, 132 Basquine, 325 Baton of drum-major, 241 -- -- Field-Marshal, 223 Beadle, dress of, 147, =264= -- in Punch and Judy, 147, 262, =264= Beads as currencies, 113 -- blue popo, worth their weight in gold, 113 -- early used in England, 112 -- from Egypt, 113 -- of the prehistoric Egyptians, 112 -- still fashionable, 112 _Beagle_, H.M.S., voyage of, 11 Beard of Edward II, 130 -- -- -- III, 129 Beards, closely shaved by Normans, 129 -- -- -- in Edward IV's time, 130 -- cut by Romans, 129 -- parted or trimmed by Saxons, 129 Bedford, Duchess of, riding habit of, 251 Bedgown, woman executed in a, 290 Beefeaters, cap of, 168 Bells as ornaments, derived from flowers, 314 Belt of groom, =140= -- -- -- origin of, 139 Belts, Dr. Cantlie on the use of, 356 -- worn by navvies, 329 Bernard, on blowing the nose on the chasuble, 195 Bhurtpore, battle of, 244 Bib, 150 -- of infant, 167 Bibliography, 363-7 Bigg, Mr. Heather, on the erect position of man, 330, 331 -- -- -- -- -- rapid loss of beauty in native girls, 328 -- -- -- -- -- use of stays, 326, 327 Billet, sign of the Crooked, 146 Binder of infant, 163 Biretta, evolution of, 213 Bishop, hat of, 214, =214= -- method of buttoning trousers, 252 -- rochet, chimere, and lawn sleeves of, 199 Black as mourning, 181 Bloomer, Mrs., 81, 356 -- -- dress of, 361 Bloomers, Dr. Bernard O'Connor on, 361 Blouse, blue, of the butcher, 307, 320 Blue blouse of butcher, 307, 320 -- coat boys, 167 -- -- -- bands of, 44, =45= -- favours, 307 Boadicea, dress of, 312 Boar, wild, spotted when young, 94 Bohemians, the King of the, wore no ostrich feathers, 91 Body, clothes used to alter the shape of, 337 Boiler cleaners, combination garments of, 320 Bone inserted into prehistoric skulls, 336 -- pin, 105 Boots, jack, 235 -- of bridegrooms removed by brides in Russia, 177 -- ornamentation of modern, 62, =63= -- top, 65, =65= -- -- upper parts now immovable, 66, =66= Borough Councillors, robes of, 138 Bouquets carried by coxswains on the Fourth of June at Eton, 171 Bows inside ladies' hats, 57, =58= -- of silk ribbon inside hat, 54, =55= Boy catching an object in his lap, 341 Boys, blue-coat, 167 -- colour preferences of, 307 -- dressed as soldiers, 163 -- petticoats of, 165 Brace in which the straps are not united, 356 Bracelets, 9 -- need to be cooled in some climates, 114 Brandenburg, Albrect von, with two palls, 197 Brandon, John, brass to, 38 Brasses, 38, Plate IV, 86, =86=, 234, =234= -- chrysome, 164 Brats, 300 Breast cloth of nun, 202, =203= -- plate of horse, amulets on, 294 Breasts, bare, in Ancient Egypt, =74=, 75 -- -- in Korea, 75, =75= -- -- in the time of James I, 76 Breeches, knee, 79 -- of Lord Darnley, 286 -- origin of the word, 311 -- petticoat, of sailors, 252 -- plush, 140, =141= -- stuffed, 337 -- Venetian, of pantaloon, 284 Bridesmaids, origin of presents made to, by bridegroom, 175 Bristol, Red Maid School of, 168 Broad arrow badge, 91 Bronze Age chieftains, dress of, 18, =19= -- -- people wore deerskin cloaks retaining horns, 117 -- pins, 105 Brooch, 122 -- safety-pin like an Etruscan, 102, =103= -- the buckle, a, without hasp, 125 Brooches, pin ring, 125 -- to fasten tunic, 17, =17= Buckle, 125 Bulgaria, shoe money in, 177 Burden, primitive method of carrying a, 106, =107= Busbies, caricatures of, 247, 248 Busby, 238 -- development of, 59 -- of Rifle Brigade, 242 -- origin of the, Sir George Darwin on, 58, =59= -- red flap on, 59, =59= Buskins, 195 Bust, padding used to improve the, 338 Butcher's blue blouse, 320 Butterman, white clothes of, 320 Button, 118 -- covered with crape, 243 -- Mr. P. W. Reynolds on the survival of a, 248 Buttonholes, exaggerated on uniforms, 40 -- knotched, 146 -- laced, 146 -- on the backs of coats, 27, =27=, 28, =28= Buttons, 24, 248 -- antiquity of, 120 -- as chronicles, 25 -- done up differently by men and women, 21, =23= -- horizontal row of, on sleeve, 36, =36= -- meaningless, on ladies' dresses, 120 -- numerous, on sleeve of undervest, 38; Plate IV, facing page 38 -- of brass on Dutch skeleton dress, 145, =145= -- -- Legion of Honour, 158 -- -- man's coat on right side, 20, =20= -- -- page boys, 144, =145= -- -- woman's coat on left side, 20, =21= -- on coats of Grenadier Guards, 29 -- -- cuffs, 35, =35= -- -- overcoats of Commissionaires, 30 -- -- postilion's jackets, 38 -- -- sleeves of clergy, 36 -- -- the back of coats, 26, =26=, =27=, =28=, =29=, =31=, =32=, =33=, =34= -- -- the back of tramway driver's coats, 30, =31= -- problematical, 15 Buttons replaced by knobs in the East, 20 -- vertical row on sleeve, =37= Calthrop, Mr., on survivals of the chaperon, 158 -- -- -- the costume of Harlequin, 283 -- -- -- -- evolution of the cockade, 156 -- -- -- -- origin of the cockade, 159 Camels, cowry shells on the trappings of, 297, =299= Cameron Erracht tartan, 242 -- tartan, 242 Canaries, yellow, 303 Cane of drill sergeant, 241 Canes, be-ribboned, 124 -- tasselled, 125 Cannibalism, probable origin of, 337 Canterbury Cathedral, shield, helmet, and surcoat of Black Prince in, 87, =88=, =89= Cantlie, Dr., on short jackets, 356 -- -- -- the effect of insufficient clothing, 355, =357= -- -- -- -- use of belts, 356 Cap, college, 47, 169, 212, =214= -- Hungarian, 238 -- judge's sentence, 217 -- line of Lancers, 241 -- livery, 146 -- of Beefeaters, 168 -- -- dignity, ecclesiastical, 213 -- -- housemaid, 149 -- -- Hungarian peasant, 59, =59= -- -- nuns, 201, =203=, 204 -- -- the Lancers, a Polish head-dress, 239 -- Scotch, streamers of, 53, =54= -- statute, 168, 348 -- Tudor flat, 214 Cape, combined with hood, =156=, 157 Caps not to be worn by married women, 350 Cards, playing, show Tudor dresses, 231 Carolines, haircombs of West, 118 Cases of brass for waiters' buttons, 144 Cassock, 200 -- of Benedictines, 198 -- once generally worn, 186 Casula, forerunner of the chasuble, 192 Cater cap, 212 Cattle, hornless, 303 Cavalryman, modern, compared with Cromwell's Ironsides, 237, =237= Cave men, drawings of, 8, =9=, 10 -- -- painting of the body by, 270 -- -- wore ornaments but no clothing, 8 Ceremony, primitive dress worn on occasions of, 5, 135 Chaco of Highland Light Infantry, 241 -- -- Scottish Rifles, 241 Chain mail, 233, 234, =234= Chains for the neck in Richard II's time, 113 -- of Mayors, origin of, 113 Chancellor of a University, robes of a, 210 Chapel keeper at Wellington Barracks, top hat of, 248 Chaperon, 152 -- development of, =156=, 157, =157= -- of Richard II's time, 157 -- survival of, 228 -- vestige on gowns of City Livery Companies, 231 -- -- -- mantles of knights, 158, =230= Chaplet of flowers used after baptism, 164 Charles I regulates clerical costume, 185 -- II, formation of Guards by, 246 Chasuble, 193, =194= -- casula, the forerunner of, 192 Chauffeurs' cockades, 160 Checks, 311 Chemise, 288 -- gauze, of Merveilleuses, 346 Chevasse, Mr., on individuality shown by clothes, 316 Children carried on the left arm, 22 -- dressed like their parents, 162 -- sucking the left breast, 24 Chimere, 199 Chimpanzee, hair of, 6 China, painted pasteboard figures burnt at funerals in, 274 -- puppet-show in, 259 -- the use of paint by women in, 275 Chin band, 201, 202, =203= Chinese women, stunted foot of, 335 Chinook Indians, deforming the heads of children, 335 Chiton, 187 Choker, 200 Choristers at Jesus College, Cambridge, bands of, 45, =45= Chrism cloth, 164 Christians, dress of ancient, 187 -- early, wore the same costume at worship as at home, 189 Christ's Hospital, 167 Chrysalis, 163 Chrysolite as a detector of poison, 124 Chrysome, 164 -- brasses, 164 Chulos in bull fight, red rag of, 306 Churches, Gothic, compared with hennin-like head-dress, 50, =51= Clans, tartans of Scotch, 312 -- with several tartans, 312 Claremont, Mr., on opals and bad luck, 124 Clark, Professor E. C., on college caps, 213 Clavi, 191 Clement, St., on special dress for worship, 205 Clergy, adoption of vestments by English High Church, 192 -- black habit of, 308 -- buttons on sleeves of, 36 -- condemnation of dress by, 344 -- criticized for gorgeous apparel, 345 -- in Holland, dresses of, 200 -- wear academical hood over surplice, 199, 212 Cloaks, deer skin, of Bronze Age people, retaining horns, 117 Clock, meaning a gusset, 68, =68= -- origin of, 68 Clocks of clowns, 269 Cloth, breast, 202, =203= -- chrism, 164 -- pied, 313 -- parti-coloured, 313 Clothes, adopted for æsthetic reasons, 14 -- -- -- reasons of coquetry, 14 -- adoption of, for ornamentation, 8 -- -- -- -- reasons of modesty, 8 -- -- -- -- warmth, 8 -- dispensed with on ceremonial occasions, 136 -- distortions caused by, 322 -- effect upon action, 341 -- -- of, upon the outsider, 315 -- everyday, worn at night, 287 -- first worn by women, 12 -- in their development subject to the same laws that act upon the bodies of animals, 362 -- made from the bark of trees, 11 -- mental effect of, 339 -- minimum of, worn at sports, 6 -- not necessarily worn in cold climates, 11 -- -- worn at night, 287 -- of animal actors, 301 -- -- dolls, 137 -- -- monkeys, 301 -- -- Punch, origin of, 257 -- represented among animals, 291 -- Sunday, 205 -- swaddling, 163 -- the principles of evolution applied to, 1 -- used to alter the shape of the body, 337 -- useful characters always retained, 15 -- why worn, 8 -- worn at executions, become unfashionable, 353 (See also under the headings of _Costume_ and _Dress_) Clothing, not worn by cave men, 8 -- preferences of girls for different articles of, 340, 341 Clown, 283 -- clocks of, 269 Clowns, painting of, likened to that once in vogue in China and Japan, 276 -- paint of face of, 269 Clubbed hair, 134 Coachman, coat of, 142, =142= -- Lord Mayor's, wig-bag of, 143, =143= -- origin of dress, 139 -- red coat of royal, 235 -- wig of, 132, 142, =142= Coastguard, revers of, buttoned back, =39= Coat, blue in sixteenth century, 168 -- buff, 235 -- development of the modern, 15 -- evolved from the shawl, 16 -- lapels, nicks in, 41, =41=, =42= -- patched, of harlequin, 283 -- pouter, 141, =141= -- red, a best, 235 -- -- origin of, 249 -- -- survived for a long time in Cornwall, 235 -- skirts buttoned back for riding, =33= -- swallow-tail, evolution of, 33, =34= Coats at Harrow, 169 -- -- Westminster, 169 -- of arms, 83 -- -- Scottish Archers, 226 Coats, waterproof of, lambs, 300 Cobbett, criticisms on Quakers, 119 Cock of a hat, 61 Cockade, 61, 152, =152= -- black, 153 -- bow of ribbon on, 156 -- evolution of, 153, =156=, =157= -- for mourning, 154, =154=, 159 -- jagged edges of, 158 -- material of, 154 -- of Chelsea pensioners, =155=, 156 -- -- Danish ambassadors, 160 -- -- French ambassadors, 160 -- -- of various colours, 158 -- regent, =155=, 156, 159 -- royal, 154, 155, =155=, 159 -- treble, =152=, 156 Cockades, not under the jurisdiction of Heralds' College or Lord Chamberlain, 153 -- of foreign ambassadors, 160 -- -- chauffeurs, 160 -- those entitled to use, 153, =159= -- worn by gentlemen, 152 Cocking, 200 Coffins, Bronze Age, 18 Coif of Serjeant-at-law, 216 -- Order of the, 215 -- vestige of, 215, =217= Coin, custom of breaking, upon engagement, 115 Coldstream Regiment, motto of, 246 Collar, broad lace, at Eton, 169 -- silver worn by additional drummer, 244 Collars, high, keep the head at a wrong angle, 356 -- metal of Padaung women, =114=; Plate VI, facing page 114 -- of Court ushers and vergers, 218 -- -- ladies' mantles standing up, 48 -- -- nuns, 202 -- worn by pet animals, 298 _Colobium sindonis_, 221 Colonial, dress of the, 319 Colour, craving for, shown by the gorgeous dress of Masons, 308 -- -- -- -- -- green scarfs of the Foresters, 308 -- -- -- -- -- pageants, 306 -- of academical dress, 309 Colours, 192 -- gay uniforms come under the category of courtship, 250 -- heraldic, derived from flags, still worn, 308 -- house, 171 -- of ancient drawings due to caprice of artists, 131 -- -- Naval uniform, 251 -- -- regiments, 309 Columbine, ballet dress of, 285 Comb as an ornament, 117, =118= Combs, hair, 118, =118= -- loom, the origin of the ornamental comb, 117, =118= Combination garments of boiler cleaners, 320 -- -- -- Normans, 320 Coombe Hill School, Westerham, dress worn by girls at, 172, =172= Commissionaires, buttons on overcoats of, 30 Companies, Livery, robes of, 138 Complexions, false, of Roman ladies, 278 Convicts' dress, 91 Cope, 197, 199 -- of fifteenth century, 212 Cornish, Mr. C. J., on animals' clothes, 300 Corps piqué, Montaigne and Ambrose Paré on the suffering caused by the, 325 Corroboree, paint used at a, 272 Corset, misspelling of the word, 323 -- of Greece, 328 -- -- Rome, 328 Corsets, crusade against, 325 Cosmetics used by Roman ladies, 278 Costermongers, dress of, 319 -- trousers of, show progress of wearer's courtship, 347 Costume, clerical, regulated by Charles I, 185 -- connected with religion, 184 -- ecclesiastical, similar to civil in early times, =188= -- of barge-women, 110 -- -- the clown, Elizabethan, 269, =270= -- -- dolls, 267 -- -- milk-women, 110 -- -- nuns and abbesses resembled that of widows, 198 -- -- servants', derived from that of masters, 139 -- indicating the profession of the wearer, 316 Costumes adopted in girls' schools, 171 -- of hospitals for pensioners, 170 -- ugliness of bloomers, 81, 360 (See also under the headings of _Clothes_ and _Dress_) Coulton, Mr. G. C., on the evolution of the maniple from a pocket-handkerchief, 194 Courier bags carried on a baldric, 106, =107= Court dress, mistakes made in, 227 -- ushers, collars of, 218 Coventry, Lady, death due to painting the face, 279 Cowboy's long hair, 127 Cows, clothing of, 300 -- rainproof jackets of, 300 Cradle of American Indian papoose, 164 Cranmer, hat of, =214= Crescent as an amulet among the Romans, 293 -- made by joining two boars' tusks, 294 -- worn on a special strap by German horses, 295 Crest and badge, difference between, 90 -- -- surcoat of Henry Duke of Lancaster, 86, =86= -- on helmet, 83 -- -- signet ring, 85 -- worn upon cap of Lord Mayor's postilion, 92, =92= Creel carried on a baldric, 106 Crinoline, 337 -- devised to hide the shape of a princess, 344 -- of the young women of Otaheite, 338 Croft School, Betley, dress worn by girls at, 173, =173= Crombie, Mr. James, on superstitions connected with weddings, 176 Crook, shepherd's, 195 Crosier, 221 Cross of nuns, 202 -- older than Christianity, 122 Cross-belt of Rifle Brigade, 242 Crown, 158, 221 -- bridal, 180 -- Tudor, superseded that of St. Edward, 224, =224= Crusaders, 344 Cuff, turned back, 35, =36=, =37=, 38 Cuffs, 35 -- of widow, 183 -- white lawn, used as mourning by King's Counsel, 220 -- worn by the legal profession as part of mourning, 183 Cuirass of Household troops, 233 Culloden, battle of, 249 Currencies carried on the person, 113 -- ornaments as, 112 Cussan's "Handbook of Heraldry," 159 Custom of breaking a coin upon engagement, 115 Dalmatic, 190, 195, 221 -- compared with a shirt, 288 -- of Bishop, fringes on, 190 -- -- deacon, fringes on left side only, 191 -- symbolism of fringes, 191 Damascus, damask takes its name from, 313 Damask takes its name from Damascus, 313 Dane, dress of the, 319 Darnley, Lord, breeches of, 286 Darwin, Charles, on the loss of hair by man, 7 -- -- theory of evolution, 2 -- Sir George, on buttons, 30 -- -- -- -- evolution in dress, 3 -- -- -- -- the origin of busbies, 58, =59= -- -- -- -- top boots, 65, =65= -- -- -- -- why plumes are on the left side, 58, =58= D'Aubernoun, Sir John, brass of, showing chain-mail, 234 David, shield of, 293 Dawkins, Professor Boyd, on the origin of the hair comb, 117 Deacons, stoles of, 192 Deaths due to painting the face, 279 Decoys, dogs dressed as duck, 301 Deformities caused by bandaging infants, 164 Demeter, 297 Denmark, dress of Bronze Age chieftains, 18, =19= Depression in a judge's wig, 215, =216= Diamond, supposed powers of the, 124 Diamonds, always fashionable, 123 Diaper appeared in reign of Henry II, 313 -- derived from D'Ypres, 313 Dinners, handkerchief used for wrapping, 195 Diodorus on the plaid of, 312 Distortion of the head, 336 Divorce, Bedouin form of, 178 Djibah, =172=, 173 Doctor in the Punch and Judy show, 263, =264= -- of Divinity, scarf of, 192 -- round cap of, 213 Dogs, dress of, as duck decoys, 301 -- hairless, 303 Dolls, clothes of, 137 -- costume, 267 -- in swaddling clothes, Mr. Edward Lovett on, 268 Dolman of the Hussars, =81=, 239 Donkeys, cowry shells on trappings of, 297 Drawings of cave men, 8, =9=, 10 Dress, academical, 208 -- -- Druitt on, 210 -- bridal, 175 -- characteristic of trades, 320 -- children's, Dr. Alice Vickery on, 165 -- colour in academical, 309 -- condemnation of, by the clergy, =344= -- Court, 226 -- -- mistakes made in, 227 -- does not usually show rank, 319 -- Dutch skeleton, 145, =145= -- evening, black and white, 308 -- -- suggests correct behaviour, 340 -- Highland, 162 -- League, Rational, 354 -- monastic, 198 -- more primitive, worn on occasions of ceremony, 135 -- naval, supposed survivals in, 252 -- of acrobats, 286 -- -- ancient Christians, 187 -- -- animals, 291 -- -- beadles, 147, 262, =264= -- -- coachmen, origin of, 139 -- -- convicts, 91 -- -- costermongers, 319 -- -- footmen, origin of, 139 -- -- girls at Coombe Hill School, Westerham, 171, =172= -- -- -- -- the Croft School, Betley, 173, =173= -- -- grooms, origin of, 139 -- -- harlequins, 283 -- -- heads of churches in Scotland, 200 -- -- jockeys, coloured, 147 -- -- King's Counsel, 218 -- -- Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, 321 -- -- monks, 201 -- -- Mrs. Bloomer, 81, 361 Dress of Norwegian bride, 180 -- -- nuns, 201, =203= -- -- particular trades, 149 -- -- peasants, gay, 309 -- -- Punch and Judy, 137, 253 -- -- Romans, 187 -- -- servants, 139 -- -- the American, 318 -- -- -- Austrian, 318 -- -- -- Colonial, 319 -- -- -- Dane, 319 -- -- -- Frenchman, 318 -- -- -- German, 318 -- -- -- Hungarian, 318 -- -- -- Norwegian, 319 -- -- -- Spaniard, 318 -- -- St. Nicholas, 137 -- -- soldiers previous to the Restoration, 236 -- -- Yeomen of the Guard, 223, =225= -- once indicated rank, 319 -- origin of, 6 -- parti-coloured, came into fashion in Edward II's time, 313 -- profession often not indicated by, 315 -- rank indicated in certain professions by, 320 -- rational, 81, 361 -- reform, 354 -- simplification of Court, 226 -- special, for worship, 205 -- tax on elegant, 350 -- to be according to station, 350 -- ugliness of evening, 208 -- Union, Healthy and Artistic, 354 -- used in special occupations, 320 Dresses, bridal, often survivals, 180 -- special school, 168 -- with trains to be kept for ceremonial occasions, 358 Dressing-gowns, 138, 358 Drops for ears, 112 Druitt, Mr., on academical dress, 210 -- -- -- boys dressed in petticoats, 165 -- -- -- the coif, 216 Drummer, extra of Third Hussars, 244 Dutch settler's wife, Miss Alice Morse Earle on the dress of, 359 -- skeleton dress, 145, =145=, 272 Dyes for tartans obtained from native plants, 313 Eagles on coronation robe, 222 Ear drops, 112 Ears, perforated for rings, 112 Earle, Miss Alice Morse, on the costume of the wife of a Dutch settler, 359 Eckenstein, Miss Lina, on horse brasses, 293 Edward II, beard of, 130 -- III, badge of, 91 -- -- beard of, 129 -- IV, beard of, closely shaven, 130 -- VII, robes worn at the coronation of, 222 Egypt, finger rings in, 114 Egyptian graves, models of servants put into, 268 -- pins, 105 -- rings of blue pottery, 116 Egyptians, ancient, bury amulets with their dead, 122 -- blackening eyelids, 270 -- early, tattooing practised by, 277 -- modern, tattooing practised by, 277 -- prehistoric, beads of, 112 Elizabeth, statute cap of, 168 -- Queen, stocking of, 68 Elizabeth's coronation glove, stitching carried on to the back of, =97=, 98 -- reign, ruffs of, 48 Elsyng, brass in church at, 86, =86= Elves' arrows as pendants, 123 Elworthy, Mr., on horns of honour, 117 Embroidery carried on to the backs of gloves, 98, =99= Emeralds always fashionable, 123 Epaulettes, 238 -- worn by the Gentlemen-at-Arms, 238 -- -- -- officers of the Yeomen of the Guard, 238 -- -- -- the Lords-Lieutenant of Counties, 238 -- -- in the Navy, 238 Ermine, 222 -- bands of, indicate rank, 223 Eskimos descendants of the cave men, 10 -- shoes, piece of old, worn by, to ensure fruitfulness, 178 Essex, fish-hooks made of thorns in, 125 Eton, gowns worn by scholars at, 169 -- jacket, 169 -- white tie at, 169 Etruscan brooch, safety-pin like an, 102, =103= Eutropius, St., ceremony of garters, 71 Evolution, the principles applied to clothes, 1 Ewart, Sergeant, captures a French eagle, 245 Eyelashes, removal of, 128 -- lid, blackening of, by Egyptians, 270 -- sacred on rings, 117 -- stone or opal, 124 -- third in slow worm, 3 Executions, clothes worn at, become unfashionable, 353 Face plate of horse, amulets on, 294 -- sooty, of harlequin, 283 Facings, regimental, abolished in 1881, 238 -- why a different colour from that of the coat, 34 Fairholt on bandaged stockings, 67, =67= -- -- the origin of the mortar-board, 214 Fans called sunshades, 280 -- for blowing up a fire, 280 -- origin of, 280 Farces, Atella, celebrated for Italian, 254 Farthingale, 337 Fashion determines the amount of the body which is to be covered, 14 Fashions due to royal peculiarities, 131 -- gay, follow periods of depression, 345 -- in hair arrangement, 126 -- kept up by superstitions, 349 -- origin of, difficult to trace, 354 -- the killing of, 352 Favours, 192 Fawkes, Guy, 225 Feathers, objections to the wearing of, 121 -- of birds of paradise, 121 -- -- ostriches, 122 -- peacocks', unlucky because of eyes, 124 -- wearing of, 121 Ficorroni, 258 Field-Marshal's baton, 223 Fillet, 175 -- forerunner of the hatband, 52, =52= -- head, 149 -- vestiges of, 52, =52= Finn, Huckleberry, 341 -- Mrs., on bells derived from flowers, 314 Fireman, helmet of, 60, =60= -- private, badge of, 91 Fisher folk, barefooted, 334 Fish, gold, with several tails, 303 -- hook made of a thorn in Essex, 125 Fitzroy, General, 244 Flaccus, Dr. Louis W., on the effect of clothes on the minds of school-girls, 339, 340 -- -- -- -- -- -- preference of girls for different articles of clothing, 340, 341 Flags, heraldic colours of, still worn as favours, 308 Flap, red, on busby, 59, =59= Flash on Court dress, 228, =229= -- of Welsh Fusiliers, 133, =134=, 241 Fleshings, pink, of Merveilleuses, 346 Fleur-de-lys, 222, 293 -- on braid of drummers of the Guards, 246 -- removed from royal arms, 246 Flower, Sir William, on deforming of the foot, 334 -- -- -- -- injuries caused by tight lacing, 324 -- -- -- -- the most highly evolved foot, 333 Flowers, chaplet of, used after baptism, 164 -- wearing of, 121 -- worn at Eton on Fourth of June, 171 -- -- by a bride, 175 Folds of robes used as pockets by Arabs, 110 Foot, deforming of the, 334 -- gear, early, 62 -- Guards, drum-major's livery cap, 146 -- Sir William Flower on deforming of the, 334 -- -- -- -- -- the most highly evolved, 333 -- stunted, of Chinese woman, 335 -- the ideal in art, 333, 334 Footman, 140, =141=, 149 -- origin of dress, 139 Footmen, aiguillettes worn by, 240 -- flaps of, 32, =33= -- wig of, 132 -- with powdered hair, 131 Fourchettes of gloves, =97=, 98 Fourragère, 241 Fowls, top-knotted, 303 Fox-hunters, red coat of, 235 Frenchman, dress of, 318 Frills, 227 Fringe of a shawl, origin of, 16 Fringes, Mr. Macalister on symbolism of, on dalmatics, 191 Frock coat, 148 Frontal of nun, =203=, 204 Fruitfulness, superstitious practices to ensure, 179, 180 Funerals, horse trappings still used at, 292 -- painted pasteboard figures burnt in China at, 274 Fur, 11 -- use of, in the army, 247 Fusiliers, Welsh, flash of, 133, =134= Fylfot, 122; see Plate VII, Fig. F, facing page 129 Gagging, art of, not modern, 254 Gaiters, 70 Garlands, wearing of, signifies virginity, 180 Garment, new, put on over old, 148 Garments, dislike of divided, 359 -- flowing, give an elegant effect, 137, 357 -- -- -- dignity, 187, 357 -- long, of Noah's Ark figures, 268 Garter, 158 Garters as insignia, 71 -- golden, of Merveilleuses, 346 -- of girls, annual ceremony in Haute-Vienne, 71 -- ornamental, 71 Gatty, Sir Alfred Scott, on cockades, 153 Gauntlets worn by masons, 232 Gentleman of George III's time, 141, 143 George II's reign, coachman, coat of, 142, =142= -- -- on naval uniform, 251 -- III, black coats at Eton, mourning for, 169 -- -- gentleman's dress, 141, 143 -- III's reign, the pouter coat of, 141 German, dress of the, 318 Germs of disease disseminated by trailing skirts, 358 Giangurgolo, Calabrian, 1731, 257, =257= Gimmal rings, 115 Girdle, 73 -- of judge, 217 Girl catching an object in her lap, 341 Girls, colour preferences of, 307 -- in factories, barefooted, 334 -- wearing their hair down, 166 Gladstone, Mr., abolished the serjeants-at-law, 217 Gloucestershire regiment, badges of, 245 Glove of Anne, Consort of James I, 98, =99= -- stitching carried on to the back of Elizabeth's coronation, =97=, 98 -- -- -- down the back of, =97=, 98 Gloves, 94, 195 -- early, without fingers, 94 -- embroidery carried on to the backs of, 98, =99= -- fourchettes of, =97=, 98 -- not worn by nuns, 204 -- points on, =96=, 98 -- with two thumbs in Iceland, 95 God, solar, of Egypt, 123 Gold dust put on the head, 131 Golfers, red coat of, 235 Gordon, Miss Helen, on painting used in the time of Queen Anne, 279 Gorget the badge of an officer on duty, 235 Gorilla, hair of, 6 Gown, 18 -- black, 185 -- Geneva, bands worn with, 44 -- of judge, 217 -- -- King's Counsel, 218 -- -- Master of Arts, 210 -- -- Oxford Undergraduates, 210 Gowns, black, legal mourning for Queen Mary II, 218 -- worn by scholars at Eton, 169 Greek betrothal rings, 115 Gremial, 202 Grenadier, caps of Scots Greys, 244 Greys, Scots, 245 Grenadier Guards, 248 Groom, =140= -- origin of belt, 139 -- -- -- dress, 139 Guards, drummers of, fleur-de-lys on braid of, 246 -- formation of, by Charles II, 246 -- Grenadier, 248 -- -- buttons on coats of, 29 -- Irish, 248 -- Life and Horse, survival of cord for priming powder horn, 108 -- Scots, 248 -- white jackets of, 243 Guignol, 255 -- French punch, 257 -- the name derived from Giangurgolo, 257 Guild liveries, 232 Guinea, New, women wear no clothes, 9 Habit, black of clergy, 308 Habits, monastic, 198 Hackle feathers of Northumberland Fusiliers, 244 Hair, clubbed, 134 -- curly, imitated, 130 -- dedication of, 128 -- dishevelling of, as mourning, 181 -- down, girls wearing their, 166 -- early man covered with, 6 -- great value attached to a profuse head of, 128 -- long, not necessarily effeminate, 127 -- not correlated with cold climate, 6 -- of women dressed differently from that of men, 128 -- powder, 131 -- -- coloured, 131 -- putting up of, by girls, 166 -- queued, 134 -- Roman modes of doing the, 132; Plate VII, facing page 129 -- use of others, 130 Halberds of Yeomen of the Guard, 225 Handkerchief in general use in Henry VIII's time, 195 -- used for wrapping up dinners, 195 -- -- -- -- -- presents, 195 Hanover, cockade of House of, 153 Harem, 13 Harlequin, 261, 267 -- coat of, worn by the Lord of Montbron, 283 -- modern dress of, 283, =284= -- origin of the character, 282 -- patched coat of, 283 -- shaven head of, 283 -- sooty face of, 283 -- wand of, 283 Harlequinade, 269, 282 Harlequinne, 285 Harrow, coats at, 169 -- swallow tails at, 170 Hat band, 52 -- -- origin of, 52 -- cocked, development of, 60, =60= -- Cranmer's, 214, =214= -- for hunting with lacing, 56, =56= -- how made from a disc of material 57, =57= -- of a bishop of the Stuart period, 214, =214= -- sailor, streamers of, 53, =53= -- tall, used in the Army, 248 Hats with the underside painted green, 271 -- women in church without, 206 Haweis, Mrs., dressing to suit her surroundings, 310 Hawaiian Islands, hut of, 49 Haybands forerunners of leg bandages, 67 Head, distortion of, 336 Head-dress of French lawyer, 158 -- -- -- Henry II's reign surviving in that of nuns, 201, =203= -- -- shawl as a, 61 -- -- Siamese, compared with a Votive Spire, 50, =51= -- shaven, of harlequin, 283 -- shaving, 127 -- strap, =203= Heads, deforming of children's, by Chinook Indians, 335 Hearse cloths, 232 Heart-shaped amulets, 295, 296, =296= Hector the horse extinct in Punch and Judy show, 267 Helmet of Black Prince, 87, =88= -- fireman's, 60, =60= -- plate, 158 Helmets, metal, 60 Henna used for staining fingers and toes by Egyptians, 271 Henry VIII's reign, handkerchief came into general use in, 195 Heppel, Mr. George, on Punch and Judy, 253 -- -- -- -- figures worked by wires, 255 Heraldry, Handbook of, by Cussan, 159 Heralds, tabards of, 83 Hereditary badges, 90 Hide, raw, shoe made of, 64, =64= Highland corps, white jackets of, 243 -- dress, 162 Hindu ayahs, nose rings of, 111 -- women, painting of the feet scarlet by, 273 -- -- teeth blackened by, 273 Hodgson, Miss, uses a doll to show costume, 174 Hogarth's engravings of children, 162 Holland, dress of clergy in, 200 Holy Land, swaddling clothes persist in, 163, 333 Hood, 198 -- academical, 210 -- -- wearing of, by clergymen, 199, 212 -- combined with cape, 156, =156=, 157 -- enlargement of the peak, =156=, 157 -- of a Knight of the Garter, 229, =230= -- -- Bachelor of Arts, 212 -- -- nuns, 202, =203= -- -- the Order of the Thistle, 230 -- -- -- -- -- St. Patrick, 230 -- -- undergraduates, liripipe of, 211 -- peak of prolonged, to form liripipe, 157 -- tiny, on barrister's gown, 218, =219= Horn for priming powder, survival of cords for suspending, 108 Horns of honour, 117 Horse amulets, 293, 294, =294=, 295, =296= -- clothing, 292 -- brass, crescent shaped, derived from boar's tusks, 294, =294= -- brasses, English, the counterpart of those shown on Trajan's column, 295 -- -- Dr. Plowright on the origin of some, 293 -- -- Miss Lina Eckenstein on, 293 -- -- heraldic, 295 -- identified as a corn spirit, 297 -- trappings, 292 -- -- still used at funerals, 292 -- white, of Hanover, 243 Horses, black, used at funerals, 303 -- circus, 303 -- grey, carry the kettledrums, 303 -- hats of, 300 -- killing of, at harvest time, 297 -- sun-bonnets, 300 -- white carry the kettledrums, 303 Hose, Florentine, 70, 286 -- tights, a survival of Florentine, 286 -- trunk, 269 -- -- of acrobat, 286 -- -- -- clown, 269 -- -- -- knights, 231 Household cavalry, bandsmen's livery caps, 146 Housemaid, apron of, 149 -- cap of, 149 Hounds, Dalmatian, as carriage dogs, 303 Howard of Effingham, hat of Lord, 248 Hump of Punch, back, 262, =263= -- -- -- front, origin of, 253 Hungarian, dress of the, 318 -- peasant's cap, 59, =59= Huntsman, livery cap of, 146 Hussars, 59 -- cowry shells on trappings of horses of, 297, =298= -- dolman of, 81, 239 -- Eighth, wear sword-belts over their shoulders, 243 -- Eleventh, wear ivory-hilted swords, 244 -- Fifteenth, wear Austrian imperial lace, 244 -- lacing of, 146 -- prickers on shoulder belt of, 239, =239= -- sling jacket of, 81, 239 -- Third, extra drummer of, 244 -- uniform of, 272 Hut of Hawaiian Islands, 49 Iceland, glove with two thumbs, 95 India, lotus flowers on king's mantle, symbolical of, 222 Indian Army, puttees of, 66 Infant, bib of, 167 -- binder of, 163 Infants, deformities caused by bandaging, 164 -- powdered, 162 -- patched, 162 Inner Temple, badge of the porters of, 91 Ireland, pin-ring brooches in, 125 Irish Guards, 248 Ironside of Cromwell compared with a modern cavalryman, 237, =237= Italian women age rapidly, 329 Jacket, Cardigan, 18 -- Eton, 169 -- smoking, suggests relaxation, 340 Jackets, rainproof, for cows, 300 -- white, of Guards, 243 -- -- -- Highland corps, 243 Japan, use of paint by women in, 275 Japanese actors paint the face, 273 -- children, painting the face of, 273 -- women, teeth blackened by, on marriage, 273 Java, earliest man in, 7. See Frontispiece Jerome, St., on special dress for worship, 205 Jesson, Mr. W. H., a performer of Punch and Judy, 262 Jesus College, Cambridge, choristers' bands, 45, =45= Jewesses shave their heads, 127 Jews, 205 -- rending their garments, 42 -- tattooing practised by, 277 Joan the old name of Judy, 266 Jockey, livery cap of, 147 -- parti-coloured dress of, 147, 313 Johanna, 301 Judge, girdle of, 217 -- gown of, 217 -- sentence cap of, 217 -- wig of, 132, 216, =216= Judith, 267 Judy, dress of, =263= -- apron of, =263= -- mob cap of, 262, =263= -- once known as Joan, 266 -- origin of the name, 266 Kamarband worn by officers, 249 Kayans of Borneo, clothes of bark worn by, as mourning, 181 Kefiyeh fastened with a fillet of camel's hair, 53 Kersey, 351 Kettledrums, silver, 244 Kilburn Sisters, 201, 202 Kilt of sailors, 252 -- short, 76, =76= Kimono brought from Japan, 344 King's Counsel, dress of, 218 -- -- gown of, 218 -- -- white lawn cuffs used as mourning by, 220 -- footmen, red coats of, 235 Kirkudbrightshire, pin-ring brooches of blacksmiths in, 125 Knee-breeches worn when speeches are made at Eton, 170 Knickerbocker suits, jersey, 165 Knickerbockers, 80 -- of blue-coat boys, 167 -- a recognized feature of children's costume, 163 Knights of the Garter, 229 -- -- -- -- chaperon on robes of, 158 -- -- St. Patrick, 229 -- -- the Thistle, 229 Knobs in the East take the place of buttons, 20 Kohl, 271 Label to difference arms, 86, =86=, 88 Labourers' method of buttoning trousers, 252 Lace, Austrian imperial, worn by Fifteenth Hussars, 244 Lacedæmonian girls, tunics of, slit down the sides, 346 Lacerna, 198 Laces, 100, =101= Lacing inside a hat, =55= -- of Hussars, 146 -- tight, banned by Charles IV and Henry III, 326 -- -- in England, 326 -- -- made compulsory by Catherine de Medici, 326 Ladies, armorial bearings on dresses of, 84, =85= -- married with flowing tresses, 166 -- wear pyjamas, 288 Lady gardeners at Kew wear trousers, 358 Lake dwellings, pins found in Swiss, 105 Lamb, Persian, used for making spots on miniver, 222 Lambs that supply the wool for the pallium, 196 -- waterproof coats of, 300 Lancaster, Henry Duke of, crest and surcoat of, 86, =86= Lancers, 39 Lap, boys and girls catching objects in their, 341 Lawn sleeves of a bishop, 199 Laws for the good of trade, 348 Lawyer, head-dress of French, 158 Leech, caricatures the busbies of the Guards, 247 Leg bandages, 66, =66=, =67= -- -- derived from haybands, 67 -- -- of pfiferari, 68 Leggings, survival of the wearing of skins, 70 Legion of Honour, buttons of, 158 Leicestershire Regiment, tiger-skin aprons of, 249 Leopards on Arms of England, 86 Life Guards, black plumes of farriers of, 242 -- -- -- tunics of farriers of, 242 Light Infantry, Duke of Cornwall's puggaree of, 243 Lindley, Lord, last surviving serjeant-at-law, 217 Linen, strip of, round head as mourning in Egypt, 182 -- the showing of, 44 Lion spotted when young, 94 Lions on Arms of England, 86 Liripipe, =156=, 157, =157=, 210, 230 -- of undergraduates' hoods, 211 -- peak of hood prolonged to form, 156, =156= Lip plugs, 111 Liveries of the City Companies, 231 Livery cap, 146 -- -- of bandsmen of the Household Cavalry, 146 -- -- -- drum-major of the Foot Guards, 146 -- -- -- jockeys, 147 -- -- -- huntsmen, 146 -- Companies, chaperon, vestige on gowns of, 231 -- of page-boy, 145, =145= -- -- porters, 148 Locket, 122 Loom combs, 117, =118= Lord Mayor's coachman, wig-bag of, 134, 143, =143= -- -- postilion, crest worn upon cap of, 92, =92= Lotus flowers symbolical of India, on Edward VII's mantle, 222 Louis XVI, hair of, gave rise to wigs, 131 Louterell, Sir Geoffrey, figure showing armorial bearings, 84, =85= Lovett, Mr. Edward, on dolls in swaddling clothes, 268 -- -- -- -- origin of pin-ring brooches, 125 -- -- -- -- patterns derived from tattooing, 278 Lyman, Dr., explanation of buttons being differently arranged on the clothes of the two sexes, 22 Macalister, Mr., on fashions, 189 -- -- -- symbolism of the fringes on dalmatics, 191 -- -- -- the pallium, 196 -- -- -- -- surplice, 185 -- -- -- there being no distinctive garments for the ministers, among early Christians, 190 Macphersons, tartan of the, 312 Magnin, M., on the origin of Punch's hump, 261 Mail, chain, vestige of, on shoulder of Imperial Yeoman, 233, =233= -- plate, 235 Malachite used for painting by prehistoric Egyptians, 271 Man cook, white clothes of, 320 -- Isle of, triskele in the coat-of-arms of, 119 -- once hairy, 7. Frontispiece -- skin of, originally reddish, 13 -- primitive, 5 Manche, 146 Maniple, 221 -- once a napkin, 194 Manning, Mrs., hung in a black satin dress, 353 Manservant, modern, 143 Mantle, imperial, 221 -- of Edward VII, lotus flowers on, 222 -- -- Queen Victoria, roses on, 222 Mantles of ladies, collars standing up, 48 Maoris, tattooing of, 277 Mare, the last uncut ears of corn, 297 Marken, women of, floral designs on the bodice, 278 Market woman, sun-bonnet of, 61 Marines, Royal, mourning of, 243 Marionettes, 255 Marriage by capture, 175 Marriott, Mr., on the colour of early vestments, 190 Martingale of horse, amulets on, 294 Mask, unwritten laws that rule the wearing of, 281 Masks of the 5th of November a reminder of primitive face-painting, 280 -- worn by savages, 280 Mason, Mr. Otis T., on pockets, 110 Masons, aprons of, 232 -- insignia of, 231 Master, clothing of, becomes that of servant, 5, 152 Maud, 20 Maundy Thursday, 226 Mayhew, Mr. Henry, on Punch and Judy, 265 Medical officers, volunteer, wear cocked hats, 247 Men, colour preferences of, 307 Merveilleuses, 345, =345= Mess jacket of Somersetshire Light Infantry, 242 Meyer, Dr., on the padding of sleeves above the shoulder to prevent weapons from slipping off, 338 Mice, piebald, 302 Milk-women, apron of, 150 -- -- costume of, 110 -- -- with yokes, 110 Milton, bands of, 46 Mimes, Roman, 183, 282, 283 Mimi, 282 Miniver, 222 -- rows of black spots on, indicate rank, 223 Mitten, open work, 99 Mittens and tattooing, 99 Mitre, 221 -- strings of, 54, =54= Mizpah rings, 116 Mob cap worn by Judy, 262, =263= Modesty a habit, 12 -- different ideas of, in various regions, 12 -- ideas of, Arab women, 207 Molière introduces Punch into _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 261 Monk, General, 246 Monkeys, clothes of, 301 Monk, dress of, 201 -- scapular of, 201 -- tunic of, 201 Montbron, Lord of, harlequin's coat worn by, 283 Montaigne on the sufferings caused by the corps piqué, 325 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, and painting, 279 Montem at Eton, 171 Moore, Sir John, black worm as mourning for, 242 Mortar-board, 47, 169, 212, =214= Moseley, Professor, on face-painting in China, 273, 274, 275; see Plate X, fig. C facing p. 270 -- -- -- painting the body, 272 -- -- -- the use of paint by women in Japan, 275 Mosque-like turban, 50, =50= Mourning bands of barristers, 219 -- black as, 181 -- black band on arm for, 182 -- -- worm for Sir John Moore as, 242 -- clothes of bark worn by Kayans of Borneo as, 181 -- cuffs worn by the legal profession as part of, 183 -- dishevelling of hair as, 181 -- for death of Nelson, 252 -- -- General Wolfe, black worm as, 242 -- of Royal Marines, 243 -- purple as, 182 -- sackcloth as, 181 -- strip of linen round head in Egypt as, 182 -- white as, 182 -- white lawn cuffs used by King's Counsel as, 220 -- yellow as, 182 Moustache, 129 Mules, cowry shells on trappings of, 297, =299= Mutes at children's funerals, 182 Nail, horseshoe, as part of a pin-ring brooch, 125 Nakedness, effect of, destroyed by tattooing even in Europeans, 277 Napkin, 194, 195 Naval uniforms, 251 Navvies wear belts, 329 Neapolitan, the, as an actor, 254 Neck chains, 113 -- -- of Richard II's time, 113 Nelson, mourning for death of, 252 Neuville, M. Lemercier de, on Punch's stick, 260 Newcombe, Allan Poe, on hats and habitations, 49 Nicks in coat lapels, 41, =41=, =42= Nightcap of man, 290, =290= -- -- woman, 289, =290= Nightcaps, elaboration of, restricted in the reign of Mary, 290 -- of Tudors, 289 -- still worn, 289 Night-dresses worn by ladies in the street in Anne's reign, 290 Nightgown, the bands on a lady's, 288, =289= Night rails, 290 Nightshirt cut like a day shirt, 288 Noah's Ark figures, long garments of, 268 Norman chin-band, 201, =203= Normans closely shaved their beards, 129 -- combination garments of, 320 -- wore trousers, 79 Northumberland Fusiliers, hackle feathers of, 244 -- -- wear roses, 245 Norwegian, dress of the, 319 Nose rings of Hindu ayahs, 111 Novice, veil of, 202 Nuns, 201, 203 -- aprons of, 202 -- breast cloth of, 202, =203= -- cap of, 202, =203=, 204 -- collar of, 202 -- costume of, 198 -- cross of, 202 -- frontal of, =203=, 204 -- hood of, 202, =203= -- not allowed to wear gloves, 204 -- scapular of, 202 -- veil of, 202, =203= -- wear wedding-rings, 204 Nurse, hospital, uniform of, 150 Nurses, domestic, imitating hospital nurses' dress, 150 O'Connor, Dr. Bernard, on bloomers, 361 -- -- -- -- woman's dress for active exercises, 361 Officers, commanding, choice of uniform, 242, 243 -- non-commissioned, stripes on sleeves of, 114 Opal, supposed powers of the, 124 Opals, always fashionable, 123 -- and bad luck, 124 Openwork mittens, 99 -- of Roman shoe, 62, =63= -- stocking, 69, =69= Ophal, 124 Orange blossom, 180 Orang-utan, hair of, 6 Oraria, distribution of, by Aurelian, 192 Orarium, 191, 195 Order of the Coif, 216 Origin of fashions difficult to trace, 354 -- -- mayoral chains, 113 -- -- the clock, 68 Ornament, love of, among simple races, 8 Ornamentation of modern boots, 62, =63= -- -- -- shoes, 62 Ornaments as currencies, 112 -- of Stone Age, 112 -- serve for identification, 10 -- shells as, 112 -- why they survive, 111 -- worn even if there are little clothes, 9; see Plate II, facing page 9 Orphrey, the apparel of the chasuble, 196 Ostrich feathers, 122 Oxford University, Chancellor of, hanging sleeve of, 210, =211= -- -- undergraduate's gown, 210 Overcoat, 149 Pads in hair dressing, 131 Padding, 338 Page-boy, buttons of, 144, =145= -- -- livery of, 145, =145= Pageants, success of, a sign of the craving for colour, 306 Paint on face of clowns, 269 -- use of, by women in Japan, 275 -- -- -- -- -- -- China, 275 -- -- -- at a corroboree, 272 -- -- -- in war to terrify, 273 Painted pasteboard figures burnt at funerals in China, 274 Painting, 13 -- by native races, 272 -- follows the bones of the body, 272 -- of clowns likened to that once in vogue in China and Japan, 276 -- -- the body by cave men, 270 -- practised by civilized men, 280 -- the body among Andaman Islanders, 276 -- -- -- Professor Moseley on, 272 -- -- eyes, practised by the prehistoric Egyptian, 6000 B.C., 271 -- -- face to hide the ravages of time, 278 -- -- -- -- heighten its beauty, 278 -- -- -- deaths due to, 279 -- -- -- of Japanese children, 273 -- -- -- -- -- actors, 273 -- -- feet scarlet by Hindu women, 273 Palettes, slate, in the form of two birds in prehistoric Egypt, 295 -- -- of the New Race, 271 Pall, 197 -- manufacture of, 196 Pallium, 195 -- development of the, 196 Palmerston's, Lord, broad-toed shoes, 335 Panache derived from the horn, 117 Pantaloon, 254, 261, 283, 285 -- Elizabethan costume of, 269, 285, =285= Pantomimes, 269, 282 Pantomimi, 282 Papoose, swathing of American Indian, 164 Paré, Ambrose, on the suffering caused by the corps piqué, 325 Paris, waistbands, trade in, discarded, 348 Parliamentary officials, wigs of, 132 Parti-coloured dress of Athletic clubs, 313 -- -- -- jockeys, 313 Patches indicating political views, 279 -- of Charles I's reign banned by the Puritans, 278 -- reappear in Charles II's reign, 279 Pattern, pine, origin of, 311 Patterns, breeches of chequered, worn by Gauls and early inhabitants of England, 311 Peasant dress, slight survivals in England, 150; Plate VII, facing page 150 Pelisse obtained from Persia, 344 Pendants, 122 Pensioners, costumes of, 170 People, uncivilized, without pockets, 9 Persian women wear trousers, 81 Pet animals, collars worn by, 298 Perthshire, the bare feet of children in, 333 Petrie, Professor, on Romano-Egyptian portrait models, 132 -- -- -- buttons in Egypt, 120 -- -- -- the origin of a supposed shield-shaped ornament, 296 Petticoat at first not shaped, 73 -- hooped, 337 Petticoats, lengthening of, 166 -- of sailors, 252 -- -- small boys, 165 Pfiferari, cross gartering of, 68 -- leg bandages of, 68 Phallic worship, 122 Pig-tail, grease of, 252 _Pileus quadratus_, 212 Pillion, 140 Pin, safety, 101, 118 -- -- in hat, 104, =104= -- -- -- waistband, =103=, 104 -- -- like an Etruscan brooch, 102, =103= -- scarf, 118 Pinafore, 150 Pinafores now children's dress, 167 Pin-money, 105 Pinner, 150 Pins, bronze, 105 -- Egyptian, 105 -- found in Swiss Lake dwellings, 105 -- gold, 197 -- made of thorns, 125 -- of bone, 105 -- ornamental, 106 -- scarf, 106 _Pithecanthropus erectus_, 7 Plaid, 20, 187 -- belted, 72 -- shepherd's, 312 Plaids, 311 Plastron of Hussars, 148 Plowright, Dr., on the Moorish origin of some horse brasses, 293 Plugs for lips, 111 Plumes, black, of farriers of Life Guards, 242 -- why on left side, 58 Plush, 149 -- breeches, 104, =141= Pocket flaps, vestiges of, 32, =33= Pockets, 109 -- in the sleeves of a Corean, 110 -- side, 30 -- uncivilized people without, 9 Points, 98 -- on gloves, =96=, 98 Policeman's coat, buttons on the back of, 26, =26= -- uniform not worn by children, 163 Polly, Miss, in the Punch and Judy show, now extinct, 265 Polypus (= the octopus) changing colour, 206 Porters, livery of, 148 -- railway, waistcoats of, 148 Portugal, Queen of, demonstrates the evils of tight-lacing by means of radiographs, 325 Postilions, buttons on jackets of, 38 -- coats of His Majesty's, 145 -- of Lord Mayor, crest worn upon cap of, 92, =92= Postulant, veil of, 202 Poupée derived from pupa, 163 Pouter coat, 141, =141= Powder, 149 -- for hair, 131 Prayer-book, first, of Edward V, ornaments, rubric of, upheld by Act of Uniformity, 199 -- -- second, of Edward VI, 199 -- -- vestments prescribed by the, first, of Edward VI, 198 Prickers on the shoulder-belt of a Hussar, 239, =239= Priest, =194= Profession indicated by costumes, 316 Puggaree of Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, 243 Pulicinella, 254 -- means a hen chicken, 264 -- Oscan, of 1731, =256= Punch, =263= -- a Roman mime, 183 -- and Judy, dress of, 137 -- -- -- show, beadle of, 147, 262, =264= -- -- -- -- doctor of, 263 -- -- -- -- Hector, the horse, extinct in, 267 -- -- -- -- Miss Polly, now extinct in, 265 -- back hump of, 262, =263= -- bronze statuette with face and features of, 258, =258= -- figures worked by wires, 255 -- front hump of, 253, 261 -- gay clothes of, in France and England, 261 -- in religious plays, 266 -- introduced into _Le Malade Imaginaire_, by Molière, 261 -- origin of clothes of, 257 -- -- --, hump of, 253, 261 -- ruff of, 262, =263= -- stick of, 260 -- the behaviour of, changes, 264 -- voice of, 264 Pupa, Greek name for a baby in swaddling clothes, 163 Puppet derived from pupa, 163 -- show of fourteenth century, 259, =259= -- shows in China, 259 Puritans and Quakers, fashions set by, 348 Purple as mourning, 182 Puttees, 66, =66=, 328 -- of Indian Army, 66 Pyjamas, 128 -- worn by ladies, 288 Pym, John, bands of, 46, =46= Quakers refused to wear buttons, 119 Queued hair, 134 Quiver carried on a baldric, 106 Ra, 122 Rats, white, 302 Rank once indicated by dress, 319 -- indicated by dress in certain professions, 320 -- not usually shown by dress, 319 Ramillies, battle of, 244 Red cap of liberty, 306 -- not universal in the British Army, 308 -- rag of chulos in the bull fight, 306 -- ribbon of engaged girl, 306 -- rose of Lancaster, 306 -- shirt of the followers of Garibaldi, 306 -- tie of platelayer, 306 Regimental badges, 245 Revers buttoned back, 38, =39= Reynolds, Mr. P. W., on the survival of a button, 248 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- forage cords, 241 Rhead, Mr., on the festal dress of Otaheite, 338 Richard II's time, chaperon of, 157 Rifle Brigade, busby of, 242 -- -- cross belt of, 242 Ring, 195 -- for nose of Hindu ayahs, 111 -- in Ireland, bearing clasped hands, 116 -- of Bishop Agilbert of Paris, 114 Rings, betrothal of Greeks, 115 -- -- -- Romans, 115 -- engagement, 114 -- Egyptian, of blue pottery of faïence, 116 -- Episcopal, 114 -- finger, in Babylon, 114 -- -- -- Egypt, 114 -- for ears, 112 -- gimmal, 115 -- in which the stones stand for letters, 116 -- sacred eye on, 117 -- signet, 83, =85= -- -- in Egypt, 114 -- -- suspended from the neck, 116 -- used as an insignia of rank by Romans, 115 -- wedding, 114 -- -- worn by nuns, 204 -- why worn on third finger, 115 Robe, parliamentary, of the King, 222 -- coronation, eagles on, 222 Robes of companies, 138 -- -- a chancellor of a university, 210 -- -- borough councillors, 138 -- -- the Barons of the Exchequer, 218 -- worn on State occasions, 137 Robinson, Commander, on naval uniforms, 252 Robley, General, collection of Maori heads, 277 Rochet, 199, 221 Roman betrothal rings, 115 -- d'Alexandre, MS. of, 259 Romans cut their beards, 129 -- did not wear trousers, 77 -- shoes of open work of, 62, =63= -- tunic of, 191 -- use rings as insignia of rank, 115 Roses on Queen Victoria's mantle, 222 -- worn by Northumberland Fusiliers, 245 -- -- -- soldiers on St. George's day, 245 Roy and Adami, Professors, on the beneficial use of waist belts and stays, 332 Royalty, fashions arising from deformities of, 344 Rubies always fashionable, 123 Ruff, Elizabethan, of Toby, 253 -- of Toby, 263 -- worn by Punch, 262, =263= Ruffles, 227 Ruffs of Elizabeth's reign, 48, 351 Russia, boots of bridegrooms removed by brides in, 177 Sackcloth as mourning, 181 Safety-pin, 101, =102=, =103=, =104=, 118 Sailor suit, 162 Sailors, European, tattooing practised by, 277 -- kilt of, 252 -- petticoat breeches of, 252 -- petticoat of, 252 -- trousers, method of buttoning, 252 St. Clement on women covering their heads in church, 205, 207 -- George, cross of, 158 -- Gregory the Great, costume of, 188, =188= -- John of Jerusalem, dress of Knights of, 321 -- Lucia, 244 -- Nicholas, dress of, 137 -- -- figure of, shows old dress, 267 -- Patrick, hood of the Order of, 230 Sapphires always fashionable, 123 Saragossa, battle of, 243 Sashes meant to be used as slings, 241 -- of officers, 249 -- worn over the left shoulder by sergeants of the Twenty-Ninth Foot, 249 Satchel carried on a baldric, 106 Savage, the female--a Merveilleuse dress, 346 Savages, colour preferences of, 307 Saxons parted or trimmed their beards, 129 -- wore trousers, 79, =79= Scapular of nuns, 202 Scaramouch, 254, 261 -- a pantomimist, 286 Scarf, 191, 199 -- on ladies' hats, 149 -- pin, 106, 118 Scarves, 192 Sceptre, 221, 304 School, Blue-coat, 167 -- Bristol Red-Maids, 168 -- Wells Grey-Maids, 168 Schools, Green-coat, 168 -- Grey-coat, 168 Scotland, dress of heads of churches in, 200 Scottish Rifles, chaco of, 241 Scots Greys, 245 -- -- take their name from their horses, 303 -- -- Grenadier, caps of, 244 -- Guards, 248 Seal of Solomon, 293 Serapis, crown of, 117 Serjeant-at-law, Lord Lindley, last, 217 -- coif of, 216 -- robes of, 218 -- wig of, 215 Sergeants of Twenty-Ninth Foot wear sashes over their left shoulders, 249 Servant, clothing of master becomes that of, 5, 139 Servants' dress, 139 Sex idea, 165 "Shabbies," 268 Shamrock, 222 Shapka, 239 Shaving carried out with flint knives or pieces of shell, 127 -- of heads by Egyptians, 128 -- -- -- -- East End Jewesses, 127 -- -- the whole head, 127 Shawl, 16 -- as a head-dress, 61 -- the ancestral, 15 -- used as kilt by Danish chieftain, 72, =73= Shells as ornaments, 112 -- cowry, on trappings of camels, 297, =299= -- -- -- -- -- donkeys, 297 -- -- -- -- -- Hussars, 297, =298= -- -- -- -- -- mules, 297, =299= Shepherd, plaid of, 312 Shield, 83 -- heart-shaped, derived from a double bird, 296 -- of Black Prince, 87, =89= -- -- David, 293 Shirt front, origin of the, 44 -- survival of the, as an outer garment, 288 Shoe made from a flat piece of hide, 65 -- money in Bulgaria, 177 -- of raw hide, 64, =64= Shoes, broad toed, of Henry VIII's reign, 335 -- gift of, by bridegroom to bride, 177 -- high heels of, 335 -- old, thrown at weddings, 176 -- ornamentation of modern, 62 -- part of wages, 177 -- pieces of old, worn by Eskimos to ensure fruitfulness, 178 -- removed from dead bodies to lay ghosts, 178 -- with preposterously long toes, 350 -- thrown over the heads of the O'Neils by the O'Cahans, 177 -- -- to ensure fruitfulness, 177 Shoulder knot, use of, 238 Siamese women wear trousers, 81; see Plate V, facing p. 81 Sicily, triskele in the coat-of-arms of, 119 Sign of the "Crooked Billet," 146 Signs derived from Royal badges, 91 Silk, forbidden, 351 -- stockings, 140, =141= Simkin, Mr. R., explanation of the flash, 133 Sisters, lay, 204 -- Kilburn, 201, 202 -- of Mercy, 201 Skeleton dress, Dutch, 145, =145= "Sketch, The," on cockades, 158 Skirt, long, dangerous nowadays, 358 -- -- disseminates germs, 358 Skirts, short, a recognized feature of children's costume, 163 -- simple, of a Danish chieftainess, 73 -- of lady gardeners damaged the plants, 358 Skull on head-dress of Hussars, 146 Skulls, bone inserted into prehistoric, 336 Sleeves, costume dated by, 210 -- detachable, of nuns, 202 -- hanging, 209, =209= -- hanging, of a chancellor of Oxford University, =211= -- slashed, prohibited, 350 -- velvet, of a Proctor, 321 Sling jacket of the Hussars, =81=, 239 Smock-frock, 18, =19= Socks, 66 Soldiers, armlets conferred on, 114 -- boys dressed as, 163 -- dress previous to the Restoration, 236 Solicitor of Guards, uniform of, 247 -- -- -- cocked hat of, 247 Solomon, seal of, 293 Somersetshire Light Infantry, cavalry mess jacket of, 242 Soul remaining in shoes, 178 Spaniard, dress of the, 318 Spatterdashes, 70 Spencer, Herbert, on fashions, 343 Spire, Siamese head-dress compared with a votive, 50, =51= Sporran, =76=, 77 Spur leathers, 235 Staff, cross, 195 -- pastoral, 195 Star, 158 Statuette, bronze, of Punch, 258, =258= Statute cap of Elizabeth, 168 Stays, original intention of, 323 -- Professors Roy and Adami on the beneficial use of, 332 -- theory that they are derived from swaddling clothes, 332 Steen, Jan, bands of, 46, =46= Stick of camel driver survival of a sceptre, 304 Sticks, walking, 124 Stitching carried down the back of gloves, =97=, 98 Stoat, 222 Stockings, 66, 195 -- embroidered, 69, =69= -- leather, worn by William Penn, 70 -- of cloth, 68 -- open work, 69, =69= -- silk, 140, =141= -- yellow, of blue-coat boys, 167 Stocks of leather, 200 Stole, 193, 221 Stoles of deacons, 192 Stone Age, ornaments of, 112 Stones, precious, fashions in, 123 -- -- supposed attributes of, 123 Straps, shoulder, =74=, 75 Straw wisps on horses, 297 Streamers of sailor hat, 53, =53= -- -- Scotch cap, 53, =54= -- on barristers' gowns, 219 -- -- hats, 52, =52= -- -- head-dress of twelfth century, 53, =53= Strings, cap, 149 -- on mitres, 54, =54= Stripe on trousers, vestige of a row of buttons, =81=, 82 Stripes on sleeves of non-commissioned officers, 114 Stud, 118, =119= Suit, sailor, 162 Sumptuary laws, 349, 350, 351 -- -- a hindrance to trade, 351 -- -- usually a failure, 349 Sun-bonnet of barge women, 61; see Plate VIII, facing p. 150 Sun-bonnets of horses, 300 -- -- -- market-garden women, 61 Surcoat, 83 -- of Black Prince, 87, 89 -- -- Henry Duke of Lancaster, 86, =86= Surgeons of the Life Guards wear cocked hats, 247 Superstitions keep up fashions, 349 Surplice, 185, 195, 199 -- academical hood worn by clergy on a, 212 -- Mr. Macalister on the, 185 -- slit in front in order to go over big wigs, 185 Survivals of trade costumes (butchers), 308 -- supposed in naval dress, 252 Suspenders, 71 Surtout, 148 Swaddling clothes still used in the Holy Land, 333 -- -- theory that stays are derived from, 332 -- -- swallow-tail coat, evolution of, 33, =34= -- tails at Harrow, 170 Swastika, 119, 122; see Plate VII, fig. F, facing p. 129, 311 -- the forerunner of the cross, 311 Sword belt, not worn outside the coat, 26 -- handle, opening for, in coat, 30 -- in Court dress, 227 -- ivory hilted, worn by Eleventh Hussars, 244 Tab on soldier's coat, =29=, 30 -- -- side of coat, =31=, 32 Tabards of heralds, 83 Tags, metal, 100, =101= -- ornamental, 101, =101= -- useless on top boots, 66, =66= _Tailor and Cutter_, Editor of, on clothes and nationality, 317 Talismans, wearing of, by ancient Egyptians, 122 Talith, 205 Tannin preserves woven material, 18 Tapir, spotted when young, 94; see Frontispiece Tartan, Cameron, 242 -- wearing of, forbidden, 351 Tartans, Royal Stuart, 312 -- of Scotch clans, 312 -- dyes for, obtained from native plants, 313 -- clans with several, 312 Tattooing, 13 -- and mittens, 99 -- destroys the effect of nakedness even in Europeans, 277 -- effect of, produced by open-work stockings and blouses, 70 -- of the Maoris, 277 -- practised by early Egyptians, 277 -- -- -- European sailors, 277 -- -- -- modern sailors, 277 -- -- -- Jews, 277 -- -- -- practised by old inhabitants of this country, 277 -- scar, as a means of recognition, 276 Tax on elegant dress, 350 Teeth blackened by Hindu women, 273 -- -- -- Japanese women on marriage, 273 Thistle, hood of the Order of the, 230 Thistles, 222 Tie, white at, Eton, 169 Tierra del Fuegians, 11 Tights, 70 -- of acrobats, 286 -- a survival of Florentine hose, 286 -- -- knightly orders, 231 Tippet, 192, 212 Tippets of Doctors of Divinity, scarlet, 212 -- for ministers who are not graduates, 199 Tobit, dog in the Book of, suggested by Toby, 267 Toby, Elizabethan ruff of, 253 -- represented in China by a dragon, 267 -- -- -- France by a cat, 267 -- ruff of, 263 -- suggests the dog in the book of Tobit, 267 Toga, 187 -- replacement of, 192 -- when worn, 187 Toledo, Fourth Council of, 192 Tonsure, 217 -- of priests, 127 Topaz as a detector of poison, 124 "Toothpick" collar of dress coat, 43, =43= Top-coat, 149 Trades, characteristic dresses of, 320 Trajan, trousers shown on the column of, 78 Tramway drivers, buttons on back of the coats of, 30, =31= Treble, cockade, large, =152= Trencher, 47, 213, =214= Triangles, mystic interlaced, 293 Trimmings of judge's gown, altered in colour by Lord Coleridge, 218 Triskele in the coat-of-arms of the Isle of Man, 119 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Sicily, 119 Trousers, bell-bottom, 347 -- evolution of, 77 -- method of buttoning bishops', 252 -- not worn by Romans, 77 -- of labourers, method of buttoning, 252 -- -- sailors, method of buttoning, 252 -- shown on Trajan's column, 78 -- worn by barbarians, 78, =78= -- -- -- lady gardeners at Kew, 358 -- -- -- Normans, 79 -- -- -- Saxons, 79, =79= -- -- -- women in Siam, 81; see Plate V, facing p. 81 -- -- -- -- -- Persia, 81 -- -- in riding dress by ladies, 358 Trumpeters, State, uniform of, 242 Trumpington, Sir Richard de, brass of, showing chain mail, 234, =234= Trunk hose of clown, 269 -- -- of Knightly Orders, 231 Tudor dresses, shown by playing cards, 231 -- flat cap, 214 Tunic, 16, 17, =17=, 187 -- developed from the shawl, 17, =18= Tunic, Egyptian, 16 -- Greek, 16, =17= -- of monks, 201 -- sleeved, 17 -- survival of the Anglo-Saxon, 288 Tunica alba, 189 Tunicle, 195, 221 Tunics, black, of farriers of Life Guards, 242 -- of Anglo-Saxons compared with a shirt, 288 -- -- Lacedæmonian girls slit down the side, 346 Turban like the dome of a mosque, 50, =50= Turquoises always fashionable, 123 Twenty-Ninth Foot, sergeants of, wear sashes over their left shoulders, 249 Twain, Mark, 341 Tylor, Dr., on finger-rings, 114 -- -- -- painting in war time by civilized races, 273 -- -- -- the tendency to give up savage ornaments, 111 Underclothes, lack of, 360 Ulster, 149 Uniforms, naval, 251 -- of Hussars, 272 -- -- Navy, date from 1767, 251 -- -- sergeant worn by extra drummer, 244 -- military, regular adoption of, 235 -- -- solicitor of Guards, 247 -- service, protectively coloured, 236 -- gay, only used in times of peace, 236 Union Jack on King's colours of Coldstream Guards, 246 Ushabti, models of servants put into Egyptian graves, 268 Veil of a bride, 175 -- -- novice, 202 -- -- nun, 202, =203= -- -- postulants, 202 Vergers, costume of, 218 Vermiform appendix, 3 Vestments, adoption of, by English High Church clergy, 192 -- baptismal, 164 -- ecclesiastical, 184 -- of High Church clergy, coloured, adopted by, 305 -- ornaments of, gradually acquired, 187 -- prescribed by the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, 198 -- prohibited by second Prayer Book of Edward VI, 199 -- of Presbyterian clergy, professional, 185 -- worn at the celebration of the Eucharist, =194= Vestige of a row of buttons, stripe on trousers, =81=, 82 -- -- the coif from wig of a sergeant-at-law, 216, =217= Vestiges, buttons on postilions, 38 -- of the fillet, 52, =52= -- in the animal kingdom, 3 Vickery, Dr. Alice, on children's dress, 165 Villiers-en-Couche, battle of, 244 Voice of Punch, 264 Vowesses, 183 Waist, wasp-like, 323 Wales', Prince of, feathers a hereditary badge, 90 Waistbands, trade in discarded, in Paris, 348 Waistbelts, Professors Roy and Adami, on the beneficial use of, 332 Waistcoat, 148 Waiter, 144 Waiters, evening dress of, 144, 151 Wand of harlequin, 283 Warp, 16 -- of hand loom, 117 Waterloo, battle of, 245 Watermen, badges of, 91 Wearing of talismans by ancient Egyptians, 122 Weddings, superstitions at, 176 Weights, leaden, used by women to flatten their chests, 338 Weeds, old meaning of the word, 182 -- widows, 182 Weft of hand loom, 117 Wells, Blue schools at, 168 Welsh Fusiliers, flash of, 241 Westminster, coats at, 169 Whips, fashions in, 303 Whiskers, effect of bushy, 130 White as mourning, 182 -- clothes of butterman, 320 -- -- -- man cook, 320 Widows, costume of, 198 Wig of coachman, 142, =142= -- of judge, 215, =216= -- -- -- depression in, 215 -- -- doctor in the Punch and Judy show, =264= Wig-bag of Court dress, 227, =229= -- remnant of, 133 -- on liveries of servants, 134, =143= -- of Lord Mayor's coachman, 134, 143, =143= Wigs, barristers', 132 -- coachmen's, 132 -- imitating curly hair, 130 -- footmen's, 132 -- judges, 132 -- legal, 215 -- of East End Jewesses, 127 -- -- Egyptians, 128 -- -- Parliamentary officials, 132 -- -- Serjeants-at-law, 215 -- value of, 228 Wilhelmstahl, battle of, 244 William Rufus, hanging sleeves of the time of, 209 Wimple, 175, =203= -- of Norman ladies, 202 -- of the time of the Plantagenets, 202 Winchester scholars, bands of, 169 Wolfe, General, black worm worn as mourning for, 242 Women, Arab, 122 -- -- ideas of modesty, 207 -- barge, apron of, 150; see Plate VIII, facing p. 150 -- colour preferences of, 307 -- covering their faces, 13, 206 -- dress of, varies little, 16 -- in church without hats, 13, 206 -- -- many places wear trousers, 357 -- married, not to wear caps, 350 -- milk, 150 -- -- yokes of, 110 -- Padaung, metal collars of, 114; see Plate VI, facing p. 114 -- rational dress for, 361 -- riding astride, 359 -- the first to wear clothes, 12 -- Welsh and Italian, age rapidly, 329 Wood, Mr. Walter, on white jackets for soldiers, 243 Woodville, Mr. Caton, on aiguillettes, 240 Worm, black, of East Yorkshire regiment, 242 -- -- mourning for Sir John Moore, 242 -- -- of North Lancashire regiment, 242 -- -- of Somersetshire Light Infantry, 242 -- -- worn as mourning for General Wolfe, 242 -- slow, third eye in, 3 Wristbands, 24 Yellow as mourning, 182 -- a favourite colour of gipsies, 306 -- mourning colour in Oriental countries, 307 -- worn by mediæval Jews, 307 Yeomen of the Guard, badges of, 224, =224=, 225 -- -- -- -- dress of, 223 -- -- -- -- duties of, 225 -- -- -- -- officers, dress of, 225 -- -- -- -- -- of, wear the uniform used in the Peninsular War, 225 -- -- -- -- original uniform of, 225 Yoke, =109=, 110 -- of milk woman, 110 Yoxall, Mr., on wearing of yellow by Jews, 306 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PLYMOUTH Transcriber's note Words in italics were surrounded by _underscores_ and in bold by =signs=. Anchors for footnote 33 and 34 were added, after careful consideration where they should have been. Some illustrations were slightly moved for reader convenience, but the bold numbers in the index, leading to the original pages, were not changed. In the Index, errors in the alphabetical order were not corrected. Also in the Index, the item "Moseley" seemed to contain a footnote, which has been removed because it did not refer to anything. The original said: "see Plate X, fig. C1". A few punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Also the following corrections were made, on page 134 "Fusillers" changed to "Fusiliers" (Fig. 109) 145 "Sketon" changed to "Skeleton" (Dutch Skeleton Dress) 213 "carboard" changed to "cardboard" (made of cardboard covered with cloth) 221 "almostly" changed to "almost" (agree almost entirely with those) 263 "mop" changed to "mob" (Fig 154.), also in the List of Illustrations 278 "Markan" changed to "Marken" (the women of Marken, in Holland, may have) 289 "o" changed to "0" (8s. 0d.) 309 "deferentiate" changed to "differentiate" (serve to differentiate the sisters) 314 "promegranate" changed to "pomegranate" (the flowers of the pomegranate) 329 "had" changed to "hand" (On the other hand, the fact that) 369 "Abesses" changed to "Abbesses" (Abbesses, costume of) 388 "oy" changed to "by" (worn by Punch). Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation.