that she twitted the earls of Warwick and Strafford with the impossibility of their conquering France, even though they had "a hundred thousand Goddams" more at their command.

The usual dress of the middle and upper classes is depicted in the illustrations on page 57, and in the coloured plate representing a bishop, a judge, and an earl. The details do not call for special remark.

Sumptuary laws of the most stringent kind, for the regulation of excess in apparel, were revived with considerable additions, and the costume of the members of the community was sought to be regulated by the rank or riches of the wearer. No person of lower estate than a knight banneret was to wear cloth of gold or velvet, or to appear in a gown that reached to the ground, or to wear large sleeves, or use upon his dress the furs of either ermine or marten; while gold and silver ornaments were strictly forbidden to all who were not possessed of two hundred pounds in goods and chattels, or twenty pounds per annum. Gowns and garments cut into the form of leaves and other figures at their edges, or ornamented with letters or devices, were altogether condemned, and declared forfeit to the king; while the unlucky tailor who manufactured such finery was rendered liable to imprisonment during the royal pleasure! The presence of such enactments on the Statute Book, forming as they do a continuous series extending over more than two centuries, is sufficient proof of the inutility of all attempts to legislate upon matters of dress, food, and

commerce.

The satirists continued their attempts to check prevailing fashions and extravagance, but without much success, though often aided by clerical denunciations. In the visions of Patrick's Purgatory, by William Staunton, which that writer declares he saw at that celebrated spot in 1409, an alarming picture is given of the punishments inflicted on those people who were proud and vain, and delighted in extravagant apparel. He says, "I saw some there with collars of gold about their necks, and some of silver, and some men I saw with gay girdles of silver and gold, and harneist horns about their necks, Some with more jagges on their clothes than whole cloth, some had their clothes full of gingles and bells of silver all overset, and some with long pokes (bags) on their sleeves, and women with gowns trailing behind them a great space, and some others with gay chaplets on their heads of gold and pearls, and other precious stones. And then I looked on him that I saw

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first in pain, and saw the collars, and the gay girdles, and bawdricks, burning, and the fiends dragging him; and two fingers deep and more within their flesh was all burning; and I saw the jagges that men were clothed in turn all to adders, to dragons, and to toads, and many other horrible beasts, sucking them, and biting them, and stinging them with all their might; and through every gingle I saw fiends drawing down the skin of their shoulders like to pokes, and cutting these off, and drawing them over the heads of those they cut them from, all burning as fire. And then I saw the women that had side (wide) trails behind them, and these side trails were cut off by fiends, and burnt on their heads; and some took off these cuttings all burning, and stopped therewith their mouths, their noses, and their eyes. I saw also their gay chaplets of gold, of pearls, and of other precious stones, turned into nails of iron, burning, and fiends with burning hammers smiting them into their heads."

The exquisite on the next page is taken from a MS. preserved among the Harleian Collection (No. 4435) and which contains the "Romance of the Rose." It depicts the Beau of the fifteenth century, and after full allowance has been made for any excess in delineation on the score of its being a caricature, it is yet evident, from a comparison with similar representations in other and independent works, that the main features were true to the life.

In the second volume of Political Songs, Mr. Wright gives one on the supremacy which England ought to secure by her navy and commerce. There was no man, the writer says, of whatever degree, who had not absolute need of three things, meat, drink, and clothes. England, he said, possessed all these three articles in abundance, and one of them was a great superfluity, but the people neglected to make the most of this advantage. Other countries produced meat and drink for their inhabitants, but it was clear that they depended upon England for clothing, for merchants from them all came here to purchase either the raw material or the cloth that was made of it. The writer gives a list of the countries which then traded with England, adding that there were doubtless many others with the names of which he was not acquainted, for he conjectured that all the nations under heaven, whether Christian or Heathen, had need of English commodities. He recommends that none but wool of the worst quality should be exported; because, as the coarse cloth could only be sold at a low price, while the various processes of making the cloth