like the cynnamon-tree, whose bark is more worth than its body."

Clothes" writes a venerable historian, "are for necessity; warm clothes for health; cleanly for decency; lasting for thrift; and rich for magnificience. Now, there may be a fault in their number, if too various; making, if too vain; matter, if too costly; and mind of the wearer, if he takes pride therein.

“He that is proud of the russling of his silks, like a madman laughs at the rattling of his fetters. For indeed, clothes ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency. Besides, why should any brag of what's but borrowed? Should the Estrige snatch off the Gallant's feather, the Beaver his hat, the Goat his gloves, the Sheep his sute, the Silkworm his stockings, and Neat his shoes (to strip him no farther than modesty will give leave), he would be left in a cold condition. And yet 'tis more pardonable to be proud, even of cleanly rags, than (as many are) of affected slovennesse. The one is proud of a molehill, the other of a dunghill."

But the worthy Fuller's ideal picture of suitable dress was the very antipodes of the reality of Elizabeth's day, when that rage for foreign fashions existed which has since frequently almost inundated the island, and our ancestors masked themselves

in garish gaudery

To suit a fool's far-fetched livery.

A French hood join'd to neck Italian,

The thighs from Germany and breast from Spain.

An Englishman in none, a fool in all,

Many in one, and one in several.”

And Shakspeare, who has perhaps suffered no peculiarity of his time to escape observation, makes Portia satirize this affectation in her English admirer:-"How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."

A reverend critic thus remarks on the luxurious modes of his time: "These tender Parnels must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer. One furred through, another but faced; one for the workday, another for the holiday. One of this colour, another of that. One of cloth, another of silk or damask. Change of apparel; one afore dinner, another at after: one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions and strange. Yea, a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than he should spend in a year. He which ought to go in a russet coat spends as much on apparel for him and his wife as his father would have kept a good house with."

The following is of later date, and seems, somewhat unjustly we think, to satirize the fair sex

alone.

Why do women array themselves in such fantastical dresses and quaint devices; with gold, with silver, with coronets, with pendants, bracelets, earrings, chains, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, shadows, rebatoes, versicoloured ribbons, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, tassels, golden cloth, silver

tissue, precious stones, stars, flowers, birds, beasts, fishes, crisped locks, wigs, painted faces, bodkins, setting sticks, cork, whalebone, sweet odours, and whatever else Africa, Asia, and America can produce; flaying their faces to produce the fresher complexion of a new skin, and using more time in dressing than Cæsar took in marshelling his army, -but that, like cunning falconers, they wish to spread false lures to catch unwary larks, and lead by their gaudy baits and dazzling charms the minds of inexperienced youth into the traps of love?"

Though the costume of Elizabeth's day, especially at the period of her coronation was, splendid, it had not attained to the ridiculous extravagance which at a later period elicited the above-quoted strictures; and we are told that her own taste at an early period of life was simple and unostentatious. Her dress and appearance are thus described by Aylmer, Lady Jane Grey's tutor, and afterwards Bishop of London.

"The king (Henry VIII.) left her rich clothes and jewels; and I know it to be true, that, in seven years after her father's death, she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will. And that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gay

ness.

And then she so wore it as every man might see that her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel, which she used in King Edward's time, made noblemen's daughters and wives to be ashamed to be dressed

and painted like peacocks; being more moved with her most virtuous example than with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching that matter. Yea, this I know, that a great man's daughter (Lady Jane Grey) receiving from Lady Mary, before she was queen, good apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment-lace of gold, when she saw it, said, 'What shall I do with it?' Marry!' said a gentlewoman, wear it.' Nay,' quoth she, that were a shame, to follow my Lady Mary against God's Word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God's Word.' And when all the ladies, at the coming of the Scots' Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, (she who visited England in Edward's time), went with their hair frownsed, curled, and double-curled, she altered nothing, but kept her old maidenly shame-facedness."

And there is a print from a portrait of her when young, in which the hair is without a single ornament, and the whole dress remarkably simple.

Yet this is the lady whose passion for dress in after life could not be sated; to whom, or at least before whom (and the Queen was not slow in appropriating and resenting the hint*), Latimer, Bishop of London, thought it necessary to preach on the vanity of decking the body too finely; and who finally left behind her a wardrobe containing three thousand dresses. A modern fair one may wonder how such a profusion of dresses could be

*"Her Majesty told the ladies, that if the Bishop held more discourse on such matters, she would fit him for heaven; but he should walk thither without a staff, and leave his mantle behind him."

L

accommodated at all, even in a royal wardrobe, with fitting respect to the integrity of puffs and furbelows. But clothes were not formerly kept in drawers, where but few can be laid with due regard to the safety of each, but were hung up on wooden pegs, in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of receiving them; and though such cast-off things as were composed of rich substances were occasionally ripped for domestic uses (viz., mantles for infants, vests for children, and counterpanes for beds), articles of inferior quality were suffered to hang by the walls till age and moths had destroyed what pride would not permit to be worn by servants or poor relations. To this practice, also, does Shakspeare allude: Imogen exclaims, in Cymbeline,'

"Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion;

And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls,
I must be ripp'd—”

The following regulations may be interesting; and the knowledge of them will doubtless excite feelings of joy and gratitude in our fair readers that they are born in an age where "will is free," and the dustman's wife may, if it so please her, outshine the duchess, without the terrors of Parliament before her eyes—

"By the Queene.

Whereas the Queene's Maiestie, for avoyding of the great inconvenience that hath growen and dayly doeth increase within this her Realme, by the inordinate excesse in Apparel, hath in her Princely wisdome and care for reformation thereof, by sundry