w. Even after the company were surfeited with food and the tables
were removed, drinking was kept up until the evening.

The costumes of a people are of the greatest worth in revealing to the
student their grade of civilization and their ideals. There can be no
question but that taste in dress is one of the best gauges by which to
determine whether at a particular time the people were serious minded
or frivolous, moral or immoral, swayed by high aspirations or the prey
of indolence and sensuous gratifications. Just as truly can we arrive
at the characteristics of a race or a period by seeing the people
at their play. If we find them given to gladiatorial exhibitions, we
shall not err in concluding that they were a vigorous and war-like
people; if they are found at the bull fight, we may safely adjudge
them to be a brutalized and enervated race. The Anglo-Saxon can safely
be brought to this test. If the dress of the women is a criterion
of morals, then were these people of early England exemplary; if the
games in vogue denote the race characteristics, then were they rude,
but wholesome.

After the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, there
were evidently some changes made in their garb, to indicate their
abjuration of heathenism; for in the Church council of 785 the
complaint was made that "you put on your garments in the manner of
the pagans, whom your fathers expelled from the world; an astonishing
thing, that you should imitate those whose life you always hated."
Change of style in dress was practically unknown among the ladies of
the Anglo-Saxon period of English history. The illuminations of the
old MSS., from which all that is definitely known on the subject is
derived, show that the dress of the women remained practically the
same during the entire period.

The costume of the women can be described with many details. There was
an undergarment, probably made of linen, extending to the feet; it had
sleeves that reached to the wrists and were there gathered tightly
in little plaits. There was an absence of needlework of any sort,
excepting a simple bit of embroidery upon the shoulder. The customary
color of the garment was white. Over this was worn the gown, which
was slightly longer than the undergarment, and reached quite to the
ground. It was bound about the waist by a girdle, by which it was
sometimes caught up and shortened. The sleeves are most frequently
pictured as extending to the wrist, and we