od as they relate to woman and reveal her to us.

The great variety of fabrics, many of them imported, which were in use
enabled women to make a wide choice in the selection of material for
their clothing, while it also afforded the women of the lower orders
an opportunity for almost as varied a display as was made by those
in higher ranks. In the reign of Henry IV., who revived the sumptuary
legislation of the kingdom with regard to dress, Thomas Occliff, the
poet, in rebuking the extravagances of the times, speaks of those
who walked about in gowns of scarlet twelve yards wide, with sleeves
reaching to the ground and lined with fur, of value beyond twenty
pounds, and who, if they had been required to pay for what they wore,
would not have been able to buy enough fur to line a hood; and he adds
that the tailors must soon shape their garments in the open field
for lack of room to cut them in their houses. He mourns chiefly the
extravagance of dress on the part of the wealthy, because "a nobleman
cannot adopt a new guise, or _fashion_, but that a knave will follow
his example."

After the middle of the fifteenth century, the ladies ceased to wear
the long trains which they had formerly affected, and substituted
excessively wide borders of fur or velvet. By the end of the century,
the dress of the two sexes was so nearly alike that it was difficult
to distinguish between them. The men wore skirts over their lower
clothing, their doublets were laced in front like a woman's stays, and
their gowns were open in the front to the girdle and again from the
girdle to the ground, where they trailed slightly. At first, the
ladies imitated the men, who wore greatly padded trunks, by extending
their garments from the hips with foxes' tails and "bum rolls," as
they were called; but as they could not hope to keep pace with
the vast protuberance of the men's trunks, they introduced the
farthingales, which enabled them to appear as large as they pleased.

Such were the manners and styles of the period with which the Middle
Ages closed and the modern era began. They were not markedly different
from those of the later Middle Ages generally, but that was because
fundamental changes in society do not find their first expression in
matters which are superficial. The great revolution which had been
going on in the basic forms of society, through peaceful processes as
well as social upheavals and the prowess of arms, had its reflux more
in t