e gossamer's web with silver, and scattering
pearls over the drops of dew.

Closer around, among meadows and pastures, are all sounds and emblems
of rural life; which as yet are but agreeably varied, not ruthlessly
annihilated, by the encroachments of population and the increase of
trade.

Truly this is a difficult picture to realise on Waterloo-bridge, yet
is it nevertheless a tolerably correct one of this portion of our
metropolis at the time of "The Field of the Cloth of Gold."

FOOTNOTES:

[112] Henry.

[113] Strutt's Manners and Customs.

[114] It was at length converted into an hospital.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEEDLE.

"A grave Reformer of old Rents decay'd."

J. Taylor.

"His garment--
With thornes together pind and patched was."

Faerie Queene.

_Hodge._ "Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man; neither
flesh nor fish,
A lytle thing with an hole in the ende, as bright as any
syller,
Small, long, sharp at the point, and straight as any piller."

_Diccon._ "I know not what it is thou menest, thou bringst me more in
doubt."

_Hodge._ "Knowest not what Tom tailor's man sits broching thro' a
clout?
A neele, a neele, a neele, my gammer's neele is gone."

Gammer Gurton's Needle.

It is said in the old chronicles that previous to the arrival of Anne
of Bohemia, Queen of Richard the Second, the English ladies fastened
their robes with skewers; but as it is known that pins were in use
among the early British, since in the barrows that have been opened
numbers of "neat and efficient" ivory pins were found to have been
used in arranging the grave-clothes, it is probable that this remark
is unfounded.

The pins of a later date than the above were made of boxwood, bone,
ivory, and some few of silver. They were larger than those of the
present day, which seem to have been unknown in England till about the
middle of the fifteenth century. In 1543, however, the manufacture of
brass pins had become sufficiently important to claim the attention of
the legislature, an Act having been passed that year by which it was
enacted, "That no person shall put to sale any pins, but only such as
shall be double headed and have the head soldered fast to the shank,
the pins well sm