nd to see the
setting in which these jewel-like peasants shone--the play of
brilliant hues amid the more sombre browns and blacks, the shifting of
the blues and reds, the strong notes of emerald green--all, like the
symmetrical accidents of the kaleidoscope, settling into their places
in perfect harmony.

The entire scene bore the impress of the spirit of historical truth,
and it is by such pageants that we can imagine coloured pictures of an
England of the past.

Again, we could observe the effect of the light-reflecting armour,
cold, shimmering steel, coming in a play of colour against the
background of peasants, and thereby one could note the exact
appearance of an ordinary English day of such a date as this of which
I now write, the end of the thirteenth century.

The mournful procession bearing the body of Queen Eleanor of Castile,
resting at Waltham, would show a picture in the same colours as the
early part of the Sherborne Pageant.

Colour in England changed very little from the Conquest to the end of
the reign of Edward I.; the predominant steel and leather, the gay,
simple colours of the crowds, the groups of one colour, as of monks
and men-at-arms, gave an effect of constantly changing but ever
uniform colours and designs of colour, exactly, as I said before, like
the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope.

It was not until the reign of Edward II. that the effect of colour
changed and became pied, and later, with the advent of stamped
velvets, heavily designed brocades, and the shining of satins, we get
that general effect best recalled to us by memories of Italian
pictures; we get, as it were, a varnish of golden-brown over the crude
beauties of the earlier times.

It is intensely important to a knowledge of costume to remember the
larger changes in the aspect of crowds from the colour point of view.
A knowledge of history--by which I do not mean a parrot-like
acquirement of dates and Acts of Parliament, but an insight into
history as a living thing--is largely transmitted to us by pictures;
and, as pictures practically begin for us with the Tudors, we must
judge of coloured England from illuminated books. In these you will go
from white, green, red, and purple, to such colours as I have just
described: more vivid blues, reds, and greens, varied with brown,
black, and the colour of steel, into the chequered pages of pied
people and striped dresses, into rich-coloured people, people in
black; and as