The one is in a screaming hue of woad, the other a
quiet note of blue dye; the one in excessive velvet sleeves that he
cannot manage, the other controlling a rich amplitude of material with
perfect grace. Here a liripipe is extravagantly long; here a gold
circlet decorates curled locks with matchless taste. Everywhere the
battle between taste and gaudiness. High hennins, steeples of
millinery, stick up out of the crowd; below these, the towers of
powdered hair bow and sway as the fine ladies patter along. What a
rustle and a bustle of silks and satins, of flowered tabbies, rich
brocades, cut velvets, superfine cloths, woollens, cloth of gold!

See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel
glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of Coeur
de Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and
doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about
Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed Norman ladies with bound-up
chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the
dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of Katherine
Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of
King James's Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the
Hogarthian women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing
figures in Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed,
in hoop skirts, flirting with a fan--the lady; in gold-laced wide
coat, solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels--the gentleman. 'I
protest, madam,' he is saying, 'but you flatter me vastly.' 'La, sir,'
she replies, 'I am prodigiously truthful.'

'And how are we to know that all this is true?' the critics ask,
guarding the interest of the public. 'We see that your book is full of
statements, and there are no, or few, authorities given for your
studies. Where,' they ask, 'are the venerable anecdotes which are
given a place in every respectable work on your subject?'

To appease the appetites which are always hungry for skeletons, I give
a short list of those books which have proved most useful:

MS. Cotton, Claudius, B. iv.

MS. Harl., 603. Psalter, English, eleventh century.

The Bayeaux Tapestry.

MS. Cotton, Tiberius, C. vi. Psalter.

MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 17, 1. Illustrated by
Eadwine, a monk, 1130-1174.

MS. Harl. Roll, Y. vi.

MS. Harl., 5102.

Stothard's 'Monumental Effigies.'

MS. C.