t is crowded with painted
images and embroidered banners, and filled with the smoke and scent of
burning incense. The clergy are habited, not in white surplices or in
black gowns, but in large stiff cloaks--copes they are called--of
scarlet silk, heavy with gold embroidery. The Bishop, who is in the
pulpit, wears a cope of white, thick with masses of gold, and on his
head is a white and gold mitre. How unlike that upper chamber, where
the disciples gathered together after the crucifixion of their Master!
Is it better or worse, do you ask? Well, I think if the Master were to
come in, it would be easier to see Him in the quiet upper chamber, where
there was nothing else to see, than in the perfumed and decorated
Cathedral where there was so much else!

But now let us look at the congregation as they pass out. Are they all
women? for all alike seem to wear long skirts and thick hoods: there are
neither trousers, nor hats, nor bonnets. No, there is a fair sprinkling
of men; but men and women dressed more alike then than they do now. You
will see, if you look, that some of these long skirts are open in front,
and you may catch a glimpse of a beard here and there under the hood.
This is a poor woman who comes now: she wears a serge dress which has
cost her about three-halfpence a yard, and a threadbare hood for which
she may have given sixpence.

Are things so cheap, then? No, just the other way about; money is so
dear. The wages of a mason or a bricklayer are about sixpence a week;
haymakers have the same; reapers get from a shilling to half-a-crown,
and mowers one and ninepence. The gentlemen who wait on the King
himself only receive a shilling a day.

Here comes one of them, in a long green robe of shining silky stuff,
which is called samite; round his neck is a curiously cut collar of dark
red cloth, and in his hand he carries a white hood. Men do not confine
themselves to the quiet, sober colours that we are accustomed to see;
they are smarter than the ladies themselves. This knight, as he passes
out, throws his gown back, before mounting his horse, and you see his
yellow hose striped with black--trousers and stockings all in a piece,
as it were--with low black shoes, and gilt spurs.

But who follows him?--this superbly dressed woman in rich blue
glistening samite, with a black and gold hood, under which we see her
hair bound with a golden fillet, and a necklace of costly pearls clasped
round her throat--