ndulge, it is only for the sake of vanity, and therefore to our
infinite harm, were in those early days studied for love of their true
beauty and honorableness, and became one of the main helps to dignity of
character, and courtesy of bearing. Look back to what we have been told
of the dress of the early Venetians, that it was so invented "that in
clothing themselves with it, they might clothe themselves also with
modesty and honor;"[54] consider what nobleness of expression there is
in the dress of any of the portrait figures of the great times, nay,
what perfect beauty, and more than beauty, there is in the folding of
the robe round the imagined form even of the saint or of the angel; and
then consider whether the grace of vesture be indeed a thing to be
despised. We cannot despise it if we would; and in all our highest
poetry and happiest thought we cling to the magnificence which in daily
life we disregard. The essence of modern romance is simply the return of
the heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally take pleasure;
and half the influence of the best romances, of Ivanhoe, or Marmion, or
the Crusaders, or the Lady of the Lake, is completely dependent upon the
accessaries of armor and costume. Nay, more than this, deprive the Iliad
itself of its costume, and consider how much of its power would be lost.
And that delight and reverence which we feel in, and by means of, the
mere imagination of these accessaries, the middle ages had in the vision
of them; the nobleness of dress exercising, as I have said, a perpetual
influence upon character, tending in a thousand ways to increase
dignity and self-respect, and together with grace of gesture, to induce
serenity of thought.

Sec. XXXII. I do not mean merely in its magnificence; the most splendid
time was not the best time. It was still in the thirteenth
century,--when, as we have seen, simplicity and gorgeousness were justly
mingled, and the "leathern girdle and clasp of bone" were worn, as well
as the embroidered mantle,--that the manner of dress seems to have been
noblest. The chain mail of the knight, flowing and falling over his form
in lapping waves of gloomy strength, was worn under full robes of one
color in the ground, his crest quartered on them, and their borders
enriched with subtle illumination. The women wore first a dress close to
the form in like manner, and then long and flowing robes, veiling them
up to the neck, and delicately embroidered a