of knight
or squire of great revenue. It was a world to see how the nobles
preferred to gold and silver, which abounded, the new Venice glass,
whence a great trade sprang up with Murano that made many rich. The
poorest even would have glass, but home-made--a foolish expense, for the
glass soon went to bits, and the pieces turned to no profit. Harrison
wanted the philosopher's stone to mix with this molten glass and toughen
it.

There were multitudes of dependents fed at the great houses, and
everywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained.
Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citing
the details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick the
king-maker, was made archbishop of York. There were present, including
servants, thirty-five hundred persons. These are a few of the things used
at the banquet: three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns of
ale, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousand
geese, two thousand pigs,--four thousand conies, four thousand
heronshaws, four thousand venison pasties cold and five hundred hot, four
thousand cold tarts, four thousand cold custards, eight seals, four
porpoises, and so on.

The merchants and gentlemen kept much the same tables as the nobles,
especially at feasts, but when alone were content with a few dishes. They
also desired the dearest food, and would have no meat from the butcher's
but the most delicate, while their list of fruits, cakes, Gates, and
outlandish confections is as long as that at any modern banquet. Wine ran
in excess. There were used fifty-six kinds of light wines, like the
French, and thirty of the strong sorts, like the Italian and Eastern. The
stronger the wine, the better it was liked. The strongest and best was in
old times called theologicum, because it was had from the clergy and
religious men, to whose houses the laity sent their bottles to be filled,
sure that the religious would neither drink nor be served with the worst;
for the merchant would have thought his soul should have gone straightway
to the devil if he had sent them any but the best. The beer served at
noblemen's tables was commonly a year old, and sometimes two, but this
age was not usual. In households generally it was not under a month old,
for beer was liked stale if it were not sour, while bread was desired as
new as possible so that it was not hot.

The husbandman and artificer ate such m