. As for
the poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, for
they dined and supped when they could. The English usually began meals
with the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first the
mild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot did
otherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave the
worse to the menials.

I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with an
extract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, and
saw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwards
witnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. The
queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as she
walked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of the
garter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black
and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth
black (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use of
sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore
false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported
to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her
bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry;
and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small,
her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air was
stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was
dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and
over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was
very long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chain
she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." As she swept on in this
magnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, and
always in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke to
her kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along,
everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to give
her hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels.
The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed for
the most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fifty
gentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where she
graciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long live Queen
Elizabeth!" to which