Legate, and that an ex-Mayor of London ranks
with a Serjeant-at-law, but that these, being of
a degree lower than D.D., may be placed, four
to a mess, with a Preacher and a Master of
Chancery. Sometimes a Marshal is puzzled
because when a lord of royal blood is poor
another lord is rich; but blood takes precedence
of property, for the lord of blood royal may
come to be king. But the parents of a Pope or
Cardinal must not pretend equality with their
son, or wish to sit by him. They must be
served in a separate chamber. Tasting, for
fear of poison, is a service paid to no person
below the rank of Earl. Tnis trust is
committed to all the officers in attendance, who are
sworn by a great oath; therefore let every officer
keep close house, chest, and pantry, lest ill
tricks be played him. The Idle Young Man in
the wood has now received his lesson, and is
very much obliged to Duke Humphrey's
Steward. Now he will not be afraid to serve in
offices to which before he had not ventured to
aspire.

John Russell's curious details give us a
picture of old manners in their most luxurious
form, but suggests that, even in king's houses
the standard of cleanliness was low. With all
the profusion of viands, too, stomachs appear
to have had many difficulties to contend with.
The form of some of the directions, not here
quoted, rather inclines one to believe that our
forefathers, in their draughty, smoky, and
uncomfortable houses, suffered much more
generally than we do now-a-days from cold in the
head. As to the use of fingers in their dishes,
table-forks, it is well known, did not come into
use till the beginning of the seventeenth
century. In Coryat's Crudities, published in
sixteen hundred and eleven, there is comment
upon the strange use of forks in Italy. "I
observed," says Coryat, "a custom in all those
Italian cities and town through the which I
passed, that is not used in any other country
that I saw in my travels, neither do I think that
any other nations of Christendom doth use it,
but only Italy. The Italian and also most
strangers that are there commorant in Italy do
always at their meals use a little fork when they
cut their meat." In James the First's time it
became one mark of an exquisite that he carried
his small fork about with him; and Ben Jonson,
in one of his plays, makes a character speak of
his pains at court to get a patent for his
project for "the laudable use of forks, brought
into custom here as they are in Italy, to the
sparing of napkins." They were to be "of
gold and silver for the better personages, and of
steel for the common sort."

Mr. Furnivall, who has made for the Early
English Text Society this curious collection of
old books of etiquette, adds one or two pieces
of later counsel, from Andrew Borde, Sir John
Harrington, and others. Andrew Borde, in the
year of Queen Elizabeth's accession, advises a
man who would sleep after dinner to do so
standing upright against a cupboard. In bed it
was thought best to lie first on the right side,
"because the meat may come to the liver, which
is to the stomach as a fire under the pot, and
thereby is digested." To help to keep the
digestive pot warm, people of weak digestion
were advised to sleep with their hands upon
their stomachs. The nightcap and the undercoat
worn over the shirt were to be scarlet,
probably because that passed for a warm colour.
The neck was always to be kept warm, and in
summer it was held advisable to wear goat-skin
gloves perfumed with ambergris. Dr. William
Vaughan, in the year sixteen hundred and two,
discovered that a nightcap ought to have a hole
in the top, through which the vapour may go
out. Sir John Harrington recommends that, on
rising in the morning in summer-time, one
should wash with clean pure water; but in the
winter, instead of washing, if we understand
him rightly, sit for a little while before an
oakwood fire. In washing, after combing the hair
through forty times, the face was to be washed,
but the neck only dry-rubbed with a coarse
napkin. Garments of hart's-skin and calf-skin
were to be worn in summer; wolf-skin and
fox-skin was to be preferred in winter. One should
wear always a ring with some precious stone
for the sake of its occult virtues, and for the
same reason sometimes put in the mouth crystal,
silver, gold, or a pure sugar-candy.

It is mainly with the earlier time that we
have been here making acquaintance, the days
when a visitor at a great house left his arms
with the porter at the gate; and if he found
them within at meat, bowed left and right, and
waited before the screen in the middle of the
hall until the Marshal or Usher came, and gave
him the seat proper to his dignity. Then he
was served with the little loaf, which he was to
cut into seven pieces while waiting until meat
should be brought him; but of which bread
it would be rude to eat any before his meat was
placed before him. If he had left a horse in
the stable, its day's allowance of food would be
two armsful of hay and a peck of oats. In
those days, not only did the butler taste of every
wine presented to his lord, or to a guest of high
estate, and the cook taste every dish before he
sent it covered from the kitchen, to be tasted
again by the steward when uncovered in the
hall, but a cup of white wood was provided
wherewith the Ewerer was required to taste the
very water that was poured over the lord's
hands; so little could men, by whose death
others had much to gain, put faith in one
another.

The third Portion of

HOLIDAY ROMANCE,

BY CHARLES DICKENS,

Will be published in the monthly part for March, and
the Romance will be concluded in the monthly part for
April.