difference or diversity at all."  It is somewhat
strange that with these healthy notions of
equality, and contempt of mere rank, Philoponus
should condescend to dedicate his book
to " the Right Honourable, and his very
singular good Lord, Philip, Earl of Arundel,"
and that he should conclude his dedication
in this fashion. " Thus, I cease to molest your
sacred ears any more with my rude speeches,
beseeching your good Lordship, not only to
admit this, my book, into your honour's
patronage and protection, but also to persist,
the first defender thereof, against the swinish
crew of railing Zoilus and flouting Momus,
with their complies of bragging Thrasoes,
and barking Phormicons, to whom it is easier
to deprave all things than to amend
themselves." Oh! loaves and fishes! Oh! mighty
power of a Lord's name! Sacred ears! Oh!
vanity of heart, and mouth, and dress, and
Stubbes, and all things human!

Circe's cups and Medea's pots, Mr. Stubbes
pertinently, but severely remarks, have made
England drunken with pride of apparel. Not
the Athenians, the Spaniards, the Hungarians
(known, as they are, according to Mr.
Ingoldsby, as the proud Hungarians), the
Caldeans, the Helvetians, the Zuitzers, the
Moscovians, the Cantabrigians, the Africanes, or
the Ethiopians— (Mercy on us! what a salad
of nations!)— no people, in short, under the
zodiac of heaven have half as much pride
in exquisite bravery of apparel, as the
inhabitants of Ailgna. No people is so curious in
new fangles, wearing, merely because it is
new, apparel most unhandsome, brutish, and
monstrous. Other countries esteem not so
much of silks, velvets, taffeties, or grograms,
but are contented with carzies, frizes, and
rugges. Nobles, Philoponus Stubbes maintains,
may wear gorgeous attire, and he gives
the why; magistrates may wear sumptuous
dresses, and he gives the wherefore; but he
complains bitterly that it is now hard to
know who is noble, who is worshipful, who
is a gentleman; for those that are neither of
the nobility, gentry, or yeomanry, no, nor yet
any magistrate or officer of the commonwealth
(not even a beadle, I suppose), go
daily in silks, satins, damasks, and taffeties,
notwithstanding that they be both base by
birth, mean by estate, and servile by calling.
And this, Mr. Stubbes counts a great confusion
in a Christian commonwealth.

Of a different opinion to Philip Philoponus
Stubbes regarding exquisite bravery of apparel,
was Michel Equihem, Seigneur of
Montaigne, who, at about the same time that
Stubbes was fulminating his anathemas
against pride of dress in England, was writing
his immortal essays in his quiet home in
France. Montaigne deprecates sumptuary
laws in general; but he would seek to
discourage luxury, by advising kings and
princes to adopt simplicity. " As long,"
he says, "as it is possible only for kings
to eat turbot, and for kings' sons to wear
cloth of gold, turbot and cloth of gold will be
in credit, and objects of envy and ambition.
Let kings abandon these signs of grandeur.
They have surely enough without them. Or
if sumptuary laws be needed, let them
remember how Zeleucus purified the corrupted
manners of the Locrians. These were his
ordinances: That no lady of condition should
have her train held up, or be accompanied by
more than one page or chambermaid, unless
she happened to be drunk; that no lady
should wear brocades, velvet, or pearls, unless
she happened to be disreputable; and that no
man should wear gold rings on his fingers or
a velvet doublet on his back, unless he could
prove himself to be a cheat and cut-throat.
It is astonishing how plain the Locriana
dressed after these edicts.

After descanting awhile upon Adam and
Eve, their mean attire— Diogenes, his
austerity—and a certain Grecian who, coming
to court in his philosopher's weed (query, a
German meerschaum), was repulsed therefrom,
Mr. Stubbes favours us with an excellent apophthegm,
concerning another philosopher who was invited to a king's
banquet, and wishing for a spittoon, and seeing no
place of expectoration (for every place was
hanged with cloth of gold, cloth of silver
tinsel, arase, tapestry, and the like), coolly
expectorated in the king's face, saying: " It
is meet, O king, that I spit in the plainest
place! "  After this, Mr. Stubbes, taking the
apparel of Ailgna in degrees, discharges the
vials of his wrath upon the " diverses kinds
of hats."

Sometimes, he says, they use them sharp
on the crown, peaking up like the shaft of a
steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above
the crowns of their heads—some more, some
less, as pleases the phantasy of their
inconstant minds: others be flat and broad, like
the battlements of a house. These hats have
bands—now black, now white, now russet,
now red, now green, now yellow, now this,
now that— never content with one colour or
fashion, two days to an end. "And thus,"
says Philip, " they spend the Lord, his treaure
their golden years and silver days in.
wickedness and sin,"— and hats. Some hats
are made of silk, some of velvet, taffety,
sarsenet, wool, or a certain kind of fine hair
fetched from beyond seas, whence many other
kind of vanities do come besides. These they
call beuer (beaver) hats, of many shillings
price. And no man, adds Philip, with
melancholy indignation, is thought of any
account, unless he has a beuer or taffety hat,
pinched and cunningly carved of the best
fashion. Wore Philip Philoponus Stubbes
such a title, I wonder—beuer or taffety—when,
he went to pay his respects to the sacred
ears of his singular good lord, the Earl of
Arundel?

Feathers in hats are sternly denounced, as
sterns of pride and ensigns of vanity—as
fluttering sails and feathered flags of defiance