crosses of various composition, the cups, the shrines, the canopies, the copes, the cowls, the crosiers, the mitres, whose forms are met with in the Gothic, preserved the symbols of the worship at the same time that they produced unexpected effects of art. The gutters and spouts were very often carved into the faces of hideous demons or vomiting mouths. This architecture of the middle ages exhibited a medley of the tragic and the grotesque, of the gigantic and the graceful, like the poems and romances of the same period.

The plants of our soil, the trees of our woods, the trefoil and the oak, also decorated our churches, in like manner as the acanthus and the palm had embellished the temples of the country and the age of Pericles. Within a cathedral was a forest, a labyrinth, whose thousands of arches, at every motion of the spectator, crossed each other, separated, and entwined again. This forest was lighted by circular windows of painted glass, which resembled suns shining with a thousand colours beneath the foliage; externally the same cathedral looked, with its flying buttresses and its pinnacles, like an edifice from which the scaffolding had not been removed.

MIDDLE AGES.

DRESS-ENTERTAINMENTS AND DIVERSIONS.

THE population moving around the edifices is described in chronicles and represented in vignettes. The different classes of society and the inhabitants of different provinces were distinguished, some by the form of their garments, others by local fashions. The people had not that uniform aspect, which the same mode of dress gives at the present day to the inhabitants of our towns and to those of the country. The nobles, the knights, the magistrates, the bishops, the secular clergy, the religious of all the orders, the pilgrims, the penitents, gray, black, and white, the hermits, the fraternities, the guilds, the citizens, the peasants, exhibited an infinite variety of costumes. We still see something of the sort in Italy. On this point we must appeal What can the painter make of our

to the arts.

tight garments, our round hats, or our cocked hats?

From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the peasant and people of the lower class wore a gray jacket, girt round the waist by a belt. The body coat of leather, the pelicon, the origin of the surplice, was common to all ranks. The furred pelisse and the long oriental robe enwrapped the knight when he had laid aside his armour; the sleeves of this robe covered his hands; it resembled the Turkish caftan of the present day; the cap adorned with feathers, or bonnet, served instead of turban. The ample robe was succeeded by a close dress, and that again by a loose robe. The breeches, so short and tight as to be indecent, came down no lower than the middle of the thigh; the hose or stockings were dissimilar; one leg was of one colour and one of another. The same was the case with the surcoat, part black and part white, and with the bonnet, "And their garments

which was blue and red.

were so tight to put on and to pull off, that it seemed as if they were being flayed. Others had their robes tucked up about their loins like women, and they had their bonnets prettily pinked all round. And they had their hose one of one coloured cloth and one of another. And

their sleeves and their lappets hung down almost to the ground; so that they looked more like merry-andrews than like other people. Certes, it was no marvel then if the Almighty thought fit to punish the French for their misdeeds with his scourge," (the plague).

Over the robe was worn on days of ceremony a mantle, sometimes short, at others long. The mantle of Richard I. was made of striped stuff, sprinkled with globes and half moons of silver, in imitation of the celestial system (Winesalf). Hanging collars served as ornaments alike for both sexes.

The pointed and stuffed shoes called pouleyns, or poulains, were long in fashion. The maker cut out the upper leather like the windows of a church. They were two feet long for the noble, decorated at the extremity with horns, claws, or grotesque figures. They were of such length that it was impossible to walk in them without fastening the points, which crooked upwards, to the knees with chains of gold or silver. The bishops excommunicated the poulains, and treated them as a sin against nature. They were declared to be" contrary to good morals, and invented in derision of the Creator." In England, an act of parliament forbade the making of any shoes or

buskins "with poleyns exceeding the length of two inches." The pointed shoes were succeeded by wide square-toed slippers. The fashions of that time varied as much as those of our days. The knight or the lady who invented a new fashion became a celebrated person. The inventor of poleyns was the English knight Robert le Cornu. (W. Malmesbury.)

The gentlewomen wore very fine linen next to the skin. They were dressed in high tunics covering the bosom, embroidered on the right breast with the arms of their husband, on the left with those of their family. Sometimes they wore their hair combed down smooth upon the forehead, and covered with a small cap interlaced with ribands; at others they allowed the hair to float loosely over their shoulders; at others again they built it up into a pyramid three feet high, suspending to it either wimples, or long veils, or stripes of silk, descending to the ground and fluttering in the wind. At the time of Queen Isabeau, it was found necessary to enlarge the doorways both in height and breadth, in order to afford a passage for the ladies' head-dresses. These head-dresses were supported by two curved horns, the frame-work of this structure. From the top of the horn on