yS History of the E^iglish La7ided Inte^-est. 



rigorous practice of the men in scraping their shoes on pieces 

 of iron fixed to the sides of the doorway, and that of the 

 women in removing their pattens before entering. In the 

 hall or passage, and again at every door, was a mat or some- 

 thing else to rub off the last relics of the farmyard. The 

 same neatness extended to the immediate surroundings of each 

 household. Nearly every cottage wall in Essex and Herts was 

 shrouded in a mass of ivy, honeysuckle, and syringa, and 

 the gardens were gay with flowers and foliage, and fenced 

 with hedges of trimmed yew.^ The houses of a village Kalm 

 finds generally built in one row — sometimes quite close together, 

 sometimes farther apart. On one side were the common pas- 

 tures or outlands ; on the other, the ploughed fields, gardens, 

 and enclosed meadows. At right angles to the principal street 

 was a back lane leading to the outland.^ 



The imitation of French fashions in furniture extended to 

 dress. As a nation, we always seem to have tended towards 

 extravagance of costume. Before the Reformation the national 

 taste for excessive wearing apparel had to be restrained by 

 legislation. In Tudor times people decked themselves out 

 sometimes as Germans, sometimes as Spaniards, but rarely as 

 Englishmen. During the Stuart period they aped the florid 

 tastes of the French, until, in the second Charles' reign, a 

 revulsion of feeling momentarily impelled them in a contrary 

 direction. Then, indeed, for a short time people took to stalk- 

 ing about with the gravity of demeanour and costume peculiar 

 to some Orientals.^ But, at the period now reached, the gentry 

 had at last struck a happy medium, being clothed neither in 

 the too gay attire affected by frivolous French heaiix^ nor in 

 the too sombre garb adopted by the more phlegmatically dis- 

 posed of Continental peoples. The square-cut cloth coats and 

 waistcoats, the knee-breeches and long stockings, the great 

 neckcloths of Flemish and Spanish point lace, the fringed 

 gloves and huge periwigs of the men ; and the Dutch-like 

 stomachers, straight and tight sleeves, rows of flounces, high 

 head-dresses and lace caps of the ladies, seem, at any rate to 



' Kal Ill's Emjlmid, p. 1.3. ^ Id. Ihid., p. 209. 



' The New State of England, Part II. ch. iii. p. 38. 



