You want no furniture, alas! Spit, spoon, dish, frying-pan, nor ladle! No iron, pewter, copper, tin, or brass: No nurses, wet or dry, nor cradle, Which custom for our Christian babes enjoins, To rock the staring offspring of your loins. Nor of the lawyers have you need, No fears of cuckoldom, heaven bless Are ever harboured to distress ye, Tormenting people since the days of Adam. No schools you want for fine behaving, No powdering, painting, washing, shaving, No nightcaps snug, no trouble in undressing Before you seek your strawy nest, Pleased in each other's arms to rest, To feast on love, heaven's greatest blessing. Good Gods! Ye sweet love-chanting law was made in the same reign to limit them to two inches. The variety of dresses worn in the reign of Henry the Eighth may be concluded from the print of the naked Englishman, holding a piece of cloth and a pair of shears, in Bord's Introduction to Knowledge. The dress of the king and the nobles in the beginning of this reign, was not unlike that worn by the yeomen of the guard at present. This was probably aped by inferior persons. It is recorded that "Anne Bolen wore yellow mourning for Catharine of Arragon." MARY. I have before observed, that much of the same kind of dress which was worn by Henry the Eighth, in the former part of his reign, is now worn by the yeomen of the guard. It is no less remarkable, that the most conspicuous and distinguishing part of a cardinal's habit, which has been banished from England ever since the death of Cardinal Pole, is also now worn by the lowest order of females, and is called a cardinal. A I take the reign of Mary to be the era of ruffs and farthingales, as they were tells us, in his Letters,' that the Spanish brought hither from Spain. Howell for a farthingale, literally translated, signifies cover-infant, as if it were intended to conceal pregnancy. It is perhaps of more honourable extraction, and might signify cover-infanta. blooming virgin in this age seems to have been more solicitous to hide her skin, than a shrivelled old woman is at present. The very neck was generally concealed; the arms were covered quite to the wrists; the petticoats were worn long, and the head-gear, or coifure, close; to which was sometimes fastened a light veil, which fell down behind, as if intended occasionally to conceal even the face. If I may depend on the authority of engraved portraits, the beard extended and expanded itself more during the short reigns of Edward the Sixth and Mary, than from the Conquest to that period. Bishop Gardiner has a beard long and streaming, like a comet. The ANCIENT COSTUME OF THE beard of Cardinal Pole is thick and ENGLISH. HENRY VIII. In the reign of Richard the Second, the peaks, or tops, of shoes and boots were worn of so enormous a length, that they were tied to the knees, A bushy; but this might possibly be Italian. ELIZABETH. We are informed by Hentzner, that the English, in the reign of Elizabeth, cut their hair close on the middle of the We are informed that some beaux had actually introduced long swords and high ruffs, which approached the royal standard. This roused the jealousy of the queen, who appointed officers to break every man's sword, and to clip all ruffs which were beyond a certain length. The breeches, or to speak more properly, the drawers, fell far short of the knees, and the defect was supplied with long hose, the tops of which were fastened under the drawers. William, Earl of Pembroke, was the first who wore knit stockings in England, which were introduced in this reign. They were presented to him by William Rider, an apprentice near London Bridge, who happened to see a pair brought from Mantua, at an Italian merchant's in the city, and made some exactly like them. Edward Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was the first that introduced embroidered gloves and perfumes into England, which he brought from Italy. He presented the queen with a pair of perfumed gloves, and her portrait was painted with them upon her hands. At this period was worn a hat of a singular form, which resembled a closestool pan, with a broad brim. Philip the Second, in the former reign, seems to wear one of these utensils upon his head, with a narrower brim than ordinary, and makes at least as grotesque an appearance as his countryman, Don Quixote, with the barber's basin. As the queen had no less than three thousand habits in her wardrobe when she died, and was possessed of the dresses of all countries, it is somewhat strange that there is such an uniformity of dress in her portraits, and that she should take a pleasure in being loaded with ornaments. At this time the stays, or bodice, were worn long-waisted. Lady Hunsdon, the foremost of the ladies in the procession to Hunsdon House, appears with a much longer waist than those that follow her. She might possibly have been a leader of the fashion, as well as of the procession. [To be continued.] UPON THE VARIOUS MODES 1. The pump-handle shake is the first which deserves notice. It is executed by taking a friend's hand, and working it up and down, through an arc of fifty degrees, for about a minute and a half. To have its nature, force, and character, this shake should be performed with a fair and steady motion. No attempt should be made to give it grace, and still less variety, as the few instances in which the latter has been tried, have uniformly resulted in dislocating the shoulder of the person on whom it has been attempted. On the contrary, persons who are partial to the pump-handle shake, should be at some pains to give an equable, tranquil movement to the operation, which should on no account be continued after perspiration on the part of your friend has commenced. 2. The pendulum shake may be mentioned next, as being somewhat similar in character; but moving, as the name indicates, in horizontal, instead of a perpendicular direction. It is executed by sweeping your hands horizontally towards your friend's, and after the junction is effected, rowing with it, from one side to the other, according to the pleasure of the parties. The only caution in its use which needs particularly to be given, is not to insist on performing it in a plane strictly parallel to the horizon. You may observe a person that has been educated to the pump-handle shake, and another that had brought home the pendulum from a foreign voyage. They met, joined hands, and attempted to put them in motion. They were neither of them feeble men. One endeavoured to pump, and the other to puddle; their faces reddened; the drops stood on their foreheads; and it was at last a pleasant illustration of the doctrine of the composition of forces, to see their heads slanting into an exact diagonal, in which line they ever after shook; but it was plain to see there was no cordiality in it-and, as is usually the case with such compromises, both parties were discontented. 3. The tourniquet shake is the next in importance. It derives its name from the instrument made use of by surgeons to stop the circulation of the blood in the limb about to be amputated. It is performed by clasping the hand of your friend as far as you can in your own, and then contracting the muscles of your thumb, fingers, and palm, till you have induced any degree of compression you may propose in the hand of your friend. Particular care ought to be taken, if your hand is hard and as big as a frying-pan, and that of your friend's as small and as soft as a maiden's, not to make use of the tourniquet shake to a degree that will shake the small bones of the wrist out of their places. It is seldom safe to apply it to gouty persons. A hearty young friend of mine, who had pursued the study of geology, and acquired an unusual hardness and strength of hand and wrist by the use of the hammer, on returning from a scientific excursion, gave his gouty uncle a tourniquet shake, with such severity as had well nigh reduced the old gentleman's fingers to powder; for which my friend had the pleasure of being disinherited, as soon as his uncle's fingers got well enough to hold a pen. 4. The cordial grapple is a shake of some interest. It is a hearty boisterous shake of your friend's hand, accompanied with moderate pressure and loud acclamations of welcome. It is an excellent travelling shake, and well adapted to make friends. It is indiscriminately performed. The Peter Grievous touch is opposed to the cordial grapple. It is a pensive, tranquil, junction, followed by a mild subsultory motion, a cast-down look, and an inarticulate inquiry after your friend's health. 6. The prude major and prude minor are nearly monopolized by ladies. They cannot be accurately described, but are constantly to be noticed in practice. They never extend beyond the fingers; and the prude major allows you to touch them only down to the second joint. The prude minor allows you the whole of the finger. Considerable skill may be shewn in performing them with nice variations, such as extending the left hand instead of the right, or stretching a new glossy kid glove over the finger you extend. We might go through a long list, of the gripe royal, the saw-mill shake, and the shake with malice prepense; but they are only factitious combinations of the three fundamental forms already described, as the pump-handle, the pen dulum, and the tourniquet. We should add a few remarks in conclusion, on the mode of shaking hands as an indication of character; but as we see a friend approaching, who is addicted to the pump-handle, we dare not tire our wrist with further writing. SKETCHES OF FEMALE No. II. THE EMPRESS MATILDA This lady, the mother of King Henry the Second, was the greatest Europe had ever seen: Empress of Germany by her first marriage, Countess of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine by her second; and by the will of her father confirming her claim from hereditary right Duchess of Normandy, and Queen of England. Yet she was more truly great in the latter part of her life, when she acted only as a subject under the reign of her son, than at the time when she beheld King Stephen her prisoner, and England at her feet. The violence of her temper and pride, inflamed by success, had then dishonoured her character, and made her appear to her friends unworthy of the dominion to which she was exalted; but from the instructions of adversity, age, and reflection, she learned the virtues she most wanted, moderation and mildness. These, joined to the elevation and vigour of her mind, wherein she had always surpassed her sex, enabled her to become a most useful counsellor and minister to her son, in the affairs of his government. There is not, in all history, another example of a woman who had possessed such high dignities, and encountered such perils, for the sake of maintaining her power, being afterwards content to give it up, and without forsaking the world, to live quietly in it :-neither mixing in cabals against the state, nor aspiring to rule it beyond that limited province, which was particularly assigned to her administration. Such a conduct was meritorious in the highest degree, and more than atoned for all the errors of her former behaviour. LADY FALCONBERG. Mary, third daughter of Oliver Cromwell, a lady of great beauty, but of greater spirit, was second wife of Thomas Lord Viscount Falconberg. Bishop Burnet, who styles her a wise and worthy woman, says, that "She was more likely to have maintained the post (of protector) than either of her brothers," according to a saying that went of her, "That those who wore breeches, deserved petticoats better; but if those in petticoats had been in breeches, they would have held faster." After Richard was deposed, who, as she well knew, was never formed for regal power, she exerted herself in behalf of Charles II. and is said to have had a great and successful hand in his restoration. It is very certain that her husband was sent to the Tower, by the commission of safety, a little before that great event, and that he stood very high in the king's favour.-Ob. March 14, 1712. "I am credibly informed," says Mr. Grainger, (from whose ingenious Biographical History of England the above passages are extracted)" that Lady Falconberg frequented the established church. When she was in town, she went to St. Anne's, Soho; when in the country, to Chiswick. She was a very genteel woman, but pale and sickly. She was known to be very charitable, from the information of a person who knew her in the decline of life.-See a remarkable passage concerning her in Dr. Z. Grey's Examination of Neal's History of the Puritans, p. 36. We are told by Dr. Swift, in one of his letters, that Lady Falconberg was extremely like the picture he had seen of her father. of Monmouth was totally defeated, July 5, 1685, and Jefferies pushed on the trial with the most unrelenting violence. In vain did the aged prisoner plead that these criminals had been put into no proclamation, had been convicted by no verdict, nor could any man be denominated a traitor till the sentence of some legal court was passed upon him. That it appeared not by any proof that she was so much as acquainted with the guilt of the persons, or had heard of their joining the rebellion of Monmouth: that though she might be obnoxious on account of her family, it was well known that her heart was ever loyal, and that no person in England had shed more tears for that fatal event, in which her husband had unfortunately bore too great a share: and that the same principles which she herself had ever embraced, she had carefully instilled into her son; and had, at that very time, sent him to fight against those rebels, whom she was now accused of harbouring. Though these arguments did not move Jefferies, they had influence on the jury. Twice they seemed inclined to bring in a favourable verdict. They were as often sent back with menaces and reproaches, and at last were constrained to give sentence against the prisoner. Notwithstanding all applications for pardon, the cruel sentence was executed. The king said he had given Jefferies a promise not to pardon her: an excuse which could serve only to aggravate the blame against himself. LADY LISLE Was widow of one of the regicides, who had enjoyed great favour and authority under Cromwell, and who having fled, after the restoration, to Lausanne, in Swisserland, was there assassinated by three Irish ruffians, who hoped to make their fortunes by such an infamous piece of service. This lady now [in the reign of James II.] was prosecuted for harbouring two rebels the day after the battle of Sedgmore, in which the Duke MRS. GAUNT Was accused in the same reign of harbouring traitors. She was an anabaptist, noted for her beneficence, which she extended to persons of all professions and persuasions. One of these rebels, knowing her humane character, had recourse to her in his distress, and was concealed by her. Hearing of the proclamation, which offered an indemnity and rewards to such as discovered criminals, he basely betrayed his benefactress, and bore evidence against her. He received a pardon for his treachery; she was burned alive for her charity. |