represent, as a mere design to turn them into ridicule. Nevertheless, the fashions in dress were, especially from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, carried to a great degree of extravagance, and were not only the objects of satire and caricature, but drew forth the indignant declamations of the Church, and furnished a continuous theme to the preachers. The contemporary chronicles abound with bitter reflections on the extravagance in costume, which was considered as one of the outward signs of the great corruption of particular periods; and they give us not unfrequent examples of the coarse manner in which the clergy discussed them in their sermons. The readers of Chaucer will remember the manner in which this subject is treated in the "Parson's Tale." In this respect the satirists of the Church went hand in hand with the pictorial caricaturists of the illuminated manuscripts, and of the sculptures with which we sometimes meet in contemporary architectural ornamentation. In the latter, this class of caricature is perhaps less frequent, but it is sometimes very expressive. The very curious _misereres_ in the church of Ludlow, in Shropshire, present the caricature reproduced in our cut No. 67. It represents an ugly, and, to judge by the expression of the countenance, an ill-tempered old woman, wearing the fashionable head-dress of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, which seems to have been carried to its greatest extravagance in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. It is the style of coiffure known especially as the horned head-dress, and the very name carries with it a sort of relationship to an individual who was notoriously horned--the spirit of evil. This dashing dame of the olden time appears to have struck terror into two unfortunates who have fallen within her influence, one of whom, as though he took her for a new Gorgon, is attempting to cover himself with his buckler, while the other, apprehending danger of another kind, is prepared to defend himself with his sword. The details of the head-dress in this figure are interesting for the history of costume. [Illustration: _No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty._] [Illustration: _No. 68. A Man of War._] Our next cut, No. 68, is taken from a manuscript in private possession, which is now rather well known among antiquaries by the name of the "Luttrell Psalter," and which belongs to the fourteenth century. It seems to involve a satire on the aristocratic order of society--on the knight who was distinguished by his helmet, his shield, and his armour. The individual here represented presents a type which is anything but aristocratic. While he holds a helmet in his hand to show the meaning of the satire, his own helmet, which he wears on his head, is simply a bellows. He may be a knight of the kitchen, or perhaps a mere _quistron_, or kitchen lad. [Illustration: _No. 69. A Lady's Head-dress._]