'I looked on my left half as the lady taught me, And was aware of a woman worthily clothed, Trimmed with fur, the finest on earth, Crowned with a crown, the King had none better. Handsomely her fingers were fretted with gold wire, And thereon red rubies, as red as any hot coal, And diamonds of dearest price, and double manner of sapphires, Orientals and green beryls.... Her robe was full rich, of red scarlet fast dyed, With bands of red gold and of rich stones; Her array ravished me, such richness saw I never.' _Piers the Plowman._ There are two manuscripts in existence the illuminations in which give the most wonderfully pictorial idea of this time; they are the manuscript marked MS. Bodl., Misc. 264, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the Loutrell Psalter in the British Museum. The Loutrell Psalter is, indeed, one of the most notable books in the world; it is an example of illumination at the height of that art; it has for illustrator a person, not only of a high order of intelligence, but a person possessed of the very spirit of Gothic humour, who saw rural England, not only with the eyes of an artist, but with the eyes of a gossiping philosopher. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD III. (1327-1377) Round his arms you will see the curious tippet, the jagged ends of which hang down; these are the remains of the pendant sleeves. His shoes are buttoned in front.] Both this book and the book in the Bodleian Library were illustrated by persons who were charged to the brim with the spirit of their age; they were Chaucerian in their gay good-humour and in their quaint observation, and they have that moral knowledge and outspoken manner which characterize William Langland, whose 'Piers the Plowman' I have quoted above. With Chaucer, Langland, and these illuminators we have a complete exhibition of English life of these times. The pulse of rural England is felt by them in a most remarkable way; the religion, language, thought, politics, the whole trend of rural, provincial, and Court life may be gathered from their books. The drawings in the Loutrell Psalter were completed before the year 1340, and they give us all that wonderful charm, that intimate knowledge, which we enjoy in the 'Canterbury Pilgrims' and the 'Vision of Piers Plowman.' There seems to be something in road-travelling which levels all humanity; there is no road in England which does not throb with history; there is no poem or story written about roads in England which does not in some way move the Englishness in us. Chaucer and Langland make comrades of us as they move along the highway, and with them we meet, on terms of intimacy, all the characters of the fourteenth century. With these illuminators of the Loutrell Psalter and the Bodleian MS. we see actually the stream of English life along a crowded thoroughfare.