The mental picture from our--costume--point of view is widely different from that of the last reign. No longer do we see hoods and cowls, brown, gray, white, and black in the streets, no longer the throngs of fine craftsmen, of church-carvers, gilders, embroiderers, candle-makers, illuminators, missal-makers; all these served but to swell the ranks of the unemployed, and caused a new problem to England, never since solved, of the skilled poor out of work. The hospitals were closed--that should bring a picture to your eyes--where the streets had been thronged with the doctors of the poor and of the rich in their habits, no monks or lay brothers were to be seen. The sick, the blind, the insane had no home but the overhung back alleys where the foulest diseases might accumulate and hot-beds of vice spring up, while in the main streets Harry Tudor was carried to his bear-baiting, a quivering mass of jewels shaking on his corrupt body, on his thumb that wonderful diamond the Regale of France, stolen by him from the desecrated shrine of St. Thomas a Becket. [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; collar; ruff}] [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547) He wears the club-toed shoes, the white shirt embroidered in black silk, the padded shoulders, and the flat cap by which this reign is easily remembered.] [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; breeches}] There are two distinct classes of fashion to be seen, the German-Swiss fashion and the English fashion, a natural evolution of the national dress. The German fashion is that slashed, extravagant-looking creation which we know so well from the drawings of Albert Duerer and the more German designs of Holbein. The garments which were known as 'blistered' clothes are excessive growths on to the most extravagant designs of the Henry VII. date. The shirt cut low in the neck, and sewn with black embroidery; the little waistcoat ending at the waist and cut straight across from shoulder to shoulder, tied with thongs of leather or coloured laces to the breeches, leaving a gap between which showed the shirt; the universal pouch on the breeches often highly decorated and jewelled. From the line drawings you will see that the sleeves and the breeches took every form, were of any odd assortment of colours, were cut, puffed, and splashed all over, so that the shirt might be pushed through the holes, looking indeed 'blistered.' [Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.}] The shoes were of many shapes, as I have shown, agreeing in one point only--that the toes should be cut very broad, often, indeed, quite square. Short or hanging hair, both were the fashion, and little flat caps with the rim cut at intervals, or the large flat hats of the previous reign, covered with feathers and curiously slashed, were worn with these costumes. Cloaks, as you may see, were worn over the dress, and also those overcoats shaped much like the modern dressing-gown.