Among those whom Scott placed under tribute for much of his local coloring was a gossipy, kindly clergyman, William Harrison[3] by name, who was born close by Bow Lane, in London, who studied at Westminster, at Oxford, and Cambridge (as he himself tells us), and who had a parish in Radwinter, on the northern borders of Essex; who came to be a canon, finally, at Windsor; and who died ten years before James came to power. He tells us, in a delightfully quaint way, of all the simples which he grew in his little garden--of the manner in which country houses were builded, and their walls white-washed--of the open chimney vents, and the smoke-burnished rafters. “And yet see the change,” he says, “for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, but a great manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.” When the old parson gets upon the subject of dress he waxes eloquent; nor was he without fullest opportunities for observation, having been for much time private chaplain to the Earl of Cobham. “Oh, how much cost,” he says, “is bestowed now-a-daies upon our bodies, and how little upon our soules! How many sutes of apparel hath the one, and how little furniture hath the other! How curious, how nice are the men and women, and how hardlie can the tailer please them in making things fit for their bodies. How many times must they be sent back againe to him that made it. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman’s locks, manie times cut off above or under the ears, round, as by a wooden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varieties of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of the Turks, not a few cut like to the beard of Marquess Otto; some made round, like a rubbing brush, others with a _pique devant_ (O fine fashion!). “In women, too, it is much to be lamented that they doo now far exceed the lightness of our men, and such staring attire as in times past was supposed meet for none but light housewives onelie, is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons. What should I say of their doublets with pendant pieces on the brest, full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colors, I have met with some of these _trulles_ in London, so disguised, that it hath passed my skill to discerne whether they were men or women.” If this discerning old gentleman had shot his quill along our sidewalks, I think it would have punctured a good deal of bloat, and stirred up no little bustle. The King himself had a great liking for fine dress in others, though he was himself a sloven. Lord Howard, a courtier, writes to a friend who is hopeful of preferment: