In the reign of Elizabeth there were two adjuncts which especially went to the making of a gallant—the ruff and the rapier. He whose ruff was the deepest and rapier the longest was the most unquestionable gallant; the consequence was, that apprentices robbed their masters in order to look like gallants. The vigorous Queen looked to it, however; and she placed grave citizens at the gates, with orders to cut off all ruffs of above a nail in depth, and break the points of all rapiers that were above a yard long. The scenes at the City gates must have been turbulent enough at those times, for it is not to be supposed that a “ruffian” would submit quietly to the cutting of his collar or the clipping of his sword. In earlier times, in England, the sword and poniard too had something of sacredness attached to them: thus, when Athelstan was marching against the Danes and Scots, he paid a visit by the way to the shrine of St. John of Beverley. Upon the altar of the church there he deposited his poniard, vowing that if Heaven and the Saint would help him to a victory, he would redeem the arm at a suitable price. He gained the victory, and observed his vow; and for years the monks there blessed the good Athelstan for not only putting them above the law, but making them as rich as Crœsus. If he had not, they were men who would have taken their revenge; and they would not have scrupled, as the member of the Peace Society says in one of the comedies of Aristophanes, “to take his measure for a suit of Sardian scarlet,” or to have served his body as the heralds have the arms of the Duke of Buccleuch, which, as we all know, are “bruised by a baton sinister.” The readers of Sterne will not need to be reminded that in ancient days in Brittany a nobleman, too poor to support his dignity, was allowed to make temporary sacrifice of the same by turning to commercial pursuits, after first surrendering his sword to the keeping of the magistracy. When fortune was achieved by honest industry, the old sword was once more hung upon the thigh. It was a wise custom, superior to that I have heard of in another country, where pauper aristocrats condescend to get rich by marrying merchants’ daughters, whose dowries they as profligately squander as though they had inherited them from their own fathers.