I have said that the Normans generally were remarkable for the splendour and variety of their costume; I may add that some of the Saxons were in no degree behind them. There is Becket, for instance, the champion of the Saxons and advocate of the Commons. When that remarkably humble man went on his famous progress to Paris, the rustics observed, as he rode meekly along, that the king of England must be a marvellous personage indeed, seeing that his Lord Chancellor looked more like a king on his throne than a traveller in the saddle. He was as stately in dress at home as abroad; and he never forgave King Henry for tearing from his shoulders his splendid new scarlet mantle lined with fur, to fling it to a shivering beggar at his side. Excellent practical lesson, it may be observed. Well, it assuredly was all the practical charity ever evinced by the king. And moreover it was inappropriate. We all laughed when the angelic Irving subscribed his gold watch to some benevolent fund; and we should feel no particular increase of respect for our Sovereign and the Lord Primate if they were to stand at Temple Bar, and the former were to distribute the wardrobe of the latter among the mendicants who pass beneath that hideously ridiculous arch. Foppery in dress was at its height in the reign of Henry III., when men half-ruined themselves in order that they might dress in vestments of the magnificent material called cloth of Baldekins, or of Baldeck, the usually received term for Babylon. The rich Cyclas of this time were also named from the locality where the material was manufactured,—a custom common enough, as may be seen in the names Worsted, Blanket, Cambric, Diaper (d’Yprès), Bayonet, and many others. The general love of dress, and the wealth manifested by the grandeur of the latter, made Innocent IV. to speak of England as a “garden of delights,” and a “truly inexhaustible fountain of riches.” From this fountain his Holiness drank many a draught; and they who were compelled to supply it wished it might choke him. But Innocent made cheap compensation to England by conferring on it the signal honour of adopting its old national “wide-awake,” and after dyeing it red, conferring it on his Cardinals. The scarlet wide-awake was first worn at the Council of Lyons, in 1245. The Cardinals did not exhibit their accustomed vigilance when they permitted the fashion of this covering to glide from that of the wide-awake into that of the “broad-brim” of the Society of Friends. But perhaps it is because of its present fashion that Mr. Bright, who loves Russia and hates the press, has such respect for Rome and such welcome for her aggressions.