Even in her midday glories, she was no attractive sight as she grew in years. See her going to prayers, when her threescore years had thrice as many nobles to honour them, and _she_ walking amid all, wrinkled, small-eyed, with teeth that made her smile hideous, and with not only false hair, but that hair red. Hurtzner, who saw her on one of these occasions, says:—“Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels.... She was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans; and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness; the ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white.” The older she grew, the more splendidly she bedizened herself,—as decaying matter puts on variety of colour. “She imagined,” says Bacon, “that the people, who are much influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her personal attractions.” The people were not such simpletons, and they saw plainly enough that she was dying, in spite of the majesty of her exquisitely braided periwig. Anne of Denmark, the next Queen of England, did not look queenly even in Elizabeth’s robes. Her taste in dress was extremely bad. She patronized especially the huge farthingales, high behind, low before, and swelling out into unlimited space on all sides. These monstrous dresses were kept in countenance by the as monstrous padded costumes of the courtiers; and it was not very unusual for a bevy of the bearers of them to stick fast in the narrow passages, whence only dexterity could decently disentangle them. The King issued a proclamation against the farthingales; but the ladies, to show their contempt for his authority in matters of fashion, continued to wear them till he died,—and _then_ left them off. Spirited women! King Charles wore a white mantle at his coronation, and when his poor hearse, poorly attended, crossed the yard of Windsor Castle, the snow descended upon it, and covered the coffin as it was taken out with its silently-falling flakes; and so, from crown to grave, Charles was, as his servants used to call him, “the White King.” His consort, Henrietta Maria, was fond of the colour,—that in which Mary Tudor had mourned. But poor Henrietta, less fortunate than the sister of Henry VIII., gay and graceful as she was at her husband’s court, was too ill-conditioned in France to dress becomingly even in weeds. She was one of the founders of good taste in England; and in her exile she wore contentedly the coarsest stuffs. But then Louis XIV. buried her splendidly at his own cost; and Charles II. and his people spent twice as much in a six months’ mourning for her as would have sufficed to have kept her and her household for ever.