simplicity and absence of jealousy in their usages towards females. For not only do those who are of the same family and household kiss them on the mouth with salutations and embraces, but even those too who have never seen them. And to themselves this appears by no means indecent.” Again, when the Constable of Castile appeared at the Court of Whitehall on Saturday afternoon, 18th August 1604, after kissing Her Majesty’s hands he requested permission to salute the ladies of honour (twenty in number, standing in a row, and beautiful exceedingly) according to the custom of the country, and any neglect of which is taken as an affront. Whereupon the Queen having given him leave, His Excellency complied with the custom, much to the satisfaction of the ladies. In Shakespeare’s _Henry VIII._, at the Cardinal’s banquet, the King says to Anne Bullen:— “Sweetheart, I were unmannerly, to take you out, And not to kiss you.” In dancing it appears to have been the customary fee of a lady’s partner. A further illustration of the custom may be seen. Foreigners of the male sex, and especially Frenchmen, are in the more frequent habit of kissing each other, and probably not the ladies. Misson, a Frenchman who travelled in England about 1697, says: “The people of England, when they meet, never salute one another, otherwise than by giving one another their hands, and shaking them heartily; they no more dream of pulling off their hats, than the women do of pulling off their headcloths.” The sin of great cities we may pass over; that of early marriage is still, as it was in Stubbes’ time, a very terrible evil; the sin of drunkenness is with us still, and is present in every country. The side of charity that consists in giving doles to the poor was then neglected, and is now destroyed. We still suffer from money-lenders, though they can no longer conduct us to a life-long prison. “Beleeve mee,” says Stubbes, “it greeveth mee to heare (walking in the streats) the pitiful cryes, and miserable complaints of poore prisoners in durance for debt, and like so to continue all their life, destitute of libertie, meat, drink (though of the meanest sorte), and clothing to their backs, lying in filthie strawe, and lothsome dung, wursse than anie dogge, voide of all charitable consolation and brotherly comfort in this World, wishing and thyrsting after death to set them at libertie, and loose them from their shackles, giues, and yron bands.” (Stubbes.)