To this curious delineation of the furniture and household accommodation of the farmer, it will be necessary, in order to complete the sketch, to add a few things relative to his diet and hospitality. Contrary to what has taken place in modern times, the hours for meals were later with the artificer and the husbandman than with the higher order of society; the farmer and his servants usually sitting down to dinner at one o'clock, and to supper at seven, while the nobleman and gentleman took the first at eleven in the morning, and the second at five in the afternoon. It would appear that, from the cottage to the palace, good eating was as much cultivated in the days of Elizabeth as it has been in any subsequent period; and the rites of hospitality, more especially in the country, were observed with a frequency and cordiality which a further progress in civilisation has rather tended to check, than to increase. Of the larder of the cotter and the shepherd, and of the hospitality of the former, a pretty accurate idea may be acquired from the simple yet beautiful strains of an old pastoral bard of Elizabeth's days, who, describing a nobleman fatigued by the chase, the heat of the weather, and long fasting, adds that he— "Did house him in a peakish graunge, Within a forrest great: Wheare, knowne, and welcom'd, as the place And persons might afforde, Browne bread, whig, bacon, curds, and milke, Were set him on the borde: A cushion made of lists, a stoole Half backed with a houpe, Were brought him, and he sitteth down Besides a sorry coupe. The poor old couple wish't their bread Were wheat, their whig were perry, Their bacon beefe, their milke and curds Weare creame, to make him mery."[104:A] The picture of the shepherd youth is so exquisitely drawn that, though only a portion of it is illustrative of our subject, we cannot avoid giving so much of the text as will render the figure complete. "Sweet growte, or whig, his bottle had As much as it might hold: A sheeve of bread as browne as nut, And cheese as white as snowe, And wildings, or the season's fruite, He did in scrip bestow: And whil'st his py-bald curre did sleepe, And sheep-hooke lay him by, On hollow quilles of oten strawe He piped melody:— — — — — — — — With the sun He doth his flocke unfold, And all the day on hill or plaine He merrie chat can hold: And with the sun doth folde againe; Then jogging home betime, _He turnes a crab_, or tunes a round, Or sings some merrie ryme: _Nor lackes he gleeful tales to tell, Whil'st round the bole doth trot_; And sitteth singing care away, Till he to bed hath got. Theare sleeps he soundly all the night, Forgetting morrow cares, Nor feares he blasting of his corne Nor uttering of his wares,