"That costumes are pretty accurately represented on brasses," continued Mr. Ambrose, "we are sure, from the fact that many different artists have made the dresses of each particular period so much alike; and this circumstance adds much interest and importance to these monuments. I will now describe some of these dresses, and you must try to find out, as I go on, the several parts of the dress I am describing on Ernest's rubbing's which hang upon the wall. But I shall only be able to say a little about each. First there come the persons holding sacred office in the Church. The priests are usually, you see, dressed in the robes worn at Holy Communion, and they commonly hold the chalice and wafer in their hands. The robe which is most conspicuous is the _chasuble_. It is usually richly embroidered in gold and silk. This robe is one of the ornaments of the minister referred to in the rubric at the commencement of the Prayer Book. At the top of it you see the _amice_. This too is worked in various colours and patterns. The academic _hood_, some suppose, now represents this part of the priest's dress. You must remember we are looking at the dresses worn five hundred years ago, and which had been in use long before that time, and we cannot be surprised if some of them, as now worn, are a little changed in shape and appearance. The narrow band which hangs from the shoulders nearly to the feet, embroidered at the ends, is called the _stole_. This, you know, is still worn by us just as it was then. It is one of the most ancient vestments of the Church, and is intended to represent the _yoke of Christ_. The small embroidered strip hanging on the left arm is the _maniple_. It is used for cleaning the sacred vessels. Beneath the chasuble is the _albe_, a white robe which--changed somewhat in form--we still wear. It is derived from the linen ephod of the Jews. Sometimes on brasses, as on that beautiful one to the memory of Henry Sever[46], the _cope_ is represented. This is a very rich and costly robe, and is still always worn at the coronations of our Kings and Queens; it is also ordered to be worn on other occasions. Then the bishops wore, you see, other robes besides those I have mentioned:--the _mitre_, like the albe, handed down from the time of the Jews to our own period; the _tunic_, a close-fitting linen vestment; the _dalmatic_, so called because it was once the regal dress of Dalmatia; the gloves, often jewelled. They hold the _crozier_, or _cross staff_, or else the _crooked_, or _pastoral staff_, in their hand. As bishops and priests were then, as now, very often buried in their ecclesiastical vestments, the brass probably in such cases represented, as near as could be, the robed body of the person beneath. The earliest brasses of ecclesiastics are at Oulton, Suffolk, and Merton College, Oxford. The date of both is about 1310.