The accommodations provided for the king and privileged members of his court on this occasion were more than magnificent; a vast and splendid edifice that seemed to be endued with the magnificence, and to rise almost with the celerity of that prepared by the slaves of the lamp, where the richest tapestry and silk embroidery--the costliest produce of the most accomplished artisans, were almost unnoticed amid the gold and jewellery by which they were surrounded--where all that art could produce, or riches devise had been lavished--all this has been often described. And the tent itself, the nucleus of the show, the point where the "brother" kings were to confer, was hung round with cloth of gold: the posts, the cones, the cords, the tents, were all of the same precious metal, which glittered here in such excessive profusion as to give that title to the meeting which has superseded all others--"The Field of the Cloth of Gold." This gaudy pageant was the prelude to an era of great interest, for while dwelling on the "galanty shew" we cannot forget that now reigned Solyman the magnificent, and that this was the age of Leo the Tenth; that Charles the Fifth was now beginning his influential course; that a Sir Thomas More graced England; and that in Germany there was "one Martin Luther," who "belonged to an order of strolling friars." Under Leo's munificent encouragement, Rafaello produced those magnificent creations which have been the inspiration of subsequent ages; and at home, under Wolsey's enlightened patronage, colleges were founded, learning was encouraged, and the College of Physicians first instituted in 1518, found in him one of its warmest advocates and firmest supporters. A modern writer gives the following amusing picture of part of the bustle attendant on the event we are considering. "The palace (of Westminster) and all its precincts became the elysium of tailors, embroiderers, and sempstresses. There might you see many a shady form gliding about from apartment to apartment, with smiling looks and extended shears, or armed with ell-wands more potent than Mercury's rod, driving many a poor soul to perdition, and transforming his goodly acres into velvet suits, with tags of cloth of gold. So continual were the demands upon every kind of artisan, that the impossibility of executing them threw several into despair. One tailor who is reported to have undertaken to furnish fifty embroidered suits in three days, on beholding the mountain of gold and velvet that cumbered his shop-board, saw, like Brutus, the impossibility of victory, and, with Roman fortitude, fell on his own shears. Three armourers are said to have been completely melted with the heat of their furnaces; and an unfortunate goldsmith swallowed molten silver to escape the persecutions of the day.