that, however objectionable they are in many ways, they have for themselves this advantage, that they are extremely beautiful, so that if their morals are exactly the same as in other countries they excel at least in something which in itself is not contemptible. They are "a kinde of women bearing the faces of Angels, but the hearts of devils, able to intrap the elect if it were possible."[143] Greene had no pretension to be one of the elect, and was only too often "intraped"; but for all his miseries his words show a scarcely less intense admiration for his diabolical angels than Des Grieux's famous rapturous phrase when he meets Manon on her way to the ship that is to convey her to America: "Son linge etait sale et derange; ses mains delicates exposees a l'injure de l'air; enfin tout ce compose charmant, _cette figure capable de ramener l'univers a l'idolatrie_, paraissait dans un desordre et un abattement inexprimables." "Again," writes Greene: "let me say this much, that our curtizans ... are far superiour in artificiall allurement to them of all the world, for, although they have not the painting of Italie, nor the charms of France, nor the jewelles of Spaine, yet they have in their eyes adamants that wil drawe youth as the jet the strawe.... Their lookes ... containe modesty, mirth, chastity, wantonness and what not."[144] Besides the personal reminiscences with which he made up his repentance tales and stories, Greene as an observer of human nature is seen at his best in his curious, and at the time famous, dialogue "between velvet breeches and cloth breeches."[145] It is in fact a disputation between old England and new England; the England that built the strong houses praised by Harrison, and the England that adorned itself with the Burghley House paper work; traditional England and italianate England. Velvet breeches is "richly daubde with gold, and poudred with pearle," and is "sprung from the auncient Romans, borne in Italy, the mistresse of the worlde for chivalry." Cloth breeches is of English manufacture and descent, and deplores the vices that have crept into "this glorious Iland" in the wake of Italian fashions. Both plead before Greene, each giving very graphic accounts of the behaviour of the other. Here, for example, is a scene, assuredly from the life, at a barber's shop: "Velvet breeches he sittes downe in the chaire wrapt in fine cloathes ... then comes [the barber] out with his fustian eloquence, and making a low conge, saith: [Illustration: VELVET BREECHES AND CLOTH BREECHES, 1592.]