chicken, a few herrings, or a generous slice of meat, added to the modern labourer’s too scanty nuncheon of bread and cheese and beer. Our rural ancestors of every class went well and warmly clad. The farm labourers of the fourteenth century wore better garments than our ploughmen use to-day. Men of every class appear to have possessed linen shirts and linen drawers, hose of strong cloth, and leather shoes; a coat of warm russet or fustian, an ample cloak resembling the _Limousin_ of Auvergne, or Tuscan _Ferraiuolo_, and (sometimes attached to this garment, sometimes separate) a long-tailed hood of cloth. Masons, labourers, workmen of every class, completed this costume by a pair of gloves: London gloves were held in high esteem. Bonis, the merchant of Montauban, sold them to his country clients at seven sols the dozen. * * * * * The women were as sensible in their attire. They all wore a long chemise of linen, and over this a garment called a doublet, in form resembling the linen bodice sewn to a white petticoat, which is still used in dressing little girls. The wedding doublet of the butcher’s daughter of Montauban took about five yards of fine white linen of Paris, costing fifteen sols the ell--a measure which exceeded the modern metre by about two nails. The butcher was evidently a man of means; for we find his wife ordering some doublets for herself at £3 10_s._ apiece, while a neighbouring noble’s wife spends not quite half as much on those selected for her wardrobe. The wife of another burgher chooses three and twenty doublets, delicate in quality and of a vermeil colour. Over this garment the women of the fourteenth century put a tight long bodice of strong cloth, to which they attached, by hooks or lacets, a pair of tight long sleeves, generally of some costly material, silk being used on great occasions even by the poorer classes. Over this, again, they slipped a very long dress, touching the ground on all sides, tight in the bodice, but sleeveless, or with loose hanging sleeves; it was generally much trimmed with silk and braid. A farm-servant buys a piece of red silk to trim her gonella, another chooses one of blue cloth worth one livre: the simplest that we find, which is made of a coarse pale cloth called blanket, comes, with the trimmings, to nearly fourteen sols. The gown was surmounted by a heavy girdle, richly ornamented, from which the purse and keys of the house-wife dangled. Out-of-doors a long draped mantle, trimmed to match the gonella, was usually worn.