We see all these good people, arrayed soberly or splendidly according to their rank, but almost always comfortably dressed, as we turn the pages of the _Accounts of Bonis_ or the palpitating _Registers of the Châtelet_ (the Newgate Calendar of an earlier age). Along the country roads the notary jogs on business, dressed in violet cloth richly furred, solidly seated on his ample cob. He passes the country squire (the grandchild of the last rich semi-noble vavassour) hooded in black parti-coloured russet, and wrapped in a houppelande of English green, furred with squirrel, the long end of his cloak thrown over the left shoulder. The shepherd on the hill drives his flock; he is warmly clad in strong brown woollen. The thatcher, as he steps across the fields from his daughter’s churching, is dressed all in his best in a large check of brown and white and blue. There stands the farmer, all in sombre russet, with an elegant hood striped black and yellow; there are gold rings on his hand, worn over his gloves; there are gold clasps to his girdle. At the little village inn, the serving-maid comes out, dressed in iron-grey, with a bunch of pink roses in her hands. The mason of the hamlet stands at his gate, chatting with a fellow of his craft, and with a tramp in search of work; the home-staying workman is well clad in whitish-grey, with darker grey hose and grey-blue hood; the traveller has a long brown _cottehardie_, lined with an old coat, a brown hood buckled under the chin, brown hose, and strong leather shoes with steel buckles. At the corner of the road a wandering beggar waits for alms, dressed in a mantle of faded russet patched with an older light-blue garment, and a hood of Heaven knows what colour, not worth two deniers. His wife squats beside him, slovenly dressed in an old patched cassock tied round her waist with a reed. She has no hair, and a strip of dirty cloth tied round her head but half conceals her baldness. They are the only really shabby people that we meet (save the wandering friars, who make a virtue of it); but few are so magnificent as the drover, a person of importance, it would appear, from the quality and the quantity of his purchases. The goat-herd and the shepherd are all in russet; but see the drover as he comes home from market resplendent in his mantle checked with black and green: he sports a hood striped with grey and yellow; hood and cloak are in accordance with the most fashionable standard of the day. Here out in the fields we seldom use such brilliant colours: russet, blanket, grey, blue, and English green are our usual wear. It is only when the knight, the doctor, or the merchant from the town is drawn this way that we see the real taste of the _bon ton_: the parti-coloured green and vermeil, white and blue, _vert perdu_ and slate colour, yellow and black, white and vermeil, that are, with the universal black and green, the last cry of the _mode_. Both check and stripe are popular alike in town and country.