During the middle ages, the French women wore gowns quite high in the neck, and fitted closely to the shape. The right side was embroidered with their husbands’ coat of arms, and the left with their own. The custom of displaying the shoulders was unknown before the time of Charles the Sixth. Widows were closely muffled, and wore caps and veils very much like nuns. Henry the Fourth found himself obliged to restrain extravagance by sumptuary laws; yet his mistress, Gabriella, was sometimes so loaded with pearls and diamonds, that she could not support her own weight. A taste for rich and elegant dress displayed itself first and most conspicuously in Italy and France, and thence spread into more northern nations. Petrarch’s Laura is described as wearing gloves brocaded with gold, and dressed magnificently in silk, though a pound of silk at that period was valued at four pounds sterling in money. Spanish ladies wore necklaces of steel, to which thin iron rods were fastened, curving upward to expand the veil when thrown over the head. Caps more than a foot high were likewise much in vogue; they were dressed in the form of a toupee on the top of the head, and covered with a black veil. These caps may still be seen in some of the Spanish provinces. Both in Scotland and Spain it was customary for a widow to wear mourning till she died, or married again. The first year was passed in a chamber hung with black, from which the sunlight was excluded; the second it was hung with gray, and jewels and mirrors prohibited. All nations prided themselves on long and beautiful hair. Among the Saxons and Danes, married women only covered it with a head-dress; girls wore their tresses loose and flowing. A faithless wife had her head shaven, and the church sometimes ordered it as a penance for other sins. The Spanish and Italian ladies retained the Roman predilection for golden hair. In order to obtain the desired hue, they made use of sulphur and aquafortis, and exposed their heads to the sun during the hottest hours of the day. During the middle ages, dwellings were vast, and in some respects magnificent, but remarkably comfortless. The wife of the proudest baron, though she wore “A mantle of rich degree, Purple pall and ermine fre,” was obliged to live without many things, which the least wealthy citizen of the United States would consider it absolutely necessary to provide for his household. Coffee and tea were unknown. Coaches were not used in England until 1680. Before that time ladies rode on horseback or on palfreys; and sometimes double, with another on the pillion. A fondness for perfumes was universal; they were usually kept burning in censers. The word lady is supposed to have been derived from the Saxon word _hlaf-dig_, meaning a _loaf-giver_, from the custom of distributing bread among retainers, after a feast in baronial halls. It was customary to bind the tender limbs of infants in tight bandages.