“I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat, As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.” Sir John Falstaff at the same date would be (alas!) in his sixty-second year. Hotspur, according to the new reading I am sanguine of establishing, could not have been born earlier than the year 1382. It must have been on or about the 10th of the same month (.e. July, 1408) that Sir John Falstaff, having got the nucleus of his troops in marching order, prepared to lead them against the enemy, proceeding from London in a north-westerly direction. The departure of the Falstaff troops from the metropolis, though an event, judged by its results, worthy of celebration by the historic pencil, was not, _per se_, one of sufficient importance to call forth any such public demonstrations as the closing of shops, the erection of triumphal arches, or of balconies for spectators, the turning out of municipal authorities, the reading of addresses, &c. &c. The Lord Mayor of London on that day attended to his business, cuffing his ‘prentices and mixing his wines, stretching and powdering his broadcloth, washing his stale ribs of beef with fresh blood, or prematurely ripening his hides with marl and ash bark,--according to the civic chair in that year happened to be filled by vintner, clothier, butcher, or tanner,--just as though nothing were going forward. There was not even so much as a procession of virgins to scatter flowers before the warriors’ footsteps; not even a band of music to play before them; not so much as a wooden barrier to keep off the crowd that did not come to look at them!