woman, be she queen or the plainest mortal, who can estimate accurately her own limitations, who is proof against enthusiasm, proof against ambition, and, at a climax, proof against flattery, who knows what she can _not_ do, in that very thing finds success. Elizabeth was and ever will be a wonderful character-study; I never weary of reading or thinking of her. The settlement of Massachusetts was under James I; but costume varied little, save that it became more cumbersome. This may be attributed directly to the cowardice of the king, who wore quilted and padded—dagger-proof—clothing; and thus gave to his courtiers an example of stuffing and padding which exceeded even that of the men of Elizabeth’s day. “A great, round, abominable breech,” did the satirists call it. Stays had to be worn beneath the long-waisted, peascod-bellied, stuffed doublet to keep it in shape; thus a man’s attire had scarcely a single natural outline. We have this description of Raleigh, courtier and “servant” of Elizabeth and victim of James, given by a contemporary, Aubrey:— “He looked like a Knave with his gogling eyes. He could transform himself into any shape. He was a tall, handsome, bold man; but his naeve was that he was damnably proud. A good piece of him is in a white satin doublet all embroidered with rich pearls, and a mighty told me that the true pearls were nigh as big as the painted ones. He had a most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long faced, and sour eie-lidded, a kind of pigge-eie.” We leave the choice of belief between one sentence of this personal description, that he was handsome, and the later plain-spoken details to the judgment of the reader. Certainly both statements cannot be true. As I look at his portrait, the “good piece of him” here, I wholly disbelieve the former. Sir Walter Raleigh and Son. Sir Walter Raleigh and Son. His laced-in, stiffened waist, his absurd breeches, his ruffs and sashes and knots, his great shoe-roses, his jewelled hatband, make this a fantastic picture, one of little dignity, though of vast cost. The jewels on his shoes were said to have cost thirty thousand pounds; and the perfect pearls in his ear, as seen in another portrait, must have been an inch and a half long. He had doublets entirely covered with a pattern of jewels. In another portrait (here) his little son, poor child, stands by his side in similar stiff attire. The famous portrait of Sir Philip Sidney and his brother is equally comic in its absurdity of costume for young lads. Read these words descriptive of another courtier, of the reign of James; his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham:—