plaited
skirt; a leathern belt, corduroy knee-breeches and yellow worsted
stockings. Just such, in outside garb, was Chatterton a century ago, and
thus he is represented on his monument near Redcliff church.

[Illustration: CHATTERTON CENOTAPH.]

You are perhaps gazing skyward at some lordly campanile when a sudden
rush of feet and hum of voices comes around the corner, and the dark
street is all aglow. These are the Red Maids, who walk the earth in
scarlet gowns, set off by white aprons: they owe the bright hues of
their existence to Alderman Whitson, who died in 1628, leaving funds to
the mayor, burgesses and commonalty of the city of Bristol, "to the use
and intent that they should therewith provide a fit and convenient
dwelling-house for the abode of one grave, painful and modest woman of
good life and conversation, and for forty poor women-children (whose
parents, being freemen and burgesses of the said city, should be
deceased or decayed); that they should therein admit the said woman and
forty poor women-children, and cause them to be there kept and
maintained, and also taught to read English and to sew and do some other
laudable work toward their maintenance; ... and should cause every one
of the said children to go and be apparelled in red cloth, and to give
their attendance on the said woman, to attend and wait before the mayor
and aldermen, their wives and others their associates, to hear sermons
on the Sabbath and festival days, and other solemn meetings of the said
mayor and aldermen and their wives," etc. etc. These maids are admitted
between the ages of eight and ten, and at eighteen are placed at
service.

Other aspects of Bristol are brought out in Pope's description of it in
a letter to Mrs. Martha Blount.[1] After describing his drive from Bath
and his crossing the bridge into Bristol, he continues: "From thence you
come to a key along the old wall, with houses on both sides, and in the
middle of the street, as far as you can see, hundreds of ships, their
masts as thick as they can stand by one another, which is the oddest and
most surprising sight imaginable. This street is fuller of them than the
Thames from London Bridge to Deptford, and at certain times only the
water rises to carry them out; so that at other times a long street full
of ships in the middle and houses on both sides looks like a dream." ...
"The city of Bristol is very unpleasant, and no civilized company in it;
only, the collec