f linen, and
their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own
experience." He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come
from the North of Ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that
he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was
met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their
loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two
seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being
dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by
the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not
but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon
after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked
excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as
he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in
the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he
thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with
this naked company. But the baron... for shame, durst not put off
his apparel." (Ib. Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.)

Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the
seventeenth century, found that in Lombardy many of the women
and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At
Venice and Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk
with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the
middle. (Coryat, _Crudities_, 1611. The fashion of _decollete_
garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth
century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered
themselves up to the neck.)

In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a
house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the
custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned
for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the
incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest
girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the
custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to
Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of
Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies
at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with
cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladie