red to limit this
extravagance, which in the eyes of the world had an especial tendency to
obliterate, or at least to conceal, all distinctions of birth, rank, and
condition. Wealth strove hard at that time to be the sole standard of
dress.

As we approach the fourteenth century--an epoch of the Middle Ages at
which, after many changes of fashion, and many struggles against the
ancient Roman and German traditions, modern national costume seems at last
to have assumed a settled and normal character--we think it right to
recapitulate somewhat, with a view to set forth the nature of the various
elements which were at work from time to time in forming the fashions in
dress. In order to give more weight to our remarks, we will extract,
almost word for word, a few pages from the learned and excellent work
which M. Jules Quicherat has published on this subject.

"Towards the year 1280," he says, "the dress of a man--not of a man as the
word was then used, which meant _serf_, but of one to whom the exercise of
human prerogatives was permitted, that is to say, of an ecclesiastic, a
bourgeois, or a noble--was composed of six indispensable portions: the
_braies_, or breeches, the stockings, the shoes, the coat, the surcoat, or
_cotte-hardie,_ and the _chaperon_, or head-dress. To these articles those
who wished to dress more elegantly added, on the body, a shirt; on the
shoulders, a mantle; and on the head, a hat, or _fronteau_.

[Illustration: Fig. 417.--Costumes of the Common People in the Fourteenth
Century: Italian Gardener and Woodman.--From two Engravings in the Bonnart
Collection.]

"The _braies_, or _brayes_, were a kind of drawers, generally knitted,
sometimes made of woollen stuff or silk, and sometimes even of undressed
leather. .... Our ancestors derived this part of their dress from the
ancient Gauls; only the Gallic braies came down to the ankle, whereas
those of the thirteenth century only reached to the calf. They were
fastened above the hips by means of a belt called the _braier_.

"By _chausses_ was meant what we now call long stockings or hose. The
stockings were of the same colour and material as the braies, and were
kept up by the lower part of the braies being pulled over them, and tied
with a string.

"The shoes were made of various kinds of leather, the quality of which
depended on the way in which they were tanned, and were either of common
leather, or of leather which was similar to that we know as