necklaces around Aphrodite's tender
neck before she was well out of the sea, winding them row after row
in as many circles as there are stars clustering about the moon. No
more doubt than had the fair and virtuous Countess of Salisbury, who,
so Froissart tells us, chilled the lawless passion of Edward the
Third by the simple expedient of wearing unbefitting clothes. Saint
Lucy, under somewhat similar circumstances, felt it necessary to put
out her beautiful eyes; but Katharine of Salisbury knew men better
than the saint knew them. She shamed her loveliness by going to
Edward's banquet looking like a rustic, and found herself in
consequence very comfortably free from royal attentions.

In the wise old days when men outshone their consorts, we find their
hearts set discerningly on one supreme extravagance. Lace, the most
artistic fabric that taste and ingenuity have devised, "the fine web
which feeds the pride of the world," was for centuries the delight
of every well-dressed gentleman. We know not by what marital cajolery
Mr. Pepys persuaded Mrs. Pepys to give him the lace from her best
petticoat, "that she had when I married her"; but we do know that
he used it to trim a new coat; and that he subsequently noted down
in his diary one simple, serious, and heartfelt resolution, which
we feel sure was faithfully kept: "Henceforth I am determined my
chief expense shall be in lace bands." Charles the Second paid
fifteen pounds apiece for his lace-trimmed night-caps; William the
Third, five hundred pounds for a set of lace-trimmed night-shirts;
and Cinq-Mars, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, who was
beheaded when he was barely twenty-two, found time in his short life
to acquire three hundred sets of lace ruffles. The lace collars of
Van Dyck's portraits, the lace cravats which Grahame of Claverhouse
and Montrose wear over their armour, are subtly suggestive of the
strength that lies in delicacy. The fighting qualities of
Claverhouse were not less effective because of those soft folds of
lace and linen. The death of Montrose was no less noble because he
went to the scaffold in scarlet and fine linen, with "stockings of
incarnate silk, and roses on his shoon." Once Carlyle was disparaging
Montrose, as (being in a denunciatory mood) he would have disparaged
the Archangel Michael; and, finding his hearers disposed to disagree
with him, asked bitterly: "What did Montrose do anyway?" Whereupon
Irving retorted: "He put on a c