d the people three times answered, _Hihan, hihan,
hihan_! to imitate the braying of that grave animal.[15]

What shall we think of this imbecile mixture of superstition and farce?
This _ass_ was perhaps typical of the _ass_ which Jesus rode! The
children of Israel worshipped a golden ass, and Balaam made another
speak. How fortunate then was _James Naylor_, who desirous of entering
Bristol on an _ass_, Hume informs us--it is indeed but a piece of cold
pleasantry--that all Bristol could not afford him _one_!

At the time when all these follies were practised, they would not suffer
men to play at _chess_! Velly says, "A statute of Eudes de Sully
prohibits clergymen not only from playing at chess, but even from having
a chess-board in their house." Who could believe, that while half the
ceremonies of religion consisted in the grossest buffoonery, a prince
preferred death rather than cure himself by a remedy which offended his
chastity! Louis VIII. being dangerously ill, the physicians consulted,
and agreed to place near the monarch while he slept a young and
beautiful lady, who, when he awoke, should inform him of the motive
which had conducted her to him. Louis answered, "No, my girl, I prefer
dying rather than to save my life by a _mortal sin_!" And, in fact, the
good king died! He would not be prescribed for out of the whole
Pharmacopoeia of Love!

An account of our taste in female beauty is given, by Mr. Ellis, who
observes, in his notes to Way's Fabliaux, "In the times of chivalry the
minstrels dwelt with great complacency on the fair hair and delicate
complexion of their damsels. This taste was continued for a long time,
and to render the hair light was a great object of education. Even when
wig first came into fashion they were all flaxen. Such was the colour of
the Gauls and of their German conquerors. It required some centuries to
reconcile their eyes to the swarthy beauties of their Spanish and their
Italian neighbours."[16]

The following is an amusing anecdote of the difficulty in which an
honest Vicar of Bray found himself in those contentious times.

When the court of Rome, under the pontificates of Gregory IX. and
Innocent IV., set no bounds to their ambitious projects, they were
opposed by the Emperor Frederick; who was of course anathematised. A
curate of Paris, a humorous fellow, got up in his pulpit with the bull
of Innocent in his hand. "You know, my brethren (said he), that I am
ordered to proclai