the
majestic monarch of England! The loftiest of Christendom's knights,
the loveliest of Christendom's daughters were assembled here; and the
courteous Bayard, the noble Tremouille, the lofty Bourbon, felt
inspired more gallantly, if possible, than was even their wont, when
contending in all love and amity with the proudest of England's
champions, in presence of the fairest of her blue-eyed maidens,--the
noblest of her courtly dames.

Nor were the lofty and noble alone there congregated. After the
magnificent structure for the king and court, after every thing in the
shape of a tenement in, out, or about the little town of Guisnes, and
the neighbouring hamlets, were occupied, two thousand eight hundred
tents were set up on the side of the English alone. No noble or baron
would be absent; but likewise knights, and squires, and yeomen flocked
to the scene: citizens and city wives disported their richest silks
and their heaviest chains; jews went for gain, pedlars for knavery,
tradespeople for their craft, rogues for mischief. Then there were
"vagaboundes, plowmen, laborers, wagoners, and beggers, that for
drunkennes lay in routes and heapes, so great resorte thether came,
that bothe knightes and ladies that wer come to see the noblenes, were
faine to lye in haye and strawe, and hold theim thereof highly
pleased."

The accommodations provided for the king and privileged members of his
court on this occasion were more than magnificent; a vast and splendid
edifice that seemed to be endued with the magnificence, and to rise
almost with the celerity of that prepared by the slaves of the lamp,
where the richest tapestry and silk embroidery--the costliest produce
of the most accomplished artisans, were almost unnoticed amid the gold
and jewellery by which they were surrounded--where all that art could
produce, or riches devise had been lavished--all this has been often
described. And the tent itself, the nucleus of the show, the point
where the "brother" kings were to confer, was hung round with cloth of
gold: the posts, the cones, the cords, the tents, were all of the same
precious metal, which glittered here in such excessive profusion as to
give that title to the meeting which has superseded all others--"The
Field of the Cloth of Gold."

This gaudy pageant was the prelude to an era of great interest, for
while dwelling on the "galanty shew" we cannot forget that now reigned
Solyman the magnificent, and that this was the a