s
death, instead of the firm progress of order instituted by his father,
a bankrupt country with an enormously rich Government.

You may see for the later pictures of his reign a great bloated mass
of corpulence, with running ulcers on his legs and the blood of wives
and people on his hands, striding in his well-known attitude over the
festering slums his rule had produced in London. Harry, _Grace a
Dieu_!

The mental picture from our--costume--point of view is widely
different from that of the last reign. No longer do we see hoods and
cowls, brown, gray, white, and black in the streets, no longer the
throngs of fine craftsmen, of church-carvers, gilders, embroiderers,
candle-makers, illuminators, missal-makers; all these served but to
swell the ranks of the unemployed, and caused a new problem to
England, never since solved, of the skilled poor out of work. The
hospitals were closed--that should bring a picture to your eyes--where
the streets had been thronged with the doctors of the poor and of the
rich in their habits, no monks or lay brothers were to be seen. The
sick, the blind, the insane had no home but the overhung back
alleys where the foulest diseases might accumulate and hot-beds of
vice spring up, while in the main streets Harry Tudor was carried to
his bear-baiting, a quivering mass of jewels shaking on his corrupt
body, on his thumb that wonderful diamond the Regale of France, stolen
by him from the desecrated shrine of St. Thomas a Becket.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; collar; ruff}]

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII. (1509-1547)

He wears the club-toed shoes, the white shirt embroidered in black
silk, the padded shoulders, and the flat cap by which this reign is
easily remembered.]

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.; breeches}]

There are two distinct classes of fashion to be seen, the German-Swiss
fashion and the English fashion, a natural evolution of the national
dress. The German fashion is that slashed, extravagant-looking
creation which we know so well from the drawings of Albert Duerer and
the more German designs of Holbein. The garments which were known as
'blistered' clothes are excessive growths on to the most extravagant
designs of the Henry VII. date. The shirt cut low in the neck, and
sewn with black embroidery; the little waistcoat ending at the waist
and cut straight across from shoulder to shoulder, tied with thongs
of