the high cork soles, to which I have just alluded, were
in common use all over Europe, and were of all heights--from two
inches to seven or eight--and they were called _chopines_. They were
not such a foolish custom as might appear, for they protected the
wearer from the appalling filth of the streets. The tall chopines that
Hamlet mentions were really very high-soled slippers, into which the
richly-embroidered shoes were placed to protect them when the ladies
walked abroad. The shoes were made of leather and velvet stitched with
silk, embroidered with gold, or stamped with patterns, slashed
sometimes, and sometimes laced with coloured silk laces.

Some ladies wore bombazines, or a silk and cotton stuff made at
Norwich, and bone lace made at Honiton, both at that time the newest
of English goods, although before made in Flanders; and they imported
Italian lace and Venetian shoes, stuffed their stomachers with
bombast, and wore a frontlet on their French hoods, called a
_bongrace_, to keep their faces from sunburn.

Cambric they brought from Cambrai in France, and calico from Calicut
in India--the world was hunted high and low for spoil to deck these
gorgeous, stiff, buckramed people, so that under all this load of
universal goods one might hardly hope to find more than a clothes
prop; in fact, one might more easily imagine the overdressed figure to
be a marvellous marionette than a decent Englishwoman.

[Illustration: {Four women of the time of Elizabeth}]

[Illustration: {Two women of the time of Elizabeth}]

Falstaff will not wear coarse dowlas shirts, dandies call for ostrich
feathers, ladies must have Coventry blue gowns and Italian flag-shaped
fans; everybody is in the fashion from milkmaids to ladies of the
court, each as best as they may manage it. The Jew moves about the
streets in his long gaberdine and yellow cap, the lady pads about her
garden in tall chopines, and the gentleman sits down as well as he may
in his bombasted breeches and smokes Herbe de la Reine in a pipe of
clay, and the country woman walks along in her stamell red petticoat
guarded or strapped with black, or rides past to market in her
over-guard skirts.

Let us imagine, by way of a picture of the times, the Queen in her
bedchamber under the hands of her tiring-women: She is sitting before
a mirror in her embroidered chemise of fine Raynes linen, in her
under-linen petticoat and her silk stockings with the gold thread
clocks. Over