Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/514

 494 Hijiory of Domejiic Manners in the reign of Elizabeth they had become an important part of the focial fyftem. It was here that people went to hear the news of the day, or the talk of the town, and to frequent the ordinary became gradually confidered as a neceflary part of the education of a gentleman of fafliion. At the beginning of the feventeenth century, the ufual price of an ordi- nary appears to have been two lliillings ; but there were ordinaries at eighteen-pence, and at fome fiifliionable ordinaries the price was much higher. The general treatment of children, their coftume, and their amufe- ments, remained much as formerly, and clofely refembled thofe of France and Germany as they were then, and as they have exifted in fome parts even to our own days. The pernicious pra6tice of fwathing or fwaddling the child as foon as it was born prevailed everywhere, and the infant was kept in this condition until it became neceflary to teach it the uie of its No. 315. Swaddling a Child. limbs. I'he procefs of fwaddling is fliown in our cut No. 315, taken from one of the prints by BoflTe, publillied in 1633, which furnilli fuch abundant illuftration of contemporary manners. The period during which boys ■were kept in petticoats was very Ibort, for at a very early age they M^re drefled in the fame drefs as up-grown people, like little miniature men. Our only reprefentatives of the appearance of little boys in the lixteenth century, is found in one or two educational eftablilliments, fuch as the Blue-Coat School in London. The coftume of a child during the fliort tranfition