Page:Americans and others.djvu/218

 resolution, which we feel sure was faithfully kept: "Henceforth I am determined my chief expense shall be in lace bands." Charles the Second paid fifteen pounds apiece for his lace-trimmed night-caps; William the Third, five hundred pounds for a set of lace-trimmed night-shirts; and Cinq-Mars, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, who was beheaded when he was barely twenty-two, found time in his short life to acquire three hundred sets of lace ruffles. The lace collars of Van Dyck's portraits, the lace cravats which Grahame of Claverhouse and Montrose wear over their armour, are subtly suggestive of the strength that lies in delicacy. The fighting qualities of Claverhouse were not less effective because of those soft folds of lace and linen. The death of Montrose was no less noble because he went to the scaffold in scarlet and fine linen, with "stockings of incarnate silk, and roses on his shoon." Once Carlyle was 204