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186 rigorously defined, and no less rigorously overlooked. With his own noble hands he wrote down the exact proportion of food, fuel, and candles which each body of retainers was expected to consume; and while the upper servants appear to have fared tolerably well, the commoner sort enjoyed an unbroken monotony of salt meat, black bread, and beer. But it is in the matter of tablecloths that his grace chiefly excelled, and that he merits an honorable mention in the ranks of esoteric parsimony. For his own needs, and for the service and pleasure of his many guests,—and let us remember that he kept open house after the hospitable fashion of his day,—eight of these valuable articles were deemed amply sufficient; while in the servants' hall one cloth a month was the allowance. Granted, if you please, that in this rather effeminate age we have grown unduly fastidious about such trivialities; yet who, looking back through the long vista of years, can contemplate without a shudder the condition of that tablecloth when its month's servitude was over?

It is easier, however, to jeer at the honorable efforts of mankind than to arrange our own