satisfy the reader's curiosity, but rather to give him light into several circumstances of the following story, that, knowing the state of dispositions and opinions in an age so remote, he may better comprehend those great events which were the issue of them. I advise, therefore, the courteous reader to peruse, with a world of application, again and again whatever I have written upon this matter. And leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather up the chief thread of my story, and proceed.

These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as well as the practices of them, among the refined part of court and town, that our three brother-adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were strangely at a loss. For, on the one side the three ladies they addressed themselves to, whom we have named already, were ever at the very top of the fashion, and abhorred all that were below it but the breadth of a hair. On the other side, their father's will was very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from their coats one thread, without a positive command in the will. Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and, besides, so neatly sown, you would swear they were all of a piece, but at the same time very plain, and with little or no ornament.* And it happened that

* His description of the cloth of which the coat was made has a farther meaning than the words may seem to import: "The coats their

before they were a month in town great shoulderknots came up:* straight all the world wore shoulder-knots; no approaching the ladies - ruelles without the quota of shoulder-knots. "That fellow," cries one," has no soul; where is his shoulderknot ?" Our three brethren soon discovered their want by sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty mortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, the door-keeper showed them into the twelvepenny gallery. If they called a boat, says a waterman, "I am first sculler." If they stepped to the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, Friend, we sell no ale." If they went to visit a lady, a footman met them at the door with "Pray send up your message." In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will, read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulderknot. What should they do? What temper should they find? Obedience was absolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After much thought, one of the brothers, who hap

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father had left them were of very good cloth, and, besides, so neatly sown, you would swear they were all of a piece, but at the same time very plain, and with little or no ornament." This is the distinguishing character of the Christian religion. Christiani religio absoluta et simplex, was Ammianus Marcellinus's description of it, who was himself a heathen.-W. Wotton.

By this is understood the first introducing of pageantry and unnecessary ornaments in the church, such as were neither for convenience nor edification; as a shoulder-knot, in which there is neither symmetry

nor use.

pened to be more book-learned than the other two, said he had found an expedient. "It is true," said he, "there is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis,* making mention of shoulder-knots; but I dare conjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis." This distinction was immediately approved by all, and so they fell again to examine. But their evil star had so directed the matter, that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writing: upon which disappointment, he who found the former evasion took heart, and said, "Brothers, there is yet hope; for though we cannot find them totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we shall make them out tertio modo, or totidem literis." This discovery was also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to the scrutiny, and picked out S-H-O-U-L-D-E-R, when the same planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But the distinguishing brother, for whom we shall hereafter find a name, now his hand was in, proved, by a very good argument, that K was a modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts.

"'Tis true," said he, "the word Calenda hath in

* When the Papists cannot find anything which they want in Scripture they go to oral tradition. Thus Peter is introduced dissatisfied with the tedious way of looking for all the letters of any word which he has occasion for in the will when neither the constituent syllables, nor much less the whole word, were there in terminis.-W. Wotton.

Q. V. C.* been sometimes written with a K, but erroneously for in the best copies it has been ever spelt with a C. And by consequence, it was a gross mistake in our language to spell knot with a K, but that from henceforward he would take care it should be written with a C." Upon this all farther difficulty vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and as flaunting ones as the best.

But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days were human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline; for a certain lord came just from Paris, with fifty yards of gold-lace upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the court-fashion of that month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold-lace.† Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold-lace was as scandalous as a and as ill

received among the women. What should our three knights do in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-knots. Upon recourse to the will nothing appeared there but altum silentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial

Quibusdam veteribus codicibus, some ancient manuscripts.

I cannot tell whether the author means any new innovation by this word, or whether it be only to introduce the new methods of forcing and perverting Scripture.

point, but this of gold-lace seemed too considerable an alteration without better warrant: it did aliquo modo essemia adhærere, and therefore required a positive precept. But about this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read Aristotelis dialectica, and especially that wonderful piece, De interpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in everything but itself-like commentators on the Revelation, who proceed prophets without understanding a syllable of the text. Brothers," said he, "you are to be informed that of wills duo sunt genera, nuncupatory * and scriptory. That in the scriptory will here before us there is no precept or mention about gold lace, conceditur: but si idem affirmetur de nuncupatoria negatur. For, brothers, if you remember, we heard a fellow say, when we were boys, that he heard my father's man say that he heard my father say, that he would advise his sons to get gold lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buy it." "By G, that is very true," cries the other; "I remember it perfectly well," said the third. And so, without more ado, they got the largest goldlace in the parish, and walked about as fine as lords.

A while after there came up, all in fashion, a pretty sort of flame-coloured satint for linings, and the

* By this is meant tradition, allowed to have equal authority with the Scripture, or rather greater.

+ This is purgatory, whereof he speaks more particularly hereafter,