himself, embracing nearly all the professions and trades then known,
except the higher dignitaries of Church and State, who are not supposed
to mix freely in ordinary intercourse, and whom it would be unwise to
paint in their marked peculiarities. The most prominent person, as to
social standing, is probably the knight. He is not a nobleman, but he
has fought in many battles, and has travelled extensively. His cassock
is soiled, and his horse is strong but not gay,--a very respectable man,
courteous and gallant, a soldier corresponding to a modern colonel or
captain. His son, the esquire, is a youth of twenty, with curled locks
and embroidered dress, shining in various colors like the flowers of
May, gay as a bird, active as a deer, and gentle as a maiden. The yeoman
who attends them both is clad in green like a forester, with arrows and
feathers, bearing the heavy sword and buckler of his master. The
prioress is another respectable person, coy and simple, with dainty
fingers, small mouth, and clean attire,--a refined sort of a woman for
that age, ornamented with corals and brooch, so stately as to be held in
reverence, yet so sentimental as to weep for a mouse caught in a trap:
all characteristic of a respectable, kind-hearted lady who has lived in
seclusion. A monk, of course, in the fourteenth century was everywhere
to be seen; and a monk we have among the pilgrims, riding a "dainty"
horse, accompanied with greyhounds, loving fur trimmings on his
Benedictine habit and a fat swan to roast. The friar, too, we see,--a
mendicant, yet merry and full of dalliances, beloved by the common
women, to whom he gave easy absolution; a jolly vagabond, who knew all
the taverns, and who carried on his portly person pins and songs and
relics to sell or to give away. And there was the merchant, with forked
beard and Flemish beaver hat and neatly clasped boots, bragging of his
gains and selling French crowns, but on the whole a worthy man. The
Oxford clerk or scholar is one of the company, silent and sententious,
as lean as the horse on which he rode, with thread-bare coat, and books