tuns, including four of London and six of Kentish ale.

The narratives which have descended to us of the prodigious banquets
given on special occasions by our early kings, prelates and nobles,
are apt to inspire the general reader with an admiration of the
splendid hospitality of bygone times. But, as I have already
suggested, these festivities were occasional and at long intervals,
and during the intervening space the great ones and the small ones of
mediaeval and early England did not indulge in this riotous sort of
living, but "kept secret house," as it was called, both after their
own fashion. The extremes of prodigality and squalor were more
strongly marked among the poorer classes while this country was in
a semi-barbarous condition, and even the aristocracy by no means
maintained the same domestic state throughout the year as their modern
representatives. There are not those ostentatious displays of wealth
and generosity, which used to signalise certain political events, such
as the coronation of a monarch or the enthronement of a primate; the
mode of living has grown more uniform and consistent, since between
the vilain and his lord has interposed himself the middle-class
Englishman, with a hand held out to either.

A few may not spend so much, but as a people we spend more on our
table. A good dinner to a shepherd or a porter was formerly more than
a nine days' wonder; it was like a beacon seen through a mist. But now
he is better fed, clothed and housed than the bold baron, whose serf
he would have been in the good old days; and the bold baron, on his
part, no longer keeps secret house unless he chooses, and observes, if
a more monotonous, a more secure and comfortable tenor of life.
This change is of course due to a cause which lies very near the
surface--to the gradual effacement of the deeply-cut separating lines