dairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds,
boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all these
persons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in the
country festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the Morris
Dances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rustic
merrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, the
love of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, the
naive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake, in
his "Shakespeare and his Times," gives a graphic and indeed charming
picture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and other
sources.

In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transom
windows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all military
accoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at a
raised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigal
hospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by a
huge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by their
seats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, for
wine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food was
of coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions to
this distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were well
understood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eating
done in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from the
banquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five or
six, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham in his
"English Housewife," after treating of the ordering of great feasts,
gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion."
This "humble feast," he says, should consist for the first course of
"sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, and