whose young wife, in a beautiful black velvet hood and shining blue
satin kirtle, was evidently petting Dennet to her heart's content,
though the little damsel never lost an opportunity of nodding to her
friends in the plainer barge in the rear.

The Tudor tilting matches cost no lives, and seldom broke bones.
They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant
enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous
magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the
vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the
weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had
really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task
very difficult, as in effect they did in the actual game of war.
But the spectacle was a splendid one, and all the apparatus was
ready in the armourers' tent, marked by St. George and the Dragon.
Tibble ensconced himself in the innermost corner with a "tractate,"
borrowed from his friend Lucas, and sent the apprentices to gaze
their fill at the rapidly filling circles of seats. They saw King
Harry, resplendent in gilded armour--"from their own anvil, true
English steel," said Edmund, proudly--hand to her seat his sister
the bride, one of the most beautiful women then in existence, with a
lovely and delicate bloom on her fair face and exquisite Plantagenet
features. No more royally handsome creatures could the world have
offered than that brother and sister, and the English world
appreciated them and made the lists ring with applause at the fair
lady who had disdained foreign princes to wed her true love, an
honest Englishman.

He--the cloth of frieze--in blue Milanese armour, made to look as
classical as possible, and with clasps and medals engraven from