singing round the suburban villages of Strand, Holborn, and Charing.  It is rich withal; for after the battle of Poitiers, Harry Picard, wine-merchant and Lord Mayor, entertained in the city four kings,—­to wit, Edward, king of England, John, king of France, David, king of Scotland, and the king of Cyprus; and the last-named potentate, slightly heated with Harry’s wine, engaged him at dice, and being nearly ruined thereby, the honest wine-merchant returned the poor king his money, which was received with all thankfulness.  There is great stir on a summer’s morning in that Warwickshire castle,—­pawing of horses, tossing of bridles, clanking of spurs.  The old lord climbs at last into his saddle and rides off to court, his favourite falcon on his wrist, four squires in immediate attendance carrying his arms; and behind these stretches a merry cavalcade, on which the chestnuts shed their milky blossoms.  In the absence of the old peer, young Hopeful spends his time as befits his rank and expectations.  He grooms his steed, plays with his hawks, feeds his hounds, and labours diligently to acquire grace and dexterity in the use of arms.  At noon the portcullis is lowered, and out shoots a brilliant array of ladies and gentlemen, and falconers with hawks.  They bend their course to the river, over which a rainbow is rising from a shower.  Yonder young lady is laughing at our stripling squire, who seems half angry, half pleased:  they are lovers, depend upon it.  A few years, and the merry beauty will have become a noble, gracious woman, and the young fellow, sitting by a watch-fire on the eve of Cressy, will wonder if she is thinking of him.  But the river is already reached.  Up flies the alarmed heron, his long blue legs trailing behind him; a hawk is let loose; the young lady’s laugh has ceased as, with gloved hand shading fair forehead and sweet gray eye, she watches hawk and heron lessening in heaven.  The Crusades are now over, but the religious fervour which inspired them lingered behind; so that, even in Chaucer’s day, Christian kings, when their consciences were oppressed by a crime more than usually weighty, talked of making an effort before they died to wrest Jerusalem and the sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of the infidel.  England had at this time several holy shrines, the most famous being that of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, which attracted crowds of pilgrims.  The devout travelled in large companies:  and, in the May mornings, a merry sight it was as, with infinite clatter and merriment, with bells, minstrels, and buffoons, they passed through thorp and village, bound for the tomb of St. Thomas.  The pageant of events, which seems enchantment when chronicled by Froissart’s splendid pen, was to Chaucer contemporaneous incident; the chivalric richness was the familiar and every-day dress of his time.  Into this princely element he was endued, and he saw every side of it,—­the frieze as well as the cloth of gold.  In the “Canterbury Tales” the fourteenth century murmurs, as the sea murmurs in the pink-mouthed shells upon our mantelpieces.