run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down a tavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse.  The high-streets, especially in winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men; but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with rapier and dagger came in.  The streets were entirely unlighted and dangerous at night, and for this reason the plays at the theatres were given at three in the afternoon.

About Shakespeare’s time many new inventions and luxuries came in:  masks, muffs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given by maids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes, scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots, Venice glass, tobacco.  In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme

        “Turkeys, Carpes, Hops:  Piccarel, and beers,
        Came into England:  all in one year.”

There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee was introduced till about 1661.  Tobacco was first made known in England by Sir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women till some years after.  It was urged as a great medicine for many ills.  Harrison says, 1573, “In these days the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herb called ‘Tabaco,’ by an instrument formed like a little ladle, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatly taken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseases engendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect.”  It’s use spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. and others, who doubted that it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums.  In 1614 it was said that seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399,375 a year was spent in smoke.  Tobacco was even taken on the stage.  Every base groom must have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses, and the shops of apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never, from morning till night, without company still taking of tobacco.

There was a saying on the Continent that “England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses.”  The society was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, and yet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture of downrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech went with the utmost artificiality of dress and manner.  It is curious to note the insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even three centuries ago.  When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made or particularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, “It is a pity he is not an Englishman.”  It is pleasant, I say, to trace this “certain condescension” in the good old times.  Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way.  Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of his countrymen.