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 not empty, or for shew—­as thus, for example:  first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl’d capon; thirdly, a boyl’d piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat’s tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak’d; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; the thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an olive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or dowsets.  Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases, ‘quelque choses,’ and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can conveniently stand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you may proportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on one half the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in the splendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to the beholders.”  After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayers before supper.

The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectual animal.  He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger.  His great hall was commonly strewn with marrow-bones, and full of hawks’ perches, of hounds, spaniels, and terriers.  His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters he ate at dinner and supper.  At the upper end of the room stood a small table with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, the other Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.”  He drank a glass or two of wine at his meals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glass of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary.  After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved his mind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the “Book of Martyrs.”

This is a portrait of one Henry Hastings, of Dorsetshire, in Gilpin’s “Forest Scenery.”  He lived to be a hundred, and never lost his sight nor used spectacles.  He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past fourscore.