nominal equivalents for these sums are one dollar and a half, forty-five cents, and fifteen cents respectively, we can readily believe that the food at their tables was neither rich nor over-abundant; even if we agree with M. Say that gold at that period had three times the purchasing power that it has to-day. Subsequent laws, however, made a more liberal allowance, and under Augustus a cit izen might expend for an entertainment as much as one hundred dollars. Legislation concerning apparel was not un known to Greece and Turkey; and in some of its forms it prevailed in the latter country down to a recent period. It is scarcely more than fifty years ago that a traveler saw a crier stand by the palace gate at Pera and make a long proclamation. He held in his hand a baton shod with iron, which he struck three times sonorously on the pavement, and when he had thus collected a crowd in the streets and windows, he announced in a loud voice that the Padisha, "taking into consider ation the vain superfluities of female apparel, strictly enjoins every woman whose perigee touches the ground to cut it off as high as her ankles; and every woman whose head dress extends too far from her head is or dered to restrain it within due limits." It should be told that the women of this period were given to expanding 'their head-dress with gauze and tinsel to an enormous size. There is an account somewhere of the method by which " due limits" were determined, and their transgression punished. An officer ap proached the suspected woman, solemnly measured her headgear with a rule, and cut off whatever exceeded the proper length. What a pity we moderns have not a similar law limiting the size of the theater hat. In the fourteenth century Philip the Fair of France made sumptuary laws regulating his subjects' expenses even to the minutest detail. In the matter of clothing, no duke, count, or baron was to have more than four robes a year, and their wives were limited to the same number. Prelates and knights could
have no more than two, while every woman, whether single or married, whose annual in come was less than two thousand livres, was allowed but one. Imagine the condition of affairs if the ladies of to-day were so re stricted. Under Charles VI an edict was issued : "Let no man presume to treat with more than a soup and two dishes! " According to Dr. Hammond, an old French law pro hibited the use of any drink by women save water. An old Scotch law made it a crime for anyone under the rank of baron to use pies or baked meats. The first sumptuary laws in England con cerned indulgences of the palate. The Plantagenet who reigned in 1336 shutdown upon "the excessive and over-many sorts of costly meats" which caused "many mischiefs" to happen to the people of the realm. No man, high or low, dining at home or dining out, should at any meal allow himself to be served with more than two courses, except only on the principal feasts of the year, when three courses were permitted. Thirty years later the laws of that country took up the matter of wearing apparel. " For knights and squires cloth of silver with gir dles. Persons of lower rank are not to wear any silk, nor embroider their cloth with any silver, nor wear any jewelry, and the cloth it self must not cost more than four marks the whole piece." Then follows the thoughtful enactment that "the clothiers shall make cloths sufficient of the aforesaid prices, so that this statute for default of such cloth, be in no wise infringed." This law did not last long, however, for a twelve-month later an act was passed repealing it and ordaining that " all people should be as free as they were before." For a hundred years after this the people of England could dress as they pleased, when it appears that their costumes had reached such a pitch of extravagance and absurdity that sumptuary legislation was again deemed necessary. One thing that needed to be
