provocations, to invite each other into the field, there by their own hands, and of their own authority, to decide their controversies by combat; we have thought fit to take the said custom into our royal consideration, and find, upon inquiry into the usual causes whereon such fatal decisions have arisen, that by this wicked custom, maugre all the precepts of our holy religion, and the rules of right reason, the greatest act of the human mind, forgiveness of injuries, is become vile and shameful; that the rules of good society and virtuous conversation are hereby inverted; that the loose, the vain, and the impudent, insult the careful, the discreet, and the modest; that all virtue is suppressed, and all vice supported, in the one act of being capable to dare to the death. We have also further, with great sorrow of mind, observed that this dreadful action, by long impunity (our royal attention being employed upon matters of more general concern), is become honourable, and the refusal to engage in it ignominious. In these our royal cares and inquiries we are yet further made to understand, that the persons of most eminent worth, and most hopeful abilities, accompanied with the strongest passions for true glory, are such as are most liable to be involved in the dangers arising from this licence. Now taking the said premises into our serious consideration, and well weighing that all such emergencies (wherein the mind is incapable of commanding itself, and where the injury is too sudden or too exquisite to be borne) are particularly provided for by laws heretofore enacted; and that the qualities of less injuries, like those of ingratitude, are too nice and delicate to come under general rules; we do resolve to blot this fashion, or wantonness of anger, out of the minds of our sub jects, by our royal resolutions declared in this edict, as follow: 'No person who either sends or accepts a challenge, or the posterity of either, though no death ensues thereupon, shall be, after the publication of this our edict, capable of bearing office in these our dominions. 'The person who shall prove the sending or receiving a challenge, shall receive, to his own use and property, the whole personal estate of both parties; and their real estate shall be immediately vested in the next heir of the offenders, in as ample manner as if the said offenders were actually deceased. 'In cases where the laws (which we have already granted to our subjects) admit of an appeal for blood; when the criminal is condemned by the said appeal, he shall not only suffer death, but his whole. estate, real, mixed, and personal, shall from the hour of his death be vested in the next heir of the person whose blood he spilt. 'That it shall not hereafter be in our royal power, or that of our successors, to pardon the said offences, or restore the offenders in their estates, honour, or blood for ever. 'Given at our Court at Blois the 8th of February 420. In the second year of our Reign.' T. No. 98. Friday, June 22, 1711 THE [ADDISON. Tanta est quærendi cura decoris. —Juv., Sat. vi. 500. HERE is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress: within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men.1 The women were of such an enormous stature, that we appeared as grasshoppers before them.' At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies, who were once very near seven foot high, that at present want some inches of five : how they came to be thus curtailed I cannot learn; whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new; or whether some of the tallest of the sex, being too cunning for the rest, have contrived this method to make themselves appear sizeable, is still a secret; though I find most are of opinion, they are at present like trees new lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before. For my own part, as I do not love to be insulted by women who are taller than myself, I 1 The commode was a structure of wire, which raised the hair and fore part of the cap to a great height. The fashion went out very suddenly. 2 Num. xiii. 33. admire the sex much more in their present humiliation, which has reduced them to their natural dimensions, than when they had extended their persons, and lengthened themselves out into formidable and gigantic figures. I am not for adding to the beautiful edifices of nature, nor for raising any whimsical superstructure upon her plans: I must therefore repeat it, that I am highly pleased with the coiffure now in fashion; and think it shows the good sense which at present very much reigns among the valuable part of the sex. One may observe, that women in all ages have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads; and indeed I very much admire, that those female architects who raise such wonderful structures out of ribbons, lace, and wire, have not been recorded for their respective inventions. It is certain there has been as many orders in these kinds of building, as in those which have been made of marble: sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple. In Juvenal's time the building grew by several orders and storeys, as he has very humorously described it. Tot premit ordinibus, tot adhuc compagibus altum -Juv.1 But I do not remember, in any part of my reading, that the head-dress aspired to so great an extravagance as in the fourteenth century, when it was built up in a couple of cones or spires, which stood so excessively high on each side of the head, that a woman who was but a pigmy without her head 1 Sat. vi. 502. dress, appeared like a Colossus upon putting it on. Monsieur Paradin says that these old-fashioned fontanges rose an ell above the head; that they were pointed like steeples, and had long loose pieces of crape fastened to the tops of them, which were curiously fringed and hung down their backs like streamers. The women might possibly have carried this Gothic building much higher, had not a famous monk, Thomas Conecte 2 by name, attacked it with great zeal and resolution. This holy man travelled from place to place to preach down this monstrous commode; and succeeded so well in it, that as the magicians sacrificed their books to the flames upon the preaching of an apostle, many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of his sermon, and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He was so renowned, as well for the sanctity of his life as his manner of preaching, that he had often a congregation of twenty thousand people; the men placing themselves on the one side of his pulpit and the women on the other, that appeared (to use the similitude of an ingenious writer) like a forest of cedars with their heads reaching to the clouds. He so warned and animated the people against this monstrous ornament, that it lay under a kind of persecution; and whenever it appeared in public was pelted down by the rabble, who flung stones at the persons that wore it. But notwithstanding this prodigy vanished while 1 Guillaume Paradin's 'Annales de Bourgoigne,' 1566. 2 Conecte was a Carmelite monk who was burnt as a heretic in 1434, after he had denounced the vice at the Pope's court. Addison found the materials for this paper in Bayle's 'Dictionary.' |