human
Act of Parliament is a term apt to mislead. To-day it is enforced by so powerful a machinery that practice conforms to precept; but in mediæval England much law was dead letter. Statutes were often mere admonitions; they expressed but an ideal, a pious intention. This was specially true of the Sumptuary Laws, whereby the dress and food of the king's subjects were nicely regulated. If you turn over a book of costumes you find that man's attire has varied more than woman's. The sorts and conditions of men were marked by rigid lines. This fact was shown forth in their dress, and that again re-acted on their modes of thought and habits of life.
gpt
Men's apparel, says Edmund Spenser,
human
Of old time man's dress was rich and varied, but how to catch its vanished effect? In Courts of Justice there is still the splendid, if occasional, bravery of the judge. See the same man in private, gaze on divinity disrobed, and the disenchantment measures for you what is lost in the splendid garb of other days. In mediæval Europe the Church first condemned a too ornate appearance. Thus, under our early Norman Kings, long hair was much in vogue. In 1104 Bishop Serlo, preaching before Henry I. and his Court in Normandy, attacked this fashion roundly, compared his hearers to