In those days the enjoyments, and, in a great measure, the tastes, of all men were alike, from the highest to the lowest—the same sports pleased them, the same viands, for the most part, nourished, the same liquors enlivened them. Fresh meat was an unusual luxury to the noble, yet not an impossible indulgence to the lowest vassal; wine and beer were the daily, the sole, beverages of all, differing only, and that not very widely, in degree. The same love of flowers, processions, out-of-door amusements, dances on the greensward, suppers in the shade, were common to all, constantly enjoyed by all.
Now, it is certain, the enjoyments, the luxuries of the one class—nay, the very delicacy of their tables, if attainable, would be utterly distasteful to the other; and the rich soups, the delicate-made dishes, the savor of the game, and the purity of the light French and Rhenish wines, which are the ne plus ultra of the rich man's splendid board, would be even more distasteful to the man of the million, than would be his beans and bacon and fire-fraught whisky to the palate of the gaudy millionaire.
Throughout their progress, therefore, a thousand picturesque adventures befell our party, a thousand romantic scenes were presented by their halts for the noon-day repose, the coming meal, or the nightly hour of rest, which never could now occur, unless to some pleasure-party, purposely masquerading, and aping the romance of other days.
Sometimes, when no convent, castle, hostelry, or hermitage, lay on the day's route, the harbingers would select some picturesque glen and sparkling fountain; and, when the party halted at the spot, an extempore pavilion would be found pitched, of flags and pennoncelles, outspread on a lattice-work of lances, with war-cloaks spread for cushions, and flasks and bottiaus cooling in the spring, and pasties and boar's meat, venison and game, plates of silver and goblets of gold, spread on the grass, amid pewter-platters and drinking-cups of horn, a common feast for man and master, partaken with the same appetite, hallowed by the same grace, enlivened by the same minstrelsy and music, and enjoyed no less by the late-enfranchised serfs, than by the high-born nobles to whom they owed their freedom.
Sometimes, when it was known beforehand that they must encamp for the night in the greenwood, the pages and waiting-women would ride forward, in advance of the rest, with the foragers, the baggage, and a portion of the light-armed archery; and, when the shades of evening were falling, the welcome watch-setting of the mellow-winded bugles would bid the voyagers hail; and, as they opened some moon-lit grassy glade, they would behold green bowers of leafy branches, garlanded with wild roses and eglantine, and strewn with dry, soft moss, and fires sparkling bright amid the shadows, and spits turning before the blaze, and pots seething over it, suspended from the immemorial gipsy tripods. And then the horses would be unbridled, unladen, groomed, and picketed, to feed on the rich forest herbage; and the evening meal would be spread, and the enlivening wine-cup would go round, and the forest chorus would be trolled, rendered doubly sweet by the soft notes of the girls, until the bugles breathed a soft good-night, and, the females of the party withdrawing to their bowers of verdure, meet tiring rooms for Oberon and his wild Titania, the men, from the haughty baron to the humblest groom, would fold them in their cloaks, and sleep, with their feet to the watch-fires, and their untented brows toward heaven, until the woodlark, and the merle and mavis, earlier even than the village chanticleer, sounded their forest reveillé.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PROGRESS.
"Great mountains on his right hand,
Both does and roes, dun and red,
And harts aye casting up the head.
Bucks that brays and harts that hailes,