Leaving these savage races, and entering Europe, ;" we shall be surprised to find that in Germany, up to the sixteenth century, complete nakedness was almost the daily rule. By this statement I mean, not that men and women went habitually naked, but that the sight of each other's nude bodies was of daily occurrence. The ladies wore one garment only; and in the dances it was the great delight of the male to raise his partner so high that in coming down her short skirt flew up to her head, disclosing the charms of her person not only to the enthusiastic youth but " a large circle of admiring acquaintances."4

It was not until Calvinism took root both in France and Germany, as Remy de Gourmont remarks, that nakedness was proscribed by custom, and took refuge in an art which preserved rather than destroyed the tradition of it.* In the days of Charles V, every public festival had its procession of beautiful naked girls; adulteresses were led nude through the streets as a part of their punishment; and in the religious plays and mysteries of the times, such parts as those of Adam and Eve were played perfectly naked, without even what a writer calls "the hideous luxury of tights," Cory at relates ("Crudities") that when travelling in Italy, in the seventeenth century, he found the women wearing only smocks, in warm weather; and, in Venice and Padua, with their breasts and backs entirely naked. Mary Wortley Montagu, writing of the women of Turkey, describes them in the baths at Sophia as "quite in a state of nature," as regards dress; and in Ireland, up to the seventeenth century, it was no uncommon thing to see young women and girls stark naked, grinding corn for the family.1