were called into existence; and they cannot be interfered with without suffering the penalty which violated law always inflicts.

The love of change is deeply seated in the human heart. It very early manifested itself, and gave a powerful sceptre into the hands of Fashion. At first her regulations were in harmony with natural wants, and her caprices were few and simple; but in proportion as society became artificial and refined, her decrees assumed an arbitrary and extravagant character, and were published and rescinded with great rapidity. It might naturally be expected that our ancestors would readily imitate the fashions of their conquerors. Tacitus distinctly tells us that the sons of the British chieftains began to affect our dress;' and the women, no doubt, would have followed their example, had it not happened that their garb was very similar to that of the Romans. The Saxons taught the people to wear long hair and forked beards, which they coloured blue by means of dye or powder; and the Danes introduced to them their black garments, not as the symbol of mourning, as it is well known they never lamented the death of their nearest and dearest friends, but because they constituted the national garb, and harmonized with their national standard, the raven. The Normans brought with them many novelties in dress and habits, which the Anglo-Saxons eagerly copied; and from the time of the Conqueror to the present day, the tide of fashion has, with a few irregularities, flowed in upon our shores from the continent. Every royal lady, who has been called to share the throne with our kings, introduced some of the fashions of her own country; and the great convulsions which have shaken the church and the state have exerted no small influence on the decrees of Fashion.

Much philosophy, and not a little practical wisdom, may be gathered from considering the various freaks of Fashion. The human race has been most unfortunate in the epithets which have been applied to it; and not the least curious is that which describes man as an imitative animal. He certainly possesses great curiosity, abundant vanity, and vast powers of mimicry. He is ever striving to realize what he sees around him, and exercises his ingenuity in contriving what he thinks will adorn his body and gratify his tastes. Fashion is the natural result of his mental and moral constitution, and of the circumstances in which he is placed; and just as these have varied, its freaks have changed their character. It, however, has its own laws; and though, at first sight, its changes appear more uncertain than the wind, yet, like the breezes of heaven, they can be observed, classified, and referred to the fixed principles which regulate them. No doubt it requires extensive and accurate observation, and much philosophic skill, to detect them; still there are certain principles which regulate those who

originate,

Craving after the Beautiful.

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originate, and those who follow, the decrees of Fashion. The former are often actuated by caprice, vanity, or the desire of gain; and the latter by the powerful craving there is in man to imitate what appears to be beautiful, or what marks out position in society. The changes of Fashion always follow one uniform rule. They never commence in the lower classes of society, and ascend to the higher, but the reverse; for in whatever station they begin their existence, they either die out there, or descend to the lowest walks of life. Fashion thus furnishes an index to man's nature and condition. It displays his mental and moral character, and gives a clue to his social life; it calls into lively exercise his imitative powers; and it exerts a baneful or beneficial influence upon society, according to the character of the changes it inaugurates.

The craving after the Beautiful exerts a wonderful influence upon the changes of Fashion. Their contrasts are so great, chiefly because there is nothing in which men differ so much as in their ideal of beauty. The fashionable Cherokee Indian, when he smeared his body with red or yellow ochre, and hung around him his rows of teeth and scalps, thought himself, and was regarded by his compeers, surpassingly beautiful; as much so, perhaps, as the fashionable lady who, a century ago, endeavoured to heighten her charms by patches and rouge, a maccaroni head-dress, and wellhooped garments. 'What we are in fashion,' says Dr. Thomas Brown, is ever beautiful; but nothing is, in fashion, so ridiculous as the beauty which has been.' A fashion would not be imitated if it had no supposed charms nor advantage to recommend it: those, therefore, who follow it must perceive something in it to render it worthy of their adoption. Their taste may be vitiated, and their estimate of its value erroneous; still there must be some supposed advantage to recommend a fashion, before the old will be given up and the new received. The votaries of Fashion often have to make great sacrifices to gratify their tastes; but perhaps that circumstance even enhances its charms in their eyes.

It is amusing to notice some of the circumstances which have rapidly brought in fashions, and as speedily banished them. Sometimes a word, or a single act, of a warrior will change the fashion of a whole country. When Alexander the Great ordered his Macedonian soldiers to shave, lest their beards should become handles whereby their enemies might capture them, smooth chins became universal in Greece. Mausoleus introduced a new custom into Asia Minor, when he commanded the heads of the conquered Lycians to be shaven; for the poor fellows felt so uncomfortable and ridiculous, that they bribed the king's general to allow them to obtain wigs from Greece, and a peruke speedily became the height of Lycian fashion. Courtiers are always eager to imitate their sovereign; and sometimes majesty will even condescend to follow

H 2

the

the fashion it has unwittingly introduced. When Louis XIV. was a little boy, he had such long, beautiful, curly hair, that all classes tried to imitate it by wigs and false curls; but when he grew up, and became the 'grande monarque,' the king adopted the fullbottomed wigs, in defiance of the canons of councils, and the thunder of the priests. All English gentlemen then wore perukes ; though Charles II. forbade the members of the university of Cambridge to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, and read their sermons.

The enthusiasm of a moment has not unfrequently introduced a fashion for life; and even sudden fear has rapidly turned its tide. At the beginning of the twelfth century, it was customary in England to wear very long hair; and a decree was passed in the Council of Rouen against it. But example is more powerful than precept, especially in fashion. When Henry I. was in Normandy, Bishop Serlo preached so eloquently against this custom, that, it is said, the king and his courtiers were moved to tears. The prelate immediately seized his opportunity, and his scissors, and cropped the whole congregation; and a royal edict secured the fashion of 'cropping' during Henry's lifetime. In Stephen's reign, however, long hair again appeared, though, for a short time, the previous fashion was revived in consequence of the dream of a young soldier, who was noted for the length and beauty of his hair. He dreamed one night that a person came behind him, and strangled him with his own curls; and the dread of such a calamity was sufficiently powerful to cause all men throughout the nation to cut off their flowing ringlets.

Fashions which have been introduced to hide defects have frequently become exceedingly popular. The Effeminati, or dandies, of the twelfth century, wore shoes with immensely long-pointed toes; and when the Earl of Anjou twisted his like rams' horns to conceal his deformed feet, the nobles eagerly adopted the fashion. The ruff, too, was first worn by a lady to conceal a wen on her neck. We are told that the sight of a falling apple suggested to Sir Isaac Newton the great law of the universe; and the appearance of a certain lady suggested the uniform of our gallant seamen. The English navy was not distinguished from the army by any particular costume till the days of George II. In the year 1748 there arose much discussion respecting a naval uniform, and one day his majesty George II., accidentally met the Duchess of Bedford on horseback in a blue riding-habit trimmed with white. The king was so struck with the effect of these colours, that he immediately commanded them to be adopted in the uniform for the navy; and blue and white continued to adorn the heroes of the deep till his late majesty, William IV., changed the facings to scarlet. An interesting volume might be written on the trivial eircumstances which have introduced some of the most striking fashions.

fashions. Dr. Doran's book records a few instances, and is full of amusing gossip and pleasant reading; and the curious reader can consult with advantage, as Dr. Doran has, J. R. Planche's 'History of British Costume.'

Fashions have often been abandoned on account of circumstances not less striking than those which introduced them. The times of Elizabeth were characterized by enormous ruffs and fardingales. As the ladies then sighed, more than they do now, for clever starchers to get up their ruffs and points, the queen brought over some Dutch women, who were quite au fait in their work; and one, Mistress Dingham Varden Plasse, made a large fortune by teaching the nobility, at five pounds each, how to starch ruffs; and also, for twenty shillings extra, how to seeth,' says Stubbs, the liquid matter in which the devil hath learned them to wash and dive their ruffs.' The bands and ruffs of the reign of James I. were stiffened with yellow starch, which was introduced into England by Mrs. Turner, a physician's widow; but when she was convicted of being an accessary in poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, and went to the scaffold in a yellow ruff, the fashion of wearing them died with her who had given them their peculiar colour.

In our own days we have seen many fashions given up as soon as they have ceased to indicate the position and character of the wearer. Charles II. invented for himself a peculiar costume called the vest dress, which consisted of a long cassock of black cloth, fitting close to the body, 'pinked,' with white silk under it. His courtiers thought it exquisite, and the fashionable everywhere adopted it. Louis Quatorze, however, showed his contempt of the mode and its maker by dressing all his footmen in 'vests;' which naturally caused great indignation in England, and led Charles and his courtiers to abandon the costume, because they did not wish to look like French footmen. The footmen of the aristocracy now wear the aristocratic dress of the last century. There was nothing more pleasing to our grandfathers, during the summer months, than their nankeen; and in England and France it was the height of fashion, to the great detriment of the trade of the latter country. Louis XVI. listened to the complaints of the French manufacturers, and speedily sent the custom out of his country, by dressing the public executioners in the fashionable material. Many a recent fashion has been introduced and consigned to oblivion by the tricks of trade.

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The wise man might have been reviewing the fashions of his country when he wrote, Is there anything whereof it may be said, "See this is new!" It hath been already of old time.' The 'last new fashion' may often be discovered adorning the figure of our ancestors, with a few modifications to suit more extravagant

tastes

tastes and pockets. Thus the present 'wide-awake' appears to have been the standard stock of an English hat. It represents the Roman petasus, or travelling cap, the Norman capa, and the shape of the first cardinal hats given at the Council of Lyons in 1245, before they were flattened and spread out to their present dimensions. The front was peaked, and the crown pointed, in the fifteenth century; and its original shape restored, and covered with feathers, in the sixteenth. In the seventeenth, the crown again gradually rose to a point, and then as gradually subsided, till it resembled the present yachting hats; and in the eighteenth, the flap was turned up, or cocked,' according to different fashions. There was the Monmouth cock, the Ramilie cock, the military cock, and the mercantile cock; and in the 'Spectator' No. 532, John Sly, 'haberdasher of hats and tobacconist,' states that he is preparing hats for the several kinds of heads that figure in Great Britain, with cocks significant of their powers and faculties. The present workman's blouse was originally a Saxon garment, which was worn by the Norman knights over their armour, and was often lined with fur in the winter, and used as an overcoat. In the fourteenth century, it was made of coarse canvas, or fustian, and was worn by both men and women, and very much resembled the smock frock now worn by the rustic. The present fashion of hooping dresses, also, is no novelty. In the chivalrous days of Edward III., the Monk of Glastonbury tells us that the ladieswered such strait clothes that they had long_fox-tails sewed within their garments to holde them forth.' The fardingales of the times of Elizabeth appear to have been introduced into England, with the ruffs, from Spain, and are the prototype of the modern hoops. Dr. Doran quotes the following curious anecdote from Bulwer's Pedigree of an English Gallant.'

When Sir Peter Wych was sent ambassador to the Grand Seigneur, from James I., his lady accompanied him to Constantinople; and the Sultaness, having heard much of her, desired to see her; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by her waiting women, all of them dressed in their great fardingales, which was the court dress of the English ladies of that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness received her visitors with great respect; but, struck with the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party, seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural formation of Englishwomen; and Lady Wych was obliged to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to convince her that she and her companions were not really so deformed as they appeared to be.' -Pp. 43, 44.

The eighteenth century was remarkable for the extraordinary Freaks of Fashion. There was a constant rivalry between the monstrous head-dress and the expanding hoops. Addison tells us he remembers several ladies who were once very nearly seven feet high that then wanted some inches of five feet; and Rogers, in his Table Talk,' relates how he had to place a lady, whom he was conducting to a party, on a cushion at the bottom of his carriage,

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