awe the imagination, in a fashion of dress, which from dissuetude or quaintness, has become connected with ludicrous associations, and, at the same time, to make the reader acknowledge, in despite of these, their beauty or dignity, evinces no common talent in a novelist; nor do we recollect one among the whole host of writers of this class, with the exception of our author, who has contrived to render his heroes or heroines lovely or respectable, in the antiquated fashions of trunk hose, slouched hats, and green josephs; or combined an air of grace and taste, with the queer personal materiel of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Independently of this skill, with which he has managed the article of dress in his dif ferent novels, he may claim some merit, also, in having traced its various aspects through the multiform changes it underwent during the long period which his works embrace. The proverbial variableness of fashion is more strictly applicable to the English costume than to any other subject in the universe. No nation of the globe has so frequently changed

the fashion of its garments as ourselves; nor have any people gained less in elegance and taste by their inconstancy in this respect.

With more sound sense than half the world besides, and with better notions of the "fitness of things," (if the pun may be allowed,) than all our neighbours, we have, in all ages, gone to foreign quarters for that which ought to have been invented at home, and adapted to our own peculiar climate and character; and, hence, instead of being clothed like gentlemen, with the taste which nature and circumstances would have suggested, the English, though first in expensive, have ever been last in graceful, appearance, among all the nations of Europe.

This unpatriotic practice of borrowing from foreigners the forms and materials of our clothing was reprobated, with some humour, by Lily, in Queen Elizabeth's time. "The attire they use," says he, "is rather led by the imitation of others, than their own invention; so that there is nothing in England more constant than the inconstancy of attire-now the Spanish, then the Morisco, gowns; then one thing, then another; insomuch, that in draw

ing of an Englishman, the painter setteth him down naked, having in one hand a pair of shears, in the other a piece of cloth, who having cut his collar after the French guise, is ready to make his sleeve after the barbarian manner."* It is to our Gallican neighbours, however, that we have been the most indebted for models of fashions in dress; an obligation which they conferred on us very early in our history, and which we have continued to acknowledge, and to avail ourselves of, to the present day.

Edward the Confessor, who received his education in France, imported with him into England the mode of dress which he had there adopted; and the Norman monarchs, who shortly afterwards occupied the English throne, confirmed, of course, this taste for foreign attire. The male habiliments of this period, however, (for female attire is too im portant a subject for light discussion,) seem to have been neither ungraceful nor inconvenient. The head was covered with a cap of cloth, ornamented with fur and jewels, (our observa. Euphues, and his England.

tions are, of course, confined to the stars of fashion;) the shirt, a foreign luxury, involved the body; a doublet, fitting the limbs, reaching to the wrists, and girded by an embroidered belt, concealed the shirt; and a wide mantle (originally without sleeves, but after wards with these appendages) hung elegantly from the shoulder, and was wrapped round the person, or flowed majestically behind it, as utility might demand, or caprice suggest. It was upon this external garment that the Anglo-Norman dandies bestowed the most thought and expense. To Henry I. was presented, by Robert Bloet bishop of Lincoln, a mantle of this description, made of the finest cloth, lined with black sables, and adorned with white tufts, at an expense of an hundred pounds; a sum which, considering the relative value of money, would probably approach to our two thousand pounds. Nor could Richard the First's gala robe be of inferior value; "for," says the historian," it was striped in strait lines, adorned with half-moons of solid silver, and almost covered with shining orbs in imitation of the system of the heavenly

bodies."* The inexpressibles, also, in lieu of the Saxon short petticoat were introduced; and stockings and shoes, in the room of naked legs and sandals, became parts of the English gentleman's personal costume. It must be acknowledged, however, that our ancestors did not manifest a greater degree of constancy to these becoming and useful forms of clothing than their descendants have observed. Innovations were gradually made in every department of dress, but in none more strikingly, or unwisely, than in the article of shoes. In the court of William Rufus appeared a meteor in the hemisphere of fashion, of great celebrity. He was surnamed Robert the Horned, from the pattern of his shoes, which were so elongated at the points, stiffened with wool, and curled towards their extremity, as to resemble the frontal ornaments of a fullgrown ram. The clergy, horrified at such a monstrosity, declaimed against it with the most. earnest vehemence; but all in vain; fashion triumphed over eloquence; all the courtiers applauded the happy invention, adopted the

* Henry's Hist. of England, vol. vi. p. 357.