in the forest-there is ribbon enough to girdle the world, and almost lace enough to veil it-and everything is second-hand, and of course dirt-cheap. "In this quarter," says our author, would have kept her and her household | temptible scoundrel, George IV., coarse all her days. Katherine of Braganza had and heartless, and does justice to Queen little taste for dress, but had a taste for Adelaide in declaring that she was simply music; she was a handsome woman, and a lady, and would have been a thoroughly looked well in a full court suit. Mary of tidy, honest, careful housewife in any Modena, wife of James II., hated rouge, sphere of life. and only wore it in obedience to her hus- From the "Tiring Bowers of Queens," band's wishes. Queen Anne, who was we shall pass to a tiring bower of a dif lame, had to be carried to her coronation ferent description. There stands in Paris, in a sedan chair, her train hanging out on the side of the old Temple, a ragbehind, and borne by pages. Being Queen market, which presents the strangest specof France, as well as of England, she must tacle in that way to be met with in the be attended by French nobility; but the world. In one dense mass, separated real article was not to be had, and there- only by narrow passages, in which it is fore a couple of fellows were dressed up to barely possible for two people to pass each represent the Dukes of Normandy and other, nearly two thousand shops are Aquitaine. She made the fortunes of crammed and compressed together. They her washerwomen and sempstresses, and contain everything to be found in the married one of the latter to the son most extensive catalogue of personal adornof the Bishop of Ely: she also knighted ments, as well as everything for domestic John Duddlestone, bodice-maker of Bris- use that can be manufactured from the tol. She was ruled, as all the world woven fabrics of all countries—and lastly, knows, by the Duchess of Marlborough, all articles of leather, of iron, and of other who appropriated her cast-off clothes, metals adapted either for personal use or and not content with the last wear for culinary operations. Ladies' bonnets of the Royal robes, would always are marshalled in battalions ten thousand have the last word in dispute. Anne strong-parasols rival in number the pines had a penchant for monstrous wigs on the male head, and was offended with Prince Eugene for appearing in her presence in a tie-wig. On the death of her husband, she mourned in a dress of black, white, and purple-a practice sanctioned by other courts. Sophia Dorothea, wife of George "takes place the last transaction of the black I., never visited the country of which she dress-coat, the silk waistcoat, and the black leather was queen. For allowing Count Königs- boots. The French feuilletoniste, M. D'Anglemark to kiss her hand, her husband mur-mont, has devoted much of his acute observation dered the Count and shut her up in prison to the manners of the Temple Exchange. It is for thirty years. Caroline, wife of George from him we learn that when a coat has passed II., attended to her toilet and her devo- through all its degrees of descent-when it has tions at the same time. While her nymphs latter to his valet, from the valet to the porbeen transferred from maker to owner, from the were adorning her body, the chaplain, ter, and from that functionary to the Norman who Whiston, stood at the door preferring plies in Paris the vocation which is monopolized prayers for her soul. Sometimes the in London by the sons of ancient Israel-it soon nymphs would shut the door, and after arrives at the Temple, the necropolis of then the chaplain would stop. This Parisian costumes. It is there turned, mended, nettled the Queen, who inquired, "Why and re-made; it has yet a phase to go through do you stop?" "Because," said the chap-facturers who make l'éngrais de lain,' guano for before it is ultimately sold to those Paris manulain, "I do not choose to whistle the worn-out clothes. This last phase it owes to the Word of God through the key-hole." ingennity of the brothers Meurt-de-Soif. Old Queen Charlotte lived in transition times, and wore the costume of two separate centuries: she lacked taste, and did not become the robes she wore. Dr. Doran does not tell us, what was the fact, that she was an incorrigible miser, and hoarded thousands of old garments till they were destroyed by the moth. He calls the unfortunate victim of that conVOL. XXXVII.-NO. I. "This name, Meurt-de-Soif, as we are told by M. D'Anglemont, is not a name invented by the Paris wits. The family of Meurt-de-Soif (die of thirst), has its residence in the Sixth Arrondissement. Its especial occupation is the purchase of old garments in huge quantities, which are made temposuburban beaux who sun themselves beyond the rarily to wear a new aspect, and then sold to the barriers. "The traffic carried on by this family takes place 8 at night, by torchlight, and by Dutch auction. There you may see put up a coat from the studio of Humman, a genuine waistcoat from the hand of Blanc, and trousers whose incomparable cut de clares them to have proceeded from the genius and shears of Nurbach; in a word, the costume complete of a 'fashionable' of the first water-for how much? Three francs!-just half-a-crown! the pleasantry of the vendor included, without extra charge. "The pleasantry is something like that of our 'Cheap Jack's' whose invention is so facile, and whose power of lying exceeds that of Osten-Sacken and the Czar together. 'Look, gentlemen,' exclaims one of the illustrious house in question, 'this coat originally belonged to a Russian Prince, and was the means of rendering him irresistible in the eyes of a danseuse of the Grande Chaumière. It subsequently became the admiration of all the inhabitants of the Closerie du Lilas, who saw its effect on the back of a celebrated corn-cutter. By means of this coat the valet of a "milord" carried off a figurante from the little Théâtre des Délassemens, who mistook him for his master. The coat has come to us immediately from this last possessor, the extravagance of whose Dulcinea compelled him to part with it. Well, gentlemen, notwithstanding all these glorious souvenirs, in spite of all the conquests due to it, I give it to you, gentlemen, at three francs! Three francs! there is an opportunity for those accustomed to profit by it!' 66 The coat put up at three francs has a gradually diminishing value put upon it, until it is at last purchased at thirty sous; Nurbach's trousers go for a franc; and Blanc's waistcoat for the small price of fifty centimes—fivepence! "The garments thus purchased are often only retained for a single Sunday, some fête day, on which the poor cavalier desires to look splendid, though it be with a second-hand splendor, in the eyes of his belle.' If the costume holds together through the severe ordeal of a night's dancing, it is often re-sold to the Temple merchants, who repair the damage, and again fit it to the back of some ephemeral dandy of the suburbs, who wishes but to shine for a 'little day.' "La Mère Moskow' drives her trade by the side of the Meurt-de-Soifs. She is an ex-vivandière of the Grand Army, who lets out body-linen to poor gentlemen suffering from scarcity. A shirt may be hired of her for a week for the modest price of twopence, the wearer being required merely to leave his old one, by way of a security deposit. Nothing can be more delicate than, not the deposit, but the way in which the request is made; and a shirt of La Mère Moskow might have been worn, without a scruple, at Lord O'Grady's by the Reverend Ozias Polyglot, or the betterendowed Reverend Obadiah Pringle." The only wearable commodity which we cannot recollect ever having met with in the great second-hand mart of the Temple is a wig. The deficiency does not extend to the volume before us, in which there is an entertaining chapter on "Wigs council. and their Wearers." From it we learn that the Roman Otho wore one to conceal his baldness, and that Martial satirised the dandies and coquettes of his day for supplementing their attractions by wearing false hair. The early Christian fathers made a mortal enemy of the wigwearer, and preached against his wares as unbecoming to Christianity. St. Jerome thundered against wigs, and for centuries they were denounced by council after St. Ambrose enjoined upon ladies the fashion of wearing the hair short. "Do not talk to me of curls," said he, "they are lenocinia forma, non præcepta virtutis:" and St. Cyprian gravely preached, "Give heed to me, O but she who wears false hair is guilty of a ye women! Adultery is a grievous sin; greater." The hair of the clergy was regulated by decrees. Pomades and perfumes were denounced as damnable inventions, and priestly coxcombry was punished by anathemas-says the Council of Lateran (Gregory II.)," Cuicumque ex clericis comam relaxaverit anathama sit !" "All personal disguises,' says Tertullian, 'is adultery before God. All perukes, paint, and powder, are such disguises and inventions of the devil,' ergo, &c. This zealous individual appeals to personal as often as to religious feeling. If you will not fling away your false hair,' says he, as hateful to heaven, cannot I make it hateful to yourselves, by reminding you that the false hair you wear may have come, not only from a criminal, but from a very dirty head, perhaps from the head of one already damned?' "This was a very hard hit indeed; but it was not nearly so clever a stroke at wigs as that dealt by Clemens of Alexandria. The latter informed the astounded wig-wearers that, when they knelt at church to receive the blessing, they must be good enough to recollect that the benediction remained on the wig and did not pass through to the wearer! This was a stumbling-block to the people; many of whom, however, retained the peruke, and took their chances as to the percolating through it of the benediction. "On similarly obstinate people Tertullian railed with a hasty charge of ill-prepared logic. You were not born with wigs,' said he; 'God did not give them to you. God not giving them, you must necessarily have received them from the Devil.' It was manifest that so ricketty a syllogism was incapable of shaking the slightest scratch from a reasoning Christian's skull." In the days of King John, our forefathers curled their hair and bound their locks with fillets, like girls; and they went bareheaded to preserve their ringlets in tact. English ladies first took to wigs about the year 1550. Pepys wore his own hair until seduced by the charms of a periwig, of which he bought a pair for £4 10s.; he records in his diary that the wigs gave him less trouble than his natural hair, and therefore he should adhere to the practice of wearing them. Tillotson was the first of our divines represented in a wig-and he says, in one of his sermons, that he could remember the time "when the wearing of hair below the ears was looked upon as a sin of the first magnitude." The victory of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies wig, with its plaited tail and tie, and great bow at top. It continued to the time of George III., but went out with the French Revolution. In France, wigs ended by assuming the appearance of nature. The fashionable perukes which the ladies wore during the Reign of Terror, were made of the hair of the victims who fell beneath the axe of the guillotine, and which was bought of the executioner, Samson. We shall pass the subject of beards, extracting only one bon mot, which is too good to be omitted: "A few years prior to the Revolution, the witty, but rather too fiery, Linguet, was committed to the Bastille. It is seldom that confinement calms the bile of the confined; and accordingly, Linguet, the next morning, was engaged in writing ab irato an article against his incarcerators; when he was interrupted by the entrance into his room of a tall, thin, pale personage, whose appearance very much displeased the celebrated advocate. "What is your business?' said the latter, in a marked tone of ill-humor. "Sir,' answered the other, 'I come"I see you are come,' interrupted the impatient lawyer, but you are not wel-come.' Possibly, Sir; but I am the Bastille barber, and I have come "Here the Figaro of State prisoners burst into a laugh, and rubbing his chin significantly with his hand, exclaimed, Ho, ho, my good Sir, that is a different matter; puisque vous etes le barbier de la Bastille, rasez-la; and after so capital a pun, he addressed himself in better humor to the cutting up of his adversaries." The worst of this "capital pun" is that it is not translateable. A chapter on Swords reminds us that the practice of wearing them was once common in Greece, and that the Athenians first discontinued the custom, and passed from dissolute life into more polite and elegant manners. It is about a century ago that they ceased to be an article of dress in London. Beau Nash abolished them in Bath, as he did the top-boots of the squires and the aprons of the ladies. The last fatal duel fought with swords was between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, in 1762; they fought in a tavern-room, with closed doors, and Mr. Chaworth was slain-it might be said murdered. The nobleman was found guilty of manslaughter, but claiming the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., was discharged on paying his fees. Once, when Garrick played Bayes in the Rehearsal, he mimicked Gifford who was so enraged that he challenged the Roscius, and cured him of mimicry by running him through the arm. The temper of Spanish blades has been celebrated from time immemorial. Virgil alludes to them in his first Georgic-"At Chalybes nudi ferrum" (mittunt), which Dryden translates - "And naked Spaniards temper steel for war." The English blade formerly had a bad character, and no officer ever ventured to meet the enemy with a weapon of native manufacture. Their improvement was due to Mr. Gill, of Birmingham; and they are now considered equal to any amount of throatcutting. From some rather discursive disquisitions on Gloves, Breeches, Buttons, Stockings, Masks, Vizors, &c., we shall venture only a few scraps. Gloves, we are told, were not unknown among the Romans. Varro says, that to pluck olives without them was to spoil the olive; and Athenæus tells of a glutton who used to dine out in gloves to save burning his fingers with the hot meats. The early English ladies, before they knew the use of gloves, had the ends of their mantles made glove-shaped, and these covered the hand under the name of mufflers. A dishonored knight was despoiled not only of his arms, but of his gloves, which were the gage of battle. Gloves are distributed at funerals-perhaps as a challenge from the doctor against all who should insinuate that he had killed the deceased. When the Bishop of Durham escaped from the Tower in the reign of Henry I., he had to slide down a rope, and rubbed the skin off his hands to the bone, having forgotten his gloves. At a remote period the French monks were the authorised glove-makers; they manufactured them from the skins of the animals they took in hunting. Gloves were sometimes the medium of a bribe: Sir Thomas Moore decided a case in favor of Mrs. | cotton, linen, thread, flock, compressed Croaker; on the following New Year's Day she sent him a pair of gloves containing forty angels; he took the gloves out of gallantry, but refused the lining. Here follows a story concerning gloves: clay, &c. Yet, notwithstanding all this va riety, there are acts of Parliament still in force which declare it illegal for a tailor to use any other buttons than those of brass. "This law is in force for the benefit of the Bir"Ambassadors' effects are passed without examination-not by law, but out of courtesy. This courmingham makers: and it further enacts, not only tesy has made smuggleresses of many an Envoy's that he who makes and sells garments with any wife; but of none more than of a French Ambas- but brass buttons thereto affixed, shall pay a pesadress, not very many years ago in England. nalty of forty shillings for every dozen, but that She used to import huge cases of gloves under the he shall not be able to recover the price he claims, name of despatches,' and these she condescended if the wearer thinks proper to resist payment. to sell to English ladies who were mean enough to Nor is the act a dead letter. It is not many buy them. But the custom-house officers became weeks since that honest Mr. Shirley sued plain tired of being accomplices in this contraband trade, Mr. King for nine pounds sterling, due for a suit of clothes. King pleaded non-liability on and they put a stop to it by a very ingenious contrivance. Having duly ascertained that a case di- account of an illegal transaction, the buttons on rected to the Embassy contained nothing but the garment supplied having been made of cloth ladies' gloves, they affected to treat it as a letter instead of gay and glittering brass, as the law which had been sent through the customs by mis- directs. The judge allowed the plea; and the detake, and which they made over to the post-office. fendant having thus gained a double suit without The authorities of the latter delivered the same in cost, immediately proceeded against the plaintiff due course; the postage-fee, of something like to recover his share of the forty shillings for every 2501., was paid without a remark; and the Am-dozen buttons which the poor tailor had unwittingly bassadress stopped all further correspondence of that sort by declining to deal any longer in gloves." We shall decline the author's observations on breeches, and pass to the pantaloons. It is worth remembering that "This light-fitting garment was once part of the official costume of the great standard-bearer of the Venetian Republic. He carried on his banner the Lion of St. Mark, and he was the Piantaleone, or Planter of the Lion, around whose glorious flag, and tightly encased legs the battle ever raged with greatest fury, and where victory was most hotly contended for. The light, parti-colored legs of the tall Piantaleone were the rallying points of the Venetians. Where his thighs were upright, the banner was sure to be floating in defiance or triumph over them; and Venice may be said to have stood upon the legs of her pantaloons. He who once saved States was subsequently represented as the most thoroughly battered imbecile of a pantomime. But therein was a political revenge. Harlequin, clown, and columbine, represented different states of Italy, whose delight it was to pillory Venice by beating her nightly under the guise of the old buffoon, 'Signor Pantaloon.' The dress has survived the memory of this fact, though the dress, too, is almost obsolete." Touching Buttons, we are reminded that Birmingham is the chief seat of the button manufacture, where five thousand persons, half of whom are women and children, are employed in making them, from such materials as metal, wood, bone, ivory, horn, leather, paper, glass, silk, wool, supplied. A remarkable feature in the case was, ter who set it up, and the client who profited by that the judge who admitted the plea, the barrisit, were themselves all buttoned contrary to law." All that need be said here about Stockings is, that Queen Elizabeth's were the first English legs covered with a silk pair, which her Majesty found so pleasant, that she discarded the hot cloth-hose for ever. Since then the manufacture of stockings in England has grown to something truly prodigious. We export at the present time sixty thousand pairs of silk stockings, two hundred and fifty thousand dozen pairs of cotton, and half as many of worsted. Add to this, that a lady always takes off her left stocking last,-a fact that admits of no denial-and you have the whole statistics of the business in stockings. After We must skip the Masks, the Patches, the Puppets, and leap from the wearers of habits to the makers of them-the Tailors. From some cause or other, best known to himself, Dr. Doran manifests extreme consideration in behalf of the gentlemen of the hot-goose and the needle. some learned observations on St. William, their patron saint, and a fanciful dissertation on the measure taken of the tailors by the poets, he regales us with eight separate biographies of tailors of renown (he should have given us nine, and made up the complete man), each of whom was a notable hero in his day, and abandoned the confined area of the shop-board to play a prominent part on the world's wide stage. The first is the celebrated but somewhat traditional Sir John Hawkswood, who, slaying a couple of ruffians set upon him by his rival in love, had to run for it, and turned soldier. For his hardy valor, Edward III. dubbed him knight on the battle-field. He won the commendations of the Black Prince on the bloody day at Poitiers. At the Peace of Bretigny, in 1360, he formed and headed a band which he called "Les Tards Venus," and commenced war on his own account, and soon by his rapacious deeds became awfully renowned as "John of the Needle"-a needle four feet long, with which he "sewed up" his enemies by slaying them. Edward winked at his free-booting, and Sir John pricked his way to fortune. But the Pope interfered with an appeal to the English King, and Sir John, having first enriched himself, submitted to his sovereign and his Church. He now became a soldier of fortune, fighting for whomsoever would pay him best. His undaunted bravery won for Florence a permanent peace, and that State showed its gratitude by retaining his services and pay when they had no longer need of him. In his old age he took a wife, whose flashing eye and lightning tongue drove him to meditation and pious deeds. He founded an English hospital at Rome for poor travellers, by way of balancing his account with heaven. He died in Florence in 1393, and was buried with a magnificence never surpassed. There is a cenotaph to his honor in the church of Sible Hedingham, his native place. The second is George Dorfling, the martial tailor, born in Bohemia, in 1606. Dorfling could boast no parentage, and was apprenticed by the parish to a tailor. but he had a soul above buttons, and when he grew tall enough he enlisted in the service of the Elector of Brandenburg. He became the model of a true soldier, was ever the first at his duty and the last to leave it-loved, laughed, and fought like a light-hearted cavalier, and won golden opinions from all men. Promotion was rapid, and celebrity followed. He fought like a lion under Count Thorn at Prague, and subsequently under the great Gustavus during the whole of the Thirty Years' War. After the peace of Westphalia he transferred his services to Frederick William, and took part in all the great battles against Swedes, Poles, and French, up to the year 1695. He amassed considerable wealth, and, as morality then went, earned it all fairly, by winning it as his share of the plunder of his victories and by his talent in diplomacy, for which he was as renowned as for valor and strategy. He was all his life an example of gallantry, courtesy, and gentleness of manners. But once did he ever meet reproach, and that was from the officer who had enlisted him, and who, not being able to forgive the greatness he had achieved, sneeringly alluded to his ori gin. "True!" said the veteran, "I have been a tailor, and cut clothes, but harkye, the sword at my side is the instrument with which I shall cut the ears of those audacious enough to make of that fact a ground of mockery or reproach." The third heroic tailor is Admiral Hobson, who volunteered from the Isle of Wight as a boy, into the fleet, in the reign of Queen Anne. The next day they fell in with a French squadron, and the little tailor behaved so well that promotion commenced at once, and did not stop till he became an Admiral. The fourth is John Stow, the Antiquarian, who was born in Cornhill, in 1527. He was the author of the "Chronicles," and an unwearied sifter of old legends and rubbish. He discovered and bought of a glazier the head of James IV. of Scotland, and had it decently interred in the church of St. Michael's, Wood street. He wrote the "Survey of London," and is held in especial honor by all topographers and antiquaries. The fifth is a brother antiquary, John Speed, of Cheshire, author of various learned works, whose titles are too long for transcription, and among others of the "Cloud of Witnesses; or, the Genealogies of Scripture, confirming the truth of holy history and the huma nity of Christ," an essay which was for a long time prefixed to the English Bible, and the copyright of which was vested by James in the author and his heirs for ever. The sixth is no less a personage than Samuel Pepys, who seems to have followed the sartorial trade under his father, until he was lifted by his cousin, Sir Edward Montague, from the shop-board into the Board of Admiralty. Pepys did his duty in that department as few men in any age have done it; and by his industry, talent, and sedulous practical attention to |