attention from all other thoughts, because our
minds must then be concentrated on the hat.
We must press it over our brows tightly
enough to cause a deep red ring upon the
forehead; and that done, we must be on the
alert for any puff of wind which may require
us to carry up our hands for its preservation;
because the great surface of a column slenderly
supported at its base, renders it very liable
indeed to be blown over. This is all very
true, but all these discomforts and
inconveniences it is better that we should bear; it
is better that we should abide a slow process
of change, than that one family should be
reduced to poverty for a gain to the
community comparatively trifling. A great
number of families were ruined by the
abandonment of shoe-buckles. Cloth-buttons,
it is well known, reduced many respectable
members of the metal-button trade to their
respective workhouses. We should like to
avoid any such accompaniment to the
abandonment of hats.

This is our firstly; for our secondly, we
may express an opinion that the abandonment
of hats, without injury to hatters, is
a change now gradually taking place. You
shake your head. Well, we will put by
that suggestion for a few minutes, and
consider what sort of substitute for chimney-pot
hats we, in this country, may be expected
reasonably to desire. The Greek cap is often
pointed to as something picturesque. In as
far as its shape accords with the wearer's
head, and does not caricature the outline of
the wearer's body, it is very well. It suits
the costume and climate of the Greeks, but,
I diffidently submit, not the English dress
and drizzle. A cap of many colours would
not match our sober broad-cloth dress, and a
sober skull-cap, without any brim, would
pour the rain that fell on it over our faces in
wet weather. In England, certainly, the
brim is an essential portion of a hat: we
want eaves to the roofing of our heads;—not
monstrous umbrella brims, like those of the
hats seen in the Tunis department of our
Exhibition, but a moderate projection. The
Greeks would have put brims to their caps if
they had lived under an English sky. Up the
White Nile, the Keks are a race of people
wearing skull-caps. They coat their hair
with the Nile mud, letting it dry in the sun,
so that they seem to go about entirely bald,
with earthen skull-caps. If they lived in a
rainy country, it would not need many
showers to inform them that a mud-pie was
unpleasant wearing. Every man to his taste;
but neither mud caps, nor Greek caps, would
suit London weather. A simple head-covering,
a skull-cap with a brim, would answer
the exigencies of our case in the simplest
manner. Such a head-covering was
introduced, not many years ago, under the name
of "wide-awake," by hatters. It was made of
felt, and was meant for garden-wear. Such
hats have been long worn by our rustic
population. Who would have supposed
that hatters themselves, introducing "wide-
awakes," began unconsciously to work the hat
reform?

Let us refer to another change that has
unconsciously crept in. Some years ago,
every respectable hat was, or professed to be,
an edifice of beaver's fur. The unhappy race
of beavers was almost exterminated; beaver
fur was very dear. But—long life to the
Beaver—a silk imitation was introduced.
There were then silk hats and beaver hats;
but the silk hats were considered to have been
created for the poor or shabby portion of
society. Who can say in what month, or in
what year, opinion changed? yet we all know
that in the present day we have consigned
beaver hats to the band-boxes of country
squires, and the manufacture of silk piles has
slipped in at the last moment, to save the
beaver from following the Dodo into history
and out of life: while its substitute has
rescued the hat-trade from the union.

It is in this way, very gradually, that the
felt hats, called "wide-awakes," have made
their way; they have risen already to a glory
beyond that of their native felt, are made of
fine material, and crown the prettiest faces in
the world. Our English ladies, without calling
meetings or creating any stir, have done
what English gentlemen have talked about,
have for their own parts done away with
hats for their own Equestrian wear. Ladies
who ride with cylinders upon their heads are
now no longer to be seen. They wear the
"wide-awake;" they are emancipated; they
appear in reasonable hats, and never will be
seen in cylinders again. Omitting feathers,
and such decorations as become the English
woman, but do not become the man, hats of
this form can be adapted to our male costume,
and by this change of fashion there accrues
no injury to hatters. The change will not be
made by public meetings, or by the Antihat
Association. It is a change in
progress, slowly, but surely, following the
current of opinion. The time has arrived
when any hatter may perceive the point to
which the public taste is tending. The rest
of the hat reform is in the hands of hatters;
if they will leave off making cylinders, and
offer to the public hats resembling those now
worn by ladies—modifications of the wide-
awake—they will be well backed by the
public. How many fashions of paletots and
Chesterfields have been created by our tailors to
their own benefit? Why, then, are hatters
at a stand-still? Why, in the face of
universal discontent, do they still sell what the
public does not like to buy? If hatters ever
live to be deserted, as the buckle-makers and
the manufacturers of shank-buttons were,
they will have nothing to blame for the
misfortune but their own inactivity.

In the meantime we would suggest that a
great step towards the abandonment of our
uncomely and uncomfortable form of hat