with the best Genoa at some forty
shillings a yard.  There is a tradition in my
family of how, at a famous birthday dinner
at my aunt Barbara Parchment's, I neglected
all the delicacies of the table in my anxiety
to display the plum-coloured velvet lining of
my coat.  Indeed, when I observe the
simplicity, even the sombreness of modern
evening dress, I can scarcely realise the gorgeous
costumes in which we used to indulge in
my student's days.

Tom Probe, who is now in the Church,
went to the Hardware Assembly in a bright
brown coat lined with white satin, a green
and gold waistcoat, a white satin stock, and
tights of white kerseymere with a thin cord
of gold down the side.  He was very much
admired by the ladies generally.  Bob Possett,
who is now a thriving solicitor of serious
principles, used to wear, on Sundays and
holidays, a blue frock as much braided and
frogged as an officer of hussars; and, for my
own part, I was not ashamed to walk in Hyde
Park with him in winter in a great coat with
deep fur collars and cuffs, which then secured
me some extra attention, and now would mark
me as a mountebank or quack doctor.

The era of brilliant-coloured velvet ten-
guinea waistcoats, fur, and braid, was
succeeded by the corvine style.  The dandies
took the sarcasm of the author of Pelham for
earnest, and morning fêtes became something
like assemblies of undertakers.  We became
as black as crows; shirts were discarded.
Black, and all black, was the word; so that
when Count D'Orsay introduced white
waistcoats it was quite a relief, although it turned
the crows into magpies.

But, more absurd than all was the era of
tightness.  About a quarter of a century ago
a fashion came in and long continued, of making
clothes so tight that they were calculated
to stifle, strangle, and torture the wearer,
rather than to allow him either to work or
play.  The dandy of that wretched period was
tight from the sole of his foot to the crown of
his head—some even wore stays.  The trowsers
fitted like a skin; to pull on the boots, which
with difficulty passed through the legs of the
trowsers, required a long struggle, with aid of
boot-powder and boot-hooks.  The waistcoat
was laced in, so that if the victim was so ill
advised as to eat, the buttons flew off
with a loud report.  The waistband of the
trowsers was drawn in with a buckle, to
which many owed permanent disease.  The
coat required care when put on, as the fine
cloth was apt to crack.  To lift either arm
was a danger and a difficulty, for the sleeves
were not considered perfect if a single
wrinkle appeared.  To crown the miseries
of the dandy, he wore round his neck
an instrument in the shape of a stock which
only allowed noses of true Mosaic form to
point towards the ground.  No doubt it was
the tight fashion, supported by tailors and
bootmakers, that for a time reduced our
jeunesse dorée in society to stolid inactivity—to
nodding instead of bowing, to crawling instead
of dancing, and to monosyllables instead of
conversation.  How could a man swaddled in
his clothes dance, talk, laugh, or sneeze?
I remember passing my time at a famous
breakfast, leaning against the door-jamb,
unable to attack a most tempting Spanish
ham and Cambridge brawn in consequence
of the exquisite fit of a pair of universally
admired salmon-coloured trowsers of
newly invented merino.  I did venture at
last, when a loud crack compelled me to retire
covered with blushes.

When I saw my son Peter shake himself
into his well-cut clothes—a triumph of Jermyn
Street art—and pull on his elastic kid-fronted
boots, I congratulated him on having escaped
the punishment of the boot, and the pillory of
the stock which his poor father often suffered
without compulsion.  For my own part, let
artists and æsthetic critics rant as they will,
I do not believe that a more suitable dress for
civilised life was ever devised than that
ordinarily worn at the present day, as a morning
dress, especially in the various kinds of tweed,
in dark or light colours, according to the
season.  It is a dress in which a man can eat,
drink, read, write, run, fight, ride, and carry
books or provisions in his pockets, if needful,
and can put on or take off in three
minutes.  There was a struggle about fifteen
years ago between the quiet and the gorgeous
style; for, at a pigeon-shooting match in
Edinburgh, between Lord Muzzle and Captain Wad
of Meltonian reputation, the captain appeared
in an old tartan shooting suit, the peer in
black trowsers strapped down over wonderful
boots, a tartan velvet waistcoat of his clan
pattern, an ample satin stock, and a frock of
white linen plush.  Nevertheless, the dandy
won the match.

But it is in material more than in cut that
the present generation have the advantage
over their fathers in comfort and in cheapness.
To begin with under clothing: free-trade in
wool has given us a supply of a soft raw
material which is applied to all sorts of
hosiery.  Keenly do I remember the battles I
had with my nurse on the subject of certain
irritating flannel under-waistcoats.  Now, elastic
woollen shirts are to be had cheaper than the
flannel of those days, and as soft as silk.  So,
too, merino stockings have superseded coarse
worsted.  Not only Shetland and Welsh, but
Australian, Silesian, Cape, and Egyptian sheep
are laid under contribution by the hosier.  So
with shirts.  In my boyhood linen was the
only possible wear for a gentleman.  Soldiers
and sailors, and poor folks, were supplied
with a scanty linen garment of the texture
of a jack-towel.  Now cotton, made as it
can be made, is not a sixth of the price,
warmer, and more wholesome.  A working
man's wife can manufacture a good shirt for
one shilling, and for three shillings as good a
garment may be produced as formerly cost