FROM THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE THE THIRD TO THE YEAR EIGHTEEN THE year 1760 gave a younger sovereign to the British nation than it had possessed since the days of Queen Elizabeth. George the Third was only in his twenty-third year when the sudden death of his grandfather' placed him on the throne. "Yet he presented few of the graces, and none of the liveliness of youth. At the same time, he was wholly free from the vices or irregularities which commonly attend that age with personages in his situation. A few months after his accession he married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who, like himself, was decorous, devout, and rigid in the observance of the moral duties; and those who love or admire them least can scarcely deny that they contributed to a great and striking reformation of manners. Before their time the court of St. James's had much of the licentiousness of the court of Versailles, without its polish; during their time it became decent and correct, and its example gradually extended to the upper classes of society, where it was most wanted. The polish and the grace, the refinement or brilliancy, perhaps were still wanting; for neither of the two royal personages was particularly distinguished as graceful or brilliant, and the king had a strong predilection for a quiet, domestic country life, and the practical operations of farming."" With these tastes and habits, the youthfulness of either sovereign would not carry them into many fashionable extravagances; indeed, since the days of the second Charles 'At the funeral of George II., the Duke of Cumberland is mentioned by Walpole as wearing a "dark brown Adonis and a cloak of black cloth." 2 Knight's "Pictorial History of England." costume seems to have had little or nothing of royal patronage, and still less of its absolute attention. The nobility and gentry started all that was new, and reigned supreme viceroys of the "ever-changing goddess," without waiting for the royal sanction to their flippancies; and their taste, or want of taste, certainly ran riot during the forty years of which we are writing to an extent that equalled the absurdities of any previous period, and which Яма makes the history of fashion during that time more varied than that of any similar length of time. At the commencement of the reign of George the Third both ladies and gentlemen dressed simply enough; even the hoops of the ladies were of unpretending dimensions. The cut here given represents the costume of 1760. The lady has a small "gipsy hat," a long-waisted gown laced over stomacher, with short sleeves to the elbow, where very full ruffles are displayed. The gentleman's dress is only remarkable for the extra quantity of lace with which it is garnished, and for the small black cravat he wears. Fig. 287. the In the "London Magazine," 1763, is the following curious paragraph, which contains the detail of a lady's best dress at this time:-"A young married lady, who died a few days since, was, at her own request, buried in all her wedding-clothes, consisting of a white négligée and petticoats, which were quilted into a mattress, pillows, and lining to her coffin: her wedding-shift was her windingsheet, with a fine point-lace tucker, handkerchief, ruffles, and apron; also a fine point-lace lappet-head, and a handkerchief tied closely over it, with diamond ear-rings in her ears, and rings on her fingers; a very fine necklace, white silk stockings, silver-spangled shoes, and stonebuckles." The occasional gaudiness of ladies' dresses at this time may be gathered from an advertisement of the loss of "a brocaded lustring sacque, with a ruby-coloured ground and white tobine stripes, trimmed with floss; a black satin sacque with red and white flowers, trimmed with white floss; a pink and white striped tobine sacque and petticoat trimmed with white floss; and a garnet-coloured lustring night-gown, with a tobine stripe of green and white, trimmed with floss of the same colour, and lined with straw-coloured lustring." In all which we observe the strongest opposition of bright colours in the most obtrusive and tasteless combination. A writer in the "St. James's Chronicle" of 1763 is loud in condemnation of tradesmen who ape their betters in dress, and declares: "I am seldom more diverted than when I take a turn in the Park of a Sunday, to see what uncommon pains these subaltern men of taste make use of to become contemptible. The myriads of gold buttons and loops, high-quartered shoes, overgrown hats, and vellum-hole waistcoats, are to me an inexhaustible fund of entertainment." He then describes an interview with one, who appeared in "a coat loaded with innumerable gilt buttons; the cuffs cut in the shape of a sea-officer's uniform, and, together with the pockets, mounting no less than twenty-four. The skirts were remarkably long,' and the cape so contrived as to make him appear very round about the shoulders. To this he had a scarlet waistcoat, with a narrow gold lace, double lappelled; a pair of doeskin breeches that came half-way down his leg, and were almost met by a pair of shoes that reached about three inches and a quarter above his ankles. His hat was of the 1 In a history of Male Fashions, published in the "London Chronicle," 1762, the writer says: "Surtouts have now four laps on each side, which are called dog's ears; when these pieces are unbuttoned, they flap backwards and forwards like so many supernumerary patches just tacked on at one end, and the wearer seems to have been playing many hours at back-sword, till his coat was cut to pieces. When they are buttoned up, they appear like comb-cases, or pacquets for a penny postman to sort his letters in. Very spruce smarts have no buttons nor holes upon the breast of these their surtouts, save what are upon the ears, and their garments only wrap over their bodies like a morning gown: a proof that dress may be made too fashionable to be useful." true Kevenhuller size, and of course decorated with a gold button and loop. His hair was cropped very short behind, and thinned about the middle, in such a manner as to make room for a stone stock-buckle of no ordinary dimensions. To complete the picture, he carried a little rattan cane in his hand"-and by trade was a blacksmith. At the same period, another correspondent, in great alarm, calls attention to "a certain French fashion which during the present war hath gradually kept into this kingdom; a fashion which hath already spread through the metropolis, and, if not timely prevented, must infallibly infect the whole nation:" this being "an additional growth of hair, both in front and rear, on the heads of our females." He then describes the way in which it is dressed, by curling and crisping it, adding pomatum and meal; after which the barber "works all into such a state of confusion, that you would imagine it was intended for the stuffing of a chair-bottom; then bending it into various curls and shapes over his finger, he fastens it with black pins so tight to the head, that neither the weather nor time have power to alter its position. Thus my lady is dressed for three months at least; during which time it is not in her power to comb her head."1 Such was the beginning of a fashion which increased in monstrosity, and reigned for more than twenty years; being, in fact, the great feature of this period of English costume. 2 In 1767, a writer in the "London Magazine," remarking that the English people are said to be singular for extremes in taste, adds: "I think it was never more flagrantly exemplified than at present by my fair countrywomen in the enormous size of their heads. It is not very long since this part of their sweet bodies used to be bound so tight, and trimmed so amazingly snug, that they appeared like a pin's head on the top of a knitting-needle. But they have In 1765, Walpole writing to Lord Hertford mentions the petition of the periwig-makers (see "Gent. Mag.," p. 95), and also that Lady Harriot Vernon had quarrelled with him for smiling at the enormous headgear of her daughter, Lady Grosvenor, who had come to Northumberland House one night with such a display of friz that it literally spread beyond her shoulders. 2 According to Mrs. Bury Palliser, tulle is first mentioned in the "French Encyclopædia," in 1765. 1 now so far exceeded the golden mean in the contrary extreme, that our fine ladies remind me of an apple stuck on the point of a small skewer." By contrasting the headdress of the lady in the cut already given upon page 382, with fig. 288, the reader will at once detect the great change effected by fashion in this particular portion of female costume. Nos. 1 and 2 are copied from engravings by G. Bickham to "The Ladies' Toilet, or the Art of Head-dressing in its utmost Beauty and Extent," translated from the French of "Sieur Le Groos, the inventor and most eminent professor of that science in Paris," published in 1768. The figures, in this very curious book (of which there are thirty) were so much admired in Paris, that we are told, "not only all the hair-dressers of any note have them, both plain and coloured, in their shops, but every lady's toilet is furnished with one of them, very elegantly bound, and coloured to a very high degree of perfection." To describe No. 1, in the author's own words: ल Fig. 288. "This head is dressed in two rows of buckles (or close curls), in the form of shellwork, barred and thrown backwards: two shells, with one knot in the form of a spindle, composed of a large lock or parcel of hair, flatted, or laid smooth, taken from behind the head, in order to supply the place of a plume or tuft of feathers." No. 2 is "dressed with a row of buckles, the roots whereof are straight, two shells (on the crown of the head), and a dragon or serpent (at the side of the head, reaching to the shoulders), composed of two locks of hair taken from behind the head, with a buckle inverted (running upwards сс |