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It is not worth noticing the changes in fashion, unless to ridicule them. However, there are some who find amusement in these records of luxurious idleness; these thousand and one follies! Modern fashions, till, very lately, a purer taste has obtained among our females, were generally mere copies of obsolete ones, and rarely originally fantastical. The dress of some of our beaux will only be known in a few years hence by their caricatures. In 1751 the dress of a dandy is described in the Inspector. A black velvet coat, a green and silver waistcoat, yellow velvet breeches, and blue stockings. This too was the aera of black silk breeches; an extraordinary novelty against which “some frowsy people attempted to raise up worsted in emulation.” A satirical writer has described a buck about forty years ago;[2] one could hardly have suspected such a gentleman to have been one of our contemporaries. “A coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the arms, and buttons too big for the sleeves; a pair of Manchester fine stuff breeches, without money in the pockets; clouded silk stockings, but no legs; a club of hair behind larger than the head that carries it; a hat of the size of sixpence on a block not worth a farthing.”

As this article may probably arrest the volatile eyes of my fair readers, let me be permitted to felicitate them on their improvement in elegance in the forms of their dress; and the taste and knowledge of art which they frequently exhibit. But let me remind them that there are universal principles of beauty in dress independent of all fashions. Tacitus remarks of Poppea, the consort of Nero, that she concealed a part of her face; to the end that, the imagination having fuller play by irritating curiosity, they might think higher of her beauty than if the whole of her face had been exposed. The sentiment is beautifully expressed by Tasso, and it will not be difficult to remember it:–

“Non copre sue bellezze, e non l’espose.”

I conclude by a poem, written in my youth, not only because the late Sir Walter Scott once repeated some of the lines, from memory, to remind me of it, and has preserved it in “The English Minstrelsy,” but also as a memorial of some fashions which have become extinct in my own days.

STANZAS

ADDRESSED TO LAURA, ENTREATING HER NOT TO PAINT, TO POWDER, OR TO GAME, BUT TO RETREAT INTO THE COUNTRY.

AH, LAURA! quit the noisy town,
And FASHION’S persecuting reign:
Health wanders on the breezy down,
And Science on the silent plain.

How long from Art’s reflected hues
Shalt thou a mimic charm receive?
Believe, my fair! the faithful muse,
They spoil the blush they cannot give.

Must ruthless art, with tortuous steel,
Thy artless locks of gold deface,
In serpent folds their charms conceal,
And spoil, at every touch, a grace.

Too sweet thy youth’s enchanting bloom
To waste on midnight’s sordid crews:
Let wrinkled age the night consume,
For age has but its hoards to lose.

Sacred to love and sweet repose,
Behold that trellis’d bower is nigh!
That bower the verdant walls enclose,
Safe from pursuing Scandal’s eye.

There, as in every lock of gold
Some flower of pleasing hue I weave,
A goddess shall the muse behold,
And many a votive sigh shall heave.

So the rude Tartar’s holy rite
A feeble MORTAL once array’d;
Then trembled in that mortal’s sight,
And own’d DIVINE the power he MADE.[3]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It consisted of three borders of lace of different depths, set one above the other, and was called a Fontange, from its inventor, Mademoiselle Font-Ange, a lady of the Court of Louis XIV.]

[Footnote 2: This was written in 1790.]

[Footnote 3: The Lama, or God of the Tartars, is composed of such frail materials as mere mortality; contrived, however, by the power of priestcraft, to appear immortal; the succession of Lamas never failing!]