h appeared about 1720, runs as follows:

"An elderly lady, whose bulky squat figure
By hoop and white damask was rendered much bigger,
Without hood and bare-neck'd to the Park did repair
To show her new clothes and to take the fresh air;
Her shape, her attire, raised a shout in loud laughter:
Away waddles Madam, the mob hurries after.
Quoth a wag, then observing the noisy crowd follow,
'As she came with a hoop, she is gone with a hollow.'"

The hoopskirt was the characteristic feature of eighteenth-century
styles, and it grew to such enormous proportions as seriously to
inconvenience the wearer and to interfere with the cubic feet of space
which a pedestrian might reasonably claim as his right on a crowded
thoroughfare. But there were eighteenth-century styles which were more
reprehensible than the oft-caricatured hoop.

There was a class of votaries of fashion, in contrast to the mass of
society, whose only notion of dress was display, and toward the middle
of the eighteenth century these imported the most extravagant and
immodest of French styles. As they paraded the public gardens, to
which all classes resorted, the staid people were scandalized by their
appearance. T. Wright, in his _Caricature History of the Georges_,
says that "what was looked upon as the _beau-monde_ then lived much
more in public than now, and men and women of fashion displayed their
weaknesses to the world in public places of amusement and resort,
with little shame or delicacy. The women often rivalled the men
in libertinism, and even emulated them sometimes in their riotous
manners." Women of the town were greatly in evidence, and a
trustworthy traveller of the times affirms that they were bolder and
more numerous in London than in either Paris or Rome. Not only at
night, but in broad daylight, they traversed the footpaths,
selecting out of the passers-by the susceptible for their enticement,
particularly directing themselves to foreigners. Archenholz says: _On
compte cinquante mille prostituees a Londres, dans les maitresses
en titre. Leurs usages et leur conduite determinent les differentes
classes ou il faut les ranger. La plus vile de toutes habite dans
les lieux publics sous la direction d'une matrone qui les loge et
les habille. Ces habits mee pour les filles communes, sont de soie,
suivant l'usage que le luxe a generalement introduit en Angleterre....
Dans_ _la seule paroisse de Marybonne, qui est la plus grande et l