but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a
thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their
Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmantel_).

"As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have
doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted
together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create
protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the
art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it."

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain
feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion
of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call
a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes,
or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers
so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking
adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due
fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud
under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm
in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen "was
red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her
tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in
any glass, were wont to serve her"? We can answer that Sir Walter knew
well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment
dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only
slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader
parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not to
comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a
chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his
_devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several
pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his
galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon
the Professor publishes this reflection:--

"By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch;
Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by
his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a
bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a
turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--f