long-skirted coats;
the country women in black hoods and cloaks, and the men in frieze
coats. The ladies would pass by in pearl necklaces, flowered
stomachers, artificial nosegays, and shaded furbelows: one is noted by
her muff, one by her tippet, one by her fan. Here a gentleman bows to
our coach, and my lady's heart beats to see his open waistcoat, his
red heels, his suit of flowered satin. I should not fail to notice the
monstrous petticoats worn by ladies in chairs or in coaches, these
hoops stuffed out with cordage and stiffened with whalebone, and,
according to Mr. Bickerstaff, making the women look like
extinguishers--'with a little knob at the upper end, and widening
downward till it ends in a basis of a most enormous circumference.'

To finish. I quite agree with Mr. Bickerstaff, when he mentions the
great shoe-shop at the St. James's end of Pall Mall, that the shoes
there displayed, notably the slippers with green lace and blue heels,
do create irregular thoughts in the youth of this nation.

GEORGE THE FIRST

Reigned thirteen years: 1714-1727.

Born 1660. Married, 1682, Sophia of Brunswick.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

[Illustration: {1720: A woman of the time of George I.; a shoe}]

We cannot do better than open Thackeray, and put a finger on this
passage:

'There is the Lion's Head, down whose jaws the
Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great
banker's in Fleet Street the effigy of the wallet, which
the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a
country boy. People this street, so ornamented with
crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to
clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lacquey
marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack,
tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's
great prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing
their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a
boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries
that are silent now).

'Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses,
tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their
periwig appearing over the red curtains. Fancy
Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the upper
windows, and a crowd of soldiers bawling and bustling at
the door--gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet
with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams;
gentlemen of the Horse Grenadier