aven faces surmounted by
white wigs; there is--if we believe the pictures--a tendency to fat
due to the tight waist of the breeches or the buckling of the belts.
The ladies wear little lace and linen caps, their hair escaping in a
ringlet or so at the side, and flowing down behind, or gathered close
up to a small knob on the head. The gentlemen's coats fall in full
folds on either side; the back, at present, has not begun to stick out
so heavily with buckram. Aprons for ladies are still worn. Silks and
satins, brocades and fine cloths, white wigs powdering velvet
shoulders, crowds of cut-throats, elegant gentlemen, patched Aspasias,
tavern swindlers, foreign adventurers, thieves, a highwayman, a
footpad, a poor poet--and narrow streets and mud.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

Everywhere we see the skirted coat, the big flapped waistcoat; even
beggar boys, little pot-high urchins, are wearing some old laced
waistcoat tied with string about their middles--a pair of
heel-trodden, buckleless shoes on their feet, more likely bare-footed.
Here is a man snatched from the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword Alley by
the King's men--a pickpocket, a highwayman, a cut-throat in hiding. He
will repent his jokes on Jack Ketch's kitchen when he feels the lash
of the whip on his naked shoulders as he screams behind the cart-tail;
ladies in flowered hoops will stop to look at him, beaux will lift
their quizzing glasses, a young girl will whisper behind a fan,
painted with the loves of Jove, to a gorgeous young fop in a
light-buttoned coat of sky-blue.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

There is a sadder sight to come, a cart on the way to Tyburn, a poor
fellow standing by his coffin with a nosegay in his breast; he is full
of Dutch courage, for, as becomes a notorious highwayman, he must show
game before the crowd, so he is full of stum and Yorkshire stingo.
Maybe we stop to see a pirate hanging in chains by the river, and we
are jostled by horse officers and watermen, revenue men and jerkers,
and, as usual, the curious beau, his glass to his eye. Never was such
a time for curiosity: a man is preaching mystic religion; there is a
new flavour to the Rainbow Tavern furmity; there is a fellow who can
sew with his toes; a man is in the pillory for publishing Jacobite
ballads--and always there is the beau looking on.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of George I.}]

Country ladies, still in small h