wig;
you will find a veritable confusion of barbers' enthusiasms,
half-forgotten designs, names dependent on a twist, a lock, a careful
disarrangement--pigeon's-wing wigs with wings of hair at the sides,
comets with long, full tails, cauliflowers with a profusion of curls,
royal bind-wigs, staircase wigs, ladders, brushes, Count Saxe wigs,
cut bobs, long bobs, negligents, chain-buckles, drop-wigs, bags. Go
and look at Hogarth; there's a world of dress for you by the grim
humorist who painted Sarah Malcolm, the murderess, in her cell; who
painted 'Taste in High Life.' Wigs! inexhaustible subject--wigs
passing from father to son until they arrived at the second-hand
dealers in Monmouth Street, and there, after a rough overhauling,
began a new life. There was a wig lottery at sixpence a ticket in
Rosemary Lane, and with even ordinary wigs--Grizzle Majors at
twenty-five shillings, Great Tyes at a guinea, and Brown Bagwigs at
fifteen shillings--quite a considerable saving might be made by the
lucky lottery winner.

[Illustration: {Back view of a man's coat; seven types of hat for
men}]

On wigs, hats cocked to suit the passing fashion, broad-brimmed,
narrow-brimmed, round, three-cornered, high-brimmed, low-brimmed,
turned high off the forehead, turned low in front and high at the
back--an endless crowd. Such a day for clothes, for patches, and
politics, Tory side and Whig to your face, Tory or Whig cock to your
hat; pockets high, pockets low, stiff cuffs, crushable cuffs, a
regular jumble of go-as-you-please. Let me try to sort the jumble.

[Illustration: {1739: Two views of a coat for men}]

[Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.; a sleeve; a
waistcoat}]

Foremost, the coat. The coat is growing more full, more spread; it
becomes, on the beau, a great spreading, flaunting, skirted affair
just buttoned by a button or two at the waist. It is laced or
embroidered all over; it is flowered or plain. The cuffs are huge;
they will, of course, suit the fancy of the owner, or the tailor.
About 1745 they will get small--some will get small; then the fashions
begin to run riot; by the cut of coat you may not know the date
of it, then, when you pass it in the street. From 1745 there begins
the same jumble as to-day, a hopeless thing to unravel; in the next
reign, certainly, you may tell yourself here is one of the new
Macaronis, but that will be all you will mark out of the crowd of
fashions--one more