ttempt to explain it: it passes beyond the
realms of explanation into the pure air of Truth. The Truth is simple.
Aristocracy being no longer real, but only a cult, one is afraid of
one's servants. Your servant puffs her hair at the sides, and, hang
it! she becomes exactly like an aristocrat. Our servant having dropped
her _g's_ for many years as well as her _h's_, it behoved us to
pronounce our _g's_ and our _h's_. Our servants having learned our
English, it became necessary for us to drop our _g's_; we seem at
present unwilling in the matter of the _h_, but that will come.

To cut the cackle and come to the clothes-horse, let me say that the
bunglement of clothes which passes all comprehension in King George
IV.'s reign is best explained by my cuttings from the book of one who
apparently knew. Let the older writer have his, or her, fling in his,
or her, words.

'CUROSY REMARKS ON THE LAST NEW FASHIONS.

'The City of London is now, indeed, most splendid in its
buildings and extent; London is carried into the
country; but never was it more deserted.

'A very, very few years ago, and during the summer, the
dresses of the wives and daughters of our opulent
tradesmen would furnish subjects for the investigators
of fashion.

'Now, if those who chance to remain in London take a
day's excursion of about eight or ten miles distance
from the Metropolis, they hear the innkeepers
deprecating the steamboats, by which they declare they
are almost ruined: on Sundays, which would sometimes
bring them the clear profits of ten or twenty pounds,
they now scarce produce ten shillings.

'No; those of the middle class belonging to _Cockney
Island_ must leave town, though the days are short, and
even getting cold and comfortless; the steamboats
carrying them off by shoals to Margate and its vicinity.

'The pursuit after elegant and superior modes of dress
must carry us farther; it is now from the rural
retirement of the country seats belonging to the noble
and wealthy that we must collect them.

'Young ladies wear their hair well arranged, but not
quite with the simplicity that prevailed last month;
during the warmth of the summer months, the braids
across the forehead were certainly the best; but now,
when neither in fear of heat or damp, the curls again
appear in numerous clusters round the face; and some
y