fly of the fern; a great improvement to
these green branches is the having a few wild roses
intermingled.

'The most admired colours are lavender, Esterhazy,
olive-green, lilac, marshmallow blossom, and Indian red.

'At rural fetes, the ornaments of the hats generally
consist of flowers; these hats are backward in the
Arcadian fashion, and discover a wreath of small flowers
on the hair, _ex bandeau_. In Paris the most admired
colours are ethereal-blue, Hortensia,
cameleopard-yellow, pink, grass-green, jonquil, and
Parma-violet.'--_September 1, 1827._

Really this little fashion book is very charming: it recreates, for
me, the elegant simpering ladies; it gives, in its style, just that
artificial note which conjures this age of ladies with hats--'in the
charming cottage style, modestly tied under the chin.'

They had the complete art of languor, these dear creatures; they
lisped Italian, and were fine needlewomen; they painted weak little
landscapes: nooks or arbours found them dreaming of a Gothic
revival--they were all this and more; but through this sweet envelope
the delicate refined souls shone: they were true women, often great
women; their loops of hair, their cameleopard pelerines, shall not rob
them of immortality, cannot destroy their softening influence, which
permeated even the outrageous dandyism of the men of their time and
steered the three-bottle gentlemen, their husbands and our
grandfathers, into a grand old age which we reverence to-day, and
wonder at, seeing them as giants against our nerve-shattered,
drug-taking generation.

As for the men, look at the innumerable pictures, and collect, for
instance, the material for a colossal work upon the stock ties of the
time, run your list of varieties into some semblance of order;
commence with the varieties of macassar-brown stocks, pass on to
patent leather stocks, take your man for a walk and cause him to pass
a window full of Hibernian stocks, and let him discourse on the stocks
worn by turf enthusiasts, and, when you are approaching the end of
your twenty-third volume, give a picture of a country dinner-party,
and end your work with a description of the gentlemen under the table
being relieved of their stocks by the faithful family butler.

POWDER AND PATCHES

'The affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty,
such as Venus had.'

'At the devill's shopps you buy
A dresse of powde