e better, although personally
many of us would doubtless strenuously object to wearing neckties of the
magnitude here portrayed. In 1975 costume seems to have taken a step
backward, and the literary young gentleman, who is the hero of the
engraving, may well be carrying about his MSS. inside his umbrella.
Whatever may be the merits of the spring fashions for 1978, it would
appear to have been universal (to speak of the future in the past
tense), for both these young gallants are dressed precisely alike. Of
the three remaining designs, that of 1984 appears to us to exhibit the
contour of the lady's figure most generously, and to have certain
agreeable and distinctive traits of its own which are not only lacking
in the gentleman's apparel, but are absent from the inane conception
which appears to have obtained vogue five years later.

[Illustration: 1970]

[Illustration: 1975]

[Illustration: 1978]

[Illustration: 1984]

As to the last plate in the series, we can only remark that if the
character of our male posterity after four or five generations is to be
as effeminate as its attire, the domination by the fair sex cannot be
many centuries distant. The gentleman appears to be lost in
contemplation of a lighted cigar. If he possessed the gift of seeing
himself as others now see him, he would probably transfer his attentions
to another and not less contiguous quarter.

[Illustration: Spring and Summer Fashions, 1932.]

In a general review of the costumes of the forthcoming century the
Doctor observes:--

"The seventeenth is famous as the brown; the eighteenth is with us the
yellow; and the nineteenth we term the black century. I am asked my
opinion of the twentieth. It is motley. It has seen the apotheosis of
colour. Yet in worshipping colour we do not confound the order of
things. As is the twentieth, so was the fifteenth."

The author furthermore observes that "the single article of apparel
which stands out most silhouetted against the background of the 19th
century's dress is its hard, shiny, black head-gear. It is without a
parallel. It is impossible for us to conceive of a similar article
surviving for so long a period; and I venture to say, versed as I am in
the science, nothing more absurd and irredeemably inappropriate, or more
openly violating in texture and contour every rational idea on the
subject, was ever launched. In 1962 the neck was left bare, in the
neglige fashion, in imitation of Butts, the