at all to the amount of 'passably picturesque'
costumes which can be either revived or invented for us; but that unless
a costume is founded on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be
of any real value to us in the reform of dress. This particular drawing
of Mr. Huyshe's, for instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that our
grandfathers did not understand the proper laws of dress. There is not a
single rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us
stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease.

Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on
principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has been
drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke of Newcastle's
delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of our best
authorities on our best era of costume. I do not of course propose it
necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one
should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a
realisation of living laws. I give it as an example of a particular
application of principles which are universally right. This rationally
dressed young man can turn his hat brim down if it rains, and his loose
trousers and boots down if he is tired--that is, he can adapt his costume
to circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs are
not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness of narrow
sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite untrammelled,
always an important point; and as regards comfort, his jacket is not too
loose for warmth, nor too close for respiration; his neck is well
protected without being strangled, and even his ostrich feathers, if any
Philistine should object to them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him
very pleasantly, I am sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they
are no doubt left at home, and his cloak taken out. _The value of the
dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a law_. My
young man is consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe's young
man is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the
former one learns everything. I need hardly say that this dress is good,
not because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed on
the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or a pointed arch
is good, not because one may be Greek and the other Gothic,