e the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be
judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without
awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his
large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, and monstrous three-cornered
hat. Our modern great ladies, strange to say, seem to have an especial
affection for this hat, since they take particular care to have a
couple of footmen behind their carriage glorying in this capital
atrocity, while on the coach-box they encourage the older form of the
flat cocked hat of Louis XV.

All cocked hats, be it observed, are glorious rain-traps; the only
improvement they are capable of is one not yet patented, namely, the
appending of neat flexible spouts, say of Macintosh cloth, from each
corner, so as to convey the water in pleasant meanderings over the
back and coat-tails. In dry weather these spouts might be tied up, and
would form graceful curves either before, behind, or on one side of
the cocked flaps, while in a shower they would add dignity to utility,
as they hung all adown the back of the wearer. One kind of utility,
however, the old cocked hat certainly had; it served in some degree,
maugre the looping up of the brim, to shelter the face from the sun;
not indeed when worn full front, as it was in Dr Johnson's time, and
as we remember the household troops used to wear it--but when, by a
daring innovation of revolutionary times, it came to be turned round
on its human pivot, and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it
is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was
that the Great Duke got all through Spain with it; though Napoleon,
who greatly reduced its dimensions, always kept to the orthodox
full-front; and in all positions, except the latter, it certainly does
shade some portion of the face from the sun. But while, for example,
the projection of one peak shades the nose, the ears and cheeks are
left to fish for themselves; or else, if the hat wheels round again to
the front, the ears come under its benignant shade, but the tip of the
proboscis suffers awfully. The cocked hat has always been a two-horned
dilemna ever since the third peak moved up in the world from its
original position of horizontal equality, and aspired to be a near
neighbour of the cockade or towering plume.

It was that wicked revolution of France, or rather that dissolute time
preceding it, which produced the most mischief in the hat line. Look