know the exquisite national head-dresses of the
Italian and Spanish women, from pictorial representation, if not from
actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has
not heard of the national caps of Poland, Hungary, and Russia? Not the
slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found
in any of these. In all of them, not caprice, but the more rational
qualities of use and ornament, have been studiously regarded. It is in
England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their
national costume, and are content to suffer the inconvenient
consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed
Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as
to their head-dress, whether in their houses or in the fields, and
comparing them with the tattered, dirty things worn by the labourers'
wives and daughters of England, say which are to be preferred in point
of taste--which are the cleanest--which are the most becoming.

Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity, the earliest traces
that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England, are to be met
with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that
time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their
heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other--in the reign of the
second George, we believe--some lady or other stuck on her head a round
silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim, perfectly circular, and the
brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she
subsequently changed into a straw one, and this was the root of the
evil--_hinc illae lachrymae!_ We are aware that, at the gay court of Louis
XIV., and even before he had a court, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when
she went to battle or to hunt, wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did
Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand
_parties de chasse_. But then, at the same time, these illustrious
"leaders of _ton_" put on gold-embroidered male coats, and evidently
endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly
sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the
bonnets of their descendants, than do the black beaver hats of the
latter, when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de
Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat, is derived by
our modern belles from the times we are spea