copious streamers float from the crown down their
backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this
to be said in their excuse--they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas
were. They wielded enormous fans, nearly two feet long; they had
capuchins to their cloaks; and they delighted in the rotundity of hoops.
Peace be with the souls of our grandmothers! Good old creatures! they
were not very tasty, to be sure; but they wore glorious stiff taffety
fardingales, and they have left us many an ample commode full of real
china. As times wore on, and as the free-and-easy revolutionary school
came to inculcate their loose doctrines on women as well as men, the
ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances;
and so, in a fit of spleen, one day the Duchess of G----, or some other
woman of fashion, cut off this hinder protuberance, and appeared, to the
scandal of her neighbours, _plus_ the front poke, _minus_ the back one.
This was a daring, free-thinking, revolutionary innovation. Somebody had
probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone
forth--women began to see daylight through their hats--the dawn of
emancipation appeared--clip, clip, went the scissors, and, for the time
being, the dynasty of gipsy hats had ceased to reign. Hereupon--the
consequence of all changes of dynasties--whether of bonnets or Bourbons,
'tis much the same--a fearful period of anarchy ensued: every milliner's
shop in Paris and London was pregnant with new shapes--bonnets
periodically overturned bonnets, numbers were devoted to the block every
week, and each succeeding month saw fresh competitors for public favour
coming to the giddy vortex of fashion. Husbands suffered dreadfully
during those troublous times: many a man's temper and purse were then
irremediably damaged; and there seemed to be no means of escaping from
this reign of female terror, this bonnetian chaos, until the great peace
of 1814 brought about a prompt solution. Here, to be classical in so
grave a matter, we may observe, that, just as Virgil in his Georgics
represents a civil tumult, even in its loudest hubbub, to be suddenly
calmed by the appearance of some man of known virtue and authority, so
in London--and therefore in England--the visit of an illustrious lady,
and the cut of her bonnet, appeased the agitated breasts of our fair
countrywomen, and reduced their fancy to a fixed idea. The Grand-duchess
of Oldenburg c