avelling robes; but news is very lately come that the
French have lately altered their fashion, whereby he must needs be out
of countenance, if he be not set out after the last edition!" To find
himself out of fashion, with twenty suits for twenty days, was a
mischance his lordship had no right to count on!

"The glass of fashion" was unquestionably held up by two very eminent
characters, Rawleigh and Buckingham; and the authentic facts recorded of
their dress will sufficiently account for the frequent "Proclamations"
to control that servile herd of imitators--the smaller gentry!

There is a remarkable picture of Sir Walter, which will at least serve
to convey an idea of the gaiety and splendour of his dress. It is a
white satin pinked vest, close sleeved to the wrist; over the body a
brown doublet, finely flowered and embroidered with pearl. In the
feather of his hat a large ruby and pearl drop at the bottom of the
sprig, in place of a button; his trunk or breeches, with his stockings
and riband garters, fringed at the end, all white, and buff shoes with
white riband. Oldys, who saw this picture, has thus described the dress
of Rawleigh. But I have some important additions; for I find that
Rawleigh's shoes on great court days were so gorgeously covered with
precious stones, as to have exceeded the value of six thousand six
hundred pounds: and that he had a suit of armour of solid silver, with
sword and belt blazing with diamonds, rubies, and pearls, whose value
was not so easily calculated. Rawleigh had no patrimonial inheritance;
at this moment he had on his back a good portion of a Spanish galleon,
and the profits of a monopoly of trade he was carrying on with the newly
discovered Virginia. Probably he placed all his hopes in his dress! The
virgin queen, when she issued proclamations against "the excess of
apparel," pardoned, by her looks, that promise of a mine which blazed in
Rawleigh's; and, parsimonious as she was, forgot the three thousand
changes of dresses which she herself left in the royal wardrobe.

Buckingham could afford to have his diamonds tacked so loosely on, that
when he chose to shake a few off on the ground, he obtained all the fame
he desired from the pickers-up, who were generally _les dames de la
cour_; for our duke never condescended to accept what he himself had
dropped. His cloaks were trimmed with great diamond buttons, and diamond
hatbands, cockades, and ear-rings yoked with great ropes an