round the same, made triumphant leapings, singing the national airs. APPAREL. “We run through every change, which fancy THERE is a very marked and wide difference between our moderns and the ancients in their several views of appropriate dress. The latter, in our judgment of them, were always stiff and formal, unchanging in their cut and fit in the gentry, or negligent and rough in texture in the commonalty; whereas the moderns, casting off all former modes and forms, and inventing every new device which fancy can supply, just please the wearers" while the fashion is at full." It will much help our just conceptions of our forefathers, and their good dames, to know what was their personal appearance. To this end, some facts illustrative of their attire will be given. Such as it was among the gentry, was a constrained and pains-taking service, presenting nothing of ease and gracefulness in the use. While we may wonder at its adoption and long continuance, we will hope never again to see it return! But who can hope to check or restrain fashion, if it should chance again to set that way; or, who can foresee that the next generation may not be even more stiff and formal than any which has past, since we see, even now, our late graceful and easy habits of both sexes already partially supplanted by "monstrous novelty and strange disguise !"-men and women stiffly corsetted-another name for stays of yore, long unnatural looking waists, shoulders stuffed and deformed as Richard's, and artificial hips-protruding garments of as ample folds as claimed the ton when senseless hoops prevailed! Our forefathers were excusable for their formal cut, since, knowing no changes in the mode, every child was like its sire, resting in "the still of despotism," to which every mind by education and habit was settled; but no such apology exists for us, who have witnessed better things. We have been freed from their servitude; and now to attempt to go back to their strange bondage, deserves the severest lash of satire, and should be resisted by every satirist and humourist who writes for public reform. In all these things, however, we must be subject to female control; for, reason as we will, and scout at monstrous novelties as we may, female attractions will eventually win and seduce our sex to their attachment, "as the loveliest of creation," in whatever form they may choose to array. As "it is not good for man to be alone," they will be sure to follow through every giddy maze which fashion runs. We know, indeed, that ladies themselves are in bondage to their milliners, and often submit to their new imported modes with lively sense of dissatisfaction, even while they commit themselves to the general current, and float along with the multitude. Our forefathers were occasionally fine practical satirists on offensive innovations in dress-they lost no time in paraphrastic verbiage which might or might not effect its aim, but with most effective appeal to the populace, they quickly carried their point, by making it the scoff and derision of the town! On one occasion, when the ladies were going astray after a passion for long red cloaks, to which their lords had no affections, they succeeded to ruin their reputation, by concerting with the executioners to have a female felon hung in a cloak of the best ton. On another occasion, in the time of the Revolution, when the "tower" head-gear of the ladies was ascending, Babel-like, to the skies, the growing enormity was effectually repressed, by the parade through the streets of a tall male figure in ladies attire, decorated with the odious tower gear, and preceded by a drum. At an earlier period, one of the intended dresses, called a trollopee, (probably from the word trollop) became a subject of offence. The satirists, who guarded and framed the sumptuary code of the town, procured the wife of Daniel Pettiteau, the hangman, to be arrayed in full dress trollopee, &c. and to parade the town with rude music! Nothing could stand the derision of the populace; delicacy and modesty shrunk from the gaze and sneers of the multitude, and the trollopee, like the others, was abandoned. Mr. B, a gentleman of eighty years of age, has given me his recollections of the costume of his early days in Philadelphia, to this effect, to wit: Men wore three-square or cocked hats, and wigs, coats with large cuffs, big skirts, lined and stiffened with buckram. None ever saw a crown higher than the head. The coat of a beau had three or four large plaits in the skirts, wadding almost like a coverlet to keep them smooth, cuffs very large, up to the elbows, open below and inclined down, with lead therein; the capes were thin and low, so as readily to expose the close plaited neck-stock of fine linen cambric, and the large silver stock-buckle on the back of the neck, shirts with hand ruffles, sleeves finely plaited, breeches close fitted, with silver, stone or paste gem buckles, shoes or pumps with silver buckles of various sizes and patterns, thread, worsted and silk stockings; the poorer class wore sheep and buckskin breeches close set to the limbs. Gold and silver sleeve buttons, set with stones or paste of various colours and kinds, adorned the wrists of the shirts of all classes. The very boys often wore wigs, and their dresses ih general were similar to that of the men. The odious use of wigs was never disturbed till after the return of Braddock's broken army. They appeared in Philadelphia, wearing only the natural hair, a mode well adapted to the military, and thence adopted by our citizens. The king of England too, about this time, having cast off his wig, malgre the will of the people, and the petitions and remonstrances of the periwig makers of London, thus confirmed the change of fashion here, and completed the ruin of our wig makers.* The women wore caps, (a bare head was never seen!) stiff stays, hoops from six inches to two feet on each side, so that a full dressed lady entered a door like a crab, pointing her obtruding flanks end foremost, high *The use of wigs must have been peculiarly an English fashion, as I find Kalm in 1749 speaks of the French gentlemen then as wearing their own hair. heeled shoes of black stuff with white silk or thread stockings; and in the miry times of winter they wore clogs, gala shoes, or pattens. The days of stiff coats, sometimes wire-framed, and of large hoops, was also stiff and formal in manners at set balls and assemblages. The dances of that day among the politer class were minuets, and sometimes country dances; among the lower order, hipsesaw was every thing. As soon as the wigs were abandoned and the natural hair was cherished, it became the mode to dress it by plaiting it, by queuing and clubbing, or by wearing it in a black silk sack or bag, adorned with a large black rose. In time, the powder, with which wigs and the natural hair had been severally adorned, was run into disrepute only about thirty years ago, by the then strange innovation of Brutus heads;" not only then discarding the long cherished powder and perfume and tortured frizzle-work, but also literally becoming "Round heads," by cropping off all the pendent graces of ties, bobs, clubs, queus, &c. The hardy beaux who first encountered public opinion by appearing abroad unpowdered and cropt, had many starers. The old men for a time obstinately persisted in adherence to the old regime, but death thinned their ranks, and use and prevalence of numbers at length gave countenance to modern usage. Another aged gentleman, Colonel M., states, of the recollections of his youth, that young men of the highest fashion wore swords; so frequent it was as to excite no surprise when seen. Men as old as forty so arrayed |