parts of female education were bestowed, but geogra phy and grammar were never regarded for them, until a certain Mr. Horton-thanks to his name!-proposed to teach those sciences to young ladies. Similar institutions afterwards grew into favour.

It was usual in the Gazettes of 1760 to '70 to announce marriages in words like these, to wit: "Miss Betsey Laurence, or Miss Eliza Caton, a most agreeable lady, with a large or a handsome fortune."

In still earlier times, marriages had to be promulged by affixing the intentions of the parties on the court house or meeting house door; and when the act was solemnised, they should have at least twelve subscribing witnesses. The act which imposed it was passed in 1700.

Of articles and rules of diet, so far as it differed from ours in the earliest time, we may mention coffee, as a beverage, was used but rarely; chocolate for morning and evening, or thickened milk for children. Cookery in general was plainer than now. In the country, morning and evening repasts were generally made of milk, having bread boiled therein, or else thickened with pop-robbins,-things made up of flour and eggs into a batter, and so dropt in with the boiling milk.

We shall give the reader some little notice of a strange state of our society about the years 1795 to 1798, when the frenzy of the French revolution possessed and maddened the boys, without any check or restraint from men half as puerile as themselves, in the delusive politics of the day.

About the year 1793 to '94, there was an extravagant and impolitic affection for France, and hostility to

every thing British, in our country generally. It required all the prudence of Washington and his cabinet to stem the torrent of passion which flowed in favour of France to the prejudice of our neutrality. Now the event is passed, we may thus soberly speak of its character. This remark is made for the sake of introducing the fact, that the patriotic mania was so high that it caught the feelings of the boys of Philadelphia ! I remember with what joy we ran to the wharves at the report of cannon to see the arrivals of the Frenchmen's prizes, we were so pleased to see the British union down. When we met French mariners or officers in the streets, we would cry, "Vive la Republique.” Although most of us understood no French, we had caught many national airs, and the streets, by day and night, resounded with the songs of boys, such as these: Allons, enfans de la patrie, le joùr de gloire est arrivé!" &c. "Dansons le carmagnolé, vive le sang, vive le sang!" &c. “A ç'ira, ç'ira," &c. Several veises of each of these and others were thus sung. All of us, too, put on the national cockade. Some, whose parents had more discretion, resisted this boyish parade of patriotism for a doubtful revolution, and then they wore their cockade on the inside of their hat. Such a one I wore. I remember several boyish processions; and on one occasion the girls, dressed in white and in French tri-coloured ribbons, formed a procession too. There was a great liberty pole, with a red cap at top, erected at Adet's or Fauchet's house, (now Girard's square, up High street ;) and there I and one hundred of others, taking hold of hands and forming a ring

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round the same, made triumphant leapings, singing the

national airs.

APPAREL.

"We run through every change, which fancy
At the loom has genius to supply."

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,

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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