fficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a
thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their
Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmaentel_).

'As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have
doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted
together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create
protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the
art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.'

Our Professor, whether he hath humour himself or not, manifests a
certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could
emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we
might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches,
cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of
Dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or
striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with
due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the
mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm
in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen 'was
red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her
tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in
any glass, were wont to serve her?' We can answer that Sir Walter knew
well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed
parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only
slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader
parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not
to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a
chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay
his _devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted
several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a
spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round
him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection:

'By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch;
Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by
his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a
bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of
a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his
breeches,--for no Mem