ory of Costume in England, by the author of these notes,
it has been remarked that the freedom and looseness, as well as ease and
elegance of female costume at this period is to be attributed to the
taste of Sir Peter Lely, rather than to that exhibited by the _Beauties_
of Charles's court. "It was to his taste, as it was to that of a later
artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, that we are indebted for the freedom which
characterized their treatment of the rigid and somewhat ungraceful
costumes before them." Walpole, in his "Anecdotes of Painting," says,
"Lely supplied the want of taste with _clinquant_; his nymphs trail
fringes, and embroidery, through meadows and purling streams. Vandyke's
habits are those of the times; Lely's, a sort of fantastic night-gown
fastened with a single pin." Lely's ladies are not unfrequently _en
masque_, and are habited in the conventional dresses adopted for
goddesses in the court of Versailles.

[H] Nell appears to have first fixed the attention of the King by
appearing at the King's Theatre in an Epilogue written for her by
Dryden; who, taking a _pique_ at the rival theatre, when Nokes, the
famous comedian, had appeared in a hat of large proportions, which
mightily delighted the silly and volatile frequenters of the place,
brought forward Nell in a hat as large as a coach-wheel, which gave her
short figure so grotesque an air, that the very actors laughed outright
and the whole theatre was in convulsions of merriment. His Majesty was
nearly suffocated by the excess of his delight; and the _naive_ manner
of the actress, her wit, archness, and beauty, received additional zest
by the extravagance of "the broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt" in which
Dryden had attired her, and which fixed her permanently in the memory of
"the merry Monarch."

[I] "Improvement" has extended far beyond Old Brompton. The little
wooden house of the old rat-catcher has been swept away, and he is
obliged to locate himself and his live stock in some back lane, where
none but his friends can find him; and as he is disastrously poor, their
number is very limited.

[J] Then vicar of St. Martin's, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
In that sermon he enlarged upon her benevolent qualities, her sincere
penitence, and exemplary end. When, says Mrs. Jameson, this was
afterwards mentioned to Queen Mary, in the hope that it would injure him
in her estimation, and be a bar to his preferment, "And what then?"
answered she, has