f the hood is common and not in the true dandiacal
spirit, whips off his hood, and, placing the top of his head where his
face was, he twists the liripipe about his head, imprisons part of the
cape, and, after a fixing twist, slips the liripipe through part of
its twined self and lets the end hang down on one side of his face,
while the jagged end of the hood rises or falls like a cockscomb on
the other. Cockscomb! there's food for discussion in that--fops,
beaux, dandies, coxcombs--surely.

I shall not go into the matter of the hood with two peaks, which was
not, I take it, a true child of fashion in the direct line, but a mere
cousin--a junior branch at that.

As to the dates on this family tree, the vague, mysterious beginnings
B.C.--goodness knows when--in a general way the Fall, the Flood, and
the First Crusade, until the time of the First Edward; the end of the
thirteenth century, when the liripipe budded, the time of the Second
Edward; the first third of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe
was in full flower, the time of the Third Edward; the middle of the
fourteenth century, when the liripipe as a liripipe was dying, the
time of the Second Richard; the end of the century, when the chaperon
became the twisted cockscomb turban. Then, after that, until the
twenty-second year of the fifteenth century, when the roundlet was
born--those are the dates.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}]

We have arrived by now, quite naturally, at the roundlet. I left you
interested at the last phase of the hood, the chaperon so called,
twisted up in a fantastical shape on man's head. You must see that the
mere process of tying and retying, twisting, coiling and arranging,
was tedious in the extreme, especially in stirring times with the
trumpets sounding in England and France. Now what more likely for the
artist of the tied hood than to puzzle his brains in order to reach a
means by which he could get at the effect without so much labour!
Enter invention--enter invention and exit art. With invention, the
made-up chaperon sewn so as to look as if it had been tied. There was
the twist round the head, the cockscomb, the hanging piece of
liripipe. Again this was to be simplified: the twist made into a
smooth roll, the skull to be covered by an ordinary cap attached to
the roll, the cockscomb converted into a plain piece of cloth or silk,
the liripipe to become broader. And the end of this, a little round
hat wi