die also: padded breeches lost
some of their bombast, ruffs much of their starch, and fardingales
much of their circumference, and the lady became more Elizabethan in
appearance, wore a roll under her hair in front, and a small hood with
a jewelled frontlet on her forehead. It was the last of the Tudor
dress, and came, as the last flicker of a candle, before the new mode,
Fashion's next footstep.

CHARLES THE FIRST

Reigned twenty-four years: 1625-1649.

Born 1600. Married 1625, Henrietta of France.

THE MEN

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Charles I.}]

This surely is the age of elegance, if one may trust such an elegant
and graceful mind as had Vandyck. In all the wonderful gallery of
portraits he has left, these silvery graceful people pose in garments
of ease.

The main thing that I must do is to show how, gradually, the stiff
Jacobean dress became unfrozen from its clutch upon the human form,
how whalebones in men's jackets melted away, breeches no longer
swelled themselves with rags and bran, collars fell down, and shirts
lounged through great open spaces in the sleeves.

It was the time of an immaculate carelessness; the hair was free, or
seemed free, to droop in languid tresses on men's shoulders, curl at
pretty will on men's foreheads. Shirts were left open at the neck,
breeches were loosed at the knee. Do I revile the time if I say that
the men had an air, a certain supercilious air, of being dukes
disguised as art students?

[Illustration: {Six styles of hair and beard}]

We know, all of us, the Vandyck beard, the Carolean moustache brushed
away from the lips; we know Lord Pembroke's tousled--carefully
tousled--hair; Kiligrew's elegant locks.

From the head to the neck is but a step--a sad step in this
reign--and here we find our friend the ruff utterly tamed;
'pickadillies, now out of request,' writes one, tamed into the falling
band, the Vandyck collar, which form of neck-dress has never left the
necks and shoulders of our modern youthful prodigies; indeed, at one
time, no youthful genius dare be without one. The variations of this
collar are too well known; of such lace as edged them and of the
manner of their tying, it would waste time to tell, except that in
some instances the strings are secured by a ring.

[Illustration: {A doublet}]

Such a change has come over the doublet as to make it hardly the same
garment; the little slashes have become two or three w