mischievous. The pair of them,
in reality religious fanatics, prepared a harvest that they little
dreamt of--a harvest of extravagant clothes and extravagant manners,
when the country broke loose from its false bondage of texts,
scriptural shirts, and religious petticoats, and launched into a
bondage, equally false, of low cut dresses and enormous periwigs.

In the next reign you will see an entirely new era of clothes--the
doublet and jerkin, the trunks and ruffs have their last eccentric
fling, they become caricatures of themselves, they do all the foolish
things garments can do, and then, all of a sudden, they vanish--never
to be taken up again. Hair, long-neglected, is to have its full sway,
wigs are the note for two centuries, so utterly different did the man
become in the short space of thirty-five years, that the buck of the
Restoration and the beau of the Jacobean order would stare helplessly
at each other, wondering each to himself what manner of fool this was
standing before him.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660)

This shows the modification of the dress of the time of Charles I.
Not an extreme change, but an endeavour towards simplicity.]

CHARLES THE SECOND

Reigned twenty-five years: 1660-1685.

Born 1630. Married, 1662, Katherine of Portugal.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles II.}]

England, apparently with a sigh of relief, lays aside her hair shirt,
and proves that she has been wearing a silk vest under it.
Ribbon-makers and wig-makers, lace-makers, tailors, and shoemakers,
pour out thankful offerings at the altar of Fashion. One kind of folly
has replaced another; it is only the same goddess in different
clothes. The lamp that winked and flickered before the stern black
figure in Geneva bands and prim curls is put to shame by the flare of
a thousand candles shining on the painted face, the exposed bosom, the
flaunting love-locks of this Carolean deity.

[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles II.}]

We have burst out into periwigs, monstrous, bushy; we have donned
petticoat breeches ruffled like a pigeon; we have cut our coats till
they are mere apologies, serving to show off our fine shirts; and we
have done the like with our coat-sleeves, leaving a little cuff
glittering with buttons, and above that we have cut a great slit, all
to show the marvel of our linen.

Those of us who still wear t