ess was not prohibited in public, for Pepys tells us that
on July 29, 1667, a Quaker came into Westminster Hall, crying,
"Repent! Repent!" being in a state of nakedness, except that he
was "very civilly tied about the privities to avoid scandal."
(This was doubtless Solomon Eccles, who was accustomed to go
about in this costume, both before and after the Restoration. He
had been a distinguished musician, and, though eccentric, was
apparently not insane.)

In a chapter, "De la Nudite," and in the appendices of his book,
_De l'Amour_ (vol. i, p. 221), Senancour gives instances of the
occasional practice of nudity in Europe, and adds some
interesting remarks of his own; so, also, Dulaure (_Des Divinites
Generatrices_, Ch. XV). It would appear, as a rule, that though
complete nudity was allowed in other respects, it was usual to
cover the sexual parts.

The movement of revolt against nakedness never became completely
victorious until the nineteenth century. That century represented the
triumph of all the forces that banned public nakedness everywhere and
altogether. If, as Pudor insists, nakedness is aristocratic and the
slavery of clothes a plebeian characteristic imposed on the lower classes
by an upper class who reserved to themselves the privilege of physical
culture, we may perhaps connect this with the outburst of democratic
plebeianism which, as Nietzsche pointed out, reached its climax in the
nineteenth century. It is in any case certainly interesting to observe
that by this time the movement had entirely changed its character. It had
become general, but at the same time its foundation had been undermined.
It had largely lost its religious and moral character, and instead was
regarded as a matter of convention. The nineteenth century man who
encountered the spectacle of white limbs flashing in the sunlight no
longer felt like the mediaeval ascetic that he was risking the salvation of
his immortal soul or even courting the depravation of his morals; he
merely felt that it was "indecent" or, in extreme cases, "disgusting."
That is to say he regarded the matter as simply a question of conventional
etiquette, at the worst, of taste, of aesthetics. In thus bringing down his
repugnance to nakedness to so low a plane he had indeed rendered it
generally acceptable, but at the same time he had deprived it of high
sanction. His profound horror of nakedness was out of re