German system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly
applicable to our climate, our country and our century. This important
fact has already been pointed out by Mr. E. W. Godwin in his excellent,
though too brief, handbook on Dress, contributed to the Health
Exhibition. I call it an important fact because it makes almost any form
of lovely costume perfectly practicable in our cold climate. Mr. Godwin,
it is true, points out that the English ladies of the thirteenth century
abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the early Renaissance
in favour of a tighter mode, such as Northern Europe seems to demand.
This I quite admit, and its significance; but what I contend, and what I
am sure Mr. Godwin would agree with me in, is that the principles, the
laws of Greek dress may be perfectly realised, even in a moderately tight
gown with sleeves: I mean the principle of suspending all apparel from
the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the stiff ready-
made ornaments of the modern milliner--the bows where there should be no
bows, and the flounces where there should be no flounces--but on the
exquisite play of light and line that one gets from rich and rippling
folds. I am not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume,
but trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which are
dictated by art and not by archaeology, by science and not by fashion;
and just as the best work of art in our days is that which combines
classic grace with absolute reality, so from a continuation of the Greek
principles of beauty with the German principles of health will come, I
feel certain, the costume of the future.

And now to the question of men's dress, or rather to Mr. Huyshe's claim
of the superiority, in point of costume, of the last quarter of the
eighteenth century over the second quarter of the seventeenth. The broad-
brimmed hat of 1640 kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer from
the face; the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years ago,
which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the
precursor of the modern 'chimney-pot': a wide turned-down collar is a
healthier thing than a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more
comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had
'three capes'; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the
shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly
war