Greek cap. Shall we confess it,
fastidious reader?--we strongly suspect the cap worn by that idle
fellow Paris, when he so impudently ogled the goddesses on Mount Ida,
to have been very similar to the good old _bonnet de nuit_ of our
grandfathers--(shall we whisper it, of ourselves?) Yes, that little
cocked-up corner at the top looks like a budding tassel; he never had
such bad taste as to tie it with a riband round his brows; and we do
not read in Homer that Helen, though a capital workwoman, ever gave
him one; but we are inclined to believe that the old punty-dunty,
pudding-bag-shaped cap which is still worn by the French peasantry in
their field occupations, and is still patronized by a large portion of
Queen Victoria's loving subjects, is of the highest antiquity, and
based, we have no doubt, on utility. We must be candid enough to say,
that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this
species of cap--truly we think it the very type of all that is
slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable,
pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your--nightcap are we
to say? no--than your _bonnet Grec_.

Hats, properly so called, whether of cloth or fur, were evidently the
invention of some out-of-door people; but then they were not the
brimless pyramidal canisters of the present fashion, but were either
caps with dependent brims, or else broad and flexible Spanish
_sombreros_. The very idea of a hat is that of utility--something to
keep off the sun and the rain--any thing will do for warmth that will
aid the hair in keeping in the natural caloric of a man's head; and
hence we much doubt whether the Irish, that hot-headed nation, ever
wore hats in early times. From the want of shade being early felt by
civilized nations, more than shelter from rain, and from hat-shapes
being found on early southern monuments, we are inclined to think that
the hat was more extensively worn in Southern than in Northern Europe;
more, as it is, in Southern England than in Northern Scotland. Hence,
although we find many iron skull-caps, like hats, used by the military
in the fifteenth century; and although we find traces of hats even in
the plebeian costumes of the middle ages--yet we look upon the Spanish
and Italian hat of the sixteenth century, as the more immediate origin
of its degenerate successor, the actual _chapeau_. We need not trace
the variations of its form through the seventeenth century, from t