f 1853, with
the corresponding inability to pronounce the "r" otherwise than as a
"w," or to converse but with a languid, used-up drawl; the smaller ties
and growing collars, when a wasting youth complains that "She is lost to
him for ever" (_she_, the laundress!); the schoolboy's Spanish hat of
1860, that was soon developed into the "pork-pie," and was to be adopted
generally for country wear with baggy knickerbockers; the full-blown
Dundreary of 1861, with long weeping whiskers, long coat, long drawl,
and short wits; with the sudden change for the better in the following
year. All this is to be found clearly recorded year by year, season by
season, with all the peculiarities of "form;" of umbrella and
umbrella-carrying; of dancing, energetic and invertebrate; of
handshaking, sensible and high-level (which was invented, of course, by
the ballroom girl who was holding up her train in the dance); of hirsute
adornment and aesthetic craze--every shade of fashion is followed in its
true development and in its wane--down to the recent phase of 1893 and
1894, when the swell lets out his collar for an advertisement hoarding,
or, safe in the perfection of its starching, marches quietly across the
desert while fierce Orientals turn the edges of their swords in vain
across his linen-shielded neck.

And the ladies! The coal-scuttle bonnet and the incipient crinoline of
1845; the growing crinolines of 1851, larger in 1860, largest of all in
1864; the hair in bands or side-curls of 1852, and in nets in 1862; the
bonnets worn almost off the head in 1853, more so in 1854, until Leech
drew a picture of two ladies walking out, with footmen carrying their
headgear behind them; the "spoon-shaped bonnet" of 1860--"the latest
Parisian folly," which the street-boys mistake for "a dustman's 'at;"
the archery of 1862, the pork-pie hat, the croquet, the tennis, the
golf--every sport, every habit and custom, every change of dress, down
to the minutest detail--all is recorded with faithfulness and humour,
first by Leech's pencil, and then, in chief measure, by Mr. du
Maurier's.

* * * * *

It is curious in turning over _Punch's_ volumes to see how on occasion
he could use his power of prophecy with an accuracy that spoke well for
the common-sense, sometimes even the statesmanship, to be found among
the Staff. "There is but one Punch, and he is his own prophet." It is
rather as a social reformer than as a politici