varieties-The Royal George: The Plain Bow: The Military: The Ball Room: The Corsican : The Hibernian Tie: The Eastern Tie: The Hunting Tie: The Yankee Tie: (the "alone original " one)-The Osbaldiston Tie: The Mail Coach Tie: The Indian Tie, &c. &c. &c.

Though of these and their numberless offshoots, the Yankee Tie lays most claim to originality, the Ball Room one is considered the most exquisite, and requires the greatest practice. It is thus described by a "talented" professor :

"The cloth, of virgin white, well starched and folded to the proper depth, should be made to sit easy and graceful on the neck, neither too tight nor loose; but with a gentle pressure, curving inwards from the further extension of the chin, down the throat to the centre dent in the middle of the neck. This should be the point for a slight dent, extending from under each ear, between which, more immediately under the chin, there should be another slight horizontal dent just above the former one. It has no tie; the ends, crossing each other in broad folds in front, are secured to the braces, or behind the back, by means of a piece of white tape. A brilliant broach or pin is generally made use of to secure more effectually the crossing, as well as to give an additional effect to the neckcloth."

What a world of wit and invention-what a fund of fancy and taste-what a mine of zeal and ability would be lost to the world, "if those troublesome disguises which we wear" were reduced to their old simplicity of form and material! Industry and talent would be at discount, for want of materials

whereon to display themselves; and money would be such a drug, that politicians would declaim on the miseries of being without a national debt. Commerce, in many of its most important branches, would be exploded; the "manufacturing districts" would be annihilated; the "agricultural interest" would, consequently and necessarily, be at a "very low ebb;" and the "New World," the magnificent and imperial empress (that is to be) of the whole earth, might sink again to the embraces of those minute and wonderful artificers from whom, I suppose, she at first proceeded--the coral insects; for who would want cotton! No, no. Selfish preferences, individual wishes, must merge in the general good of the human race; and however" their own painted skins" might suffice our "sires," clothing, "sumptuous," as well for use," must decorate ourselves.

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To whom, then, are the fullers, the dyers, the cleaners-to whom are the spinners and weavers, and printers and mercers, and milliners and haberdashers, and modistes, and silk-men and manufacturers, cotton lords and fustian men, mantua-makers and corset professors, indebted for that nameless grace, that exquisite finish and appropriateness,which gives to all their productions their charm and their utility?—To the NEEDLEWOMAN, assuredly. For though the raw materials have been grown at Sea Island and shipped at New York,-have been consigned to the Liverpool broker and sold to the Manchester merchant, and turned over to the manufacturer, and spun and woven, and bleached and printed, and placed in the custody of the warehouseman, or on the shelf of the shopkeeper-of what good would it

be that we had a fifty-yard length of calico to shade our oppressed limbs on a "dog-day," if we had not the means also to render that material agreeably available? Yet not content with merely rendering it available, this beneficent fairy, the needlewoman, casts, "as if by the spell of enchantment, that ineffable grace over beauty which the choice and arrangement of dress is calculated to bestow." For the love of becoming ornament-we quote no less an authority than the historian of the State of Europe in the Middle Ages,'—" is not, perhaps, to be regarded in the light of vanity; it is rather an instinct which woman has received from Nature to give effect to those charms which are her defence." And if it be necessary to woman with her charms, is it not tenfold necessary to those who-Heaven help them!-have few charms whereof to boast? For, as Harrison says, "it is now come to "it is now come to passe that men are transformed into monsters."

"Better be out of the world than out of the fashion," is a proverb which, from the universal assent which has in all ages been given to it, has now the force of an axiom. It was this self evident proposition which emboldened the beau of the fourteenth century, in spite of the prohibitions of popes and senators,-in spite of the more touching personal inconvenience, and even risk and danger, attendant thereupon-to persist in wearing shoes of so preposterous a length, that the toes were obliged to be fastened with chains to the girdle ere the happy votary of fashion could walk across his own parlour! Happy was the favourite of Croesus, who could display chain upon chain of massy gold wreathed

and intertwined from the waistband to the shoe, until he seemed almost weighed down by the burthen of his own wealth. Wrought silver did excellently well for those who could not produce gold; and for those who possessed not either precious metal, and who yet felt they "might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion," latteen chains, silken cords, aye, and cords of even less costly description, were pressed into service to tie up the crackowes, or piked shoes. For in that day, as in this, "the squire endeavours to outshine the knight, the knight the baron, the baron the earl, the earl the king, in dress." To complete the outrageous absurdity of these shoes, the upper parts of them were cut in imitation of a church-window, to which fashion Chaucer refers when describing the dress of Absalom, the Parish Clerk. He

"Had Paul 'is windowes corven on his shose."

Despite the decrees of councils, the bulls of the Pope, and the declamations of the Clergy, this ridiculous fashion was in vogue near three centuries.

And the party-coloured hose, which were worn about the same time, were a fitting accompaniment for the crackowes. We feel some difficulty in realising the idea that gentlemen, only some half century ago, really dressed in the gay and showy habiliments which are now indicative only of a footman; but it is more difficult to believe, what was nevertheless the fact, that the most absurd costume in which the "fool" by profession can now be decked on the stage, can hardly compete in absurdity with the outré costume of a beau or a belle of the fourteenth century.

The shoes we have referred to: the garments, male or female, were divided in the middle down the whole length of the person, and one half of the body was clothed in one colour, the other half in the most opposite one that could be selected. The men's garments fitted close to the shape; and while one leg and thigh rejoiced in flaming yellow or sky-blue, the other blushed in deep crimson. John of Gaunt is portrayed in a habit, one half white, the other a dark blue; and Mr. Strutt has an engraving of a group assembled on a memorable occasion, where one of the figures has a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other. The Dauphiness of Auvergne, wife to Louis the Good, Duke of Bourbon, born 1360, is painted in a garb of which one half all the way down is blue, powdered with gold fleurs-de-lys, and the other half to the waist is gold, with a blue fish or dolphin (a cognizance, doubtless) on it, and from the waist to the feet is crimson, with white "fishy

naments; one sleeve is blue and gold, the other crimson and gold.

In addition to these absurd garments, the women dressed their heads so high that they were obliged to wear a sort of curved horn on each side, in order to support the enormous superstructure of feathers and furbelows. And these are what are meant by the "horned head-dresses" so often referred to in old authors. It is said that, when Isabel of Bavaria kept her court at Vincennes, A.D. 1416, it was necessary to make all the doors of the palace both higher and wider, to admit the head-dresses of the queen and her ladies, which were all of this horned kind.

K