been as many orders in these kinds of buildings, as in those which have been made of marble; sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple. In Juvenal's time, the building grew by several orders and stories, as he has very humourously described it. Tot premit ordinibus, tot adhuc compagibus altum Post minor est; aliam credas. Juv. Sat. vi. 501. With curls on curls they build their heads before, A giantess she seems: but look behind, DRYDEN. But I do not remember, in any part of my reading, that the head-dress aspired to so great an extravagance as in the fourteenth century; when it was built up in a couple of cones or spires, which stood so excessively high on each side of the head 10 that a woman, who was but a pigmy without her head-dress, appeared like a colossus upon putting it on. Monsieur Paradin says, 'That these old-fashioned fontanges rose an ell above the head; that they were pointed like steeples, and had long loose pieces of crape fastened to the tops of them, which were curiously fringed, and hung down their backs like streamers.' The women might possibly have carried this Gothic building much higher, had not a famous monk, Thomas Connecten by name, attacked it with great zeal and resolution. This holy man travelled from place to place to preach down this mon20 strous commode; and succeeded so well in it, that as the magicians sacrificed their books to the flames upon the preaching of an apostle, many of the women threw down their headdresses in the middle of his sermon, and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He was so renowned, as well for the sanctity of his life as his manner of preaching, that he had often a congregation of twenty thousand people; the men placing themselves on the one side of his pulpit, and the women on the other, that appeared (to use the similitude of an ingenious writer) like a forest of cedars, with 30 their heads reaching to the clouds. He so warmed and animated the people against this monstrous ornament, that it lay under a kind of persecution; and, whenever it appeared in public, was pelted down by the rabble, who flung stones at the persons that wore it. But, notwithstanding this prodigy vanished while the preacher was among them, it began to appear again some months after his departure, or, to tell it in Monsieur Paradin's own words, 'The women, that, like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.' This extravagance of the women's headdresses in that age, is taken notice of by Monsieur d'Argentre, in the history of Bretagne, and by other historians, as well as the 10 person I have here quoted. It is usually observed, that a good reign is the only proper time for the making of laws against the exorbitance of power; in the same manner an excessive head-dress may be attacked the most effectually when the fashion is against it. I do therefore recommend this paper to my female readers by way of pre vention. I would desire the fair sex to consider how impossible it is for them to add any thing that can be ornamental to what is already the master-piece of nature. The head has the most beautiful 20 appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure. Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lightened it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light: In short, she seems to have designed the head as the cupola to the most glorious of her works"; and when we load it with such a pile of 30 supernumerary ornaments, we destroy the symmetry of the human figure, and foolishly contrive to call off the eye from great and real beauties, to childish gewgaws, ribbands, and bonelace.-L. No. 119. On Country Manners; they are always behind those of the town. Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboe, putavi VIRG. Ecl. i. 20. The first and most obvious reflexions which arise in a man who changes the city for the country, are upon the different manners of the people whom he meets with in those two different scenes of life. By manners I do not mean morals, but behaviour and good breeding, as they shew themselves in the town and in the country. And here, in the first place, I must observe a very great revolution that has happened in this article of good breeding. Several obliging deferences, condescensions, and submissions, with many 10 outward forms and ceremonies that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and distinguished themselves from the rustic part of the species (who on all occasions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual complaisance and intercourse of civilities. These forms of conversation by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the modish world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside. Conversation, like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation 20 to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its natural good sense and beauty. At present therefore an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behaviour, are the height of good breeding. The fashionable world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more loose upon us: nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good breeding shews itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. If after this we look on the people of mode in the country, we find in them the manners of the last age. They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the fashion of the polite world, but the 30 town has dropped them, and are nearer to the first state of nature than to those refinements which formerly reigned in the court, and still prevail in the country. One may now know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good breeding. A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in 264 half an hour, as would serve a courtier for a week. There is infinitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices This wives, than in an assembly of duchesses. rural politeness is very troublesome to a man of my temper, who generally take the chair that is next me, and walk first or last, in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. friend Sir Roger's dinner almost cold before have known my I the company could adjust the ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have 10 seen him forced to pick and cull his guests, as they sat at the several parts of his table, that he might drink their healths acto their respective ranks and qualities. Honest Will cording Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has been fishing all the morning, he will not help himself at dinner, till I am served. When we are going out of the hall he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking in the fields, stopped short at a stile till I came up to it, and upon my making signs to him to get over, told me, with a 20 serious smile, that sure I believed they had no manners in the country. There has happened another revolution in the point of good breeding, which relates to the conversation among men of mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first distinctions of a well-bred man, to express every thing that had the most remote appearance of being obscene in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown, who had no such delicacy of conception and expression, clothed his ideas in those plain homely terms that are the 30 most obvious and natural. This kind of good manners was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, formal, and precise; for which reason (as hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by atheism in another) conversation is in a great measure relapsed into the first extreme; so that at present several of our men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse uncivilised words in our language, and utter themselves often in such a 40 manner as a clown would blush to hear. This infamous piece of good breeding, which reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has not yet made its way into the country; COUNTRY COSTUME. 265 and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of conversation to last long among a people that make any profession of religion, or show of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it, they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their good breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like men of wit and pleasure. As the two points of good breeding which I have hitherto insisted upon regard behaviour and conversation, there is a third 10 which turns upon dress. In this too the country are very much behindhand. The rural beaus are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced hats, while the women are still trying to outvie one another in the height of their head-dresses. 20 But a friend of mine, who is now upon the western circuit, having promised to give me an account of the several modes and fashions that prevail in the different parts of the nation through which he passes, I shall defer enlarging upon this last topic, till I have received a letter from him, which I expect every post.—L. No. 129. The same subject; letter describing the fashions in the Vertentem sese frustra sectabere canthum, PERS. Sat. v. 17. fashion; as very DRYDEN. Great masters in painting never care for drawing people in the well knowing that the head-dress or periwig that now prevails, and gives a grace to their portraitures at present, will make a very odd figure, and perhaps look monstrous in the eyes of posterity. For this reason they often represent an illustrious poet in a Roman habit, or in some other dress that never varies. I could wish, for the sake of my country friends, that there was such a kind of everlasting drapery to be made use of by all who live at a certain distance from the town, and that they would agree upon such fashions as should never be liable to changes and inno |