ingham, looking round at the audience, and smacking his own cap tighter on his circumspect head; "what of that? I guess we know nothing of kings in this country." The New Orleaners were in raptures, and the king sat corrected.

In a

In old days there was not only a fashion in the hat, but also in the cock of it. The famous battle of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies cock of the hat. In No. 526 of the 'Spectator," "John Sly, a haberdasher of hats, and tobacconist," is directed to take down the names of such country gentlemen as have left the hunting for the military cock, before the approach of peace. subsequent number is told how the same John Sly is preparing hats for the several kinds of heads that make figures in the realm of Great Britain, with cocks significant of their powers and faculties. His hats for men of the faculties of law and physic do but just turn up to give a little life to their sagacity. His military hats glare full in the face; and he has prepared a familiar easy cock for all good companions between the above-mentioned extremes.

Admiring mothers would sooner have followed their sons to the grave than seen them walk about with hats uncocked-whether the form took that of a spout or the point of a mincepie. The German Kevenhüller came on about the accession of George III. They were as tasteless as those French chapeaux à cornes, of whom Mr. Bob Fudge says that he

"would back Mrs. Draper

To cut better weather-boards out of brown paper."

At this time, we are told, there was the military cock and the mercantile cock; and while the beaux of St. James's wore their hats under their arms, the beaux of Moorfields Mall wore them diagonally over their left or right eye. Some wore their hats with the corners which should come over their foreheads, in a direct line, pointed into the air. These were the Gawkies. Others did not above half cover their heads, which was indeed owing to the shallowness of their crowns. A hat with gold binding

bespoke a man given to the pleasures of the turf. The tiny Nivernois had came into fashion early in the reign of the third George; and it is said that gold-laced cocked hats used to be worn in the year '78, because they had a military look with them, and would therefore protect the wearer against the press-gangs that were then more than usually active.

When round hats came in, at first merely for morning or undress wear, but finally became a fait accompli, like that other little matter, the French Revolution, all the young wearers of them (and there were, at first, no others) were denounced as "blackguards" and "highwaymen." The youthful votaries of fashion retorted by nicknaming the three-cornered hats, as “Egham, Staines, and Windsor," in allusion to the three-fingered road-post pointing in that tripartite direction. The flat, folding, crescentshaped beaver, called a cocked or an opera hat, was still to be seen as late as 1818; and a party of gentlemen returning on foot from Almack's on a summer's morning, with pantaloons tight as the Venetian standard-bearer's, and hats cocked according to the mode, presented a rather martial look. Since that time, the round hat has gained headway; even coachmen only wear the old cocked covering on state occasions; and the ugliest article that ever could be devised for the purpose seems to be planted upon our unwilling brows for ever.

In New, as formerly in Old, England, Quakers objected to take off their hats. A judge in the former locality once remarked thereon, that if he thought there was any religion in a hat he would have the largest he could purchase for money. Poor Essex, at his mock trial before his enemies in Elizabeth's palace, was compelled to stand uncovered. He was so embarrassed with his hat and the papers in it, that he forgot something of what he had to say; and perhaps too much care for his hat helped him to lose his head.

Finally, do my readers know why "beaver" was the originally favourite material for a hat? Dr. Marius was told by a Jew

physician of Ulm, that it was because by wearing a cap of beaver's fur, anointing the head once a month with oil of castor, and taking two or three ounces of it in a year, a man's memory may be so strengthened that he will remember everything he reads. I would eschew French velvet, and would stick to beaver, if I thought that.

And now as hats were put upon heads, the next fashion that will naturally come under our notice is the fashion of Wigs and their Wearers. Previous to turning to which, I may mention, by way of being useful, that "beaver" is not beaver in our days; and that perhaps is why we are all so forgetful of our duties. English beaver is a mixture of lamb's wool and rabbit's fur. Silk, satin, and velvet hats are made of plush, woven for the most part in the north of England. Paris hats are made in London from French plush, of which we import annually about 150,000 lbs. We export few hats except to our own colonies. They are chiefly made, like our wigs, for native wear.

WIGS AND THEIR WEARERS.

"Wigs were to protect obstinate old heads from the rays of truth."
ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.

WHEN it is said that Hadrian was the first Roman Emperor who wore a wig, nothing more is meant than that he was the first who avowedly wore one. They were common enough before his time. Caligula and Messalina put them on, for purposes of disguise, when they were abroad at night; and Otho condescended to conceal his baldness with what he fain hoped his subjects would accept as a natural head of hair belonging to one who bore the name of Cæsar.

As for the origin of wigs, the honour of the invention is attributed to the luxurious Iapygians, in Southern Italy. The Louvain theologians, who published a French verson of the Bible, affected however to discover the first mention of perukes in a passage in the fourth chapter of Isaiah. The Vulgate has these words :"Decalvabit Dominus verticem filiarum Sion, et Dominus crinem earum nudabit." This the Louvain gentleman translated into French as follows:-" Le Seigneur déchevelera les têtes des filles de Sion; et le Seigneur découvrira leurs perruques." The which, ́ done into English, implies that "The Lord will pluck the hair from the heads of the daughters of Sion, and will expose their periwigs." My fair friend, you will perhaps fling your own in my face were I to presume to tell you what the true reading is.

In the above free-and-easy translation, the theologians in question followed no less an authority than St. Paulinus of Nola, and thus had respectable warrant for their singular mistake.

Allusions to wigs are frequently made both by the historians and poets of ancient times. We know that they were worn by fashionable gentlemen in Palmyra and Baalbec, and that the Lycians took to them out of necessity. When their conqueror, Mausoleus, had ruthlessly ordered all their heads to be shaven, the poor Lycians felt themselves so supremely ridiculous, that they induced the king's general Candalus, by means of an irresistible bribe, to permit them to import wigs from Greece; and the symbol of their degradation became the very pink of Lycian fashion.

Hannibal was a stout soldier, but on the article of perukes he was as finical as Jessamy in 'Lionel and Clarissa,' and as particular as Dr. Hoadley's Ranger-as nice about their fashion as the former, and as philosophical as the latter on their look. Hannibal wore them sometimes to improve, sometimes to disguise, his person; and if he wore one long enough to spoil its beauty, he was as glad as the airy gentleman in 'The Suspicious Husband,' to fling it aside when it wore a battered aspect.

Ovid and Martial celebrate the gold coloured wigs of Germany. The latter writer is very severe on the dandies and coquettes of his day, who thought to win attraction under a wig. Propertius, who could describe so tenderly and appreciate so well what was lovely in girlhood, whips his butterflies into dragons at the bare idea of a nymph in a toupet. Venus Anadyomene herself would have had no charms for that gentle sigher of sweet and enervating sounds, had she wooed him in a borrowed hair. If he was not particular touching morals, he was very strict concerning curls.

If the classical poets winged their satirical shafts against wigs, these were as little spared by the mimic thunderbolts of the Fathers, Councils, and Canons of the early Church. Even poets and Christian elders could no more digest human hair than can the crocodile-of whom, dead, it is said, you may know how many individuals he devoured living by the number of hair-balls in the stomach, which can neither digest nor eject them. The indignation of Tertullian respecting these said wigs is something perfectly