will find you out." My father promised to be vastly prudent; and as he was always equally at home in every company, on the principle of feeling that every man was his brother, he was not in the least disturbed by the consciousness of his old coat and inked elbow. Thus everything went on prosperously until dinner was nearly over. My dear father, having probably, as usual, found the means of putting everybody in good humour about him, he turned towards the butler, and said, 'Johnson, it must not be lost!' The good man frowned and shook his head, but all in vain. It is much too good, Johnson,' he added; though you are ever so angry with me, I must tell it.' And then out came the whole story, to the great delight of the whole noble party present, and to the lasting gratification of my father himself; for he never failed to be highly pleased whenever he told the story; and it was no small addition to the tale, to tell of the scolding he got, before he came away, from the honest butler, whose punctilio he had most barbarously wounded."

Since the beginning of the present century, the laws of fashion have been more stringent, those of taste ever execrable. Taste, in its true sense, and as applied to costume, has never of late been

The admiration

Of this short-coated population,

This sew'd-up race, this button'd nation,

Who, while they boast their laws so free,

Leave not one limb at liberty;

But live with all their lordly speeches,

The slaves of buttons and tight breeches."

Even George IV. and his favourites could not bless or curse the nation with a taste for dress. After all we are better off in that respect than the Italians of the last century, who were accustomed to walk abroad without hats, and with parasols and fans; and we do not desire to see Kensington Gardens like that at Schesmedscher, near Bucharest, of the figures on which gay stage the correspondent of the 'Daily News' thus graphically speaks:

"From three o'clock in the afternoon till an hour after sunset the place is crowded with boyards, boyardines, and the sons and daughters of the same, shopkeepers, peasants, gipsies, officers, and cadets, without any distinction of rank, but all dressed regardless of expense, and swaggering in thoroughly peacock pride. We have matter-of-fact people, practical people, go-ahead people, ingenious people, etc., but without exception this is the 'dressiest' people of Europe. To see the manner in which the young people fig themselves out here, one might imagine that millinery, hosiery, and tailors' goods were a profitable investment of capital. When one has been awhile in the East one generally ceases to wonder at varieties of costume; but the beau monde of Bucharest in holiday attire might well rouse the most nonchalant or phlegmatic into surprise and attention. Fashions of dress seldom remain long in one's memory. The man who this year enters the Park with a terribly broad-brimmed hat does not remember for a moment that twelve months previously he would have been miserable had he worn one with a brim more than an eighth of an inch wide. It needs engravings to call up really vivid recollections of what one'sself, as well as every one else, wore ten, twenty, or thirty years ago; and Bucharest recalls very vividly a certain class of engravings. Every one is familiar with those splendid works of art which represent his Majesty George III. reviewing the Middlesex Volunteers in Hyde Park, the Pump Room in Bath, Charing-cross at the period of the erection of Nelson's Column, or any other remarkable scene as it appeared in the days of that illustrious individual, Mr. Brummel. Your readers well remember the broadcrowned Caroline hats, the short-waisted coats, the long-tailed surtouts, the "pumps" and Hessian boots, in which fashionables strutted at that period. All this, and more, is to be seen here. Young men walk about in sky-blue cutaway coats with brass buttons and shockingly short skirts, trousers almost as tight as the ancient pantaloons, and cream-coloured kid-gloves. Others appear on promenade with coats whose tails descend to their heels, and

others again in all the brilliancy of the latest Paris fashions. The contrast and mélange are curious and infinitely amusing, and the display of jewellery is immense. In short, in London I would take the proudest man in the place for a linendraper's shopman in his Sunday clothes. It is in the article of gloves however that most extravagance is displayed. White or cream-coloured is the colour de rigueur. Present yourself to a Wallachian lady to pay a visit, with your hands cased in anything more durable, and you excite as great a sensation as if you walked into a London drawing-room in top-boots. Nor must you go about the town on foot; a birtcha, or two-horse open hackney carriage or calèche, at two zwanzigers an hour, is indispensable. The vehicles are however generally very good and clean, and the drivers civil; disputes about fares are unknown."

A portion of the above looks like a scene in a pantomime, and this induces me to offer a remnant or two of remark connected with stage-costumes.

REMNANTS OF STAGE DRESSES.

"All these presentments

Are only mockeries, and wear false faces "

CHAPMAN'S BUSSY D'AMBOIS.'

THERE were few people who wore such a stage-look in the last century as a country squire in London. Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff speaks of one whom he had just seen in the Park. He was of a bulk and stature, we are told, larger than the ordinary; "had a red coat, flung open to show a gay calamanco waistcoat; his periwig fell in a very considerable batch upon each shoulder; his arms naturally swung at an unreasonable distance from his sides, which, with the advantage of a cane that he brandished in a great variety of irregular motions, made it unsafe for any one to walk within several yards of him."

If this was the public dress of a country gentleman, the town fops had their own costume for their own stage. There was the dapper gentleman, with his cane hanging to the fifth button. The smart fop rejoiced in red-heeled shoes and a hat hung, rather than cocked, upon one side of the head. The set of "a good periwig made into a twist" denoted the "fellow of mettle." The coffeehouse politician was known by the moustache of snuff on his upper lip; and the lords of acres, as I have just remarked, by their glaring scarlet coats.

The walks looked like a masquerade scene at a time of high carnival, and bad taste reigned undisturbed. Reformers however sought to amend it; and Paul Whitehead, the tailor-poet, used to say that the taste of the nation depended upon Garrick! Davy's

own taste was very questionable in some respects, for he played Macbeth in the then costume of a general officer, with scarlet coat, gold lace, and a tail-wig. All the other actors were attired in similar dresses; and if Malcolm, on seeing Rosse, at a distance, exclaimed, "My countryman!" he was quite right to exclaim, on seeing an English recruiting sergeant advance, "and yet I know him not!" But Rosse might have said as much of Malcolm. It was Macklin who first put Macbeth and all the characters into national costume, when he played the chief character himself, in 1773; and all the thanks he got for it was in the remark that he looked like a drunken Scotch piper-which he did. But Macbeth in kilts is nearly as great an anomaly as when he is in the uniform of a brigadier-general; and even Mr. Charles Kean, though he exhibited the Thane short-petticoated, seemed glad to get into long clothes and propriety as soon as the Thane had grown into a king.

Macklin was a comedian rather than a tragedian, and it is singular that it is to another comic actor we owe the correct dressing of Othello. It was in the latter character that Foote made his first appearance in London, at the Haymarket, in 1744. He was announced as a 66 gentleman" whose Othello "will be new dressed, after the manner of his country." Mr. Wright would now play the character with about as much propriety and equal success, or the want of it. Foote is said to have looked very much like the black boy with the tea-kettle in Hogarth's 'Marriage à la Mode.' "Bring the tea-kettle and lamp!" was Quin's exclamation, when he saw Garrick enter, blacked as Othello. And we may note that, at this time, if a stage-manager were not acting in any piece represented during the evening, he was exempted from coming before the audience, whatever confusion might reign in the house. He was said to be not dressed. Austin never so much offended Garrick as when he brought a cast-off dress, the exact counterpart of that worn by Garrick himself in Lothario, and in which Austin intended to accompany