and shows their form and proportion, is not unbecoming. That which floats in light drapery around the body, and rather shades than conceals its outline, is highly graceful; that which covers the person entirely, and folds the whole man up in his garments, is cumbrous, and if not managed with unusual art, borders upon deformity. The last seems at all times to have been very generally preferred by the Orientals, and is still the mode of dress in use among the Turks and Persians. The first, according to Tacitus, was the distinctive mode of the nobles among the ancient Germans, and is still the national dress of the Hungarians, imitated in the uniformn of the Hussars*. The second and most elegant, as well as most natural, was the dress of the Greeks and Romans. Though all the motives of dress are necessarily combined in these different raiments, yet the object of the first seems chiefly convenience; of the second, grace; of the third, magnificence. These different habits have of course been modified, altered, and intermixed in various manners, according as taste or barbarism, reason or fancy have prevailed; though in most countries some remnant may be discovered of their ancient and long established garments. To the instances which I have just hinted at, I need only add, that in Italy, in Sicily, and in the other provinces long subject to the Romans, some trace of the toga may be still discovered in the cloak without sleeves, which is thrown about the body to cover it in part or entirely, sometimes over one shoulder and under the other, and sometimes over both, so that one of the skirts falls loosely down the back. The toga was the characteristic dress of the Romans, the habit of peace and of ceremony, the badge of freedom, and the distinguishing ornament of a Roman citizen. Yet with these honourable * De moribus Germ. cap. xvii. claims in its favour, it could not resist the influence of fashion, since so early as the age of Augustus, we find the Romans fond of appearing even in the Forum without it, and rebuked for it as a sympton of meanness and degeneracy, by that prince, so tenacious of the decorum of ancient times. En, said he, indignabundus. Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam. Suet. Oct. Cæs. Aug. 40. Horace alludes to the same custom, as a mark of vulgarity*. But as the prosperity of the state declined, and as the Roman name ceased to be an object of distinction and peculiar respectability, the dress annexed to it was gradually neglected, not by the populace only, but by the higher orders, and in process of time by the Emperors themselves, who were oftentimes little better than semibarbarians. This negligence increased considerably during the decline of the empire, and yet both then and long after its fall, the Roman habit was still, in a great degree, the most prevalent. And indeed the barbarians, who invaded Italy, have in general been very ready to adopt its language, manners, and dress, as more polished and more honourable than their own, and the changes which have taken place in all these respects are to be ascribed not to the tyranny of the conquerors, but to the slavish spirit of the Italians themselves, sometimes too much disposed to copy the habits and the dialect of their conquerors. The Goths, in fact (not to speak of the short * In Martial's time the toga still continued an essential part of decent dress in Rome; it was considered as one of the comforts of the country to be able to dispense with it-Hic tunicata quies. reign of Odoacer) were Romans in every respect, excepting in name, long before they were introduced into Italy by Theodoric, and the Longobardi, though at first the most savage of barbarians, yielded to the influence of the climate, and bowed to the superior genius of their new country. The principal change which took place therefore during those turbulent ages, was rather the neglect of what the Romans conşidered as decency of dress than the adoption of any new habit. The toga was laid aside as cumbersome, and the tunica gradually became the ordinary habit; and on the various forms of the tunica most of our modern dresses have been fashioned. In the middle ages richness and magnificence seem to have prevailed ; in later times the Spanish dress appears to have been in use among the higher classes, at least in the north of Italy, and to it finally succeeded the French costume, without doubt the most unnatural, and the most ungraceful of all the modes hitherto discovered by barbarians to disfigure the human body. By a peculiar felicity of invention, it is so managed as to conceal all the bendings and waving lines that naturally grace the human exterior, and to replace them by numerous angles, bundles and knots. Thus the neck is wrapped up in a bundle of linen; the shoulders are covered with a cape; the arms, elbows, and wrists are concealed and often swelled to a most disproportionate size, by sleeves; the knees are disfigured by buttons and buckles. The coat has neither length nor breadth enough for any drapery, yet full enough to hide the proportions of the body; its extremities are all strait lines and angles; its ornaments are rows of useless buttons; the waistcoat has the same defects in a smaller compass. Shoes are very ingeniously contrived, especially when aided by VOL. II. 3 н buckles, to torture and compress the feet, to deprive the instep and toes of their natural play, and even shape, and to produce painful protuberances. As for the head, which nature has decked with so many ornaments, and made the seat of grace in youth, in age of reverence; of beauty in one sex, of sense in the other; the head is encumbered with all the deformities that human skill could devise. In the first place, a crust of paint covers those ever-varying flushes, that play of features which constitute the delicacy and expression of female beauty, because they display the constant action of the mind. In the next place, the hair, made to wave round the face, to shade the features, and to increase alike the charms of youth and the dignity of age; the hair is turned back from the forehead, stif fened into a paste, scorched with irons, and confined with pins; least its colour should betray itself, it is frosted over with powder; and least its length should hang clustering in ringlets, it must be twisted into a tail like that of a monkey, or confined in a black bag, in sable state depending. When the man is thus completely masked and disguised, he must gird himself with a sword, that is, with a weapon of attack and defence, always an encumbrance, though sometimes perhaps necessary, but surely never so when under the protection of the law, and perhaps under the roof, and in the immediate presence of the first magistrate*. In fine, * The reader need not be informed, that this custom is a remnant of barbarism. The Greeks and Romans never carried any kind of weapon, except when actually in war, and when embodied as soldiers. Among the latter, it was deemed a crime to fight, and it was murder to slay, even a public enemy, without having previously taken the military oath.-See a striking instance of this delicate sense of law and justice, in Cicero de Officiis, lib. 1. The barbarians, on the contrary, con to crown the whole figure thus gracefully equipped, nothing is wanting but a black triangle, (a form and colour admirably combining both inconvenience and deformity,) in other words, a cocked hat! Addison has said, that if an absurd dress or mode creeps into the world, it is very soon observed and exploded; but that if once it be admitted into the church, it becomes sacred and remains for ever. Whether the latter part of this observation be well or ill founded, I will not at present undertake to determine, but the first part is clearly contradicted by the long reign of French fashions in courts, and by the apparent reluctance to remove them. After all, it must appear singular, and almost unaccountable, that courts so proud of their pre-eminence, and nations so tenacious of their independence, should so generally submit to the sacrifice of their national habits, and in their stead put on the livery of France, a badge of slavery, and a tacit acknowledgment of inferiority. It was hoped at the union, that the French phrases, which still remain in parliamentary usage to perpetuate the memory of the Norman conquest, and to disgrace the lips of the sovereign even when arrayed in all the majesty of the constitution, would have been suppressed. The public were then disappointed, but sidered the sword as the mark of freedom and independence; they looked to it, and not to the law for protection. Like Mezentius they invoked it as their tutelary divinity. Dextra mihi Deus et telum quod missile libro. Our polished courtiers choose to imitate the latter. perusal a passage of Thucydides on this subject.—Lib. 1. Virgil x. I recommend to their |