About a Bonnet.

So then, having "put down" hats, we come to bonnets; this is the due order of things—hats should be taken off before bonnets always; "common politeness makes us stop and do it." And here, as the immortal Butler found it necessary in olden times to lament the perils that environed a man meddling with a hard subject, so we might well indulge in an ejaculation at what may be our fate if we presume to take liberties with the head-dress of the ladies. ActÆon, when he contemplated Diana simplicem munditiis, paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so, perhaps, we may incur—but never mind; the task, worthy of a Hercules, (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed,) must be gone through with, and the scrivano umillimo must push his pen even under the pole of a lady's bonnet.

The best-dressed woman in the world was our great-great-great progenitrix; we really cannot trace up the pedigree, but you all know whom we mean—your common mother and ours: we have the highest authority among our own poets for saying so. There can be no doubt that her coiffure was perfect. It is a law of nature—it was true then—it has been true ever since—it is indisputable at the present day—the expressive beauty of a woman lies in her face: whatever, therefore, conceals the face is a disfigurement, and inherits the principle of the ugly. Ye who would study the Æsthetics of human habiliments, look at the lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul, now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes, now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance—remember, while you were yet young, your mother's look of love, that look which was all-powerful to master your fiercest passions in your wildest mood—who will say that the female face ought to be concealed? As far as we, the more powerful, though not the better, portion of the human race are concerned—off with the bonnet! off with the veil! say we. But there are others to be consulted in settling this preliminary dogma of taste—the feelings and the inclinations of woman herself are entitled to at least as much regard as the imperious wishes of man. She, who possesses the bright but fleetly fading gift of beauty, has also that inestimable, indefinable accompaniment of it—modesty. Beauty is too sensitive a gem to be always exposed to the light of admiration; it must be ensheathed in modesty for its rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere, but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible, yet positive, effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile, gentle reader, woman's beauty is like champagne, it gets terribly into a man's head: do not, however, leave the cork out of your champagne bottle—the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes, and will not let you look at it for a week together—her eyes will be all the brighter when you next see them. There is a good cause for it; man is an ungrateful, hardly-pleased animal; every indulgence that woman grants him loosens her power over him. Women have an innate right to conceal their heads!

We arrive, then, at the foundation of taste for a lady's head-dress. Her face, her head, is naturally so beautiful, that the less it is concealed—as far as the mere gratification of the eye is concerned—the better; but the necessity for veiling and protecting this precious object is so inevitable, that a suitable extraneous covering must be provided; let that covering be as consonant to her natural excellence as it is possible to make it.

Now, we are not going to write a history of all the changes of female head-dress that have taken place since the world began: nothing at all of the kind. We refer the curious amateur to the work of that learned Dutchman—we forget his name, 'tis all the same—De Re Vestiaria; or he may look into Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians—there is a pretty considerable variety of bonnets or caps to be seen therein, we calculate. If he be a decided cognoscente, let him rather go to the Attic gallery in the British Museum, and examine the Panathenaic procession, where the virgins are in the simple attire of the best days of Greece: but here, or in any of the monuments of that foster-country of art, and in all the series of Roman sculpture and coins, he will find no head-dress for a female beyond that of the veil. The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil, as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head, so as to conceal every feature, and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons—and it could as easily be withdrawn partially to allow of "a sidelong glance of love," or wholly to give "a gaze of welcome," to a relation and a friend. Happy men those old Greeks and Romans! they had no bills for milliners—whatever their jewellers' accounts might have come to! When they travelled, their slaves were not pestered with bonnet-boxes and similar abominations—a clean yard or two of Phoenician gauze, or Asian linen, set up Mrs Secretary Pericles, or Mrs General CÆsar, with a braw new veil. There was little caprice of fashion—the veil would always fall into something like the same or at least similar folds; and we do believe that, for a thousand years or more, the type of the mode remained fixed. Whether the ancient Asiatics made their women wear precisely the same mask-veils as those jealous rascals the Turks and Arabs do at the present day, we do not know, and we are not now going to enquire: we only wish to protest, en passant, against these same modern Eastern veils; they are the most frightful, unclassical, unbecoming things ever invented as face-cases. Our present purpose is with the head-dress of modern British ladies—let us look into their bonnets.

And truly a bonnet, taken by itself, without the jewel that often lies under it—a bonnet per se—is as bad a thing as a hat; something between a coal-scuttle and a bread-basket; it is only fit to be married to the hat, and, let us add—settled in the country. But it is, nevertheless capricious in its ugliness, just as its possessor is capricious in her prettiness; for, look at it from behind, its lines do not greatly deviate from the circular form of the head; it seems like a smart case;—look at it from before; there it is seen to best advantage as an oval frame, set with ribands, flowers, and laces, for the sweet picture within; but look at it from the side, and the genuine, vulgar, cookmaid form of the coal-scuttle is instantly perceived. It serves in this view evidently as blinkers do to a horse in harness, just to keep the animal from shying, or to guard off a chance stroke of the whip. But it is uncommonly tantalizing into the bargain. You walk along Regent Street some fine day, and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old, faded, frumpy bonnet, that hinders you from watching a sweet little chapeau-de-soie immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride, push by the old bonnet, and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes:"—whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves, and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand, that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation, exchange one of your blandest smiles, and pass on, still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite chapeau. Half afraid, of course—for she is a lady evidently, and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman—you venture, as you pass, to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses;—pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy, that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and instantly catching your eye, she gives you a condescending nod, and you're forced to escort her all the way up to Portland Place! It's enough to make a man hang himself; and, to say the truth, many a poor fellow has been ruined by bonnets before now—even Napoleon himself had to pay for thirty-six new bonnets within one month for Josephine!

Bonnets, however, have more to do with women than with men; and we defy our fair friends to prove that these articles of dress, about which they are always so anxious, (a woman—a regular genuine woman, reader—will sacrifice a great deal for a bonnet,) are either useful or ornamental. And first, for their use; if they were good for any thing, they would protect the head from cold, wet, and sunshine. Now, as far as cold is concerned, they do so to a certain degree, but not a tenth part so well as something else we shall talk of by and by; as for wet—what woman ever trusted to her bonnet in a shower of rain? What woman does not either pop up her parasol, or green cotton umbrella, or, if she has not these female arms, ties over it her pocket-handkerchief, in a vain attempt to keep off the pluvious god? Women are more frightened at spoiling their bonnets than any other article of their dress: let them but once get their bonnets under the dripping eaves of an umbrella, and, like ostriches sticking their heads under ground, they think their whole persons safe;—we appeal to any man who has walked down Cheapside with his eyes open, on a rainy day, whether this be not true. And then for the sun—who among the ladies trust to her bonnet for keeping her face from freckling? Else why all the paraphernalia of parasols? why all these endless patents for sylphides and sunscreens of every kind, form, and colour? why can you never meet a lady in a summerwalk without one of these elegant little contrivances in her hand? Comfort, we apprehend, does not reside in a bonnet: look at a lady travelling, whether in a carriage or a railroad diligence—she cannot for a moment lean back into one of the nice pillowed corners of the vehicle, without running imminent risk of crushing her bonnet; her head can never repose; she has no travelling-cap, like a man, to put on while she stows away her bonnet in some convenient place: the stiffened gauze, or canvass, or paper, of which its inner framework is composed, rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women, if candid, would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort, and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress—we will not allow, of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming—and even then it is only the modern class of bonnets—is, when they are viewed full front: further, as we observed before, they make a nice encadrement for the face: and, with their endless adjuncts of lace, ribands, and flowers, they commonly set off even moderately pretty features to advantage. But is only the present kind of bonnet that does so; the old-fashioned, poking, flaunting, square-cornered bonnet never became any female physiognomy: it is only the small, tight, come-and-kiss-me style of bonnet now worn by ladies, that is at all tolerable. All this refers, however, only to that portion of the fairer half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and womanhood: those that are still in childhood, or sinking into the vale of years, cannot have a more inappropriate, more useless, covering for the head than what they now wear, at least in England. Simplicity, which should be the attribute of youth, and dignity, which should belong to age, cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life.

How, then, has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves, or have been overpersuaded, into the belief that a bonnet is the highest point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish imitation of the caprices of French milliners, themselves actuated by millions of caprices and fancies—but at the same time by one steadily-enduring principle, that novelty and change, no matter how useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down—the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet—as we understand the word in England—is not an article of national costume in any portion of the world except our own island—America and Australia we place, of course, out of the pale of taste. In France itself, the peasantry, and all classes of women immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies, wear bonnets. This word does not signify the same thing as with us, gentle reader. The French word bonnet means a snow-white cap, whether rising into an enormous cone, like those of the Norman beauties, or limited to a jaunting frill and lappels, like those of the Parisian grisettes. The real bonnets, the French female chapeau, is worn only by those who call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois, it is true, and in some parts of Switzerland and Germany, straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth century. Who does not know the exquisite national head-dresses of the Italian and Spanish women, from pictorial representation, if not from actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has not heard of the national caps of Poland, Hungary, and Russia? Not the slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found in any of these. In all of them, not caprice, but the more rational qualities of use and ornament, have been studiously regarded. It is in England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their national costume, and are content to suffer the inconvenient consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as to their head-dress, whether in their houses or in the fields, and comparing them with the tattered, dirty things worn by the labourers' wives and daughters of England, say which are to be preferred in point of taste—which are the cleanest—which are the most becoming.

Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity, the earliest traces that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England, are to be met with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other—in the reign of the second George, we believe—some lady or other stuck on her head a round silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim, perfectly circular, and the brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she subsequently changed into a straw one, and this was the root of the evil—hinc illÆ lachrymÆ! We are aware that, at the gay court of Louis XIV., and even before he had a court, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when she went to battle or to hunt, wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand parties de chasse. But then, at the same time, these illustrious "leaders of ton" put on gold-embroidered male coats, and evidently endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the bonnets of their descendants, than do the black beaver hats of the latter, when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat, is derived by our modern belles from the times we are speaking of. Plain beaver or felt hats were worn by some of our farmers' wives as early as the reign of Charles I.; but, to judge from the prints of that date, they borrowed them from their husbands. And to a period like this is to be traced the custom, still extant throughout most parts of Wales, for the women to wear the same head-costume as the men. The round ladies' hat, however, of the middle and end of the last century, may be seen in its primitive state in those enormous circles of straw, brought from Tuscany, and sold in our milliners' shops, fit to be pinched and cut into the prevailing fashion. The hats, both of men and women—when once they had quitted the becoming costume of the Middle Ages—arose out of one and the same type; a large circle of stuff with a projecting central cap for the skull. Human invention, in the matter of hats, seems for several centuries to have rested in this solitary idea. When this circular adumbral and pluvial roofing had to be adapted to the female head, it was found advisable to fasten it down to the cranium—not, indeed, by any screw driven therein, nor by any intriguing with the locks of woman's hair, but by the simple expedient of ribands passing under the chin. The difficulty consisted in attaching the upper ends of these ribands; for if they were sewn on under the overlapping brim, the same brim would take liberties on a windy day, and would flap up and down like an Indian punka. If they were sewn outside, they acted like the sheets of a ship's sail, and pulled down the struggling circumference into two ugly projections, bellying out before and behind. However, women, for comfort's sake, having got an awkward article to deal with, preferred the latter alternative—tied down their hats with ribands, (men, be it remembered, at the same time, tied up their brims into the prim, high, cocked shape,) and called these ugly coverings "gipsy hats." We remember something like them, dear reader,

"When first we went a-gipsying, long long ago."

Before matters had arrived at this pitch of ugliness, the ladies of the court of George III.—the very antipodes of that of Louis XIV.—had essayed, under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte, to render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse—they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas were. They wielded enormous fans, nearly two feet long; they had capuchins to their cloaks; and they delighted in the rotundity of hoops. Peace be with the souls of our grandmothers! Good old creatures! they were not very tasty, to be sure; but they wore glorious stiff taffety fardingales, and they have left us many an ample commode full of real china. As times wore on, and as the free-and-easy revolutionary school came to inculcate their loose doctrines on women as well as men, the ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances; and so, in a fit of spleen, one day the Duchess of G——, or some other woman of fashion, cut off this hinder protuberance, and appeared, to the scandal of her neighbours, plus the front poke, minus the back one. This was a daring, free-thinking, revolutionary innovation. Somebody had probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone forth—women began to see daylight through their hats—the dawn of emancipation appeared—clip, clip, went the scissors, and, for the time being, the dynasty of gipsy hats had ceased to reign. Hereupon—the consequence of all changes of dynasties—whether of bonnets or Bourbons, 'tis much the same—a fearful period of anarchy ensued: every milliner's shop in Paris and London was pregnant with new shapes—bonnets periodically overturned bonnets, numbers were devoted to the block every week, and each succeeding month saw fresh competitors for public favour coming to the giddy vortex of fashion. Husbands suffered dreadfully during those troublous times: many a man's temper and purse were then irremediably damaged; and there seemed to be no means of escaping from this reign of female terror, this bonnetian chaos, until the great peace of 1814 brought about a prompt solution. Here, to be classical in so grave a matter, we may observe, that, just as Virgil in his Georgics represents a civil tumult, even in its loudest hubbub, to be suddenly calmed by the appearance of some man of known virtue and authority, so in London—and therefore in England—the visit of an illustrious lady, and the cut of her bonnet, appeased the agitated breasts of our fair countrywomen, and reduced their fancy to a fixed idea. The Grand-duchess of Oldenburg came over with her brother, the Emperor of all the Russias, and wore on her head, not a coronet—but such a bonnet!

"Ye powers who dress the head, if such there are,
And make the change of woman's taste your care!"

—so Cowper might well have exclaimed, had he been then living. Tell us, ye gods, whence did her imperial highness derive the idea of her bonnet? Truly, we can conjecture no other source, than these very words designating her rank, for the bonnet was imperial—none but such a lady would have dared to originate it; and it was also high—high indeed! The crown rose eighteen inches in perpendicular altitude from the nape of the neck, while the front poke retained the modest dimensions of the original gipsy hat. We recollect the duchess in Hyde Park with this monstrous headgear, and the women all in ecstacy at the delightful novelty. The success of this bonnet was universal—it was a "tremendous hit," as they say in the play-bills; every woman that could afford it raised her crown, and Oldenburgized her head. Well, this fashion lasted tolerably long; it had the great value of rendering public opinion nearly uniform; but it got old, as all fashions must do, and died a natural death—not without an heir, a worthy heir. The new idea, you will perceive, was that of inordinate length, in one way or the other. The duchess had got it all up aloft—up in her top-royals—the new bonnet (we really do not know who invented it, but some wicked little hussy at Paris, no doubt) had it all down below, in the main-sail; the crown dwindled to nothing, and out went the front poke to exactly the same length, eighteen inches. This was truly exquisite—every body was in raptures. The bonnet was tied tight under the chin, and to see a woman's face you had to look down a sort of semi-funnelled hollow, where the ambiguous shade of her countenance was illuminated only by the radiance of her eyes. Here, too, the success was immense; the mothers of us, the young bloods, the choice spirits of the present day, all wore bonnets of this kind, when our governors went wooing them in narrow-brimmed overtopping hats. The next change of any note worth mentioning, was one of comparatively recent times, such as some of us may remember their first loves in; it was derived from a partial return to the primitive round expanded hat, and was in its chief glory, when that last great piece of French dirty work, the Revolution of 1830, was perpetrated. Women had retrograded to the old circular idea; they had given up their pokes. It was too much—female folly had, it was supposed, worn itself out—a revolution was wanted, and it came. To wear the hat, however, in its primitive rotundity was impossible—it would have suited a lady in the West Indies, but not in Europe; to tie down the brim would not do, it would have been re-adopting the worn-out fashions; so, just as was done in the Parisian political revolution, a compromise of principles was resorted to—women cut off part of their brims, turned the circle into a sort of eccentric oval, and rejoiced in the redundant curve projecting now from the left, now on the right side of their heads. Ribands, stiffened out into gigantic bows, set forth the ample chapeau right gaily; the brim stretched itself out with all the insolence of a public favourite; and at length Tom Hood showed us how a lady might go to church on a rainy day, and shelter the whole family beneath her maternal hat. The present queen of the French wore an enormous chapeau of this kind at the audience which Louis Philippe gave to the peers and deputies that came to offer him the throne; every lady in England, of a certain age, has worn a hat of the same sort.

We are bound to allow that this hat had something of the useful in it: the ample size of the brim effectually warded off both sun and rain; and we much question whether the parasol trade did not rather languish under its influence. But then it had corresponding disadvantages; it was unbearable in a windy day, and rendered any thing like close contact with a friend impossible. To get a kiss from your pretty cousin, or your maiden aunt, if you met them in the street, was quite out of the question, unless you previously doffed your hat; and, as for two young ladies laying their heads together and whispering soft secrets, no such thing was practicable. The downfall, therefore, of such stiff and unwieldy hats might have been foretold from an early period of their existence; it came, and with it a counter-revolution—a restoration of the legitimist bonnet. But, mark the malignity of a certain elderly personage, whose name and residence we never mention in ears polite; a change, a final change, came, and it came from the source of all abominations—Paris! Yes! 'twas a pure and genuine invention of the fickle people—of la jeune France! We gave up the restored bonnet, and we adopted the little, reduced, cut-away, impudent bonnet of the present moment. Now, with regard to the actual origin of this same form of bonnet, which has met with universal approbation, but which has no really good qualities to recommend it, except those of portability and warmth to the ears of the wearer—we make, with some regret, the following assertion, upon the accuracy of which we stake our Æsthetic reputation. We were witnesses of the fact; any man in Paris, who had his eyes about him, must have witnessed the same thing; we appeal to all the lions of the Bois, or the Boulevard des Italiens: these small bonnets, and the peculiar mode of wearing them at the back of the head were first introduced in Paris by a class of persons, to whom we cannot make any more definite allusion than to say that their names must not be mentioned. These people invented these bonnets, and wore them for nearly six months before they were imitated; and then, the fashion being taken up by the milliners, became general both in France and England. A corresponding change in the cut of the upper portions of ladies' gowns, and in the manner of putting on the shawl—that very cut and manner now universally adopted—came from the same source, and at the same time. These changes added greatly to female comfort, we admit; and they were founded, mainly, on principles of good taste; but they had also other causes, obvious to the Æsthetician and the ethnologist, which we abstain from noticing. Once more, having been eye-witnesses to the change, and having at the time maliciously speculated within our own breasts as to how long it would take for such a mode to run the round of women's heads—our anticipations having been fully realized—we pledge ourselves to the accuracy of this statement.

Well, then, having thus run a-muck against bonnets, what reparation are we to make to the fair sex, for abusing their taste and condemning their practice? We will try to point out to them certain leading ideas, which may bring them back to sounder principles, and make the covering of their heads worthy of the beauty of their faces. And here, as in the case of hats, the first thing to be aimed at must be, utility—the second, ornament. Be it observed, too, that we are writing for the latitude of England; because in this respect, as in most others, the climate ought to decide upon the basis of national costume. Now an Englishwoman, of whatever grade she may be, requires, when she goes out of doors, protection principally from wet, next from cold, and lastly from heat. Her head-dress, to be really useful, ought to comprise qualities that will effect these three objects. The substance, therefore, of the covering cannot consist of cotton, linen, or silk, at all times of the year; these substances will do for the more temperate or the hotter seasons, but not in winter—that is to say, they will not be serviceable during five months out of the twelve. In this inclement season nothing but woollen cloth or fur ought to be the principal article of female head-dress; only these two substances will effectually keep off wet and cold. They may be lined with silk or any other soft substance, but the foundation, we repeat, ought to be fur or woollen cloth; both of them articles of English manufacture or preparation—one varying through all degrees of price; the other within the reach of most persons, even in the middling classes of society. In the summer, silk, linen, cotton, or any other light fabric, will effect the purpose proposed—protection from the rays of the sun, and from the casual wet that may occur—though from the last, less than from the first inconvenience. So much for the common substance of an Englishwoman's out-of-door head-dress—for the material, that is to say: its use should always be modified by the rank and occupation of the wearer. The form must be ascertained from a reference to the principles laid down above, as to the combining a proper degree of concealment, with the due exhibiting of the beautiful features of the female face; the covering should afford ample concealment when wanted, but should also admit of the head being completely exposed when required. Now, the veil gives abundant concealment, but does not admit of total removal, and is rather inconvenient to the wearer; it is apt to get in the way, and is in danger of causing a slovenly, or even a dirty, appearance; it is more suited for in-door, than for out-of-door use—more for a warm than a cold climate. The hood is the best thing we know of, for combining the two requisites of complete concealment and complete exposure. It unites by its shape all the purposes of form, to the applicability of any kind of soft material; and it is suitable to the climate of this country at any period of the year. But, "how ugly!" the ladies will exclaim—"who could bear to tie her head up in a pudding-bag?—Does not the very form of the hood approach too nearly to that of the head, and thus violate a fundamental principle of Æsthetics?" Our reply must be, that there are various kinds of hoods, and that, if they be considered ugly, it is more from their strangeness, through long disuse, than from any fault in their natural form. Besides, the very principle of concealment, so essential to a woman's modesty, militates rather against the principle of beauty; we admit it to be a difficulty—we would even say that the head of the female while out-of-doors, amid the busy throng, does not admit of the same degree of ornament as the head of the male. If we can make woman's covering graceful, it is enough; the beauty of it should be reserved for the drawing-room and the boudoir—it should not be exhibited in the street. And after all, beauty for beauty, we will back a hood against a bonnet any day in the week.

Bear with us, however, gentle ladies, while we explain to you how we would have you make and wear your hoods; and, to do so the better, examine with us some of those delightful portraits of the time of Rubens and Vandyke, when, among the nobler classes of females, dress had certainly attained a high, if not its highest point of picturesque and elegant effect. Look at some of those admirable Flemish pictures, where you will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood, and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example—if a hood, so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head, were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders, or come even lower, at the fancy of the wearer, and were fastened round the neck, the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head, and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be instantly thrown back, and would lie on the upper part of the neck in picturesque and graceful folds. The lines of such a covering, not so flowing, indeed, as those of a veil, would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face, while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods, such as those, are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes, or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun, as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such a dress; what a complete protection from cold, and, if necessary, from wet! Even in summer, the hood would keep off the sun's beams much more effectually than any bonnet; it would be light, warm, portable—useable at pleasure, always ornamental, always becoming. These hoods would be of service, whether for a walk or for a journey in a carriage; they would not need to be disentangled from the person like bonnets; they would merely have to be thrown back; they never could get spoiled by crushing; they never would need cumbrous boxes to be carried in; and, what is worthy of consideration, their cost might always be suited to the means of the wearer. They would admit of any kind of ornament that would not destroy their principle of utility;—for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied—it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any, the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus, in spring time, a young and high-born damsel might wear her hood and tippet of light-coloured silk or brocade, edged with ermine or swan's-down, and attached with silver cords and clasps of pearl—while the noble matron might wear the same of crimson or purple velvet, edged with sable, and attached with golden cords and diamonds. The peasant's wife and daughter might use hoods of black, blue, or grey woollen cloth, lined with grey linen, edged with plain riband, and fastened with a simple button. How much better, how much more rational, how much more becoming, such head-dresses as these, than the gay but useless ribands, feathers, and chapeaux of the one class, or the misshapen, uncomfortable, untidy-looking bonnets of the other! According to the present system, it is almost impossible to infer the rank of a lady from her external costume—many a milliner's girl has passed for a duchess before now—whereas by the adoption of articles of dress, founded on principles like those of the hood, some decisive marks of distinction might be obtained. Thus the rich furs and the jewels, or the gold brocade of the princess, might indeed be imitated by the merchant's wife—who at the present day is nearly her equal in wealth—the representative of political power in, what is called, a constitutional government; but the shop-girl and the dancing-mistress might break their hearts with spite, ere they could set up a system of dress in keeping with hoods of the kind alluded to. We do not recommend, that distinction of dress according to difference of rank should be carried to an undue limit; for in the present age of the world, and especially in our country, where the basis of society is shifting, and where the pivots of the commonweal are loose, too little distinction of rank is allowed; rank is not respected as it ought to be; but, nevertheless, the promiscuous jumbling together and confounding of all men is carried too far; it is one of the elements of republicanism and anarchy that we should do well to discourage. To ladies, more than to men, would distinctions of dress be useful, and with them they would be more practicable of reintroduction; any thing that would tend to augment the outward respect of men for women, and of women for each other, would be so much gained toward a revival of some of the soundest maxims of former days.

Bonnets, then, to Orcus! Hoods to the seventh heaven!

H. L. J.