had put on her best looks, and painted herself for our reception. Her hair appeared in a very nice disorder, as the nightgown, which was thrown upon her shoulder, was ruffled with great care. It is a very odd sight that beautiful creature makes when she is talking politics, with her tresses flowing about her shoulders, and examining that face in the glass, which does such execution upon all the rude standers-by. How prettily does she divide her discourse between her women and her visitors! What sprightly transitions does she make, from an opera or a sermon to an ivory comb or a pincushion! How have we been pleased to see her interrupted in an account of her travels by a message to her footman, and holding her tongue in the midst of a moral reflection by applying the tip of it to a patch! But more particularly when her male valet-dechambre" (for ladies in high life employed male chamberlains to perform many of the offices of the lady's-maid), “in dressing her hair, allowed her beautiful tresses to hang in dishevelled but lovely disorder upon her shoulders."

Hogarth has also happily ridiculed these dressing-room levees in his series of "Marriage à la Mode." The gentleman with his hair in papers, surrounded by his professors and admirers; the lady, under the operation of the curling-tongs, listening to the divine who lounges on the couch by her side, while the friseur, in his inquisitive curiosity, is allowing the tongs to singe her hair; the little black boy, with his toys, at her feet, "make up" the toilettescene of a fashionable married couple. In the "Rake's Progress," Hogarth has again bequeathed to us a graphic illustration of these toilette levees. Here the man of fashion, in his déshabillé, is surrounded by professors—the dancing-master, the French teacher of the small-sword, the English master of quarterstaff, the landscape-gardener,

anxious to get the rake in his hands, the professor of music at the harpsichord, the bravo, the poet, the jockey, and a group of tailors, peruke-makers, milliners, &c. The fashionable taste for cock-fighting is illustrated by the pictures which hang round the room; and the rage for Italian singers, by the long list of presents sent to Farinelli the day after his first performance.

But these levees were not always mere compliances with a fashionable custom; they were often had recourse to to serve political purposes; and the captivating charms of a minister's lady at her toilette have won support to governments which have lost all other means of gaining it. It is said that the second daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, known as "the Little Whig," ravished many votes from the opposite party by her fascinating airs and graces at the toilette levees. Her mother, that terrible old Sarah, was a model in one respect of a type of female aristocracy whose existence we can scarcely be led to believe in, but for the testimony of Fielding and his brother novelists. Lord Campbell relates (“Lives of the Chief Justices") that the Duchess, calling, in 1738, on Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, to consult him, would not leave her name; but his clerk, in describing her, said, "I could not make out, sir, who she was, but she swore so dreadfully, that she must be a lady of quality." Horace Walpole ("Memoirs of the Reign of George III.”), speaking of the evidence produced in the trial for crim. con. in which the Earl of Grosvenor was plaintiff, and the Duke of Cumberland defendant (1756), says the correspondence was then read, "Yet to the lady's honour be it said, that, bating a few oaths, which sounded more masculine than tender, the advantage in grammar, spelling, and style was all in her favour."

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The little black boys and the monkeys, which Hogarth so frequently introduces into his pictures, were the pets of the ladies of the time, just as poodle-dogs have since become. In the "Taste in High Life" we have both a black boy and a full-dressed monkey; the latter, with an eye-glass, bag-wig, solitaire, laced hat, and ruffles, is perusing a bill of fare, which promises "pour dîner, cocks'-combs, ducks'-tongues, rabbits'-ears, fricasee of snails, gras d'œuf beurré,”—a satire upon the fashionable taste for French and eccentric cookery. The lady of the house, grotesquely dressed in stiff brocade, is showing to her visitor, a gentleman with a large muff, long queue, and feathered hat, one of those specimens which it was then a fashionable taste to collect-a small cup and saucer of old china, which she appears to consider a perfect gem.

The attitude of the gentleman, even, is a study from contemporary manners. Miss Hawkins, in describing the personal appearance of Horace Walpole, tells us that the mincing air was indispensable to the character of the fine gentleman: "He always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had made almost natural -chapeau bas between his hands, as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm, knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor."

There is scarcely a single work of Hogarth's which does not afford us a glimpse of fashionable follies. The unobtrusive but ingenious manner in which he makes even the most trivial accessories of his pictures tell his moral, or slily point his satire, will frequently be serviceable to us in investigating the manners and customs of which we are collecting specimens; and if we may occasionally be thought too severe upon the century in bringing forward

what was ludicrous or vicious in its composition, we more than atone for it in merely repeating the names of those who help us, by the vivid efforts of their pens and pencils which they have left behind them, to illustrate its peculiarities; for who can feel disrespect for the period, when he is thus casually reminded that such men as Hogarth, and the satirists and authors whom we take for our authorities, belonged to it?

CHAPTER III.

COSTUME.

IN the particulars of costume we have often thought that our grandfathers displayed more taste than we have been able to infuse into many of our modern fashions. There was something grand, commanding, even dignified, in the broad and embroidered coat, the long waistcoat, the full wig; the mere cock of the hat could be made to convey a dozen different impressions to the beholder; the lace ruffles were, perhaps, dandified and effeminate, but there was something rich even in them.

We have now lying before us an old magazine, in which there is a portrait of a great somebody of the time, apparently a conspicuous member of the haut ton, and as he was, no doubt, an exquisite of the first water, and followed the prevailing fashions to the very letter, the picture may be considered in a wider sense-as the portrait of the English gentleman of the eighteenth century. Mark the studied precision of his dress-mark the stiff bearing of every limb, as if each thread had given him notice that it was stretched to the utmost, and must crack on the slightest provocation. From his toes to the very extremities of his hair he is full-dressed according to the notions of the time.