Two small ditto 0 12 0

Two small ditto, old 0 8 0

Seventeen napkins 0 17 0

One carpet 2 0 0

It is not the easiest of tasks to follow up the evolutions of dress as styles grew into extravagance up to the last quarter of the eighteenth century. When peacock gorgeousness prevailed, men and women vied with each other in the costliness of their costumes, and sartorial sobriety was left to some families of un-

HEAD-DRESS Of a Lady of Fashion in 1770.

mixed Dutch blood. The price of good cloth, prior to the Revolution, being a guinea a yard, gentlemen of a frugal disposition would have a coat turned when it had lost its original freshness, so as to make it do duty twice as long. After that it went to the servant. Mechanics, workingmen and country people wore leather breeches, leather aprons and baize vests of red or green. The dress of a runaway apprentice is described in an advertisement of 1753 : " A blue coat with black mohair buttons, blue lapelled waist-coat, the lapells lined with black velvet, a pair of black leather breeches with solid silver buttons and a brown wig."

To the cumbrous hoops, which came into fashion after the " wide skirts" of the ladies, succeeded the " bishop," a half-circular pillow stuffed with horsehair and supposed to give more natural elegance to the figure. This, in turn, was superseded by the "queue de Paris," an abridged edition of the " bishop," and not unlike the "bustle" of our day. The press, during all this time, tried in vain to exercise its nascent power by denouncing folly. An editor gives vent to his indignation in the following outburst (1754) : "These foreign invaders first made their attack upon the stays, so as to diminish them half down the waist, exposing the breast and shoulders.