On such matters, however, fashion is all-powerful; and however grandly the benchers of an Inn might talk in their council-chamber, they could not prevail on their youngsters to eschew beards when beards were the mode, or to crop the hair of their heads when long tresses were worn by gallants at court. Even in the time of Elizabeth--when authority was most anxious that utter-barristers should in matters of costume maintain that reputation for 'sadness' which is the proverbial characteristic of apprentices of the law--counsellors of various degrees were conspicuous throughout the town for brave attire. If we had no other evidence bearing on the point, knowledge of human nature would make us certain that the bar imitated Lord Chancellor Hatton's costume. At Gray's Inn, Francis Bacon was not singular in loving rich clothes, and running into debt for satin and velvet, jewels and brocade, lace and feathers. Even of that contemner of frivolous men and vain pursuits, Edward Coke, biography assures us, "The jewel of his mind was put into a fair case, a beautiful body with comely countenance; a case which he did wipe and keep clean, delighting in good clothes, well worn; being wont to say that the outward neatness of our bodies might be a monitor of purity to our souls." The courts of James I. and his son drew some of their most splendid fops from the multitude of young men who were enjoined by the elders of their profession to adhere to a costume that was a compromise between the garb of an Oxford scholar and the guise of a London 'prentice. The same was the case with Charles II.'s London. Students and barristers outshone the brightest idlers at Whitehall, whilst within the walls of their Inns benchers still made a faint show of enforcing old restrictions upon costume. At a time when every Templar in society wore hair--either natural or artificial--long and elaborately dressed, Sir William Dugdale wrote, "To the office of the chief butler" (_i.e._, of the Middle Temple) "it likewise appertaineth to take the names of those that be absent at the said solemn revells, and to present them to the bench, as also inform the bench of such as wear hats, bootes, _long hair_, or the like (for the which he is commonly out of the young gentlemen's favor)." CHAPTER XX. MILLINERY. Saith Sir William Dugdale, in his chapter concerning the personal attire of judges--"That peculiar and decent vestments have, from great antiquity, been used in religious services, we have the authority of God's sacred precept to Moses, '_Thou shall make holy rayments for Aaron and his sons, that are to minister unto me, that they may be for glory and beauty_.'" In this light and flippant age there are men irreverent enough to smile at the habiliments which our judges wear in court, for the glory of God and the seemly embellishment of their own natural beauty.