As for the ladies, they outrivalled the sterner sex, as they should do, in the splendour of their attire. They wore powder, patches and hoops--the latter a revival apparently of Elizabeth’s day--which grew in size with the progression of the Georges, until fashion took a sudden revulsion in the days of the last, and left them off altogether, which was considered at the time highly indelicate. In the earlier period referred to ladies did not scruple to walk abroad with their dresses even more than _decolletée_, a custom which possibly was not long persevered in on account of the climate. Ladies of the present day will rejoice to hear that enormous muffs were carried. To sum up this topic so interesting to the softer sex, ladies at that time wore just as many furs and feathers, silks and satins, jewels and fine laces, as they do at the present day, and the craving after them, the debts incurred in their procuring, wrought them, possibly, quite as much harm, and were the cause, no doubt, of just as many broken marriage vows. The world is very much the same at all times, except that now and then we take on a little extra enamel, which we call civilization, to hide our natural barbarism for a time, as the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians before them did--these latter even to having their hollow teeth gold-crowned as we do--until some upheaval from within, or a crushing blow from without, breaks the thin crust, and leaves us just the natural savages we were at first. FOOTNOTES: [16] From the “Old Whig” newspaper 26 Feb., 1736. This inscription was afterwards introduced by Hogarth in his caricature of Gin Lane. Wilkins. CHAPTER VII. PETER WENTWORTH’S LETTERS ON THE PRINCE’S LIFE. Floating in and out of English history of this period are the letters of a person who apparently was furnished by Providence to write tittle-tattle of his times for the information of posterity. These are the letters of the Honourable Peter Wentworth, mostly addressed to his brother, Lord Strafford, but others to his sister-in-law, Lady Strafford. To these we have to look for the first little insights into the Prince’s life in England.