"Your Petitioners therefore, with submissive hope and dutiful resignation, leave to your Majesty's consideration the merits of their Petition; and whether your Majesty's gracious condescension, by example and countenance, is not the only means whereby unimagined numbers can possibly be saved from the deepest misery; humbly praying such commiseration and relief in their present deplorable situation as to your Majesty shall seem meet. And they shall ever pray, &c. "The above Petition was presented to his Majesty on Monday last; to which he was most graciously pleased to return the following answer: 'That he held nothing dearer to his heart than the happiness of his people; and that they may be assured, he should at all times use his endeavours to promote their real welfare[353:A].'" The Ladies Head-dress in 1765 is said to have exactly resembled that of Mary Queen of Scots as represented in her portraits. Court Mournings were continued for a most unreasonable length of time previous to 1768, and became very prejudicial to the Manufacturer and Retailer; but remonstrances from the City of London procured the ensuing notice, which was inserted in the Gazette: "His Majesty, in compassion to such manufacturers and people in trade as by the length of Court Mournings are, in this time of general scarcity and dearness of provisions, deprived in a great measure of the means of getting bread, hath been pleased to give directions for shortening all such mournings for the future: and the Lord Chamberlain's orders for Court Mournings will be issued hereafter conformably thereto. HERTFORD." The subject of Dress is now nearly exhausted; but I cannot part with the Follies of thirty years without permitting an observer to speak of one of them: "Among the many enormous exuberances of modern dress, I believe there is one lately sprung up which you may not have noticed. You will perhaps be surprized when I tell you it is the _Cork-rump_. To explain this technical term, you are to know that the ladies have thought it conducive to elegance to make an addition to the hinder-part of their dress, by sewing several large pieces of cork under the straps of their stays, in order that, by the protuberance of this new additional rump, their waist may seem the smaller and the more delicate."