Man's last aspiration towards dandyism gasped and died in the embrace of the stock of Count D'Orsay. Now, woman alone rules the roost of fashion, man is "no longer dressed but clothed," and under feminine autocracy, dress, whose interests are widely and publicly recognised, has reached a position of primary importance. No more are these interests represented in an unwanted corner of a monthly periodical, or in the letters of the town cousin to the country cousin, or in the counsels of perfection signed by "the old woman." They maintain various journals established in their honour, and in the field of Fashion England has risen from the ranks to leadership; while a wide plain of cheap selection opens to the proletariat the chance to beautify their outer as well as their under wear, which has emerged from the uncompromising confines of stiff long-cloth and Madeira work to the seductive limits encompassed by fine lawn and embroidery, allied to Valenciennes lace and soft ribbon. As I write, Fashion seems a pleasantly moderate thing, and the summer-day dress of white linen, with a broad-brimmed hat encircled by the floating veil, and the evening dress of chiffon garlanded with chiffon, appear to justify my suspicion that "whatever is, is right, in the world of dress." And, when I remember that the "picture" dress of to-day was the garb of convention yesterday, I can hope that our bespangled nets and tinselled brocades will in due course be encircled with charm from the halo of the bygone. May it also, I pray, come to soften the hardest outline of our leather-trimmed tweed and serge costumes of sport, and to exercise a benign influence upon our disproportionate figures and our perky toques! CHAPTER X OF BRITISH PEASANTS While searching in the annals of the bygone costume of the peasant, the most democratic person might be tempted to regret the repealing of all sumptuary law. We are grateful to-day to recognise the artistic value of the red tie of the masculine tiller of the field, or of the coloured handkerchief over the head of the harvest-woman, but, in those other times, the plains and the fields, the woods and the forests, were the background for a people in brave array, on which blue, red, green, and white played conspicuous part. And not alone in colour must their garb have been pre-eminently attractive to the eye, but in the simplicity of its make, the liberal display of white linen about the neck and the head, and the further addition of coloured lacings. These completed an effect of picturesque carelessness which may well have been allowed to cover a multitude of sins of omission in personal cleanliness.