Robert Cruikshank was "a man about town" in those days, and the "dandies" whom he and his fellow caricaturists satirized and ridiculed were the sham "Corinthians" of his time. Apart from the idea of caricature they must have been queer fellows--these men with the large eye-glasses, squat broad-brimmed hats, huge cravats and collars, cauliflower frills, tight coats, short bell-shaped trousers, and well-spurred Wellington boots! In one of the satires of the time (which I take to be Robert's) we see five of them preparing for conquest in a hairdresser's shop; and the "make up" comprises, in addition to the tremendous neckties, cauliflower frills, and top-boots of the period, false calves and stays, a pair of which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next to nothing. In a pair of rough anonymous satires--_The Dandy Dressing at Home_ and _The Dandy Dressed Abroad_--the former shows us how the completed figure is built up. The absence of a shirt is concealed by an amply frilled "dickey," the dirty feet protrude from the well-nigh footless stockings, the bare arms are clothed at the extremities only by the cuffs, while a pair of huge seals dangling from a ribbon guard form pendants to a latch-key instead of a gold watch. The fellow's washing bill, which lies on the dressing-table before him, comprises four items--all of them collars. On the ground, side by side with the Wellington boots, which he himself has just been cleaning, lie the open pages of "The Beau's Stratagem." In a sketch by the always coarse satirist Williams, two of these fellows have been decoyed into an infamous house and drugged, and the indignation of the bully and his female assistants is intense when they find that their watches are not even pinchbeck, but only pincushions. The "Corinthian Kates" who figure in the satirical sketches of this period are members of the _demi monde_. An excellent undated sketch, signed "J. L. M. fect.," entitled, _A Dandyess_, is divided into two compartments. The first scene shows us the completed figure (a most absurd one), and the second (which is laid in the lady's garret) how the magnificent result has been attained. We find her engaged in ironing her chemisette; over the fire are suspended her stockings; on a stool near her stand her bottles of cosmetic and a pot of rouge; on the floor her "artificial hump"; while her preposterous bonnet and other articles of costume hang from different articles of the scanty furniture. 1819.