[Illustration: {1772: A woman of the time of George III.; two types of hat; 1775: A woman of the time of George III.; 1794: A woman of the time of George III.}] [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820) This shows the last of the pannier dresses, which gave way in 1794 or 1795 to Empire dresses. A change came over all dress after the Revolution.] Then we go on to the absurd idea which came over womankind that it was most becoming to look like a pouter pigeon. She took to a buffon, a gauze or fine linen kerchief, which stuck out pigeon-like in front, giving an exaggerated bosom to those who wore it. With this fashion of 1786 came the broad-brimmed hat. Travel a little further and you have the mob cap. All of a sudden out go hoops, full skirts, high hair, powder, buffons, broad-brimmed hats, patches, high-heeled shoes, and in come willowy figures and thin, nearly transparent dresses, turbans, low shoes, straight fringes. I am going to give a chapter from a fashion book, to show you how impossible it is to deal with the vagaries of fashion in the next reign, and if I chose to occupy the space, I could give a similar chapter to make the confusion of this reign more confounded. DRAWINGS TO ILLUSTRATE THE COSTUME OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR, AND THE REMAINING TWELVE BY THE DIGHTONS, FATHER AND SON [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Five men}] [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Four men}] [Illustration: {Four men and a boy}] [Illustration: {A man and three women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: {Four women}] [Illustration: The King.] [Illustration: The Navy.] [Illustration: The Army.] [Illustration: Pensioners.] [Illustration: The Church.] [Illustration: The Law.] [Illustration: The Stage.] [Illustration: The Universities.] [Illustration: The Country.] [Illustration: The Duke of Norfolk.] [Illustration: The City.] [Illustration: The Duke of Queensberry.] GEORGE THE FOURTH Reigned ten years: 1820-1830. Born 1762. Married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick. Out of the many fashion books of this time I have chosen, from a little brown book in front of me, a description of the fashions for ladies during one part of 1827. It will serve to show how mere man, blundering on the many complexities of the feminine passion for dress--I was going to say clothes--may find himself left amid a froth of frills, high and dry, except for a whiff of spray, standing in his unromantic garments on the shore of the great world of gauze and gussets, while the most noodle-headed girl sails gracefully away upon the high seas to pirate some new device of the Devil or Paris.