Admiring mothers would sooner have followed their sons to the grave than see them walk about with hats uncocked,—whether the form took that of a spout or the point of a mince-pie. The German _Kevenhüller_ came on about the accession of George III. They were as tasteless as those French _chapeaux à cornes_, of whom Mr. Bob Fudge says that he “would back Mrs. Draper To cut better weather-boards out of brown paper.” At this time, we are told, there was the military cock and the mercantile cock; and while the beaux of St. James’s wore their hats under their arms, the beaux of Moorfields Mall wore them diagonally over their left or right eye. Some wore their hats with the corners which should come over their foreheads, in a direct line, pointed into the air. These were the Gawkies. Others did not above half cover their heads, which was indeed owing to the shallowness of their crowns. A hat with gold binding bespoke a man given to the pleasures of the turf. The tiny Nivernois hat came into fashion early in the reign of the third George; and it is said that gold-laced cocked hats used to be worn in the year ’78, because they had a military look with them, and would therefore protect the wearer against the press-gangs that were then more than usually active. When round hats came in, at first merely for morning or undress wear, but finally became a _fait accompli_, like that other little matter, the French Revolution, all the young wearers of them (and there were, at first, no others) were denounced as “blackguards” and “highwaymen.” The youthful votaries of fashion retorted by nicknaming the three-cornered hats, as “Egham, Staines, and Windsor,” in allusion to the three-fingered road-post pointing in that tripartite direction. The flat, folding, crescent-shaped beaver, called a cocked or an opera hat, was still to be seen as late as 1818; and a party of gentlemen returning on foot from Almack’s on a summer’s morning, with pantaloons tight as the Venetian standard-bearer’s, and hats cocked according to the mode, presented a rather martial look. Since that time, the round hat has gained headway; even coachmen only wear the old cocked covering on state occasions; and the ugliest article that ever could be devised for the purpose seems to be planted upon our unwilling brows for ever. In New, as formerly in Old, England, Quakers objected to take off their hats. A judge in the former locality once remarked thereon, that if he thought there was any religion in a hat, he would have the largest he could purchase for money. Poor Essex, at his mock trial before his enemies in Elizabeth’s palace, was compelled to stand uncovered. He was so embarrassed with his hat and the papers in it, that he forgot something of what he had to say; and perhaps too much care for his hat helped him to lose his head.