The early Welsh bards, we are told, dressed in sky-blue; the modern bards of the million are content to breakfast on it: the British astronomers wore green, which was not indicative of what the colour might have stood for,—a verdant knowledge of the science. When the Romans planted their conquering eagles on our soil, the old British chieftains resisted them and their fashions. Tacitus says that it was the sons of the chieftains who first adopted the Roman mode; and no doubt the old gentlemen were disgusted when they beheld their unpatriotic young heirs wandering about without their _braccæ_, and sporting the tunic before whose presence liberty and trousers had disappeared, but not for ever. The Saxons brought in their own fashions, and some of these still prevail; the smock-frock, for instance, is the old Saxon tunic without the belt. Such a dress was never known in Ireland nor in Scotland: the Saxons kept for whole centuries to a fixed fashion, as may be seen in any illustrated work on costume. In this respect they were only less tenacious than the Persians, whose garments passed from father to son as long as they could hold together. It would be difficult, I fancy, to persuade any modern young Anglo-Saxon to draw on the _scanc-beorg_, or shank-coverers, of his respected and deceased “governor.” It is only the mantles of our Peers that descend hereditarily upon the shoulders of succeeding generations; and some of these mantles look dingy enough to date their origin from the time when Henry III. established Tothill-fields Fair, in order to spite the Londoners. The latter, it will be remembered, were compelled to close their shops for an entire fortnight during the holding of the fair in Westminster; and the man on Tower Hill who wanted to furnish his outward or inward person with the smallest article was compelled to resort for it to the neighbourhood of the Abbey, or to do without till the fair was raised. The taste of the Anglo-Saxons was rather of a splendid character, but sometimes questionable. A lady with blue hair, for instance, could not have been half so pleasant to look at as a lady with blue eyes; though the custom of dyeing the hair blue was perhaps scarcely more objectionable than that of the young ladies and gentlemen of Gaul, who washed theirs in a chalky solution, in order to make it a more fiery red than it had been rendered by nature. I may add that, of the tasteful Anglo-Saxons, the nuns were the most especially tasteful; and the gorgeous attire of the sisters, with other attractions, seems to have stirred the very hearts of some of the most stony of prelates. Many of the latter however were rigidly severe in their censures against the luxurious dressing of lively Saxon nuns; but their objurgations take very much the form of that delivered by Tartuffe when he handed his kerchief to Dorine:—