This reminds me of a foolish interference of Louis XVI. in a matter of dress. In the days of our grandfathers there was nothing so fashionable for summer wear as nankeen. No gentleman would be seen abroad or at home in a dress of which this material did not go to the making of a portion; and as we ever fixed the fashion on questions of male costume, the mode was adopted in France, and English nankeens threatened to drive all French manufactured articles of summer wear out of the market. The king however surmounted the difficulty: he ordered all the executioners and their assistants to perform their terrible office in no other dress but one of nankeen. This rendered the material “infamous;” and many a man who deserved to be hanged, discarded the suit because a similar one was worn by the man who did the hanging. So Mrs. Turner, the poisoner, being executed in the reign of James I. in a yellow starched ruff, put to death the fashion of wearing them. Picturesqueness of costume went out with chivalry; and few things could be uglier than an Englishman of James the Second’s or of William and Mary’s days, except an Englishman of our own tight and buttoned period. A hundred years ago it would have been unsafe to have sold a plaid waistcoat in either Rag Fair or Houndsditch. In 1752 Mr. Thornton said in the House of Commons, that “he believed it true, plaid waistcoats had been worn by some wrong heads in the country; but in the parts where he lived he saw no occasion for an army to correct them” (he was speaking against a standing army), “for some that had attempted to wear them had been heartily thrashed for doing so.” In the same year it is worthy of remark that we were exporting gold and silver bullion to the Continent; not indeed at the rate at which we are now importing it, especially the former, but still in quantities that seem almost incredible. The metal-import question as it stood then excites a smile in those who read it now. For example, among the current news given by our juvenile friend, Sylvanus Urban, in his volume for 1752, we learn that “a parcel of waistcoats embroidered with foreign gold and silver (which were lately seized at a tailor’s house, who must pay the penalty of £100, pursuant to Act of Parliament), were publicly burnt in presence of the custom-house officers and others.”