The steeple head-dresses of Anne and the first George’s days came under the notice of Addison, in the ‘Spectator.’ He compares them with the _commodes_, or _towers_, of his time. Speaking of the former, he tells us that the women would have carried their head-structures much higher had it not been for the preaching of a monk named Concete. The good and zealous man preached with more effect than Rowland Hill did, when he inveighed from the pulpit against Mrs. Hill’s top-knots. So logically did he prove that steeple head-dresses were devices of the devil, that they who wore them were the devil’s daughters, and that after this life the everlasting home of the latter would be with their father, that the ladies, in a fit of religious enthusiasm, cast off the denounced decorations during the summer, and made a bonfire of them after it was over. It must have been a pretty fire in which pride was burned, for the congregation amounted to something like ten thousand women, with as many male hearers; from which it is to be supposed that the preaching took place in the open air. If only half the ladies committed their caps to the flames, it was, no doubt, a glad sight to the makers of the caps. _They_ were sure that if fashion went out in one blaze, it would rise phœnix-like from the flames of that fire or another. For a time however, these exaggerated head-dresses were excommunicated; and it was as unsafe for a lady to appear in one in public, as it would be for a lady to make a tour through the liberty of Dublin on the 12th of July, clad entirely in materials of Orange hue, and singing at the top of her voice the exasperating song of ‘Boyne Water.’ She would assuredly be pelted, as _they_ were pelted by the religious and unfashionable rabble, who, years ago, if they could tolerate sin, were shocked at the sight of tall gay caps, which had been denounced by a short grave friar. But the milliners had not long to wait unemployed. As soon as the monk had turned his back, the needlewomen were again set to work; and “countless ’prentices expired” in the efforts made to execute the orders. “The women,” says Monsieur Paradin, “who had, like snails in a fright, drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.”