When Holland, the Chiswick baker, played Hamlet, at his first benefit at Drury Lane (1762), the little tillage poured out all its inhabitants to do him both honour and profit; and I do not know if the predecessor of the present estimable rector, the Rev. Mr. Bowerbank, was not at the head of them. However this may be, there was assuredly amongst them a young Chiswick maiden, who contrived to seat herself at a corner of the lowest seat of the amphitheatre, with her feet resting on the stage. When the Ghost appeared, Hamlet’s hat fell off; and this so excited the commiseration of the damsel from Chiswick that she gently stepped forward, picked up the hat, and with her own hands placed it upon Holland’s head, with the broad corner foremost, as it might have been worn had Hamlet been exceedingly drunk. Holland gravely finished the scene, but his appearance was too much for the gravity of the house; and although the audience, becomingly but with difficulty, restrained their risibility till the young prince with the queer hat and his respected sire’s ghost had diversely departed, they burst out into so uproarious a laugh _then_, that the whole house rang again; and Holland too when he was led to a glass, and contemplated his own counterfeit and highly ridiculous presentment. Such was a hat on the English stage; here is one on that of America. Mr. Charles Kean, when once playing Richard, at New Orleans, observed, as he was seated on the throne, and the curtain was rising, that his noble peers wore their hats or caps in his presence. With his truncheon to his lips he contrived a stage whisper, which said, “Take off your hats; you are in the presence of the king.” “And what of that?” roared high-reaching Buckingham, looking round at the audience, and smacking his own cap tighter on his circumspect head; “what of that? I guess we know nothing of kings in this country.” The New Orleaners were in raptures, and the king sat corrected. In old days there was not only a fashion in the hat, but also in the cock of it. The famous battle of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies cock of the hat. In No. 526 of the ‘Spectator,’ “John Sly, a haberdasher of hats, and tobacconist,” is directed to take down the names of such country gentlemen as have left the hunting for the military cock, before the approach of peace. In a subsequent number is told how the same John Sly is preparing hats for the several kinds of heads that make figures in the realm of Great Britain, with cocks significant of their powers and faculties. His hats for men of the faculties of law and physic do but just turn up to give a little life to their sagacity. His military hats glare full in the face; and he has prepared a familiar easy cock for all good companions between the above-mentioned extremes.