I said that there was brain under the hat; this is not always obvious, but there is generally hair. Once upon a time, not very long ago, hair was constructed with great labor into a huge tower upon every lady’s head, pomatum being used by way of mortar, and this tower was repaired every three weeks. The British matron then looked like a “mop-headed Papuan.” The two were much alike, except in this, that while our countrywoman triumphed in her art, the Papuan was discontented with his nature. The ladies here, whose hair was naturally made to fall around the shoulders, reared it up on end; but in New Guinea, fashionables born with hair that grew of its own will into an upright bush, preferred to cut it off, and re-arrange it in a wig directed downwards. Sometimes they do no more than crop it close; and then, since it is characteristic of the hair in this race to grow, not in an expanse, but in tufts, the head is said by sailors to remind them of a worn-out shoe-brush. So, at the Antipodes as well as here, Art is an enemy to Nature. Hair upon the head was meant originally to preserve in all seasons an equable temperature above the brain. Emptying grease-pots into it, and matting it together, we convert it into an unwholesome skull-cap. The neck? Here sanitary people say, How satisfactory it is that Englishmen keep their necks covered with a close cravat, and do not Byronize in opposition to the climate. That is very good; but English women, who account themselves more delicate, don’t cover their necks, indeed they do not at all times cover their shoulders. So traveling from top to toe, if Englishmen wear thick shoes to protect the feet, our English women scorn the weakness, and go, except a little fancy covering, bare-footed. From this point I digress, to note of other garments that the English dress, as now established, does on the whole fair credit to society. To the good gentlemen who poetize concerning grace and the antique, who sigh for togas, stolas, and paludaments, I say, Go to. The drapery you sigh for was the baby-linen of the human race. Now we are out of long-clothes. The present European dress is that which offers least impediment to action. It shows what a Man is like, and that is more than any stranger from another world could have detected under the upholstery to which our sculptors cling. The merest hint of a man—shaped as God shaped him—is better than ten miles of folded blanket. Artists cry down our costume; forgetting that if they have not folds of drapery to paint, that is because they have in each man every limb to which they may assign its posture. If they can put no mind into a statue by the mastery of attitude, all the sheets in Guy’s Hospital will not twist into a fold that shall be worth their chiseling.