Mr. A. C. Corbould, in an illustration of the correct costume for Rotten Row in 1885 and 1889, shows that for men the tall hat and frock coat had yielded in the latter year to the bowler and tweeds. The dress of the ladies shows less change, but the tall hat has gone and the skirts are grey not black. Short tailless coats for morning wear were coming in, and _Punch_ welcomes in 1889 the introduction of brown boots as a relief from "that dual despotism, dreadful grown, of needless nigritude and futile polish." Whiskers were still worn, but, amongst young men, were severely restricted in length, and shorn of the ambrosial exuberance of the 'fifties and 'sixties. "Æsthetes" were once described as a set of long-haired men and short-haired women, and Du Maurier's pictures justify the summary, but these peculiarities were confined to a coterie; they never seriously affected the usages of Mayfair or involved any revision of the "petty decalogue of Mode." Spats were generally worn, and the "mashers" of the 'eighties carried very slim umbrellas when they took their walks abroad in the park for Sunday parade. Evening dress presents few and negligible differences from that in vogue to-day. One of the very few references to military uniforms in these years indicates the reaction against "useless flummery." A military correspondent in _The Times_ had said, in 1890, that the day of cocked hats and plumes was gone, and _Punch_ availed himself of the saying to design a new and rational uniform for general officers, so that they might be mistaken by the enemy for harmless gentlemen farmers. LETTERS AND JOURNALISM: DRAMA AND MUSIC As I ventured to remark in an earlier volume, a literary critic's acumen and _flair_ are better shown in his estimates of writers whose fame is as yet unassured, or who are just emerging above the horizon, than of authors of established reputation. No special credit attaches to _Punch_ for writing with reverence of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott or Charles Lamb, whose centenary evoked a charming tribute in 1875, when the Headmaster of Christ's Hospital appealed in _The Times_ for support in erecting a memorial to Elia in his old school. A better test is furnished in his references to Browning and Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, Charles Reade and Trollope, Jefferies and Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, and, to come down to the end of this period, Kipling and Barrie. Yet all established reputations were not respected by _Punch_. When Rabelais was included in Professor Henry Morley's series of World's Classics in 1883 _Punch_ uttered a vehement protest against the choice. He calls Rabelais a "dirty-minded, scurrilous, blasphemous, witty, broadly humorous and extravagantly grotesque clerical buffoon." The _Saturday Review_ thought otherwise, but _Punch_ declared that the defence was only put forward as "a stalking-horse for a malicious attack on ourselves."