NEEDLEWORK IN COSTUME.--PART I. "What neede these velvets, silkes, or lawne, Embrodery, feathers, fringe and lace." Bp. Hall. "Time was, when clothing sumptuous or for use, Save their own painted skins, our Sires had none. As yet black breeches were not." Cowper. Manifold indeed were the varieties in mode and material before that _beau ideal_ of all that is graceful and becoming--the "black breeches"--were invented. For though in many parts of the globe costume is uniform, and the vest and the turban of a thousand years ago are of much the same make as now, this is not the case in the more polished parts of Europe, where that "turncoat whirligig maniac, yclept Fashion," is the pole-star and beacon of the multitude of men, from him who has the "last new cut from Stultz," to him who is magnificent and happy in the "reg'lar bang-up-go" from the eastern parts of the metropolis. It would seem that England is peculiarly celebrated for her devotion at Fashion's shrine; for we are told that "an Englishman, endevoring sometime to write of our attire, made sundrie platformes for his purpose, supposing by some of them to find out one stedfast ground whereon to build the summe of his discourse. But in the end (like an orator long without exercise) when he saw what a difficult peece of worke he had taken in hand, he gave over his travell, and onely drue the picture of a naked man, unto whome he gave a paire of sheares in the one hand, and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end he should shape his apparell after such fashion as himselfe liked, sith he could find no kind of garment that could please him anie while together, and this he called an Englishman. Certes this writer shewed himself herein not to be altogether void of iudgement, sith the phantasticall follie of our nation, even from the courtier to the carter, is such, that no forme of apparell liketh vs longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long and be not laid aside, to receive some other trinket newlie devised. "And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it is a world to see the costlinesse and the curiositie; the excesse and the vanitie; the pompe and the brauerie; the change and the varietie; and, finallie, the ficklenesse and the follie that is in all degrees; insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancie of attire. "In women, also, it in most to be lamented, that they doo now far exceed the lightnesse of our men (who nevertheless are transformed from the cap even to the verie shoo) and such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for none but light housewives onlie, is now become a habit for chast and sober matrons. "Thus _it is now come to passe, that women are become men, and men transformed into monsters_."