But if the men looked badly, what shall be said of that which should have been the fairer portion of the cavalcade? Salvator Rosa never dreamed of such objects, and Hogarth would have gone stark mad in the attempt to depict them. Ringlets were buried under mob-caps and old woollen-hoods, and smothered in bad straw hats and superannuated felt jockeys, tied down in the same ungraceful manner as those of the men. Hoops had suddenly ceased to be fashionable, even in advance of the sudden Quaker collapse in the cities; and every shape, bulky or lank, showed in its own undisguised proportions--here a form of beauty, there a draped lamp-post, and yonder a bedizened bolster. In short, the very worst riding-dresses possible to achieve seemed to have been carefully gathered from all the old-clothes shops in the universe; and if the men were the ugliest brigands of the dark souled Italian painter, the women were the drollest witches that ever capered through the brain of the master-dramatist. And yet there were sparkling eyes showing occasionally from under those hideous bonnets, that perhaps looked the brighter for the contrast; and it is not sure that one or two of the sweet auburn curls of Clara Vanderlyn, which had strayed away from their confinement and lay like red gold on the neck of her shabby black riding-dress, could ever have shown to more bewitching advantage. Every one laughed at the appearance of the other, as the mount was taking place, and as Hartshorne, of the Crawford, who seemed to have measured the capabilities of every horse and calculated the weight and skill of every rider, called off the names from the roll-book, and gave place to each in turn.