Certainly the most European part of the present Croatian costume is the black felt-hat, which oscillates between our broad-brim and what is vulgarly known as a ‘pork-pie;’ but then the brim is used as a receptacle for vasefuls of flowers, and is often surmounted by waving plumes, so any such work-a-day resemblances are soon forgotten. Then there is another variety of hat made of straw, with a conical peak, which recalls a more distant parallel. When a Croat wears one of these, and perchance, as he often does,[147] having doffed his belt, goes about in his long flowing tunic and broad petticoat-like breeks, an uncomfortable feeling comes over you that you have seen him before; and when you have searched the remotest crannies of Europe in vain for his like, it suddenly flashes upon you that it is no other than John Chinaman who stands before you! Yes; there are the very peaks to his boots; there is the beardless face, the long pendulous moustache, and in old days, when—as you may see by a picture in the Museum—the Croat wore a pigtail, as his Dalmatian brothers do still, a Celestial meeting him might have mistaken him for his double! The patterns on these various articles of attire are striking in character; they are hieroglyphics, hard to decipher, but long household annals are written in them. I take it that pure ornament, as opposed to imitation of natural forms, has gone through two stages of development, which may be called the ‘Angular’ and the ‘Curved,’ of which the angular precedes the curved, and stands to it in much the same relation as Roman letters stand to current writing. During the Stone Age in Europe this angular ornamentation seems universally to have prevailed. It continued during the earlier Bronze Age, but towards its close the second phase of ornamentation began to develope itself in some countries, and we of the Iron Age have seen the old angular ornamentation almost supplanted by its offspring. At the present day, one European people—the Lapps of the extreme north—may still be said to remain almost in the first stage of ornament; the hardness of their materials, the bone and wood on which they mostly work, their little employment of metals and pottery, their seclusion from the current of European civilization, have conspired to keep them back. But it is more remarkable that a people of a more central European area, and a more prolific land, should still linger on in the transitionary stage between the old and new styles of decoration. Yet, as far as my observation goes, this is the case with the Croats, and generally with the Sclavonians of the south. They seem to be acquainted with the beauty of the new style, but to cling with a peculiar fondness to the angular ornamentation of their ruder forefathers. Thus, in the women’s clothes, at least, nearly the whole of the embroidery is of this prehistoric kind. The high collars of the Croat mantles, which resemble those of the Lapps in form, resemble them also in pattern.