The hoopskirt was the characteristic feature of eighteenth-century styles, and it grew to such enormous proportions as seriously to inconvenience the wearer and to interfere with the cubic feet of space which a pedestrian might reasonably claim as his right on a crowded thoroughfare. But there were eighteenth-century styles which were more reprehensible than the oft-caricatured hoop. There was a class of votaries of fashion, in contrast to the mass of society, whose only notion of dress was display, and toward the middle of the eighteenth century these imported the most extravagant and immodest of French styles. As they paraded the public gardens, to which all classes resorted, the staid people were scandalized by their appearance. T. Wright, in his _Caricature History of the Georges_, says that "what was looked upon as the _beau-monde_ then lived much more in public than now, and men and women of fashion displayed their weaknesses to the world in public places of amusement and resort, with little shame or delicacy. The women often rivalled the men in libertinism, and even emulated them sometimes in their riotous manners." Women of the town were greatly in evidence, and a trustworthy traveller of the times affirms that they were bolder and more numerous in London than in either Paris or Rome. Not only at night, but in broad daylight, they traversed the footpaths, selecting out of the passers-by the susceptible for their enticement, particularly directing themselves to foreigners. Archenholz says: _On compte cinquante mille prostitueés à Londres, dans les maîtresses en titre. Leurs usages et leur conduite déterminent les différentes classes où il faut les ranger. La plus vile de toutes habite dans les lieux publics sous la direction d'une matrone qui les loge et les habille. Ces habits mêe pour les filles communes, sont de soie, suivant l'usage que le luxe a généralement introduit en Angleterre.... Dans_ _la seule paroisse de Marybonne, qui est la plus grande et la plus peuplée de l'Angleterre, on en comptoit, il y a quelques années, treize mille, dont dix-sept cents occupoient des maisons entières à elles seules_.