is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation
(that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem,
not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick
well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their Ruff-mantles
(_Kragenmantel_).

"As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have
doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted
together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create
protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art
of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it."

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain
feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion of
any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real
love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes, or other
the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, escape
him: more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to
the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's
fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet,
appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether at
that period the Maiden Queen "was red-painted on the nose, and
white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and
wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her"?
We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the
Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the
same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only
slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader parts of