their heads to receive the benediction of the mild-eyed old man with the
beautiful features, the head of Church and State. Many a time, too,
Pius IX. would descend from his coach and walk upon the Pincio, all
clothed in white, stopping sometimes to talk with those who accompanied
him, or to lay his gentle hand on the fair curls of some little English
child that paused from its play in awe and admiration as the Pope went
by. For he loved children well, and most of all, children with golden
hair--angels, not Angles, as Gregory said.

As for the fashions of those days, it is probable that most of us would
suffer severe penalties rather than return to them, beautiful as they
then appeared to us by contrast with the exaggerated crinoline and
flower-garden bonnet, which had given way to the somewhat milder form of
hoop-skirt madness, but had not yet flown to the opposite extreme in the
invention of the close-fitting _princesse_ garments of 1868. But, to each
other, people looked then as they look now. Fashion in dress, concerning
which nine-tenths of society gives itself so much trouble, appears to
exercise less influence upon men and women in their relations towards
each other than does any other product of human ingenuity. Provided every
one is in the fashion, everything goes on in the age of high heels and
gowns tied back precisely as it did five-and-twenty years ago, when
people wore flat shoes, and when gloves with three buttons had not been
dreamed of--when a woman of most moderate dimensions occupied three or
four square yards of space upon a ball-room floor, and men wore peg-top
trousers. Human beings since the days of Adam seem to have retired like
caterpillars into cocoons of dress, expecting constantly the wondrous
hour when they shall emerge from their self-woven prison in the garb of
the angelic butterfly, having entered into the chrysalis state as mere
human grubs. But though they both toil and spin at their garments, and
vie with Solomon in his glory to outshine the lily of the field, the