Dress. It shows me that the subject of dress reform is one that is
occupying many wise and charming people, who have at heart the
principles of health, freedom, and beauty in costume, and I hope
that "H. B. T." and "Materfamilias" will have all the real
influence which their letters--excellent letters both of them--
certainly deserve.

I turn first to Mr. Huyshe's second letter, and the drawing that
accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the
theory contained in each, I think I should state at once that I
have absolutely no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair long
or short, or his cuffs back or forward, or indeed what he is like
at all. I hope he consults his own comfort and wishes in
everything which has to do with his dress, and is allowed to enjoy
that individualism in apparel which he so eloquently claims for
himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others; but I really
could not take Mr. Wentworth Huyshe's personal appearance as any
intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
should guide the costume of a nation. I am not denying the force,
or even the popularity, of the "'Eave arf a brick" school of
criticism, but I acknowledge it does not interest me. The gamin in
the gutter may be a necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a
nuisance. So I will proceed at once to the real point at issue,
the value of the late eighteenth-century costume over that worn in
the second quarter of the seventeenth: the relative merits, that
is, of the principles contained in each. Now, as regards the
eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth Huyshe acknowledges that
he has had no practical experience of it at all; in fact he makes a
pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in his assertion,
which I do not question for a moment, that he has never been