"passably picturesque," he says I may possibly think it; well,
passably picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly,
simply because it is not founded on right principles, or, indeed,
on any principles at all. Picturesqueness one may get in a variety
of ways; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar to us, for
instance, may be picturesque, such as a late sixteenth-century
costume, or a Georgian house. Ruins, again, may be picturesque,
but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are
meaningless. Beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the
perfection of principles; and in "the ideal dress" of Mr. Huyshe
there are no ideas or principles at all, much less the perfection
of either. Let us examine it, and see its faults; they are obvious
to any one who desires more than a "Fancy-dress ball" basis for
costume. To begin with, the hat and boots are all wrong. Whatever
one wears on the extremities, such as the feet and head, should,
for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material, and for the
sake of freedom should take its shape from the way one chooses to
wear it, and not from any stiff, stereotyped design of hat or boot
maker. In a hat made on right principles one should be able to
turn the brim up or down according as the day is dark or fair, dry
or wet; but the hat brim of Mr. Huyshe's drawing is perfectly
stiff, and does not give much protection to the face, or the
possibility of any at all to the back of the head or the ears, in
case of a cold east wind; whereas the bycocket, a hat made in
accordance with the right laws, can be turned down behind and at
the sides, and so give the same warmth as a hood. The crown,
again, of Mr. Huyshe's hat is far too high; a high crown diminishes
the stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who is
tall is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning: