neither old age nor infirmity will excuse a man for wearing his
hat upon his head, either at home or abroad. Females are (if
possible) still more subject to the caprices of fashion; and as
the articles of their dress are more manifold, it is enough to
make a man's heart ake to see his wife surrounded by a multitude
of cotturieres, milliners, and tire-women. All her sacks and
negligees must be altered and new trimmed. She must have new
caps, new laces, new shoes, and her hair new cut. She must have
her taffaties for the summer, her flowered silks for the spring
and autumn, her sattins and damasks for winter. The good man, who
used to wear the beau drop d'Angleterre, quite plain all the year
round, with a long bob, or tye perriwig, must here provide
himself with a camblet suit trimmed with silver for spring and
autumn, with silk cloaths for summer, and cloth laced with gold,
or velvet for winter; and he must wear his bag-wig a la pigeon.
This variety of dress is absolutely indispensible for all those
who pretend to any rank above the meer bourgeois. On his return
to his own country, all this frippery is useless. He cannot
appear in London until he has undergone another thorough
metamorphosis; so that he will have some reason to think, that
the tradesmen of Paris and London have combined to lay him under
contribution: and they, no doubt, are the directors who regulate
the fashions in both capitals; the English, however, in a
subordinate capacity: for the puppets of their making will not
pass at Paris, nor indeed in any other part of Europe; whereas a
French petit maitre is reckoned a complete figure every where,
London not excepted. Since it is so much the humour of the
English at present to run abroad, I wish they had anti-gallican
spirit enough to produce themselves in their own genuine English
dress, and treat the French modes with the same philosophical