help asking yourself whether its hour has not struck. Yet, when one has
said this, one must hedge from a conjecture so extreme. The king wears a
frock-coat, a long, gray one, with a white top-hat and lavender gloves,
and those who like to be like a king conform to his taste. No one, upon
his life, may yet wear a frock and a derby, but many people now wear
top-hats, though black ones, with sack-coats, with any sort of coats;
and, above all, the Londoner affects in summer a straw hat either of a
flat top and a pasteboard stiffness, or of the operatically picturesque
Alpine pattern, or of a slouching Panama shapelessness. What was often
the derision, the abhorrence of the English in the dress of other
nations has now become their pleasure, and, with the English genius of
doing what they like, it may be that they overdo their pleasure. But at
the worst the effect is more interesting than our uniformity. The
conventional evening dress alone remains inviolate, but how long this
will remain, who can say? The simple-hearted American, arriving with his
scrupulous dress suit in London, may yet find himself going out to
dinner with a company of Englishmen in white linen jackets or tennis
flannels.

If, however, the men's dress in England is informal, impatient, I think
one will be well within the lines of safety in saying that above
everything the English women's dress expresses _sentiment_, though
I suppose it is no more expressive of personal sentiment than the chic
of our women's dress is expressive of personal chic; in either case the
dressmaker, male or female, has impersonally much to do with it. Under
correction of those countrywomen of ours who will not allow that the
Englishwomen know how to dress, I will venture to say that their
expression of sentiment in dress is charming, but how charming it
comparatively is I shall be far from saying. I will only make so bold as
to affirm that it seems more adapted to the slender fluency of youth