_Grey_. They went to parties in the day-time on horseback; and on the
days when there were no parties, of which there were a great many then,
they gave themselves up to a very delightful mode of passing the time,
when it is intelligently practised, known as staying at home.

_Mr. Key_. What a bore!

_Grey_. But don't confine your criticism of head-dresses to the
fifteenth century. Look through the costumes of the three succeeding
centuries, and see how often invention was taxed for artificial
decorations of the head, equally elaborate and hideous. Anything but to
have a head look like a head! anything but to have hair look like hair!
See this lady of 1750, her hair drawn violently back from her forehead
and piled up on a cushion nine inches high. She is plainly one of those
lovely, warm-toned blondes whose hair is of that priceless red that
makes all other tints look poor and sad; and so she defiles its
exquisite texture with grease, and blanches out its wealth of color with
flour. She might have gathered its gleaming waves into a ravishing knot
behind her head; but no, she has four stiff, enormous curls, noisome
with a mingled smell of hot iron, musk, and ambergris, hanging like
rolls of parchment from the top of her cushion to below her ear. O' top
of this elevation is mounted a wreath of gaudy artificial flowers, in
its turn surmounted by four vast plumes, two yellow, one pink, one blue,
from the midst of which shoot up two long feathers, one green and one
red, while behind hangs down a greasy, floury mass gathered at the
end into a club-like handle, which has some fitness for its place, in
suggesting that it should be used to jerk the heap of hair, grease, and
feathers from the head of the unfortunate who sustains it. Just think of
it! that sweet creature must have given up at least two hours of every