“Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin.  But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground.  Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled up here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe.  Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue.

“Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,—­I shall here say nothing:  the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us.

“Rich men, I find, have Teusinke [a perhaps untranslatable article]; also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling.  Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect.  Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections.  The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (schief):  their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses:  some also clap bells on the peak.  Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat (ohne Gesass):  these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap them.

“Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare.  Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry.  Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman!  Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned.  The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (Flammen), that is, sparkling hair-drops:  but of their mother’s head-gear who shall speak?  Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten.  In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad:  these are their Ruff-mantles (Kragenmantel).