“As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (mit Teig zusammengekleistert), which create protuberance enough.  Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.”

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love.  None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, escape him:  more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity.  Sir Walter Raleigh’s fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth’s feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen “was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her”?  We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,—­our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust:  and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him.  Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection:—­

“By what strange chances do we live in History?  Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,—­for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto’s Court omits him.  Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting:  my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.”—­Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest?

“The simplest costume,” observes our Professor, “which I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar’s Cavalry, in the late Colombian wars.  A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it circular):  in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck; and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.”