Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni’s of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them.  For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked—­namely, a mincing Frenchman.  At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—­lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—­but not commonly carried by the walkers.  The Female Tatler advertises “the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed the umbrella from Wilks’ Coffee-house, shall the next time be welcome to the maid’s pattens.”  An umbrella carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy.  As late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own life, informs us, that when he carried “a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out ‘Frenchman! why don’t you get a coach?’” The fact was, that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true esprit de corps, were clamorous against this portentous rival.  This footman, in 1778, gives us further Information:—­“At this time there were no umbrellas worn in London, except in noblemen’s and gentlemen’s houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it rained, between the door and their carriage.”  His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his umbrella.  But he adds that “he persisted for three months, till they took no further notice of this novelty.  Foreigners began to use theirs, and then the English.  Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number of umbrellas.

[Footnote A:  Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria.  They are also depicted on early Greek vases.  But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty.  In Caedmon’s “Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture,” now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.  The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above, they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.—­Ed.]