Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: hair drawn up into hideous little knots, tied with ribbon. Everything was done to detract from the natural grace of the little girl—one of the very sweetest things in nature. The male sex fared no better. I saw in my extreme childhood a few old gentlemen still dressed in top-boots and breeches, and wearing at all times coloured tailed coats with plain gilt buttons, and the last of the judges to wear daily, wig, black breeches, and stockings, even in the streets when he walked to and from Court, was Lord Glenlee, who still sat on the Bench when I was born. He used, before the buildingof George the IV Bridge, to plunge from Brown Square down into the Cow- gate, and climb up one of the filthy closes to the Parliament Square, bewigged and in silk stockings, with his court hat in his hand. In his declining years he was carried daily in a sedan-chair, probably the last of the male sex to use that old- time vehicle. By the year 1840 the trouser fashion had become practically universal. As a rule the gentleman's nether limbs were encased in the tightest of pants, strapped down over boots during the day, and over shoes at night. The tailed coat was much worn in the daytime. It would have been an outrage for an advocate or a medical man to wear anything else, and in their case a white tiewas de rigueur. The coatwas made with the tightest of sleeves. I remember while this GENTLEMEN'S FASHIONS fashion still obtained of being taken to hear a great statesman on his receiving the freedom of our city, and when I saw him waving his arms, as he said to the assemblage in pompous tones, " Long mayyoucherishtheseglawriousmemories of Old (not auld) Lang Syne," I wondered in my youthful eagerness of inquiry how that old man managed to force those great gouty knuckles through the pinched-in s...